The Madrid part of our Christmas holiday was much like the year before, with the kids buying little gifts at the American School’s Holiday House sale and Lisa again having “Breakfast with Santa” at school on a Saturday.
By the time the ASM students reached sixth grade, they planned their own holiday parties, so it was no big deal for me to be a room mother, as I was for Julie’s class. All I had to do was coordinate the food donations with the other mothers—to decide who would send in candy, chips, and so on. The kids would plan and carry out their own activities, and the room mother was free to attend the party or stay home.
I decided to go in for the Christmas party in Julie’s sixth grade classroom, just to see if I could be helpful. But Sibley Labandeira, the teacher, told me when I arrived that the kids just wanted to chat, so she had let them move their desks around. All the girls were on one side of the room, and all the boys were on the other.
“Do you have any younger children?” Ms. Labandeira asked me over the din of the kids’ voices.
“Yes, a third grader,” I said.
“Boy or girl?” she asked.
“A girl,” I said.
“Well, then you might enjoy pulling a chair up on the boys’ side of the room and listening to what they talk about,” she advised. “I promise you’ll hear things you’ve never heard before.”
“Okay,” I said doubtfully, and I did as she had suggested. I started to eavesdrop in the middle of a conversation. Michael Kapsch, my neighbor, was speaking. “I don’t know which I should be when I grow up—a bullfighter or an international terrorist.”
Mrs. Labandeira had been right.
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