Last is a Place

Owen is the child in the red shirt.

Kindergarten Cross Country Meet

Fall 2006



      Our lives this fall have revolved around Cross Country.  Joel is coaching and Owen is running and Sarah and I are attending the meets and cheering on the team and helping tote and schlep and do whatever else we need to do to try to keep the Sunday afternoon races running smoothly.  My main job has been to stand under the tent and yell at kids to "cut it out." It's a multi-purpose phrase that works well in a variety of situations. This is Joel's first year as the head coach of the cross country team and Owen's fifth year running.  Owen is doing great this season and finished his last one mile race with a PR of 7:21.  Joel has done a fabulous job coaching and attributes all of his success to "setting low expectations."  (Those are his words, not mine).

     Owen first participated in cross country when he was in Kindergarten.  He was five years old and looking back on it now it was kind of ridiculous that we "encouraged" him to run.  He wasn't ready.  He hadn't found his competative spirit - heck, he couldn't even tie his own shoes.  But, encourage we did and Owen finished his first CC meet in something like 36th place - right in the middle of the pack.  By the time his third CC meet rolled around, Joel and I were kind of hopeful that Owen was getting the hang of running and competing.  He started the race with the rest of the pack and as he disappeared over the hill, we (Joel and I) were left to wait anxiously until he came back into view again to run towards the finish line.  The minutes dragged by and while hoards of other children reappeared and crossed the finish line, there was no Owen. Eventually, we saw him pop up over the top of the hill.  He was run/walking in sort of a zig-zag pattern across the course and he certainly didn't seem to be in any hurry to finish.  Joel and I started cheering for him but he was still so far away we knew he couldn't hear us.  As he meandered toward the finish line, kids continued to pass him.  Joel and I screamed for him to pick up the pace . . . he slowed down.  As he got almost to the finish line a wave of relief washed over me because there were still three kids behind him and I took some comfort in the fact that at least he wouldn't finish last.  And then Owen stopped running.  He just stopped.  While he stood there - only feet from the finish line -  those three kids that were behind him ran right past him. Only then did Owen start jogging his way across the finish line.  He finished in last place.



Sarah. The day her brother finished last.
She didn't care.

As we rode home with a fairly content Owen in the back seat (and oymygosh how could be content because he just finished last!!!), Joel and I were wondering what the heck just happened out there on the cross country course?  How had Owen managed to finish in last place?  What the two of us didn't know was that Owen had finished in last place on purpose - because "last is a place" he explained to us, just like first is a place.  He knew from the moment the race started that he wanted to finish in last place and he worked really hard to make sure that happened. Of course, we all look back on this now and laugh - even Owen, who no longer thinks that last is the place he wants to be.


Scenes from a Sip-N-See

     My niece, Delaney, was the honored guest at her very own sip-n-see this afternoon.  It was a lovely party.  If you're unfamiliar with this tradition, a sip-n-see is a baby shower that's held with the baby in attendance.  The "sip" part refers to the fact that punch (sometimes spiked) and light refreshements are served while everyone takes turns "seeing" the baby.  There are also presents.  It's a lot of fun.

 



The After Party
(with lots of fun bows and hats)

     When Sarah Grace and I got home this afternoon, she asked if we could look at the pictures from her sip-n-see.  The Tullahoma Ladies hosted one for her when she was a teeny tiny girl.

Sarah's Sip-n-See
May 2004

I'm pretty sure this is the day that
Owen decided his Uncle Victor needed
to marry Aunt Stacey.
She spent most of the afternoon entertaining him.





Harvest Gold




The Electrolux

   Our stove went out last week which means that our cosmetic kitchen makover now has the potential to morph into something more elaborate. On Saturday afternoon we took a trip to the appliance store to see what's available in the world of freestanding ranges.  Joel's favorite is this Electrolux range (photo left). It comes with "wave-touch" controls that light up when you pass your hand over them and also includes a "perfect turkey" feature. My favorite was the Bosch range (see photo below). Its clean lines and straightforward utilitarian design give it a timeless look.  I was completely sold on this model too until the salesman told us that Bosch is a German company. As he (the salesmen) continued to talk about quality engineering and product longevity, the realization hit Joel and I at about the same time - we'd be buying a German oven. Not sure that's the kind of mental image I want to build my kitchen around. We're still contemplating our options at this point, although it probably won't be the Bosch.   

