"You're a writer? What do you write?" "Letters."

Since my daily blog-a-thon in May, my pageviews have increased from 20-30 to about 125-150 per day. More and more of them are people I haven't actually met. I like this. I enjoy having an audience. If you like something I write, tell a friend. Now that I've broken the triple digits, I'm full of crazy ambition. Like, what if I had two hundred devoted readers?

I'm really working on feeling like blogging is "real" writing. It feels more real if there's an editor and your work gets accepted and published. Except that I have more readers at my blog than I had in most of the little magazines I used to sometimes publish in back in the day!

Also, blogging is really my genre. I do essays, sure. Almost never fiction. But from my first opportunity, I've had a knack for writing letters--I used to write very long, very detailed, very funny letters to friends in college. And I did my first "group letters" --which later evolved into a small e-mail list -- after I had left my Ph.D. program at Rutgers. I started writing long letters, making multiple copies, adding a cover, and sending them off to my group of friends from New Jersey. One of my friends, who was then living in Florida, told me that she read my letters out loud to her friends at parties. "Has anything come from Su?" they would ask when they saw her. And when it had, they would all get together at her place and kick back with a cold beer while she read to them.

It can be hard--well, it was hard for me--to accept that my special writing talent lies in writing letters. But it does. Even when I spent a month at a writing retreat many years ago, my main output was long group letters to Raider and some other friends. I sent one almost every day. Sometimes two a day. This was before people had e-mail access routinely; it cost me a mint in stamps.

I wrote a lot of other stuff, too. But what I really loved and could not get enough of was writing letters.

Blogging is like that. When you read one of my blog posts, you might be interested to know that they read very much like my letters do. A typical letter might include some funny stories about my kids; some fretful processing about something that's on my mind; a snarky book review (or a non-snarky one); a story or two about people I've met. Pretty much like the blog, except that I don't tend to do all of those things in a single blog post, and I have to be a bit more discreet about storytelling.

I thought I was going to go on to talk about something else, but I think that's it for now. Your takeaway: Feed my overweening ambition! Point interested friends in my direction!

(Edited to add: Apparently this is my twelve-dozenth post! Woo-hoo!)

For Your Edification: What is a Good-Faith Question?

So, one of the things on my list for this week is to make an appointment to talk to the Tiny Tornado's teacher and principal about TT's gender. I have a very clear agenda for this meeting: making sure they understand that TT is to be treated as a boy, and that under no circumstances are they to disclose his status to other parents or children. I intend to be friendly, but this stuff isn't negotiable. He is starting school as a boy; that's his choice and we're going to honor it.

A couple of people have asked me "what if" questions about this plan. What if he decides, a couple of years down the road, that he isn't a boy? Are we setting him up for trouble if we let him identify as a boy now?

I have a few thoughts about that. One is that, as an anxious person, I have a lot of experience with "what if" thinking, and it's rarely productive.

Also, I don't see that we have much of an option other than to have him start school as a boy. He's very clear about his boyness right now; he's not going to want anyone calling him a girl or using female pronouns. And, as one friend pointed out, his gender presentation is so strongly coded "male" that it could only be harder for people to be trying to think of him as a girl. I had to submit his birth certificate to enroll him, and it says he's female. I think that a box checked on a piece of paper filed away in a drawer in the office is going to fade into insignificance next to the reality of the Tiny Tornado standing right in front of you.

At the same time that I try not to engage in "what if" thinking, I have done enough of it to know we have lots of options if the Tiny Tornado chooses to identify as a girl somewhere down the road. For one thing, being a homeschooling family gives us a lot of power--we're perfectly prepared to homeschool him if school doesn't work out in one way or another. In fact, he wants to homeschool, and right now our best guess is that we will homeschool him after this school year. To be honest, our primary motivation for sending him to Begindergarten (a Young Fives program for kids with summer and fall birthdays who are not ready for Kindergarten) is the free respite care. So "how will he cope in school if X happens?" is not something we worry too much about. I have lots of other things to worry about, and don't have a lot of energy to spare for that particulr one just now.

The summer gathering was very interesting with the Tiny Torndao. It was the first time I've been somewhere with him where lots of people just assumed he was a boy, and there was no tension at all between that and who he "really" is. It felt peaceful.

Of course, lots of people there did know him before, and they seemed to adjust very well. Some of his teachers in Junior Gathering had him last year, and they just cheerfully adapted to the new pronoun. It really is easy when you're face-to-face with him. A couple of years ago, we had an intergenrational retreat at our Quaker meeing, and one of the facilitators kept calling Tiny Tornado "he" even after being corrected several times. Because the evidence of your own eyes is very strong.

