Kinderguardian

Leah graduated from kindergarten.

She and her classmates put on a performance, wherein they showed off their musical talents, and all the reading, math and Spanish they had mastered. 

She did a wonderful job

but was really only interested in showing off one thing.

Fortunately, Eddie didn't seem to mind at all. 

In fact, now that school is out, I think he's really looking forward to spending more time with her.

Halftime

Not sure when this happened - 

but today our Jolie turned nine. 

From a parent's perspective, I think nine is the most monumental childhood birthday, because it means we are halfway done raising her. Nine years ago today, she was born. Nine years from today, she will be an adult. As I told Jack, to put it in his terms -- The clock has run out on the first two quarters. Today is halftime. 

Like any committed coach, I think halftime should be spent reviewing the early plays of the game, and contemplating strategy for a victorious finish. So here goes - 

Jolie first joined our team as the most difficult player ever drafted. Colic, allergies, reflux, chronic ear infections. She spit up buckets, never slept for more than three hours at a a time, and screamed so often she was constantly losing her voice. Some days we didn't know whether to call the pediatrician, or an exorcist. 

By age two she completed her physical training by outgrowing most of her ailments, and was ready to be pulled from the bench and onto the field. Her helmet took the form of perfect blonde ringlets. I treasure my memories of Jolie's first quarter, because all the coaching was one-on-one. Jack and I were living a simple student life, and it completely revolved around our firstborn. We marveled at every play she made, and cheered on every step she took down the field. There is no counting how many hours we spent reading her books, pushing her on the swing, or following behind as she splashed along the Santa Barbara coast. 

At the end of the first quarter and into the second, Jolie was selected as team captain, as we drafted 3 new players into the league -

 #2, Leah Jane - 

#3, Calvin James - 

and #4, Eddie Jack - 

This forced her to take a salary cut, and her personal training hours were scaled back significantly. But, she quickly and naturally took on the role of star defensive player, always guarding and protecting the younger three.

Jolie calls the plays instinctively. In the mornings, when she hears Eddie cry, she scoops him out of his crib and entertains him while I take care of the others. When it's time to get on the bus, she helps Leah up and down the giant step, then walks her to class and won't let her leave without a kiss goodbye. After school she sits at the table with Cal and helps him practice his letters.

Not a day goes by that Jack and I don't wonder what we would do without Jolie in the league. As team owners, we have a hard time saying no when it comes to contract negotiations. Without even the help of an agent, her demands are almost always met - whether they be staying up late to watch Wipeout with Dad, signing up for hip hop lessons, or money to buy her own pink lemonade at Cafe Rio.

As we run toward the tunnel to celebrate her birthday, if a sideline reporter were to stop and ask how I'm feeling about the second half, I would say I'm optimistic, and a little emotional. Then I would go on a rant accusing the scorekeepers of speeding up the clock, because there is no way it has been 9 years already. 

These is my hashtags

Recently, I have developed a newfound appreciation for the book ‘These is my Words’ by Nancy Turner. If you haven’t read it, and I highly recommend you do, it’s the fictional story of Sarah Prine, a woman living in the Arizona territories in the late 1800’s. If you’re into things like Indian raids, nervous breakdowns, and amputation without anesthetic, and who among us is not, you’ll eat it up.

The book is written in the form of Sarah’s diary, the first entry dated when she was 17 and barely literate, and spans about 20 years.  By the time it ends, she has been married a time or two, birthed and buried babies, and finally learned how to put together an intelligible sentence. Then of course there is that dashing Captain Jack, swoon, but before I go spoiling the plot I will get to my point.

What I’ve come to appreciate recently about the book is that when it begins, and Sarah is an unattached teenage girl, the diary entries are frequent, and they are lengthy. She writes every day. Multiple times a day. Pages and pages. We get rich details of her daily life, challenges, dreams, joys.  

As time goes on however, and Sarah assumes the responsibilities of a wife and mother, the entries become increasingly brief and infrequent.

She will write once a week, then once a month, and soon only a few times a year, sometimes dropping in simply to mention that the Maldonado children have the measles, or that she is proud of the dress she sewed for her daughter, and of her son, who can now hammer nails into the wall, and “talk Mexican like he was a native.”

Then, another year will go by, and we will hear nothing except that, “A new decade will be upon us soon, and our family will greet it with another baby.”

My favorite excerpt from her journal, is this one:

“My life feels like a book left out on the porch, and the wind blows the pages faster and faster, turning always toward a new chapter faster than I can stop and read it” 

Yes Sarah! Katie Erb “likes” this.

My own book may be free from the threat of poisonous snakes, or tasked with churning butter and fighting off bandits with a shotgun, but the wind blows my pages still, at a rate of speed that never ceases to amaze me.

Like Sarah, the more deeply entrenched in family life I’ve become, the more brief and infrequent the chapters I write. I imagine the posterity of our generation digging up our memoirs, and finding lengthy blog posts that gave way to Facebook status updates and eventually, Instagrams. From these is my words, to these is my hashtags. 

The book helped put into perspective for me, the value of any effort we put into documenting the lives of our families - no matter how brief, infrequent, or inconsistent. Even a picture or two a year, accompanied by a few thoughts here and there, can add up to over the course of a lifetime to tell a remarkable story.

I think sometimes we're paralyzed by the idea of all or nothing - Either we keep an organized, current, consistent record of our lives and our children, or we don't bother keeping one at all. I think I would do well to take a page from Sarah's book and start embracing the concept of brevity. (Nevermind the fact that my post about brevity has ended up being eleven paragraphs long.)

When the pages of my life are blowing quickly in the wind, and I want to remember them as best I can, I'm going to upload for my posterity whatever is on my memory card, with nothing more than a word or two.

Like this. Here a few highlights from our last six months.

“My life is so full of wonderful things right now...Mama told me to make a special point to remember the best times of my life. There are so many hard things to live through, and latching on to the good things will give you strength to endure, she says. So I must remember this day."

-Sarah Prine, These is my Words.

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