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You don't really know your kid until you eat lunch with them at school. Allison forgot her science project at home Friday so I took it to her school at lunchtime. I decided to sit with her and visit since I haven't done that at all this year. Shame, I know. So the first thing I noticed was that she was drinking milk. Chocloate milk, but MILK. She hasn't had milk at home since she was two. The second thing I noticed was that she was eating peaches. I could not pay her to eat peaches at home. The third thing I noticed was that she is just like me. She loves to make her friends laugh. Her cute little friends all told me about the funny things she does like make grape kabobs with her straw and how she flung a piece of cake across the lunchroom "accidentally" and it landed in someones hair. Oh they just went on and on all the while Allison was just beaming with pride.
Lots of peole say she is my "mini me" even though I rarely realize it. She loves school supplies and even cried a little tonight because she wanted to run by Staples and get some tabs to organize her notebook. I found some Vera Bradley pencil cases marked half-price so I bought her one for making a good grade on her PASS word test finally. You should have seen how happy that made her. She loves crafts and enjoys helping me with whatever project I'm working on. She's taking gymnastics and piano, the two things I was doing at that age.
But seeing her at that lunch table enjoying her success at making people laugh was a revalation for me. It brought me back to late elementary school when I was a blossoming poet. I loved to take whatever topic we were studying and whatever writing assignment we had and turn it into a poem of sorts.
I even wrote a poem to nominate my teacher for an award. "She's my teacher, she's my friend. She's the best there's ever been. Her caring, sharing and her love, goes out, around and above."
Then there was the one I wrote about letting my pet turtle "Tot" go back into the creek from whence he came. "Letting my turtle go was really hard for me. Watching him swim into the wild and wonderous sea." Yes, I can remember that from fifth grade, but don't ask me anything about high school, because I don't remember it much at all. Strange, isn't it? I sometimes wonder if chemo wiped those memories out. Anyway, I have always loved to write and I love to make people laugh.
My friend Trina was the friend I remember laughing with the most in school. We had nicknames for each other and talked in funny voices that just really cracked us up. And Hill was my friend who made me laugh like crazy on the bus. Then there was Louie who made me laugh in college. We'd hang out on the bench at his house and act out funny lines from movies and sing very loudly. Then there was my friend Carmen who made me laugh through the later years of college. She took me to my chemo treatments and we would laugh until we were in tears. While all the other "Big C" patients looked on and wondered what could possibly be so funny at the Cancer Center of the Carolinas, we were having a great time.
Now I guess the person I laugh with the most would be my brother Mike. He calls me routinely while he's walking the dog and I'm waiting in the car line to pick up the Little Man. We've laughed a lot over the years, but most recently our laughter has become like therapy. Stress has been a theme for us this past year and laughter as you know helps alleviate that. He was the one who took Dad to his doctor appointments and then radiation and watched him grow weaker each day. He took it pretty hard when I was diagnosed with cancer, but then his wife was diagnosed the same year and went through a mastectomy as well. So now we make jokes about our overweight dogs and current events. We laugh a lot about Obama and our Mama. Other than the Knight I guess he's the one person who knows exactly what I will find funny and he'll even make a note to himself to tell me about something funny that he heard or saw. It's almost like we can take our history and our heartaches and wrap them together and make each other laugh like nobody else can. He "gets me" and I appreciate that. Laughter really is good medicine.
Lots of peole say she is my "mini me" even though I rarely realize it. She loves school supplies and even cried a little tonight because she wanted to run by Staples and get some tabs to organize her notebook. I found some Vera Bradley pencil cases marked half-price so I bought her one for making a good grade on her PASS word test finally. You should have seen how happy that made her. She loves crafts and enjoys helping me with whatever project I'm working on. She's taking gymnastics and piano, the two things I was doing at that age.
But seeing her at that lunch table enjoying her success at making people laugh was a revalation for me. It brought me back to late elementary school when I was a blossoming poet. I loved to take whatever topic we were studying and whatever writing assignment we had and turn it into a poem of sorts.
I even wrote a poem to nominate my teacher for an award. "She's my teacher, she's my friend. She's the best there's ever been. Her caring, sharing and her love, goes out, around and above."
Then there was the one I wrote about letting my pet turtle "Tot" go back into the creek from whence he came. "Letting my turtle go was really hard for me. Watching him swim into the wild and wonderous sea." Yes, I can remember that from fifth grade, but don't ask me anything about high school, because I don't remember it much at all. Strange, isn't it? I sometimes wonder if chemo wiped those memories out. Anyway, I have always loved to write and I love to make people laugh.
My friend Trina was the friend I remember laughing with the most in school. We had nicknames for each other and talked in funny voices that just really cracked us up. And Hill was my friend who made me laugh like crazy on the bus. Then there was Louie who made me laugh in college. We'd hang out on the bench at his house and act out funny lines from movies and sing very loudly. Then there was my friend Carmen who made me laugh through the later years of college. She took me to my chemo treatments and we would laugh until we were in tears. While all the other "Big C" patients looked on and wondered what could possibly be so funny at the Cancer Center of the Carolinas, we were having a great time.
Now I guess the person I laugh with the most would be my brother Mike. He calls me routinely while he's walking the dog and I'm waiting in the car line to pick up the Little Man. We've laughed a lot over the years, but most recently our laughter has become like therapy. Stress has been a theme for us this past year and laughter as you know helps alleviate that. He was the one who took Dad to his doctor appointments and then radiation and watched him grow weaker each day. He took it pretty hard when I was diagnosed with cancer, but then his wife was diagnosed the same year and went through a mastectomy as well. So now we make jokes about our overweight dogs and current events. We laugh a lot about Obama and our Mama. Other than the Knight I guess he's the one person who knows exactly what I will find funny and he'll even make a note to himself to tell me about something funny that he heard or saw. It's almost like we can take our history and our heartaches and wrap them together and make each other laugh like nobody else can. He "gets me" and I appreciate that. Laughter really is good medicine.
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