There’s a tendency to focus on the momentous things in end-of-year reflections — new schools, homecomings, job changes, travels. And 2019 has had those things for us. But in some ways, 2019 for us is best reflected in the quotidian. Simply living together under one roof back in our home in San Francisco (something we last did in June of 2015). Having breakfast before school and work on a weekday morning. Or staying out late with friends on a Saturday night. Or coming home to find Mojito waiting for attention. Yes, perhaps this year can be best summed up as the year of the cat, the year when an adorable creature that Adela brought into our lives a few months before we ticked over to 2019 brought us all joy and anchored us even more to home.
Adela: I love watching my friends’ faces when I try to explain how classical music can be beautiful, with its fluctuating harmonies and mournful melodies. But, I bet they laugh at mine when they talk about the time it takes to memorize choreography. Going to art school is everything I could have asked for, getting to be with people who have such fascinatingly different interests, but all done with passion and love for our individual art forms.
The end of the decade has already brought some changes to my life. I ended middle school, thoroughly excited to join the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, where I had been accepted in May after a nerve-racking audition in February. I was so thrilled my hard work had paid off, but so much more was yet to come.
Over the summer, I had the amazing opportunity to spend time in Greece with my grandma, aunt, cousin and mom. From dust-covered ruins to sand-covered beaches, we explored Athens, the Peloponnese peninsula, and two spectacular Greek islands. The interesting history and relaxing beauty of such an incredible place was a great way to spend time with family and learn more about worlds before us. Then, my mom and I traveled to meet up with the other side of my family in the rolling hills of Ireland. A whole new history, especially a more personal one, was one of the numerous spectacular things we got to do. I got to meet several distant cousins living there that I never knew I had, and we hit it off immediately. It was so fun to make new connections with people I never knew I had any connection to. It was so amazing.
August, the start of my first year as a high schooler at Ruth Asawa SOTA, was the start of a world I didn’t know existed ’til now. I got to meet so many great people so passionate about art, dance, architecture, creative writing, and so much more. It has been so entertaining. I’ve met artistic and interesting people, and I couldn’t have asked for better friends.
For two-plus years, I had been preparing for my Bat Mitzvah and, in October of 2019, I finally celebrated it. It was not only a new pathway towards self-discovery, but also a way to connect with family and friends in a place that’s special to me.
The decade might be ending, but my life is nowhere near that. I’m thrilled to continue growing and starting an adventure to last a lifetime.. with my cat.
Dylan: I am The Mover. This name was given to me for a variety of reasons, and it embodies every aspect of my life this year. This year began with my move back to the Bay, marking the conclusion of our time in Chile. This process turned my life on its head just as it had three-and-a-half years before as we packed up our house and headed off towards the unknown. Some will argue that the move back can’t be considered the “unknown,” but looking back at my life this year, I realize that it was nothing like my life before Chile.
As most who read this letter know, I have been immersed in the world of soccer for many years. And this year was no different. Upon my return to the States, I completed my move to the club De Anza Force. I have been with them for the duration of this past year and have made various moves towards my future, whether that be pursuing a professional career in Europe or pushing towards a college education while continuing to develop as an athlete. The move has opened up many doors and opportunities for me to advance within this passion of mine and I look forward to what the future holds.
Another big step I took this year was shared with my dad, as we sought Hungarian citizenship. We spent half of the year learning this unbelievably difficult language only to fake our way through a citizenship interview in Budapest. Thankfully (and miraculously), we passed said interview, submitted our documents and have been playing the waiting game for the approval of our application. This was an important milestone towards our goal to obtain a European passport and helps me move forward towards potentially living in Europe with a professional contract or attending a European university. This moves us closer to a new world of possibilities that I am intrigued to explore throughout next year.
