It's 1984, but we've been here before...

I loved 1984/1985.


I was a big kid. I was in third grade (still my favorite elementary year). I have so many memories from this age.


We moved the summer before school started and I began a new BIG school. I was miserable. I had started my education at a small school that had (gasp!) only one class per grade. I had been with the same kids (with few exceptions) for three years and now I was a tiny little fish in a huge pond, scared and lost.


Bless my mother for her mercy. She allowed me to transfer back to my beloved Rees School for one last year. I cried when I heard the news. Had I ever been happier?


Awesome things from that year: a class camp-out (can you imagine?) and a 3rd-5th grade sleep-over at the school. All rewards for reading excellence.

It was in 3rd grade that I was reborn into the world of music. We had a reading station in which we'd sit in pairs under a sheet-covered table and through head-phones, listen to homophones or some such thing. One day my friend Ben brought in a Cyndi Lauper tape and we listened to the intracies of language in "She-Bop." Ben, despite this odd new-wave beginning, has been influencing my musical choices for over two decades, may he rest in peace. "You're the Inspiration" by Chicago was our song, in my mind anyway.

My teacher was way awesome. She was full-blooded Navajo and she taught us songs and sign-language from her culture. She was an excellent and dedicated teacher (and she still remembers me).

My sister was born in 1984. I still love baby Mandy like nothing else. I treasured her as if she were a perfect doll that lived and breathed and belonged to me. I changed her diapers and delighted in her growth and accomplishments. I wonder if my mom ever felt a bit robbed by my taking Mandy completely over. I did my best to teach her to sit up, to talk, sing and write her letters. Although there's definitely a generation gap wedged in between us, I love grown Mandy and mama Mandy like crazy. I do not know what I'd do without my sister.

This is all on my mind, because I just realized that Dane is in third grade now, that favorite time in my life. I worry because I'd been into boys for years at this point (though he seems blissfully uninterested in girls, the whole of his class being just friends). I hope that he's having a great time. I hope that he feels as alive as I remember feeling. I loved recess and I loved reading, so we're the same there. But he gets math and is quite good at it. There's a big difference. He has been with 60% of the kids in his class for 2 1/2 years now. He seems confident and like he's learning what Dane is all about. For as much as he dislikes working hard, I'm impressed with how he can when it is needed and has even learned to be pleasant about it. I embrace his big-kid-ness.


Isn't that a great brother/sister picture?