Sukkot

http://www.virginia.edu/jewishstudies/images/sukkot_ancient.jpg  

We are now into the first day of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, which began last night and continues for nine days.  A festival of harvest and celebration, Sukkot commemorates the waiting of the Israelites in the desert for their entrance to the Promised Land.  Observant Jews build Sukkahs -- little huts, reminisicent of the mobile huts the Jews lived in as they wandered the desert for 40 years -- outside their homes and eat their meals in their Sukkahs, where they are able to see the sky during the holiday.  

For me, a Christian teaching in a Jewish school, Sukkot has largely meant some extended time off from work to catch up on all the preparation that I should have done over the summer.  (And, this year, to sleep away at least yesterday -- I did get the miserable virus that kept my daughter out of school last week.)  But this year, Sukkot has delivered a new fragment of enlightenment.  

Several people have been writing about the melancholy that they feel with the coming of autumn.  I haven't addressed that, because it's not what I feel, and I've been wondering why.  I have experienced three major life-shattering experiences in my 51 years, each of them with never-ending ripple effects, and each of them had its beginning in October.  And yet, autumn is truly my favorite season, and October my favorite month.  How could that be?  I should be ripping the month of October from the calendar and refusing to acknowledge its existence on anything that has to be dated.   

What occurred to me, as I thought about Sukkot this year, is that, regardless of and despite my personal experiences, insignificant in the vast millenia of human activity, autumn is a time of communal gathering in and harvest, a time of Thanksgiving for the nourishing and life-saving qualities of food and water, and a time of hope in things unseen, as we see the earth put itself to bed in anticipation of the long dark and cold of winter. In winter, we can only wait with foolish optimism for longer days of light and the first green shoots to poke through earth so cold and muddy that it looks as if couldn't support a single living thing, but in autumn the colors of the trees and fields remind us to celebrate.   

I'm sure that this recognition comes from my childhood.  We lived in the country and for four generations my family ran a grain business.  Since it involved the selling of seed and fertilizer and the buying of harvests to be sold to larger markets, I didn't know much about farming itself.  No one in my family put in so much as a vegetable garden, and our only animals were dogs and cats (and, for awhile, the pigeon named Cat).  But we lived in the midst of farms, with corn and soy beans and cows and sheep growing all around us.  In the late summer, a trip to the grocery in town would mean being stuck in the long lines of trucks bringing corn in to sell.  The only real whole-town celebration during the calendar year was the Fall Festival, with the main intersection blocked off for rides and booths.  My father and uncle put in 18 and 20 hour days in October as the beans came in, complained all through November when rain brought things to a standstill, and went back to work feverishly later in the winter, when the ground again became hard enough for the machinery to get into the fields.  

I always thought that I liked the autumn because it was the beginning of a new school year, with all the crispness and promise that that entails.  But now I see things differently.  Autumn is a time for working together, whether in an ancient movement toward a promised land or a contemporary harvesting of food for the winter and seed for the spring.  In either case, it is a time of great industry and hopefulness.  And so far, no matter how desperately out-of-kilter the month of October has sometimes been, its yellows and reds have always been too brief.   

Walked: 3 miles.

Walked this month: 61.3 miles

Walked since beginning journal: 502 miles.

   

Autumn Lights Up The Backyard

I was in class tonight when the Harvest Moon rose.  So I decided to be creative with its later results.

Celebration of Autmn Continues

Worn-Out Thistle

Poem: "IV," by Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir (Counterpoint).

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth's green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.

Available this morning on The Writer's Almanac.

Autumn Sunday

A dried thistle -- masquerading as a stained-glass window.

Letting Go

Early Autumn in Algonquin

Think back about a decade: one of my sons is off to summer camp for the first time.  I'm excited for him and we have a great drive together down to North Carolina, enjoying the blue of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  I return home full of plans for all that I intend to accomplish in the next few weeks.  Anyone with more than one child knows that the work involved both increases and decreases in geometric proportion to the number of children present.  The housework and attentiveness required in connection with three children drops dramatically when one of them is absent, even for a day.  Three weeks?  I could run the entire nation.

So what did I do for that three week period?  Mostly I sat at the kitchen table, moping and waiting for the mail.  I got about five or six letters, every one of them a gem.  ("Dere Mom, a skunk and here babys cam to the 4th of july firworkes.") I did not clear out the attics or basement or do exciting things with the other two.  I just waited, miserably, for my child to return. 

And return he did.  He did not drown in the lake, or fall off a mountain, or get lost in a cave.  He came home grinning and healthy -- a tad homesick, too, with vows not to go back, which he forgot all about within a few weeks.

I got better at letting them go.  Within a couple of summers, all three children were at camp; a few more years, and that first one was off to Europe to live.  Now two of them are 20 and back at college.

I don't miss them as agonizingly as I did my oldest that first summer.  I think about them several times a day, and before I fall asleep at night and as soon as I wake up in the mornings.  I'm interested in everything about their lives -- in far more than they want to share.  I'm already planning Thanksgiving.  But on the whole, I'm happy for them.  We have experienced enough heartbreak in our family and among our friends since that first long-ago camp summer that I am well aware of how fortunate each of them is to be able to go to college as a reasonably well-functioning young adult.

What I miss now is the family life that once was.  When your children are little, older mothers frequently tell you to pay attention, to enjoy those years, to recognize how fleeting they are.  Hey, I told myself all that all the time.  My own childhood was so truncated that I knew well to be appreciative each day of the renewed chance mothering gave me to recover what I had lost.

But it wasn't enough.  I guess it never is.  It's hard now for me to believe that I once lived a life in which days were spent pushing swings and wiping up juice spills, and evenings supervising baths and teeth-brushing, and then reading aloud to three little ones heaped on my bed in their fuzzy and footed sleepers.  Their wolf-den days are over -- at least until they have children of their own.

Ahhh....there's the solution.  Not too soon, of course, for them -- but not soon enough for me.

Autumn in Algonquin

Here's today's entry in my mini Celebration of Autumn.  My son took it last week as my father and his wife set off from their campsite early one morning.

I'm so grateful that my father has shared his love of canoeing and the Algonquin backcountry with his grandsons.

The University as a Medieval Phenomenon

The University of Chicago

It's hard for me to believe that, less than two years ago, I was trying to discourage my son from attending U of C.  How could I not love this campus?

