1 The light has shifted now and the Ailanthus tree has turned to a shadow in the dusk. I turn the recorder off and sit on my bed. I can hear the soft swish of the ceiling fan in the hallway. Outside, little kids on the block are playing a game of tag, yelling, Not it!
Not it! Then a woman's voice breaks through, calling someone home to dinner.
2 Tuncurl my legs from beneath me and head for the stairs. But at the top of the stairs I stop and sit, watching my father at the piano as he lifts his fingers from the keys and presses them down again. His fingers are long and white and delicate. I'd never really looked at his hands. But as they move over the piano keys, lifting such sweet music out of them, I want to run down and hug him I want to tell him about my year in the ARIT room, about everything he missed in the many years he was in prison.
I want to ask him if he had great friends when he was my age.
Friends he promised to meet up with again in twenty years.
But I stare at his back as he plays. He is somewhere else. He is with my mother in another dream. A dream of a place before this place. A time before this time. A story before this story.
5 Soon my uncle will be finished packing and will come down to join him on his guitar. Maybe theyll ask me to sing and my voice will be high and off-key and they'll laugh about how the musical gene skipped right over me.
6 When I was in fifth grade, I didn't know how fast time could move. How you could wake up one day and so much around you had changed forever. I didn't know that one day we'd have a teacher who would say, Take your books. You won't be coming back here today. And that we'd walk out of the lives we'd always known, our faces turned toward her, so many questions and so much fear.
- Daddy, I say. My father turns from the piano and looks up at me.
s Play 'Summertime.'
• My father looks confused for a minute, and then his face softens into something warm and familiar. Something I knew a lifetime ago when I was a tiny girl getting tossed into the air by him, laughing and screaming, both afraid and thrilled.
10 When I was in fifth grade, I didn't know the Unfamiliar would be beautiful and funny and heartbreaking and hard. That it would be Amari calling me Red and the glint coming off of Tiago's glasses.
That it would be Esteban in the window, a silhouette with the sun coming in around him. That it would be poems and pictures and questions. And answers.
" I head down the stairs and sit on the bench beside my father. His fingers are long and pale and stretched out across the keys. He smiles, bends and kisses the top of my head, the first notes of
"Summertime" rising from the piano.
12 I dreamed this moment a thousand times, he says.
13 I didn't know it would be people you barely knew becoming friends that harbored you And dreams you didn't even know you had-coming true. I didn't know it would be superpowers rising up out of tragedies, and perfect moments in a nearly empty classroom.
и Me too, I say. And when I rest my head against his arm, when the music circles around us, when my uncle stops packing and joins in with his guitar and we pick up the song as if we'd always been singing it, what I know for sure now is that this is the end of one of many stories.
QUESTION 44 DOK 4 5 points
In the very last chapter of this novel, Woodson finally gives a concrete description of the unfamiliar. What is the unfamiliar? Should it be embraced? What do you think?
In the last chapter of the novel, the unfamiliar is described as a mixture of beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, and hard experiences. It includes new friendships, the fulfillment of unexpected dreams, the emergence of superpowers from tragedies, and moments of perfection in unexpected places.
As for whether the unfamiliar should be embraced, this is subjective and open to interpretation. Some may argue that embracing the unfamiliar allows for personal growth, new experiences, and a broader understanding of the world. Others may feel more comfortable sticking to the familiar and avoiding the uncertainties and challenges that come with the unknown.
Personal opinion may vary, but it can be argued that embracing the unfamiliar can lead to personal growth and a deeper appreciation for life's complexities. By stepping out of our comfort zones and embracing the unfamiliar, we can discover new opportunities, strengths, and perspectives that we may have otherwise missed out on.