"Kit, after all the years I've been here, I just realized, we have no system for publicly recognizing anyone's accomplishments. We have no awards, no honor society, no Employee of the Month, why is that?"
Kit took my question, as intended, as being about the school, not my own level of obtuseness. We were sitting on the Mansion porch, looking out at the snow, I in several layers of school uniform, she in a white faux-fur wrap she'd gotten in a second-hand store. Her red hair, graying now in places, tumbled out from the wrap around her face. Also, her nose was pink.
"Oh, come on, Daniel," she said, "I'm enough of a diva without any ritualized occasions for people to tell me how great I am."
Ordinarily I wouldn't call her a diva, but....
"I suppose you're right, Kit," I said. "Especially as it wasn't you're accomplishments I had in mind."
Her cheeks turned pink to match her nose.
"I didn't mean--" she stammered, then recovered herself. "All of us are divas, in one way or another, yes, including Charlie. Though I suppose he'd be a devo." She hadn't picked on Charlie in my hearing in some months. I'd been starting to hope she'd gotten over it.
"That hardly seems fair," I protested. "All of you have done such amazing things, and most students don't know the half of it. There are senior students who don't realize Greg's an alchemist or that Charlie's a writer. Karen does flowers. You have a masters' degree in dance movement therapy!"
"I don't keep up with my certification."
"And what about students? Why don't we get recognition?"
"Care to be the change, Daniel? You know, you can always tell the other students I'm awesome, if you don't think word is getting out properly."
"That's not what I'm talking about--although, you know I do think you're awesome, right?"
"Of course."
"I mean, how did we get here and why?"
"Ah, that. I knew you were going to interview me, but I thought you'd make an appointment."
"If this isn't a good time, we can reschedule," I told her, "but mostly I just ask questions that pop into my head."
"I know." She said it with a great deal of fondness, then took a deep breath and collected herself before going on. "Well, I wasn't being facetious about being the change. Around here, things happen because someone sees a need and answers it--or has a need and asks for it. No one has gotten serious about public recognition yet, so it hasn't happened, but you could change that, if you wanted to."
She fell quiet a moment, maybe watching the blue shadows of the cedar hedge, maybe giving me a chance to respond. But I said nothing, and she was looking at the hedge.
"The thing about student awards, though," she continued, "is that we could only give awards for superlatives. Giving an award to everybody is stupid. And defining some people as better automatically defines everybody else as worst. I almost never won awards in school. I can't say it bothered me, but it didn't help, either, so what was the point? What's the point of recognizing the few if the best it does for the many is not hurt them?"
"I suppose it could be motivation," I said, "but I did get awards in school a few times, and it never really meant much."
"Well, there you go. I guess we're all motivated by something other than recognition."
"But I want you to be recognized, Kit," I told her. "And I want you to recognize me." Not just her, of course, but yes, including her. She reached over and took my hand a moment. Her hand, despite having been wrapped in fake fur, felt like ice.
"I think you're awesome, Daniel, you know I do. But that's interpersonal, different from some public, institutional thing. There's no problem with it."
"So, how did you get here?" I asked. "What was the school like when you started? What do you know of it's history? And what do you actually do? Like, all the stuff I don't even know to recognize you for?"
And so she told me. We sat and talked for a long time, and while I found all of it interesting, I'm not sure that it would interest you were I simply to repeat her account. I'm also not sure she really told me everything relevant.
For example, she never did tell me what really happened between her and Charlie.
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