A Day Early

My alerts are working haphazardly, I'm way behind in my journal reading, and I'll only be online a short time tomorrow morning, so I'm going to acknowledge Yom Kippur a day early.  My life is enriched daily by my students, all of them Orthodox Jews, and I hope that this is a holy, moving and safe week-end for them, their families, and the worldwide Jewish community.

http://www.goodnewsfeets.com/yomg.html

I Should Have Something to Say...

but I don't.  This week is a little too busy for me.

My husband is approaching the deadline for a huge project at work.  Not seeing much of him.

One son is off to college and back to his usual terse e-mail self.  He needs money; what else is new?

My daughter stayed home sick today, but she did do a teeny tiny bit of work on her college stuff.  Of course, being home sick, she missed a visit with a college rep, so I can''t say she made a lot of progress.  (And yes, she really is sick.  A lot of people around here are, including, soon I would say, me.)

I had a class Monday night, curriculum night at the school where I teach Tuesday night, and a bit of shopping with my remaining child last night.  I have done eight loads of wash in the last two days, I'm thinking about changing the beds, and tomorrow he and I are off to Chicago.  I have about 100 papers to grade when I get back Saturday night.

And then -- everyone will be where they are supposed to be for a couple of months and I will go back to the Paper Project.  Unless I get what my daughter has, in which case I'll be asleep instead.

Walked: 3 miles.

Walked so far this month: 55.2 miles.

Celebration of Autumn

Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.
-   George Eliot

Autumnal Equinox

I thought I would spend some time this week celebrating the planet's turn into my favorite season:

Equinox at Knowth
Observations made by Mythical Ireland at Knowth's western passage at Autumn Equinox, September 22, 2000, reveal an interesting surprise - that it may not point exactly towards equinox sunset. Measurements made by a 3-man team show the passage is not oriented due west, but some 7 or more degrees off. Anthony Murphy gained exclusive access for the equinox, and captured the sunlight as it penetrated part of the passage. But the sunlight does not penetrate the full passage until a week or so after equinox.

http://www.mythicalireland.com/ancientsites/knowth/equinoxwest.html

CELEBRATE!

TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER 22, 2004  

12:30 P.M. EDT

A Quickie

No, not that  kind.

I came home for lunch and found that one of my friends has updated her journal by discussing how some people maintain pristine houeholds and others of us do not.  How could I resist the challenge?

On my dining room table (spread all over): graded American history quizzes, financial aid documents, a Tulane University viewbook, a stack of notes on ancient Chinese philosophers, and a Time special issue on Great Buildings of the World.

On the chest of drawers (in stacks):  a world atlas, special issues of U.S. News on The Ancient World and The First Olympics, a book on Encountering God in Nature, an AP World History teacher manual, and several sections of history notes paper-clipped together.

On one of the built-in shelves: glassware (oh, that's supposed to be there), a stack of empty file folders, packets from MotoPhoto, and an old subpoena for a case in which I was happy not to have to testify.

On the floor: DSL packaging and instructions, computer paper and print cartridges, more history notes. 

On the little table under the window: a pile of books on France and Maine.

On the computer table:  several drafts of the paper my daughter was working on last night, a book I am actually reading, my son's schedule for this fall's classes, some print-outs on master's programs in architecture and engineering, a new flyer on contemplative prayer, and a University of Chicago guidebook.  Also a salt shaker which I just knocked over.

The mice should be able to make themselves right at home.

Long Day

That was yesterday.  It's not worth writing about in a public journal, but one of the things I've enjoyed about this process is taking a look back occasionally and discovering minutiae I had already forgotten, so maybe this will serve a purpose someday.

Oh. A momentary pause.  The cat and dog were just making frenetic dives under the computer desk.  I thought they were playing with each other, but a deep growl from our usually cheerful pup caused me to look up.  With no glasses or contacts I am incapacitated, but it seems that they had just deposited a newly dead mouse by the dining room door.  I have now removed said mouse to the brush pile outside.  It was a fully grown mouse; I guess I can hope that it just slipped in the door recently and is not part of an extended indoor family.  I'm not so terribly hopeful, though; there was a mouse upstairs earlier this summer.

Back to yesterday:

Early to work to complete a mammoth pile of copying.  No complaints; the photocopier did not break down.  The office has, however, made the rather bizarre decision to lock up all the paper, which requires that we track down a secretary with a key every time the machine runs out, which is a rather frequent occurrence and slows the entire process down considerably. I will never, ever, ever comprehend the bureaucratic thought process that takes place in the minds of school administrators whose minds SHOULD be occupied with ideas for enhancing rather than stultifying the efficiency of their operation.

Five classes with an unexpected meeting in between.

Attempts to complete student loan forms stymied by the need for my husband's driver's license number.  For heaven's sake.  My husband is, as usual, completely incommunicado for the day (which in his case, means about 12 hours).  The application will not be finished until after dinner, for which I won't be here.

My daughter skips yet another meeting with a college rep for a school which she would find intriguing  if she  would only take a look.  So far she has not: studied for the upcoming SAT-Round Two, checked to see if her teacher recommendations are taken care of, asked her voice teacher for help with a scholarship audition, completed her application form, started her second attempt at an essay, emailed college admissions reps whom she absolutely needs to email, asked her theatre tech teacher for help with a portfolio, or otherwise exerted herself in any way.  I'm not sure which is at a higher pitch: her anxiety level or my frustration level.

An ongoing monologue from my son-still-at-home, who goes to college on Friday (yes, the quarter system is for the birds) and is reorganizing his fall schedule for about the fifth time this summer. 

On to my own class, where I discover, over a two-and-one-half-hour period, that I have not understood one word of the reading nor anticipated one word of the discussion.  This is not a usual experience for me.  I am too tired to be upset, but I make a mental note to myself to remember that my bafflement mirrors how many of my own students feel much of the time.

The last half of Everwood.  Dies anyone else find this plot sequence in which Andy has lied to Ephraim about Madison's pregnancy utterly ridiculous?  The only bright spot so far this season is Harold's reaction's to the interloping young doctor.  He's not the star, and I imagine that he's frequently overlooked, but Dr. Harold Abbott is the most nuanced character on the show.

