No More Nomura

Reflecting on the Last Two Years and the End of Preschool

Today was Rebelle Harmony’s final day as a Penguin. Last Year she was a Ducky. Almost two years since September 2020, when we first dropped her off for the full day. She officially graduated from preschool in mid-June (with honors, of course). Her class performed a play in which they were each assigned the role of crayon. She was the orange crayon. She remembered all of her lines (and most of her classmates’ lines). They sang “True Colors.” We’ve listened to it at least three dozen times in the last couple months. Cyndi Lauper’s voice remains mysteriously fragile and bittersweet. We had the record, growing up in the 80's. Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Charlie Kaufman’s 2015 film Anomalisa featured a melancholic and subdued version of it that stayed with me.

Rebelle Harmony is five. Kind of impossible to realize more than 1,800 days have passed since she arrived in the summer of 2017. Things began shutting down just as her conscious memory likely began retaining images, words and sounds. Maybe the yellow “Caution” tape around the playgrounds is one of those memories. She used to tell me, “Oh Daddy, the playgrounds is closed!” We did everything we could to keep all of that chaos out, but there’s no doubt…