Team Gray!

Dear Imani,

Yesterday, your Saxon Math 2 arrived in the mail. As we excitedly looked through the package, we found Joy’s Kindergarten meeting book, too. You wanted to go to the basement immediately to get the Kindergarten teacher’s book, so we went down and found it. I remembered having finished the whole book with Xay, but not with you.

We didn’t finish the first grade book this year either, but Xay and I had finished that a month early.

I’m sorry we didn’t finish your math for your two years of homeschool. I was trying to remember why yesterday. I told you it had something to do with my having a hard time trying to teach just you, and not Joy as well.

But, when I was taking my walk, I remembered some other things. Like, Grammy died during your Kindergarten year. That was devastating to all of us, and I stopped homeschooling for a while. When I started up again, I was more interested in your learning how to read, so math went by the wayside.

First grade started off rough, with Yasha’s birth problems. I can look at the first grade calendar, and see that we did math the day before Yasha was born, and we didn’t get back to it for a while. After she died, we were all too devastated to deal with school for a while. Then, we tried to work on first grade math into the summer. Then. we. stopped. Just like every summer since we’ve started homeschooling, my intentions were to school through the summer, but after awhile, the summer play schedule crashed in around us, and we put school on the back burner.

I finally gave up all pretense today, and put the first grade math stuff away. I had to make room for Kindergarten and Second grade. I want this to be the year that we finish your whole math book. I want you to learn and grow, and live up to your great potential.

I want you to read real books this year, like Charlotte’s Web, and the Trumpet Swan. I want you to finish more books of the Bible. I want you to finish Suzuki 1 in piano, and get half-way through Suzuki 2, or surpass my expectations. Maybe this will be the year we start violin! And ballet! And you will get good at playing your recorder. And you’ll speak Spanish. . .

I don’t want to start next year apologizing again. Have a great year, baby. I love you.

Mommy.

I usually sign the kids up for summer reading at the library. They get to win prizes for reading more, and I figure it’s a win-win situation. I signed up for the adult game in 2000 to win a rocking chair. I didn’t win, nor did I even finish the game board. I figured the summer reading game was not for me.

But, I guess I felt guilty for signing the children up for something I wasn’t willing to do myself, so I started signing up for it a few years ago.

Last summer, it ushered in the season of Lori Wick. Her books are so readable, I read one of the series twice last summer. I filled out my whole game card, and then gave birth the day before the big awards party.

This year, I started out reading
non-fiction. But I remembered having stumbled upon a funny book called Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me: A Novel in the adult stacks, so I just grabbed a book that caught my attention: The Movie-Goer.

I read this strange, morose, but riveting book after I’d checked out a bunch more books. I found a funny book called Gucci Gucci Coo, and I quickly followed this up with another Karen Karbo book, The Diamond Lane. And, maybe it’s just my brain on garbage, but I started to see correlations between the three books.

In The Movie Goer, the main character filters his life through movies. He likes to go see movies, even bad ones and he talks about the characters in the movies in terms of the actors who play them. In Gucci Gucci Coo, the main character runs an upscale baby boutique, and many of her clients are celebrities. The author, Sue Margolis, mixes fictional and real celebrities and products throughout the funny story. The Diamond Lane is probably the most outrageous of the three, with stories, characters and plots overlapping all over the place. The main character in this book is a documentary film maker, and she prefers the image of life to the real thing. Even though she doesn’t believe in marriage, she finds herself engaged to please her dying mother. The prospect of turning her wedding into a documentary is the only thing that gets her excited about planning the wedding. Meanwhile, her fiance, and movie making partner, is trying to sell their love story as a screenplay.

I found all the books entertaining, although I feel a little sheepish for having read those last two. They are going to be knocking around in my head for awhile.

Now I’m re-reading Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife, memoir of midwife Peggy Vincent. I last read this when I was pregnant with Esteban. I checked out Motherhood made a man out of me to re-read as well. Maybe I’ll go back to Lori Wick.

I almost missed the fair this year.

Then I happened to read on a back page of the circularweekly newspaper the fair opened Monday. And as always, Tuesday was children’s day. Children’s day means that kids get in free (instead of $2 a head), and they can get all day ride passes for $10 as opposed to $16 or $18–the weekend rate. So, I could spend $50+ as opposed to $90+. To sweat all day in the unbelievable humidity.

The County Fair has been a grandparent event for us since 1992. My mother always loved to go to the fair and look at the quilts, and complain about what got ribbons. She used to enter in the fair in the 70s and 80s, and hated all the persnickety comments made about her hand work. “The edges aren’t very finished, are they?” “You sure like bright colors,” another judge remarked. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when someone else submitted watermelon rind pickles–died green, and won Ma’s previously uncontested title. She quit submitting work to the fair in the 80s, but still enjoyed turning her nose up at the offerings years afterward.

Ma took such joy in watching the babies at the fair. One year we got these long balloons –Ma hated balloons–but she suspended judgment on these balloons, because of the exhilaration
Yanni and Xay got from dancing with these balloons.

The last year we went to the fair with Ma was 2003. Her electric cart thing wasn’t working, and I had to push her around in a wheelchair. It was miserably hot, and she was unable to see as much as she liked to see. Daddy started escorting us to the fair after that.

Daddy wasn’t as free with his money as Ma, but he had much more energy, so he could push strollers, and walk through all the animal exhibits with us, cheerfully. It wasn’t the same as going with Ma, but it had its own charms.

Last year, Daddy sat at a table and read a book the whole time. This year, he informed me that he doesn’t like the fair, and he sent Zeke along instead. Zeke has a vicious limp from his motorcycle accident, so after standing and watching Joy and Esteban ride the ‘rollercoaster’, I suggested he and Imani, who flatly refused to ride anything to go find some shade and sit down.

Yanni, Xay, and Jake were free to navigate the big kid rides, while I walked around with Joy and Esteban in the kiddie area. Joy wanted to try different rides; they never rode the same ride twice, and Esteban was game to try anything Joy tried.

I noticed that even the tamest baby ride said, ‘don’t ride if you are pregnant.’ I hadn’t spent the $10 for myself to ride, but, dang! I couldn’t even accompany Esteban on the Merry-go-round! It’s a good thing he’s three, and almost as big as Joy.

I felt echoes of Mommy as I dug deep and paid the $2.00 for Joy to play a fishing game. That was almost the last of my money. So when Esteban started pulling at a fishing reel, and having a major breakdown, I let him pick out Joy’s prize. So I had two discontent children on my hands.

And when I dragged everyone inside the air-conditioned building–I mean, sweating for 1 1/2 hours straight was more than I could bear–I really felt like I had done my mother proud. The 4-H room has taken over the fair. When we had been entering sewing at the fair, you didn’t have to be in 4-H. Now, that’s all the exhibits we saw. I heard her scoffing in my head about how those 4-H kids can submit anything and get a blue ribbon. Gotta get my kids in 4-H. . .