First retro-post of November: day 1

Apparently, I'm still a sucker for a dare. So.

To the motivating individual who has dared me to blog daily this month, I hope you will accept this after-the-fact post (written November 2nd, early a.m.), since I only got the message about the challenge you issued just now. And we'll just have to see how this works when I'm in Mexico next week.

November 1, Day of the Dead.
I'd wanted to build an alter for Mom. I bought flowers. I knew which picture to add. I had a few other odds and ends to put in place. I had the morning off work because S didn't have school, so I thought I had time in which to do it.

Instead, I spent the day playing taxi driver/personal assistant for children. They were my children, so I didn't begrudge them their dependency on me, or resent their bake sale, Ortho appointment, Math Club, horse riding, and ballet rehearsal. I'm increasingly aware of how quickly they will be grown and (we hope) out of the house. But I have to admit that a little frustration was creeping through the cracks that for the second day in a row (after a 4 day streak) I wasn't able to sit down for an uninterrupted 30 minutes and write yesterday, let alone build that alter.

Then, while herding kids at the school bake sale (which R & I really did BAKE for, as opposed to just "distressing" the crust on a store-bought pie) - and these were kids who had barely come down from their Halloween sugar highs and were chomping at the bit to have MORE quick-and-dirty carbs - I noticed that the school had set up a table with a number of Día de los Muertos alters, and among them was one R had made for her grandmother

It was simple: a photo of Mom with the girls, all three smiling real smiles, as opposed to the "just take the damn picture" grimace you sometimes see in posed photos; a couple of little rubber ducks (which Mom always got for the girls to have in baths when they visited her), some glitter and sequins to represent a sandy beach and her southern California home, and a very touching poem in Spanish that served as a tribute. R had known they were making alters for her Spanish class. She'd gathered the pieces. and brought them to school, and crafted the alter - all without saying a word to me. I told her how much it meant to me that she'd done it, but she'd done it for herself and for Mom, and that was what really mattered.