My daughter asks me to proofread a paper for her.  She has made that request approximately three times in her life, so I do it.  And then I go to bed and relax for a few minutes with an utterly frivolous novel.

I never did get to walk.  But here I am: another day for the animals, the mice, and me.

College Blues

I spent yesterday taking one of my sons back to college.  It's a drive of a couple of hours, a few hours there unloading the car and visiting Target, and the drive home.  

It was a hard day for me.  My son is excited about getting back to school and looking forward to a new housing situation, an apartment with three other young men from his high school -- a major step up from the sardine-packed dorm lifestyle of freshman year.  He has more room in a bedroom to himself this year than four of them had for their two bunk beds last year.  With a kitchen, perhaps he will eat better and stay healthier than he did last year, after having pronounced the cafeteria food disgusting and given up his food plan for subsistence meals of fast food and drugstore sandwiches. And it looks as if he and his roommates will get along well.  

But I am deeply affected by my surroundings, and I find his depressing.  Having had most of my own educational experiences at small and beautiful New England liberal arts colleges, or approximations thereof,  I have no affinity whatever for the huge and nondescript midwestern university campus.  The off-campus housing I remember, while hardly representative of the lifestyle of the rich and famous, was usually found in (very) modest residential areas, with some semblance of landscaping.  My son and friends are living in a concrete complex that surrounds a tiny concrete courtyard, already littered with soda and beer cans.   

I think that the most depressing aspect of the whole situation for me is that he doesn't seem to notice or care.  I tell myself that it's just part of late adolescence -- kids this age are able to handle just about anything with equanimity.  Or maybe it's just that as they grow up and away, they don't make choices that coincide with my own -- of schools, studies, living arrangements, how they spend their free time -- and I know that my daughter is next in line.  

I'm at the computer because I have just finished writing an extremely academic paper on the topic of being attentive to life as we live it.  That's what I have to remember: to be attentive and appreciative of the experiences that are, rather than longing for the ones that are not.

Walked: 4 miles.

The Next Election: Clinton vs. Schwarzznegger

My boys returned from their Canadian canoe trip in high spirits last night, and filled the kitchen with their laughter over Presidential politics.

"Bill Clinton is the only Democrat who can win a Presidential election," claimed one.  "Let's face it; people LIKE Bill Clinton.  They don't care what he did.  He's a funny and likeable guy!"

"Did you hear that a Republican in Congress has already started the ball rolling to amend the Constitution?" asked my father.  "To delete the requirement that a President must be a native-born American citizen?"

"For Arnold?" I asked.

"Yep," confirmed my father.

"Oh, that's it!" cried my other son.  "The Democrats need to promote their own amendment -- eliminating the two-term limit for Presidents.  Then Bill can run again!"

"Bill Clinton vs. Arnold Schwarzznegger-- now THERE's an election!"

 

An Anniversary

From Governor William Bradford's Plymouth Plantation Register, "Register of Governor Bradford's in his own hand, recording some of the first deaths, marriages and punishments at Plymouth":  

Digory Priest: January 1, "the year begins with the death of Degory Priest,"

I learned from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac that today marks the anniversary of the Pilgrims' departure for the shores of America from Plymouth, England in 1620.  

A few years ago, when my oldest were doing their family histories for their middle school humanities class, I discovered that I'm a Mayflower descendant.  Just hanging by a thread, there -- a great-great-great, one Digory Priest, was a Pilgrim hatmaker, traveling first to Leiden, Holland and then back to England and on to what would become the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  He was one of the signatories to the Mayflower Compact, but died almost immediately, in the epidemic that spread through the fledgling Puritan settlement.  After that, the evidence becomes more ambiguous.  My record book indicates that his wife and daughters came over in 1621, but online (and probably more accurate) references date their arrival to 1623 on the Ship Anne, his wife having already remarried. A daughter's marriage in 1630 in Plymouth led to my own family line -- on to Nantucket and eventually westward to Ohio.  

That's the gist of what I know.  It was my great-grandmother who had a passion for such histories and did the research necessary to establish herself as a Mayflower descendant and Daughter of the American Revolution via two other ancestors. When the boys started to talk about their projects, my  father was able to locate her thick black book detailing the first generations of early European settlers in America.  

My husband's family's arrival in America was equally interesting.  As we asked for information for the school report, we learned out that a cousin of his had started a geneaology project, and had located fascinating paperwork from their grandfather's arrival in New York on a ship from Wales in the early 1900s.  As I recall, he and his brothers came with their mother, following their father who had left a short time earlier to establish himself.  At the age of fourteen, my husband's grandfather was listed on the ship's manifest as a "boy miner," meaning that he had already been employed in what was to become his life's profession in the coal mines of western Pennsylvania.  

A lot of people make fun of women like my great-grandmother, broadly-built turn-of-the-century "ladies of the club" sailing through the Midwest in their wide-brimmed hats on their DAR and Mayflower Society fervor.  But I am always moved by these stories of emigration to America.  What determination and courage it must have taken, whether born out of religious fervor or old world poverty, to clamber onto a small ship and set sail for a new life on an unknown continent.   

My husband's family story in America is only a century long and, therefore, much easier to know than  my own. His grandmother was also from Wales; she and her husband met in Pennsylvania and produced five children, four of whom are still alive.  I know (or knew) in person all the players.  I hope that someday we will be able to go to Wales with our children and see the places from which part of their family originated.  

The family of Digory Priest has faded into mystery.  Thinking that his wife and daughters came to America almost immediately after he did, I have often wondered whether they would have had any inkling of his fate when they set  sail  for America.  It seemed unlikely that they  would have  come if they had known that their husband and father was already gone, but perhaps they had no options.  Perhaps they knew that only those early marriages in Plymouth would secure their place in the Puritan community.  The new information I have read online this morning seems to turn that story upside down; his wife was apparently already securely in her place when she brought her daughters to these shores.  

It's something to think about, as I sit in the comfort of my dining room, furnished with a mixture (dare I say blend?) of 19th century antiques and a brand new Dell.  Would I have boarded either of those ships?   PLYMOUTH PLANTATION

Walked: 3.5 miles.

Happy New Year!

http://www.weblokam.com/culture/paithrukam/imges/sep/rosh_hashana_tapestry.jpg

Experimenting

Today I'm mostly cleaning and grading papers.  Not so much fun, but I'm in no particular hurry. I'm taking VERY FREQUENT play breaks, and I'm learning a little about Paint Shop. 

