My coffee klatch began (20 years or so ago? really?) on Mondays. I was a newcomer invited to an established group of middle school alternative school mooms down at Cafe Zola. My daughter chose to try to get in to the alternative school and I supported her choice. I was excited to be invited to this coffee klatch but also a little nervous. For one thing, I am an introvert.

For another, I am a fan of our city’s popular alternative “open” schools but not a rabid fanatic. So I was nervous because some of the alternative school parents in this town (and this is not limited to alternative school parents) have some pretty dern strong opinions about their kids’ educations and I, well, don’t, at least not usually. So I wasn’t sure if the conversation would turn into a lot of complaining. Or that I could even keep up with the conversation at all. (I mean, I can’t even keep up with conversations about the Bolshevik Revolution, roight? 🐽)

And then there is the angst that goes something like… Do they REALLY meet EVERY Monday at 8 AM? Are they meeting THIS Monday? What if I get there first and no one is there? What if no one else shows up? On and on ad infinitum. There were no smart phones in those days and some people didn’t check email so there was no way of texting everyone “Are we on?” These days if I get to a “date” of any sort early, I grab a coffee (or whine or whatever) and read on my phone. In fact I often *try* to get there early. The iPhone has changed my life!

I am a person who keeps her “ear to the ground” so I understood a lot of the issues recurrently discussed by the open school community even if I didn’t care all that much*. But these mooms were on the tame side when it came to “open” school “issues” and we all got along well and eventually we welcomed some mooms from the mainstream public middle school our school shared space with.

Our group eventually largely disbanded as kids went to high school and mooms got “real jobs” and the three of us who could still manage to meet moved our location (to Barry Bagels) and eventually our weekday moved around too. We all have successful 30-somethings and one has grandchildren. (And I am not senile.) But Wednesday is our usual day and the last time we changed it temporarily to Monday, I almost forgot, so this time I made a post-it note reminder and stuck it in a place I KNEW I would see in the morning. My MacBook Pro.

* I was happy with my child’s alternative middle school experience and I *did* care that our city *had* alternatives and when the school district reorganized and our little open middle school was threatened, I became a WARRIOR in the ultimately unsuccessful cause to save it, using my natural-born data base and writing skills to organize mailings, etc. PSMYA – Parents and Students for Middle Years Alternative.

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