The boy from Barton Road

Megan’s high school graduation was a couple of weeks ago.  So she is in that short little part of life where one is neither in high school nor in college.  That ends soon.

Only now, these weeks after the ceremony, does it occur to me if the boy from Barton Road was there.  Barton Road is home to the housing projects of Wellesley.  The kids there go to Schofield Elementary, as our girls did.

There was a morning in October, when Megan was in the second grade, when a boy who lived in Barton Road came to school in his bare feet.  The mother left the house early every morning to get to her job.  The boy’s uncle was supposed to come over and get the boy off to school.  But that day he never showed up and the boy somehow ended up locked outside his house, without his shoes.  He walked to school, about a mile away, in his bare feet.              

This was in October, when there can be some pretty decent days in Massachusetts.  But then there are some other days. 

I forget his name, if I ever knew it.  It seems, like a lot of folks, I wasn’t paying as much attention as perhaps I could have.  But hey, we’re all busy.  Right?

I’ll have to ask Megan if he made it to graduation.  And if he did, if he had some family there.