Hands

When I distribute the bread at the Eucharist, I'm drawn to the outstretched hands. Old hands, gnarled with arthritis, wrinkled and worn with age, with skin almost translucent, and I wonder what those hands have done? How many tears have they dried, how many hurts soothed? How often have they shaken with anger or caressed a lover? What secrets do they hold in their fragile beauty? What stories could they tell?

And baby hands--chubby, soft, unblemished, reaching, reaching. So full of wonder and newness, so eager for the little wafer of bread. Grasping for life and full of promise--what will they touch? What will they hold? What stories will they shape?

Random Bullets of School in Which I Prove Just How Geeky I Am

• Tomorrow's the day...school starts for the Kid, and for lots of others in the blogosphere. I think the Kid is mostly ready to go back; we had two great vacation trips over the summer, but he really hasn't seen his friends much, and he needs to be around people--people besides me who will listen to him talk and respond with more than nods and uh-huhs. It's not that I'm not interested in what he has to say, it's just that I'm an introvert and his extroversion wears me down at the end of the day.

• But school brings getting up early and even worse, homework. I hate homework now far more than when I was a kid. I mean, I just did it. Of course I procrastinated, but fear of humiliation meant that I could not would not did not turn up with assignments not done. The Kid apparently has no such fear of humiliation. Ho hum....homework missing? Oh well. Oy, it's frustrating. He's a smart kid, that's not the issue, he just hates to do written work. He promises to do better this year. We'll see.

• I loved school when I was a kid. And when I was an adult. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that I have spent 28 years as a student. Can that be right? K + 12 + 1 year of college + 4 more years of college later + 7 years in grad school + 3 in seminary. I'm hard pressed to say which was my favorite part. It's easier to say what I didn't like:
• 3rd grade when we moved for the first time, and I got my first bad grade--a C in handwriting. My new school was really different from where I'd started school, and I missed my friends and my grandparents. My teacher in the new school had this policy she called "reseating"; she assigned our seats by grades each marking period. Yes, that's right. The desks were in long rows and the rows were numbered. The first seat in Row 1 went to the kid with the very best grades, and it went on from there. I was always in Row 1, but never in the first seat, but that was okay. Two other things I remember about that: the boy who had the first seat in Row 1 started missing a lot of school. We knew he was really sick, but we didn't know what was wrong. Within a few months he had died from leukemia. And the girl who had the last seat in Row 4? She had Down Syndrome (although we didn't call it that then). She was a sweet girl, and I don't think anyone was unkind to her, but there were no special services for her, no special classes or teacher's aide, or anything. She was just there. And always had the last seat...
• My senior year of high school; it was such a waste. I needed two credits to graduate--senior English and Civics. I had a totally crappy teacher for Civics and it was a totally boring class. I started the year with two really excellent teachers, one in English and one in Advanced Composition; by Thanksgiving one was promoted to an admin job and the other was so sick she had to take the rest of the year off. The only bright spot was my advanced bio class, which was fun most of the time. Senior year was depressing, too, because everyone was applying for colleges--except for me. My mother's mental health issues were in full bloom at the time, and my parents refused to fill out any financial aid paper work for me and told me that I'd have to live at home and go to the local state college. I should've applied to other schools anyway, but I didn't have enough self-confidence or gumption to do it. I had good grades and good test scores, but my mother and my sister just kept coming up with reasons why I would never be accepted at this place or that place, and I bought it. Four college degrees later I can look back at this with some detachment, but I was angry about this for years.
• The last three years of grad school. I just wanted to be done, but my research was lagging and I was teaching a full load between TAing and adjuncting at the community college (hey, I needed the money!). But it all worked out and I was Phinally Done after seven long years. Edited to add: When I was applying for grad school my undergrad advisor kept telling me that grad school would be the best time in my life becasue I would be able to study what I was most interested in and do the research I wanted to do. In fact, grad school was not like that for me at all; perhaps that was a clue that I wasn't in the right field. Or perhaps I didn't enjoy it because there was so much other stress in my life. Who knows?
  

• I loved most of the rest of it. Yes, I griped and complained like everyone else, but I really did love it, especially my undergrad years and seminary. I don't miss teaching now, but I do miss being in an academic environment.

• And from jo(e)'s school meme:
• Smells that remind me of elementary school: Magic Markers, chalk, mimeograph sheets, fall leaves
  
• Things that remind me of elementary school: Kiddie lit, bulletin boards, 3-ring binders, jumping rope, fat pencils
  
