Monday, June 18, 2007

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Maddie Takes First in State for Poetry in Her Grade.


The Wind

The wind,

The wind,

It blows through the grass.

The wind,

The wind,

It blows up to the sun.

The sun,

The sun,

It warms the wind.

The moon,

The moon,

Is friends with the stars.

The moon,

The moon,

It shines in the sky.

The stars,

The stars,

They shine with the moon.

The stars,

The stars,

The sun is a star.

Things I Realize as I Get Older.


When it comes to all the stuff we do for them, our kids don't have a clue. But then, when I was their age, neither did I.

I had to be a full-fledged adult myself before I began to appreciate things I never even noticed as a child.

One of the first things to hit me were holiday dinners. You have to understand, my family's holiday dinners were better than anything you could get in even the best restaurants. None of this stuff-suspended-in-Jello stuff, but homemade marinara sauce, ravioli, meatballs, Italian Wedding Soup, breads, fresh salads, and always a backdrop of brewing coffee with the promise of a cinnamon Bundt cake for later.

As a child, I'd enjoy the aroma of the upcoming meal, then I'd start to hover, looking weak, as I got hungrier. But I never understood that sometimes the cooking started days before, and hard work went into everything from shopping for the ingredients to the ambiance of the table, to cooking the actual day of the event, right down to cleaning up everything afterwards. We're not even talking about the fact that these Italian women (with the occasional interloping Hungarian who happened to marry in) also cleaned their homes within an inch of their lives while all this was going on.

When I was little, all I knew was that for about 1/2 an hour, I was eating food I looked forward to all year long. I knew it was good then. When the meal was done, my sister and I would go play nicely.

Now that I'm in the position of cook for many of the events, I realize it's one heck of a lot of hard work! And my female relatives did it year in and year out with smiles on their faces. In that, they are my role models.

The same goes for the everyday running of a home. I come from a long line of proud housewives, and though I have a college degree, I stay home because to do it right, you either have to hire several people or be here to do it yourself. I still don't know how they did such a good job. I haven't had time to try new recipes for ages and my house has never looked as good as theirs, but I give it the old college try.

Another aspect of being an adult is that I now notice when adults put on shindigs for kids, there is a tremendous amount of work. Take this weekend's scout camp. You've got dozens of pre-pubescent girls out in the woods without their parents. The results could be disastrous. At the very least, the logistics of feeding and keeping all these girls safe is enough to give you a headache in the preplanning department.

I had gone to numerous camps as a youth, and I loved them. I loved the woods, sleeping in sleeping bags, hanging with my friends and being away from my parents. It never occurred to me that those adults there hadn't lined up for the privilege!

Until this weekend, when I became one of those adults.

Now, it was time for my daughter and her friends to have some big fun, and up to myself and the few women that gave up their weekend to provide it.

For them, it was the joy of canoeing (which, I have to confess, was my favorite 1/2 hour of the entire weekend), learning archery, making crafts and eating too many s'mores. For we oldsters, it meant sitting out in the sun for four hours providing that same craft over and over to a succession of groups, standing on the dock giving that canoeing clinic over and over, or being one of the adults (as I was) who had to hotfoot it from activity to activity to make sure everyone got everything in. This was after a brisk hike to the ocean, where we all stood around and made sure nobody drowned and that everyone ate on time.

The mosquitoes swarmed like locusts and it was us who made sure the girls didn't get eaten alive. We were the ones who cut off Hormone Wars at the pass when two cabins decided they didn't like each other. We also made sure that the girls with special allergies or dietary considerations didn't poison themselves with too much sugar and that everyone was asleep by only 2 hours past lights out.

Walk here. Walk there. Break up this argument. Sleep on a plywood bunk. Pass on some wisdom. Dry some tears. Call a dad to take one overnighter home early because of homesickness, take photos, dispense medications and after it was all over make sure everyone packed everything else back up to take home.

When I asked my daughter if she had a good time, she responded with the same enthusiasm that I had when I was her age. Which means whatever we did, as exhausting as it was, must have been what the chaperones before us did. The ones we barely noticed in our excitement.

If I could go back and thank them for their hard work, after this weekend, I certainly would. Because I just realized that those adults from 30 years ago worked their butts off.

As I've said, I'm a little slow on the uptake.