January 26, 2014

Six inches of new snow on the ground this morning. 

Old snowmen. New snow.

Twenty five below zero expected on Monday with wind chills reaching almost 50 below. 

No wonder everyone talks about the weather all the time. That...and the meat sale at the local grocery!

Miller Country store.

(NOTE: For the perfectionist that lives within me and for the budding blogger that I am…a transitional paragraph was missing in Friday’s post, deleted inexplicably. It’s probably only going to matter to me, but because it does…matter to me, I added it, updated and republished.)

With the goal of Harry knowing a little bit about a lot of things as the working model, I do what I can to teach Harry when he’s not in school. In addition to manners and kindness and morals and just plain common sense, we do more basic things too. We do puzzles, LOTS of puzzles. Big, beautiful colorful underwater and outer space puzzles. We have alphabet and number cards (with wonderful illustrations by Eric Carle – the beloved and innovative children’s illustrator) and we play. Imaginative play. Harry has a marvelous imagination. He loves to build lost cities, towers and tunnels with blocks. (Actually tunnel was one of Harry’s first words – he was born in Boston after all.) He has a wooden railway that he LOVES. It has hundreds of pieces of track that allow for hundreds of variations of railways: ovals and circles, crisscrosses and straight. And of course, books.  Hundreds of amazingly illustrated books.  I’ve loved choosing his books, always particular about not only the story (whether there’s a lesson to be learned), but the quality of the illustration as well. It has been said that picture books are an introduction to literature for the very young reader. They can take us on adventures, teach us new things and certainly make us laugh and cry too. Harry never gets through a page, even the books we’ve read 50 times, without asking questions. Questions about a small detail in the illustration or questioning why this or why that? I love his quest for knowledge.

Santa brought more track at Christmas. 

And at Grandma’s, construction paper is king!  We’ve made a whole paper train complete with an engine, coal car, boxcar, flat bed car and caboose. We’ve made fish, a request when he came home from school talking about a fishing game they had played.  We cut shapes. We paste. We color. And we stick stickers.  Harry has just recently discovered the fun of stickers. He does, though, for some reason, like to stick them all in the same spot in the middle of the paper. We are also working on a farm-themed Valentine’s Day card for Grandma!

Fish.

The paper train.

Don't "balk" Valentine, Be Mine.

Harry is working on the alphabet with Miss Margie.  He’s known the alphabet for a long time, but now approaching each letter in more detail, the sound it makes, how it looks, what words begin with what letters. Each week is a new letter.  This week it’s “h” and Harry couldn’t wait to tell me that “h” says ha…ha…ha…Harry!!

Self portrait.

Polar bear. Creativity runs in the family.

It’s becoming his routine now. Early in the morning - every morning - as we are backing out of the driveway on the way to school, Harry repeats: “Mommy, I want to go home.” Sometimes he says “to Massachusetts.” Sometimes “to Boston.” He wants to go to our home…what he has known as our home together.  Explaining to a 4-year-old that we have no home to go to is more than difficult. To do it in succinct phrases that he can digest and understand is not easily done.

I just quietly explain that before we can live in a new home, I have to find a new job and that I am trying to do just that. I hope soon that I’ll have a different answer for him. Things are moving at a snail’s pace. It is excruciating.

In early February, I’ll be getting on a plane and traveling to Columbia, Missouri to participate as a jury member, judging the news division of the Pictures of the Year International Photography competition. The judging begins on February 5 and continues for three weeks. It’s a prestigious honor for me, the competition one of the more coveted recognitions in the industry. It will be a grueling 5 solid days of judging for my panel, beginning at 8 o’clock in the morning and winding down around 6 p.m. The panel of judges is described on the official website as “18 of the most prestigious professionals.” My fairly beaten down ego needed that.

It should be really interesting to experience the competition in its current iteration, as I actually coordinated the competition as a student. This will be the 71^st annual competition, mine the 36^th annual? (I think it was the 36th…geez…I don't honestly remember. I guess I'll need to look that up. I do remember that it was SO incredibly important to me at the time.  I was the first female to coordinate the competition and the first to have the slide show presentation - all the slides dropping into the projector at the precise, correct moment, synched with the Russian composition, Pictures at an Exhibition - go off without a hitch!) 

It was a very different competition then. Photographs were entered in color and black and white prints, mounted on 11 x 14 mounting board and sent in portfolio cases. As you might imagine, everything is now submitted electronically in digital files. The categories expanded from newspapers and magazines to online publications, video and multimedia. It should be fun to be back on campus. No doubt it has changed a great deal. I think the traditional picture in front of the columns (those that still stand in the middle of the quad, the only remaining structure after the Academic Hall- the first building built on campus - caught fire, January 9, 1892, destroying the entire building) will have to be made and posted on Instagram, not shot on film and printed days later like the last time I was there. Wow, how things have changed! I sound like such a dinosaur.

Sorting and categorizing the entrants.

Portfolio cases stacked in the background for returning the entries. 

I’ve been trying to ignore the most difficult part of the trip…leaving Harry.  Harry and I have not been apart for more than a few hours most of his life. We are very close…bonded in a very special way.  Grandma will be his caretaker for the week. I think she’s more than a little nervous about it, as am I.  Not worried about her caring for him, but worried about being without him (although getting my 40 plus pound child into his car seat, and buckling those 5-point safety buckles over his layers of winter clothes is a struggle for me on a good day.) He is my joy, my light and my life. I know it sounds silly, but separation anxiety is real. Separating from something that is so much a part of who you are, how you spend your day, what occupies your thoughts. It will be…difficult. He will be in school during the day, his routine remaining fairly much the same, except without me. I’m worried, but I think I said that already.

I’m going to call every night, just to hear his voice, and Harry, mine. I can’t really manage a Face Time call or SKYPE.  No one in the family has an iPhone (except for me) or a computer, and the Internet lives at the Public Library. Mom says it will be good for him…and for me. I think it will be awful.

Us.

I ran into a friend from my high school days at Wal-Mart the other day.  He asked how things were going? This was our second meeting, the first a little awkward for me. I was walking out of Wal-Mart and a man in a FedEx uniform said my name as I passed him.  I was startled a bit, having tried to be fairly low key in our time here. I didn’t recognize him at first, but once he said his name, it all came flowing back to me. We talked, caught up briefly and I explained my presence here. The second time, he was in line behind me. When we chatted, I told him that I would be taking a trip in February and I was worried about leaving Harry.  He said, “He’s four now isn’t he?” He emphasized the number as if that was the magical age of independence. “Yes, but…” I struggled to explain.  “You mothers! He’s always going be your baby, right?” he laughed. My baby? Yes…he was right. He will always be my baby.

Me and my baby.