Pre-Christmas complexities.

I was in Ringwood on the other side of town when the text came through: your child is registered as absent. It was the start of the last week of school. I called him. Where are you? School was optional, he said. Then why did I get an absent text? He was out with a friend.

I walked into the store preoccupied with the fractured conversation. Can’t anything be black and white? Dozens of keyboards, organs, pianos were on display. There is no more beautiful object than a brand new German piano, lid open, maker’s name in gold leaf above the keys set in a black mirror-lacquered off-square object that could have been designed by an ancient Grecian architect. The salesman danced out of a rear office and we talked about keyboards and how smaller hands would benefit from the graduated give of a superior model rather than the clunky action of the cheaper ones, and we came to an agreement and I said I’d pick it up on Tuesday. Later, I called the school. Yes, it was optional in this last week, but if they attended, they would work around the school. As in repair, or maintain.

The next day he was back at school. He came home with paint staining his clothes and limbs. Revelation: never realised how satisfying it was, and was going back next day to finish the job; painting the outdoor performance deck. The vice principal had thanked him; told the canteen lady to ply him with food. She brought it to the deck, misunderstanding his role. Thought he was a community corrections ‘worker’. She should have known: were he that, the deck should have remained unpainted. No, he said; I'm a student here. That's unusual, she had said. They usually have people to do that kind of thing.