Tie-Dye

Major life-skill I haven’t given my kids yet:

Tie-dye.

It’s on.

Children and Faith and Other Matters

I’m reading about the Marian apparitions of the twentieth century, and the intensity of feeling that they provoke, and the intensity of the experiences.   I’m not going to offer an opinion on the “reality” of those experiences without a lot more information.  But a few thoughts on children, madness, hope, Battlestar Galactica, and of course Daffy Duck.

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On Thunderstorms & Reading By Lightening Flash

Poetry is hard to read for those who have never done it.  So we did it the easy way: I had them underline the nouns and circle the verbs.  As we made our way through the poem, they connected concepts like “voice” and “thunders” and “shakes.”  They made the connection themselves.  We commented on how different the quality of daylight had been in New Orleans after the storm, partly because the whirling voice of the storm had stripped the trees bare of their leaves.

Lisa, perhaps encouraged by the smallness of the group and the recentness of the flood that the storm had unleashed on New Orleans, broke out, “I have read this psalm my whole life.  I never knew it was about a storm or about a flood.” She was angry. “That would have been too simple,” she said.   She was angry.

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Man, Beginning

I can’t believe how badly it hurts tonight as I plan the defensive drills, think over the stretch-routines, and all the rest of the business of coaching.  Outside the open window, the rain is falling.

I want to tell him, “Keep your balance.  Be suspended from heaven and rooted in the earth.” 

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Church Cancelled Owing To Act of God

Somebody once said that fun is danger in the absence of death. Several more days of rain are expected, and we gently slip from the stage of "fun," the extended wet holiday filled with leisure-reading and conversation, into the grim adult world of worry.

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A Dream About Trains, and About Him

"When the train hit the terminus it was always crowded.  I'd read Carl Sandburg's poem about the place, and if Chicago were now more about bonds than hogs, it was still the place to be, a destination, and for me and my fellow travelers, the end of the line.   But there's always somewhere else to go."

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American Pie Kinda Morning

This morning my daughter and I were driving to my mother's house. We were listening to a playlist I'd made her a few years ago that begins with Don McLean's indispensable "American Pie." I can measure my relationship with my daughter by it, and her growth, as surely as I can by those little strips of tape on the wall that we use to measure her height.

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How My Ravenous Thirst For Fairies And Flowers Got Slaked Today

I doubt seriously there is one parent in the auditorium that isn't prepared to fight for that girl as the troupe scurry off stage to no less and no more than the usual applause.  Not one is unready to say, "You go, girl.  You dance.  You want to dance, then dance."

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The Bottle: Autistic Spectrum

In the Otter's house is a special child. He sits alone and watches.

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Spring Football

I coach the defensive line on a team of homeschooled high school aged boys. My son plays for them.

We've got our Spring game tonight.

I'm salivating: last night the coaches took on the team.  There were seven of us, thirty of them.  We beat 'em, yours truly having a pick-six to slam shut their pretty comeback hopes.

God, what a great sport....

My dad's got a new iPhone and will be texting the hospital so mom can keep up.  (Mom and dad only missed maybe two games last fall.  They're the proud grandparents of the coolest defensive end in high school football.)

Time to go get suited up and chew some red meat.