When Don was home on his first break from the academy, he was full of tales of what went on at the school. There were some girls showing an interest in him. This was the first time he’d even mentioned the opposite sex. He was trying to pretend it didn’t matter, but I could tell he was pleased. Still, he didn’t seem quite sure how he should react to their advances.

Teens in north Arkansas participated in sports Don was unfamiliar with. He was anxious to give them a try. To me, they sounded dangerous. They involved rappelling off of mountains, and spelunking, which I understand is climbing around in caves while exploring them. He mentioned crawling on your belly in the dark with a light attached to your head. I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

Other sports involving snowboarding and skiing, would something for later. Having lived in the deep south, snow was something we rarely saw. Those were things a mother doesn't care to know her accident-prone son will soon be involved with. It made me wonder why I ever agreed to allow him to go so far away. Still, Don was more excited than I’d seen him in a while. I had to acknowledge my children were starting to grow up and letting them try their wings was part of it.

Connie started out her year as a class clown, and came home with some frowny faces in conduct. Being a behavior problem got her separated from the section to which her more serious friend Jennifer was assigned. Since I was a working mom, and Diane was a stay-at-home mom, Connie liked pretending Diane was her mom. She liked the idea of having a younger mom. Diane was barely in her twenties, while I was in my mid-thirties and Evan in his mid-forties. Carol walked her to the bus each morning, and Connie even told some of the kids, Carol was her mother. I’m happy to report that now she sees me in a more favorable light.

Connie also tried to change her name. The teacher thought the name Connie might be short for Constance, so she let her believe that was true by answering roll that way. I’m not sure why she preferred that name, but maybe it was because Don told her Connie stood for con-artist and that is what she was turning out to be.

Christi got interested in sports and joined a softball team. She tried out and was chosen to be a part of the color guard at her school so she would be marching in the Mardi Gras parades behind the flag bearers. This meant buying a uniform which was a short pleated green skirt in school colors, a white satin blouse, white gloves, white boots with green tassels, a white hat and green pom-poms.

Carol was a senior and she did well in her classes. When I saw work she did in art class, I realized she had a lot of talent in art. Pencil portraits as well as oil painting were favorites. She was also in a free enterprise class which might have come under the heading of economics. The school was teaching entrepreneurship which meant she had to come up with a project where she could earn money. She made Christmas ornaments from clothes-pins which she sold on campus. Aside from the one friend, she made on her first day at the school, she never mentioned any other girls from Grace King.

Carol did have some friends from church, and one was a Spanish girl that she visited from time to time. They both wanted to go to a college in Texas, and they were planning to be roommates. Carmen had come from El Salvador to live with her sister who was married to an airline pilot. She’d had to learn English after she got to this country, so she was a little behind in school. She took her GED in order to be ready for college the following semester. Carol finished high school in December and got a job at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in the spring. She didn’t plan to start college until the fall semester.

We all enjoyed Carol’s job because at the end of the day, she was free to take all the doughnuts she wanted from those which hadn’t sold. She had some bad experiences while working there because several people she knew died tragically. Two of them worked with her and one was a daily customer who died of a heart attack. One worker was hit by a car and a young doughnut cutter who she was starting to like as more than a friend, died when his trailer caught on fire at night. That seemed to hit her hard.

Carol almost experienced something which could have been disastrous involving a babysitting job. It was with a family where she had kept the children many times. She knew both the single mother and the man who was her boyfriend. He often drove her home. One night she had an appointment to babysit, but she received a call at the last minute to say it had been canceled. Shortly afterward, she learned that night the boyfriend had been murdered by the ex-husband. I can’t imagine what might have happened if she had been there at the time.

Don came home on several more breaks, and he never missed the bus again. On one break, he chose to go home with his roommate, Lowell, from Enid, Oklahoma. Lowell had a younger sister who was attracted to our son as well. She later wrote some letters to him.

He enjoyed his year at the school and at midterm he did pick up some of the core courses he would need in order to graduate from high school. His job went well and he learned some construction skills while working. To our amazement, he survived the year with no emergency visits. The one special girl he mentioned often was named Lenora.

The actual graduation service for Carol didn’t take place until May even though she finished school in December. Both Evan’s mother and my mother and dad came for the graduation. It was a huge class and those things tend to get tiresome, but family is expected to endure it for the sake of their graduates.