And me.

So we've moved. And I am doing all right.

Those last few weeks in Boston were just how I wanted them to be. There were lots of dinners with friends and people stopping by and taking a few extra minutes to chat. I drank a lot of tea with friends. The packing was not rushed until the very end and I was able to keep a pretty level head about things because I paced myself. And I did myself a favor by doing a bunch of yoga those last few weeks.

I wasn't very sad. That was a weird thing.

I will admit, that at the Corner Co-op when they sang the good-bye songs I got sad and cried at the thought of "moving along", as the song says. I have been to that Co-op three or four times a week for four years. It has been such a supportive a nurturing place for all of us to grow and the things we've all learned there we will carry with us everywhere. (I've considered calling the Co-op several times in the last week as I have been puzzled by Ramona's behavior--usually I'd just ask them what they thought about this or that parenting issue as I dropped her off.)

I also cried when I said good-bye to the house. We can never return to it. It is the only home the kids remember and there are so many good memories in that house. Most of our friends have come there for our social time and it has been alive with people so much of the time. I will really miss it.

But I felt so happy saying good-bye to Boston. Not in a good-riddens kind of way, but it a celebratory way. Boston, the Co-op, JP, the Haley, and even HGSE and HMS have been great for us in this chapter of our lives. I feel that I have grown up a lot. And that makes me so happy. Our friends have been so wonderful. Just wonderful. And I feel so happy to have them. So happy.

So I wasn't sad as we hugged our crying friends good-bye.

Then we drove out of town and headed South. I was still focused on tasks and getting to our destination. At the "log barn" we finally had a chance to relax for a minute and I finally (FINALLY!) was sad. My heart got heavy--it swelled thinking of life going on in JP without us and I cried and then cried some more. I will really, really miss our comfortable community. I will miss knowing what to expect out of the day. Mainly I will miss all you people who I like seeing as I go about my days. No more talking to Amy nearly each day about coordinating kids' transportation. No more Aarti drop-bys or Ara cooking dinner at our house. No more spying on Julie and Aaron and cuddling Moses. No more calling Kira from the car. No more mom's group. No more seeing Sharon at the playground. No more grand entrances into the Co-op with one of the chorus of teachers warmly welcoming us. No more swims at Curtis Hall or overdue books at the library where all the librarians know you and your kids and what you like to read. Oh, it will be hard to let go. I am glad that I had a few days away from the "to do" list to let the reality sink in.

After the stay at the log barn and a visit to Dollywood I started to feel better. The heavy heart lightened. Driving into Alabama, then Mississippi and finally Louisiana felt so right. It wasn't just that a new line of tasks started to form in my head. This is the setting of the next chapter of our lives and I am chopping at the bit to get going on it.

It is going to be different. Really different. It is flat here and hot, damn hot. Oh, and that whole Katrina thing...this city is devastated. But there are signs of life; I can already see a lot of change from April when I was last here. Hope is in the air. At the closing for our house today, two of the people were wearing seersucker suits--for real. Sumner's toenails are painted and a woman asked me today if his father knew that I had done that. And Phil and I noticed when we crossed the Mason-Dixon line that people aren't really into maintenance of some of the public places here as they are in other parts of the country. And Phil’s mom has been saying for year that you can’t find good bread in New Orleans. So maybe in my future there’s a sparkly seersucker suit and a boys’ pedicure business and a public areas maintenance initiative and a whole lot of rice. We will see.

But tonight I am still feeling the excitement of anticipation and peace and confidence that we are where we are supposed to be.

A May Christmas-Cardy Summary

I know. You've been sitting on the edge of your seat. Checking a blog that seems to be dead. Dead as a doornail. The most recently published entries are pathetic. April and May needed some serious help.

Will the blog revive? Yes.

What happened in April and May? We didn't die (althought it has felt that way). The blog isn't defunct (although it has felt that way). We're just in the middle of moving. In fact, for the last 10 days I haven't even logged into a computer. And the ten days before that Philip was monopolizing ours day and night to tie up all the loose ends of our life.

So dry your tears! Start checking my blog again. I'm back. You will not be disappointed.

And this entry...this is the last blog of "The 8th Year". If you forgot, that's the title of my blog. This has been the 8th year that Phil and I have muddled through the world together as a couple. And it has been "a year of digging deep" and I am glad we did so much digging. Even thought we got really dirty and we haven't struck gold, I know Philip and myself better. I feel like we have had the time and taken it to figure out what we want in the next stage of our lives. And I will keep writing about how it all works out.