But the Gathering was also the first place I've fielded people's questions and comments. I've talked about TT's gender journey on my blog and on Facebook, and it seems that, if some of my readers have doubts or concerns about how we're handling it, they're keeping it to themselves. I've gotten only a mix of silence and positive comments about my writing on the subject. But several people at the Gathering--some of whom had been following his story on-line, and some of whom had just learned about it there--took the opportunity to talk to me about it.

Sometimes this went very well. Sometimes it went...less well.

One friend, who just learned about the new pronouns at the Gathering, expressed her interest in what has to be just about the perfect way: "You must have had quite the journey with the Tiny Tornado this past year. I'd like to hear more about that sometime, if you're comfortable talking about it."

Another friend started by expressing a concern about us making an apparently irrevocable decision based on the wishes of a 4-year-old. That's a little less pleasant, but we ended up having a good talk. She was interested to hear me talk about why we don't see this as irrevocable at all ("Irrevocable? All he's done is wear boys' underwear and ask us to call him He. That can be reversed with a trip to Meijer and the letter S."), and then I talked to her about how we are trying to be very in the moment about stuff--we don't imagine that we know the outcome of this.

At TransHealth Raider and I had opportunities to hear from doctors and psychologists who specialize in treating gender nonconforming children. And, statistically, there is a really good chance that the Tiny Tornado will identify as female when he gets older--maybe a little more than 50%, based on their experience with other kids. We're not holding him to anything. We're just doing what seems best to us right now. And right now, it's clear that he is happiest living as a boy.

So, we talked about that some, and it went really well. This friend had been concerned that we were making a terrible mistake, and I think by the end of our conversation she at least felt that, if we were making a mistake, it was at least a thoughtful mistake and not a reckless one.

Other folks... *sigh*

I've had a few things in my life that people were persistently curious about: our two oldest being conceived with donor sperm; Tiny Tornado's adoption; fat acceptance; homeschooling. Things that people are naturally curious about. I have often wished that people would understand that even perfectly natural curiosity ought to be suppressed sometimes; just being curious doesn't entitle you to information about someone else.

But, since I am generally happy to share my experiences, it's not so much that I wish people would suppress their curiosity as that I wish they would learn two things:

1. To recognize when they don't know much about something, and withhold judgement until they do.

2. To ask actual questions.

One thing you find when you homeschool is that most people don't know much about it, but have very strong opinions anyway, and they want to share these opinions with you. I wish we could all learn to recognize our ignorance, and remedy it before making judgements. But I'm pretty sure that's a pipe dream.

The other thing is that I encountered more than one person who said, "I have a question about the Tiny Tornado," and then went on to talk about their own feelings and "concerns." I am proud of myself that I actually did a good job of getting out of these conversations--I'm not a very direct person but I actually said to two different people, in so many words, "I'm not willing to have this conversation with you," when it became clear that "Can I ask you a question?" was actually code for "May I share my ignorance and judgement with you?"

I always say, "I will answer any good-faith questions about this," whenever any of these kinds of topics come up. "I don't think you're thought about the implications of this down the line," is not a good-faith question. "Kids as young as four don't even understand gender, so I'm concerned that you're making a mistake letting the Tiny Tornado choose" is also not a good-faith question. Nor is, "Don't you think he's just emulating his big brothers?" No, I don't. Clearly you do. But you probably wouldn't think that if you lived in our house.

So, what does a good-faith question look like?

Well, it's not a statement, for one thing. "I'm concerned that..." is almost never actually a good-faith question. It's usually actually a lecture or commentary. If your "question" doesn't end with a question mark, it's not a good-faith question.

A good-faith question should actually ask for information. "Don't you think..." for instance, is also almost never a good-faith question. It's an expression of opinion disguised as a question. It's putting words in my mouth. It's telling me what I should think. It's asking for my agreement with your opinion.

How do you know if you're asking a good-faith question?

Well, one way to think about it is to go back to high school journalism class and the classics: Who, What, Where, Why, When, and How. If you can re-phrase what you want to say so that it begins with one of these words, it's harder to turn it into a statement of your own opinion (not impossible, I'm sure. But harder). Think about how different these sound from the examples I gave above:

"How did you decide to use male pronouns for the Tiny Tornado?"

"Where have you gotten information to help you make these decisions?"

"How do you think you'll handle it if he decides, somewhere down the road, that he is a girl?"

