Today our drama was a sick raccoon, right around the corner from our house.

My elder daughter spotted it on our way out this morning — first excitedly (because other than evidence of emptied cat bowls, we hardly ever actually see them) and then, as we realized it was lurching and what raccoon in its right mind would be out in the heat of a Texas summer, the excitement tempered and she grew quiet and sad.

My younger daughter began to cry. 
She said she was scared although we later determined that she was scared for the raccoon, not of it.

There was much scurrying on our part, to call the wildlife rescue folk and to check in with the neighborhood listserve which has been busy with news of distemper in the coon population.

And sure enough, it was distemper this time around, too. 
By this afternoon he had died — rather quietly and with decidely less chaos than he might’ve met in a net and cage and bumpy truck.
So that’s good.

But still.

When you live in the middle of a city you want the wild things to be seen and to survive.

Raccoon
By Anne Sexton

(Read the rest here…)

Every single generation of kids needs to learn — somehow, someway — about sex.

A million mamas — mine and now me — have jumped into the blushy, tittery muck to do the teaching.

A million dads have, too.

A whole heap of questions get asked — and answered.

A whole heap don’t.

Lots of kids think it’s gross.

Lots don’t.

Some kids already knew it all.

Some didn’t.

(Some wish they still didn’t.)

A whole heap of mamas feel prepared for all this.

A whole heap don’t.

But a whole heap of mamas feel better getting the goods out there on the table, for everyone to know and understand.

A whole heap of kids feel better, too…

It’s So Amazing…

isn’t it???

Look, I’m all for swimming and water balloons and sleeping in, but a girl’s gotta have a good stack of books by her bed in the summertime.

We’ve already been to the library three times since school let out.

My daughters each have their own card, & they nearly buckle under the weight of the tomes they check out.

The big hits so far:
The Amelia books
The Boxcar books
The SOS File
The Pixie Tricks books
Love, Ruby Lavender
Because of Winn Dixie
The Fudge Books
and lots and lots of books about Japan

They’re going through a book or two a day. 
At this rate, their fingertips are gonna get calloused and their eyesight’s gonna go.

I remember my own frayed, paper library card from when I was a kid — and the stacks of Nancy Drew books I’d bring home to read by flashlight. When we moved to the hinterlands of Wisconsin, there was a BookMobile which is pretty much as close to magic as an automobile can get without turning into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Our experience here is a bit more urban and we’ve got branches galore to choose from, but the magic still holds. 

A library is a great leveler in life; we’re all equal in the stacks, each with a heart and mind just aching to be opened. How about making a run up to yours this afternoon?

It turns out that my younger daughter and her friends from 1st grade are witches.

But it’s not what you think.

There’s not a newt’s eyelash or toadstool to be seen.

Those, apparently, are the stuff of Pell Witches.
(Which is short for Potion-and-Spell. Of course.)

These little gals are Sea Witches, Plant Witches, Water Witches and the like.
A happy, dreamy coven gathered, right now, at my house.
For Witch Camp.

Current activity:
Handbooks, which is no surprise since I’m a word witch.
According to the powers-that-be.

The witches (Ivy, Bellatrix, Pacific, Adilanta and Gail) are debating colors, magic, rules and regulations.

Serious stuff.

Adilanta, who happens to be related to me, seems a little bossy.
Let’s hope nobody turns her into a frog.

Later this week, they’ll be at the other houses, fashioning wands, cooking and storytelling.

And who knows what other types of magic they’ll concoct?
Don’t leave any intact egg shells lying around…

Charm Against an Egg Boat
Anonymous

You must break the shell to bits, for fear
The witches should make it a boat, my dear;
For over the sea, away from home,
Far by night the witches roam.

Um, hello. 

Mr. Murphy?

I’d already been knocked down a notch during the whole 2004 election. 
Okay?  
I get it. 

Goodness is not to be taken for granted.

Change is constant. (Or not, as the unfortunate case may be.)

Bad stuff happens to good people.

I totally didn’t need this week’s still-no-kitchen-car-suddenly-in-the-shop-cat-with-an-abscess-two-girls-with-swimmers’-ear-stuck-in-tornadic-winds-in-the-grocery-store-forget-my-swimming-suit-at-the-swimming-hole kind of week.

I mean, I missed Poetry Friday.
Aaaaaakkkkk!!!

What is this world coming to?

Things better be lookin’ up come November.
I’m just sayin’.

I’ve been invited to participate in a writers’ workshop at the end of the month.

With a lot of very good writers.

Very prolific good writers.

Which means I am reading a stack of manuscripts that’d put the phone book to shame.

It is a dizzying array of work — from picture books to YA — and we are going to give each one its due in two-and-a-half days of discussion. 

Which means I am reading a stack of manuscripts that’d put the phone book to shame — very carefully.

And what I’m discovering is:

There is no shortness of talent out there.

No derth of original ideas.

No lack of empathy, or lack of intuition, or lack of guts.

What a lucky world that all these folk put pen to paper when there were so many other things they could have done…

Our girls have been asking for a blessing before dinner, especially since our visit to Seattle a couple of weeks ago where we discovered my in-laws singing the same lyrical little grace I sang at summer camp, back in the day.

So I found what I thought was the perfect answer to their wishes — 
a little rhyme by Ralph Waldo Emerson that goes like this:

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

That pretty much covers the bases, I think. 
Plus, it rhymes so it’s easy to memorize.
And it’s short so nobody’ll get hungry waiting.

But here’s the thing.
As we recited it tonight — a few times to get it good & sticky in our brains — I heard my small one carefully substituting phrases from my next picture book.

(Which is in rhyme, coincidentally, so is easy to memorize.
And is short, so nobody’s going hungry while waiting.)

Her sister and dad heard her, too. 

And before long it had been decided — 
Ralph Waldo out (beloved though you may be), Mama in (biased though they may be).

I feel a little funny being the pen behind our dinnertime blessing but it made everyone else kind of blushy-happy, so I’m going along with it for now. Until someone decides we oughta switch to the old ditty ’bout the appleseed…

Yesterday, I closed my post with a note of gratitude.

So I figured, what better place to start today?

The thing about kindnesses is that they can be complicated…
when they come with strings attached and what not.

And then the subsequent gratitude gets a little murky, too.
Sometimes a bit begrudging or embarrassed. Y’know?

I prefer the pure kind — of kindnesses and gratitudes. 

Pure, unfettered giving and receiving and thank you thank you thank you.
Like that.

No big white elephant in the middle of the room.

Just you. 
And me.
And thank you.

Here’s what Louise Gluck has to say about all that:

Gratitude

Do not think I am not grateful for your small
kindness to me.
I like small kindnesses.

(Read the rest here.)

Lately I’ve found myself asking of others quite frequently.

And on the days I’m not asking, I tend to accept help when it is offered. 

When, for instance, my best chums say that they will take turns delivering dinner once a week while we are without a kitchen?

I say, um, yes.

And when my kids are at a neighbors all morning and they offer to keep them all afternoon?

I say yes. 

Dogsitting?

Yes.

Advice?

Yes.

Get out of jail free?

Yes, thank you. 

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And then, at two a.m., the voices in my head (who are all sort of pull yourself up by your own dang bootstraps kinda folk) say to me:

How ya gonna make good on this, Missy?
How ya gonna pay these people back?

And they sit there sneering, the voices, waiting for the paroxysms of guilt and shame.

And I teeter.

And they sneer and twitter with anticipation.

And I waver.

And they are lovin’ this! 

“Look at her,” they say. “Needy and wobbly as a two-legged stool.”

And that is when I plant my third leg firmly on the ground —
this is a benefit of yoga, my friends (third eye, third leg, all sorts of extras that balance and enrich) —
firmly on the ground, I plant it.

And I say, “I am not going to pay these people back. Their gifts are not about me. Their gifts are reflective of them. They are just good folk.  I am blessed and surrounded by a hundred very fine friends with open hearts. And sometimes when you are faced with open heartedness, it’s best to be open handed. That is the third leg of the stool called love. Tomorrow, it is my turn. Tomorrow, I will offer my ear to the person who needs to talk, my car to the person who needs a ride, my bag of pecans to the squirrels. And in the meantime? I will say thank you.”

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have to admit that I usually say no, thank you to memes.

I think it’s sort of appalling how much 80s music is still alive in my head; I don’t want to feed the beast by talking about it. 

Ditto — bad haircuts, bad habits and most embarrassing memories.

But the lovely Jen Robinson tagged me to talk about summer goals, and since it is nearly one hundred degrees here in the heart o’ Texas, it seems like the appropriate time to give it a thought.

Numero uno:

My top priority this summer is to put down the laptop and step away from the overwhelm. 
I want to be present and joyful with my kids and my husband, my family and my friends, and myself. 

I want to swim. 
A lot. 

Nap. 
Quite frequently. 

Read.
A ton.

Blog.
A bit.

Talk. 
Freely. 

Listen. 
Carefully.

I want to single- rather than multi-task, say no when I need to and yes when I want to, and generally enjoy the fact that I have the health and the time and the privelege to take it down a notch this season.

Numero dos:
I’m only teaching one class this summer.
It’s online, and I want to enjoy it. 

I want to wallow in my students’ evolving work, share with them what I’m able to share, and try to convey the joy of poetry as viscerally as the nuts & bolts of the craft.

Tres:
Since Jen called me out specifically in regards to exercise, I’d better rise to the occasion.

This summer I want to keep my mileage up and running shoes handy, I want to take my yoga practice with me on vacation, and I want to swim. Pretty much every day. That’s the plan.

Quatro:
Read, read, read. 
The novels on my bedside table and then some.
Plenty of good adult fodder but also, like last summer, I want to read any of the big award winners I haven’t gotten to yet. 

And I’m starting at the library.
Tonight.

Now then.
If you want to put a little thought into your summer, consider yourself tagged!