On June 1 the blog will have a new name and a new look. Do NOT be alarmed. It will still be little me, pecking away at the keyboard, trying to make sense of my life and pursuit of happiness.

Over the last few weeks I have experienced so much. It is more than enough material for twenty entries and then some. I wish I had a keyboard the night Phil and I stayed up all night to finish packing or the next day when Phil tried to talk to the movers and, although they were native English speakers, he could not understand a word of the Boston accents. I wish I had time to write about Ramona saying good-bye to her best friend Kate--they agreed to get married when they grow up and Kate pointed out that they'd have to be married in Boston because boys and boys and girls and girls can't be married in other states. If only I had a moment to paint a picture of Sumner's last day a school. He planted three plants in the school yard; his class toasted to him saying good-bye and good luck in English, Spanish, and Creole, over fruit punch and cheese puffs; they wrote him a book telling him how they remembered him; then they all shook his hand, one at a time, before one boy asked if they could hug him, and they did; Sumner read the class dino jokes while they waited for his bus; and then he chose to ride bus 078 home with his best friend for the last time. And the day that we were supposed to be packing up for our trip and cleaning the house, but we got locked out of our friends' car with Phil's phone on the driver's seat and had to spend our morning retrieving it and then spent the days hugging our friends good-bye. We left the next day seven hours later than planned and made it to Hartford...that's two hours from Boston.

And here I am tonight, writing in a business center in a Holiday Inn Express outside of Birmingham, on our final approach into New Orleans. As we've driven through CT, then PA, onto VA and into Tennessee for six nnights and then through GA and Alabama, I've come to realize that I am moving to the South. I know, I have been saying it for months, but there has been something about the gradual decent into the South that makes it real. Really real.

And how are we doing?

Here comes the Christmas cardy summary...

Ramona: In summary, she has logistics on her mind. She has to work out the logistics of our move and how she is going to manage it. For practice, over our last several weeks in Boston she insisted on carrying a suitcase, which was full of her toys, to school each day to distribute to her playmates. At school she also orchestrated several "moves". To move, she'd enlist the help of four or five of her peers. They'd move all of the toys from the play kitchen/costume area into the Block Room. It was a lot of work, yet Ramona accomplished it several times (with the help of her friends).

On the day we said good-bye to our house she sang a song, through her buckets of tears, that went something like this:

So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
We've got to be moving along, but we can come back and look at the front of you.
And wave hello, but we won't live inside.
We'll live in New Orleans and live by our gandparents. (SHE'S STILL CRYING HARD AND SINGING)
And we will have sleepovers at their house sometimes.
And we will have sleepovers at their house sometimes.
And I might wake up with a present by my pillow at the sleepover.
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
We've got to be moving along.

As soon as we drove out of Boston her next question was: when will we get to the "log barn"? (The "log barn" was the log cabin we stayed in for six nights in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee) Where will Sumner and I sleep? How long will we be there?

And today, when we pulled out of the log barn she started in on the sleeping arrangements in the new house in New Orleans. "Do Mema and Grannabelle know each other?" This has been of grave concern to her. She wants to make sure that her grandparents all know each other so that they can all hang out with her at the same time, "If they do then when Grannabelle comes to visit she can sleep in my bed with me, if she doesn't wiggle, and Mema can have a sleepover too and sleep in my bed. But it might get a little squishy. And if Alex comes to visit she can also sleep with me. But not at the same time as Grannnabelle and Mema..." It goes on and on.

And she can't stand the clothes I packed for her, so she wore nothing the entire time we were in the log barn. When we went out she wore one of two outfits.

And she can't stand it when any of us so much as brush against a towel she if going to use.

And she's demanding a lot more of everyone. As my mother says, "When things are out of control, you need to control what you can."

Sumner: My sweet, sweet boy. He is doing just fine. Sumner doesn't seem to feel things in fits and spurts like Ramona. He is steady. Steady sad. Steady mellow. Steady content. His moods don't flash by they wander thru.

The last few weeks in Boston were stressful because nothing was steady. Each day a few more of his things would disappear into taped boxes. He'd storm around roaring at me for packing them away. Sometimes he'd cry. And refuse and then accept a hug and cry a little harder.

