I told them I couldn't teach level 5

Once there was a fellow and his goal was to see me every day. Sounds obsessive, doesn't it? He told me, "I want to see you every day. Where do you live? I want to walk past your house and watch you water the plants or carry the groceries inside."

I kissed the top of his head, put my arm around his shoulders and said, "You don't want to do that."

"Why?"

"Because seeing people is not being with people. And you can even be with people who you can't see."

"I know," he said and linked his fingers between mine. "Last night when I couldn't fall asleep, I remembered you." His hair smells like toast left out overnight and his fingers are gummy with stickiness. "You said when I couldn't sleep, to remember my last happy day. To remember all of it." He smiled.

"That's good." I shook my head a bit and stared hard at the thin line of dark under his fingernails, his fingers wrapped onto my hand.

"Yeah.I asked you about your car?"

I nod, shake my head no, and then nod a bit more.

"It's a Dodge Caravan, 1990, red."

"Right."

"Well, that was my last happy day."

Ryan jumps up then and goes to stand with the other students lining up at the water fountain.

They shouldn't let me teach level 5. I'm not cut out for it.
My son, Dylan, was in fifth grade at that time. I came home from substitute teaching that day, told him I was proud of him, that we were lucky, the luckiest of the lucky.

Being Dylan, he pressed his lips together for a moment, then reached for the Pringles and said, "What grade did you teach today?"

I couldn't say anything.

"Was it level 5?"

I nodded.

Dylan hugged me. So Dylan's not here, but I don't miss him because I know he's here. He is at college now, learning and sometimes having to stand and wait for a water fountain. He's with me all the time. And somehow that other little boy, on that day, understood something that I thought I understood that actually took me a long time to really understand.