And The Award Goes To...

You got it. My baby. The closing ceremonies were tonight. After singing, presentations, cultural drum playing, dinner and about five hours, we found out Son had the best book in his group. One of the best rewards was it was not just him. Remember my gang? Most of our kids are at different levels so the daughter of one friend won. The daughter of one of her sisters won and their brother had one of his girls win too. These are my people. They have always been winners to me. You should know the books were judged by people totally independent from the group. It was truly based on their own merit. Son? He got his first trophy and could not get to me fast enough to show me. He was so proud. That was reward enough for me.

It is Finished

Two solid weeks of work. One major marathon weekend. Another summer program project is complete with time to spare. We bound it about 4 Sunday afternoon so I could chill out for the rest of the day. I missed a friend's daughter's 1st birthday party too. I've got to get a gift figured out pronto.

So, I've got one more summer until I have TWO children in the program. That means TWO projects and even with TWO parents, it's not enough help. My friends? Well let's see.

One is a stepmom and her daughter is in the program. I read her book for her in the process and they finished on time.

Three friends are sisters and they have a brother. I'm cool with him too but hang with the girls. One sister has one daughter and they finished about when I did. She went to help the one married sister who has a son in the program, the other divorced sister who has one daughter in the program and the divorced brother who has 2 daughters in the program and an ex-wife who didn't help for some reason. Their cousin was also there to help with the 4 books that were going on. I text the one sister to tell her something. She asked if I was done. I told her I was and asked what she was doing because I expected her to be conked out. She told me about the group thing they had going on. At that point it was after 10 at night. I saw her this morning, wiped out. She left about 5 in the morning she said. They still weren't done. It's important to note, no one started late. This is just how it is when you work a full-time job and have a family (2 of the sisters have other children too) and this too. It's a job. It is. We are glad the kids are doing this, but it is truly work for the whole family!

But it is finished. That's all that matters. So I can't show you every page because it's 27 pages, not including the bibliography and title page and that kind of stuff. It only had to be 8-10 pages of content but that would just never do. So here's a sample! Excuse me while I enjoy the fruits of our labor!


The cover. Thank God it was a regular size this year so I didn't have to do that annoying contact paper thing. I was able to get laminate sheets in 9x12 and that did the job.


A little of the inside pages. He illustrated most of the pages himself.


A little more of the inside pages. Got a little 3D action going on. I did maybe 3 or 4 pages this way where I found a good image online and had him draw his characters for me to cut out and put into the scene.


A little splash on the back of the book. My parents don't know this yet but they gave the story rave reviews. See? Well, you can't read them from this picture I know, but trust me they loved it! Though they haven't read it yet.

So these are a tad blurrier than I hoped but then again, so is my vision right about npw. I need a drink. Pepsi machine, here I come!

Wake Me When It's Over

Well, I am exhausted. It's not surprising and I did sign us up for this, but I am complaining anyway. We are in high gear with Son's project and the end of the race is near but I feel like I've got to run on one leg to get there.

My to-do list:

1 - Help Son finish book by this Saturday so we can get it bound Saturday or Sunday because it's due Monday.
2 - Work like mad at work because it's insane there and also find time to look for illustrations for Son's book because it's a lot for one kid to draw in a few days. This requires staying a little later, thus taking time from being home with him to do the project.
3 - Pay as many bills as possible in preparation for trip to take kids to parents and my own vacation a little after that.
4 - Figure out puzzle packaging for fund raiser project and get the kits printed before the end of August when the printer goes on his own vacation.
5 - Sleep.
6 - Wash dishes.
7 - Wash clothes AND put them away.
8 - Finish story for writing assignment and submit before August.
9 - Sleep
10 - edit friend's story whose daughter is also in Son's summer program
11- Sleep

Where is Mr. T in all this? Well, that's the thing. I am the keeper of knowledge in our house. If you want to know how to spell something, you come to me. (OK, HE comes to me.) If you want Son to get his math homework right - yes, summer math homework - you come to me. Although, I can trust Mr. T to listen to Son read a book so he can add it to the list of books he read over the summer. THAT he can safely do. But for the most part, anything related to the education of the kids is dictated by me and no, I didn't necessarily ask for it. It's just the job that fell to me. Mr. T mows the lawn and pays the bills and grocery shops and goes on all school trips with both kids. I wash everything and everyone, and do the school stuff. Still not sure that's equitable but frankly, this system will keep the lights on, food in the fridge and the kids advancing to the next grade every year.

So we drag. Up early; get them ready and off to respective destinations; work, work, work; come home by 7 or 7:30 to help Son work on project until about 9 because he has to get up too early to stay up too late; maybe I fall asleep, maybe I'm too wired to sleep so I'm up until 11 or so watching whatever I've taped, praying that window didn't close when I can successfully fall asleep and still get more than 4 hours.

I don't know what I'm going to do when Daughter is in the same summer program and we have TWO family projects to do. I can't even imagine having to do two books this year. Ugh! Depending on what it is, I may have to make someone with specific necessary talents an honorary family member for the month so I can get help.

My prediction for next year's project is something artistic like painting a picture, writing a song, something like that. Something the director said a couple of weeks ago about next year's theme - Reconstruction - put that thought in my head. I think it's time to start taking honorary family member applications.

Turning On The Light

There's a meme going on and thanks to Kerri, I am honored to be a part of it....but not just yet.

