Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful that I am not shopping for food right now. We're going to go spend some time in fellowship with the cousins and in-laws - my 9 months pregnant sister-in-law is probably scrubbing her floors in preparation for our arrival as I type. I'm really hoping she goes into labor, so we all can tag along to the hospital, and I can witness a baby being born. Even though I've been present for the births of six little darlings, I was always so flustered at the time. And I really want to hold a little baby. So I'm also thankful that our newest cousin (until the in utero one is born) will also be a part of this Thanksgiving celebration.

What I'm really thankful for is that we have such a good time with our siblings and parents.  I'm looking forward not only to six kinds of pie, but also to the comfortable fun of hanging out with family.  I could be cynical and say that distance has preserved our fondness for each other, but I'd rather believe that we genuinely enjoy each other's company. I never saw any irony in the Norman Rockwell painting.  The experience of distance gets buried under the memories of connection.

But even the long drive is something to anticipate - I want to get some reading done.

Happy feasting to everyone.

When it rains, it pours...

After months of not being tempted by a thing at the movie theater, I'm suddenly feeling overwhelmed with desire to go to the show. I'm hoping the theaters are going to offer some kind of season ticket discount for lovers of literary adaptations -- Harry Potter 7, pt 1, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby (why Leonardo?), The Tempest (Prospera?), a movie about King George VI called "The King's Speech," Gulliver's Travels (Jack Black?), a Coen brothers remake of True Grit ...

Quick Takes

See Jen for more.

1. Although my house is in shambles, and I’m constantly running late because I’m trying to do one more thing, and my kids haven’t eaten a decent meal since my husband had back to back trips first to Africa and then California, I love my little jobs.  That does not mean I am doing a good job at either. And I am doing a rotten job of coaching 4-5 yr old girls to play soccer. Last night my daughter and another girl on her own team pushed each other down in front of their own goal because they were fighting over who would score. That was after they fought over the ball and scored for the other team.

2. I am getting lots of positive feedback from my first job, teaching Latin at the elementary school 2 mornings a week (no cash value).  Maybe that is because we play games every other class for "review" (anyone know other vocab review games besides Pictionary, Charades, and Jeopardy?). Or perhaps I am popular now because I give out candy to students who memorize prayers and sayings or do worksheets since I can't give grades. I need a new rewards system now that I'm running out of recycled Halloween candy.

3. The other job, teaching Composition I and II at the community college (mini-minimal cash value), also only takes place 2 mornings a week for two hours a day. I suppose if I were to calculate my pay based on those hours, it might be a decent rate of compensation. I also go in to the school on Friday mornings to grade assignments and to talk to the other instructors in the faculty lounge.  And when the countless hours spent debating what I’ll say and do in those 2 hours, plus hours trying to figure out how to critique papers tactfully, are added together, I think I make about $1.22/hr.


4. The kids at the elementary school are boisterous and involved during our short sessions (25 mins each with 4 classes, 4th – 6th grade). They’ve particularly enjoyed the past couple of weeks we’ve spent talking about Roman/Greek mythology (culminating with a Jeopardy game). Lots of fans of Percy Jackson out there – which definitely made my job of paraphrasing myths easier.

Meanwhile at the community college, I feel like a stand-up comedian getting lobbed with tomatoes when I jabber on and on and am confronted with blank stares, snores, and the back side of iphones. But I finally had a couple students come see me in my little office, which means they are at least interested in passing. I didn’t want them to leave. Maybe I should keep tea and cookies handy?

5. One student had to come see me because she copied and pasted an article from the internet into the course dropbox (almost all of the coursework is turned in online). She was supposed to come in on Wednesday, but she didn’t show. I had myself worked up, imagining a hostile confrontation, a belligerent attack against my poor teaching skills, a rejection of learning. Instead, when she showed up this morning, she was apologetic, embarrassed, chastened. So I was able to take the merciful route and offer a zero on her paper instead of a zero for the course.


