All in family

School's Out ... Almost

Emily
family, life

School should be out, but it's not. We are paying a 90 degree summer rate for stolen snow days. Teachers, bookbags, and sneakers, fresh and new in August are tired and frayed, ready for a respite.

I cried every single day of first grade, even the last day of school. I was moved from classroom to classroom, my teachers passing me along like a white elephant Christmas gift, where the wrapping looks cute but the contents are not as expected. My brothers alternated the duty of escorting me from school bus to class as silent tears poured down my cheeks. After I was delivered, they bolted for refuge in the junior high building. I. Hated. School.

It got better along the years. I finally realized school played to my nerdiness. That along with the abundant library where you could read as many books as you wanted was almost a fair trade for the caged confinement of desks and chalkboards.

The Feral Bunny

Emily
family

My eight year old daughter wants a bunny. Not a stuffed bunny or a chocolate bunny or a little plastic hopping bunny. She already has all of those. She wants a real, live bunny. Very, very badly does Ryann want this bunny. I hate to sound so skeptical about my daughter and her baby Peter Cottontail. I have just come to understand that with children much like with their taller, grown-up counterparts, life is sometimes more about the getting than the actual having.

Here is the thing about little girls, they may be made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and perhaps this next part was omitted from the poem because it is difficult to find words that rhyme with “relentless without mercy,” but it doesn’t make it any less true. My daughter wants, even needs, a bunny.