Maybe Atticus was a little too weary from a very long day to be excited about taking a picture in his kindergarten seat. But he sure got a second wind after he got up and decided to walk around and read every single one of his classmates’ names on the other 23 seats…
In June 2006, Kevin and I took a day off and traveled the Blue Ridge Parkway. Just us.
Somewhere near Mabry’s Mill, we found this stone church and stopped.
A full day of school, then homework and martial arts class at the Y. The boys were too pooped to play well before bedtime.
Lucas at a little less than 11 months…a little more than six years ago. ๐
If you’re gonna run, make sure it’s in the right direction. ๐
Today was the birthday of two very important people to us: my son Cody, who was stillborn 12 years ago, and Kevin’s grandfather, Lawrence Simpson, who died in 1991.
In memory, we spent a while this evening at the two separate cemeteries, on opposite ends of the city, sharing flowers and memories and prayers.
Lucas wanted tape and some thick paper. He had an idea: “A tent!”
It may have been something Kevin said that spurred Lucas into making it for his favorite stuffed animal, Spider-Monkey; I’m not sure. But before long, he’d used up all the tape and set off for his room.
The “tent” fits well over his alarm clock that sits on the night stand between his and Attie’s beds now. (They had separate bedrooms in the old house, but wanted to share when we moved here.) And there’s plenty of room for Spider-Monkey to sleep underneath it.
No more falling off the bed in the middle of the night!
p.s. That’s not Spider-Monkey in the picture. That’s Lucas’ Loris, which he got at the NC Zoo a couple of years ago. (Confession: We’d never heard of a loris until we came home with it and googled pictures to find out what it might be. They should have had a tag!)
Here’s a picture from a few years ago of Lucas with Spider-Monkey. Kevin and I bought him at a rest area off the New Jersey turnpike on the way home from New York a few years ago for Lucas’ birthday. I used BeFunky.com for the “comic” filter.
I wish I had a picture of the sunset we saw on the way home from Susie’s today!
Instead, I have a snippet of conversation to remember:
Atticus: The clouds are orange! The clouds are orange!
Lucas: It’s like God’s drawing on the sky!
Atticus: God’s drawing the clouds orange!
Aren’t they cuuuuttteee!!!!
Yeah, I know they’re not really monkeys. No tails.
But it seems wrong to call them anything else. Why? I have no idea.
Why is it that terms we sort of grew up with just sound more right than others? Even if they’re just totally wrong, it’s like they just fit because you’ve heard and said them so much.
Take the term “hose pipe,” for example. (For those of you who are wondering what in the world it is: It’s what people around here in southern Virginia call a water hose. Why? I have no idea.) Well, it’s completely redundant, but for some reason, it just sounds right. It rolls right off my tongue, even though the English teacher in me cringes when I say or hear it.
I’m sure there are tons of other examples.
Somewhere along late high school to early college, I tried to reform myself of all of this southern stuff. I trained myself to say “turn on the light” instead of “cut on the light.” I worked to pronounce that final “g” on all of my participles and progressive verbs. And I learned more about how chimpanzees aren’t monkeys. ๐
It must’ve worked for a while, at least, even though my college friends from the rest of the country weren’t fooled in the least. When I was waiting tables at an old local restaurant after I’d returned from Oklahoma, a non-local couple told me that they had my accent pegged for either New York or Florida. Hmm!
Anyway. What I called improvement at the time I now see so differently.
See, I wanted to be someone other than who I was, so that people would like me better. It completely defeats itself, though. Even if people did like “me,” I knew they didn’t really like me, but this “me” I’d constructed as a facade. Of course, if they didn’t like “me,” I really hadn’t lost anything … unless you count my self-respect, courage, and identity…
I was setting myself up to be lonely and alone without having even meant to take one step on the path. So sad. ๐
All of this, Kevin could probably sum up succinctly, and one hyphenated word would almost certainly be at the top: SELF-ABSORBED. And another: PRAY.
So even now, when I’m feeling insecure and beating myself up over saying the wrong thing or not thinking to say something I should have, when I’m spending too much time wondering what other people are thinking about what I said, what I wrote, what I wore, how I’ve changed… these are times when I need to stop and realize that my focus is on the entirely wrong spot.
Kevin says these are his only two original sayings, but I’m thinking he must be wrong…if only because he hates to be wrong so bad. ;P
He says all of this is “very true.”