Like most kids, he lives in the now. He doesn't do a whole lot of anticipating. So the last weeks in Boston he went to gymnastics and played with Nikhil and went to school just like he always does. And he didn't think of each event as his last. When he said good-bye to Nikhil there were no kisses or hugs or tears, it was a see-you-tomorrow good-bye.

He's crying more than usual. And we're hugging a lot.

Philip: I won't presume to say how he is feeling and what he is thinking (at least not in print), but he still has a sense of humor.

He had a hard time parting with the homestead. I knew this long before he shared some tears with me and the kids at hour final farewell. He wanted to put our plunger in the dish washer and bring it along with us because "it is a really good one". He would have also thrown our toilet brush in the back of the van if I had let him. We were eating down capers until the last day and Phil was SO pleased to give away of nesting rum and tequila bottles as well as our racks for can food to happy homes.

For comic relief he watched Wedding Crashers about seven time in May and many lines from this fine film have become our anthems. Like, "Let's not take a turn to Negative Town" and "Living the dream" punctuated with some air punches to the sky and "It's be fun" "Yes, I am sure it will be fun for the people who are going [not me]" and "What an IDIOT" among many others.

He's taken care of a lot. For once we tried to divide and conquer and he took the paperwork and I took on the physical packing. This means he also took on the lion's share of worrying about money and bills and closings and mortgages. And he's done a good job. Ballard St. has new own owners and as of Wednesday Nelson St. will be ours.

There have been bad moods. Like yesterday when he had to listen to the Chronicles of Naria and then the tinny Music Machine CDs for about four or five hours straight. At the end of that he started to talk like God/Aslan until Sumner asked him to stop because he was afriad Phil may turn into a lion. Or the day when missed an exit after getting another late start, which led to a thirty minute detour. He bitched an moaned for an hour or two while I stayed cheery and then just as he was rising above it snapped at me for finally getting grouchy.

Mainly he's still laughing.

Me: I'll get to me later tonight. It is 11:01 and check out was a minute ago and I already extended it once. I need to go brush the kids' hair.

Race is a Construct

I'm heard that before. I have theorized about it. I've read it. I know it. But still, people look different and some look similar, so race is a convenient identifier. I often use it as a proxy for class and culture, which in my little world in Boston is sometimes accurate and sometimes isn't.

Sumner has fresh innocent eyes. Last year, he asked us who was white and who was black. We asked him what he thought. He told us that he and I were white. One kid in his class was black. Everyone else he knows was "in between". Ramona, Phil, grandparents, friends, teachers, and so on were all "in between", even though I would identify many of these people as white or black or Indian or Japanese or Latino or something else. He saw “in between” people.

The other day he said, "Mom, I think I may be the only white kid in my class."

"Really, why do you say that?"

"Well, I'm not sure about some people. Like Veronica, I just can't tell with her. And Sally. Mom, I just can't tell." (Veronica is bi-racial and Sally is white. Their names have been changed.)

I didn't respond to this. "How do you know you're white?"

"I know that," He said as if I had asked him the most obvious thing, like how he knew he was a boy. He continued, "People have said so."

People have said so, so he's starting to "get it". He is constructing knowledge about who is who and who he is and he is using his world as a mirror to figure it out. Race is one of his identifiers for himself, but not others. Yet. Race is a construct.

First it seemed to be just ordinary bickering...

Ramona was supposed to be brushing her teeth and Sumner was in the bathtub. Phil and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking. We could tell that they were arguing, but it was benign. We like for them to work these things out.

All of a sudden we hear Ramona's voice rising to a fever pitch. "It is NOT! Don't say that! DON"T CALL IT THAT!"

There was some murmuring from Sumner.

Now all-out, unintelligible shrieking from Ramona. I am a screamer and I could hear myself in her. Phil pushed out his chair and slowly moved to investigate. In less than a minute he had mediated the whole thing and returned to the kitchen.

"Do you know what they were fighting about? Sumner was calling the soap dish a poop boat. Ramona didn't like that."

A poop boat. It puts some of my screaming in perspective.

Fashionista

Ramona just told me, "Change your pants."

Granted, I am wearing post-Sumner-partum pants. I am packing. I am working in the basement today right after I drop her off at school.

"Why?" I asked.

"You look blurry. You look crumpily. You need to iron these pants. And...you look like a boy. I don't like those pants."

But I do and I am going to wear them.

ma