"How are you feeling about all this?"

"What kind of support system do you have as you're dealing with this?

You can fix a "don't you think" bad-faith question by dropping two letters and an apostrophe: "Do you think he's just emulating his big brothers?" is a good-faith question, because it implies the possiblity that I'll say, "No, I don't think that, and here's why."

A good-faith question should reflect the questioner's desire to know more. That's why I loved Peggy's, "I'd like to hear more if you're comfortable talking about it." I'm going to be remembering her as a model when I'm dealing with my own curiosity. Her comment could also be rephrased as, "What has this past year been like for you and the Tiny Tornado?"

See how that works?

I try to be patient with people. Their intentions are generally good; they're watching out for the Tiny Tornado. As I said, their curiosity is perfectly natural. And they are offering me an opportunity, however awkwardly, to share what I know. I found at the Gathering that it was easier to be patient with people now that I've figured out how to be blunt; in the past, I've had a tendency to not recognize my own discomfort, to let other people set the parameters for discussion, to share more than I was comfortable sharing when people approached me this way. Knowing that I can say, "I'm not going to have this conversation," or "That's not really a question. Do you have a question I can answer?" really helps.

Maybe I'll make a little card, "What is a good-faith question?" that I can hand to people. I could say, "I'm not going to have this conversation right now, but I'd be happy to have a different conversation with you after you've read this." A little control-freaky, sure. But also an invitation. Because I really am happy to talk to people about just about anything. If I have reason to think they're actually listening.

That Time of Year Has Rolled Around Again

The Tiny Tornado's birthday is coming up, and that means it's time for me to write the annual letter to his birthmother. This is often a challenge for me; sometimes old feelings about the lies and the drama and the custody fight and the drugs come up. Some years, I feel charitable, generous, and loving; some years, I feel put-upon, like having this ethical obligation when K. has no reciprocal obligation is just not fair.

This year, I just don't know how to write an honest letter. Since I wrote to her last year (a very nice letter in which I included an SASE in case she wanted to write to the Tiny Tornado), the Tiny Tornado has chosen to live as a boy. I am not comfortable telling K. about this, for a variety of reasons. One is that I have no reason to believe she has any goodwill towards us, and I don't choose to tell her anything that she might, in some way, use against us. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense--she couldn't possibly gain custody, for instance. But she could conceivably cause us some kind of trouble if she chose to.

On the other hand, I'm not comfortable writing a letter with female pronouns, either. And when I have tried to write mini-drafts in my head without using pronouns at all, it gets a little weird.

I have been thinking some about the agreement I made. We were asked to commit to writing a letter every year for 18 years, but I wasn't willing to make that commitment. I had heard from other adoptive parents that their children sometimes came to feel that letters to birthparents who were not otherwise in touch--not writing back, for instance--were an invasion of privacy. So I said, "I will commit to writing an annual letter until and unless the baby decides he doesn't want us to anymore."

This isn't exactly that circumstance, though I suspect that if I asked the Tiny Tornado, he would not want me to write to K. He doesn't like to talk about her, and last year when I asked him to help me think about what to tell her and what pictures to include, he vehemently declined to participate.

There's no legal obligation to write her. But I'm thinking about what my ethical obligation is, and how to weigh that against what seems best for my family.

I won't simply not write; but I might write a letter saying that the Tiny Tornado is doing well but I can't go into details this year. And I'll tell her, like I do every year, that there is a place in the Tiny Tornado's baby book for her picture, and that the Tiny Tornado would probably love to have one, or to hear from her. I'll enclose an SASE again. Maybe one of these years she'll use it.

And I'll tell her, like I do every year, that we are praying for her, and for the Tiny Tornado's half-siblings. Because we are. I do hope to hear from K. sometime. I hope to hear that she is doing well.

The Things You Find Out About Yourself

I had a couple of surprises at last week's FGC Gathering of Friends. One was that one of the highlights of my week was being invited to meet with a group of polyamorous and kinky Friends. A small group of us met early in the week, and enjoyed it so much that we met again a few days later. That second meeting was one of the deepest, most worshipful parts of my week.

I was surprised by how much meeting with these folks meant to me, because I hadn't thought of polyamory as a central part of who I am. If anything, I see myself as something of a poser--Raider and I claim to be in an open relationship, but it's only been actively opened up a couple of times, and that before we had kids.

