MindSpinner

I kissed summer vacation goodbye last Monday and attended faculty-wide literacy training all week, conducted by truly capable grant partners from the City by the River. I am excited about our faculty’s positive response and by how our classrooms will be transformed over the course of the four-year grant.

Writing letters (the old fashioned kind, with stamps) to Catapult Kid is keeping me busy, too. I try to track down and print out news articles I think he’ll be interested in and enclose those along with a short note or a long one, depending on the news or lack thereof. He’s supposed to be able to call this weekend - 2.5 minutes per parent. We’ll just have a chance to hear each other’s voices.

Thank goodness we’ll have the chance to hear each other’s voices.

Yesterday, I picked blackberries from the kitchen garden and embarked on the adventure of making jam. I have never made jam before, though I remember my mother doing this. I’d help with peeling apples or peaches, but not so much with the process. Such big pots. So much steam. And afterward, 18 small jars filled with blackberry essence of July, suitable for consumption in January (or this morning, on a waffle). I started a little after 9:00 p.m. and finished by midnight. My favorite part is taking the jars out of the canner to cool and hearing the little pop that says the jars sealed properly. I have a child’s happiness at learning a new thing, never outgrew it.

Unless you happen to be a mother who’s just sent her son off to a program very like boot camp and is sentenced for five whole months to communicate, with the exception of two brief visits, only via letter and an occasional five-minute phone call, you may not quite fathom just how happy I was to come home from school this evening and find a letter in the mailbox today from Catapult Kid.

Food’s terrible he says, but he’s adjusting. Schedule’s nonstop, but his attitude is much more positive than I expected that it might be. He’s actually grinning and bearing it. Of course, he wants a few items in a care package - could we possibly expect otherwise? The funny thing is that the first item on his list is shampoo. He’s been at the Academy for only a week; he has very little hair (having been virtually scalped), and he needs more shampoo?

I’ll have this letter until the day I die.

On Thursday, my daughter and I hiked to the old Forest Service tower atop the mountain that rises near my mother’s home. I remember the days when the tower was manned by a ranger who kept an eye out for forest fires. My uncle drove my cousins and me up to see it in a jeep when we were young, and I’ve hiked up now and then in years since. On a clear day, the view extends for miles and miles. Thursday was not a clear day, but the walk was still worthwhile.

The first thing to do was hop across the barrier that’s been in place for years now. At first, the road rises slowly, and it is much grassier than it used to be.

Much of the way up is graced, in July, by wild Black-Eyed Susans, blackberries mostly not yet ripe, and Sweet William.

We flushed at least eight wild turkeys.

The path grew steeper and rockier until it resembled not so much a road as a dry streambed full of boulders. And finally, when we getting worn out, we reached our destination.

The tower’s closed now; nobody has to stay up there to watch for fires anymore, but the view remains worth the climb.

On the way down, we picked a bowl of wild blackberries to take to my mother, who has climbed this mountain many, many times but cannot do so any more, and we picked up a small flat rock to add to the stone path through the garden back at home.

Next time, we’ll take a different trail just a few hundred yards up the road.

It is true that, for financial reasons, our getaways are pretty much limited to family visits. But you won’t hear me whining, given the view from my mother’s back yard. Spending time with family is priceless, and the place makes a visit into something of a vacation.

I’m told Catapult Kid maintained his composure and even his sense of humor throughout in-processing at the Academy, though some of the other cadets were crying. He even looked pretty good with a shaved head.