Archive for April, 2010

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Trying to Do the Right Thing

April 29, 2010

My little six-year-old darling was picking up trash off the school grounds with her Daisy Scout troop this afternoon when she came upon a $20 bill. It was a cause for much celebration and excitement. She was the heroine of her little group.

And then I made her turn it in to the office on the off chance that someone comes in asking about it.

We didn’t even discuss it. I just took her into the office and turned in the money and watched her little face crumble. And felt instantly like I had made a mistake. But of course it was too late to back out with the principal in front of me and the money handed over.

I don’t regret giving the rightful owner a chance to claim the money, but I do regret the way I handled things in turning it in. I took my sobbing little girl home and held her in my lap and talked about why I had done what I had done, how there could be another little girl sobbing at home right now because she had lost the $20 her parents had given her for something at school, and how grateful she would be that another child turned it in. Then I apologized to her for not giving her a chance to hold onto her find for a little bit to show it to Daddy, and for not discussing with her the right thing to do before just doing it. I asked her to forgive me, and without hesitation, through her sobs, she said, “I forgive you, Mama. I love you.” And I felt worse. I asked how I could make it up to her.

We had a good afternoon afterward. We talked about finally instituting an allowance so the kids can have spending money that they don’t find on the ground, and I painted her toenails sparkly pink, and she got to watch that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa does a science experiment to prove that a hamster is smarter than her brother. She seems content.

One thing about parenting that never fails to amaze me is how sometimes even when you have what looks like a clear-cut path in front of you, you can feel like you made the wrong turn. I guess that’s true for life in general, but the stakes seem higher with kids. I really don’t want to screw this up.

Posted in The Kids | 2 Comments »

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Talking with The Boy

April 27, 2010

Just had this conversation:

The Boy: Do you think when I run the timed mile that I should wear boots?

Me: Why would you wear boots?

TB: Like the army men do.

Me: They wear combat boots, not cowboy boots.

TB: What are combat boots?

Me: They lace up.

TB: One of the kids in my class, his mom is in … what’s that thing called that’s like the army but they stay here?

Me: The National Guard?

TB: Yeah. The National Guard. She’s in the National Guard and she has those boots.

Me: So his mother wears combat boots?

TB: Yeah. I’m gonna go ride my scooter.

That cracked me up. Times have changed!

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The Pacific

April 23, 2010

While we were in Fredericksburg last weekend on our journey to see the wildflowers, my little family stopped in at the National Museum of the Pacific War. Back in the middle ’90s, when it was called the Nimitz Museum, The Big M and I had gone there and poked around in what was little more than a giant shed housing broken down planes and guns from World War II. It certainly has changed. It’s now on par with any great history museum, Smithsonian included.

That night we visited my parents, and they presented me with magazines and newspapers that my grandparents had kept during the war. This presentation was coincidental but well-timed.

Corpus Christi was my dad’s hometown and the home of the Naval Air Station, a major base that produced more than 35,000 Navy fliers for the war. George H. W. Bush was the youngest ensign produced there during the war, earning his wings in 1943 at age 18. (The Pacific museum, by the way, has a Plaza of Presidents; every president from FDR to G.H.W. Bush served in WWII — all 10 of them. That’s pretty amazing.)

Here are some shots of  newspapers from December 8, 1941 that Dad’s parents saved:

That was the morning edition. I’ll give you a better picture of the Final Edition:

A close-up of the right side:

Inset from that article:

Who had the lone nay vote?

Since the dawn of time, it’s always a woman causing the problems, am I right, folks? Interesting lady, this Rankin. She became a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi after the war. See her Wiki entry here.

Newspaper map of Pearl Harbor:

I thought this was interesting because I didn’t realize men were being drafted *before* the U.S. entered the war:

Do they still call residents Corpus Christians?

Check out this movie ad:

And finally, see if you can pick out what’s weird about this article:

Wanly? Laconically? Deplored? What kind of crazy vocabulary is this for a family newspaper?

I’m going to enjoy sorting through all this old stuff.

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Gone With The Wind

April 21, 2010

Twenty-three years ago I sent an ancient, tattered, paperback copy of Gone With the Wind flying across my bedroom in a fit of rage, taking satisfaction as it thunked off the wall and landed on teal shag carpet, its red-edged pages askew. I was so mad at Margaret Mitchell. How dare she keep Scarlett and Rhett apart when they were so perfect for each other? What the hell kind of romance novel was this?

As it turned out, it’s not a romance novel.

I learned quite a bit about men and love in my thirteenth year. From Mrs. Mitchell, I learned that it’s better to be honest in expressing your feelings to the man you love and to risk his censure than to torture him and end up losing him. And from watching the bewildered second wife of a friend’s philandering dad, a man who serially divorced to marry his affairs, I learned that it’s pretty stupid to expect that a guy who’d cheat on his girl to be with you won’t cheat on you for the next girl that catches his eye.

