Happy Birthday! To The Unschool, to me, & to you--even if it's not...
I loved the Alice in Wonderland story as a child—later, too, but it was ALIVE for me as a child. So much so that when someone (it’s best I don’t remember who) pointed out it’s ALICE … IN… Wonderland, and not ALISON, I was devastated.
My mother had bought a record of the Disney songs, and the opening moment of the BURST of music filled me with delight. Then there’s the Mad Hatter tea party tune about celebrating your very merry UNbirthday. So if June is not a celebratory month for you, count yourself in: we can all, always, celebrate our merry unbirthdays. There are many such days, and each should have some merry moment.
On Saturday, I turn 60. I’m celebrating with my family—what I most want to do—and look forward to it. I need to write something to read aloud to all my boys. The thoughts and notes are too much in my head, and I need time to set them down. You know how that works!
The post for this week was to look at and to take apart a quote of Stephen King’s, about “fear being behind all bad writing…” but the piece has grown and isn’t yet ready and it’s not a topic I want to rush. I hope to have ready to post by midweek.
The Unschool also has a birthday!
It’s three years this month since I went “paid.” Some of you have been here that long, with me through all these months. Some of you have only recently found this newsletter.
Thank you, each, all, for reading, offering comments, taking part in some way.
The photo
…is of me with my three brothers. Two of us have June birthdays, and it was some June day in 1970-something at the family old-school barbecue long ago, marshmallows on forks in hand… All three of the brothers seem pretty intent… on not burning? I’m wearing a dress my mother sewed for me. She still lives in that house, alone now, and is happy to be there; my dad built it. Love went into every nail.
Wave your fork and marshmallows! Write something this week that celebrates. Maybe some piece you’ve been putting off. Some piece for family. Or just for you.
I’ll catch up with you next week — when we look at the useful stuff in Fear.
Happy You-in-Wonderland Day!
Happy birthday and marshmallow waving to you 🎶🎶🎶and the Unschool!🎉 60 is a great place to be 🤍
Night. Waves lap on the shallow rocky shore. Through the trees an across the lawn and over the granite terrace the lights of the cottage are warm. Before us the lake, dark green and calm in the night, gentle calming laps on the shallow shore. On that shore we have built our own round fire pit with flat lake rocks and filled it with wood and lit it. Two of my brothers, old enough, and me. Sometimes our cousins. Sometimes cottage friends from down the shore. No adults. We know to have a bucket of water at the ready just in case. With our sticks found in the woods we squat around the fire pit, marshmellows on the tips. We hold the marshmellows into the flame until the marshmellows flame black. We wave them in the dark to put out the flames, then with our teeth pull off the black outer casing, chew, swallow the burnt deliciousness. We put the soft marshmellow heart back into the flame until it is toasty gold, pull it out, wave it to cool it, and pull the golden soft marshmellow off the hard blackened stick tip with our teeth. Over fifty years later some of the faces have faded, but not the feeling of gathering around the little fire, the quiet dark lake beyond us, no adults, roasting and toasting and crunching our marshmellows. Together.