    

The Bosch



The Harvest Gold

     As a point of reference, I grew up in a house that had "Harvest Gold"  kitchen appliances (most houses built in the early 1970s were graced with either a "harvest gold" or "avocado" color scheme). This photo of my mom and me was taken in March 1977.  I was five years old and inflicted with the chicken pox and we were baking a cake to get my mind off the itching and the scratching. It worked too, at least as long as I was using the mixer. What's relevant (to me) about my parents' harvest gold stove is that it kept working years longer than my mother wanted it to. She finally gave this stove away in the mid-1990s and replaced it with a black stove. She also updated the dishwasher, refrigerator, floor and cabinets - and then they moved.  I'm actually wondering if this stove is still out there somewhere in working order.  It was ugly but well made.

Random Footnote:

     The wallpaper in my mother's kitchen was very similar to the wallpaper in the kitchen on the television show "Three's Company."  I had a huge crush on Jack Tripper when I was little and I always thought it was pretty cool that we (me and Jack) had the same kitchen wallpaper.  I guess it also means that the orange-green-brown plaid wallpaper was fashionable which is more than a little scary.  But hey, who am I to criticize bad wallpaper, right?  http://adayinthelife-julie.blogspot.com/2011/01/make-it-so.html

Baby Laundry

Some of Sarah's baby things

that we're sharing with her new cousin.

These little side-snap kimono shirts are

my absolute favorites.




      It's one of the most soothing things for me - washing and drying and folding loads of baby laundry immersed in the smell of Dreft and bleach and surrounded by stacks of tiny onesies and gowns and sleepers (especially those that are tinted pink).  Having  a niece is going to be great fun, I know it already.  Don't misunderstand, I adore my son and my nephews, but there is just something about little girls.  Maybe it's all the pink and princess-play and polka-dots.  I feel so blessed to be an aunt again.  What a gift to get to share in their lives.  As for me, I have been on a bit of a shopping spree this weekend.  Judge me if you will, but I cannot stop myself from buying pink sleepers and rompers and bath towels and socks and I may (or may not) be throwing in a few shameless plugs for myself (see photo, right).  Welcome to the family Miss Delaney.  We are so very glad that you're here.

Owen and Sarah

with Delaney Alexis Vallejo

who arrived on September 8, 2011.

What It's Meant For Us

After hearing about Pat Head Summitt's diagnosis of early-onset dementia last week I thought I'd share a little bit about my own family's experience in dealing with dementia.

   When my mother was first diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1993 she had a whole host of symptoms.  Fatigue, nerve pain, spasticity, loss of balance and slurred speech were her most noticable problems.  She was also having some trouble with her memory, something that her neurologist defined as cognative impairment, but given all of the other symptoms, her memory (or lack thereof) wasn't the focus of our attention at the time.  She compensated for her cognative impairment pretty well for a number of years. She carried a notebook with her and made lists upon lists of things she needed to do and she hung sticky notes up all over the house.  She's now closing in on twenty years of living with her MS diagnosis and at this point her once defined "cognative impairment" is now officially "dementia". It's her most problematic MS symptom.  I wrote the following entry on her Caringbridge site in April of 2010.  ________________________________________________________________

One of the interesting things they are doing with my mom at Stallworth is working on a memory book.  This isn't a scrapbooking kind of thing but a very utilitarian binder that contains an April calendar page and a copy of her daily schedule including the names of the people she met and worked with that day. When I was there yesterday I noticed that there were sheets of blank notebook paper in the back so I decided to write her a note to let her know that I had been there and where we all were and when we would be back.  Today when I went in I found that her therapist had put my letter in the binder which I guess means she likes the fact that I wrote it. Sarah was with me today so in addition to leaving her a note telling her that we'd had dinner with her and that I would be there for lunch tomorrow, Sarah left lots of hearts and butterflies and "I love you's" all over the page.

   Yesterday was a really good day.  My mom was more alert and focused than I have seen her in a very long time.  We had a conversation about the fact that my dad has gone to Knoxville for a few days to take care of a some things and that she is in a rehabilitation facility and not a nursing home.  She said she had noticed that some of the other patients seemed much younger than her and it made sense to her that they are all there recovering from some type of automobile accident, just like she is. Like I said, it was a good day.

    Today was a more typical day.  She was very tired this afternoon and her responses to many of my questions and attempts to converse with her were flat, for lack of a better word.  She had more trouble focusing. She has always had good days and bad days (cognatively speaking) and in the last year or so she has fallen into a pattern of one good day followed by several down days - it's just that yesterday's "good" was off the charts for her and as hard as I tried to not let it happen I was hopeful.   I wanted her to smile at me and reach her hand out to me when I walked in the room today like she did yesterday and she didn't. I'm grateful that I had yesterday though because we really did have a pretty good afternoon.

