Half a World Away

No, no global theme for the week. My hand's tired/my heart aches. Just sent Primera off to school after she ate approximately 1/8 of her waffle. There to do...what? According to the teacher, who held a parent-teacher conference so relentlessly negative that I actually asked if my kid would repeat third grade, even though I KNOW they never do that, my kid isn't compliant at school doing her work. She won't finish it (though the few grades they've actually given have all been high). At home we have endless desperate reward systems. At the center of all this is someone 48 inches tall with a whim of iron. And someday she will have the autonomy to exercise her poor judgment all by herself; I think about that every day. Which is one reason why I like to shop. I'm thinking Sephora today.

She let me brush out her hair today (tender-headed: stiff bristles are torture to her, so we use a brush that has soft bristles and does a poor job of getting through all that hair). Her hair is wavy and has coppery glints: it is THICK but silky. Sometimes I think of the description of that character in To the Lighthouse (too lazy to look the name up--Minta Doyle? The one who marries Paul and ends up in a so-so marriage): something reddish-gold and flying and harum-scarum. Which is how she looked running down the front lawn toward the bus with her backpack flopping along behind her.

Article in the Times yesterday that I found hysterical: said that in a study of 909 Texas women, most ranked childcare up there with housecleaning in terms of enjoyableness. Which isn't it, either: I think if you average the highs and lows, maybe it comes out to the same. Extreme tedium/frustration leavened by--revelation? Something not experienced when cleaning the fridge.