Indeed, we've spent most of our 19 years together too busy with other things to have relationships on the side. For the first few years, we were so busy enjoying each other we actually thought we were monogamous. Then, one day in the car, we engaged in one of those "what if" conversations--what if you were at a conference and it was someone you'd never see again? what if it was an ongoing relationship with someone out of town? what if it was someone in town and you wanted to date them in a clearly secondary-to-our-relationship way? what if it was someone in town and you got very serious with them?

And we discovered that none of these scenarios was a deal-breaker for either of us. "Huh," we said. "I guess we're not monogamous. Who knew?"

It was another four or five years before either of us acted on it, though. We got busy with figuring out how to stay in a relationship past the first couple of years, and then in dealing with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder I'd had since childhood, and with one thing and another, there was never a good time. For one thing, we were too darn busy to have time to date. For another, it's never a good idea to start a second relationship when your first one is vulnerable. It's too easy to use the new lover as an excuse to opt out of the work you need to do with the old one.

I'm sure some people do it and make it work. It's not a risk I'm willing to take.

And then, after awhile, all the drama and hard work was behind us. We were stable, settled, happy. And over several months in the summer of 2000, we both had some outside adventures, and it was fine. It was fun, and it was fine.

And then, a few weeks later, I got pregnant with the Lego Savant, and there followed another decade of being just too darn busy. Most parents can attest that nurturing your own relationship during the years you're raising young children is hard enough; I couldn't imagine having the energy or patience for a girlfriend.

In general, for the last decade, I've seen myself settling into life as a very conventional middle-class stay-at-home mom. I felt like I clung to my theoretical polyamory the way I clung to my nose piercing--something that signalled that I wasn't boring and middle American. Or, at least, not just boring and middle American.

I need to digress to say that I don't mean to suggest that heterosexual, monogamously married moms are dull or unworthy. I know many women who are, so far as I know, HMMMs, and they are all awesome. They make mothering into a loving art, they like their husbands, they all have something that isn't their children that they are passionate about, whether that's gardening, art, religion, political and social activism, bread-baking. There's no shame in being one of them, and to the extent that I am one of them, I'm proud to be. This is just a holdover from some anxiety from my youth; it's about me, not about them.

It never occurred to me that I clung to my "theoretical" polyamory because polyarmory is actually part of who I am. That I might not be a poseur trying to be more interesting than I am, but a polyamorous person who just hasn't had the inclination or opportunity to practice much these last two decades.

But I had a lot of time to reflect on the long car ride home, and realized that nearly all of my relationships have been non-monogamous. I've done it well, and I've done it badly. I've done it with women whose care and respect for their lovers were a model to emulate, and I've done it with women whose behavior was a red flag I should have let myself see sooner. I've gotten it so badly wrong that I've hurt someone I care about very much (long since forgiven!), and I've gotten it so right that my girlfriend and I could double-date with her lover and her lover's other lover.

But I've always done it. My first woman lover and I broke up in 1988, and I don't think I have committed to be exclusive with anyone since then (that first few years with Raider, when we mistakenly believed ourselves to be monogamous, are a special case).

Anyway, I wanted to say that until I walked into that room for that meeting last week, I hadn't realized how isolated I have felt among Quakers as a polyamorous person. (And as a person with some unconventional sexual preferences, but I'm not going to talk about that in any detail.) It felt good to be in a circle of folks where I knew I wouldn't be judged, though it actually took us some work to get to that point, because you never know. Unconventional people can be just as prone as anybody else to think that everything on their side of some self-defined line is OK, and anything on the other side is just plain wrong. Nobody wants to face that moment when you make yourself vulnerable only to find out that you were not safe from judgment in that space. But we got there. And it was a good, deep, and worshipful place to be.

I might have another post on this topic in me--thinking about this brought up so many memories: good, bad, funny, sexy. I might write about what, in my experience, works and what doesn't. What are some of the common blunders? What are the red flags you should look for in a new relationship? How do people of good will take care of each other in multiple relationships? I'm no expert, but I spent a few intense years in my 20s learning by trial and error, and I might have a few words to say.

I usually do.

The Story I Didn't Tell Shani On the Golf Cart

Yesterday, I said that I had three additional blog posts queued up in my brain. I was wrong. All day yesterday, things would come back to me and I would jot them in the "blog ideas" section of my notebook. There aren't three of them. There are ten.

I'd better get to it, then.

We'll start with a relatively light-hearted one, because I have much to do today and don't want to have to think too hard.

The University of Rhode Island campus doesn't have many hills. It pretty much has one. One big hill that the whole place is built on. I found the campus disorienting in general, but as the week wore on, "uphill" and "downhill" became my most useful means of visualizing where things were.

