Driving Home From Church

I pulled over twice on the way home from church to break up fighting in the backseat. The first time, I made them say something nice about each other. 

Luke: Pete's smart.

Pete: Nu-uh, Luke's the one that's smart! (smaht)

Carrie: (sing-song voice) You're both smart. That's wonderful!

Pete: (impatiently) Nooooo, Luke's da one that's smahter. 

Carrie: (not in a sing-song voice) Okay, say something else nice about Pete, Luke.

Luke: (not smiling at all, bored) He's funny.

Carrie: He IS funny. Okay, Petey, Luke is smart, now say one more good thing about him.

Pete: He has really long hair. (He has weally lond hay-uh.)

Carrie: Great! Let's get going.

Four blocks later, we pulled over again. This time I just made them apologize.

Again, with the modesty.

I just read the most beautiful post I have read in a long, long time. In Beach Baby, Melissa M. describes a sequence of beach-memories beginning with her childhood. As a seven year old, she gathers shells, encounters stranded stingrays, and walks down the beach hand-in-hand with her grandfather. As a teenager, she gets sunburnt while reading Jane Austen and mooning over a boy. Then she's a honey-mooning newlywed, a young mother, and finally a mother with growing and almost-grown children.

Exquisite. A gut-wrenchingly beautiful read for me as I fight an almost constant yen for Someplace Else and a wish that escaping to a beach was a lot closer than a days drive. And it was an interesting look at life's progression and time marching on. (Just this morning I was musing that in one week, Brandon and I will have been married for seven years and how that's equivalent to high school and college. But these seven years have passed by a lot more quickly than high school or college did alone.)

Then.

One of the commenters asked about her honeymoon bikini: Why did she think she should wear one? Just because she was now married, she didn't need to be modest anymore?

REALLY??

Good feelings gone. (Dori, Finding Nemo)