Almost forty years ago I caused Michael Wasserman’s Passover-themed shoe box diorama depicting Moses receiving the Ten Commandments to fall off the teacher’s desk when I stupidly reached for another piece of matzo that I wasn’t even hungry for. Wasn’t it just yesterday that everyone turned and stared at me without helping to pick it up and put it back together? That he saw the shoe box on the floor; all his hard work, all his careful gluing, his tiny precision handiwork—ruined? We were eleven or twelve then, the age when boys still show their feelings, the age that Teddy used to be when his face would soften and fall with every passing sadness. That day, in the few seconds it took Michael Wasserman to register the accidental demolition of his construction-in-miniature, his eyes had welled with tears like something actually hurt. He looked crushed. I’m certain I’d gasped and covered my mouth with my hands in shame. Was there anything worse than destroying someone’s art project?

But before I could apologize, he’d bent down in his chinos, carefully picked up the shoe box, put it on top of the pile of books and notebooks he was carrying, and left the classroom for the carpool line. All without saying a word. I didn’t move. My face was red-hot, my stomach churned with embarrassment and self-loathing and recriminations I was convinced would last forever: Why hadn’t I just sat down in my stupid chair with the little side-desk attached? Weren’t my braces already filled with enough chewed-up matzo? If only I hadn’t reached for that second piece, none of this would have happened. I was wearing my favorite powder-blue ski jacket, which meant that it was sometime between March and April, during New England’s tease of changing seasons that never fails to trick and disappoint—there must still have been a chill of winter in the air, despite some light in the sky. The principal, Mr. Wrath—which was really his name and really how he spelled it—poked his head into the classroom and told me that my mother was in the carpool line, waiting. It was six o’clock, time to go home. He didn’t seem to notice the debris on the floor, the accident that had just happened, how time had suddenly and completely stopped.

Instantly I’d had a flash of my mother’s blue Buick Skylark idling in the chilly dusk while the other mothers—it was all mothers back then, no “helpful” dads—pulled around her and gave her dirty looks—a scene I knew I’d hear about on the ride home, and during dinner, and for years to come: how it was hard enough for her to teach inner-city seventh-graders all day, go food shopping after work, bring the groceries home and put everything into the refrigerator and freezer, and then make it to the temple in time for the mad crush of children desperately pushing through the doors toward freedom, only to have me be late and put her in the incredibly uncomfortable position of holding up the line.