6. I can’t decide if what I love most about these jobs is doing the reading and research or being out in public with people. The students and other faculty members are fascinating. I don’t hang out on campus enough to people watch for any length of time, but there are a couple of students who are becoming familiar because their appearance is so unique. One is a girl who is tall and thin but has a congenital face deformation not unlike the boy in Mask. The first time I saw her, I adverted my eyes, much to my shame. Pretending to be preoccupied with my phone, I’m sure she sensed my discomfort.

The other person has a beautiful, pleasant face, but she is morbidly obese. The first few times I passed her she was sitting on a bench, and she smiled cheerfully and tossed out a pleasantry. (The campus is small enough for newcomers to stand out, I guess, or she’s just friendly, like 90% of the rest of the people around here.) But one day I was walking behind her and noticed how thick her legs were. She has to use a walker. I’m sure it’s uncouth of me to comment here, but I couldn’t help staring, again to my shame. My desire when talking to people with disabilities is to be friendly and natural, but my own selfish self-consciousness often betrays me.


7. These two poems by Ogden Nash might make our class more fun:

"I Do, I Will, I Have "



How wise I am to have instructed the butler
to instruct the first footman to instruct the second
footman to instruct the doorman to order my carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen,
I know that marriage is a legal and religious alliance entered
into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut and a
woman who can't sleep with the window open.
Moreover, just as I am unsure of the difference between
flora and fauna and flotsam and jetsam,
I am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people
one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or
the gas pipe and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the
windowsill, it's raining in, and he replies Oh they're all right,
it's only raining straight down.
That is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,
Because it's the only known example of the happy meeting of
the immovable object and the irresistible force.
So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and
combat over everything debatable and combatable,
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life,
particularly if he has income and she is pattable.







"A Word to Husbands "


To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

both on http://www.poemhunter.com

Now read this...

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’m now a paid working mother with a job teaching at the local community college. Only five classes are left before finals. (I’m crossing my fingers to get offered another class or two next semester.) We finished up the short story unit, and now I’m scrambling to decide what poems to cover in those last 5 hours of class. How can I engage the imaginations of these students who universally find poetry boring? I could either go for interesting and contemporary poems, or historically and culturally significant poems, or I could pick out exemplifications of the various figures of speech, forms, sound effects, use of symbolism, etc. . . . What I really need to do is just make a decision!

 

Fortuitously, the short stories I finally chose seemed to complement each other with regard to theme or characterization. Judging by the essays I’ve graded so far, most students only read the ones I quizzed them over, or ones they may already have been familiar with (“The Lottery”). I was surprised to read two journal entries from different students who read O. Henry’s “The Gift of The Magi” negatively. One thought Della was afraid of making Jim mad and that Jim flopping on the couch was a sign of his disgust. The other student felt that the author was urging greater consideration before visiting the pawn shop because he thought the loss of the favorite possessions was a such a great sorrow .

 

The stories we ended up reading were:

• "Godfather Death" by the Brothers Grimm
• Updike’s “A & P” (focused on the idea of chivalry)
• Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
• Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” (Our two fascinated by death stories)
• Carver’s “Cathedral”
• Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case” (these were our art stories)
• Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”
• TC Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” (Our dark wilderness/dark heart stories)
• Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”
• Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” (mother/daughter/sister relationships)
• Katherine Anne Porter’s “Jilting of Granny Weatherall”
• O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (Southern grannies dying stories)
• Kate Chopin’s “The Storm”
• Chekhov’s “Lady with the Pet Dog” (adultery stories)
• Ha Jin’s “Saboteur”
• O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” (which affected me much more strongly this time around. The first time I read it back in college, I could hardly stay awake. This time I could hardly keep back the tears. I never was interesting in reading more of O’Brien, but now I want to hunt down the story collection from whence this came, of the same title. Perhaps because I have a more intimate connection with war since my husband went to Afghanistan? What a different environment than Vietnam, though.)
• Finally, for irony and cultural literacy: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi”

 

 

No Hemingway after all. After reading the selection in the book, “A Clean, Well-lighted Place,” I decided that despite Hemingway's popularity with adolescents and young adults, I didn't want to talk about such a nihilistic piece. Could be retitled “All the Lonely People.”

