Saturday

Wake Up! Part II

Last night I dreamed that some Southern judge and his wife visited me. There were other people with me and a bunch of noisy unruly little kids that were ignoring everything I said to them. The judge brought me this complicated bunch of settlement checks that I was supposed to send out to various parties. I understood the whole transaction but the checks kept getting mixed up and swept off the conference table ending up in a hodge podge of piles on the floor.

The whole time I'm trying to organize the checks and get the kids to behave, the judge was telling this long funny story and his wife kept interrupting him until he finally told her to "just be quiet!" I left in the middle of the story to go find a set of plans that I was supposed to be holding onto for someone. The plans blew out of my hands while I was on the top of a parking garage and I needed to go and find them. I had to race down a bunch of confusing stair wells in several office buildings to make my way to the side of the one building where I thought the tube of plans had maybe landed.

“Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.” Sigmund Freud

Monday

School Days

Yesterday I sorted through boxes and boxes of old school papers and artwork, trying to decide what to keep, what to photograph and what to just toss. It being the night before my youngest starts his Senior year, this keepsake I came across made my heart skip a beat. This is a letter from Anna's kindergarten teacher. We were blessed to have this introduction into the Lake Travis School system.

"Dear Parents,

I give you back your child, the same child you confidently entrusted to my care last fall. I give him back pounds heavier, inches taller, months wiser, more responsible, and more mature than he was then. Although he would have attaained this growth in spite of me, it has been my happy privilege to watch his personality unfold day by day and marvel at this splendid miracle of development. I have thrilled at each new achievement, each new success, each new expansion of self. I give him back reluctantly for having spent the nine months together in the narrow confines of a crowded classroom we have grown closer, have become a part of each other, and we shall retain a little of each other.

Ten years from now if we meet on the streeet, your child and I, a light will spring to our eyes, a smile to our lips, and we shall feel a bond of understanding once more. This bond we feel today. We have lived, loved, laughed, played, studied, learned, and enriched our lives together this year. I wish it could go on forever, but give him back I must. Take care of him for he is precious.

Remember that I shall always be interested in your child whoever he becomes. His joys and sorrows I'll be happy to share. Please call me if there is anything further I can ever do for him.

I shall always be your friend. "