Author: Rebecca Valentine

This is Bella on the morning of her sixth birthday earlier in January. She's just opened a set of Avon body paints. But I don't think that's why she's so happy. This is just how Bella is almost all the time. Utter joy. And if she can't find it, she makes it. When I imagine Bella, this is how she looks....

I was fortunate to grow up with two very different sets of grandparents, unfortunate enough not to live nearby and see them often. Distance not withstanding, they all held--and still hold--very distinct places in my heart. My mom's parents were not formally educated beyond the middle grades. Pap worked in the brick refractory (a job that eventually killed him) and Gram raised a large family while keeping the farm going. She was a no-nonsense type of gal, but never skimped on giving out hugs to us grandchildren. Neither was she shy about disciplining us when the need arose. To me, Gram is homecooked food, warm hugs, and warnings to be careful. Spending summers at Gram and Pap's house meant days spent on the big tree swing or catching crayfish in the creek (where we spread Mom's ashes in 2004), teasing the bulls and then running for our lives and, at all times, keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes and copperheads. Summer evenings...

Windsor parents were invited to attend an informational meeting this past Monday at the high school to learn about the drug program that is going to be implemented at the high school this April. Windsor, the town whose parents are supposedly so supportive of and concerned about their kids...14 people including myself showed up to hear the presentation. One of us was a newspaper reporter. Another was the minutes-taker. What an impressive showing that was. I understand that even if you have just one student in the school district, it can be difficult to attend all the meetings every month. With trying to juggle a non-traditional work schedule, Wes' weekly 4-hour class, and multiple activities of my own four kids, I rarely get to attend meetings, even those I want to. But given that Windsor High was recently singled out for its higher-than-average drug and alcohol abuse problem, I naively believed more parents would show up at this meeting that took all...

I have wanted to sit down at this computer and write a column for over a week now. Yet every attempt failed. My brain simply feels overloaded, my sensory perception on cruise control. Whereas usually life feels like a road trip, with stops and adventures along the way, lately it feels like abstract art, with fragments of events and even thoughts thrown together randomly, often overlapping and eclipsing each other. I turned 42 this past Monday. I love birthdays, even though (because?) they mean I'm older. I just don't care much about age. I woke up feeling good, checked for new wrinkles and found only the same old familiar ones. Still have all my real teeth, and my hair hasn't begun to fall out, though underneath, I've got a nice little nest of gray which I have no intention of hiding. So really, all was right with the world. But by the end of the day, I was in tears, which is...

Snow! Glorious snow! Christmas of 2006 will definitely be white one for those of us who got hit with the blizzard. I just finished reading a news article about how thousands of airline passengers are stuck at the airport in Denver. My own dad and his wife have extended their stay in Mexico because they can't get a flight into Denver. Stuck in Mexico...could be worse fates, I think. But thinking of all those people longing to get home to their loved ones by Monday reminds me of a Christmas Eve many years ago when I was stranded in an airport due to inclement weather. I was young...was I even 20? I've traveled a lot...years blur and in the end, don't matter anyway. What I remember most is feeling depressed at the prospect of spending the holiday without my family or boyfriend, who was in the Marines (and still is, actually) and had gotten leave so we could spend a few...

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I've been thinking a lot about a little girl I once knew back in my early childhood in Wisconsin. Tina was the youngest of four daughters, the eldest of whom had died before I ever knew them. I was friends with Sandy, the sister who was a year or two older than me. And I knew Suzy, who was already grown (at least in my eyes, she was; could be she was only in high school, but I think she was older than that). At any rate, though Sandy was technically my friend, it is little Tina who fills my memories. Tina was several years younger than I. Mostly I played with her because she was Sandy's little sister, and our moms made us play with her. I remember feeling most days rather ambivalent toward Tina. I found her annoying (much as Tavi finds Bella, Tucker finds Tavi, and Max finds Tuck). She cried a lot....

As I sit here at the kitchen table, steaming mug of coffee to my left, glorious Christmas tree to my right, I hear a rattling sound. I turn in the direction from which it's coming, and all I can figure is that my Deep Rock water supply is thawing and making wierd noises. Sometimes the cooler "talks" and startles me. It always happens at night, when the kids are in bed and all is quiet. From the dark recesses of the kitchen, buzzing. But that's not what I'm hearing right now. It's as if someone is knocking on the walls of my house. And then I realize--someone is! I had poured birdseed into a wall-mounted feeder earlier this week, and if I turn my head and glance out to the back patio, I see birds everywhere. They've found my treat for them. Some are fluttering their wings madly, attempting to get every last morsel from the feeder. There's nothing unusual about birds...

Last July, I wrote a column that hit a nerve with our illustrious school board and certain members of our community whose teenage boys vandalized the high school but then managed to dodge the punishment of expulsion. That punishment was in keeping with school district policy and was supported by the high school principal as well as the interim superintendent and others. In that column, I voiced my opinion of what went down in that situation: The parent of one of those boys is an influential and wealthy developer here in Windsor, and he used his clout and power to see to it that his son did not have to (fairly) pay for his crime. And of course, he generously used that same clout to give the other boys the same treatment because otherwise, what would that look like? It was ugly. It was unjust. It was corrupt. And I still maintain that this is what happened. School board member Cathy...

This family is not fun to be with. The pilgrims didn't have many chairs, and if there was one, the dad sat in it because he was the head of the house. We're an abnormal family because you are so involved in your kids' lives. The pilgrims signed a peace treaty with the Native Americans. That means their team wouldn't fight with the other team. There are too many people in our family. The pilgrims were cold and hungry. Half of them died. Half of them didn't. Can I just live in the basement? Thus went dinner conversation around the Valentine/Godfrey table for the past couple nights. In less time than it took to prepare the meals, eat them, and clean up afterwards, my kids have pushed me to the brink of insanity with all this talk of pilgrims and teen angst. I can't take any more. Bella came out of her kindergarten class with a gaggle of other girls, all of them resembling the Flying Nun (remember...

I love the public library. Not just the one in Windsor, but every public library I've ever walked into. Some are admittedly nicer than others. But it isn't the building or the layout I enjoy; it's the smell, the atmosphere, the hordes of books and CDs and audio books and movies and magazines that surround me. When the world ends, I want to be in a public library. I usually go to the library armed with a list of books I want to read. My "Books to Read Before I Die" list is a pipe dream, really. I know I'll never have the time to read every book on my list, or the ones that will one day appear there. Still, I like my list. It's long. It's comforting. And I can add and delete book titles for any reason I like, or no reason at all. My book list is my little effort at rebellion. On my way to the checkout...