 

 

Now for poetry: At first I thought I’d breeze through a different historical period each class session, to unify our approach and to see how poetry has evolved, but the book doesn’t offer much written before Shakespeare aside from “Barbara Allen” and “Sir Patrick Spens.” Next I thought I’d pick themes to guide our reading – love day, war day, nature day, etc. Then I considered assigning vocab terms and picking exemplars. So many possibilities, and so many poems…

 

So far we have just addressed why read poetry – although by “we,” I mean me. I assigned the first 2 chapters in the poetry section of their book, one on definitions of poetry, and the next entitled “Words.” Today I read aloud Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” and Billy Collins' “Introduction to Poetry,“ a fun one. The college requires a quantitative analysis paper on responses to “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke. The class nearly unanimously agreed that it suggested an abusive situation, rather than merely an image of a father (perhaps scorned by his wife and beat down by his job) boisterously romping with his son. I started to talk about WCW’s “Red Wheelbarrow” although I was a little stumped about what to say, other than “ponder.” Let it stick.

 

Surprisingly successful was the little poetry writing exercise that I borrowed from another teacher. I handed out a paper with a prescribed form for describing a favorite place, and was delighted with the responses. So – more poetry writing in the future. Perhaps that will be the guiding star - starting each class with a writing exercise.

 

The other poem that seemed to go over well was James Stephens’ “A Glass of Beer.” I’m leaning toward trying to pick poems the students can identify with, just so they won’t be left with a bitter taste for poetry.

 

A strong invective is always popular, so ending with a bitter bite:

 

A Glass of Beer

 

The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there

Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer:

May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair

And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.

That parboiled imp, with the hardest jaw you will ever see

On virtue's path, and a voice that would rasp the dead,

Came roaring and raging the minute she looked at me,

And threw me out of the house on the back of my head.

 

 

If I asked her master he'd give me a cask a day;

But she with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!

May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten and may

The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.

Autumn ramble

It rains! Hurrah! I was beginning to get tired of all the sunny, mild weather around here. Nothing like a good November rain for enjoying warm beverages.


I have to say, this fall has been much more colorful than last year. Based on my impressions last fall, I would have been quite dismissive of autumn in the Deep South, but whatever proportions of sun, rain, and temperature are necessary for vivid foliage fell into line this year. Our neighbor’s maple tree, the only one around for miles, brings fiery hues to our usually dun colored street, and we don’t have to rake any of the leaves. Of course, there is nothing like the cooler weather to make me long for a Midwestern autumn, even though I’m enjoying what we have here, especially early morning runs with my husband. Quite often we are greeted by pelicans and the harsh cry of herons. If only the casino didn’t block the view of the sun on cresting the bay...

Our last couple of weekends have included cultural activities, in addition to the seasonal soccer games.  Last weekend it was an art fair and the opening of the new Frank Gehry designed Ohr-O'Keefe Museum. We went on the family day, when Americorps volunteers were present to help the kids make booklets about George Ohr, the Mad Potter of Biloxi, and paper crowns. (For Mardi Gras? Or to keep the little girls happy while the boys had crazy mustaches painted on their upper lips?) I kicked myself for forgetting a camera. The museum was extremely small, and not being a connoisseur of pottery, I don't know that I'll be back often. The sculptures by Richmond Barthe were stunning, though.  Made the art fair offerings pale (except for the booth where you could pay $5 to pose with a little street vendor monkey.)

A model of the museum:

George Ohr:

 This weekend included a drive to Mobile that was absolutely glorious (despite our intended destination being a car repair place), and discovering the free Fort Conde with its miniatures and wax figures brought back memories of Ft. Monroe - a nice cap to the day that included a visit to the Exploreum to see the sea lion show. Of course, the display of photos of past queens of the krewe of the Conde Cavaliers, who sponsor the first parade of the Mobile Mardi Gras season, was more to the liking of my young ladies, but at least there was something for everyone.