     As for my mom, when anyone asks her how she's doing she always says she's doing fine.  Always.  The answer never changes.  And I guess that's kind of where my head is tonight and really has been all day because she's not fine, not really. She's in a wonderful hospital and she's getting excellent care but the fact is that there's no amount of physical or occupational therapy that can now undo what the MS has done to her in the last seventeen years.   And I'm sad and I miss her.  I miss her a lot.

"Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
And sings the tune
without the words
and never stops at all."
                      - Emily Dickinson

The Unknown Unknowns

"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know." - Donald Rumsfeld, Former US Secretary of Defense      This quote, or some version of it, has been running through my head the last few days.  Owen started fifth grade a few weeks ago which means he's moved to the Upper School.  We've been told that things are different up there - less parent involvement, more student responsibility and an emphasis on being organized. It seems that organization is the key to survival in this brave new middle school world.  If you look to the photo on the right, you will see that "we" faced some challenges in the organization department during the first few days of school.   My ten year old was handed a large box of school supplies and sent to his locker and told to put them away - and this is exactly how a ten year old puts a box of stuff in his locker.  Very age appropriate but a little on the messy side. After a trip to Staples, Owen conceded to let me come upstairs with him after school so that I could help him get his locker in order. I had been forbidden from going upstairs with him before school started because he wanted to handle everything all on his own.  Whether my son believes it or not, I am quite adept at organizing things and I was more than happy to offer him some help.  Of course, I also gleaned information from some trusted sixth grade parents who were more than happy to get us started off on the right foot.  His locker (the last time I saw it) looked like this.  Greatly improved.  He was happy with it too, which is a complete bonus as far as I'm concerned.     As far as Owen's adjustment to Middle School life (and mine, lest we kid ourselves that he is the only one making adjustements), I would have to say it's a work in progress.  After being spoiled with having little to no homework in 3rd and 4th grades, he's coming home with mounds of homework.  It's going to take some getting used to for all of us.  He's also having to learn the personalities and quirks of seven different teachers (yes, he has a different teacher for each subject he takes).  It's like high school in some ways.  The positive side of all of this is that he's going to perfect his organizational skills and learn to move from class to class with ease long before he leaves SBA for high school.  The negative, he's ten and the lack of structure is making it difficult at times to stay on top of things.  I think fifth grade is going to be an adjustment for all of us. I have the distinct feeling that we've got a lot of "Unknown Unknowns" out there just waiting to trip us up - which is intimidating to say the least.  It may be a bumpy year but we've got our fingers crossed that things will go well enough for him.      On a side note, some of the fifth grade parents have been having some hilarious therapy sessions on facebook at night.  There's something about feeling like you're all in the trenches of math homework together that lowers the stress level of these later than usual homework nights.  And yes, I do realize that this is just fifth grade and that I need to get a grip and take a step or two back from the process and just let things happen - but that's hard to do sometimes.  Yet another thing that is a work in progress.     Lastly, there is Sarah, our second grade child who is oh so helpful with all of this fifth grade stress (ha!).  She bounces around the house announcing how easy her homework is and how much fun she's having in second grade.  Love that in-house sibling support.

A New School Year

First Day of Fifth & Second Grades
August 11th, 2011

Paulette Elementary
First Day of school ever on August 8th, 2011

My children returned to school last week. They were excited to be going back to familiar surroundings - friends, teachers, classrooms.  Several hundred miles away, Paulette Elementary held it's first day of classes in Union County, Tennesse. Paulette Elementary was built on the piece of property where my grandparents house and store once stood.  It's also the first elementary school to be built in Union County since 1970, fourty-one years ago.  I tried to find a picture of the completed school building, but so far I've been unsuccessful.  I did find a photo of the almost finished building though.  

     At the risk of throwing too many important milestone dates in at once, I feel the need to mention that last week (August 10th) was also the third anniversary of my grandmother's death.  My grandmother, Cleo Hurst, died peacefully in her sleep in the house she had called home for over 60 years in the same room where my grandfather, LJ Hurst, died peacefully in his sleep in the summer of 1982.  I haven't driven out to see the new school.  I could blame it on logistics - it's a long drive from Nashville to Union County - but the truth is that I just haven't had the strength to do it.  I know that all of the places that I love are gone - the house and barn and the store building where I spent so much of my childhood with my mother and grandparents.  I can't imagine driving around the bend in the highway and not seeing the roof of my grandparent's house and the circle drive and the walnut trees and the green stretches of open fields.  It's good that the county has a new school - they desperately needed one - and I hope nothing but the best for all the new Paulette Panthers who are excitedly walking the halls of their brand new school building this week. I am sad for what I have lost in the process though. 

The Hurst Place
May 2008