Today is my very last day of being the parent of a kid who plays basketball at Harmony Elementary School. It's been a long haul. Last night the boys lost their final game of the season, and they went out smiling and having fun, and what more can you ask for? Last weekend's tears were forgotten, they lost by a respectable, non-humiliating margin, and the Harmony parents were delighted. Today the indomitable girls' team plays . . . an actual posse of winners, these girls are . . . and Paul takes part in a couple of foul-shooting and all-star affairs, and then my days of biting my nails in elementary-school bleachers are over.

I will have to discover a new subject of contemplation. I wonder what it will be.

Whitman wrote, "Every existence has its idiom, everything has an idiom and tongue." I will try to keep that in mind.