And I walked 4 miles this morning.

North Bar Lake and Lake Michigan, Empire, Michigan

Algonquin Travels

Well, I don't have to work tomorrow, which means I don't have to work tonight.  So I thought I'd just play around a little with whatever I could find online.  My boys are canoeing in the backcountry of Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park with my dad and his wife.  I haven't been there in a couple of years, so I thought I'd just imagine the trip they are taking.  Algonquin is a north woods park, a couple or more hours north of Toronto:     The main birds there are loons:     We've seen osprey there, too:     And one night I heard the wolves of Algonquin:

Mostly, though, we canoe:

Portage:

Camp:

And hang out with loons:

(This loon is carrying a chick on her back. How cool is that?)

Would You Do It The Same Way?

If you had your life as a mother to live over again, would you do it the same way?

I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks, ever since a colleague expressed concern over her daughter's first pregnancy.  Having earned a doctoral degree and found employment before having her first child, and having remained steadily employed since, she is dismayed by her oldest's choice to forego graduate school for a first baby and at-home motherhood in her early 20s.

I told my daughter about the situation, mostly because I wanted to explore options with her.  At 17, feeling intensely the pressures of The College Process, and with no interest in having children ( a feeling that she thinks will last forever), she cannot imagine the choices that loom in her not-so-distant future.

I went to law school straight out of college, so most of the young women I knew in my early 20s were lawyers in the making.  We had few role models - women represented only 4% of the profession and 25% of our class.  The world was changing, but not fast enough for us to figure out what to do.  Many of the men in our class became parents within a year or two of graduation, but very few of the women followed that path.  Those men seemed to have married teachers and nurses, women whose careers had required less initial educational investment and who had a few years of work behind them when we were just getting started.  Most (not all) of my friends waited until their early 30s to become mothers.

Somewhere during that time period, our armour began to show signs of wear.  One friend never even took the bar exam; she dropped out of our summer prep class and never looked back.  Within a few years she had three children.  Others worked a few years, had a first child, and vanished from the workforce, never (so far) to return.  I worked part time after my twins were born, left my job when my third child was six months old, and returned when she entered first grade, first to several years of self-employment and then to a different career.  Others plowed forward into what have become extremely successful professional careers, but they tended to have either one child, or two children with a space of several years in between.  The only one of my classmates whom I know to have done what we all presumed we would -- build a high-powered career while having three children in quick succession -- acknowleges the critical role played by an always-on-call nanny,

Then there's the other group -- women who went to law school later.  One friend started when her twins were in elementary school.  Several women in my own class had completely grown and self-supporting children by the time that they applied to law school -- one of those women subsequently began one of the most successful practices in our city.

Oh, and another group -- most of my close friends now, made when I first became a stay-at-home mom, never had the kind of career ambitions that would have required a graduate education.  They all work (Ha!  We all have kids in college.  We will work until we turn 95 or die, whichever comes first.) , and all hope for satisfying work lives, but not at the expense of years of education and training.

So what's the best way to do it?  Oh, I know the answer -- there is no "best way."  But I am forming some thoughts on the matter -- not that my daughter will ever consider my thoughts relevant to her life.  (Of course, I relayed them to her anyway.)

I think that the big mistake that the professional women of my generation made was in trying to mimic the male pattern: an advanced education right after college, several years of apprenticeship, and finally the big prize of a partnership in a practice or business, a big corporate promotion, or tenure in a university.

The fault in that system became apparent as we hit 30.  The early 30s are crucial for career development -- at least insofar as the male model is concerned.  All of those professional prizes are dangled before the eyes of the 32-year-old employee, who has invested a lot of time and effort into grabbling the gold ring that by  then hangs just in front of her face.  The problem is obvious: the early 30s are also a crucial time for childbearing.  A woman who forges on in her career at that point makes significant compromises with respect to her role as a mother of young children.  A women who cuts back on or drops the career makes devastating choices with respect to her future work life and income.

Biology being what it is, I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that the situation differs for men and women.  What's wrong is not recognizing that alternate career paths are as viable and contributive as the traditional ones. 

I told my daughter that I think that if I had it to do over again, I would have had my children in my mid-20s, shortly after finishing college, and focused entirely on them for several years.  No more of the wishy-washy back-and-forth stuff.  Then, with the children launched in elementary and middle school and my time somewhat more under my control, I would have gone on to to complete my education, with the idea of beginning a career as they finished high school or began college.  I would have been only in my mid-40s by the time my children were all in college, physically, mentally and emotionally ready to focus my energy outside my home without feeling pulled in a dozen directions.

Well, that's one view.  I'd love to hear what others have to say.  How would you advise your own daughters?

Goldenrod

I suppose that the first weeks of fall bring back memories of early school days for almost everyone.

I grew up out in the country and took a bus to school.  One morning when I was in about third grade, my grandmother walked me down our hill to the bus and, since we had a bit of a wait, helped me pick a bouquet of the goldenrod growing along the fence across the road as a present for my teacher.

No one in my family had any allergies; I was unacquainted with the concept of an allergic reaction.  Needless to say, my teacher gift provoked some responses that were disappointing.

And not nearly so exciting as the results the following spring, when my grandmother sent me to school with another of her finds,  a praying mantis egg case.  I stored it carefully in my desk and forgot all about it until a few days later, when baby praying mantises scattered across the room.  What shrieks erupted from my friends on either side of the aisle!

Walked: 3 miles (no hawk).

Walked so far in  September: 45.7 miles.

Yikes! No Camera!

I should never go out without my camera.

I took an early walk in the cemetery this morning and there in the grass, right in front of me, was a young red-tailed hawk finishing off his breakfast.  He let me approach to within five feet of him -- I kid you not.  He never did fly away; I decided to leave, thinking that as a novice hunter he was probably really hungry and therefore unwilling to leave what was left of his catch -- which wasn't enough to be identifiable.  He must have spent his entire little life in the cemetery; he was utterly without fear of me. 

I could have gotten a great shot with the Brownie camera I had when I was nine -- but of couse I had no camera at all!

Walked: 3 miles.

