Taking Marian to school

[vaneramos]

Marian has a funny way of stringing words together sometimes. As we drove along the cottage road Friday evening, she asked: "Will the aunt of the peoples be coming?"

I couldn't comprehend her meaning at first. Ant of the people?

"The dog of the parsley?" I said to her. "The pillbug of the elephants?"

We cut to giggling. It turned out she was asking about my cousin, Catherine. Mom had said my cousin would join us for dinner one night this weekend, but in fact Catherine had never confirmed. Marian couldn't remember my cousin's name, only that she was the aunt of two other children who visited the cottage a couple summers ago. That's how Marian dug up the ambiguous phrase, "aunt of the peoples." Catherine didn't come, so we were alone for the weekend: me, Marian and Brenna, my parents, Potvin the cat, and Emma.

Emma is my parents' alpha female golden retriever. I prefer to call her Embolism, but rarely aloud. This weekend Marian and I came up with another nick, "Emer the Lemur." It's the way we relate, with crazy language and turns of phrase.

All the way home yesterday afternoon we concocted likely titles for the last two books in J.K. Rowling's notorious series.

Harry Potter and the Penguin of Death

Harry Potter and the Pedestrian Conspiracy

After we dropped off Brenna, I took Marian to her new boarding school. It was a strange experience. For the past six years, since they moved to Lindsay, I have had no firsthand experience of my daughters' school. Their mother clearly didn't want me interfering, so I didn't.

Now things have changed. Marian is older, she has more say about what happens in her life. She wants me involved. So there we were, driving up a country lane to a few brick buildings in the middle of nowhere. I opened the trunk, lifting out her luggage: a suitcase, a couple bags of fresh laundry, a heavy bag of books, a tupperware container full of banana muffins I had baked that morning, and her new guitar.

Yes, she has had a new guitar for a week, and is doing an amazing job of catching on. No lessons yet; her teacher is away in Virginia. Already she has learned the "Ode to Joy." The first line was in her lesson book; she picked out the rest by ear.

"I hate that song," she said. But she kept playing until it was perfect.

She spent hours leaning over the strings, plucking, playing, annoying her sister. And I remember how I loved to play the piano, started lessons when I was 13. All the thunder and lightning of classical pieces, landscapes of sound in which I could lose my heart and soul, draining the anxiety and demands of life, letting rain wash keys across strings of my mind.

Marian and I walked around the campus. She is happy there. She is 12. She showed me the art studio, the haunted chapel, the horses standing like statues on a green hillside. All the while, the sun set in a red-gold valley haze of maples.

Driving away in the dusk, with stars blinking into the deepening sky, I felt that familiar tearing. It seems my life has more goodbyes than hellos, but I know it's an illusion. The departures are simply more weighty.

One morning this weekend I dreamt I had been kidnapped by a band of terrorists. It started with a sex scene in a bathhouse, then my lover turned on me, arrested me. The next moment in the hall I was surrounded by men in police uniforms, but their credentials were false. Turned out to be a ring of criminals. The dream carried on through a series of scenarios in which I was different men trying to secretly help the me who had been kidnapped. Every time my lover was a member of the gang, and I had to betray him to save myself.

In one of the last scenes I was keeping a handwritten journal, but it was connected to the internet. I had to figure out how to encode messages in my journal so that people reading it would be able to understand them, but without alerting members of the gang. I needed to communicate the schematics of a hotel where my prisoner self was hidden.

Comments

[blt4success66.livejournal.com]

Van,

I thoroughly loved your entry today. I have to admit my ignorance (or stupidity?) for not going deeper into your journal and/or webpage. I did not know you had children.

Children can be a source of intense joy and pain. Each has its place in your relationship with them but I hope yours is joy.

Thanks for letting us have a glimpse into your life!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Ironically I only changed my LJ profile very recently; until a couple weeks ago it started off identifying all the labels: "polyamorous gay father." I decided to take a break from that, and try identifying myself by my creative output.

Of course my daughters are an important part of my life, but they live at a distance, so I don't see them frequently during the school year. However they were with me fulltime in July and August, so if you want to know more about that aspect of my life, just check my archives.

We have come through trials, but I have a good relationship with both my daughters. My elder daughter (12) is unhappy at home, which is part of the reason she is going to boarding school this year, and we are particularly close.

[dakoopst.livejournal.com]

As always, Van, thank you for sharing this view into your relationship with Marian. It makes me happy to see you experiencing the full range of parental emotions with her, and to realize that she's drawing you more into her life on her own accord.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she is a smart little woman, and I'm proud of her.

[stephe.livejournal.com]

I think the last one will be Harry Potter and the Expected Plot Twist.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Do you predict a particular plot twist, or just that there will be one? I don't have any clear idea about how things will turn out.

This weekend Marian reported that Daniel Radcliffe said not to expect a happy ending.

I replied, "The real tragedy would be if J.K. Rowling dies." And we laughed. Although I'm sure even that possibility has been accounted for.

[stephe.livejournal.com]

The pattern for the last few books has been a) Rowling gives broad outlines of something unpleasant to happen, b) fans spend several months guessing, c) the book comes out with something unpleasant that had been predicted by more than one person in the intervening months. So the meaning that the specific content of the twist would be known is one possibility. I had more meant that the fact that there would be a plot twist is what is expected.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

At any rate, my daughters and I have spent many hours in amused speculation.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the next one will be called Harry Potter and the Death Screams of One Million Trees Sacrificed to Print This Doorstop

And I'll be in line for it, natch. :)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Ah, and Revenge of the Whomping Willow.

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

Bwahh-haa-haa-haa-haa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!!