This year's Mobile Carnival Association queen from: http://blog.al.com/entertainment-press-register/2010/02/royal_splendor_mca_queen.html

My husband went to Africa and all I got was this...

 ... a nativity triptych, a couple dolls, a goat-hair camel, elephants carved from palm wood, a giraffe-necked zebra bowl, soapstone trinket boxes, a scary mask beer opener, and rungu sticks, also known as lion-bashers, also known as dangerous weapons stored on an upper shelf in my closet so that they do not become brother-bashers.

The airport. Note the baggage cart.

My husband posing with the artist who carved the elephants and rungu sticks. These are certifiably hand-carved, unlike the soapstone boxes, which came from the duty-free shop at the international airport (not the one pictured above.)

A baobab tree. Perhaps if you squint you can see a little prince.

Or you might see these millipedes.

A favorite hang-out on the base

The Rat Trap is also a favorite hang-out for the vervet monkeys, which like the Skittles. As you can see, it is easy to identify male vervets.

The RC church. My husband also took a video of the entrance song to show me the difference between this African choir and the way the Notre Dame folk choir sang "Jina la Bwana," the 

 Magnificat in Swahili, but I can't upload it easily.

 

Sunset over Kenya.

On the bandwagon

Everyone else has probably moved on to new topics, but I meant to say something in passing about the Erica Jong editorial and the accompanying essay by her daughter that were in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend. Although a few years ago I might have been more offended by Jong’s denigrating remarks about attachment parenting and “motherphilia,” now that my youngest is school aged, I feel no personal offense, and instead wonder more about Jong’s own feelings toward the article written by her daughter. Jong’s fiery comments can be dismissed as a reaction against the political implications of attachment parenting. She sees it as a tool of the right-wingers to keep parents too tired to protest, although it seems to be a parenting style that appeals to the extremes of both political stripes. The voices of pro-lifers, who are sometimes attachment parenting proponents, raised in protest certainly belie this claim, while the environmentalists and celebrity moms she mentions (Madonna and Angelina) don’t seem to be paragons of conservatism.

She seems to be setting herself up for controversy. Maybe she has a new book coming out and needs some press.

But the more dramatic story is the subtext in the pairing of the two essays: Erica Jong criticizes women who give up work to stay home with children, breastfeed on demand, and make the choices that she encouraged their mothers to reject. Then her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, who stays home and helicopter parents, writes about her mother’s ambivalence toward parenthood. She says her mother wasn’t a bad mother, BUT her mother was “as good a mother” as she could be.

So is Molly Jong-Fast suggesting that there are better mothers, or that her mother could have been a better mother? That some women are temperamentally better suited to motherhood than others?

I have to admit I agree with that statement with qualifications, and wouldn’t hesitate to say that I’m not one of the better mothers out there. I’ve said before that I am not a cuddly, crafty type. But I followed some of the practices of attachment parenting, in a large part to delay the return of fertility. And unlike the many women like Molly Jong-Fast whose parenting style represents an implicit rejection of the way their mothers parented, I admired the example of my own mom who stayed home while we were little, nursed us, shopped at the co-op, and made yogurt and breads from the Tassajara Bread Book. She also went back to work when we were school-aged and let us listen to Marlo Thomas sing about how mommies can be anything. So I grew up thinking girls could do anything boys could do, but better, and I still wanted to stay home with my kids while they were babies. I didn’t think about not breastfeeding. I used cloth diapers to be green, but also because I was cheap. Of course, I had high-minded ideals about why I should stay home to devote myself to my babies, but I was also a little bit lazy and lacking in ambition. Fortunately, my husband had a job with benefits that accommodated our cheap standards of living, so I didn’t have to work.


