Friday, August 25, 2006

~Sup Dawg~

The children and I are back in school, and I got the job working for the Bengal Newspaper. It has been a pretty busy week, but I know it is only gearing up to get better. The first week of school is the woe-ing period. Class time is so sweet and fun, and the professor seems so laid back and understanding--and then the final day to drop the class arrives and the professor walks into class with a whip and he/she declares, "Alright bitches, get to work."

Ikeman's first day of school will be September 5th. He will be in preschool and he is already in love with the name of his teacher. He has only met her once, and he held my hand and kept his lips clamped tight for the entire exchange. He is in love with the idea of going to school, but the reality of doing it scares him. It also scares me. I have had his hearing checked and it is fine--but his speech is not what it should be. I am anticipating speech therapy for the boy and this makes me sad--he seems so perfect to me right now, why would we have to change him?

Kate got her first pair of glasses and her first violin and I am probably not allowed to say it--her first bra. She is tall enough that her head reaches to the bottom of my chin. When she and I go out together and people tell her that she looks like her mother, she blushes and says thank-you. The glasses that she picked for herself look very similar to my glasses, and she has started wearing a shell necklace that looks like my shell necklace. It pleases me that she is trying to emulate her mama. I am sure that the day is coming when she wants to be autonomous and so she will change everything about herself that she perceives is the same as her mother. She is already the antithesis of me in the areas of math. My daughter got the presidents award of academic excellences for her abilities in math; I can't multiply positive and negative numbers.

Jake is starting to look like the man he is going to be. He has lost all of his baby roundness, and he is getting tall. He is skinny and ripped, he likes to flex his stomach so that his ribs poke out and his six pack appears. He has his father's teeth and hair and attitude. He is my child that is most likely to share. If he has cash and his siblings do not, he gives them cash. If Kate's ice cream bowl is finished before his, he will give her a bite from his bowl. He is in the third grade this year and I wonder if he is as good at school as he is as home. And, God forbid--is he has bad?

Time seems to be pooling around me. I am always rushed, but sometimes I move at a leisurely pace. The important things are looming in front of me, but the little things are so much nicer to pay attention too. Last year at this time I was stressed about how I would handle school and my life. This year I added three jobs to that equation and I am sure that I will have enough time to do everything that it is important for me to do.

Five and Six and Seven years ago, I was lying in my bed napping my days away and dreaming of what my life would be like if I was a writer. I spent a lot of days sleeping and dreaming about what it would be like because I was too tired to get up and and find out. I found my reality of being a young mother so bleak--piles of laundry and mounds of dishes and stacks of diapers and overflowing garbage cans and kids clinging to my hands and legs and chest--that I took daily naps to escape my reality and float to the magical places where I was living in my dream of being a writer.

I want to thank all of you that have been reading my blog since I began blogging. It was your voices that told me I didn't have to just dream about it, I could actually do it. You are the wind beneath my wings dammit. If I hadn't found blogging and all of you--I would probably still be taking four hour naps every afternoon so that I could dream about how it would be.

Time may be pooling around me, but the list of things that I have committed myself to is pretty long. I am excited to see my name in print, I can't wait to write my paper about the Trobrianders and there are still fish to catch in Island Park. I have a lot of plans, a lot of obligations and a whole shit load of responsibilities.

I probably won't be writing here very often, but when I do write it will be something that I think is important for me to remember.

2 comments:

Paul said...

We knew talent when we saw it, Deb.

Deborah said...

Paul, you are my favorite.