The campus wasn't large, but because of the hill, I ended up using the golf carts quite a bit. Early in the week, I walked everywhere, but after a couple of days I found that my plantar fasciitis was acting up in a very painful way, so I started rationing my walking.

Man, that was two dull paragraphs. I'll try to spice things up.

Anyway, one afternoon my sweet friend Shani and I were taking a golf cart somewhere together--business meeting, maybe? I can't remember. And we were chatting. Being on the golf cart reminded me of a story about a previous golf cart ride I'd taken, and I was about to start telling it when it suddenly occurred to me that our driver might have been the driver of that golf cart, too. Looking at him, it began to seem quite likely, in fact.

Had I told the story then, it would have been a delicious but excruciating irony. As you will understand when you have heard it.

Four years ago, I had injured my knee quite badly and couldn't walk any distance. Somehow, as the gathering grew near, I was able to connect with someone who lent me a scooter for the week. I loved my scooter so much. I could zip around anywhere, I didn't have to wait for golf carts, and with some judicious squeezing (and Baby Tornado in a sling), all three of the kids could ride it with me, which they thought was fun.

I did a lot of FLGBTQC childcare that week. The campus had this wonderful quad with criss-crossing paths that the kids loved to ride their bikes and scooters (the push-with-your-foot kind) around. They were all so enamored of my power scooter that, when I was doing childcare, I also let them drive it around the quad. This was a very popular pastime.

Now, I know that there is a school of thought that mobility tools and accessibility aids are not toys. I get those arguments--they're tools, not playthings. But I also think that they belong to the person who owns them. I've helped my kids understand that it's not OK to touch someone's chair or crutches without permission, for instance. People with disabilities often talk about having their bodily autonomy violated by people who touch them without permission. This is also a thing that happens to children all the time. And so we've worked on making sure that our family knows that curiosity is a fine thing, questions are usually a fine thing, but respect for other people's bodies--and the accessibility aids that they use--is foundational.

I've also noticed that people often give permission when asked--the Tiny Tornado's preschool teacher, for instance, showed the class the lift in her van, and let them try out her daughter's wheelchair, because they were very curious about it. This kind of response to curiosity is healthy, I think. It helps create connections instead of leaving people with disabilities "over there" on the other side of an invisible line.

So, anyway.

Four years ago, I crossed over from temporarily able-bodied to temporarily disabled, and I had a power scooter. It was a wonderful tool for me during that gathering, when I was, as usual, there alone with my three kids and also couldn't walk much. But we also played with it.

Now, this playing was accompanied by conversations with every single kid about respecting individuals' choices about their gear. Yes, I'll let you drive my scooter, but that doesn't mean anybody else with a scooter will let you. They may feel that it's inappropriate, and they get to choose. And, by the way, let me remind you that you should never touch anyone's mobility aids without permission--even if they're not using it right then. (All the kids: "Yeah, we get it already." *eyeroll*)

That was a lot of caveats. Perhaps too much Big Dull Buildup. I just wanted folks to know where I was coming from when I let the kids drive around the quad.

One day, though, I took a golf cart. I don't remember why. Maybe the kids had run down the battery and my scooter was charging. Who knows? But I had this conversation with the driver, which started out awkward and only got worse:

As we drove along, we kept passing people I knew, and I would exchange greetings with them. So I said to the driver, "Do you ever feel like you know everybody here?"

Driver: No.

Me: Oh. Well, I've been coming for a long time, 12 or 13 years.

Driver: I've been at every gathering since 1984.

Me: Oh. Well, I meet a lot of people through my kids.

Driver: My four adult children have been at the gathering every year of their lives.

Me: Oh.

*awkward pause*

At this point, we pass a woman using a power scooter.

Driver: That woman drives me crazy. She has no respect at all. She drives around on her scooter like it's a motorcycle, all these kids hanging off her, and she lets kids drive it around. She has no idea that it's completely inappropriate to do that. It disgusts me.

Me: Actually, that's me you're talking about.

*even more awkward silence until we get to my destination*

I was very amused by this interaction. I know the point of view he ascribes to; I just don't agree with it entirely. "People like that take all the fun out of being disabled," I fumed to David. (Yes, I was joking. Just in case you can't tell. Sometimes people can't.)

I'd never before had someone complain about me, to my face, without realzing it was me they were complaining about. It was a fascinating thing to have happen.

I was also amused by the irony of being lectured on appropriate behavior with regard to the disabled by a person who couldn't tell me and a Black woman with dreadlocks apart. I mean, really: Scooter Woman #2 and I resembled each other not at all. Anyone could tell us apart with the most superficial of glances. There is no excuse for mistaking us for each other except a failure to look past the machine.

