There had been a few bumps in the road, but, on the whole, it had been a very successful time. I wasn’t sure how much of this success had to do with Grace (who began coming over to our house for tea and tutoring in the spring), Blaze’s peers, or the fact that I had come to school with him every day. I kept thinking that a large part of Blaze’s readjustment at school came from within himself. This was the year that he’d started thinking and talking about his birth. It was also the first time that I’d ever seen him take any steps, however tentative, toward forming some relationships with children his own age. But I often felt that trying to understand Blaze was like trying to understand the ocean. To me, he seemed just as deep, changeable, and unfathomable. So much of what I learned about him came from a purely instinctual level. I knew that coming to school with him was the right thing to do at the time but I couldn’t have said why, exactly, or what else I could have done. I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to give a repeat performance the following year.
