...two...one.

Two left...

And my parents are here for a day. My father has long talks with M. about Sasquatch, a mutual interest. They look at pictures online. Footprints and blurry long-distance views and hypothetical sketches. M. is delighted. He gives my dad his last Oreo. This is big.

We've been reading some stories from 'Tales of the Kingdom' at naptime. Today's was 'The Baker Who Loved Bread.' Kind of inaptly named, but a really vivid story about denying shelter, bread and love to those in need -- and this really being denial of all this to the King Himself. Wounding the King Himself when you wound a stranger.

I had forgotten all about 'Tales of the Kingdom.' Until I saw the books again, and all kinds of memories came shooting back. The strange, almost gruesome pictures. The smell of the pages. The realism of the stories. A little disjointed, but all making a beautiful sense, too, somehow.

My parents read them aloud to us when I was very small. And I remember leafing through the books myself...

'The Apprentice Juggler' is a favorite. 'A Girl Called Dirty' is a powerful one too, especially if you ache for anyone struggling against God. (And she is all of us.)

The metaphors are resonant. I think you might like them.

I'm so tired. The fuel seems to be totally drained from me. Sinus infectionishness not helpful...

My children. My children. Your children. Your children, oh Lord.

One left.

"The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes. They cannot sound otherwise to those who have not had the relevant experience..." (C.S. Lewis.)

It's family field day! But there are thunderstorms. The sky turns green as I stand outside for morning traffic duty, and suddenly it feels like night. Lighted windows call 'welcome' as they do in the dusk-time... but it is 7:45 in the morning...

So: no trip to the park. We have field day at school. Taking turns in the gym, computer lab, etc. Most kids don't show up. Of those who do, about half have parents with them. It's a strange day. Isn't it funny how the end of something can turn out to have so different a character than what it's had all along? This isn't how school's felt at all, for nine long months. Nine months of building routine, of following the rhythm, of keeping them carefully penned in with invisible fences... and then you say goodbye in a whirlwind of totally-different-ness. Who are we? What have we been through?

There is the feeling

of losing one's children.

Not like the real thing, I know. And there are so many reasons it's good that this is ending. But the feeling comes nevertheless,

because I love them. What a strange season this is.

"In looking back, it would be wrong to deny that we have been in the Slough of Despond, and have crept along the Valley of Humiliation, but it would be equally wicked to forget that we have been through them safely and profitably; we have not remained in them, thanks to our Almighty Helper and Leader...The deeper our troubles, the louder our thanks to God, who has led us through all, and preserved us until now. Our griefs cannot mar the melody of our praise, we reckon them to be the bass part of our life's song, 'He Hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.'"

(Charles Spurgeon.)