So, I was on the golf cart with Shani, and this story came to mind, and then I looked at the driver and realized that he might very well be the same man. In fact, I'm reasonbly sure he was. So I did not tell the story, though it would have been a satisfying conclusion to tell a story about a person not realizing he was talking about me while not realizing I was talking about him.

This man was also, later in the week, the first golf cart driver to question my need for a cart. I have other friends who've had this happen to them, some of them routinely, because they have an invisible disability. But it had never happened to me until this week.

This gentleman was parked outside the dining hall, and the kids and I walked up and asked if he was free to take us somewhere. The kids were excited about riding the golf cart, and he said to me, "The golf carts are not for riding just for fun. I'm not going to take you just because you want to ride and then not be here when someone really needs it."

I said, "It is fun to ride the golf carts. I also need it. But we will wait for another driver."

I was sorry right then that I hadn't taken the time to get a priority rider card--I hadn't done it early in the week because I didn't expect to use the carts, and then I was just too lazy even though I walked past Golf Cart Central every morning on my way to my job at the Info Desk. But I'd have been glad to be able to flash it at him just then.

I hope this man isn't as joyless in general as he has seemed in our interactions. He reminds me of a roommate of mine in grad school who was very involved in several political causes, and she would come home from meetings frothing with anger because people had been having fun. "As if they're at a social event!" She wanted her political activism to be serious, and couldn't see that, for many people, such work is both serious and a social outlet. She disapporoved of chatting and laughter while planning direct action.

If I had a power scooter again--even permanently--I would still let children drive it around. Because I am pro-fun, I am indulgent with children, and I do not believe that my decision to let kids drive my scooter disrespects anyone else, or the decisions they make about their own bodies and their own tools. And I trust children to understand that just because I let them do this doesn't mean they should assume that anyone else will.

That's my choice. I respect that other people make different choices. And I hope that this man has, somewhere in his life, an outlet for frivolity and fun.

Some Moments from our Trip to Rhode Island & Boston

We got home about 36 hours ago. I've been doing lots and lots of laundry, spent much of yesterday doing a first clearing-out of my overloaded inbox, and have not yet had the down time I was so sure awaited me here in Michigan.

I have a lot to write about. My brain containts full blog posts on polyamory, the fragrance-free policy at the gathering (and the handing out of soap at registration), and something else I can't remember right now; these were all worked out during the long hours of driving and thinking on the way home. But right now I'm just going to toss out some brief bits to clear the surface detritus.

I have a years-long tradition of flirting with a certain friend of mine when we see each other at gatherings. This year's best moment:

Her: I brought nothing but black shirts.

Me: That's great, because as far as I'm concerned, it's black shirts or nothing.

We also had a fun, if rather obvious, "sleeping together" joke after we both napped through meeting for worship late in the week.

My friend Janis is getting ready to homeschool her daughter this coming school year, and we spent a lot of time this week talking about it, as her deadline for getting some forms into the state was coming up soon. She'll be a natural at it, as this story she told me clearly proves. All my homeschooling friends will recognize themselves in this:

After missing a couple of days of school, her 12-year-old daughter told her that she had missed the unit on reproduction. Janis went into overdrive, pulling out books and queueing up websites and generally making sure her daughter had the most complete, accurate, and healthy information about human sexuality available. She even pulled down a volume of Leonardo da Vinci's anatomoical drawings, including a cut-away view from the side of a man and a woman having intercourse, as well as drawings like this of babies in utero:

After returning to school, her daughter came home and told her that none of the other kids knew any of that stuff. She'd mis-heard a word. Whatever they studied on the days she missed, it wasn't "reproduction."

Visiting the New England Aquarium made Word Boy really hungry for seafood.

The Lego Savant--now 11--was so free-range at the gathering that most days I only saw him at meals and bedtime. Not at meals to eat with, you understand. Merely to see him from across the room, talking and laughing with his friends, and know that he was showing up where he was supposed to when he was supposed to.

Officially, I was required to show up at the beginning and end of every morning and evening session of Junior Gathering to sign him in and out. Unofficially, his friends' parents--and in one case, a grandmother I still haven't met, though the Lego Savant says she's really nice--did it for me most of the time. We parents have done a lot of signing each other's kids in and out over the years, but this year we didn't even coordinate it. Whoever showed up just did it, and then we'd bump into each other walking around and say, "Oh, by the way, I signed the kids in."

