Pure Practicality

Even though Kenzo said he’s totally fine walking all the way home by himself, today I still timed my after lunch walk so that I could meet him halfway and walk together.

The first graders all leave school in one big group and as they pass each block a couple of kids turn off down to their respective streets. Two little girls who live on our street actually got ahead of the group and hurried off home together. When I met up with Kenzo he was walking with his new friend Hidekazu.

Kenzo wasn’t not pleased to see me, but since he was with his friend and they were having a great time walking together he kind of just pretended I wasn’t there.

I also sort of pretended I wasn’t there. I walked a little in front of them and let them have their space. I was enjoying observing how they walked along and chatting with each other and peeking into things like the change dispenser in a vending machine and old people's gardens.

Kenzo really wanted his friend to come over and play. He reminded me that he wrote a letter to him and invited him over, but I told him that Hidekazu should probably just hurry on home or else his mom will be very worried. I promised both of them that we will all play together sometime soon. We have to make sure everyone’s mamas and papas know about it.

I like Hidekazu. He's a nice boy, as far as I can tell. When I greeted him with a hearty "konnichiwa" he responded with a confident "hello" and proceeded to count to ten in English.

Eri took Kenzo to catch his 4 o’clock bus to Friends Club. When she came back I went downstairs to ask her about something and Kenzo was there. It turns out he had a stomachache and didn’t get on the bus. He recovered quickly so Eri drove him and of course Osamu went along, the opportunist that he is. He parlayed the entire thing into tons of slide and other playground time.

In part because the school’s parent newsletter explicitly says so and also out of pure practicality Kenzo is now picking up more responsibilities. One of them is washing his own fork, knife, and chopsticks set.

Comments

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