I rarely help out with the children during Quaker meeting for worship, but they needed a substitute last Sunday, so I volunteered. In the days leading up to my big teaching gig, I received two phone calls from our very efficient coordinator and e-mails from four members of the Religious Education Committee, including an attachment [...]

Yesterday Luke did cartwheels on my mother’s grave. The weirdest thing about it was that the grass hadn’t fully grown back yet, so we could see the rectangle traced like a shadow. We let Luke do cartwheels, but scolded him when he started climbing on the headstones, so he ran off to climb a nearby [...]

We were driving up Germantown Avenue when Luke asked if Halloween was a long way away because he was hoping his hair would be long enough to have a thin pony tail in back like the jedis in training because next Halloween Luke wants to be a spy/jedi (a combination Luke says no one has [...]

I’m reading an amazing book at the moment called Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery. After 155 pages of terrible stories that none of us learned in school, I finally got to the chapter called “Hated Heros,” which included two stories that jumped out at me.First was the tale of Prudence [...]

Yesterday on the playground after school, a girl in Luke’s First Grade came up to me and said, “Luke’s so silly. He’s like my personal entertainment.” A nearby girl concurred, and Luke responded by falling to the ground and rolling in the wood chips. The girls laughed, but I was annoyed because I was trying [...]

Today is Luke’s birthday, finally. After weeks of anticipation, he is seven. His ambivalence about it continued right up to last night. After Megan asked me to buy her deodorant and sunscreen—so she can “feel older”—Luke observed, “Megan wants to get older, but I don’t.”I can’t say I blame him. Two weeks ago I had [...]

This morning I noticed Megan scratching her head at the breakfast table. Those of you who have dealt with head lice won’t judge me for sighing in relief when I heard that Luke had banged her in the head.It’s one of those good-news-bad-news days. I finally finished our taxes last night, and the good news [...]

I’m going to do my taxes today. Or at least I’ll start them. I’ve been meaning to all week. Usually I have them done by now, but there has been too much going on this year—Mom’s taxes, among other things.One of the first questions I need to answer for my own taxes is whether or [...]

Softball started on Saturday. Since Luke will be seven in less than two weeks, he’s now in the older group of players. This apparently means they get more expensive uniforms and play something more like real games, as opposed to last year in the Instructional League, where kids hit the ball off a T, and [...]

My nine-year-old daughter likes to listen to B101, the soft rock station that advertises “five songs in a row.” Of course, whenever you turn the station on, they always seem to be on a commercial, a point I made this morning on the car ride to school. Megan defended the station and said you only [...]