tidbits

Acadia 032
Originally uploaded by melnykowycz

• Maine photos here!
  


• Funerals and caskets and death have become a part of our daily conversations. Not only have we been to 2 funerals this year, but we pass 2 funeral homes on our 3 minute drive to school. Last week in Maine when we played on the beach for hours, Collin basically spent the entire time “burying caskets”. Today we passed a particularly long funeral car line up headed by a half-hearse full of flowers (is this a MA thing?). Collin shouted out, “A funeral! I looooooove funerals, but I don’t like the dead people.”
  


• Although our kids may be more extroverted than their moms, don’t think they are any less eccentric. Last night on our way out the door for our daily soccer time, Cayla decided to tape a strip of yellow fabric on her head. She wore it all evening, all night, and kept it pasted on for school today. We’re a little unclear if this is a fashion statement, protest measure, or something else.
  


• The kids (and ummmm . . . .us adults) are lost to "The Lion King". Cayla and Collin got the soundtrack last week from their grandparents. It’s on 24/7. Watching Collin lip-synch to songs of which he only knows every 7th word is fairly amusing. However, the twins’ swinging hips don’t miss a beat.
  


• We’ve got a date. We’re heading home May 20! Excited –yes! But, we’re (we=the kids and I, not so much Flannery) getting really sad too. The kids have such a supportive community here. And, now they are at the age where they are forming their own relationships with kids and adults at school, in the neighborhood, at the park and playground, and at the Y. And Dalya! They are really going to miss these people and not because we put the words in their mouth .
  


• Katie and J and I had a long conversation about diversity last night – 3 ½ hours long! So, I’m a bit tired today. It’s the same discussion that Flannery and I have been having for years now. A talk of white culture, black culture, and Latino culture. A talk of school resources and safe neighborhoods. A talk of social reproduction. A talk of “great diversity discussions” at all-white schools. A talk of staffs that include teachers of color. A talk of our perceived differences between the schools within one district. A talk of the actual differences between schools within one district. A talk of resources within a school: music programs, special education programs, and counseling programs. A talk of racism and why any of these differences are allowed to exist within a single school district. Although the principal of the neighborhood school that Collin and Cayla will attend in September assures me that it will a wonderful, supporting, nurturing environment in which all their needs will be met, I just don’t buy it. How can their needs be met if they are one of a handful of children of color in their class and are guided by a sea of white teachers. A friend whose child was in kindergarten there this year assured me that although the school is mostly white, they talk A LOT about diversity. But, as J says, talking it and living it makes all the difference in the world. And, yet the most diverse middle school in our town is by far the “roughest”. I know that my kids carry a lot of baggage with them and I want them in a neighborhood and school that supports them socially, academically, and emotionally. Since this is only a tidbit of what I’m thinking, I’m cutting myself off here, but you haven’t heard the end of it.
  


• After swimming yesterday Collin headed off by himself into the men’s locker room. Yipes – we’ve got a kid now.
  


• I love this book. Rachel, read it. You can read a bit from another book here. I must read more of her.