Mystery reader

For the third year, Rachel's class has "mystery readers" every Friday -- parents who come in and read for 15 minutes to the kids. Her teacher this year, Ms. Burke, has the parents give five clues that she shares with the students all week, one a day, so they can guess who will be coming on Friday.

I signed up to be the first mystery reader of the year. My clues were:
--My favorite thing to do in the summer is swim outside
--My favorite thing to do in the winter is read by a fire
--My favorite place is in the kitchen
--I drive a car the color of night
--I work with words for a living

I warned Ms. Burke that Rachel is very hard to keep secrets from and that she'd probably figure it out...and she almost did! She tried to trick me on Thursday morning as I staggered out of bed, half asleep, asking me if my favorite place was in the kitchen, etc. I said I was too tired to answer and went back to bed.

Then this morning, she said, "Uh, mom? Um...we have a mystery reader..."
"Oh," I said. "Are they still doing that in third grade?"

Her little face just fell, and her eyes teared up. "SECOND grade," she said, then went off, very unhappy, to wash and brush. I hated to do that to her, but I wanted it to be a SURPRISE (Drew said she told him last night at dinner that she pretty much had figured out it was me).

When I got to the class with an armload of books, Rachel jumped up, raced over to me and gave me a gigantic hug. She looked so happy to see me! I had picked out some cool books, one of which made the kids laugh a lot and another that was a little old for them, but as I told the kids (and, later, Ms. Burke), they're all smart kids so I thought they'd get a lot out of the books. And they did! It was the first time I've ever made a class of Rachel's laugh.

The kids also got to ask me questions based on the clues. A couple of them thought it was going to be their parent coming in. One kid asked what kind of car I drove, another asked what pool I swam at. They really seem like a nice group.

And then I collected Rachel and she insisted on stopping at the library. "Five minutes," she promised, but then she found a book about Cleopatra and gave it to me while she read the book she'd checked out, and I became engrossed in the Cleopatra book...and I looked up and all of a sudden it was 5 and we had to go home so I could make the roast chicken and potatoes I had bought for guests who were supposed to show up but decided to stay closer to Annapolis because of the driving rain. We hope to meet them for brunch Sunday.