Loss

Today it was my son’s portable video game case with a bunch of cartridges in it that left home in Portland and didn’t make it to Albuquerque; Saturday it was a stuffed dragon of his younger brother’s that I had endowed with enough anthropomorphized sentiment because it — named Turnip, by my three year old, Turnip, he’s got a gift for names! had accompanied Rainer to preschool on that first insecure day, had been kissed goodnight — had endowed it with enough something that the idea of just buying a replacement felt guiltily wrong. Turnip set out for errands with us, and was unfindable at bed time, and several phone calls did not reveal it to have been turned in anywhere. Other stupid losses — the couch last week decided...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Sep 19, 2007 | 5 comments

Quote of the Day

“…because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply ‘question authority,’ you’ve got to speak with it, too.” – Taylor Mali, my new YouTube fascination, and the best distraction from the heat, the exhausted and whiny kids and their incomprehensible homework, the kitchen I’ve got to clean so I can make dinner so I can clean it again, and my frustration with a day that started out with such promise!

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Posted by Mara Collins on Sep 11, 2007 | 0 comments

Nitpicking

SO someone used the search term “hypographia” to get to my blog.  And I used the term to mean the opposite of “hypergraphia” which means the compulsion to write. There is a difference.  Greek – ‘hyper’ as a prefix  means ‘over’ ‘above,’ ‘beyond’, ‘hypo,’ ‘below’ ‘under’ ‘beneath’.  Right – hypergraphia, compulsion to write, hypographia, struggle to write?  Aren’t I clever?  Sure way to make people look for everything you say that is wrong and stupid.  Or just hate you.  See, high school experience as the walking dictionary taught me something.  But I hate that somebody might be searching for hypergraphia and find my...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Sep 2, 2007 | 1 comment

In Memoriam

On June 12th, my grandmother, Mary Bogart, passed away.  She would have been 100 on September 20th of this year, and we’re planning to be in New Mexico on that day for a family gathering and memorial service. When our first child was born, he had six great grandparents, all but my father’s parents who passed away my senior year in high school, and now our boys have only their great grandmother, my father-in-law’s mother.  I am so grateful they will have memories of all these people.  It also means that we’ve had more funerals in the last five years than in any other period in my life.  It doesn’t seem to get any easier. My mother asked me several weeks ago to write something for the collection of memories of my grandmother that...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 31, 2007 | 0 comments

Wasted on the Young

It’s funny, how, except for the occasional babysitter and the year of teaching the youth class at Sunday school, my life has had very few teenagers in it since I was one. It’s sort of a shock to be around them and have them move around you, not acknowledging your existence or at least your personhood, segregating themselves — and I find myself tempted to get in their faces “I remember being just like you.” Which would be about the worst thing, I think, I could say. Because the essence of youth is thinking you’ve invented the whole experience. Still, a recent dose of being around some Bahá’í youth, and having a facebook account, which seems a little like eavesdropping in a playground for teenagers, and the fact that my...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 17, 2007 | 0 comments

Children as Status Symbols

Listened to this lovely story on NPR about how having four children — and being able to send them to expensive private schools, hire consultants for potty training and teaching them to ride bicycles and buy fancy vehicles in which to transport them — is a symbol of status in some communities. I tried to keep it in mind as I sent my husband off to San Francisco for a conference on Linux, and spent the day trying to pack and ready the house so I could take my little status symbols camping for five days and not come home to a house where my feet stick to the floor from those same status symbols pouring their own orange juice. I tried to keep it in mind when I found myself having a full scale temper tantrum because the older status symbols wouldn’t...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 6, 2007 | 2 comments