Fair to Middlin'

Tonight was our last dinner at the beach, and as we gathered around the table, someone proposed that each person share the highlight of the week for them. Next it was the low point, which was sort of negative, but still interesting, and then five-year-old Richard suggested that we tell the middle of our vacation.

We asked him what he meant by that, and he explained that it was something kind of good, but kind of bad, too. He went first. "My middle was when a wave hit me in he face," he said.

Fifteen-year-old Treat was skeptical. "That was the mid-point of your week?" he asked. "Half of the week was worse than getting a face full of salt water? You couldn't have had a very good time."

The adults around the table wanted to jump in and defend Richard, but we were silenced by his explanation. "Treat," he said, "that was my middle because I was a big boy when the water hit me."

His answer clarified the task for us, and next Treat told us about the horseshoe crab tail that he carried all the way back from his bike ride only to discard it in disappointment when he found that everyone else had left the beach to go home.

Emily paused a little before she started. "What was my bittersweet moment?" she wondered aloud, and that word, bittersweet, really helped the rest of us get it. As it turned out, there was much more discussion about those in between times that each of us described than of any of the the highs or the lows, and those stories somehow seemed a lot more revealing and true, too.

What a good question, Richard!

Southern Fried!

This afternoon we were treated to a good old coastal thunderstorm. With the thermometer pushing the upper 80s earlier in the day, it sure felt like summertime, and even though that's why we chose this place for this vacation, I was reminded of what one of my students posted just a few days ago: Are you ready for summer? I need some spring first. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Anyway, the boomers passed through, and we ran around the house closing all the windows. Unfortunately, one of them was not securely latched at the top, and as I pulled it down, it swung in and smacked me squarely on the bridge of the nose. For a long moment all I could do was loosely cup my palms over my face and hope that nothing was broken. I barely had the ice pack applied before there was a loud crack, and Treat and Richard raced wide-eyed down the stairs to report a bright flash of light and the faint smell of smoke in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Next came Jordan out of the downstairs bedroom with the tale of a laptop power cable that had just popped and flamed. As the smoke alarms screamed, we checked the unfamiliar house for signs of hazard or catastrophe.

As best we could figure, lightning had struck very near. The TV was down for the count, and a few power cables were fried, but it seemed like it was only the things that were drawing power at the time of the surge that were damaged. Even so, I considered how quickly things can go south-- that window, like the lightning, hit hard and without warning, but when it was all over, it could have been so much worse.

Southern Fried

My grandmother was from Mississippi and her fried chicken was legendary. Whenever we visited her, she would make it for us to have on the three hour car ride back home. Once, she ran out of time and sent my grandfather to KFC to buy the chicken. Family tradition has it that the four-year-old me knew something was amiss from the first bite. "This is not Grandma's chicken!" I reportedly exclaimed.

I don't have any memory of the incident, but I always thought of it as a testimony to remarkable chicken rather than a remarkable palette. My grandmother died 39 years ago, long before I started cooking, and her chicken recipe was lost to me for about twenty years, until I had the occasion to ask her youngest sister about it on one of her rare trips up north. She told me how she made hers, and how their mother made hers, and that she reckoned my grandmother's recipe was somewhere close to in between.

It was almost another 19 years until I put her method to the test. Skillet frying a chicken just always seemed like a lot of trouble. But on this family vacation to South Carolina, we planned to celebrate my brother's birthday, and making fried chicken the way my grandma did seemed like a perfect menu choice.

My original idea was to use a deep fryer, but I left the cord at home, and so I was forced to fry it on the stove, just as she did. Honestly? I'm glad I did, because it turned out really well, and it wasn't the hassle I always thought it would be. In fact, I may not wait another 19 years to try it again.

Believe It or Not

I gave my students the option to keep posting throughout our spring break, and I was curious to see if they would and what they might say. I told them all it might be fun to check in with the group, especially since we wouldn't be seeing each other every day. It has been interesting-- kids have posted from Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Utah with tales of their journeys. Other kids have written about the adventures they've had at home, but it only took until today, Tuesday, for an underlying emotion to come to the surface. "I miss school," one person wrote, and after that, every kid who went online replied with how much they missed it, too.

And the best part is that I have it writing.

We Do This Because

Today was the beginning of Passover. My brother-in-law is Jewish, and we have shared a Pesach Seder dinner with my sister's family for the past few years. I like it; the customs, although unfamiliar, are comforting in their ritual, and I appreciate feeling connected to two thousand years of history, even if it isn't my own. Tonight was no exception-- my sister made a wonderful meal; my niece and nephew shone with the excitement of the festivities, and their dad led us through the traditions of the holiday.

We were raised Catholic, and although I have some serious issues with the church and its social policies, I always loved the rituals and traditions of mass and the sacraments. I know that they can be mystifying to the uninitiated, though. Years ago, a friend of mine, who happened to be Jewish, and I were invited to the wedding of another teacher on our team. The ceremony included a Catholic mass, and when the priest asked that the gifts be brought to the altar my friend looked at me in panic. "I left mine in the car!" he whispered.

Rubbernecking

Our trip down to South Carolina was about an hour and a half longer than we hoped, mostly because of traffic backups in North Carolina. Oh, we made the best of it: the weather was glorious, cloudless blue skies, warm sun, and cool spring air; the van was comfortable and of course, the company was excellent. Still, we were in a place that many travel, but few actually see, and details that anyone would have been forgiven for missing at 80 mph were unmistakable: the way the pavement gleamed, studded with the broken glass from countless accidents, the dead dog nearly obscured by the tall grass, it's tail fluttering gold in the patch of fluttering green.

The cause of our delay? Violent storms and tornadoes had ripped through the area yesterday, and their devastation was visible from the highway. In one spot, people wandered aimlessly through the shattered remains of a trailer park, presumably trying to help put somebody's life back together, and we on the interstate were a legion of vehicles, passing by in a column ten miles long, slowed to a crawl so that we could see.

I Love a Minivan

How did the minivan get such a bad rap? Almost all of my friends and family with kids are waaaay too cool for the grand caravan and its ilk; you should see the faces they make when someone suggests that they might like to own one. It's impossible to tell what provincial stereotypes they wrestle with, but as a mature adult without children, I am free from those surly bonds.

I have merrily rented a van or two every summer for the last eight in order to pile all the nephews in and head out for some awesome kids-and-aunties-only vacation. It's hardly surprising then that to me a minivan represents nothing other than enough space for everyone and the dog to hit the road for some F-U-N! What could be the stigma in that?