How's Your Mom and Them?

An excellent primer for Yankees on the use of y'all.....

It's a Snowflaky World

I've been turning over the premise of a study I've been doing in my mind for a couple of weeks. The premise is that we start out life as maverick-like Individuals...we have all these hopes and dreams and ideas in our youth. Children revel in themselves and love to feel special. Then we grow up and begin to make decisions. A funnel effect occurs as we make one decision and rule out 10 others, and so on down the line. One day we wake up in a life that looks eerily like the lives of every other person we have surrounded ourselves with. You look around and see very little variation in the landscape. Everyone is thinking, doing, feeling, talking and living...exactly the same way. And all of a sudden, you feel a little Trapped. That's when you know that the Individual part of you is feeling smothered, shoved into the back room closet.

It's so interesting how we are made. God made each one of us completely unique - no two exactly the same - just like the snowflakes. But he also made us so alike that we have many, many things in common with the other humans. We're all snow, after all, even if we're also all flakes. And isn't is such a delight to find common ground with a new friend or a writer's words or a piece of music ...it Resonates. And you say, YES! I have felt that. I have thought that. I believe that. And it's a great feeling. It's simpatico. Commonality allows us to feel connected. Individuality allows us to feel special. And God, brilliantly, made us with both halves of the same whole. Individual, but yearning for connection. Unique, but made for community.

I think one of our downfalls is when we cannot appreciate that dual nature in others, or in ourselves. We swing too far either way and forget that the most natural place is right in the middle. Some cling to their individuality at the expense of their connections with others. Then come the feelings of isolation and resentment that no one understands. Some become obsessed with conformity and begin to drown in self-imposed rules about how they "must" act or dress or think. Then come the feelings of entrapment. If only we could regard ourselves as God must. Completely unique and precious individuals, who are designed to love and be loved by their understanding journey-mates. This is why I love travel so much. It is a reminder that anywhere you go in the world, people are very different. And very alike. See? Snowflaky!

Finding Love at the Skating Rink

Remember when we were too young to drive and too old to hang out with our parents on Friday night? And we put on our cutest clothes and our pinkest lip gloss and our biggest hairdo and had our moms drop us off at the local skating rink? As we walked in the doors, we were mesmerized by the mysterious darkness, the pulsating music, the smell of overcooked pizza and the sight of the glittering disco ball. Ahhhh...pre-teen heaven. It was one of the first places we went to see and be seen. We could scan the room instantly, and with laser-like precision, pick out our friends, our frenemies and the objects of our romantic crushes. Let the drama begin!! A successful night might mean escaping the wrath of the ever-present skating rink bullies or being asked to couple-skate by the right boy. A really successful night might end with you and the-cutest-boy-ever "going together," whatever that meant. It was all about looking for love, wasn't it? Just like every other Friday night for the rest of our lives, until we hopefully found "true love" and made it our own. There is something magnetic about the skating rink. Even Big Stuff, who is a few years away from looking for love (Thank you, Jesus), could not get enough of the skating rink recently. Round and round she went. For almost three hours. She cried when we finally had to go home, and said we could live at the skating rink if only her parents weren't so mean and unreasonable, insisting on living in a house and sleeping in beds and all. Cutie Pie, who was apparently a preteen skating rink god (you learn something new every day!), picked up all his old moves right away. He tried to teach me to turn and backward skate, but apparently if you don't learn these skills by age 13, your chances of mastering them are close to nil. He did hold my hand for a few turns around the floor though. And he did try to show off a little (hey, don't we look better than that other dad and daughter?) It was cute. Toward the end, the DJ hooked us up with the Alan Jackson 9/11 song, which goes something like this: And some good things He gave us are Faith, Hope and Love....and at this moment I'm passing my sweet little girl holding hands with her Daddy and looking up into his encouraging eyes, big smiles on both of their faces....And the greatest is Love..... And the greatest is Love. My conclusion? It's still possible to find true love at the skating rink.