I have moved through three educational systems in the last year, all fundamentally different. While leaving Chile, I was also leaving a private education, something I have been exposed to exclusively in South America. Then, upon moving back to San Francisco in January, I took the first half of the year to devote my time to things that felt important to me. Obviously, soccer was involved as I continued to develop my athletic ability; but these months provided me with a freedom that I had never experienced before. Among the things that I devoted my time to, I like to highlight my decision to volunteer substantially with the SF/Marin Food Bank. I volunteered multiple times per week and over the seven months totaled more than 200 hours packing food for those in the Bay Area in need of help. This experience opened my eyes to the reality that I had returned to and moved me, both intellectually and emotionally, to understand that I have the ability and responsibility to provide what I can for those in need. However, this is not where the year ends. After the seven months of “free time” I decided that I was ready to return to the traditional institution of school (ugh). Come late August, I re-enrolled in the SFUSD public school system at Lowell High School, reconnecting with many old friends that I had left four years prior. This moved me as a person and demonstrated to me what kind of a person I really am. I as a social, interactive mover, who can’t sit still (literally) and someone who needs to be engaged with others at all times to grow as a person. All of these changes enlightened part of me that I had only caught glimpses of over the years and I am humbled to have had this special opportunity to move through these many environments at such a young age.
Finally, and most importantly, this year was the first time I got to spend any substantial quality with our amazing 5th family member. Mojito has revolutionized our lives in ways that we couldn’t have imagined (and some that we could) and in the spirit of reflection he has given me this title. To him, I am The Mover. I pick him up, imposing my affection on him — maybe too much (especially when he doesn’t want it)… and so I have officially earned this label. I am The Mover, and this is reflected in how I present myself to the world and it encompasses my life as a whole.
Matt: I spent half of 2019 learning Hungarian. Or at least enough of that very tricky language to complete a quest that started in the 1880s, when my great-grandfather Albert Kelemen was born in Debrecen, Hungary, allowing me a century and a half later to apply for Hungarian and European Union citizenship. Dylan joined me on this quest, unraveling the mysteries of Hungarian with the amazing assistance of our teacher-by-Skype Lídia Körmöndi (Köszönöm szépen, Lídia!) and traveling to Budapest to sit for an interview and submit proof of ancestry. We have a few months yet to wait to learn our fate, but the hard part is over and we expect to have EU passports before 2020 comes to a close.
The other half of the year was consumed with a new job. I have, with great excitement, re-joined New Leaders, a non-profit committed to transforming educational opportunity for students of color and students facing poverty by developing effective school leaders. I am leading a new line of work for New Leaders, one that is focused on partnering with colleges and universities to transform principal preparation. While it is difficult to set aside the good work Jeannette and I have been doing together with our clients, I know that Kelefors Consulting, LLC is in good hands.
In between these two half-years, we enjoyed a truly memorable family gathering in Ireland. Twenty-two of us — my mom, her sister, and their families — crossed the Atlantic, met up with our Broderick cousins, saw the homesteads of our Irish ancestors, skulled pints, crooned ballads, and spun yarns. It was the homecoming of all homecomings. And it was made all the more special when all of those family members, plus more family and many friends, traveled out to California just a few months later to celebrate Adela as she became bat mitzvah.
A few other notable memories: traveling to Montreal to see Jason and to meet Emily and Maurice; accompanying Dylan to Southern California as his team advanced all the way to the national semifinals; and, for the first time ever, having a pet.
In five months time, I’ll be 50 and will have shared 20 years of marriage with Jeannette, milestones we are celebrating with a 545-mile bike ride from SF to LA. Many of you have graciously donated to our ride and we are so grateful for that.
Jeannette: Despite having a new constant in Mojito to our daily lives in San Francisco, I started 2019 not sure how many months I’d be spending in Chile in 2019. Dylan made the decision in mid-January to return to the U.S. for school and soccer, kicking off a month of flurried activity to terminate our lease and pass on a household worth of stuff. I was hopeful that I could maintain some work on exciting and interesting projects, visit with friends, and keep up my Spanish, but I just wasn’t sure how it would all work out.
In March the Chilean government notified me that my request for permanent residency (a saga which began in Sept 2015) had been approved, but would require me to complete the process in person, so I planned a trip to Santiago in April to claim it, further some work projects, and reconnect with friends. Of course the bureaucratic process caused me some white knuckles moments to the very end, but alas I have an official “home away from home” for as long as I can keep up an annual trip to Chile. In August I returned for an intense work-focused trip, grateful for opportunities to advance several projects related to teacher and school leader training in project-based learning. The tumultuous events of mid-October threw everything up in the air (more about that below), but I have planned my first 2020 trip to Chile toward the end of March.
