Dear Oregon and Ohio clans,
Happy Eastern O...
April 25, 2006 by Meg in Lytton
Dear Oregon and Ohio clans,
Happy Eastern Orthodix Easter, Oregonians!
I'm looking forward to meeting you in Chicago Friday night, Sue. I'll email you arrival times.
Callie's back from visiting Dick's mom in Fla and is dealing with last minute issues of her team's final paper for their course at Wharton. She is excited about working for Habitat for Humanities in Zambia for 3 weeks in June. Unfortunately, this means she'll miss Mikayla's graduation!
We're getting set for Julie's graduation-- we bought 2 new guest beds and made restaurant reservations. We're still trying to figure out Penn's graduation schedule, which is as unfathomable as the inscrutable Orient! She'll start summer organic chem classes at Bryn Mawr College almost as soon as she graduates from Penn and then take more pre-med prerequisites at Temple in the fall. She can then start the MCAT and application process next spring.
Mikayla has a summer job helping with stagecrew stuff at her high school. With babysitting on the side, she might do well. She looked lovely for the prom despite shivering in the cold, rainy weather.
We're starting the planning for the trip to Western Pa for Dad's memorial service. I'll send out notices as soon as I receive them from Betsy. We are renting a van (mine burned up a few months ago after a squirrel built a nest inside the dashboard and gnawed through the wires--I was driving along when smoke began to issue from the dashboard!). We hope Sue will fly to Phila and ride back with us. We will invite Judy to come with us too.
I have taken up reading Dad's sea books. I am enjoying Patrick O'Brian's (of Master and Commander fame) series. It's the first time in a long time that I've needed to keep a look-up word list as I read. (Look up the etymology of the word "grog"!)I remain impressed and warmed by Dad's intellect and feel a connection through the reading....
Again, off to bed.
Meg
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Dear Sue,
I'm delighted to hear that you hav...
April 11, 2006 by Meg in Lytton
Dear Sue,
I'm delighted to hear that you have not smoked for 2 months. I hope I don't jinx it or put pressure on you, but I am very happy for your accomplishment!
Mikayla seems to have decided on Oberlin, sight unseen. We went through the catalogues for McAllister, Carleton and Oberlin this weekend, comparing course-to-course, professor-to-professor, and she felt most excited by the offerings at Oberlin, which seems less traditional than Carleton. She had previosly decided against Smith and McGill. She was supposed to visit Oberlin this weekend but doesn't want to go,saying that visiting colleges makes her dislike them and that she is sure she'll be happy there.
Dick and I are pretty upset by this approach and are somewhere between depressed, isolated and furious.
I've decided that this is one kid who seems to have to learn from the school of hard knocks.
She reminds me of myself but I wish I had been smarter and listened better and tried to see the world and other people's lives from many different angles. That way I wouldn't feel as if it took me 'til age 35-45 to figure out what was going on in life! I think that being able to stop to see things from everyone's perspective and always looking for the answer that works for lots of people is a sign of intelligence. On that note, I caught the tail-end of The Fog of War movie, interviews with Robert McNamara, on TV yesterday. Fascinating, insightful, if sad in the inevitability of the result.
I hope, at the end of the day, I will have raised my kids well and be able to be proud of them. At the end, Dad was accepting of everyone-there seemed to be such forgiveness that last day. He gave me such a big, long wonderful hug before he died. Dick and I both miss him.
I have to stop posting these at night. I go on too much....
Life, love and happiness to all,
Meg
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