"I'm Lizzing my bed"

Me: Maya, did you just use 'Liz' as a verb?

Maya: I'm Lizzing it. For Liz. It's her bed. I'm mating (making) it.

Liz my adventurous, intelligent, funny, intense, generous, and perceptive new friend from MSU came to visit us for the weekend. She's really from Southern California, staying on campus in East Lansing for the summer while she works towards her Masters in Music Ed.

Maya loved having a friend here...'sharing' her room, playing endlessly, reading books, pretending to be imaginary characters, being covered in stickers...

And in honor of her new friend, 'Liz' is now the name of Maya's 'dirl' (girl) in the doll house family. Last night, we brought Liz to meet Allie in Allendale (another friend from class). Maya's doll house is now 'Allie's house'....where Liz stayed last night.

So now, I keep hearing..."Mom, we do(go) to Talifornia?"

Sophia

She's smiling and starting to 'talk' so much more lately. Her eyes are just too sweet to even speak about. Part of me can't wait to 'know' her more...to hear her thoughts put into words. To watch her run and play with her big sister. To see them become friends.


But most of me just hopes I can be conscious enough, patient enough to be aware of the joy of now. To just delight in holding her...and watching her smiling sparkling eyes blinking at me...without feeling impatience or regret over the unfolded laundry, messy kitchen, and papers to write.

could you play the cello?

try it here

Thanks cousin Christine.

A 'conversation' over spanish rice.

Reading Lolita in Tehran...

...and reading Philosophy on my couch have been some of my more decadent pleasures this summer.

My grad class at MSU started last week. And I am loving it. Sometime I will encounter a class I don't enjoy so deeply, I am sure. But thus far, Music Learning Theory, Music Psychology, and Music Philosophy have been stimulating and fun. The almost two-hour drive (besides being expensive) is a peaceful and exhilarating space for me. Azar Nafisi's stories and her voice are captivating as she reads her memoir, 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' to me (through my cassette player). A wise and loving professor, her philosophies about the value and complexities of stories...her insights into the greatest works of English Literature and all of life are brilliant.

My feelings toward my Music Philosophy professor are similar. Without actually 'saying' a lot, she has invited us to think deeply, to question why we believe what we do about music, to ask important questions...

It seems that learning has the same effect on my mind as caffeine.

Our delightfully long weekend was spent...

...playing with Rudd cousins...watching fireworks on a grassy hill, singing and dancing in Go-Go's downstairs, practicing for the 'cousin show' that never happened, swimming, running, playing, eating out on the deck, art fair shopping with sisters...





...and saying farewell to the 'cottage,' the beautiful old Harmson A-frame nestled into the woods by a creek...just steps away from lake Michigan. Maya and Sophie and I escaped being soaked by the annual Fourth of July water fight. I was grateful that 'nap-time' provided an excuse for me to avoid getting wet. It was far more fun watching everyone else scream and surprise each other with balloons, water-guns and buckets of water.

The water fight of 2005
(including smaller versions of Emma, Liam, Jaelyn, & Addison)

2008

The chaos of chasing a silly two-year old, calming and feeding and diapering a 3-month old, and keeping track of all the 'stuff' that accompanies these tiny people provided a welcome distraction from the sadness of saying good-bye to this perfect place.
Even I have accumulated eleven years of memories here. But for Ryan, I know, this is the place of his childhood memories...snowy Christmases, hot mosquito-y summers playing by the creek, riding down an impossibly steep wooded hill in a wagon?, playing with cousins, visiting his Grandma and Grandpa...

"Nothing important is completely explicable."
- Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet