Month: September 2006

I attended a PTAC meeting earlier this week at Skyview. Due to schedule constraints, I was never able to attend the PTAC meetings last year, so I was thrilled to realize that, at least for now, I can make it to these Monday-night affairs. At one point in the meeting, we were brainstorming ideas for events the schools could hold to help bring parents and students together, maybe raise some money, show school spirit...that sort of thing. And while I consider myself a creative person, my mind was a complete blank. I couldn't think of one activity or idea. On top of that, I didn't like any of the ideas others came up with. After the meeting, while I was getting ready at home to let the day come to a close, I thought about my inability to contribute to or even support what went on at the meeting. After putting Max and Tuck to bed (the girls were already there), clearing...

School pictures have arrived for high school students, and as I was switching out the old for the new in a frame I keep on the piano, a very old photo of Max fell out. Staring up at me was a blond, brown-eyed boy of 13 months. Next to that fallen photo was Max's most recent, taken just one month ago. Brown hair, green eyes covered by glasses, a retainer soon to be followed by braces...so many changes, yet the smile--the expression--was the same. He knows oh so much more than he's letting on. Seeing these two versions of my eldest child side-by-side gave me pause. I sat down and studied the face I once felt I'd waited several lifetimes to see. And I remembered the very strong sense of familiarity I'd experienced the first time I laid eyes on Max. Although I had spent that pregnancy in great anticipation of meeting this baby, once I saw him, I realized it...

Today is the five-year anniversary of the tragedy known simply as 9/11. Say "nine-eleven" out loud to anyone in the country, and no further explanation is needed. Today, every news channel on TV and news site online is filled with survivor stories, photo collages, lists of the dead. We must relive that horrific event whether we want to or not. The only other event that has occurred in my lifetime that shook the nation to its core was the death of Elvis Presley in 1977 (and arguably, the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, though someone had to remind me of that one). I mean no disrespect in comparing the two events; they both often enter into conversations with the question "Where were you when..." I can answer that question for both events. I was twelve years old, bouncing my Super Pinky ball off the concrete wall of our garage in small-town Wisconsin when a radio announcer interrupted whatever tune was...

The other evening, Tucker was sweeping the kitchen floor, Max was in the living room allegedly doing homework, and I was in the family room folding laundry. Our home is a split-level, so even though the three of us were in different rooms, it was easy to communicate with one another. Tuck seems to do some of his best thinking when he's sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor. I can't tell you why; but that job takes him approximately three times longer than it has to simply because he continuously stops to chat. That evening, he had explorers on his mind. He's in fifth grade, and his class is knee-deep in a unit on global exploration. Whenever I hear the names Magellan, de Gama, and Ponce de Leon, I am instantly transported back to my own fifth-grade classroom at Lincoln Elementary School in Wisconsin. Explorers and fifth grade go hand-in-hand. Tuck began talking about what he was learning, and Max chimed in...

The last few years of her life, my mom lived in a side-by-side duplex in a small rural town in Pennsylvania. Had that house been situated anywhere else in the continental United States (with the possible exception of backwoods Kentucky), it would have been condemned. The electrical wiring alone was enough to bring on the wrecking ball, and it wasn't worth fixing. From the outside, it was a residence like many others on that street: old, ugly, falling apart. But once inside the door, you found yourself embraced by a welcoming environment carefully crafted by someone who very obviously loved her home and made the best of what she had. If a piece of furniture was ugly, Mom painted or reupholstered it. Hole in the wall? A framed Victorian Era postcard covered that up nicely, and no one was the wiser (except that Mom was always so proud of her abilities, she made sure she showed you the hole). And as...