I’m also aware of how parenting practices don’t work the same way for every kid, so our parenting style shifted a little with each new baby. Each child has needed something a little different from me. And they don’t stay needy babies very long. So Jong’s rant against attachment parenting as a step back for feminism hardly seems relevant, since for many women this stage lasts only about three to five years. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the generation that is growing up nurtured by doting mothers returns to a more detached style of parenting.

These are rambling thoughts. I don’t have parenting all figured out. And perhaps Erica Jong is really ranting against the attitude of knowing the secret to perfect parenting that can be present in attachment parenting craze and causes some women to feel like they will fail as mothers if they don’t nurse or carry their babies around. Other women haven’t pressured me to parent a certain way, but I haven’t really hung out in high pressure groups. My guilt is all self-inflicted.


If I felt peer pressure, it was not from proponents of attachment parenting; it was from the “Why aren’t you using your degree?” types like Erica Jong. I still remember the hurt feelings caused by a college professor I bumped into one time with the four kids I had then, even if I don’t remember the exact words he used to suggest I was wasting my education by staying home.

The real influence on why I chose to parent the way I have would have to go to J P II’s Familiaris Consortio. Before my husband and I were married, we studied up on all the marriage and family encyclicals and church documents and were bombarded with the message that love and self-sacrifice go hand and hand, the same theme that ran through the literature I was reading. I’m not sure what Jong would think about that, but her editorial doesn’t seem to consider self-sacrifice much of a virtue.



Not that I’m good at self-sacrifice, either. This blog is an indulgence. My children will probably grow up and criticize me for being too emotionally detached, and they already decry my heavy handed censorship of what they watch and read. Some kid is always accusing me of favoritism. Since every one of the kids has said this, I feel pretty certain that I’m equally unfair to them all. I’m aware of my shortcomings as a mother. But my goal isn’t to be a perfect mother, but to help point my kids toward God, their origin and their ending. Being the best mother I can be, like Molly Jong-Fast says, is enough if I can help the kids see that love and self-sacrifice are entwined.

So in the end, I feel sorry for Erica Jong, rather than irritated by her, because she obviously has had some painful relationships in her life. And perhaps her relationship with her daughter has been one that has given her pain. I hope the pairing of the two essays is a sign of the strength of their relationship instead of a weakness.

Encomium

Continuing with the theme of death, the other day my mother sent me a clipping of an obituary of our old next door neighbor. Until the time I was seven, my family lived in Indianapolis on the east side in the same neighborhood where my mother and father had gone to high school and where my grandmother had grown up. For a long time, that place was home, and the place we moved to was the “new house.” The new house had a rural route number, although it was on a street of newer houses surrounded by cornfields. The first house was in a neighborhood of small bungalows and cape cods nestled close together that now must be nearing the century mark.

Our house was a little limestone number with green trim. It had a low roof like a bungalow but no front porch. Instead, the front yard was graced by a crabapple tree in one corner and a redbud in the other, and by the front door was a little imitation courtyard garden, with a wrought fence enclosing bleeding hearts, lily of the valley, and daffodils, all clustered under a small dogwood tree. In my memory it was glorious – straight from the pages of a Tasha Tudor book. But when as an adult, I drove by with my husband, all those colors in the front yard had vanished.

The inside wasn’t quite as quaint: gold shag carpet, lattice wallpaper with big yellow flowers, wallsized mirror in the living room. Green shag carpet covered the back bedroom that Betty and I shared with a big green piano. That room, I think, had been a porch and had indoor/outdoor carpet when we first lived there. My first brush with home decorating was when my parents put in real carpet. I remember wanting to sleep on that plush surface with all my stuffed animals.


