Mundania 31

* September 11, 2001 didn't profoundly change the way I live. I didn't ignore it -- who could? Even with no internet access (we had only dial-up, and all the servers were jammed) and a tiny TV with very fuzzy access, I followed the story like everybody else. I watched and cried and held my three-month-old baby, shattered at the thought that there were evil people who wouldn't take mercy even on a mother with a child. A month later I walked through airport security, lugging Addie's impossibly heavy carseat, past soldiers with automatic rifles, on my way to my sister's wedding. I cried again.

But as for realizing life's uncertainty, facing the fact that there was evil in the world, and appreciating every day of life I had... I already lived like that. I lost two fathers by the time I was twenty. I grew up Baptist, which considers everybody capable of terrorism unless redirected at an early age. I come from a very down-to-earth family that doesn't rage against the cosmos very often. (Well, we do, but only about topics like stupid baby names and Daylight Savings Time.)

There aren't soldiers in my family, and DC, PA, and NY don't have anything to do with our daily lives.

I did let go of the thought that I need to do all the right things so God will protect me, and that it's up to me to defend God from critics. If He's the God of all the Universe, He can handle His own arguments.

Ultimately, the attacks rocked my world, but not my foundations.

* We start school today. I'm a mixture of excitement and dread. Addie and Stuart are doing fourth/fifth/sixth grade (homeschooling is too flexible for The System, which is part of my mission statement), and I'm feeling the weight of responsibility. We're doing two Alpha-Omega SoS classes and Teaching Textbooks (also computer-based) for math, freeing me of preparation and teaching in three subjects.

Daphne starts kindergarten/first grade/second grade. Maybe instead of "flexible," homeschoolers should be considered "fluid."

* Men who have time to listen to podcasts (as opposed to me, a woman who has no time to listen to podcasts): check out my friend Mike's "The Married Man Podcast" on Facebook. As he and his buddies say, they're not licensed counselors, but they ARE all happily married so that counts for something.

* In the last two weeks, Phillip's vocabulary has expanded from two words (Mama, Dada) to at least seven: ball, juice, bee, yeah, no (which he says as "mo"), cheese, fish, and -- my favorite -- "Diddy" for Addie.

* What he can't say is, "Oh, Mama, here's where I put the camera when I played with it last week and lost it."

* In other news, we lost the new camera we bought two weeks ago. This replaced the one we broke on vacation in June. Which replaced the one we lost back this winter. Now my friend Deidre understands why I reacted with horror when she offered to let me borrow their camera to take on a day trip with us.

-- SJ