• How much milk cost when I began school: Three pennies. And ice cream was a dime (same as for jo(e).
• Scariest thing about school: Gym class--I was always so bad at sports, it was humiliating, plus the nasty gym suits we had to wear (shudder).
• School clothes, favorite or otherwise: In fourth grade, I had three dresses and I rotated them. I was always glad for a snow day so I could wear pants to school. In seventh grade I had a dress that my mother made me and the first few times I wore it I got 100 on a test that day--can we say superstitious behavior? I made sure to wear it every test day for the rest of the year.
• Strangest thing: jo(e) wrote: Whenever a kid vomited on the floor (and this seemed to happen fairly often), the janitor would come in with this bag of weird orange stuff, almost like kitty litter, that he would sprinkle all over the mess. This happened throughout my entire school career. It was some kind of weird vomit tradition that all janitors had sworn to uphold. I always use to think, "Why doesn't he just get the mop and clean it up?" I have this exact same memory, and I can still smell it--eewwww
• A significant elementary school memory: It was late fall in the fifth grade. All the 5th grade classes were in the large room where we had assemblies to begin practicing Christmas Carols (we went to a nursing home to go caroling, and yes this was public school back in the day.) One of the sixth grade teachers came to the door and beckoned to my teacher who went out into the hall. When she came back into the room, she was visibly shaken and she told us that President Kennedy had been shot.
• Favorite teacher(s): Mrs. Teal in 1st grade because she was sweet. Mrs Step in fifth grade because she let us read Tom Sawyer instead of a boring reading book. Mrs. Turner in sixth grade because she was awesome in every way. Mrs. Boeh my 7th grade English teacher and 8th grade Latin teacher because she taught us to diagram sentences and I still understand grammar b/c of it, and because she could write on the board while facing the class.
• Best seasonal memory: I always loved walking to school through fall leaves. Fall and school just seem to go together.
• What I wanted to be when I grew up: Depending on the year, a senator, an architect, a doctor, a marine biologist, a librarian, a geneticist.
  

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

On my summer vacation I went to Maine to visit friends. Maine is the last state on the East Coast that I hadn't visited. I always thought I would like Maine; something about its ruggedness and rocky coastline and independent character appealed to me the same way Vermont did even before I moved there. And I wasn't disappointed: I loved Maine.

The first few days we stayed at my friends' cottage very near the water. These cottages are right around the corner from my friends'.

J grew up going to this cottage every summer. She and D (her partner) have done a lot of fixing up, and it's really cute. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of it.

We went to the beach, where the Kid discovered that he really does like the ocean--after telling me all summer that he didn't. (How pathetic for a kid born in Florida and living where we now live!) D's 7 year old niece, J-c, was visiting from London and she and the Kid had a great time together--somewhat of a new experience for both of them since the Kid has no younger siblings, and J-c only has a step brother who doesn't live with her full time.
















































At a different beach we looked for shells for J-c's craft project--a shell covered bird house.













After the first few days in the cottage we stayed at D and J's house, just about a mile away. It has a great deck for relaxing and watching the birds.





























We went to a cove near the house with some great driftwood.



The doggies like to swim here, too.


























One highlight of the trip was leaarning to play golf. Well, the Kid learned, and he's pretty good, and I putzed around--I'm really bad, but it was still fun. The golf course there is older and not at all fancy and chichi, which suits me just fine. Unfortunately, the golf pictures are on J's computer, so you'll just have to use your imagination for that!

J-c and D polished up their Frisby skills with the Kid.






D and J have two really great dogs (these are the dogs we took care of for a couple of weeks).

Reuben was waiting for his mom to come back. Isn't he the cutest?


















Diamond is a great lady, and she knows she's the queen of the household!






One day we saw a "llama parade" and invited the llamas to graze in the front yard for a bit. There are five llamas who live with a family down the road from my friends' house, and they are far friendlier and tamer than I would've imagined.










One of the llamas was a bit lazy and like to sit down to eat.



















Llamas have very interesting hooves and they only have bottom teeth.





As usual, I took some pictures of flowers.
































On a shopping trip D and I saw a chocolate castle--36 pounds of chocolate!



It was, simply put, a wonderful vacation.

Home Again, Home Again

We arrived home a couple of hours ago from 10 wonderful days visiting friends in Maine. It was my first trip to Maine, and I fell in love with the place. We went the beach and learned to play golf (well, I sort of learned, but the Kid is really good) and explored the area and just relaxed and had fun. I took lots of pictures, and will post some later.

I returned home with a laptop that has both a battery that won't hold a charge for more than an hour (if that) and a power cord that needs replacing. SIGH. I do have my desktop, so I am not completely without computer, but truly, I love using my laptop, and often the Kid and I want computer access at the same time. So, my dilemma is--when do I stop putting money into a three and a half year old laptop, and just buy a new one? And if I take the plunge, do I switch to Apple? My friends in Maine each have an Apple and they really love them. I priced out the new MacBooks, and while they aren't cheap, they aren't a lot more than a comparably outfitted Dell. Decisions, decisions.

Edited to add: I bought a new power cord for the lappie because the Kid had to use the other computer and I was in withdrawal....but I am definitely saving up for the MacBook.

Turtle Update

It seems that the turtle, she came to lay eggs.

There is a large pile of mulch in my driveway, left there by folks who were working on my yard (and never finished, but that's a different story) and yesterday when I came back from dog walking, I noticed that it had been dug in, all over one side. I mentioned this to someone at the office, who told me that the same thing had happened last summer before I moved in. Last year, one of the yard workers dug up and moved all the eggs closer to the pond behind my house.

I can't even SEE the pond right now because the undergrowth has taken over, and we're apparently not allowed to cut it back without all kinds of permission....even though the pond is human made, it is still on a wetland. So I don't think I'm going to be trying to move the turtle eggs. And if someone ever comes to move the mulch...well, that doesn't seem to likely now. I just hope those baby snappers have a good sense of direction when they hatch.