Nature in the City (with a nod to Molly Bloom)

Virginia wrote an entry yesterday about the lives of nature lovers in the city.  I was all set to produce an erudite defense of exactly that, complete with the environmental arguments in favor of aggregate lifestyles as opposed to five-acre lot minimums, but this appeared instead:  

you simply have to look more intently in the city it is all here different but here the monarch chrysalises on my grandmother's porch were sea green and their golden sparkles danced in the sunlight on the lake islands the butterflies race free across the becahes here they are tossed and turned in the cavernous passages created by city skyscrapers but they are headed for mexico regardless as the waves break across the seawalls the cans and scaup undulate with the waves while a cormorant stretches her wings in the sun on an inland city pond a redtail wheels above the cemetery mistaken identity by many he is too young for a red tail the warblers are passing back through unseen except by the most knowledgeable in the field and they don't advertise themselves neither the warblers this time of year nor those who recognize them loons not here yet the lakes in Canada remain free of ice the deer stop traffic the catbirds in my yard think they own the place especially at 6:00 in the morning geese fly low in formation over a girls' hard-fought soccer game which team are they honking for?  buckeyes litter the sidewalk gleaming as though they'd been polished overnight the puddle ducks are starting to molt and wondering if they are stuck in the city for life will they have to join us for coffee on saturday mornings all those raucous women who dream of beachside cottages but cannot leave one another a skunk hightailed it across the gas station parking lot last night a young racoon appeared in the ivy on the guest room windowsill there is warmth in the sunshine on the bridge on the bench next to the cemetery lake on the curb with friends will there be screech owls this year they haven't been back in a long time when we visit with our friends a big group of us sunday summer nights for years and years their skunk joins us sunshine and goldenrod at the 9/11 ceremony in the cemetery bumper stickers kerry/edwards member of the presidential prayer team city firefighter afl/cio us navy national guard uniform nurse's scrubs red-headed woodpeckers we need to be where there is art and debate over health care benefits for gay city employees and museums and music and all the nature even if most people don't know about it it is here

Walked: 4 miles.

Sunday Sermon

I had another topic planned for today -- and maybe I'll even get to it later -- but I got back from church awhile ago and one of our pastors preached such a terrific sermon* that I thought some of it bore repeating.   

The passage from Scripture on which the sermon was based is Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28.  Jeremiah was a prophet to the Jewish people shortly before they were carried off into exile by the Baylonians in 587 BCE.  Many of Jeremiah's  words warn what will befall the people who fail to follow God, but at the same time he insists upon the necessity of a restored relationship between God and God's people.  

Preaching with reference to Hiroshima, the Holocaust, September 11, and the Russian horror of the past week, our sermon today focused on the meaning of the words "justice" and "repentance."  

We tend to think of justice in terms of punishment, said our pastor but, in the Bible, the meaning of justice is found in the word "restoration."  Justice means returning what rightfully needs to be returned, and restoring that which needs to be restored.  

Repentance, he went on, means to get outside of ourselves and see beyond ourselves.  We are called to see "with God's imaginative eyes and compassionate heart."  

We have gotten increasingly fearful since September 11; apparently at least one survey indicates that 40% of Americans fear becoming victims of the next terrorist attack.  But, our pastor insisted, fear and hatred are not the vocabulary of God.  

Good words for the beginning of a week.  Did anyone else hear from a pulpit in the last three days something that bears repeating?    

 

*I'm trusting that he won't mind my paraphrasing without attribution, since I'm not inclined to provide identifying details online.

Thoughts on 9/11

On two separate occasions in two separate states this summer, people told me that they would not consider allowing children to travel abroad in today's climate. 

Does that say something about the power of terrorism?  About our willingness to concede defeat?  About American arrogance -- that we will venture forth only where we are certain of warm welcomes and friendly companionship?  Or just about parents' unwillingness to abandon their beloved offspring to a treacherous unknown?

I don't know.  All of the above and then some, I suppose.  One of my sons has long had a desire to join the Peace Corps, and the motherly and practical sides of me are certainly far more apprehensive about that plan now than I was three years ago.  The idealistic side of me, however, wants him to hang on to that goal.  He speaks a second language and has several months of volunteer construction experience with Habitat -- he has the potential to make an actual contribution to building up (quite literally) our planet and the relationships among its peoples.

My children have been in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic this summer.  Two of them are in Canada as I write.  I just ran into friends newly returned from a month in Turkey, where they left a child who is spending a college semester there.  Many of my own students travel frequently to Israel.  One of my next-door neighbors is from Lebanon and his family has been here recently.  On the other side, one neighbor is from Germany, and the family was there this past summer for a daughter's marriage to a German man. Another daughter spend last year in Germany.  My children's camp counselor friends hailed from England, New Zealand, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, and Australia. One of their friends who also spent a high school year in France hosted his French sister here for her first visit to the U.S. in August.  I had a professor last year from Lebanon; I have one this year who is a spiritual and administrative consultant around the world and, as a Catholic priest, has developed close relationships with Buddhists in the Far East.  I have an online friend who traveled with her family in China this past summer.  Last week I learned that my eighth grade American history students have family members who within the past two generations have come here from Israel, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Libya, and Russia.

We are connected in an intricate web of relationships across this globe.  We need to foster and maintain those connections if we are to prosper, as individuals, as a nation, and as citizens of the world.  We cannot permit a cult of extremism, violence, and hatred to force us into isolation and a sense of false sense of security on this continent. The people who died on September 11 traced their roots to dozens of cultures and nationalities.  It is incumbent upon us to honor them by remaining open,  curious and friendly toward the other peoples of the world, willing to share in their lives and concerns as we hope they will in ours.

walked: 3 miles.

Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper

It's Friday!  My other workdays end on the late side for a teacher -- I finish teaching at 5:15.  But because our school is Jewish, I finish at 1:45 on Fridays.  Today is about the most magnificent day we've had in a long time, so I intend to take full advantage of my free time with a long walk.

I also have a plan for the several days off that are coming up in the next few weeks: Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.  The Jewish calendar can pose difficulties for Christian teachers during other portions of the year.  My children's schools all follow secular (read: sort of Christian) calendars, so I am seldom on vacation when they are.  And we go longer into the summer to make up for days missed earlier in the year.  But in the fall, my favorite season, it's a real pleasure for a Christian to have the Jewish holidays off.  Long walks as the leaves change, free time for reading, leisure in which to plan the next several weeks of teaching, and This Year's Paper Project.

