The higher powers like balance in the world. I accept that balance is a good principle, and so I don’t mind the highs and lows that life seems to bring in pairs. Sometimes they occur on a life-altering scale: the death of a beloved relative with the birth of a new person to whom you’ll lose your heart, perhaps. Other times the stakes are much lower, and we get comedy rather than catharsis.

Wednesday was Constitution Day at school. The Seniors have been studying the American Constitution since the beginning of the semester in Humanities, and this was the climax. Nine local judges, lawyers, scholars, and governors came to visit the school and presided as teams of students presented their knowledge of constitutional law and its bearing on current events. I got to see these adults blown out of their socks as the seventh- and eighth-graders confidently held forth on the powers of the president and the promises of the Constitution, then cogently and eloquently fielded questions on the ramifications of California’s potential amendment of the electoral college system, the pros and cons of direct vs. indirect democracy, and the dangers of executive privilege.

I knew these kids were smart cookies, but I was blown out of my socks when Hanna cited James Madison’s arguments against adopting a Bill of Rights, when Andrew spooled off the Preamble from memory and then analyzed it, and when Ben, asked whether the government’s need to act for the Common Good ever conflicts with individual rights, whipped out Truman’s seizure of the steel mills during the Korean War. I was bursting with pride at my association with the school that nurtures such minds. I was incandescent with the thrill of being alive in a world with teenagers like these in it.

And then I went to my job at the yarn shop, where a cock-eyed sample knit up in mohair required reseaming. So I had a good chuckle at my own expense as I fell to work teasing apart goaty snarls of stitchery. Balance, indeed. That’s life, shining and knottily awry all at once.