But that’s another story.

I was recently inspired to pick up Gone With the Wind for a second time. Reading it again, I discovered that this is a novel about fortitude, perseverance, gratitude, courage, loyalty, and honor. It’s about whether like is meant to be with like, whether pragmatism or idealism works better in a changing culture, whether knowing yourself is a virtue when you don’t know others, whether you can be absolved of sins when you own them, and whether any of us is capable of real change.

I’ve been thinking about the questions Mrs. Mitchell raised and whether or not I agree with her answers. And I’ve been wondering why this novel exploded into popularity immediately upon its publication in 1936 and why it has endured for 74 years. Why is this story so compelling?

I think one answer is that during a time of tremendous stress (the Great Depression), readers found escape in a novel where people endured a much worse period in American history and came through it without being crushed. It is a comfort during hard times to know that hard times are endurable. (In that same vein, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiographical novels about a family that sticks together to overcome obstacles in the post-Civil War rural midwest were also published during the 1930’s and became enormously popular.)

Gone With the Wind continues to have meaning because life continues to be hard and always will be. It is the nature of life to be hard. What I like about the book is that Margaret Mitchell didn’t romanticize the past. The movie romanticized the antebellum South, but in the book slavery was not romantic, the Glorious Cause was not glorious, and the martial law of Reconstruction was no picnic for those under the government’s thumb. Scarlett never looked back and never longed for the past. Hers was a continuous fight for the future.

I want to have full disclosure here. Although Mrs. Mitchell was ahead of her time in describing race relations, she’s well behind 2010 standards, and parts of the book come off as bigoted. While this detracts from the story, I don’t think it negates everything that *is* good about it.

This time when I finished the book, I carefully reshelved it. Scarlett didn’t get her man, but she’ll be all right. After all, tomorrow is another day.

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The Texas Hill Country

April 19, 2010

We were out in the Hill Country this weekend, enjoying the beautiful wildflowers and panoramic scenery. This is the best shot I got. The bluebonnets flow in rivers out there.

I’m lousy with a camera, but someone who is not posted pictures taken Saturday from the same loop, and I feel compelled to link them so you get a glimpse of how beautiful the Hill Country is right now. I’d credit the photographer, but he’s known to me only as BQ88.

This creek of blue is flowers.

I love everything about this photo.

The diversity of flowers out there is breathtaking.

It’s the traditional bluebonnets and oak tree shot, but 10 times better looking than the one I did of the exact same location.

And how about this one, of the same location from my first shot? Yeah, this guy knows how to do color.

If you’re in Central Texas in the next week or two, go see the flowers before they’re gone. They are spectacular. You can see the route I took here.

Posted in Gardening, Travel, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

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Fun Friday Blogs

April 16, 2010

Since finishing the library build, I’ve been not particularly interested in taking on yet another home improvement project.

But then my sister turned me on to this incredibly cool blog called Knock-Off Wood that got me thinking again. I’ve always had a dream of building my own furniture, and Ana is inspiring me to try something.

Ana’s blog led me to Remodelaholic and another new favorite, Better After. Both contain pictures of people’s remodeling projects, but Better After is exclusively Before and After shots, the best part of any HGTV show. It was so fun looking at pictures and linking up my library that now I’m thinking about posting Befores and Afters of other projects we’ve done. And we’ve done a lot.

Have a good weekend!

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Byeya’s Irises

April 10, 2010

Somewhere close to 60 years ago my grandmother planted these “champagne” irises. They’ve survived droughts, freezes, and then 18 years of neglect after she died. More recently they survived being dug up and moved to my house.

I’ve been watching them, anticipating the day they would burst forth.

Today was a perfect spring day. I brought Augustine’s Confessions outside to read after it got too sunny to keep weeding. A small hill in my backyard proved magnetic after awhile, and I was drawn out of my shaded spot to lie there on my stomach and read.

Back in college, half my life ago, I used to lie outside on a hill reading in a sunny area between dorms, my friends to either side of me, listening to the music of Pearl Jam’s Ten blaring from a stereo propped in the open window of the boys’ dorm to our right combined with the music of romping 19-year-olds hitting volleyballs, throwing frisbees, and reveling in the freedom of new adulthood.

Today I listened to the music of neighborhood lawnmowers, the TV in the garage where my husband worked, and the shouts of my children romping with their neighbors in the yard next door, reveling in the freedom of a sunny Saturday with no homework.

“Time does not stand still, nor are the rolling seasons useless to us, for they work wonders in our minds,” Augustine said.

