Midway through the school year, Dakota was mainstreamed into the kindergarten at the same neighborhood school where D.J. goes to second grade. Today he graduated. Actually, I don’t think they call it “graduation,” but they did have a celebration and made a big deal out of passing from kindergarten to first grade. I wasn’t at the ceremony, but the family met up later on for a dinner in Dakota’s honor.

We ate at a local fifties-style diner where they have those tableside juke boxes with the pages you can flip to see the song selections. Dakota was fascinated with this device. At first he was pretending it was a book about dinosaurs, which is still his main obsession, but then I heard him start reading the song titles. “The Boys Are Back in Town,” he said, and sure enough, there was Thin Lizzy listed at the top of the page. Right below it was “Bang a Gong” by — oh yes, by T. Rex. You can imagine his delight to learn that an actual dinosaur was on the juke box. He got very testy when Aiden tried to turn the page (which only made Aiden try harder, and there were tears involved, but they didn’t last long).

Unfortunately, the juke box was pretty much the highlight of the evening. The food was okay, except that we kept finding foreign objects in it, which kind of detracts from the presentation. And frankly, the service was a little weak, too. It’s a good think we had four happy children with us to distract us from the bad parts. D.J. did some wonderful drawings with the crayons they provided, and Kylie was cheerful and chatty, as usual.

Aiden peeked over the back of the booth, but sadly, there was no one sitting behind us for him to talk to. He did his cat imitation (“Meow! Purr!”) and had his way with the French fries and pickles on his plate. He didn’t show much interest in the cheeseburger, but to be honest, it didn’t look that good to me, either. I think he was just happy there was something going on that he was a part of, although when everyone was getting ready to leave, he put a fake pout on his face and said with unconvincing grumpiness, “I’m not done yet.” I think he was done, but he had his little joke anyway.

I got the call about dinner late, but I didn’t hesitate to say yes. Not for an occasion like this. I came home determined to spend the rest of the evening reclining in front of the TV set, but I couldn’t resist getting back to the work I’d started before I left. I kept at it until it was finished, about 8:30 pm. It actually felt good to get to the end of a task for once. It was almost like the old days, when I could work late every night and never feel it (or resent it). Almost.