The Three

First day of sixth grade at a new school - middle school. It's a big building that includes the old Sav-a-Lot grocery store building where Tahijah and I used when we didn't have time for better (farther away). Around the corner and up the Avenue, less than half a mile from the Howard Street house where the book is set.

When I saw them last I took them around to the house, and then the park where they rode their first swing and climbed their first trees. They played baseball with some adults from the block and played well, Damear hitting a grandslam.

I hope he remembered it walking into that big new school, where they were the youngest and not the oldest and mom was a bus ride not a short walk away.

"Your dad drive you?" I asked them when they called last night. "No!" (we're not babies). "We took The Three."

The three bus. I remember the three bus. If I write another book about all this, which I am not believe me planning on doing (but...), I'll call it The Three. Three was one title option for WWU, an option my publisher didn't like much.

They'll be okay. Their parents raised them to survive in North Philly's tough streets and schools. But thrive? What is thriving in a place like that, in a time like this? It's enough that they should keep loving one another, their parents, themselves. Keep growing.

I'll ask what I asked before, in the book - can you do more, to make this a world worth growing into, for young black teens (almost), and men (eventually).

Which leads me to comments on Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Soon.

ps - 1st day pic when/if Tahija sends me it.