I took in the beauty around me, noting the prickle of last year’s grass thatch against my wrists, the contrast of the gentle warmth of the April sun soaking through my clothes and a light, cool breeze on my face, the visual punch of reborn plants bursting with foliage in the slanting light, and the smell of mulch and new growth.

“Yet were these beautiful things not from you [God], none of them would be at all. They arise and sink; in their rising they begin to exist and grow toward their perfection, but once perfect they grow old and perish; or, if not all reach old age, yet certainly all perish. So then, even as they arise and stretch out toward existence, the more quickly they grow and strive to be, the more swiftly they are hastening toward extinction. This is the law of their nature. You have endowed them so richly because they belong to a society of things that do not all exist at once, but in their passing away and succession together form a whole, of which the several creatures are parts. So it is with our speaking as it proceeds by audible signs: it will not be a whole utterance unless one word dies away after making its syllables heard, and gives place to another.”

And I saw what he was saying. We are part of a greater whole. We can’t see it because we are just parts, but for the whole to exist we must grow and eventually die, as did those before us and those yet to come. It is like we are the individual words of a spoken sentence, one that will not have meaning until all the words are spoken. It is bittersweet to see this beauty and to know its temporariness and yet it must be. We grow toward perfection in our mortal selves, and if we’re lucky we grow old before we perish. But always we are moving on, moving toward the true perfection of the whole.

Before I went inside I took a picture of Byeya’s irises. Today another part reached perfection.

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The Help and Claire Beauchamp

April 9, 2010

My book club recently discussed Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel about three women from Jackson, Mississippi who find themselves unexpected players in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960′s. It’s a page-turner, and an entertaining read that led to a discussion of how people seek to right a societal wrong — and what a person of 2010 sensibilities would do if she found herself back in the ’60s.

On that note, I’d like to (re)introduce you to what has become my favorite series ever: Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series.

Claire Beauchamp is a 20th-century feminist who finds herself in 18th-century Europe and America addressing the respective roles of women, government, and religion in society. She confronts wrongs, such as slavery and persecution of those believed to practice witchcraft, and she does so in a way that comes across as completely real. Each person can have an impact, but it’s a limited one, and one that has its own consequences, some of them unintentional and undesirable.

The scope of these novels is so vast that I can’t even summarize them. Pretty much any issue you’d run into in real life seems to get addressed at some point or another. The character development and storytelling are outstanding; in my mind, Gabaldon does the best job I’ve seen of describing realistic relationships and exploring the nature of love, commitment, and honor. And she does it all in a context of extensive historical research that brings the past to life.

If you’re looking for a good, lasting read, give Outlander a try. Only one caveat: if you’re especially sensitive to intermittent scenes of graphic violence, this may not be your bag.

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David is Home

April 8, 2010

For those of you who have been following baby David’s story, I wanted to let you know that he is home with his parents and siblings. I saw him yesterday, and he looked very well, all things considered. His mom says that although he still has many future surgeries, he’s healing much better now that he’s back with his family again. He shows a great deal of strength and determination. So does she!

Please keep this family in your prayers.

Posted in The Kids | 2 Comments »

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Beezus and Ramona

April 6, 2010

I loved Beverly Cleary when I was a kid. So I was thrilled when The Boy finally started reading her books. Until a few weeks ago…

Him: At school we’re reading about Ramona and Bee-ZEUS!

Me: Ramona and who?

Him: Bee-ZEUS, her big sister.

Me: Her name is BEE-zus.

Him: No it’s not. It’s Bee-ZEUS.

Me: Buddy, you’re thinking of the wrong god. Her name rhymes with “Jesus.”

Him: Everyone pronounces it Bee-ZEUS.

And so ensued a five-minute argument in which he could not be swayed from his position.

Now, aside from mispronouncing the name of a favorite literary character of my childhood, there’s a bigger issue going on. Namely, my son no longer sees me as the ultimate authority in issues of education or intellect. I knew it would happen. I knew that some day I would be cast aside as someone whose opinion was of little value, but I was kind of hoping I had until middle school for that to happen.

And so I keep butting heads with him, hoping I can bring back my little boy who thought Mommy knew everything. If only for a little while.

I went the phonics route today when he brought up “Bee-ZEUS” again.

Me: How do you pronounce B-U-S?

Him: Bus.

Me: How would you give it a long U sound?

Him: Add an “e”.

Me: Right. So B-U-S-E would be “byoose.” How do you spell the last part of Beezus’ name?

Him: Z-U-S.

Me: So it’s a short U sound that rhymes with “bus.” BEE-zus.

Him: I know fifty people who call her Bee-ZEUS.

I know I should just let it go. But dangit, this is a childhood classic! And I just noticed that there’s a movie version coming out this summer. The trailer includes the correct pronunciation. I’m thinking about playing it for him.

I’m so ready for him to have a come-to-Beezus moment.

Posted in The Kids | 2 Comments »

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