I grow the most brilliant children. My youngest just graduated with a 4.0 and stopped at the Formigny B&B with her roadtrip companion on their meandering way east. I disappointed her companion with how few embarrassing babysitting stories I had, but I lived up to the warning she received from my children's mother at graduation this weekend that I remember every book I've ever read and will talk your ear off and never wear shoes (straight out of the car, she pointed at my feet and observed, "No shoes!"). The entire family is going to Ireland ("Do you need to bring a babysitter?") and my oldest is starting a global jaunt from there. My middle and oldest just went to the March for Women's Lives in D.C. In another family of victims, one sister got a job in her field, no mean feat, and the other is a high school chemistry teacher--hooray, because there can't be too many female ones. (Our high school had no female science or math teachers. Actually a majority of the teachers were male, and I wonder if that's because our teacher salaries were higher than average.)
RKC is looking forward to reading for pleasure again. Because she just took two semesters of Portuguese I told her about José Saramago ("Read those of his books with dogs"); because we were sitting in the living room I pulled The Golden Compass from the shelf and shoved His Dark Materials down her throat; because we both like Lemony Snickett I told her Sunny's best word from Slippery Slope, "Buscheney," meaning someone without regard for others; and because she said she wanted to read The Giver I actually gave her my copy. I told her that while it's great for kids, as an adult she might be disappointed by the holes in its structure. "And not good Holes either." She's also looking forward to Life of Pi and The DaVinci Code.
For graduation I gave her Sandra Boynton's version of Oh, the Places You'll Go!, Yay, You! because while Dr. Seuss is of course superior, everyone gives everyone that. Also a little card version of The Book of Questions to entertain herself and her friend in the car, "If You Were a Cereal, Which One Would You Be?" And, because I am a child of the '80s and my sister's suggestion of a Mother's Day present reminded me I could do this, two mix CDs, RKC & A's Roadtrip 2004 and RKC Graduation. Making the mix CDs occurred to me yesterday at work, and the first song I thought of belonged in both mixes, Cat Stevens's "On the Road to Find Out," which is good because, reading the song lists, RKC said, "Oh, I love Cat Stevens!" (and then, "Who is Kate Bush?").
Yeah, I made a mix tape for someone 13 years my junior. I was going to say, "I am sure I shall be monstrous glad of Miss Marianne's company, whether Miss Dashwood will go or not, only the more the merrier say I, and I thought it would be more comfortable for them to be together; because if they got tired of me, they might talk to one another, and laugh at my odd ways behind my back. But one or the other, if not both of them, I must have," but I didn't, because that book thing, you know.
(That book thing didn't stop my quoting to my new reading-friend-at-work (we sit mostly silently, but together, reading books we have propped on our meals), yesterday, after I coaxed her out of lunchroom onto the patio and into a stiff breeze, by way of apology, "She is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all this wind. Why does she not come in?" She is a reading companion, so she understood, so mleah.)