Category Archives: Home & Family

My kids had a quietly amazing conversation on the
drive to school this morning. Jessica is taking 11th grade Honors Biology
and has been studying genetics for some weeks. She was studying
for a quiz and had a question about Punnit Squares.
Paul had studied them in 7th grade last year. Watching the two of them
with their heads together over her laptop working out a genetic inheritance
problem was a real delight, if somewhat humbling. First, I barely remembered what
a Punnit Square was! Second, they were not squabbling. (This in itself is a minor
miracle.)

I pray that my kids grow up to have the loving and supportive
relationship that has developed between my brothers and me. It is a source
of stability and comfort to be in good communication with both of the other
people who share my particular family context.

Today is Halloween, probably the most popular American holiday on which
everyone has to work. I have seen some costumes at work already (besides
my own!) but I am sure to see more when I go to the cafeteria for lunch.

My daughter went to High School today as a Clever Gipsy Girl (a character in one of
the songs she is learning). We spent hours at the Goodwill used clothing
store yesterday finding bits and pieces of things to adapt for her costume.
She has a grey underskirt, orange and red overskirt, a sheer green shawl around
her waist, a silver concha belt also, a white lace top, a red paisley pashmina shawl,
black boots, and lots of necklaces and bracelets. She put on lots of eye makeup and
is having a wonderful time sashaying and jingling around campus.

My Middle School son is the character Yoda from Star Wars. We bought the costume
ready made and then had to look all over for his heart’s desire – a green plastic
lightsaber that makes noise. Of course, as soon as it left the store the light burnt
out but he still likes it.

We were going to create a haunted house at home but school activities got in the way
so we will just have the standard bowl of candy when the little ghosts and goblins
come with bags to fill tonight.

I was just over at the Peet’s
coffee bar in Sun’s Menlo Park building 18 and saw that they
were selling individually wrapped

Rice Krispies Treats. I had an immediate flash of memory from camping
at the
Lair last month:

At the end of lunch one day, we saw two young Camp Blue staffers skittering through the dining
hall holding a huge thick droopy sheet of yellow stuff and eating it
from either end. Someone in the kitchen had made a whole pan-full of
Rice Krispies Treats just for the two of them. They were giggling and tearing
off great chunks for anyone who wanted to share. Their pleasure in the experience
of having way too much of a sweet usually available in little squares was
a joy to watch.

The delight of watching teenagers taking charge of themselves, creating their
own style, and enjoying life
is one of great pleasures of parenting. As the Mom of two teens, one of them
only a week into teenagerness, I am having fun.

Monday was Jessi’s first day as a Junior in High School.
Harker has a matriculation
ceremony, speeches, and pictures the first day so everyone dresses up.
On Tuesday, we dropped Jessi off curbside at Harker where two friends were already waiting.
They had, of course, coordinated locations by cellphone on the drive to school.
Sinead’s curly hair was topped by lime green feathered
deelybobbers. Jessi, whose hair and Sinead’s hair have recently both been dyed a
kind of plum brown, was wearing her bright orange

Converse sneakers with cat socks. The three girls were bouncy with happiness:
delighted to see each other and to be starting a new year.

Jessi is taking an all-honors and Advanced Placement load (Pre-Calculus, Biology,
Latin III, English, US History, Graphic Arts, Cantilena harmony choir, weight lifting
and wrestling) plus preparing for her karate black belt exam. She will also need
to decide where to apply for college. Still, Jessi is having a great time and is very
much in love with learning.

My son Paul started 8th grade yesterday at
Jordan Middle School (Palo Alto)
and today he turned 13. He spent the summer reading

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, plus the Mildred D. Taylor series
that he started with
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry in school last year, plus re-reading John D. Fitzgerald’s

The Great Brain series. John even got Paul to read
The Stainless Steel Rat but Paul said he did not like it.

Pretty good for a boy who spent two years in schools
for dyslexics and learned to read in 4th grade!
Paul had a good summer, including summer school, a SCUBA lesson at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and camping for a
week at the
Lair of the Golden Bear U.C. Berkeley alumni family camp.

Jordan Middle School has been wonderful for Paul. He is in a special three year program
(6th through 8th grade) for kids with behavioral and cognitive learning disabilities.
After so many years in the wrong school, finding the right school for my boy has been
a great joy. Paul works very hard, gets good grades, and is just blooming. He is sad
that his best friend went to Palo Alto
High School a year before him but he is learning how to keep up a relationship
with someone outside of his class and he is making new friends too. We all have hopes
for a good year.

Jessi starts her Junior year in at
The Harker School (San Jose) next week. Besides taking Advanced Placement or Honors
everything, singing in the Harker Conservatory, wrestling, testing for her karate
black belt, and staying on the
Honor Roll, her job this year is to decide where to apply to college. Eeek!

Harker is very serious about college applications and they seem to do
well on acceptances to preferred schools. Jessi told me that one of the
college advisors last year said he would come to school in a full Scottish
kilt with all the trimmings if his group all got accepted to their first
choice schools. They did and he did.

Harker has started planning for their annual weeklong college trip to the
East Coast. So far, they plan to visit Boston College, Boston University,
Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Wellesley, Brown, Yale, NYU,Columbia, Princeton, the
University of Pennsylvania,George Washington, American, Georgetown, and
Johns Hopkins University.

We have been reading the
Fiske Guide to Colleges. Jessi is interested in schools with both great
academics and a superb music program so we requested that Harker also consider
visiting Oberlin College, Carnegie Mellon Univ. (CMU), West Point (United States
Military Academy at West Point), and St. Olaf College. We are also interested
in some schools in Canada and England but we will have to get there
on our own.

This is going to be a wild year.