There is paper everywhere in this house.  Paper paper paper paper paper.  There is solidly covered paper, in the form of hundreds and hundreds of books.  (We have a library instead of a fourth bedroom, with built-in bookcases covering the two long walls.  There are also bookcases in almost every other room, and if there isn't a bookcase somewhere along a wall, there's a pile of books.)  There is glossily-covered paper, in the form of the countless magazines to which I am addicted.  (A sampling: Traveler, Arizona Highways, Blue Ridge, Traverse, Coastal Living (yes, I have an active fantasy life), Birders' World, Christian Century, Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly, Commonweal, Sojourners, People, and on and on.  And on.)  There is black-and-white newsprint, in the form of numerous back issues of the Sunday New York Times and, especially, the Travel section and Book Review.

Then there's the work paper.  I have boxes and boxes of books and magazines on divorce law (my previous life) and on teaching writing, literature, and social studies.  I have streams of lesson plans, and tons of magazines that I've saved "for  just the right moment."  And there's the family paper:  bills, financial statements, tax returns, wills, school records, college application materials, insurance records.  And the sentimental paper:  letters, journals, calendars, boxes of kids' artwork and essays.  There's even the extended family paper -- a few (really, just a few) boxes of letters and other items that I've lifted from my grandmother's attic. 

I don't think I need all of this paper.  I think most of it needs to leave.  As I recall, the last big clean-out that I did was when my kids were in middle school.  I discovered that I was in possession of, among many other things, three full-year sets of fourth grade Montessori math packets.  Should I keep one as a souvenir, I wondered?  Oh, please.  I realized that we had reached the point where everyone in the house knew how to do long division, and that we did not need ANY fourth grade math packets at all.  What a turning point in my life.

But, alas, that was probably five years ago.  The paper has reproduced itself exponentially since then.  I'm sure that I, myself, have had nothing to do with it, but I am the one who is going to have to clean it out.

I'm in the wrong season, I know.   My Paper Project does bear some resemblance to the Passover Project that my Jewish friends and colleagues have to embark upon each year, when they must clear their homes of every speak of bread.  However, I plan to carry on.  My goal is for my Paper Project to be over long before next spring's Passover rolls around.  Then I can start on the Photo Project.

Walked: 3.5 miles.

Walked yesterday: 3 miles.

Frances is Here...

in a mild kind of way.  It's been raining steadily since mid-morning and I guess we have another day of rain ahead of us.

This was a full day that left me with little sense of accomplishment  and a keen awareness of all that I could be doing with respect to my own work, my mess of a house, my daughter's college applications, my son's college loans, and my sons' impending canoe trip with my father and his wife in Canada.  Here's what I did:

1.  Spent more than an hour early this morning searching the basement for our first aid kit, trying repeatedly to reach my husband on the off chance that he had put it with his soccer equipment (he coaches a girls' U-10 team), calling Bean's to order a new one only to find that they couldn't get it here before Friday, calling the outfitter in Ontario to have one set aside for when my little tour group arrives there...all only to find out at 9:00 tonight that my husband does indeed have ours in his car.  Is there a reason that 10-year-old young ladies on a suburban soccer field ten minutes from two major hospital systems need a wilderness medical kit?

2.  Slipped in a walk before the downpour began.

3. Taught five classes, some of them more successfully than others.

4.  Admitted defeat on the teacher work space project, took some stuff from home into work at lunch, and spent some time organizing a tiny carrel to my minimal satisfaction.  At least I had had the good sense to establish squatter's rights there before school started.

5.  Stood in the pouring rain to watch my daughter's soccer team go down in defeat 4-0.

6.  Spent one-and-one-half hours at the first senior class college meeting of the year (barefoot, since my socks and sneakers were soaked) (as were all the women's soccer seniors, from head to toe), listening mostly to details I've been through twice and shaking my head at all the deadlines that my lovely child is doing her best to ignore.

7.  Prepared two classes for tomorrow -- one of them with some help from photos from our own Journey to China.

OK!  - I'm done.  But first I should add, in gratitude, that my sons did all the grorcery shopping and started preparing food for the arrival of the grandparents tomorrow.  They are far better at those tasks than I am -- I'm thinking that they should move home immediately to finish college and take care of their mom.

 

Walked: 3.5 miles.

 

Gift of the Hurricane

Thanks to Frances, I am back in touch with what my kids call one "wing" of my family.

My family's structure is a bit complicated.  It started out conventionally enough -- mom and dad and three kids in southern Ohio in the 50s.  We spent a lot of time in Vero Beach, Florida, and lived there for half of 1959 and 1960.  My parents built a house there; they had plans for an eventual permanent move.

In the fall of 1960 my mother and youngest brother died in an automobile accident.  Fast forward two and one-half years, and my father is marrying the newly divorced wife half of a couple my parents were friendly with in Florida.  Her two oldest children stayed in Florida with their dad and her two youngest moved to Ohio with her.  If you have any questions about the kind of woman my stepmother was (no, I realize that you probably don't), try to imagine someone who would move 1000 miles away from her 15-year-old daughter and 12-year old son and only see them once a year after that.  And yes, I do feel sorry for that woman.  She was in an impossible situation -- bad marriage, no college degree, no job skills -- but she didn't exercise a whole lot of imagination in addressing her problems.

My stepmother died in an accident eight years later.  Yes, that actually happened.  Her children all made their way back to Florida and we gradually lost touch.  My father remarried less than a year later, and he has not proved adept at maintaining relationships with families of former wives.  As a college student, I acquired two new stepsisters and a half-brother.  That marriage ended in divorce after a good 25 years and my father has remarried again.  Now I have a stepbrother whom I've never met, and quite likely never will.

It's my Florida family that I'm concerned with here.  My stepsister, who is five years older than I am, and I have stayed in touch intermittently over the years.  Although we never lived together as siblings, we do share the bond of being the oldest children and only daughters in families ruined by death and divorce and connected by remarriage.  Twelve years ago we all got  together in her home state of Georgia and had a wonderful time.  A few years after that, I took my children to Vero for a few days to see my childhood haunts and meet one of my brothers and his family.  That brother and I are the same age and were extremely close growing up, but we hadn't seen each other since we graduated from high school.  We had  a wonderful visit, too.  But we all lost touch again.