A Composer in the Making

I get treated to the original works of a singer/songwriter most every day. The Silver Bullet seems to be a constant source of inspiration for my budding musician because songs just come to her out of thin air everytime we get in it to go somewhere. Today I heard the first-ever public rendition of a song called If You Like Bugs and God is in Your Heart (a working title). It went something like this:

If you like bugs
and you think they are delightful
Delightful, delightful
You should keep the bugs
and never squish them
You're not afraid
Because you adore God
and you praise Him
Because of the bugs
They swim in the pool
In the pool, in the pool
And God is in your heart
in the pool, in the pool
And that's all....

She always asks how I like the song, to which I always reply - I love it!! Where did you learn that song? And she scolds me gently, Mama, I didn't LEARN it. I thought of it. Myself. Yes. Of course you did.

Bringing up the Rear

Our Small Fry joined her first soccer team today. Actually her first official team ever. I must say I derived great joy from the whole thing. Seeing her in her tiny uniform just about sent me over the edge into the land of There Has Never Been a Cuter Child Than This In All of History. It's the land where her older sister lives also, in case you were wondering. But really, the greatest part of the whole thing was seeing her out there, just doing her thing. Her Daddy pointed out early on..."Look. She's last." And we exchanged knowing looks. There is a universal truth about Small Fry that we have all come to accept. She's always last. No matter where you're going or what you're doing, the kid will be bringing up the rear. Trying to rush her will do you no good. In fact, in her younger days, it might have brought on a fully involved, five alarm tantrum. I've even gone so far as to warn preschool teachers trying to hustle her out of the car..."Don't Do It. Just let her finish her thought. You will be so glad you did. And so sorry if you don't." Nowadays she takes it mostly in stride, just looking at us quizzically as if to say, What's the rush folks? I've got butterflies to catch and songs to sing. What's your hurry, what's your worry? And soccer practice was no different. They tried to get her to kick the ball and hustle back in line. She was not fazed in the least. She took her time, never noticing that she was taking longer than anyone else or that she was always the last to get back in line. She swung her hair. She played patty cake with her friend. She waved at us on the sidelines. La La La. And she was so happy every single second. God, I love that about her! Not to say it hasn't frustrated the living bejesus out of me now and again, but I think I've learned to let her be. And I so rejoice in her being-ness. I have a friend who is around us a great deal, and she often comments that I am so patient with her. This is, of course, quite comical to me as I would not rate patience at all high on my list of good qualities. But she just brings it out in you. She has trained me to be patient. She insists on doing things at her own pace, and what's wrong with that? We should all insist on the same thing.

Just Keep Swimming

We have survived the first week of school. Summer seems a long-ago memory, although the air is still heavy with Indian Summer heat. It seems that I require a good long while to process life, a system that does not respond well to frequent interruptions and constant sidetracking. There are a lot of experiences and lessons-to-be-learned from this summer that have yet to be fully experienced or properly learned because I'm not an on-the-fly experiencer or learner. My ability to multi-task is just not up to snuff, people! And I have this idea that at my age, my psyche really ought to be a little more settled. You know, like I should know what I want to be when I grow up already. I don't have the luxury of time to ruminate, reflect and figure things out, and yet I feel constant pressure to have things figured out so that I can be this steadfast rock and foundation to some other little growing psyches in this house. And so I'm back gulping snatches of air while the crashing waves of let's-just-get-through-today churn over my head. Is that any way to live?? I think not. But what can I do? Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...I guess that's what Dory would say. Sounds like a plan. Not a great plan, but it's the best I can come up with on limited oxygen.

10 Things to Love About Summer

Swim team! Where else can you gorge yourself on Twizzlers and Pop Rocks whilst screaming your head off for your offspring, whilst simultaneously trying not to cry because you're so stinking proud of her?

Slip-N-Slide! The genius who invented this glorious contraption should be crowned in the How to Kill a Summer Afternoon Hall of Fame.

Low Country Boils. YUMMMMM.

Naps, because we aren't on a schedule, you see, and 10 p.m. has suddenly become a perfectly acceptable bedtime! Heck, it's not even dark at 8:30, mama!

Backyard tomato gardens. No fear of salmonella!

Using my passport twice in one month!

Florida sunsets. Small Fry kept prodding me...get a picture of it now, mama. Get one now, mama. She was right. It just got prettier and prettier.

Hello Kitty kites.

Days when blood is thicker than beach sand.

Olympic fountains on a blazing hot day.