Ashley
Ashley is not the only reason I haven’t written in so long, but she has made life here a little busier and a lot richer. Ashley Katherine Nanyonjo arrived here from Uganda on August 25. Seventeen years old, she’s a Rotary exchange student attending Cooperstown High School. Over the summer a friend of ours was talking about a young woman who was scheduled to start school here in the fall. Rotary had a host family for her in December but no place for the fall. Jay and I looked at each other and said, why not? We have space and time, and it would definitely be interesting.
Ashley is a joy to live with. For Jay and I, who both raised challenging teenagers, she’s a new experience. She’s unfailingly polite, helpful, thoughtful, modest and quiet. Her room is as neat as a pin all the time, and I can’t stop her from cleaning the kitchen, sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing her bathroom. In fact, her first question on arriving was what her chores would be. I was stumped – a question I was totally unprepared for. She has a great sense of humor and Jay can get her giggling. She’s fit and athletic and signed up for varsity cross country right away. She’s a serious student, and finds school here easy compared to her boarding school in Kampala. We just went to open school night and met her English teacher, her AP calculus teacher and her AP physics teacher. They all confirmed that she’s a joy to have in class and is doing very well.
Of course, life for a teenager is never all smooth. She finds the social life of high school quite different – mainly more cliquish and less inclusive than what she’s used to. And cross country running has been much harder than she expected. But she’s making friends and the cross country team gives her time with kids of different ages, all of whom seem to be pretty positively engaged. If she has been homesick, she hasn’t talked about it. She bonded instantly with Aviva, and made a strong connection with Liz’s family, especially Rowan, when they visited in September. We’re meeting up with them again in Massachusetts next weekend where they’re visiting with Sean’s mom, Holly, who is out here visiting her siblings.
Having a teen in the house reminds us both of being teens and of raising teens. Jay got her laughing over his antics in high school (including welding lockers shut in metal shop), and I remembered the loneliness of my senior year when all of my best friends had already left for college. I think about that tight friend group that was my whole world then. I only have email addresses for two of them now, and rarely connect. Jay has stayed much more connected with high school friends, seeing them often when we were in California and still having regular long phone calls. I wonder how Ashley, at 77, will look back on this year. I can’t imagine the courage, self-confidence and faith it took for a high school kid to fling herself half way around the world to live with strangers in a totally foreign country.
For us, it’s new routines. Jay is up every morning making her lunch and breakfast. (She tried the school lunches which are free for all students in New York, but she didn’t care for the food or the noisy cafeteria. She likes to bring lunch and hang out with quieter kids in one of the teacher’s rooms.) I’m driving her to school in the morning, part of the only “rush hour” in Cooperstown. I pick her up at 5:00 when her cross country practice is over, or later on nights when there’s a meet. We had typically eaten lightly at night, but Ashley comes home hungry. We still eat lightly, but Jay is preparing real dinners now. And we are connected to the high school, to the kids and their families, in a way that extends our connections in Cooperstown. It’s made me aware of how age-segregated our life tends to be.
Having Ashley here helps me stay focused on all that is good in our small world and helps me not obsess about the disasters I can’t change in the big world. The League work has the same effect. We’re much more active this year than we have been in the past. I think we’re all eager to do something positive locally. We organized a great presentation by our county election commissioners on their processes for keeping elections safe and fair. Our next event is an author talk by Lindsey Cormack on her book, How to Raise a Citizen. We’re focusing on events that will appeal to folks across the political spectrum. And we’re getting lots of other civic minded organizations to co-sponsor these events so that we make the network of nonpartisan organizations visible.
Life goes on. There’s so much I can’t do, but I can make a home for a wonderful young woman from Uganda, and I can help my neighbors learn about how democracy works, and I can be part of civil, positive conversations. Ashley and her friends fill me with hope.