Ch- Ch- Ch- Ch- Changes, or Not

On the way to her first day of second grade I was a-joshin' and a-jokin' my daughter because she looked and sounded grumpy.  She sounded grumpy a little louder and so I told her I was trying to get her to smile and be happy on this, her first day of second grade.

"Yeah, like that's gonna happen, Mom."  Sarcasm, drip, drip, drippin' with each of her little steps.

Ahh....I guess things haven't changed that much.  Because that's what I was afraid of...things changing.  So, with her attitude firmly in tow, my daughter left me at her classroom door feeling happy and secure.

At the dinner table...even more security!  My son made new friends and could tell us that they were all democrats and were into music.  My daughter's new friends set themselves apart, one because he dressed really cool and the other because they had a "cool dead tooth".  She with her red striped hair fit right into the little group.

And now, my son is singing about going to school tomorrow and my daughter is grumping about getting up early. He's reviewing his math, she's writing her reading minutes in her reading log.  She's got tomorrow's outfit selected and he's only planning on changing out his socks from today's outfit.

Sighhhh, normality.  Happiness is me.

You see, I'm not actually that good with change.  It makes me feel uneasy, out of control.  Not necessarily a good thing either as a parent or in, well, any career. I first noticed this when I was in school.  In elementary school, I felt I would get used to one teacher and then the next year, a different one with a different approach. I would worry about not doing well, that I would do something wrong.

Then, as I became a bigger reader, I found I was more comfortable with historical novels (still am today) than with those that "looked forward", like Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.  All books about a dystopian future--places I know I wouldn't do that well, quite frankly.  I hated reading them...I could never get comfortable in their skins.

And while time and experience has taught me that change isn't as scary as I make it out to be, making it easier for me to work through, I find myself happier when I'm realizing that things haven't changed as much as I've feared. 

This is not the best role-modeling, I know. And I definately don't want it to be one of the things I pass on to my kids.  But then I glance at my bookshelf and you can see Rubicon by Tom Holland and almost any biography of John Adams, Jefferson, Roosevelt and more.  With fiction, I see The Children's Book by AS Byatt,  The Help by Kathryn Stockett, heck even the romances I read are typically Regency.  I'm surrounded by the past, very little present and absolutely no future.

Now I know these two things probably are loosely tied, if at all. Or maybe not...maybe they are very closely tied together.  Who knows?  Regardless, it is the way I am and is my comfort zone.

So, baby steps...new school year, new things:  tonight, my daughter and I have embarked on reading Gregor the Overlander together.  While ostensibly set in present day, I can pretend it's set in the future and feel like I'm going hog wild in the change department. 

Which is all I can handle given that my son didn't turn bright red tonight when asked about new girls in his class...a definate portending of big changes a-comin'.

Gulp.

This Week, for What It's Worth: A Worthy List

My list for this week, in no particular order:

I miss tiny babies. Mine are older now and I miss their tiny, squishy, cuddly, cooing, baby-powder smelling bodies.

Looking at kids looking at art is awesome.

1/5th of Pakistan is under water. How can that be? 1/5th of an entire country!  It's hard to think about that, Haiti, the Gulf, the Middle East and troops in harm's way without becoming overwhelmed and upset.

Being Muslim is not equivalent to being a terrorist. Not all Christians, nor Jews, Budhists, Russian Orthodox, Sikhs, Hindus, African Diasporics, and/or Neo-Paganists, etc., are the sum of the worst acts of those that practice their religion. C'mon America...let's get this right—there should be mosques and temples and churches, libraries, museums—places of beauty and learning and freedom to help us deal with the horrible things/honor the people that died on 9/11.

I would like to elect people that govern and not politicians.

Funniest line in a romance novel ever: "He smiled then and made her heart spring like a lemming flinging itself into the sea." Best. Line. Ever.

Best advice I gave my son this week: If a girl sees you picking your nose, you can never, ever, ever recover from that with her...or with any of her friends.

I'm re-reading the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters. So well written, such well plotted stories.

When my daughter wears her Scharfen Berger chocolate t-shirt that states "Extra Bitter" on the front...it's a statement of fact.

Read the Mistress of the Art of Death series by Ariana Franklin. Stunning historical novels with a protagonist that puts any modern day forensic scientist to shame. Sorry Bones!

My kids hate it when I sing everything I say to them. I'm funnier than they realize. 

I have good friends. I am lucky.  This week was the Clay Pit in Austin and a bottle of good wine at 50% off.

We do get better at some things with age and practice. I'm just sayin'. Sighhhhhhh.

I am anxious to read "The Blasphemer" by Nigel Farndale. One of the best British books of 2010. Second chance stories...they make me hopeful.

The Economic Security Index says that 20% of American households are facing "utter economic devastation".  Look around folks, we are them.

I love the Allstate "Mayhem" commercials.

