Short and semi-anonymous stories

 My kids are growing up, and I don't want to embarrass them....  But they have done some really grown-up things lately. 

My third grade kid was tired of both parents leaving for rehearsals and having to stay with sisters, so he insisted on coming with us for two weeks.  During these rehearsals and concerts, he was very quietly contained and spent most of his time studying the NIV and KJV versions of the Bible using a concordance and also pretending to be a pilot using all the cockpit controls to fly a plane.  He prepared for these caregully timed departures from home using his watch and packing the car with his study materials, cans of beans and vegetables,  utensils, and can openers, so he would have a dinner he could eat.  During some of the rehearsals,  he also befriended various people who weren't playing at the moment and took them on his airplane rides.  All of these friends he made were females in their 60s, and they seemed to enjoy him as much as he enjoyed them.

My newly minted teenager has been spending around 20 hours a day on the couch, which is ok in one sense, as they are doing online school. However, the grandparents came for two days this week for a construction project, and this kid jumped up and became an important part of the crew.  She helped with unloading the old cabinet, shelf demolition, installing the new cabinet, and organizing and reloading the new cabinet.  When the overhead cabinets needed new hinges, she was part of the unload/re-drill/organize/clean/reload team.  But most amazing of all, she took it upon herself with no hint or suggestion from anyone else to plan and prepare dinner for the seven of us both nights, taking into consideration everyone's various dietary needs, which include vegan, FODMAP, and gluten-free.  She wrangled assistants of various ages to care for things like run to the store for green onions, set the table, cut vegetables for the salad, and wash a pot between preparing of different dishes.  She overlooked no detail and made lovely, large meals.  Also when I was up at two in the morning feeling unwell, she again went nto caregiver mode and  helped me find out which medication I could take and got it out for me.

My first grader has been quite hard to feed, as she mostly only likes what she school cafeteria serves plus sweets.  She will often skip a meal at home due to her strong feelings about this.  Last night, however, she was proactive.   She heard the ice cream truck in the neighborhood, pulled out her little wallet of earnings from some special chores a couple of weeks ago, and ran over to the park to make her purchase.  She ate her ice cream dinner out of doors so as not to drip on the floor, then put the stick and wrapper in appropriate receptacles instead of on the floor or on the furniture.  Then she checked the time, saw that her bedtime approached,  brushed her teeth, and went to bed without being asked.

Little Flash Backs

 I am sure this experience is common to many people, perhaps even most, and I think it has been common to me my whole life.  So common, in fact, that it barely registered.  But lately for some reason I have been noticing it more pointedly and thinking about it.  I mostly seem to pay attention to it when I am teaching.  I don't know if that means it happens more frequently when I am in the middle of a lesson or if it just means I am more aware of it under those circumstances.

What I am referring to is tiny, brief flash backs to moments or places from my earlier bits of life:

I am hidden up in my tree, sitting on a leafy oak branch in my back yard while my thoughts run expansively and relentlessly in my shaded and slightly uncomfortable retreat.... 

I am walking into my violin lesson with great anticipation at the Dallas Suzuki Institute and noticing the industrial white walls and industrial grey carpeting....  

I am in my Austin grandparents' backyard on a cool day looking at the laundry line stretching down towards the creek.... 

I am sitting in the fourth and fifth grade Sunday school class on the raised wooden platform behind the office dividers, listening to other kids struggling to read the big words and long sentences of a Bible passage, feeling both confused about why it was difficult for them and unneccesarily pleased with myself at my own good reading skills... 

I am on the play structure at preschool, feeling panicked about the wind and holding my hair so it wouldn't blow away....  

I am riding the bus in Aspen to an early morning rehearsal and smelling the cold, fresh, mountain air as my fingers freeze, feeling so very alive....

I am riding in the car with my Kindergarten friend Erin, along with her mom and younger twin brothers Chad and Derek, smushed into their tiny air condition-less car on a hot day; the windows are down and I feel like I am gasping for air, because the wind rushes in.... 

I am walking to the back pack cabinet at the end of the school day in fourth grade; some boys tell me they looked through my bag - my face turns hot and my pulse throbs in my ears at the invasion of my privacy....

I am in the sandbox in my back yard as it gets dark, and a large toad hops in and terrifies me, as it seems nearly as large as my head....

I am in the upstairs lounge of a dorm at Texas Christian University on a hot summer evening, struggling to play the complicated scales of the Suzuki Etude quickly from memory with the practice cassette my teacher had sent along....

I am hiking 17 miles at Mt. Rainier with Jared and an out-of-town friend in less-than-optimal shoes with scanty provisions while silently experiencing the nausea of my first pregnancy, but I am tough....

I am sitting in the shaded and peaceful dining room of our Birmingham condo reading some great and difficult literature and listening to some rather ancient choral music while Jared was working long hours, filled with lots of big and mostly happy feelings....

I don't always know why these tiny vignettes intrude.  On occasion they are tied in some way to what the student and I are working on at the moment.  I imagine that the proverbial life flashing before the eyes just before one's demise might be a string of these tiny encoded glimpses.  I see them quite a lot now, but don't suppose I am dying.