I'd sign him out in the evening, tell him, "you're signed out, don't stay out too late," and head back to the dorm. He would show up about half an hour later, though the last night he and a friend stayed to help pack up and he was gone more than an hour.

One morning, without thinking, I tried to kiss him when I saw him in the cafeteria at breakfast, and was rebuffed. But later that very same day, I ran into him and his friends, and he was feeling so happy that he spontaneously gave me a great big hug. He's in a transitional stage of life right now, I'd say. He's been moving back and forth over a line between childhood and adolescence for some time.

Word Boy has become fashion-conscious since his last haircut, which he loves. He actually checks his hair in the mirror in the morning, and he wants his clothes to match. He suffered from a perplexing shortage of clean shorts and t-shirts at the gathering (packing up, we found a bag with more clean ones that had gotten buried, which at least solved the mystery although it came too late to do much good). One day, the only clean t-shirt and shorts he had didn't, in his view, match. Also, the t-shirt was too long. I showed him how to tuck it in, which helped, but he was pretty grumpy about the whole thing until we got to breakfast and someone said, "Hey, looking good, Word Boy." I could have kissed that person.

He has also become fashion-conscious on my behalf. He has favorite outfits, and can be consulted as to color choices. One morning at breakfast, I stood up from the table, and he exclaimed, "Mom! That is my new favorite outfit! That dress, with the black headband...and your new purse. You look perfect!"

Love that kid.

The dress in question has a plunging neckline. For the first time in my life, I had to use double-sided fabric tape to hold it in place. The Tiny Tornado thought double-sided fabric tape was a great idea, and also used it, in his case to keep the collar of his polo shirt just so.

One afternoon, I was watching Word Boy and the Tiny Tornado, as well as a friend's kid--we'll call him The Explainer, because it's perfect for him, even though Word Boy already has a friend I've nicknamed that. Word Boy is attracted to a certain kind of very smart and verbal kid. Practically all of his friends could be called "The Explainer." Word Boy and The Explainers--some day they'll form a band.

One day I came back to the table at lunch to find Word Boy, a boy we'll call That Smart-Talkin' Kid because Explainer 3 starts to get hard to keep track of, and a third kid who might have been Explainer 2 but might have been Word Boy's new friend The Dissector, I can't quite remember--anyway, I came back to the table and the three of them were discussing Leornardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings. It was kind of a theme of the week, apparently. That Smart-Talkin' Kid's mom and I were a bit proud of this moment, though I felt less proud because, until this week, Word Boy hadn't actually heard of da Vinci's anatomy drawings. Which, given his interests, is a huge oversight on my part which I must rectify immediately.

Word Boy had a wonderful time in his Junior Gathering group. He spent lots of time with his oldest Gathering friend, Still Waters, as well as getting closer to Explainer 2 and making new friends in That Smart-Talkin' Kid and The Dissector. He got to spend the afternoon at Still Waters' campground with him and his family, and Explainer 2's mom took him on a late-night trip to see the beach under a nearly-full moon.

As we were packing up to leave on Saturday, my friend Neil asked me how we were doing.

Me: We're doing fine. Word Boy has been having such a wonderful time and has made such good friends that he is absolutely heartbroken about leaving.

Neil: That's great!

A pause. And then we both burst out laughing.

Anyway, I had WB, TT, and Explainer 2, and we were hanging out at this wonderful spot near the cafeteria, a boulder-strewn stream bed that was a favorite of the kids all week (multiple stream-based drenchings account for why I had to do laundry not once, but twice, on this trip). And some dear friends from our yearly meeting were also hanging out there, including a boy about Word Boy's age who we'll call The Force of Nature.

The kids were having such a good time together that I suggested to The Force of Nature's mom that he spend the afternoon with us, too. She thanked me, and then checked in to be sure I was really up for it--The Force of Nature is, shall we way, not an especially compliant child or talented at listening to grown-ups' instructions, though he is very sweet and his intentions are generally good.

I said, "I have had a little practice at dealing with that kind of thing. The Tiny Tornado has been training me. Five years ago, I'd have been completely unprepared. Today? I think I can probably manage."

My three favorite 12-year-old girls in the world:

They roomed right across from us and teased me that they had learned the 6-digit access code for our door because they'd been hearing me coach the Tiny Tornado through it all week. By Friday, he was inputting it and opening the door all by himself.

