Deep Calls

Summer is over ~ there are books strewn across the living room / dining room: Geography, Literature, English, Bible, Geometry (finish of last year), Algebra 2. There are notebooks and pencils and pens and a couple of backpacks. It feels both exhilarating and daunting. This year in our homeschooling ... what? journey? jaunt? expedition? peregrination? [ ... I can hear you now...readers "WHAT??" Peregrination????] Yeah, I found it as a synonym of journey and I cannot resist a great new word. So, here: from O.Fr. 1528, from Latin: peregrinationem (nom. pereginatio), " a journey " from peregrinatus, pp. of peregrinari " to journey or travel abroad ", from peregrinus " from foreign parts, foreigner " , from peregre "abroad"   properly   " that found outside the Roman territory ",   from per- (q.v.) + agri, loc. of ager " field, territory, land, country "] Ok I like this word : PEREGRINATION! ... my homeschooling PERE...

... I sat down to write, since writing makes writing easier, and all the thoughts that pirouetted through my mind as I got up -- flitted away without so much as a backward glance. "Hey, wait! Where are you going, ideas. It is so vacant here in my mind without you. W A I T!!! Come back Come back ... come    back" See, I had this idea about "back stories" -- like what went on behind all that goes on 'on stage' in life. It seemed clever as I rolled over when Ed's alarm went off. I could nearly hear the words flowing from my mind to my fingers as I pulled clothes on and sauntered (ok, "sauntered" sounds better, but "stumbled" might be more accurate) to the computer and waited for the computer to wake up too.  Then I sat down. NOTHING. No witty repartee, no sparking metaphors. I hate this. So I think I will ~ go make coffee now and try again later.  mmmpphhhhffffff! grumble.

I can see them, in my mind's eye: my friends, the Weita family, in their house this morning. Jeff is in his office, hidden behind the wall made from book shelves. He is working at his computer tweeking the podcast for Deborah. His glasses are halfway down his nose and he intently peers through them. fingers flying on the keyboard. Deborah, she is in the living room, in "her" chair, a brown recliner, computer on her lap, doing lesson plans. There is at her elbow on a small round table her glass of ice tea. The tea is 2/3's gone and when it is gone it will be as if she is woken from a spell ... but not till then. She reaches for it to take a sip, fingers sure, never looking up -- so intent upon the work.   Lauren is curled up on the couch near her mother reading Beauty . She is savoring the moments of 'free' reading before school starts. Lindsey is in her bedroom: PINK and black! She is sitting in her desk chair playing her guitar. I can hear their bird whistlin...

I don't know exactly what I expected...swamps, everglades ~ maybe alligators. I did not expect it to feel like I was entering a forest, a modern forest, populated and scattered with suburb neighborhoods. Florida! As I looked out the window as the plane prepared for a landing, I saw a sea of green. Lush green. Here and there, a street, a neighborhood. But MOSTLY : trees.  I got off the plane and just as I was warned hit a WALL of humidity and heat. It was 10ish in the morning, the sky was crystal blue and the air was wet with heat. It never stopped amusing me, making me giggle: I would walk outside and my glasses would fog up, like a mirror after a hot shower. I never could get my bearings ~ there were no mountains, and I felt completely lost. Time made me feel, much of the time, like one of those paddle and ball toys ~ the ones with a light wooden paddle with a ball attached to it by a string of elastic. My mind and psyche kept bouncing and snapping back and ...