Safe at Home

For the first time in about 5 years, we actually went on a trip... just Sara and I... without the kids... the pauses are for dramatic effect, by the way... Really, five years. Everyone I tell this too seems shocked, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. Sam is four and a half, Lily two and a half, we don't have Michael Jackson throw-around money, and we just haven't been able to manage it. My parents came over on a Saturday afternoon and we quietly skulked out of the house, into the car, and drove to New Hope all the while praying our cell phones wouldn't ring. Thankfully, the kids didn't throw up or rob a bank, so we spent the weekend like a couple of giddy newlyweds - getting massages, going out to dinner, having drinks, staying up past nine, it was crazy. My nerves were pretty frayed before we left, and it turns out a couple of absolutely perfect days was all I needed to de-strung-out myself. I occurred to me as I was writing this, I don't think that I thanked my parents enough. We thanked them, of course, but if they had any idea how much I needed to go away, they could have asked for pretty much anything in return and would have gotten it. In the end, we thanked them... and they just took off when they could have even taken my firstborn in return ...
Right back into the swing of things though... and the last shimmering glow of relaxation from two weeks ago was swept away today after work. Had a crummy day in general - plus I have a cold whose only symptoms seem to be congestion and enlarging the section of my brain that controls 'grumpy'. Picked up the kids and felt a bit better even though Sam got in trouble at school, and then got a call on the way home from daycare from my friend Kathy...
Our friend at work has a daughter who is a doctor, newly married, who was in the Army still paying off medical school. A week and a half ago, she came down to the kitchen to tell me her daughter was shipping out to Iraq that day, and then on Wednesday she came down to tell me that she had finally gotten a phone call from her, and she was settling in and getting to work out there. Kathy called because today, right after I left, an army officer showed up to tell our friend that her daughter had just been killed. Gone, in ten days. Just like that.
She asked me to call two other people and tell them, and I had to sit down for a minute on the kitchen floor while the kids were watching TV to get myself together first. It was funny though, because I couldn't even get the words out. When I called, Kate was on her way to IKEA and laughing because her friend was lost, Jen was in the middle of teaching a piano lesson, and I just couldn't get my lips to make the words, like if I didn't say it, somehow it wasn't true.
Tonight all I see in Lily is someone else's daughter, like I'm watching a ghost. I keep thinking that there was a time when her daughter rubbed icing on her face like Lily did tonight, grabbed onto her leg like Lily grabs onto my leg when I'm trying to walk, and held her hand with the same gentle determination that Lily holds mine. Funny thing is, the thing that I see every night on the news affecting families all over the world has just lightly brushed by me, and still has shaken me to the core... today we're safe at home, and she is gone.
Just like that.

Nine Years, Give or Take...

Quite a crazy week, out here in suburbia... I started up at the school again, which was interesting... usually, the first week back is pretty cool, because it is just faculty and staff, so we're only cooking for about a hundred people, and can make whatever wacky things come to mind. As usual though, work is chock full of wonderful challenges (can you feel the gentle ooze of sarcasm?) and we were greeted with a kitchen minus a floor because of a mildew problem they discovered right before opening up for the year. Unfortunately, since I haven't perfected the ability to levitate, we had to quicklikearabbit roll a refrigerator into the hallway, a worktable into the storeroom, and gather up all the equipment we thought we might need and drag it out of the kitchen before they started working... and spent the whole week cooking like Anne Frank, hidden away in corners and storerooms. 'Course there weren't any Nazis, but we did get into the habit of whispering to each other, and I kept a diary that I think will still be as touching and relevant 50 years from now as it is today. One of the highlights of the week was a party that Kate and I catered on Tuesday night, it was a short notice thing for 100 people that we scraped together using one table, a grill, and a few microwaves. About 5 hours and a lot of cursing later we turned out filet mignon, citrus shrimp, eggplant parmesan, antipasto, chicken with marsala cream... and a handful of little appetizers. Good times... Oh, and on top of that it was our anniversary on Tuesday, so I left early in the morning, and didn't get home until Sara was already in bed, not exactly the most romantic moment in our nine years of marriage. Luckily, we found out on Wednesday that Tuesday wasn't actually our anniversary, Wednesday was. After a short discussion about why neither of us can ever remember whether it is the 28th or 29th (and a brief, scolding lecture from my sister who set us right on the date) we actually had nice anniversary after all...

Amidst all of the hustle and bustle around here, we've been doing a fairly decent job of keeping ourselves sane by running the kids ragged. For our long four day weekend we've been all over the map, and walked them to the point of exhaustion through the Tyler Arboretum yesterday. We saw some cool stuff - a butterfly house packed with caterpillars and butterflies; some cool trails and a meadow maze; and more frogs than you can shake a stick at... and best part of all was that everyone in the house slept like rocks afterwards.

Oh, on a totally unrelated note, Sam has started dressing himself. It's great, since we don't have to coax him into getting dressed in the morning, but he needs a bit of fashion advice. I certainly don't want to discourage him, but its hard to leave the house when he comes downstairs wearing Spiderman pants and a ruffled periwinkle tuxedo shirt. I have to admit it does add a little spice to our lives though... it's fun sitting downstairs in the morning waiting to see which one of the Village People the boy will come down looking like...