Back at home, I was delighted to continue compelling work with my U.S. clients, and engage a new project with the Learning Policy Institute founded by my thesis advisor and mentor Prof. Linda Darling-Hammond supporting the California Performance Assessment Collaborative (CPAC).
Celebrating life was a big part of this year. I turned 50 in May, with a surprise visit from my brother, and an amazing dinner party planned and prepared by Matt, Dylan and Adela. The celebration continued with a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Greece with Adela, my mom (also celebrating a milestone year in 2019), niece Claire, and sister-in-law Laura, and an unforgettable family heritage trip to Ireland where I met Rooneys & Brodericks (Matt’s clan in Lough Rea and Ashbourne) and Sleaters (my Nana’s clan from Sligo). Additional get togethers with friends celebrating 50 enriched the year with much love and reflection. And Adela’s bat mitzvah was a true blessing for me and our entire family.
But this year I also mourn the loss of two dear souls. Prof. Ed Bridges, one of my dissertation committee members whom I could always count on to encourage and support my academic and personal growth. And Daniel McLaughlin, co-founder of Envision Schools who championed a world-class education for all students, but especially for first generation college-bound youth. It is an honor to remember them and their gifts as inspiration for not only my work, but also for ways of being.
I’m grateful our nuclear family was together magnitudes more than we had been in 2018 (7x, for the curious). For Dylan’s soccer games, Adela’s musical performances, training rides and date nights with Matt, our family dinners, play sessions with Momo, quiet evenings reading inspired authors, and live engagements with notable thinkers and doers among us, for good health and new year ahead. Violetta Parra’s world-renowned song, “Gracias a La Vida,” rings truer than it ever has for me. Gracias a La Vida.
*****
The start of 2019 was the culmination of three-and-a-half years in Chile for our family, in one form or another. It was an experience that brought all four of us immense joy and growth. So, it is with deep sadness that we have watched events unfold in Chile this year, as decades of structural inequality and a failure to reckon with the legacy of the dictatorship exploded in angry protests followed by a brutal and senseless response from the government and military. Tanks rolling down the avenues, hundreds with maimed bodies and lost eyesight from supposedly non-lethal weapons fired by police, failed and hollow leadership from the president and his allies. It is a wrenching feeling, equal parts gratitude to be out of the fray, guilt to be unable to stand in close solidarity with our friends and with the Chilean people, and hope that a promised new constitution will bring real change in Chile.
Meanwhile, we have so much to do here in the U.S. in 2020. Now that we’ve really settled back in, we begin the year knowing that the whole of this year will be a fight to reclaim our democracy. We’ll be doing our part and we hope that all of you will be united in that fight.
The year in numbers
1 – number of new drivers added to our car insurance this year (uff!)
2 – high school PTAs of which we’re members
3 – bridges crossed in one of Jeannette & Matt’s best training rides to date
3.6 – magnitude of the earthquake we felt the morning of Adela’s bat mitzvah
7 – months of active instruction at Kelefors Academy of Learning and Empowerment (KALE) during the year
13 (approx) – vocal and musical theater performances by Adela
22 – members of the extended Rooney clan who traveled from the US to Ireland for a get-together in July
58 – number of teeth Adela brushes each night . . . 30 of them are her cat’s so he won’t have to go to the cat dentist
60 – number of days after she left Chile that Jeannette received permanent residency status in Chile (gotta love the bureaucracy)
98 – percent decline in Hungarian language retention since Matt and Dylan’s citizenship interview in Budapest
225 – Greek islands left for Jeannette & Adela to visit (2 down!)
600 – percent increase in the number of date nights for Jeannette & Matt in 2019 compared with 2018
7,345 (approx) – The number of articles of impeachment left on the cutting room floor
9,000+ – number of miles Dylan traveled for away games with De Anza Force