growth

This week Em and her dad have been picking pumpkins. I think they're at around 150 large ones; I don't recall what small gourds they planted but in the past they've hauled in several hundred of those. Next month we'll sell them at our town's fall market. This week Goose claimed a few; she burst inside demanding black paint after fastidiously washing her selected punkins. I recall not long ago that'd make me go, "yeah, let me sit with you and we'll paint these right up!" but now I just smock'd her, gave her a brush, a dish of paint, and a cup of water, and let her run off to do her thing.

I love how steady her hand is getting, how her vocabulary-of-art-conventions is developing--look at the pigtail or braid on the next one--and how she sees and makes and lives, full of bright exuberance. We've been planning on homeschooling her for kindergarten and have had a steady flow of curriculum coming in the past month or two; the plan was to start next week, but on Monday Goose decided we should start now. I expect the novelty will wear off eventually for her but that first wave of starting School is a heady thing.

Last night I woke up from a dream, which is a rare occurrence--and a happy dream, which is even rarer. In it, a friend and former choir director (who is deceased) was on stage in front of us, the choir, proudly calling out a former student in the audience who recently transitioned. He directed his choir at a conservative private college where several people came to me and apologized when my sister came out, as if she were dead (or. worse than dead, in their eyes). I have no idea what his stance was re the denomination's view towards anything non-hetero, but I do know he was happy to loudly push against norms in dress and presentation, free from the shackles of propiety by his own sense of self-value and further rocketed into the stratosphere by his son with Down's. The man loved.

In my dream his actions were good; there was no fear from his declarations of pride and joy--my only worry was how we were sloppy in coming onto the stage, we did not practice enough in our formation, and people were blocking sight-and-sound lines. The audience was happy and welcoming; the former student only embarassed for being called out, returning to that old scenario of unexpected limelight from his director but as ever with no real bite. Here was growth and pride-in-growth, a dream that distilled in its scenario the joys of reaching for freedom and finding it. i hope, reader, you will find freedom--joy and peace and an unassailed sense of your own value. Keep growing