Run Off

Whenever people tell me that they've seen a ghost, I tend to put on my cautious face. Who goes around claiming to see ghosts? Iffy people, that's who.

I know, for example, DOZENS of ghost stories.

It was very early springtime, and the run-off from the melting snow coursed down my parents driveway and created an impromptu river across it and the surrounding fields. A sudden cold snap resulted in the newly formed "river" freezing overnight, and so my dad announced that he was going to wade through it in his rubber boots and break all the ice. I'm not sure WHY he had to do this - maybe this was a terribly important task. I'm not sure. (I asked - he was cleaning out the culvert.)

My youngest brother - 13 years younger than me and still just a child in this story - was my dad's normal assistant for important "work" like breaking ice, but he was sick on the couch with a fever and episodes of Ninja Turtles. My other brother was a teenager and a friend dropped in with a truck and a brand-new driver's license and the two boys went for a drive through the farmland and the bush surrounding my parents' house.

I announced at the outset that this was a ghost story, so you know that something is going to pop up someplace, that someone will be the center of the story - will it be the sick child, dreaming in feverish innocence of what is to come? will it be my dad, stomping through the ice in the field all alone? will it be my other brother, suddenly old enough for wild, seeming freedom?

My oldest brother returned later, and was concerned. Wasn't our little brother too sick to have been outside breaking ice all afternoon? Our little brother, the one who had spent the afternoon napping feverishly on the couch - but both teenage boys had seen a small child following close behind dad as they drove by a couple of times, a small child carefully walking in the big rubber-booted footprints dad was leaving in the broken ice. And my dad had a shivery, not-alone feeling as he broke the ice, all by himself in the big white field, water running and things thawing, unseen, under the white and the ice.

I'm not in this story. I've been told this story so many times - the sick sleeping child in the house, the boys in the truck, the silent ghost child walking right behind my dad - that I can picture it in my mind, but I was already grown up and gone. My childhood books were still on the shelves, my outgrown shoes still waited by the front door but I was someplace else, I was unseen.

My kids decided to rake up the front yard this weekend - well, someone has to - and I could hear them outside as they squabbled and worked and bossed each other around. Then their dad went outside to take them for a walk and their voices were high in the air for a moment and then they rounded the corner and were gone from my sight. And I shivered in the bright autumn light, shivered in the suddenly silent air as this empty promising ghost passed by, this shivering specter of childhood's inevitable end.

It's COLD out!

I can't even remember a few short weeks ago when it was so hot that simply leaving the house would cause my brain to melt.

Susanne tagged me! I haven't done a tag in AGES, but look!

1. Nimm das nächste Buch in deiner Nähe mit mindestens 123 Seiten. Take the book that’s next to you that has at least 123 pages.
2. Schlage Seite 123 auf. Open page 123.
3. Suche den fünften Satz auf der Seite. Look for the fifth sentence on that page.
4. Poste die nächsten drei Sätze. Post the next three sentences.
5. Wirf das Stöckchen an fünf Blogger weiter. Tag five more bloggers.

All right. Let's see what's on the top of my to-read pile... "Five Mile House" by Karen Novak.

She uncovered her eyes and straightened her posture, trying to check her wavering, translucent reflection in the plastic. She couldn't focus. The heat took on a sudden density like a vital energy coalescing about her, hemming her in.

Hm. That's a lot of dense, thick adjectives. I may have lost interest. I signed the book out of the library because I tend to switch my reading diet to All Ghost Stories at this time of year, it being ghost story season and all. Just as a sad story is best for winter, a story that's all about unsettled spirits is best for fall.

I see ghosts - of a sort - all the time. There will be a kid running down the street and I'll think, with a start, that it's Justin from grade 10 math or Tracy from grade nine phys ed and then the kid will get closer and I'll realize that it's the child of Justin or Tracy (or whoever) and that Justin or Tracy have now lost their known face, are turning into something different and unrecognizable. There are people I know, of course, who have kept their faces their whole lives, but it's hard to tell who you get to be, if your child running down the street now has the family face and you have a borrowed, softening mask.

I still have my own face - I think, although I ran into a highschool acquaintance the other day and she absolutely did not recognize me - but not one of my children will ever be mistaken for me, being either too blond or too male and not one of them looking terribly like me in the first place. But what used to haunt me was the idea that someday they would be unknown to me, that their minds might be mysterious places, back when they were small and so easily known. And of course, this day has happened - my oldest child is now someone who is both known to me and who is utterly unknown, her own thoughts happening and kept away. And meanwhile, her sunny countenance smiles out from my picture of her on my shelf, a relic from a known time, a little ghost that whispers at me.

It is September. It is growing cold outside, it is growing cold within.

Look at me, posting all over the place

I wrote a melancholy piece on the end of childhood AND summer over here.
And there are new posts up at the lunch box blog!
We all have colds. Krep!
xo

Back to School!

Today is the first day of school! My oldest headed off none-too-enthusiastically in the middle of a thunderstorm AND in her new glasses and I headed... in.. to the schoolroom none-too-enthusiastically, but it was a lovely morning. I hope my Girl's day is going well too, poor thing.

Here's the schoolroom right now!

Remember the weird doorway to nowhere? My husband put BOOKSHELVES IN IT:

They can quickly come out in case we need to use the Door To Nowhere for some strange reason. My desk is STILL a big mess, since a) that is My Way and b) the schoolroom computer is out of commission. My mother-in-law MADE the little mini couch from a weird half-bathtub store display, and The Baby keeps her books on the shelf right above.

The schoolroom shelves:
I took these pictures at the beginning of last week and now the fan picture makes me laugh bitterly. It was WARM last week! This week, we have the woodstove lit.

My favorite part of the homeschool room

All of the books in the window are for our Middle Ages history this year.

I'm part of a new group blog! It's all about the trials and tribulations of packing school lunches, and my first post is up. If it was a group blog about homeschool lunches, it would just be page after page of pictures of grilled cheese sandwiches.

Thanks!

What a lot of nice birthday wishes! It was a great day.

I wrote about back-to-school and what changes and what does not at 5 Minutes for Parenting today. And now I am going to go make supper, which never changes.