By Adam Brownstein
Another pod goes in the machine, and I push the button, anxious for the caffeine hit.
Buzzzzzz, drip, drip, drip.
The espresso wafts, and I get ready.
But then, on the last chestnut drop, there is a ring at the door.
It’s the Black Cat guy who wears the green and the yellow.
The one who sets packages on our doorstep.
“Chotto matte!” I cry.
What could it be?
The Microplane for the overpriced Pardano the dusts the linguine?
The twine to bind boxes on paper day?
The 50 piece jigsaw puzzle for the four-year-old for Hanukkah? (Or maybe the 1,000 piece arrangement for the 10-year-old?)
I don’t remember. The boxes all blur together. And besides, there is coffee and an everything from The Bagel Standard.
One sip. One sip out of three.
The laundry needs me now.
I have enough hangers for the shirts and my daughter’s flared dungarees. I’ll take that little win.
The weekend’s soccer and gymnastics and swim trunks get fed to the dryer.
I press the button and go to the second sip.
What could that package be?
Only way way to find out.
Rip. Rip. RIP.
I open the box like all the other boxes.
But what’s inside is different.
A book, thick and sturdy.
There is no title, and the author’s name is fuzzed out. (Maybe they do not want to be fully known?)
I open it, and feel the slender slip case with the checkout date from school. My kids’ school.
The third sip sits idly, getting colder by the moment.
I turn the pages until I come to a map.
The eye of my soul sees royal blue and white on the map, but the authors have washed it over with black and red and green.
I look closely at the map and remember the yellow dates I savored in the Galilee and the mystics of Tzfat.
I smile about the dates and the mystics, too, but then I begin to read.
The story in this book is different from my story. It is different from what I teach my children and what they will teach their children.
I take in the third sip. Cold. Bitter. Unsettling.
This book. This vessel of ideas.
I had heard something about it in an alumni newsletter. Or was it an alumni chat group?
Wasn’t this all happening far, far away on Locust Walk and at Tresidder Union and on Library Hill?
I thought that we were safe from it. Way out here inside the Yamanote Line and on the E-20 to Chofu.
But now it’s here, the package on my doorstep.
(The context of this poem is a metaphor for the changing face of curriculum in international schools across APAC.)
The Tokyo Yenta 