Lazy Saturday Morning

It seems like we’ve spent every possible moment in the last few weeks wrapping up our summer house projects in preparation for the house guests. Now that their visit is over and done, I feel a weight lifted.

As I said before, it was a nice visit. There were some cultural differences and I found myself getting a little resentful on Thursday morning – but pulled it together and the visit ended well.

This morning, we’re lounging for the first time in a while. There are dishes to be tended to eventually, and, yes, I’m quite behind on weeding in the garden, but there’s no imminent pressure to pull it all together. I should try to make it to the grocery store, too.

The summer has been plugging along nicely for the kids. C has been sailing and will be a couple of regattas over the next few weeks. M has been in a theater camp, and his performances are done tonight. S has been enjoying the beach and the playground and the library with our sitter and the sitter’s daughter.

C finished HP7 yesterday. M has completed six chapters thus far. He’s intimidated by the size of the book. I am considering photocopying chapters so he can read it in less intimidating chunks.

We’re having a couple of families over for dinner tomorrow. We know both well enough that we don’t have to stress out making the house pristine again. The kids will play well together in the yard while the adults hang out in the screened porch sipping wine. I am looking forward to that.

We have a few more weeks before the trip west. It’s started to stress me out a bit. C is counting down the days with excitement – I try to hide the dread on my face. My sister apparently is speaking to me again, yet I have not actually spoken to her. She sent me an email saying she was going to start answering the phone and expecting me to hop to it and call her right away. Um, no. We’ve exchanged a few emails, but the visitors were a nice excuse not to perpetuate her warped view that we all revolve around her.

Yesterday’s helicopter crash was a little surreal to me. The ‘copters crashed in a park that used to be the site of the local Indian school…directly to the east of the park is the VA hospital where my dad resided (inappropriately – because of his wife’s lack of ethics) for several years, and directly to the north of the park is my high school. There are high rise buildings just across the street and so it’s very lucky that the helicopters didn’t hit them, or land in a busy street, or closer to the VA, or the high school.

(The crash occurred while the two news helicopters were trying to follow a police chase. There’s a news report this morning that local police might charge the suspect in the chase with murder because of the crash. I think that’s ridiculous. The helicopters were not helping the police with the chase in any way, but were competing against one another in pursuit of sensationalist news.)

Between the helicopter crash at the site of the old Indian school, a visit with our guests on Thursday afternoon to a local historical site, and as we plan some of our trip to include some Native American areas, I've been thinking about the old Indian schools and how our government used to separate families and send the kids to boarding schools for assimilation. There are some interesting Web sites and articles on the topics.

I have a lot of memories of the mostly Navajo kids who were behind the chain-link fences at that school next to my high school. It never seemed right to me; these kids would look so sad, looking out on us walking to or from our school. I tried to avoid walking by at times I knew the residents/students would be out in the yards. Most of the adults around us still tried to tell us that this was "for their own good."

Though this particular school remained open until 1990, I'm glad the schools are long since closed. There is still much understanding that needs to be acquired and healing to occur around this portion of American (and not just western American) history.