| Scenes from Louisiana... |
My little girl is a senior. I wonder how this could have happened. Wasn't I bringing her home from the hospital just a few years ago? Wasn’t I just pouring over a book of names, wondering if I would be buying blue or pink? What happened to the time? This week she had her first day as a senior? Is that even possible? I remember her first day at preschool as she dropped my hand to run to the door. My heart skipped away from me, attached to a set of bouncing ponytails. She didn’t turn around. I went back to the car, put my head down on the steering wheel and cried…cried because she wasn’t just mine anymore. Now I was sharing her with the world. I worried about her. Would she have a good experience? I knew her teachers would like her, but I hoped that they would really enjoy her. When I picked her up that day, she sulked, refusing to speak. “Linda Jo, what’s wrong?” For a long time, there was no response. Finally, she blurted out. “The slide was too hot and you forgot my towel for my nap.” What a failure I was! “I’ll send the towel tomorrow. Honey, is that all?” In an accusing tone, she said, “Momma! It’s not a fundabye…it’s a flag! I said it was a fundabye and the teacher said that it was a flag!” Ooohhh! Well, I thought it was so cute that I had never corrected her. I hadn't thought of what would happen when she was required to say the pledge of allegiance to a fundabye. That year she also learned that flutterbyes were really butterflies, buttertails were really ponytails, and that walking canes were not called granddogs. This week, as I watched her walk off onto the high school campus, disappearing into the sea of students, I felt many of the same emotions I had felt on that first day of preschool. Would her teachers get it? That she wouldn't be just another student behind a desk? That out in the parking lot there was a mother crying once again on the steering wheel of her car because her heart just walked off carrying a backpack and a schedule? Somehow, despite my mistakes, she became this amazing young lady…and I’m a messed up bundle of emotions because she’s growing up and I’m just not ready. After all, I just brought her home from the hospital a few years ago. Don’t expect too much of me. When sending my kids off to school, my biggest worry is that they will become just like everyone else. I want her to stay Linda Jo. When she jumped up and down with rapture because she was taking a sheet metal class, I knew that everything was going to be okay…she’s like no one else. She’s a senior. Jonah is an eighth grader. Second grader Daisy has just lost her first tooth. I tell myself everyday that somehow I will make it through these days that fill my stomach with flutterbyes. |
| My sister and I talk and text each other everyday and I get a vicarious thrill from her experiences with Louisiana culture. She's always sending me pictures of what she knows I'll like. Here we have some holsum bread. It's nice to know that in other parts of the country kids are eating a nutritious school lunch. This holsum bread is calcium fortified enriched. How about a Grab n Go toilet? It seems that many people have a secret fantasy of repairing their own toilet. I didn't know this. I don't fix anything around our house because it gives Joe anxiety. He gets upset when I have any kind of sharp object. Even when he sees me use a knife, he insists on finishing whatever I'm doing. Joe and I have different thoughts on fixing things. He has tons of tools whereas I feel that I could build a house with only a butter knife. Am I really the only person in the world who will use a butter knife as a screwdriver? Joe makes me think that I am. Other women do this I am sure. I don't know what tools are required for plumbing your own toilet, should you choose to try it. |
| Some other thoughts... |
