It was a butterfly! Apparently when we'd had the sliding glass door open yesterday to let some of this surprisingly delightful weather in, we'd also unwittingly let in a lovely little butterfly that got caught between the curtains and the door when we closed it. So after the girls woke up, I showed it to them and we let it free.
It was certainly a relief to know that butterflies can make the same scruffling noises as a mouse. And that we wouldn't have to be placing nasty glue traps around and explaining to the girls that mice really are pests and not cute little furry pets with families and homes and stuff.
Now on to the post that I started writing a couple of days ago and never got around to finishing...
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"Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination."
Robert Fulghum
I love this quote... Among many others... I'm a bite of a quoteaholic, I admit it. When I sat down to write this post, I went looking for a quote about crayons, and came up with this! Yay!
So the school year is upon us! As I mentioned in my previous post, KayKay is now in Second Grade. I think I may have also mentioned how incredulous I am at the fact that she's in SECOND GRADE.
Second Grade. Whoa.
Talk about newness. This is the season of freshly sharpened pencils, and getting back into routines. The season of learning new stuff and making friends. Of uniforms (Ugh. I hate uniforms... But that's another story for another time). Of new backpacks packed with new notebooks. Of adjusting to a new teacher. It truly is a season of newness, both for KayKay and for me.
One such new thing this year is that KayKay has a male teacher for the first time. I requested him at the suggestion of KayKay's First Grade teacher, Ms. H. I have been able to get to know him a little, and he seems like a wonderful man who truly loves children and teaching. He reads them poetry every day! And sings songs to them every day! Wow. I must say, I'm impressed already. I am thrilled for her and enthusiastic to see what Mr. H is going to do with my girl.
I'll be honest, for me, it was the shopping for new school supplies was always my favorite part of the school year, at least until I hit college... And especially in high school. The fact that the supply shopping was over before school started should tell you something about my feelings toward school. What can I say, I'm just not into cliques and fashion wars. And teachers who are not kind.
Anyway...
There is nothing quite like a brand new box of (at least) 64 Crayola crayons, all arranged into a giant rainbow and laid out like little jewels just waiting to be discovered. And having an excuse to buy them again is heavenly. It brings on a nostalgia that I can't even begin to explain. As well as probably being more fun for me than it is for KayKay. *Grin* But if it is, it's just BARELY more fun, because she absolutely LOVES buying school supplies.
I was a prolific artist as a child, and though they became (and still are) my preference when creating (drawn) art, I still have a strong attachment to the feel and look and smell of a freshly opened box of crayons. It fairly shouts possibilities in rainbow form, of newness incarnate, of hope in color.
Speaking of color, oddly enough, just after beginning this post a few days ago, I took a break to read Meghan Arias' blog, Pearl, The Prickly Pear, and she happened to link to this post dedicated to color by This Is Yellow. All I can say is, AH-MA-ZING. Oh, my goodness. This is my life, in color. And as Meghan said, how I want to write when I grow up. Read these few words and tell me its not poetry on the page:
"What I've noticed lately about all the bits and bobbles I collect and bring home to arrange and rearrange, is that each item is bursting with color, and each color does more than just compliment the one next to it; one color converses with another. And if these colors are more than just the pigments my eyes and mind recognize, if they are tiny histories packaged in the tomato red spine of a classic book or the grainy brown wood of family built furniture, the pieces I choose to surround myself with are telling a constantly evolving story of which I am a part."
Wow. And it's so true, at least for me. My home is an ocean awash with color. Literally, as I am channeling ocean colors in the last couple of years and believe I have found them to be my soul's color palette. My living room is a soft aqua that runs into the palest celery green of our dining room, bursting with sand colored couches and accents of lilac and slightly deeper green. It fairly sings to me of refreshing and the calm quiet of a vibrant soul at peace. And these colors, they tell the story of my life, my children, my home, who I am at heart. Some days I'm gray, but you'll never find it, because most days I'm aflutter with varying shades of sunshine and sea and everything in between.
Color is truly a defining force in my life. I feel fortunate to have realized that, because I think some people go through their whole lives without ever realizing the effect that color has on them. That box of 64 crayons is the axis on which so much of my life tilts. Even my closet is a rainbow. The Daddy teases me endlessly because of the fact that I actually do organize my closet in rainbow fashion. Yes, I admit it. And silly though it may be, there is a deep satisfaction in seeing that black bleeding into white which melts into peach and bursts out with orange that sings hot pink and then deepens to red which blends into purple and brightens to lavender that sighs into the blue of the sky and then flows into navy and sends its small fleet into an ocean of aqua that washes up onto lime and grass and the gray-green of creeping moss...
I admit, I wear aqua and pink most regularly, but I have the rainbow, because I never know when I might need to wear a responsible navy or flamboyant mandarin. I don't have much red, though. It's only in the last year that I've finally found a shade of red that doesn't make me look as though I belong in the mortuary. I don't decorate with it, either. Or black, really, although there are a few pieces.
My life is color. It's sherbet, and just as cool and darn near as tasty. How many childhood memories do I have tied to that certain shade of golden afternoon that smell of fresh-cut grass and lemonade? How many painted in wides swatches of sparkling midnight blue and smokey cloves from those youthful days when sunset marked beginnings instead of endings? How many now dripping in the quiet violet of naps with my girls in our big bed and the sweet, ageless comfort of their soft pink bodies snuggled up close to me?
The Ladybug just said to me, "Mommy, I'n yellow. Even with a purple tummy." As she stands in her lavender shirt behind the yellow screen here at the McDonald's Poo Place and begs me to "find" her. And I find her small and happy and bright, like a baby chick in a field of forget-me-nots.
So tell me, what color is your life? Just one, or like mine, as many as there are hues? (Although I do admit to having many variations on a theme...)
Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No.
Pablo Picasso
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