rosebud's busy day
Whew. That was like whoosh weekend. So busy. We spent the weekend at a home school conference in Seattle Washington. We go to the same conference every year and occasionally I wonder if it’s going to be worth the effort. Because it definitely takes effort. Nine people, one van. One Interstate 5. Read: nine bladders. All finely tuned to heed the call differently.
But it was definitely worth the effort. We had ice cream for dinner on the way home. Bad mama, bad mama. But every year we pack up the bairn and go to this conference, wondering what we will come home with. Nuggets of wisdom, fellowship, new friends. New and totally excellent resources.
The dancing seminarian came with us. An experience he'll never forget. It will cause him, no doubt to cling blindly to his vocation for all the wrong reasons.
Our family tradition is to go to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle after Mass on the Sunday after the conference. I realize that sound like a bit of a convoluted tradition. And it is. It’s not all that easy or relaxing or inexpensive to go the zoo. In fact, it’s difficult, busy and expensive. But we thought it would be worth the effort because we have done it for all these years and Rosebud should surely be allowed to benefit from trips to the zoo like her older siblings before, poor neglected waif that she is.
So, we go to the zoo and she is very excited to see the giraffes and the hippos and the anaconda even. The first stop is the penguin pit, we spend ten minutes there and she experiences sheer delight. From there we move on to the leopard, where she is pretty nervous, even though he is behind three inches of a substance similar to that used for 747 windshields.
From there we move on to the snake and bird area, where the anaconda is similarly housed. While viewing the anaconda from behind my legs, she brings to my attention that Huckleberry recently told her that anacondas kill people by squeezing the breath out of them. Working herself up into an unprecedented level of anxiety, she views the rest of the zoo animals from the Woodland Park Zoo stroller we rented, refusing even to unbuckle for fear something might get her.
Nothing got her and she couldn’t wait to get back to the penguin pit where the friendly, harmless penguins who have no means of biting, scratching, squeezing or making frightening noises reside. It’s peaceful, she is happy. She can even unbuckle and get out of the rental stroller. Her harrowing trip to the zoo is punctuated at either end by ten minutes of boundless joy, glorious giggling, a foretaste of heaven for a four year old, I am certain. She will talk of it for weeks to come.
Harrowing, stressful, challenged she was in so many small ways, forcing herself to peek at the hippos from between her fingers, being pushed against her will through the terrifying gorilla-land, bravely casting sidelong looks at the giraffe, more than 50 yards away, his backward knees both glorious and terrifying. Everything new, full of wonder and danger. Punctuated briefly with the intense joy of the happy, relaxed, predictable and darling penguins, almost too cute to bear. They make it all worthwhile.
She is being well prepared for motherhood.
