Excerpts from a Memoir I'll Never Write, Part 7

To Dr. Khetan,

and the place on West 12 Mile Road where all light comes from

for the burning way you have encouraged, sustained, and inspired me.

May my roots always be planted in your garden...

There's a picture of me from the third grade on our old family iPad, the one that has been dead by the foot of my sister's bed for about four years now. In it, I'm wearing purple yoga pants with silver lightning bolts on it, the ends tucked into the tops of my Target Nike socks. I'm wearing a matching purple hoodie, with an embroidered heart at the top left corner. My gap teeth look the worst they ever will, and the glasses I've chosen to sport for this era of my life are so horrendous I would later break them on purpose. My hair is falling out of my ponytail, but because I'm holding a trophy and a certificate with my name spelled wrong, I make no effort to fix it. My father stands behind me, in the blue and white striped button-up he wore at his wedding, and then every Monday morning to work. This was the first time I ever won a math competition. When I think about the quote "do something your teenage self would be proud of," I think of this picture. 

I'm learning to accept the reality that I've always had a flair for the dramatic. So much so, that I once told my friends I would be a millionaire before I turned twenty -- and believed it, too. So most days, I fear my six-year-old, darling precocious self would be deeply unimpressed by me, forever wondering when I stop musing and complaining and start getting rich and famous the way I once thought I ought to. Today, I attended the graduating seniors scholarship ceremony for ICAE -- my school away from school, weekend home away from home -- and felt, for a rare glimpse of a moment, that I'm exactly who I need to be. 

Every minute I spend here feels like watching my life flash before my eyes:

It's the second grade, and I'm sitting on the stairs trying not to be a fire hazard, waiting for my sister to finish her class. The front-desk ladies humor me by pretending to be fascinated by my childish cootie catcher, and sometimes, they let me sneak into unused classrooms to draw flowers on the white board and pretend to play teacher. 

Then, I'm joining as a student myself, spending every weekend marveling at the brilliant "Big Kids" who trickle into class already knowing every answer -- the legends, whose names we whisper under our breaths, and my own friends, who would surprise me with their intuition and unassuming epiphanies for thirteen years (and counting).

All but one of the girls I joined with drop out, but I cling on like a drunk cowboy riding a mechanical bull. Not out of indignation or sheer stubbornness, but for the glimpses of euphoria -- a classmate's father bringing me Goldfish from the vending machine because he was impressed by my knowledge of the divisibility rules; my father teaching me Stewart's Formula the way he had once taught me Pythagorean Theorem, and then he can't teach me much at all. All the while, I have this vision of myself when I'm older, when I'm close friends with every mathlete in the state and have memorized every problem on AoPS and am the "Big Kid" second graders stare at with admiration as I walk by, because math is nothing if not a full circle. 

And then I'm leaving. I don't know every mathlete in the state, but I know enough to exchange pleasantries with fathers of lifelong friends. I can hardly solve the question I've been taught six times before, but math becomes a familiar itch to me, something I crave and seek out and need the way children need routine. Maybe no second grader admires me all that much, but I give speeches at award ceremonies and stumble through words that barely relate to each other, begging them to see the infinite ways this place is the best I'll ever be. 

And Dr. Khetan, the patriarch at the head of it all -- all words fail. My first interaction with him was when my mother asked him to demote me down a level, because she was worried I wouldn't be able to handle the challenge. He spit back venom -- this is what we do for our children. This is how they thrive. He learned my name quietly, without me knowing, and told my father, quite confidently, that I was doing well despite the number of red Xs that populated my homework. He kicks parents out of the front rows so that students can get better views of the board, on which he writes in neat black ink equation after equation until we can do it ourselves. He promises me that his students are the only ones who can buy his time -- one minute from you, five from me. He tallies our scores in a giant Excel sheet so he can hand us $25 Amazon gift-cards at the end of the year, and so I suppose he was also the root of my first paycheck.

My biological grandfather was around for aphorisms and the birthday calls, for the well-wishes and the quiet comfort that I was related to someone. Dr. Khetan was there for everything else -- the guidance and mentorship, the Yoda-like wisdom, and the uncanny way Indian immigrants teach philosophy and values thinly disguised as common core subjects. He praised us infrequently, but not ungenerously --Fredrik Backman writes in one of his dedications, "I'm still trying to impress you. Just so you know," and that is how I will feel about him for the next three-hundred lifetimes.

So when he tells us that he misses us, and that he's proud of us, and that we've kept him young...when he invites us back to the building to attend banquets with students who won't know what they have until they're sitting in a dorm room in Pittsburgh checking the website weekly just for a semblance of comfort...I can't help but think that maybe everything the little girl in the purple yoga pants wanted came true, if not in the ways she thought they would. That little girl doesn't want money or fame or admiration or love anymore; she wants typical things -- to take a flight back to the city she was born in, to fit back into her old desk, to run through 50 25-cent notebooks a year, to eat Jets pizza with all her old friends and know that we will live forever.