What a day! A good day.

The same day I had caught up earlier with my other friend, my daughter took me by to my old school where I taught for more than twenty years more than twenty years ago.

We drove around the block, parked in the lot still open, school not out yet, past a yellow school bus in the driveway parked and waiting for the students to come out. We went on past it, parked where faculty and visitors filled but left a space for us.

We walked through the outer campus, I babbling memories, about what was and wasn’t then, a new gym beautiful and expensive, then here’s the lunch court cover-domed pergola where the students ate, and inside the tables chairs for faculty, the lunch ladies who got to know me and we became friends, I ate there everyday, because the food fit my three requirements: good, cheap, lots, I was always happy to be there, they were always happy to see me, the regular, and they’d smile and plop a little extra mashed potatoes and gravy on my plate, they knew how I loved to eat.

And over there, the industrial arts buildings, some still standing but repurposed, industrial arts taken prematurely from the curriculum here and everywhere else, a huge mistake because we need more not less.

And up the steps past the basement cafeteria where students ate inside, and where we held the luncheon for the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration I helped arrange when my wife and I worked for the Pasadena Community Coalition.

And inside down the hall with shiny floors, past locked hall cases with trophies, photos, awards. To the offices where the friendly reception fellow at a desk, like a border guard, asked the usual questions of why we were there and who (I know it should be whom) did we want to see, and with the Finger of Power directed us past into the area of the secretary reception clerk where we were asked the same questions again, the sign-in sheet on the counter, who did I want to see? I said I don’t know who the current administration and then I noticed on the sign-in sheet the name of the Principal, Lori Touloumian, and I cried out in joy.

My friend, my buddy, my colleague. We had bonded instantly when she was Principal at Eliot Middle School just around the corner down from my house. We had conferenced about permission and planning for the Pasadena Martin Luther King Community Coalition Annual Essay Contest where students from every Pasadena school, and from the communities surrounding, were invited to submit their entries. Students, hundreds, thousands, wrote, so many beyond a mere required class assignment, beyond the dangled lure of awards and the chance for winning money, actual money, but, for the best of them, a chance for the joy of saying what they actually thought and felt, the chance to change the world.

The Pasadena Coalition is a Big Deal. Its great leaders, Jackie and David Jacobs, came from the South and the days of Martin Luther King and the marches and the Movement and brought it all to Pasadena where they always find ways to keep it going and everyone knows and loves them and all the Politicians from as far away as Washington, D.C., come to join the Annual Celebration and update us with speeches and pass out the awards to the students who are our future, and to hear me sing in a loud voice the old songs of power and commitment.

Lori Touloumian, the Principal at Eliot, was such a remarkable leader, friendly beyond token professional to let you know she cared about what you cared about, and led the students and her school along the way they discovered they were going happily together.

She always found time to talk with me. As colleagues we would talk like real people, she would let me tell the jokes I apparently was famous for, she would laugh without forcing it, and we would plan the future. She enriched and ennobled my life.

To see her again as Principal at my old school was an unexpected joy, more than mere delight. When the office people found out that I knew her and we were friends, there was a scurrying about, and Lori appeared and we embraced the too long deferred hug of rediscovery and we caught up.

Audrey Green had been upped to Vice Principal and she appeared for the hearty hug of recognition and the expected question: “Where’s the pony tail?” a look of mine that apparently had become legendary.

They encouraged me to come back to teach, maybe just one class, or come back to give a lecture, talk about those former days, or teaching, then and now. I told them I’d been thinking about it.

We parted, looking forward to the next time meeting we hoped soon.

Kristina, impressed to see me happy, said, “You know everybody.”

I said, “No, but some still kicking.”

We had brought the future into now, and for now that’s enough.

It was a good day.