Hey Good Lookin' What'cha Got Cookin'

For a while now, I have been consumed with thoughts of 'SUPPER'. What to make, how to fit it into the evening never all at home schedule, when to begin, when to prepare, when to cook, what to buy. It's been like trying to balance a three ringed circus on a spoon.

Then the other day I had a flash of mommy brilliance. You know those moments of 'so obvious' that come along all too infrequently. I delegated to my kids. Each would be responsible for one night a week. Placing ingredients on the shopping list, preparation, serving, clean-up. What an idiot I've been. They need responsibility, they need to learn to cook and I need released from the prison of supper seven nights a week. My ten year old likes creative cooking, the girls do OK and the oldest needs to learn. My oldest can drive and I believe some kid shopping trips loom upon the horizion.

Of course, I'm hardly free of everything. I will have to organize, teach, prod... But at least some of it gets shifted and I can break out of some of the monotony. Yeah Me!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Yesterday my two daughters (15 & 13) boarded a plane to fly to Florida, all alone. The sensation of watching that jet speed down the runway and take flight with my babies on board is beyond definition. To see that huge machine grow smaller and smaller, knowing my sweet daughters were somewhere inside seemed a breech of physics. They couldn't possibly grow so small as to disappear from my sight. A hundered pounds, plus and minus, of flesh and blood doesn't vanish into the blue sky. It isn't possible.

At the point where the plane was still visable, I experienced such a sense of helplessness. If they had driven off in a car, I could follow. But where they were was completely beyond my reach. No car could take me there, no ladder so high as to climb to them. I could see where they were, but I couldn't reach them.

Beyond my reach. Children beyond a parent's reach. The definition of heartache? Perhaps I have too many children beyond my reach at this moment. A son tearing away maternal bonds as he prepares to enter college in the fall. Another son living so in his own mind unexpected actions knock me off my pins. Daughters disappearing into the blue.

Leaving on a Jet Plane. Keyword - leaving....
(Just realized I quoted another JD song)