The Lawn Mower

Baby Rachel is TWO today. While unwrapping presents, she became enthralled with this bubble making lawn mower. So enthralled, in fact, that she refused to stop playing with it to open the rest of her presents. Instead, nine adults and one teenager, just watched her wheel around the room. As we tried to persuade her to open the rest of her presents, Teenage Aerin suggested, “Maybe there’s another lawn mower.” Baby Rachel stopped short, spun around and ran over to the box the lawn mower had arrived in. She tipped it and peered inside. Disappointed that there was, in fact, not another lawn mower, she returned to mowing the living room floor, oblivious of the rest of the neatly wrapped presents. Kudos to MooMoo and Bapie for having the hit birthday present two years running.

Overheard Conversation II

The setting:  A campus computer lab
The speakers:  Two young men between 22-25

Young man 1(ym1):  No look at this. . .
Young man2(ym2):  What?
Ym1:  Another girl from my high school
Ym2:  Man
Ym1:  I know.  She got fat!  (chortles)
Ym2 (laughs)
Ym1:  She had a cute face back in high school.  Now she’s fat.
Ym2 (laughs)
Ym1:  They all blew up.  Every girl that I dated from high school apparently blew up.  (laughing)
Ym2: wow.
Ym1:  I’m serious.  The only one who hasn’t blown up is the blonde I cheated on. (laughs)

And so it continued, as the two young men laughed and made disparaging comments about the weight of young women.  I am even more of a social action coward since Overheard Conversation I.  I can no longer articulate what I would even want to say.  I just sat at my own computer and pretended not to hear.  Worse, I did hear, and throughout the day, I questioned my own annoyance at this conversation.  This type of conversation seems so much more normal to me than it did a year ago.  I reflect, again, on whether I am too judgmental.  I also reflect again on the challenge of ‘disrupting the commonplace’ outside of the relative safety of the classroom community.

The Threes

Today I became 33. I’m not exactly excited about the double threes, as threes have never been my favorite number. But I suppose I must embrace them for these next 12 months. So here are three lists:

Three things I did for fun on my birthday:

1. Manicure/pedicure (for three fingers – and three toes – ha ha)


2. Picked out three new necklace pendants


3. Ate three times more cake than I should have

Three things that I wish for myself in during the next year:

1. Inner peace from self reflection


2. Finding my passion and pursuing it


3. Friendships

My three favorite intertwining books (all by Lois Lowry)

1. The Giver


2. Gathering Blue


3. Messenger

The Grandmother

On Monday June 5, I drove six hours to Bloomington, arriving just in time to meet with the after school gang. I went out to eat with FRD and whipped his whole family in a game of monopoly. As I was leaving FRD’s house, I got the call.

An adventurer. A world traveler.

My grandmother had a massive stroke and was bleeding into her brain. FRD told me, “Go. This is so much more important than graduation.” And so I checked out of the hotel I had checked into only hours before, and got in the car at 11:00 at night, knowing that I would miss FRD graduating from the sixth grade. I drove up to Indy, picked up Michael and we drove through the night back to STL. We talked in the car for the first time since January. Our healing began as our grandmother died. She was dead by the time we arrived at 5:30 AM. We went straight to the hospital, where my parents and uncle and cousin had been sitting throughout the night

A photographer. A sculptor.

In the days after her death, I spent a lot of time with my family. And part of me was thankful that this, the death of my last grandparent, occurred at a time when I could take a week to be with them. In this time, I got to know my youngest cousin and I can only hope that the closeness we developed during this time will carry on without my grandmother’s presence to bind us. In this time, I got to know the Baby Rachel that I have been waiting so long to know. And in this time, I got to finally heal the rift between my brother and myself, finding a new relationship that can withstand loss and grief as well as happiness and joy.

A doctor. An Acupuncturist. An architect.

We all talked a lot about my grandmother during that week. I don’t imagine many children grew up with a grandmother like mine. She was not what you would imagine as a grandmother in almost any sense of the word. Her divergence from this image of grandmother is beyond description. To think of her, as she was and as she never would be, brings a smile to my face.

An Inventor. A fighter.