First Day of First Grade

In thirty minutes, Jaelyn will get on a bus and go to her first day of first grade. I feel as nervous as I did in ninth grade.





When mom and dad took me to college, I remember the feeling of happy disorientation, of dread and hope all braided together...that blue and brown station wagon disappearing from the chapel parking lot. They went back to Michigan and left me in Ohio.

I used to do doughnuts in icy fast food parking lots with my high school friends in that station wagon. But there went that station wagon and my parents and a great deal of my identity.

Every morning before we left for grade school and high school, my sleepy mother would pull all of her children to her and offer a dramatic prayer to God for our safety and safe return. She hugged us fiercely and kissed us each.

My dad's telling of that journey home from college is that mom cried. Sobbed. All the way back through Ohio and Indiana and Michigan. Eight hours because the speed limit hadn't gone up yet.

And now its just five minutes til she boards the bus. Will I always feel this lost when she disappears?



The bus missed our house. I almost got a picture of it disappearing without Jaelyn. We all piled into Minnie the minivan and zipped up the street.

Lynn wanted to make sure that the school new that the bus had, as we told Jaelyn, "gotten lost."

"Unh-uh." said Jaelyn, "You are not going in with me." Lynn agreed to just walk to the door. I was so relieved to hear Jaelyn WANT to find autonomy. It just feels too early. Too young.



Addison didn't feel great about his sister's disappearance either. This is him on the way home from dropping off Jaelyn. He's counting down the days (18) til his school starts as he eats an Eggo waffle across the counter from me.

Myrtle Beach

Every morning I woke at 5:30 and watched the sunrise over the sand and tall grass and worked on my screenplay. In the afternoons I built sandcastles, ran on the beach, played frisbee and bobbed in the waves with the kids.

I bought that shirt at a thrift store for .99 cents. Isn't that amazing? It's the real deal -- with a frayed Penneys tag from like 1956.

The smallest of the Leindecker cousins (Marcaus) woke up every morning by 6 so the cousins were up and going soon after. My in-laws like tv a lot more than we do so I found out about a frightening new incarnation of The Wiggles -- The Doodlebops. Think smurfs on heroine in Stepford. Ahhh the things that cousins pass on to each other...

that's our cottage where we all feasted on crockpots and ovens full of red meat and potatoes and hearty sauces and casseroles every night. In fact, we may be headed back to start cooking when this picture was taken...

Lynn read _Little Altars Everywhere_ & _The Flight of Peter Fromme_. She's so full of curiousity and conversation. Walks on the beach with her are always the best thing that could happen. Plus. She's beautiful.

One night I fell asleep on the porch. It felt like I was living inside of waves. Another night, just after I finished Marsden's _Fundamentalists and American Culture_, I sat on the beach and wondered what it had been like to be my grandparents who all chose to become fundamentalists as converts in the late 1940s and early 50s. The sound of the waves is the best sense memory from the whole week.