Salvation Amy

Every once in a while, someone has just the child they deserve.

When Kate was little, maybe two or three, I remember scolding her for something (as I was the older sister, and  knew all the rules).  Her reply: "That’s just the way I live my life."  It’s funny how people are who they are who they are who they are.  Were I to pick an epitaph for her, that would be it.

Miss Ella Bella Portabella seems to be cut from the same cloth.  Darling, and in charge.

It appears to be impossible to take a bad picture of Ella.

Like her brother, and, incidentally, her mother, Ella’s language skills appear unstoppable and advanced for her (15 month) age.  By the time we left on Monday, she was saying "Amy", "Scott", and "Charlie" appropriately, and with ease.

Scott and I went by yesterday morning to help Kate with some last minute errands (on accounta she now has zero hands).  When we got there, Ella was at the top of the stairs, and I helped Kate get her other foot into her pjs, and zipped her up while she squirmed into and out of Kate’s lap.  When we came down the stairs she bounced over and said "HI Scott!" before plopping herself into her car seat.

It’s just the way she lives her life.

Sam and Charlie share a sense of humor.  They played for quite some time, at sword fighting.

And decapitation:

The hardest thing about being so far away from my family is missing the day to day growing of the new human beings.  Since my last visit, both my sister and brother have grown whole new human beings.

I talk to Kate frequently, which means I get to talk to Sam frequently.  On Monday we went by Kate’s to see Sam, and meet Ella.  Kate was away having carpal tunnel surgery when we got there, and Dad was babysitting for her. 

When we first got there Sam was a little shy, Ella, not so much.  Finally I asked Sam if he knew who I was, and he shook his head no.  When I told him I was his Aunt Amy, his entire face lit up, and he said "I know you.  You’re my friend."

Then he reached into my chest, pulled out my still-beating heart, and stuck it in his pocket.

The most amazing thing about our trip so far is that we left on time.  I ended up driving through the night which earned me a lecture from my mother.  But it really happened quite logically.

When we got to Toledo, it was only 10:30, and I wasn’t really tired, and figured that I could make Saturday’s 17 hour day a little bit shorter by heading on to Elkhart.  But Elkhart was closer than I’d thought, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s waking up in Indiana, so I pushed through to Chicago, to avoid driving through the horrible Chicago daytime traffic.

And then, of course, we aren’t going to pay Chicago prices for a hotel room, and, by the time we’re through Chicago, well, you might as well just drive through.

My mother’s lecture is impervious to the logic of this.

The sun came up over the Wisconsin Dells, and we were into my favorite part of the trip, where it gets a little earlier every couple of hours, and the landscape is always changing twisting morphing into something bigger than you are, something that makes you wish you could see the history of time in its proper perspective, and that if you could, you would know the meaning of life.  This is what South Dakota does to me, always.

Scott told us the things he knows about how the landscape is formed, and the Indians that lived there before we got there, and we wondered about the travellers from the east, seeing that landscape for the first time, and the people who were already there when they got there.

On Saturday evening we’d finally had it, and couldn’t make it on to Billings, like we’d hoped, and we stopped in Sheridan Wyoming.  Television in Wyoming is better than television in Delaware, because it includes a whole channel of guys riding the bucking broncos and television is always better if there is a chance, however remote, that someone might die.  There was one guy that got kicked in the head by a bull, and they showed that clip over and over.  Which would make football better, I think, if there were more replays of guys getting kicked in the head by bulls.  And the rodeo guys, they aren’t wusses like football players, because instead of helmets, they wear cowboy hats, which provide zero protection from getting kicked in the head by bulls.

Sunday we drove to my Mom and Dad’s, and even though it was a five hour drive, it seemed quite easy, in comparison.