Here they are doing dorm hall tricks:

Which was very inspiring to the Tiny Tornado:

And this is what we found coming out of FLGBTQC worship one day. That's Word Boy, the Explainer, Katherine, the Tiny Tornado, and Aliyah:

I am already planning for next year in Greeley, Colorado. I know how long a drive it is (about 19 hours actual driving time, 5 hours more than this year's trip to Rhode Island). I'm starting to have some ideas about where we might stop on the way to see interesting things; we might even head north, take I-90 for awhile, and stop at Effigy Mounds National Monument, which I think the kids would love.

I'm planning my budget already, thinking about how I can save up the money we'll need. This isn't a gathering I can start thinking about in March the way I usually do. And I really want to be there next year. I want to see all these kids; I want to see my grown-up friends; I want to flirt with the people I flirt with; I want the kids to see the Rocky Mountains (and to see them myself for the first time in over 30 years).

The narrow, twisty roads and excessive tree cover in New England made me twitchy and claustrophobic. I was so happy to get to Ohio and see cornfields and sky. I love the midwest and I love the plains, so you will believe me when I say that I am even looking forward to driving across Iowa and Nebraska.

A whole year to live through before we go back again. This time of year, it seems like an endless wait. But somehow it always comes around again.

Phone Blogging from Rhode Island

The kids and I have arrived safely in Rhode Island after an 800-mile drive in which not much happened. We stopped after 500 miles to sleep. The Tiny Tornado has had some kind of developmental upgrade and is perfectly fine to drive with for long periods, except during the same stretch of the afternoon where he gets fussy at home--the time that was, until recently, nap time. One of those transitions.

It's possible, though, that my iPad did not make it safely to RI. Actually, tha'ts not true--we know it made it to RI because someone was watching a movie on it when we arrived at the University of Rhode Island. It just seems to have not made it safely to our dorm room. I checked the car last night without luck but am hoping that when we check again in the light of day it will turn out to have slipped down beside someone's seat. Because I love my iPad. I'm not worried about losing data--I'm backed up in the cloud for the most part, or on the computer at home. But it would not make me happy to have to replace the darn thing just now. And I will have to--I do most of my computing on the iPad.

At least I have my bluetooth keyboard with me, and so I can write on my phone. The Gathering is the kind of place where I will bust if I can't write., because so much is happening all the time.

Expect a dramatic uptick in uncorrected typos, though.

Our dorm room is wonderful. It's roomy and has a pleasant view of the campus. It also has a spiral staircase in it, which leads to another roomy pleasant room upstairs. This is just so nifty that we are all very excited about it.

Word Boy and the Lego Savant are living upstairs. Everyone has their own dresser and desk. The Tiny Tornado built himself a cozy nest for sleeping in the nook under the staircase, but was finally only able to go to sleep last night by crawling into my bed.

A few highlights of our trip before I go take my morning shower:

Word Boy observed that ever since we stayed at a Hampton Inn in Philadelphia, he's been seeing them everywhere. I told him that he is experiencing a common phenomenon, that is called the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon, or sometimes the Yellow Volkswagen effect, which is that once you become aware of something you hadn't noticed before--a new word, the Hampton Inn, a yellow volkswagen, you start seeing it everywhere.

Word Boy said that he had experienced this phenomenon other times as well.

Meanwhile, the Tiny Tornado heard us say "phenomenon" a few times, and started going, "ma-na-ma-na," to which we off course ended up replying "doot-do do-do-do."

After a long stretch during which no one had said anything, Word Boy piped up with, "I suddenly have a taste for broccoli. Do you think we could stop for lunch at a place that has broccoli?"

Later, after arriving on campus: "Today was a pretty good day. I never did get any broccoli, though."

And, in case you thought this trip wouldn't be educational: we came out of our motel room yesterday morning to head down to the free continental breakfast, and found a boy about Word Boy's age, who said, "come here and see this."

"This" turned out to be a butterfly with a wingspan of 4 or 5 inches, which was resting quietly on the back of his hand. He told us, "This is an owl butterfly," and explained how the eye spots on its wings can fool predators into thinking it's too big and scary to eat.

I commented that it was the largest butterfly I'd ever seen in the wild. He explained that, although it was indeed large, that it was not an especially large specimen of its kind.

We hung out with him, chatting about butterflies and marveling at this one's beautiful wings and fringed antennae, and tremendously large body, and then he put it back where he had found it, resting in a shady spot, and we all went downstairs to eat.

There really are wonderful things everywhere. Who knew we'd step out the door of a Super 8 in Danville, Pennsylvania, to find a Butterfly Docent waiting for us? I wonder what's going to surprise us today.