Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch . . .
The past couple of weeks have been busy, though nothing very interesting was happening for most of the time--classes finished, then there were exams, and now we can say that we have survived our first year of working and taking care of Allison Clare. We considered celebrating with wine but instead just went to bed early.
Last weekend, Sam took Allison Clare out shopping for Mother's Day, and it dawned on me that it was the first time she had ever gone out without me--and therefore also the first time I had been alone at home since the day she was born. She looked totally confused when Sam carried her out the door and I stayed behind, waving goodbye; in fact, she looked like she was waiting for the punch line, about to laugh but mystified that we seemed to be serious. After they left, I spent the first 10 minutes thinking about what I should do with the house all to myself, and then decided on a three-pronged approach: Skittles, Grey's Anatomy, and a DIY manicure.
I had only gotten through half the episode when they came back, but the odd part was how ordinary it seemed--I felt neither thrilled to be at home alone (even though fifteen months ago I could hardly have imagined how I could psychologically bear never being at home alone), nor overwhelmed by their absence. For a whole 40 minutes. ;)
Then from Monday until this morning (the one newsworthy event), we had a visitor--the beautiful and gracious Clare, who came up from Florida to meet her namesake for the first time. It was really fun to see them together, each as funny and silly as the other. Allison Clare has gotten really into saying "Hi" lately. She says it over and over again. She loves when others say it back, but she is undeterred if they completely ignore her, or if their interest in the back-and-forth flags after twenty or thirty exchanges. She gets really excited when she's out in public and hears others saying hi, and she turns around to see who could be talking to her--it's like when you're in a foreign country, and you hear English spoken and look about for the other Americans. She sometimes sits looking very serious and then bursts into a big smile and launches into her "Hi" routine. As if she had been trying, trying, wracking her brain to think of something meaningful to say, and it finally occurred to her: the same thing she had said forty or fifty times three minutes before. Clare had infinite patience for this game, along with its occasional halftime program of mutual head-shaking and grins. We will all miss her.
Hi.
posted by Tara | 10:16 PM
3 Comments:
Tell AC that I said "hi."
"The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." (Chesterton, Orthodoxy)
Blessings, and greetings!
Lee
Lee, how beautiful! It's wonderful as always to hear from you.
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