So that little house was cozy, but not beautiful on the inside. On the other hand, the neighbors' house, a white cape cod, was all loveliness. The couple who lived there had grown children who visited sometimes but not for long. These neighbors were kind and warm, unlike the neighbor on the other side of us, who seemed the incarnation of Mr. McGregor. I would climb on the wooden fence in the backyard and call to the nice neighbors for an invitation. And sometimes – often? -- they would invite me to come over. The Mr. mostly did yard work like the neighbor on the opposite, but he let us jump in his leaf piles. The Mrs., whom I called by her first name, would invite me in for little cucumber/Wonderbread sandwiches with the crusts cut off. We would practice good manners. She tried to teach me to knit. She taught me "Pretty is as pretty does" when I went fishing for compliments (or maybe to lower my expectations to a more fitting level for a homely child). 

The highlight of my visits were following her upstairs to the room with eaves and dormers where her daughter’s dolls were kept. This room was pink and green, my favorite color combination, and the bedspread was frilly and girlish. Was there a white wicker vanity or am I making that up? I don’t remember actually playing there, only gazing in awe at the dolls and books, as if visiting a museum to 1960’s girlhood. I wonder if that room was ever redecorated after we moved away.


According to the obituary, a long, informative one, the Mr. and Mrs. were married over 50 years when the Mr. died in 1995. By the time I knew them, they were retired, but previously they both worked relatively unglamorous jobs – she was a secretary at a steel company. But having a glamorous job apparently wasn’t what motivated her. She apparently enjoyed community life, as the obituary lists her membership in several clubs, activities at her church, and her work as a docent at the Benjamin Harrison Home, where she wore period dresses to give tours to schoolchildren. The couple travelled to Europe and went out dancing until they were in their eighties. Someone cared enough to include in the obit small details such as that the Mrs. was a book lover and an avid newspaper reader. I love this bit: “Until she became ill, she was still enjoying going out to lunch each week, always wearing red lipstick and high heels.” In addition to a list of survivors, the obit lists a number of friends and caregivers to whom thanks were owed. Contributions were directed to the Methodist Church down the street from the house in the old neighborhood.


What a full, happy life. What a gift was her kindness to little girls. I’m sorry that as an adult I never told her how thankful I am for those memories, although thanks were probably unnecessary. She likely enjoyed our little tea parties as much as we did.

Disenfranchised

Technically this isn’t a sin, but I feel I ought to confess to someone that I didn’t vote in the election Tuesday. I know I wasn’t the only one absent from the poles, but since at one point in time, I took an interest in politics, I feel guilty. Plus, I should be setting a good example for my children, especially the 13 yr old in the house who reads the Wall Street Journal cover to cover. (I could justify shelling out $100 for that subscription, even though I can’t bring myself to subscribe to AT&T for the free iphones we inherited.)

I didn’t vote because I couldn’t bring myself to commit. Not only did I find it impossible to commit to a candidate because no one matches up with my ideal politician, but I couldn’t decide what state to vote in. I last registered in Virginia. My driver’s license is from Mississippi. My husband’s home of record is Illinois, and now that military wives can maintain the same home of record as their husbands, instead of figuring out the legalities of each new state of residence regarding licenses, fees, taxes and registrations, I think I could have requested an absentee ballot like my husband did from Illinois. But I feel like an interloper voting in state elections. I haven’t lived in Mississippi long enough to know the state’s needs, I don’t have any legal connection to Virginia anymore, and the little I know about the candidates from Illinois isn’t good. At least Gene Taylor, who lost the election down here to Stephen Palazzo, seemed to be an honest to goodness Southern gentleman. He was pro-life despite being a Democrat, and reminded me of the reasons my grandparents were Democrats.


I suppose I’ll pay closer attention to the elections in a couple years and try to establish residency somewhere, so I can do my civic duty, especially since my husband’s livelihood depends on it. In the meantime, I am trying to cultivate a sense of rootedness even though the landlord called last week and asked if we minded if he put a for sale sign in the yard, if we were pretty certain we wouldn’t be staying. We don’t even have orders yet, and a move is at least eight months out. I feel a little sorry for the guy trying to maintain two homes, but I’m not too worried about having to keep the house pristine for potential buyers. On the other hand, I certainly don’t want to find temporary housing if a buyer does surface. Maybe we could move in with the landlord – his current house is enormous. I also don’t want the kids to start announcing that we won’t be here next year, so we don't lose friends. Today the second graders performed their All Saints’ Day presentation (better late than never), and my first grader kept talking about how he wanted to be St. John next year. Maybe he will be able to wear a camel hair tunic, but at a presentation somewhere else.

