Yes, please

At first I dragged my feet. Maddy had a photo assignment and wanted to go into Boston to do some shots.  It kind of seemed like a hassle to me but G and Sam had a church meeting and she really wanted to go, so I thought eh, why not?

I should think why not? more often. Well, that and why not's more enthusiastic sister, yes, please.

Because if I had gone with my Saturday afternoon homebody instincts, I would have missed out on this:

Swan boats retired for the summer.

Maddy in sunbeams.

Witnessing weddings.

Glorious trees.

High wire walkers practicing. (!)

Take that, dragging feet. 

Take two

Here's Maddy's first second day of school, sophomore year. It was a rainy + chilly day, perfect for the cheerful yellow rainboots and a cozy sweater. 

Oh, I love this girl.

^And even though this is a little overexposed, I love it anyway. It captures her.
Here, I'll add a slightly underexposed one to balance things out: 

. . .

When Maddy brought home all the paperwork and syllabi for the year, for some reason I recalled something Elizabeth Edwards once said. During her son Wade's early high school years she decided to read some of the books he was reading for class so they could discuss them and she could hear his burgeoning analysis and thoughts about life.* 

Brilliant. Now that the kids are older, I feel a bit separated from them in their studies. I'll proofread an essay here and there but mostly Lauren and now Maddy and Sam have sailed their own academic ships. So in light of that, I started thinking that I'll read along with Maddy on a few of her books this year. 

Here's the list for her sophomore English class: 

The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
Song of Solomon, Morrison
The Turn of the Screw, James
A Separate Peace, Knowles
The Crucible, Miller
short stories, Shirley Jackson and others
Ender's Game, Card
The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
Walden, Thoreau

And films:
The Front (Woody Allen)
Persons of Interest (Alison MacLean)
Walkout 

Pretty great books, right? It'd be kind of like a low-key, mother daughter book group. That I...crash and wrestle into my own territory and attend uninvited? Is this a sweet & lovely idea or borderline helicopter parentish?  I can't trust my judgment on these things anymore. I swing wildly from benign neglect to hovering. I blame the emptying nest and the fleeting years. Savor is my mantra. Gather and savor.

*p.s. In a sad turn of the story, later, when Wade died in an accident before his senior year, she would read the books for that year out loud to him at his grave. Heartbreaking.

Now I see...

Sam learned this on the ukelele for Maddy because it's one of her favorites.
I made him re-enact singing it for her for the first time because my camera didn't catch the audio the first time.
Hence, the hint of reluctance on his part.

I adore it.

(Via the awesome 8mm app & my iphone camera.)

p.s. Sorry about the finger sneaking in there. Also, church is already canceled tomorrow, thanks to Irene. Everyone stay safe out there!

Summer mirage

 

This song has been going through my head this week, one of the epic + quintessential songs from a really fun summer of my past.  "It's the summer of love, love, love." It makes me think of a little red Ford Tempo, lent by my grandparents while they were away for year, windows down, breeze rushing through my hair, twilight approaching, music up. Maybe that's why I've been craving orange popsicles and lemonade a bit.

What will this be the summer of? The kids all have completely different kinds of summer in store.

Lauren will be working full time for 7 weeks as a camp counselor in a local day camp.

Maddy will be working as a volunteer (if you visit Orchard House, look for our girl there) and attending girl's camp and EFY and doing driver's ed.

Sam will be attending an awesome service/outdoor adventure boys camp for a few weeks in July (more on that later) and then enjoying a free and easy August.  

For the first year ever, we won't all be summering to the beat of the same drowsy & spontaneous drummer. (hmm, in that analogy, am I that drummer? Yes.) Hopefully we'll still find time to go to the pond together, to bike for ice cream now and then, and go to a drive-in movie. But it'll be different kind of summer and I'll miss the old lovely togetherness (with an honest side of nagging and nerves).

However. The younger two kids are still in school for one more week. For Maddy, it's the worst week of the entire year because of finals. Is that a thing with all high schools now? Ours has university-style finals week at the end of each semester, using a special schedule where everyone takes two long exams a day, some of them cumulative for the year.  Too much and too soon, I say! Anyway, shhhhhhhh about summer around Maddy; it's all just a mirage for her at this point, a summer mirage. She's all highlighters, rewritten notes, and library afternoons until next Friday. (Go Maddy!)

. . .

photo via pinterest and this, attributed to vookie

Glass ceilings and mockingbirds

What a fun & full weekend! On Saturday we met my parents at the MFA & saw the Chihuly Glass exhibit (amazing! look at that ceiling in the big photo below!)

But the real reason we went was to see Hey, Boo!, a feature-length documentary about Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird. Definitely see it if you get the chance. It was surprisingly emotional for me and, judging from the sniffling and wiping away of tears around me, I wasn't the only one. (Obsession alert! I've also written about Harper Lee here and here)

A few take-aways:

1. I always thought that To Kill a Mockingbird sprung sort of fully formed from the mind of Nelle Harper Lee. But it actually took a LOT of work and two years of grueling rewrites even after she finished the initial story. 

2. Two friends (a married couple by the name of Brown) believed so heartily in her talent as a writer that they gave her a Christmas gift of enough $ to support her for a year so she could quit her job as an airline reservations clerk and dedicate herself to writing. She said it was not so much the $ but their complete faith in her that carried her through the creation of the book. What fantastic friends, definitely fifth business material.

3. She started law school but quit to be awriter. Sometimes quitting is good.

4. Atticus is based loosely on her own father, A.C. Lee, who was a member of the state legislature, an attorney, and an editor for Monroeville's newspaper. (I just found a great LA Times article about Lee's last interview and some of her influences here.)

4. While the character of Scout definitely embodies Lee's characteristics as a young girl, over the years she has come to feel more akin to Boo Radley as the media and well-meaning, curious fans have sought to bring her out of her private isolation. "Know what'd happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin', Mr. Finch, taking the one man who's done you and this town a great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight – to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'm not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man, it'd be different. But not this man, Mr. Finch...Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough."  Although meeting her is one of my dreams, I suppose reading her book is enough for me, too.

. . .

Click here for a clip of the documentary, a portion of the section on Scout.