"Class Day"

They certainly make a big deal of graduation here. Yesterday was funny hat day. It reminded me of how I've never had a good head for Hallowe'en costumes although I appreciate them greatly. I particularly remember one year seeing a half-dozen people dressed as a six pack of beer and a couple dressed as shifting tectonic plates and thinking, this is genius of a kind too rarely seen...

Melina went the classic route, a wide-brimmed straw hat with large tropical flowers she sewed on to it and trailing silk ribbons. Others ran the gamut from Shredded Wheat boxes crafted into shapes never seen on earth to an entire moose. There were many vikings and many Darth Vaders. One large hat was connected to a computer keyboard and as the kid typed (with one hand) his hat said scratchy incomprehensible things. A crocheted snood with many balloons trapped in its cascading net. Lobster haberdashery.

Last night Melina conducted her last concert with the Slavic chorus, in one of Yale's gothic chapels that certainly must have seemed pretentious when they were new but now have enough age (and urban soot) on them to look feasible. It was beautiful. My brother whom I haven't spoken to for two years was there, and Zed, ecstatic to be past his surgery and able to enjoy all the fun, and all the ex-in-laws, and all was well.