My attempt at rootedness?  Nurturing the nasturtium that recently sprouted in one of the planters I seeded last spring. I guess it figured now was a better time to bloom than in the swelter of summer.

Requiem

We’ve had a couple weeks of high festivity: spirit week, a carnival, birthday parties, a trip to a corn maze, trick or treating. In between trick-or-treating Sunday and the school's Halloween carnival last Saturday, I think the kids each have consumed at least a gallon of high fructose corn syrup. Add to the loot collected at those celebrations, goodie bags from classmates and the neighbors handed out during the week and three birthday parties Saturday. One of my six year old's favorite treats was a little plastic vial full of pink corn syrup with a gummy worm inside. Good thing we had a dentist appointment on Monday.

Since our neighborhood doesn’t have many kids – and has that seedy factor - we trick-or-treated on base with some friends. The mom of this family is from Bogota, and they had us over for a Columbian soup called ajiaco.  I made pan de muerta, my nod to the holy days, with the last bits of Moroccan saffron we had brought back from Spain a few years ago.

The base housing community was one big block party: kids ran from house to house without fear of cars, but several families really got into the fright factor. One had an inflatable haunted house and a party in the driveway with scary adult clowns and zombies. Another family had converted the garage into a gory laboratory. Lawns were dotted with skeletons and tombstones and glow in the dark cobwebs. It seems as if the south likes to celebrate Halloween big. Or maybe it’s getting this big everywhere. When a sexy pirate wench walked up to school Friday to pick up her kids, I had to figure maybe the mardi gras mindset down here has seeped into the fall festivities.

The fall festival fundraiser for the kids’ school last weekend also had a Southern feel. Each class ran a couple carnival game booths, and the booth that had the best décor won a prize. Some booths decked out their tents with the traditional skeletons and spiders, but others glammed up with tulle and glitter everywhere. Kids dressed up for the costume contest, and my 10 year old won a $30 gift card to Walmart for his mime costume. The jr high CYO manned the haunted house in one half of the parish hall, while in the other half, parents shopped at the silent auction and kids’ art sale and decorated pumpkin sale. There was a cash raffle, a live auction, a dunk tank, a raffle to get out of bingo duty, a bake sale – all the popular school fundraisers rolled into one glorious sugarhigh event.

Meanwhile, the Methodist Church across the street had their fall festival on the same day – an alternative to Halloween? Maybe they didn’t realize that our school was celebrating the same day, or maybe they hoped to lure in some of our overflow. But theirs was a much smaller event – only a few game booths and food.

And a tractor pulled hay ride.

Monday morning we found out that a twelve year old boy jumped off the hay wagon and fell under the tractor. He was killed almost immediately. He was the son of the pastor. One version of the story has the pastor as the driver of the tractor. Apparently, the emergency vehicles all arrived while the festivities continued uninterrupted at our carnival.

My imagination keeps returning to this event. I can’t quite work out how the boy fell and where he was and what his body looked like when they pulled him out from under the wheels. Saturday afternoon I saw a kitten hit by a car scuttle to the side of the street, and I keep trying to make up an alternative ending to the story of this boy, who was the same age as my second son.  Maybe he could have rolled away or laid still between the wheels.

Today the school kids, some of whom knew this boy from their neighborhood, remembered this young man.  We prayed the prayer for the dead in Latin class:

Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat eis. Fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen.

Like the students, I want to raise my hand and ask for prayers for my grandparents and for a couple friends whose children are now motherless and for all those parents who have lost children.

Another saying  I came across while doing my research for Latin class: Vivere disce, cogita mori