"You've Got to Stop and Smell the Weeds, or the Chocolate Mint"

My social media feed is filled with porch pictures of children wearing newly purchased jeans, shirts, and shoes. Some sporting a new set of braced teeth, some smiling with braces recently removed. The little ones have the gap-tooth smiles of baby teeth lost over the summer, and some have front adult teeth grown in, often looking a bit too large still for their still small faces.

Parents often mark their babies and children's growth by the progress of the teeth. "She got her first tooth!" "Her nose is runny and she's so drooly....she must be teething..." "Those two-year molars are a beast when they come in poor baby..." "He lost his first tooth during recess today! His teacher put it in an envelope for safe keeping till he got home." "His baby teeth were so perfectly straight...now it looks like someone just randomly tossed a handful of adult teeth into his mouth!" "How are we going to afford braces...." "Well just look at you! You're going to have to beat the boys off with that dazzling smile!" "We'll get you some applesauce and mashed potatoes and ice packs for your cheeks as soon as we get home....you do realize those wisdom teeth didn't actually make you smarter or wiser; you'll feel better in a few days..."

My mother and I went to the store to get the few things on a list my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Thornton had given her a couple of weeks before school was to start. Turning five years old just a couple of weeks before, I would be one of the youngest in my class. Shopping for school supplies helped excitement override my fear. A box of crayons, a jar of paste, a cigar box, a folding napping pad, a box of no. 2 pencils and a pink eraser. I can still smell the aroma of the cigar box to this day and it conjures good feelings. We little girls were required to wear dresses except for on Fridays when we could wear shorts or pants if we wished to. On the first day of school during reading time, I wet myself. Too terrified to raise my hand to ask if I could use the bathroom and I also couldn't remember where Mrs. Thornton had told us the bathroom was. I didn't want to draw attention to myself, nor did I want to get lost. I failed at not drawing attention, but my teacher quickly deflected the other children's attention to something else while she found someone to help me contact my mother who brought me a new pair of undies and dress. I was humiliated and cried that I didn't want to go back into class. My mother gave me a quick kiss and hug, and nudged me back through the door of my classroom. "Go have fun sweetie and you'll be back home real soon!"

I loved kindergarten and my memories of coloring pictures of birds, watching baby chicks hatch out of their shells, a field-trip to a dairy farm and making butter with little jars of cream we shook while the record player played "Old MacDonald had a Farm", and then spreading our own butter onto saltine crackers for our snack that day. We weren't taught to read or do math, but learned to love the alphabet and to count. I had afternoon session and would walk home with my older brother Andrew.

My grandmother would often tell of how sending her youngest child (my youngest auntie Juliana) to school. How upsetting it was to have her last baby gone during the day, and to console herself she purchased a new set of dishes; square melamine. Years later she bought a set for my mother. I bought a few pieces off of E-bay. When I see them I never fail to think about a child's first day of school, and a mother's mixture of joy and sorrow.

Natalie and Elisabeth start texting me pictures of their littles first day of school porch portraits. I'm not swept up in the prepping, planning, and shopping for this day. I was just suddenly presented with images of my grandchildren looking suddenly older and in the overwhelm of the reality of time passages I pull over to the side of the road and have a little cry. This is not an unusual occurrence, just a different topic to cry over. I follow my grandmother's lead and head to a store. Except I'm not looking for dishes; I have way too many of those already. I'll go to the children's book section and see if I find any treasures. Not seeing anything that catches my eye on the first couple of shelves, I squat down and run my fingers across the spines of the bottom row. Bingo.

Curious George to my rescue. I open the pages, check the copyright date, thumb through the pictures, lean my face into the center of the pages to take a sniff, close it and without browsing the store any further go to the checkout where I have a store credit from points earned from previous purchases I'd made earlier in the month when I bought myself a birthday present and little pricier than the $1 Curious George book.

There is a new to me old copper pot on the top shelf. Happy birthday to me and happy eating to anyone I will cook for in the future!

This is the back to school picture of 12 year old me going to begin 7th grade. Jr. High. New state, city, home, school, friends. I think I look about ten in this picture. I think I felt about nine. I still wanted to play with my baby dolls, but was embarrassed to. We were no longer mountain dwellers, we were small city slickers, living in an apartment with an actual T.V. for the first time in several years. To top things off I was now an official latch-key kid, and I hated it. While we waited for our house to be built, this apartment was our home, and the couch in this photo was my bed for an entire year. I only was bothered when Andrew who was a High School senior by now, would bring friends over and they'd hang out on my "bed" in my "room". That year I learned how to make homemade snacks by watching Rita Davenport on TV while Mama was at work. Almost daily, I'd core an apple and stuff it with a mixture of peanut butter and raisins and put the top/lid back on the apple. I got the mumps that year and missed nearly two weeks of school, dragging myself and a blanket out to the courtyard lawn and in the Arizona chilly December sun, nap and try to heal my swollen neck.

The summer before my senior year of high school began. Senior pictures. 1982. Big hair. And for clothes, I don't remember anything terribly memorable. I babysat pretty much every week-end. $1 per hour no matter how many children the family had. I think clothes were still made in America and Amazon was a jungle somewhere in some part of the world where I don't think people made clothes and maybe didn't wear many clothes either. I remember wanting to purchase a pink jumpsuit I'd seen at the mall. I babysat a whole lot of weekends to be able to finally have enough money. Why on earth I thought wearing a jumpsuit to school would be a great idea is beyond me now. Though I rarely used the bathroom at school anyway. Water bottles had yet to be invented. If you wanted a drink, you'd get one at the outdoor drinking fountain between classes. Hot Arizona water out of a public fountain. I'd rather wait to get home to drink hot Arizona water out of the faucet. And to pee for that matter. The jumpsuit wasn't too much of a problem, and it really was so hard-earned I should have kept it just as a trophy of sorts. My senior year was the year I met Dave; it was also the year I flunked geometry. Too much studying each other's eyes, not enough studying formulas. I took a night class in computer programming to make up for the F I got in geometry so that I could still graduate.

Meeting Alisa was the best thing that ever happened to me in High School. "You don't need a lot of friends....you just need an Alisa." - my Mama.

She took me out the other day for my birthday and she listened to me yammer on and on about the things I'm happy about and the things I'm mad about and all the in between. Just like when we were fifteen and sixteen years old.

Being with her always makes me feel like a teenager again. We have a sort of pact that we're not going to get old, we're just going to keep being the same us we've always been, just with a lot more going on and a lot more people to love.

Birthday flowers from Conrad and Staci who got married last week and I had a good (happy tears) little cry over that too.

Birthday dessert courtesy of Wyatt and Megan who took us out to an incredible steakhouse. We each ordered a dessert to share and this creme brulee'd bread pudding with brown butter ice cream won out as everyone's favorite.

I have plans for this chocolate mint. It involves chocolate. And mint. And milk, cream, and sugar.

Cheers to all the little people going back to school! May you have the courage to raise your hand and ask where the bathroom is. And to all the bigger little people going back to school, may you have the courage to raise your hand and question anything that is being taught that you know in your gut is inaccurate, incorrect and even immoral. May you learn how to learn and not just how to take tests. Most of all be a good friend to those that seem friendless and know that most everything you need to know in life you already learned in kindergarten or at home. If all else fails, read books. You're going to be great!