I started wondering about my three stepbrothers, two of them still in Vero Beach, as Frances made her way west, and called my sister the other night.  Once she confirmed that everyone was all right, we were laughing and talking as though we had never stopped.  And now I have received several emails full of pictures of her kids, whom I haven't seen since they were very tiny, and am getting daily reports on the well-being of my brothers.  She and her husband (an insurance adjuster!) are headed to Florida and, they hope, Vero, today.

Vero Beach is a pivotal place in my life.  I have the happiest memories of my short-lived intact family there.  Most of the very few memories I have of my mother are of times in Vero -- probably because living in Florida was exciting and something distinct from the humdrum of life in the Midwest.  (There is, after all, a beach in Florida.)  My first stepfamily is entirely grounded in Vero, and I spent probably 15 years of spring breaks there visiting my grandparents.  Vero was the first place in Florida to which I took my children, to see my dying grandfather. 

My heart goes out to everyone there.  I have been looking at all of the Vero Beach wreckage pictures online, and my father says that friends of his have a  first floor containing a  foot of water from the overflowing Indian River.  I know that it will be months before people start getting back to their normal lives.

But I am grateful for the one small gift that Frances has brought me, in the form of renewed contact with one "wing" of my family.

Walked: 3 miles.

Walked in September so far:  22.7 miles

Other Fundies: Book Review No. 4

In Times of Siege is a lovely novel by Githa Hariharan.  Set in New Delhi, it centers on a middle-aged-don't-rock-the-boat history professor whose life is turned upside down by dual surprises:  the vibrant young woman trapped in his home while recovering from a broken leg, and the unexpected repercussions of a teaching unit he has prepared which fails to satisfy Hindu revisionists. 

We are so used to hearing about religious conflict from our own persepctive.  This novel provides an understated introduction to similar passions erupting in other parts of the world.  The professor's mildly ironic and detached surprise at his predicament is intriguing, as is the young woman's frustration with her circumstances and passion for his cause.

Late Summer Morning

Oregon Roses

I had a glorious beginning to my day.  When I awakened to the plaintive and very loud meows of the kitty trapped in our room, the sky outside my window was streaked in the palest of pinks.  I took care of the animals, threw in a load of wash, and headed out for a walk to the small lake nearby.

It was clear and sunny, and almost no one was out and about yet.  There's a walking bridge over the stream running from the lake, and I settled down there to stretch out, my face to the sun and a small waterfall rushing behind me. 

When I got home, ALL THREE of my children were gathered in the kitchen.  What a wonderful sight!  Of course, they had eaten all of the breakfast food, so I had to run out to the grocery.  On the drive there, a holiday morning was clearly in evidence on the treelawns: dads holding coffee mugs, blond toddlers toppling over each other, and dogs racing back and forth.

Everything looks fresh and clean this morning.  Strong winds all night blew the humidity away, no one is racing off to work, and the gardens are heavy with the summer purples and pinks of impatiens and the autumn reds and yellows of mums.  It's a perfect morning to live here.

Walked: 3 miles.

Saturday Six

I am grading 9th grade summer papers.  So far the grades range from B+ to D-.  This is not a fun project.  So I am going to procrastinate by playing the Saturday Six:

1. What's your favorite thing to do while indoors?

Read and play on the computer -- they're  tied, I guess.

2. What's your favorite thing to do while outdoors?

Walk on the beach.

3. Do you wear any jewelry regularly?  If so, what and where?

My great-grandmother's 10th anniversary ring -- it's a diamond in its orginal (and, therefore, antique) setting and I was named for her.  I wear it most of the time.  I have lots of earrings, but I usually wear a small gold pair that my grandmother bought in an antique jewelry store for my 15th birthday when we were in Spain.

4. You have the choice of spending time alone, with a few close friends, with many friends and aquaintances, or in a large crowd consisting of people you do and don't know.  Which one would make you the most comfortable?

I prefer to spend time either alone or with a few close friends.  I can think of only one time that I had a blast in a huge crowd, but I was with my family.  We spent New Year's Eve a few years ago on the Champs-Elysees in Paris with about a million (literally) other revelers.  I didn't want to go, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything, even if it was only about 10 degrees F and fog did encircle the Tour d'Eiffel at about two minutes to midnight.

5. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

Oh, I'm not one of those shoe people.  I wear Tevas in the summer and clogs in the winter.  I maybe have 12 pairs of shoes, including running and walking shoes and flip-flops.

6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #21 from Jeanno43 and Cherie:   If a fire or other circumstances forced you to leave your home with all of your loved ones and pets -- but only time to rescue one single item, what would you choose to take with you and why?

The photos and family videos, of course. 

My Childhood Home

There's not a lot to say.

Electoral Warfare

This isn't a book review, but I am pulling the first part of it from the 06/15/04 entry in  my old journal, the one that's about to hit the dust:

David Brooks had a fascinating column in the June 15  New York Times.  He argues that the electoral divide in this country is between the "aristocracy of the mind," which votes Democratric, and the "aristocracy of money," which votes Republican. 

Pollsters now distinguish between professionals and managers. Professionals are "knowledge workers" and tend to vote Democratic.  Managers are corporate types, and tend to vote Democratic.  John Kerry is a lawyer; George Bush is a business school graduate. Democratic administrations value self-expression (remember Bill Clinton?); Republican administrations value order and loyalty.

We experienced precisely that divide in this household during the last election, between a lawyer/teacher wife and a corporate manager husband.  I see it in my father, a product of a New England college with ivy tumbling down its brick walls, who is practically apoplectic over the news every evening, and my brother, who didn't finish college but is a successful businesman who calls me regularly from his cell phone in his SUV.

I'm not sure that it's so simple, however.  I work in a school, an institution that promotes the life of the mind, in which the vast majority of both students and faculty are deeply conservative. A few weeks ago I was reading with great interest reports stating that the most accurate predictor of political affiliation is religion: Americans who got to church regularly and are religiously influenced in their voting tend to be Republican.  Well, I go to church regularly, and to church classes and committee meetings and prayer groups, and my faith has a profound influence on my vote -- but that vote ain't for the Republicans.  (It's too bad that both the media and the Democrats overlook progressive Christian voters.)

So I don't know whether you can pigeon-hole the American voter or not.

