The victim

2/1/11

Little Jedidiah is approaching his 15 month anniversary of being alive. I suppose you can call that a birthday, but it sounded more interesting to call it a monthly anniversary of being alive.

Our little boy has still yet to take his first steps.
Maybe he has not ventured into walking so much but he is talking up a storm. In fact, this morning he laid his head on my chest and talked to me for at least five minutes without stopping. And you might think that he is slow to walk, but let me tell you he is amazing because he can speak Chinese! I don't know where he picked it up from, but apparently he sounds very much like a female character on the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (We did watch this movie when we recently went to Miami but Jed was sound asleep. Maybe he was awake with his ear to the door, trying to listen in on the movie. Who knows?) It's such a rare thing that he should rest so peacefully on me and talk that I relish every moment of it, looking him in the eye and validating his strong words with an occasional "Uh huh, I know what you mean." As a mother I feel compelled though to teach my children proper manners. Every once in a while, I reminded him that while the things he says are important, he must remember to give others a chance to talk. That's what conversation is about.

There are only a few words that have come out of his mouth in English. One of them being "Yes." Jedidiah enjoys crawling back and fourth through different rooms of the house saying "yes" over and over again. Every time you ask him any question, the answer is always "yes." But the most recent development happened recently when we were having a great fight. It was late at night, and the torture began: it was time for putting pajamas on. Jedidiah was squealing and twisting and as I, almost in tears, was trying desperately to cover his bare bottom so I could put him to bed. So, as he was twisting and turning and babbling in his gibberish Chinese words, he very loudly and clearly said "VICTIM, VICTIM!!" My son is the victim of parental cruelty at his bedtime ritual. So, ever since then I every so often ask Jed: Jed, are you the VICTIM? And he answers very confidently: "Yes!"

"Home"

There are many sights and sounds of my "Home" where I grew up, including the sound of football games, wind in palm trees, the feeling of concrete beneath my feet as I walk shamelessly down the road and around the block barefoot, the sound of the multitude of children playing in P.E. around the corner.  Also, there are the familiar habits and ways of life that the people who have been living in the home I grew up in for the past 30 years:  The sound of the iron at about 2:30 as father irons his blue shirt, the soaking of coffee mugs with two inches of hardened sugar because "someone" didn't stir it properly, the row of cheap hair conditioners on the shower window and the fact that I always look for shampoo and only find many half-empty bottles of conditioner, or now that my sister wants black hair for some reason, I find bottles of weird hair-dye stuff, that you shouldn't be using to wash your hair, and probably not to dye your hair either.  Anyway, this is the home I grew up in.  Where I took my first steps, and now my little guy (at the bottom) has had the opportunity to visit this beautiful, wonderful place I call "Home."  P.S.  My mother makes it a beautiful place, lovely to take pictures of.

Childhood Books

God is America's King, She thought: Americans won't obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their conscience. No king bosses Pa , he has to boss himself. Why (she thought) when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone ele who has the right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.

Her whole mind seemed to be lit up by that thought. This is what it means to be free: It means you have to be good. "Our father's God, author of liberty-" The laws of Nature and of Nature's God endow you with a right to life and libterty. Then you have the right to be free."

-Laura Ingals Wilder, Little Town on the Prarie (My most beloved and treasured books of all time)

Lauging with Lauren

I just got off the phone with Lauren, a friend from Tallahassee that I have not spoken to in quite sometime. I do not have a beautiful, flattering photograph of this beautiful, flattering young woman, but I must say we had some beautiful, flattering times together back in the hick, redneck bible-belt and sorority girl filled land of Tallahassee, Florida. (I mean no offense by any of these terms by the way)

We had a deep and meaningful discussion together about the atrocities of facebook. I asked her if she prayed for hours by candle light for my feelings on facebook. She responded with an "Oh, Jo Anna I miss you. I don't even know what to respond to that but I miss you."

These conversations are what makes Laughing with Lauren so great. I miss that too:(

A typical conversation with my spouse

Isaiah and I had been driving already for a number of hours. I was being lulled to sleep by the droning of our car on the pavement and the faint sound of the radio, when the song: "Raindrops keep falling on my head" began to play. I smiled, because logically, that particular song makes me smile. I sort of rolled over, just enough to hear Isaiah casually say "The man who wrote this song tried to kill my father." I looked at him with my eyes half shut. "oh" I said, then I turned and went to sleep. He kept on driving, and that was the end of our conversation.

(This photograph was taken on a rainy day in Glacier National Park, Montana, on top of a trash can.)