Not All Who Wander Are Lost

It's Only Natural

It was one of those perfect almost-cloudy spring days today.

After class Darcie and I skipped the faculty meeting and took my advisees out for chinese and sushi; the school gives us ten bucks per kid each trimester, and my boys had decided to save up for a major feast. Dustin, finally off disciplinary probation but under the stress of not knowing whether his grandparents will pay for him to come back next year, cooed at the baby and laughed at everything and had a grand old time and kept saying so; his roommate, Jerry, a Hong Kong native, helped us order. Sam had never seen wasabi in real life; we managed to convince him to eat ate a whole cube of the stuff a laJackass: The Movie, and then he and Alex M. dared each other to eat the octopus, deciding ultimately to split it, but Sam had no success convincing either Alex M. or Alex F. to take him up on a similar challenge to eat the giant hot red peppers in the General Tso's. The leftovers will be gone tomorrow, but the memories will sustain us all summer.

Bellies still mostlyfull, instead of supper we went out to the newly-rebuilt Creamie for chocolate malteds and bright rasberry sorbet for the baby which turned her lips and tongue a flaming, glowing lipstick red. There and back the deepening breeze scattered pink and purple treepetals over the car like a blizzard of bright birthday tissue paper. The baby said moo to the cows we passed on the way back, and played quietly with me in bed for almost an hour after her bath before finally rubbing her eyes, a signal for lights and daddy out. There are no words for the way she is becoming deliberate about her movements, her attention, her choices -- a real person.

And now in the yard just behind the tennis courts I can hear the mother killdeer screaming her shrill cries at the darkening baseball game as it encroaches upon her inopportunely chosen nest up against the court fence at the top of the ballfield spectator hill. Last year she laid her eggs on the sandy lawn outside the administration building; this year's four tiny beige-and-speckled-grey eggs stand out no better in the dark gravel than they did in the sand. Kids threaten her with carelessness and ungentle curiosity. Yet she persists, because she, too, holds spring's hope.

Bonus points, as always, to anyone who can correctly identify the song used for today's blogtitle.