I work a Saturday morning shift at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, which (its directors will proudly tell you) is the only entirely student-run homeless shelter in the US. Run by Harvard undergrads and staffed by volunteers from everywhere, it has 24 beds, a pristine collection of The New Yorkers (for late-night reading) and a wonderfully cozy feeling.

I cook breakfast, clean, and do laundry, but I also get to talk. Self-selection makes the volunteer staff full of interesting, admirable people, and fate or random chance makes the guests awareness-altering, sometimes clearly loopy, sometimes grave, sometimes no different than they probably would be if they owned a two-story clapboard in Allston.

A man told me today that he paints the calligraphy on stained-glass windows. (Many of our guests are employed.) Mistakes are expensive, but the glass is beautiful, he said. Saints, Bible stories, the Virgin. Like icons, you know? And he pulled out a little wooden block, with hinged doors, smaller than the palm of my hand. Inside it was a gold and blue image of Mary and the Christ child. Like this, I paint them like this.

Like ostriches

Progress reports are coming home from school, so there has been much quiet reflection and self-assessment over the past few days. Even by our kindergartener.

"I came into kindergarten already knowing a lot of stuff, and now I have learned even more!"

I thought of how he had blossomed during his year of pre-school, learning the letters of the alphabet, learning to count past thirteen finally. "So you feel like you knew lots of things before the year started?"

"Yeah. Like that dolphins are birds but just can't fly."

Jumping

Ruth enjoyed autumn about two months ago in New England. We're still waiting for the maple tree in our front yard here in northern Florida to turn red, but in Atlanta over Thanksgiving weekend, we got a glorious autumn--yellow, orange, and brilliant red leaves. AND my sister's next door neighbor's yard was covered with fallen leaves.

Eleanor and Isaac and I scraped and kicked and carried them into a pile nearly four feet high and then jumped and burrowed and hid. Every day we were there (well, till the rain dampened them and our enthusiasm) we played in the leaves. It felt so virtuous, so fun! Reminded me of Last Child in the Woods.

I didn't miss Ruth

I didn't miss Ruth while I was actually eating Thanksgiving dinner. Sitting at my sister's table, dishing up the little guys' plates, laughing at the stories, taking just a bit more of my brother-in-law's (very successful) experimental turkey, I didn't think about Ruth's not being there. But in the cracks of the day, between peeling potatoes, as I helped Eleanor change into clean clothes, getting the pies out for dessert, putting the last dishes into the dishwasher, in those moments I ached for her.

We had thought about flying her to Atlanta, even searched for flights. But she would have had to miss class. It would have been expensive. And she's going to be home for Christmas in three weeks.

Of course, Sam wasn't there either, but it's different with him. We knew when he left on his mission that we wouldn't have him for any holidays for two years, and he's in England, anyway, where Thursday was just a normal workday.

But as I lay in bed Thanksgiving night, I felt like crying for Ruth. My first Thanksgiving without her in nineteen years. Without realizing it, I had done the irreversible. She had Thanksgiving with people I don't know. She really has become an adult, and I don't think I was ready for it.

The Game: A Dissection

As campus has recovered this week from the festivities of Harvard v. Yale, my friends on both sides of the match have been rehashing their impressions of the opposition. (Not in terms of the football - who really cares about that? Only the four bare-chested boys necessary to spell out YALE in blue body paint, it would appear.) No, the key things now are the respective social scenes.

From outside the Ivy League, I would guess that neither Harvard nor Yale has much of a reputation for socially-adept students. We're all the GPA freaks who study to the point of absurdity, right? But within our bubble, there's intense debate.

YALE: You are large, impersonal, and snobby! We are a tight community that isn't afraid to have our drunken fun by putting Slip'n'Slides out on the quad, or by greasing pigs to chase.

HARVARD: Your community is tight because you are all afraid of leaving campus and getting mugged in New Haven.

I have a friend here who has come away from Game-weekend talk depressed by Harvard's lack of good parties. He drinks with his roommates, and wishes he had gone to Yale (which sounds more fun).

I have another friend, who goes to Yale, who has come away from Game-weekend talk depressed by Yale's lack of a good non-drinking community. He wishes he had gone to Harvard (which sounds more fun).

I didn't even apply to Yale (technically making me ineligible for the favorite football game taunt: "Safe-ty Schooool! Safe-ty Schooool!"), so I can't really talk about it with authority. But the party conversations reminded me that Harvard really does have a great non-drinking sector. There's a group of freshmen who get up on Saturday mornings to make crepes in a dorm common room. There have been make-up parties, flash mobs, lecture hall movie screenings, and impromptu sing-alongs at basement pianos. My roommate is trying to organize a "Jesus-music dance party" . . . to each his own?

I doubt it's as simple as all that. Yale has a few non-drinkers just as surely as Harvard has a few steamy, alcohol-soaked soirees. But let's just say that, in this respect, I haven't got any buyer's remorse.