February 3, 2006 - Friday
I guess after a week of mulling it over, Harry decided this morning that he wanted to stay home alone when I took Jeremy to school. His Sunday fever of 102 had dropped to 99-100 by Wednesday, but then continued to linger in that range through today. After thinking that maybe he had shaken it yesterday afternoon, he ended up spending virtually the entire day today on the sofa. And he did not go with me to either drop off or pick up Jeremy. He stayed home alone. In the morning I put on the "Drum Movie" to occupy him and in the afternoon he actually fell asleep listening to Andre Previn and Joe Pass After Hours after I left. On the way home in the afternoon my mind did run through what and what not Harry might know to do in case of some kind of emergency. Probably not enough. There is certainly education to do before this happens again with any degree of frequency. But for today, I was gone no more than 15 minutes either time and nothing noteworthy happened.

Except something noteworthy did happen and, interestingly, it was Jeremy who summed it up so concisely at dinner when mommy started asking about his and Harry's day. "Harry was alone...with no grown-up," he said, the second half of the sentence delivered in a surprisingly wide-eyed manner. Mommy acted surprised (she was surprised, although we had talked about it on Monday after the idea had first come up) and Harry, for the first time, grinned in a tacit acknowledgement that he had, by just lying on the sofa, passed a true milestone of growing up.


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