I knew the day would come when Rose would be learning something I didn’t know. Well, I knew it theoretically, but in the back of my mind I thought I had such a great education, I was such a diligent student, she’s going to have to be memorizing the periodic table of the elements (which I was asked to learn and chose to forget) before I’m out of my depth.

The first sets of flashcards were no problem. “Pot,” “hat,” “pin,” even “cod”—I’ve got those covered. But today’s set were all shapes and their technical names. My graduate course in poetry metrics got me through some of them. If pentameter is five beats a line, well a pentagram is a five-sided shape. But I truly had never heard of a “rhombus” which I have now learned is another name for a diamond; a “trapezoid,” four sides, one set parallel; and a “quatrefoil” which turns out to be a flower with four petals.

How shall I be a role model in the face of frustration, confusion, disgust, and disdain? Do not throw the cards on the floor in a huff. Do not bad mouth the teacher. Do not curse new math, though one could make up a song about it ala Tom Lehrer. Do giggle a lot, especially at parallelogram; parallelogram is a really funny word.