School starts next week. Happy and Sad.

I love Laurell K. Hamilton and her Anita Blake, Vampire Killer series.  Great suspense novels that happens to have multiple and complicated love triangles among Anita, a Christian necromancer, wearwolves, vampires and the such. 

My daughter believes that my life gets better every time she enters a room.  She told me this when she woke me up the other day at 1:30 in the morning.  Ta-dah...my life was better.

Where You Are Affects Who You Are, or Back To "The Geography of Bliss"

After every vacation the kids will talk about their favorite moment and this time was no different. 

Elephant seals, dolphins in Santa Cruz, the Musee Mechanique in San Francisco, surfing and boogie boarding in Encinitas, riding horses north of Santa Barbara, the safari tents, Bart's Books in Ojai, marbles with Uncle Ethan, Aunt Heather and Grandma Bonnie and betting the ponies at Del Mar.

These were the agreed upon highlights, and when they ask me what my favorites were, I agree with them that all of those were great, but my super favorites were moments like the one in this picture.  Sitting on Moonstone Beach near the tide pools sifting through the stones, all of us finding "the one" over and over and over again. 

If Eric Weiner, the author of The Geography of Bliss is right, then as he stated in an interview (http://www.twelvebooks.com/)  you can "change your environment and you can change your life. This isn’t running away from your problems but simply recognizing that where we are affects who we are."

I agree with him and even though his book is about more than the vacational-geographic moments of bliss attached to a fleeting experience, I think the idea holds just as true.

As a working mom I don't often have the variety of experiences with my kids each day in which I can be a variety of people with them, but on vacation I can be "professor mom" at the California Academy of Sciences, "silly mom" at the Musee Mechanique, 'football mom' on the beach in Encinitas, "tickle monster" in the pool  and "fire cooker mom" at El Capitan Canyon north of Santa Barbara, "crazy betting mom" at Del Mar....I love these experiences because it is the geography that allows me to be completely free of expectations other than my and their own.

And, no longer how many years go by, I know I can look at the picture above and feel the blissful person that was me in that moment, in that place.

"The Wonderful O" or Freedom Is Just Another Word...

Who knew that a horrible accident with a porthole of all things would drive a man to become a pirate and outlaw freedom, love, honor and valor from an island nation.  Actually he just outlawed the letter "O", but without the words, the ideas, ideals and people didsn't exist any more either.

This is the premise of a book I've been reading and re-reading with my daughter lately.  Both of us love the story and the surface silliness of it all...trying to talk without o's is quite funny.  And, as she tends to ask insightful questions, I think she gets the deeper idea of the book and how important that is.  But most of all, we love the act of reading it...it's a fun, sometimes rolicking, always lyrical expereince.  Take this excerpt as an example...the pirate Black, having outlawed the "O", hired a lawyer named Hyde to put it into practice and this is one of his rulings (read it fast and fun and loud):

"Almost all the fruits are yours to eat, from the apple to the tangerine, with a good two dozen in between. I'll stick to those that start with P to show you what I mean: the pear, the peach, the plum, the prune, the plantain and pineapple, the pawpaw and papaya. But you will yearn for things you never ate, and cannot tolerate - I know you women - the pomegranate, for one, and the dull persimmon. No grapefruit, by the way. I hate it's bitter juice. I have banned it, under its French name, pamplemousse."

The first time we read it we got to the place in the book where the people were gathering in secret, planning to overthrow Black and his pirate pal, Littlejack.  Led by the poet Andreus and the beautiful maiden Andrea, they were talking about all of the important things they were beginning to miss now that the letter "O" was no longer and the most important things they would get back by defeating the pirate Black  They had listed Hope, Love, Valor and were trying to remember just what the fourth word was and they couldn't quite get there.  As the characters were making their list for the fourth word, so was my daughter--here is her list:

1.  Dog
2.  Soup
3.  Soccer
4.  Potty
5.  Pools
6.  Horse

And on and on...the only word that overlapped between the book list and my daughters list was "money".   And, when we got to the part where they unveiled the fourth word, "Freedom", my daughter was slightly underwhelmed.  She liked some of the words the characters came up with....

"None of these is right," said Andrea. "I'll know it when I hear it." And so, until the setting of the moon, they tried out words with O — imagination and religion, dedication and decision, honor, progeny, and vision. ... And they spent the rest of the night searching for the greatest, trying youth and joy and jubilation, victory and exaltation, languor, comfort, relaxation, money, fortune, non-taxation, motherhood and domesticity, and many anotherhood and icity. But Andrea shook her lovely head at every word the people said, rejecting soul and contemplation, dismissing courtship and elation, and many anothership and ation.

As we talked about it some more, I tried to explain the importance of freedom relative to the other ideas they and she listed.  She just rolled over and asked, quite snarkily I might add, if she was "free to go to sleep now".

I sighed and said yes.