Not too long after we adopted our cat Annie from the animal shelter when she was just a kitten, L. told me that he wished he'd paid more attention to our other cat, Izzy (a.k.a Baby Sweet) when she'd been alive. I didn't realize how much I loved cats, he told me. Three years ago we found out our thirteen-year old cat had cancer. We had to put her to sleep, and the impact of this was a slow dawning on L., even though she'd been in his life for a good eight years. He was suddenly sad, three years after her death, to realize what he'd lost.

On Sunday I took the kids to Lowe's to pick out some herb plants and flowers, and to look for a special shrub for Loopy's spot. . As is customary in our family, when a pet dies we pick out a special plant and have a little ceremony outside that involves sprinkling the pet's ashes into the ground and planting a shrub or other perennial on top of it, so it will flower and grow and carry that pet's memory on each growing season. We did this at our other house with the first pet loss L. dealt with at the age of two: our guinea pig Pepito. We planted a beautiful shrub in his memory and it's still there--I can still see it when I drive past the old house.

We picked out a small blooming hydrangea for Loopy's spot, but L. was completely focused the whole time on selecting another plant for Izzy's spot, even though we'd held our little "planting ceremony" three years ago. He picked a flowering hosta, with tall, proud whilte flowers.

It really suits her memory, I think.

T.'s class performed in their spring concert last Thursday, the culmination of over nine months of practicing songs and bell ringing and xylophone playing. T. has been aniticpating this concert for months, then weeks, then days and on the evening of the concert, at dinner, all she wanted to talk about was the event, of course. L. wanted nothing to do with any discussions of the songs--and certainly with no spontanous rehearsing on T.'s part.

As I mentioned several posts back, T. will be switching schools next year. We are so excited about her new school, and the opportunities it will provide T., but we've felt the burden of carrying around the news, knowing that while she will be excited about this school, leaving her current school will make her sad. T. is a sunny, flexible, social child, but she often buries her burdens, and I wanted to tread carefully. What complicates the situation is that T.

I had the following conversation in the car on Monday morning, as I drove L. off to school--I imagine lots of parents around the world were having similar ones:

L.: Did you hear what happened?

Me: What?

L.: You know, what happened.

Me (I'm foggy in the morning): I'm not sure.

L.: The news about Osama bin Laden!

Oh, THAT news.

I wasn't really prepared for the extent of the tornado damage on and around the campus where I teach. There was something so grotesque about the uprooted trees and the altered landscape. I've been driving the same route to work for nine years now and I hadn't ever really thought about how familiar the landscape had become to me. When you see it changed in sudden and catastrophic ways, it takes awhile for your mind to process the shock of it.

See this?

I was happily typing away at my computer, and fielding questions from students who were constantly streaming into my office yesterday (big research paper due next week!) when the phone rang. It was the front office lady at L.'s school.

"He threw up," she said. "And his stomach hurts."

My office-mate/good friend and I have a long-standing joke between us. It has to do with my powers of invisibility at work. In the nine years I've been here I seldom get invited to major events, or special programs, or to serve on committees (although that could be considered a blessing in the academic world). One time not long ago I was walking across campus and a person high up in the administration stopped me and welcomed me to the college.

"I've been here nine years," I said. "But thanks!"

On Thursday last week, I got angry. I did on Friday, too. I don't often get angry. I work hard on keeping perspective, and on practicing internal (and external) deep breathing when I have to. Years of parenting and years of modeling calm behavior to L. during his meltdowns have paid off, I think, and when faced with conflict I almost unconsciously do what I once had to so consciously do: check myself, lower my voice, relax my shoulders, take a step back in physical space, separate that roller-coaster rush of emotions into easily managed compartments.

We had a busy Saturday this weekend (actually, we had a busy weekend--more on Sunday's activities later). While Scott took T. to her ice-skating lesson, I took L. to a two-hour chess workshop. The workshop was one of many activities sponsored by a county organization that promotes the idea that all kids are gifted, and that gifted education is more about innovative approaches to curriculum that can excite and inspire all kids--not just kids labeled "academically gifted" because of test scores. 

Hear, hear.