9th grade. October.

Tamarind:

We’re at Dad’s apartment for the weekend. Homecoming Weekend. I am pooped. Denim & Red has been working overtime to organize the events. Everything Spanish red and Denim blue, with Velma the Raptor portrayed on every wall of the school. Students singing The Raptor Beat in the halls. It’s a spirited time.

I’ve been reading more books about college. They all talk about having a hook to get in, like being nationally ranked in an extracurricular activity, which I still haven’t achieved in the past two months. You can also be a legacy at a school, or have an underrepresented ethnic background, both of which increase your chances. I know Mom went to LACal Public a few miles away in the center of Los Angeles, and Dad went to NorCal Public outside of San Francisco. So I have two legacy schools, although, right now, they are both Reaches for me. That’s a new word I learned: Reach. It’s like a school is on the top shelf and I’m not tall enough to grab it, so I have to stand on my tippy-toes to Reach it. Then there are Matches, which means my grades match the grades of the previously admitted class. And Likelies, which are school that are Likely to accept me.

To find out if my ethnic background is underrepresented, I have to find out what it is first. Since everyone in Hennessey Park is some kind of brown, it’s never come up before. So I asked my parents about their ancestry. Mom said her great-grandparents moved from the Philippines to Hawaii, and her grandparents moved from Hawaii to Hennessey Park. Dad said his family has lived in Southern California since it was Mexico.

I asked each of them if anyone in the family was Native American. That’s one of the hot ethnicities for admissions and scholarships. Mom didn’t think so, but she said I could check the Pacific Islander box if it came up. Dad didn't care to do the research to find out, I mentioned the scholarships. Then he immediately set up an account on the Find Me My Ancestors website, and he’s been searching all weekend hoping to strike gold.

Lilo:

Townhouse to myself for the weekend!

I’m still getting used to having no one around for two full days every week. I haven’t lived on my own for over a decade. I had a roommate all through college, and Jencks and I officially met right after graduation, ironically in the town we had both grown up in. We started dating, and then we moved into together after we got engaged. By my calculations, this means I have only spent one year of my life as an independent adult. That’s unsettling.

Becoming the sole head of household has been a shift. When Jencks and I were married, our combined income made us comfortably well off. An economics analyst for a sustainable energy company and a civil engineer for the Town of Hennessey Park could provide a more than satisfactory lifestyle for their family. Separately, though, the cushion is no longer there. Admittedly, Jencks and I each earn incomes above the national average for a family of four. But now we’re each housing a family of three in Southern California, one of the most expensive areas to live in the United States. Our children attend public schools, and we’ve never taken lavish vacations or driven luxury automobiles. Though, if anything were to happen to either of us, or to Tamarind or Grover, or to our retired parents…our plans have changed. And those plans are detailed. Our lawyers made sure of that.

Somehow, Jencks and I have more productive communications about our future now than we did when we married. Though, I do like not having to check in with somebody before I exit my domicile.

Off to Pilates!

Grover:

I got my first quarter grades. I did not do well.

I thought I could hide them since we were at Dad’s for the weekend, but I forgot that Dad was my PTA parent. So he knew report cards would come out this week. I was coasting along Friday and Saturday because Dad was wrapped up in some ancestry project. Then Sunday he announced to me and Tamarind that we weren’t Mexican like he’d thought. We were Chinese and Spanish. Spain Spanish. So we weren’t getting any of that sweet Native American money.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

Then he told us we had to get good grades to get into college. Duh, Dad. And he wanted to check our report cards.

Darn it.

Parents who pay attention are the worst. He was mad about the Cs. I used to get As and Bs in fifth grade, and every year before that. I pointed out the A in P.E. Dad did not respond to that at first. Then he asked me which sports teams I would be joining this year. Darn it. I told him I’d try out for basketball. Try out. That way, if I didn’t get selected, it’s okay, because I tried. Good thinking, Grover.