A direct link to the Brooks column (that in September probably no longer works):

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/opinion/15BROO.html?th

Update:  I spent Saturday night at my brother's.  Now, I love my brother very very much.  In many ways, we are closer than most siblings, having gone through years of childhood trauma together.  We understand things about each other that no one else would be likely even to notice.

But -- he is indeed voting for BUSH.  His entire household -- in addition to him, his new wife and college-age daughter -- are not only all voting for Bush, they are all gung-ho Bush.   Parts of our extremely brief conversation Friday night:  

Brother:  Kerry is just a moron.  

Me:  Well,  actually, I would say that the one you are characterizing is Bush.  (I am just so incredibly articulate and subtle when astonished.)  

Brother:  Well, that's what's happening in this election.  Each side thinks the other  side's guy is a moron.  Did you watch the convention?  

Me:  A little.  I discovered that I really couldn't stomach the Republicans for too long.  Did you watch the Bush daughters?  

Sister-in-law:  I thought they were cute.  

Me:  Cute?  They came across as complete airheads.   

Sister-in-law: Well, I thought they were cute.  

Long silence as I try to imagine how I would feel if my daughter, who is only 17, handled herself in public as the Bush daughters did.  (I do feel sympathy for them.  Obviously they were paraded in front of the convention as a response to the elegant and genuine Kerry daughters, despite their lack of political experience and sophistication. And they clearly love their dad and are certainly entitled to support him.)

Brother:  Look, I don't like Bush's positions on other issues either.  But he's the only one who can handle the terrorists.

Me:  Bush has no more ability in that area than anyone else.  

Sister-in-law:  I don't like Kerry's wife.  

Brother:  You mean Ter-ay-sa?  

I decide that silence is the better part of valor.  The woman is entitled to pronounce her name as she pleases, and I like and admire her tremendously.  I keep my mouth shut.  

Brother:  Well, hang in there sis.  In 4 more years you can vote for Hil-ar-y.  

Sister-in-law:  Oh, yuk!  

Me:  You know, I think I'll go to bed.  

I really didn't want to give my sister-in-law a hard time.  She has hosted me graciously several times this summer as I have used their house like a hotel on some of my many trips.  We can agree to disagree.   But our conversation was a shocker.  I am used to my students' political views -- but my brother's?  

In better news, our children are all back under our roof.  Last night was the first time in weeks that I went to bed without calculating what time it was in France or the Czech Republic and wondering whether anyone I knew there had actually gone to bed.  

Today: Walked 3 miles.

Yesterday (Saturday 9/4/04): Walked 3 miles.  

Friday 9/3/04: Walked 3 miles.

Witches: Book Review No. 3

 

I'm teaching eighth grade American History for the first time this year so, while I was listening to presentations on World War II and the peoples of Iraq from my high school history classes and bracing myself to read a slew of exam papers last spring, I was also immersing myself in young adult historical fiction.  No fun, of course.  After all, I had to read these novels before I could assign them as summer reading.  A terrible burden.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond (1958) by Elizabeth George Speare is a classic, and Witch Child (2000) by Celia Rees is a more recent novel in the same vein.  Both feature a feisty young heroine, stymied but not undone by the strictures of colonial Puritan society.  In both cases, the young lady escapes a repressive and possibly life-threatening situation by journeying across the ocean to a new land and a society that combines new opportunity with unexpected oppresion.

Witch Child, set in 1659, opens a window to the orginial inhabitants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and their interaction with the English settlers.  The Native Americans are skilled woodspeople and healers, and save the lives of the new arrivals with little fanfare and less thanks.  The protagonist's troubles, originating in England, continue in part because of her friendship with a people whom most other colonists views as "untouchables."

The Witch of Blackbird Pond is herself something of a tangential character in a novel set in Connecticut in the 1680s.  Frontier battles with Indians barely merit a mention; here, the conflict is between the Royalists who support the English governor and the Puritans who insist upon the freedoms granted in their colonial charter.  The central character finds herself caught between the two groups, as well as between the freedom she has enjoyed as a carefree girl in Barbados and the rigidity of her adult life in America.  The "witch" enables her to see her way to making peace with all the fragments of her life.

It's significant that two of the best novels I've come across with female characters at the forefront both center on witchcraft.  Women's potent roles in connection with birth, sickness, healing, and caring for children combine with their subordinate status in a patriarchal and authoritarian society to create an ever-present undercurrent of fear.  The men seem terrified of the power of the women, whose connection to the natural world is both mysterious and unalterable, and the women are ever threatened with exposure and death in the event that their own authority becomes untenable.

Not, perhaps, the thoughts with which one would introduce American history to thirteen-year-olds.  But inevitable thoughts for an adult woman face-to-face with the burdens under which her female ancestors struggled to create a new world.

 

(In case this sounds familiar: this was originally an entry in another journal I started but gave up on -- I've just moved it over here.)

Walked: 4.7 miles.

Birthday Boys

Twenty years ago, I began the day in a drug-induced haze, which eventually cleared enough for me to have a lengthy discussion with the doctor who had replaced mine for awhile (How is it that doctors can go home to sleep, but laboring women have to stick with the program?) about a nonprogressing labor that was about to turn into a c-section.  By early afternoon I would be sitting on an operating table arguing with an anesthesiologist about a botched epidural (Ha! Little did I know that a botched spinal was about to follow).  Not much that I had planned actually took place during that labor, but I did have the extraordinary, amazing, absolutely transcendent experience of watching in a small mirror above my head as two tiny bodies were lifted from mine.   

I don't remember much of the next hour, but the babies spent it in a warmer next to me and the pictures show the personalities that have been apparent since their first seconds of life: one dozing contentedly in utter oblivion to the lights and action surrounding him, the other wide-eyed and apparently completely panicked by his emergence into this world.  In a few years, the first would be marching confidently into the Atlantic Ocean, while his brother would be racing back and forth on the beach screaming, "Mom!  He's going to drown!  He's going to drown!"  

I'm imagining them in Prague today.  One is sipping a cup of coffee, relaxed and oblivious to the fact that they need to get to the station for their overnight train to Amsterdam.  The other is tense and alert, trying to hurry things along.  And back here at home, missing them, we find that we don't have three teenagers anymore.  

Happy Birthdays, guys!

 

Walked: 3 miles.