The plan was to come home and do my version of the meme after I ate and got a free moment. But first I had to take Son to the library to return a couple of books he read and to take out a couple of others that are going to help us with his project.

He is writing a book for his family project for the summer literacy program he is in. This is his second year. Last year we had to do a scrapbook. I am creative but I hate scrapbooks. This year we have to write a book. More up my alley.

The project is due on the 23rd, which is the last week of his program. "You don't have a lot of time!" you say. You are right. There is just never enough time. But I am much more comfortable with where we are this time around than where we were last year this time - nowhere, with me dreading even starting it.

Nope. Yesterday I had Son think of what kind of story he wants to tell. He has his main character facing a test in school so he builds a time machine to go back in time to talk to the people who can tell him directly what their time was like and he can come back and ace the test.

The criteria for the book is simple - well, maybe not to him but that's why we do this as a family. For his grade level (first grade as of this past year) he has to have a book with:

an about the author page
a dedication page
a preface/introduction
8 - 10 pages with a picture on each page
up to 3 sentences per page, about 150 words or so total

The story is to be historical fiction and will incorporate some understanding about the Underground Railroad and/or the Civil Rights Movement because this is the theme for the program this year - understanding where we've been in order to assess where we are and where we are going and how it relates to them as the individuals they are.

Son has ME for a mother so his book will probably be at least 2nd grade level since the outline we created showed that we would be doing at least a 15-page story, probably a little more.

We went to the library to get books I had looked up on scientists because my thought was to give the two other characters from the past times the same scientific inclination as the main character, thus making a connection that runs through the story. Hey, I'm proud of his little story. All the kids like science. The slave boy lives in Cincinnati (home of the Underground Railroad Museum which the kids will be visiting this weekend) and he likes to watch the stars ever since he followed the North Star to freedom, so astronomy would be his racket - if only he could read. The girl likes bugs. She is also from Cincinnati during the time of real-life African-American scientist, George Carruthers, who built his own telescope at the age of nine and went on to invent a special camera that made a trip to the moon on Apollo 16. The girl would study bugs and such in college - if she ever gets the right to go to the schools that teach it. The MC was a boy named Jake but Son has his own scientific interests so I had him rechristen the character by his own name in order to really bring him to life for my young writer and just maybe get him to see that he could indeed do and be the very things he is writing about.

We sat on the bed in his bedroom, occasionally chasing out Daughter who was only interested in playing with Son's toys and trying to pester him as all little sisters do. He has to do up to 10 pages but I knew that would be limiting.

"Page One." Son writes and we give the summary of that page.

"Page Two." Son writes more as I tell him how to spell the big words mixed in with his little ones.

"Page Four. Let's have Main Character meet...what shall her name be?"

"Umm, Katie?"

"Katie. Katie lives during the Civil Rights time." We begin to write and realize we intended to go further back to the Underground Railroad time first.

"Wait," I tell him. "Erase that four. We'll come back to it. Skip a line and write Page Five. This is where MC will meet the little slave boy first. What shall his name be?"

"Ummm. Cody?"

"No, baby. During slavery time you would not have found a little boy named Cody."

"Why not? Why didn't you name me Cody? I like that name!"

I roll my eyes. "Ugh. I don't. Why would I name you that? Your name is perfect and beautiful. Besides, Cody was not a name for that era. There are names that you just won't find during every time period and Cody was not a slavery time name."

We go on as I think out loud about what the character, now named Zeke, would be doing with and saying to the MC.

"Let's let him go back to his house for hot chocolate!" Son rolls on his bed, giddy and amused by his own 7-year-old wit. I sigh, standing in the kitchen doorway, perpendicular to his own, watching his mirth and thinking of how to explain this between my mouthfuls of spaghetti.

"Son, he can't go back to his house for hot chocolate."

"Why?"

"This was a time of slavery. Zeke is a former slave who took the Underground Railroad to freedom. You, as the character, are in HIS time. This is called historical fiction because you are basing a made up story in a real time period. YOU are from the present where you have a home and a room of your own, learning what you please and being free. Zeke's family is still hiding out from the possibility someone will take them back to the plantation they escaped from. If someone saw Zeke talking to you and heard you, they would hear your intelligence and in Zeke's time, that could get you killed. He can't take you home. It would be a danger to him and his family and even if he did, and someone found out, it could get them killed and you."

Son sits on the edge of his bed, his mouth slightly open, the light going on. He shakes his head no.

"No? No what?"

"It's not me."

"Huh?"

"It's not me." I hear him.

"No, it's not YOU, it's You-the-MC you, not You-the-real-boy. No one is going to kill YOU. This is what your MC is facing. These are the times Zeke lives in."

Son's light mood falters a bit. Over the past few weeks he has been learning about the Underground Railroad and The Civil Rights Movement. What he cannot grasp yet is that they are only about 100 years apart - 1850's-1860's vs 1950's-1960's. He has been learning there have been places blacks could not go and things they could not do. He is beginning to feel some the burden carried by each adult before him who had their own dawning of realization and learned the harsh truth that they would have to someday pass on to their own offspring. It is reinforced as we finish the outline, 2 hours later, and I then call my parents so they can give him a little more Civil Right era background and explain to him their own civil rights experiences because see? It was not that long ago that equality was won - partially, as my father explained.

"What do you mean?" Son asked. But my father chose not to go there. "Let's just say it was a time when we could begin to get decent jobs."

My mother explained about being able to sit anywhere she wanted on the bus. "I was just a girl then but there was a store we would go to to buy dresses and it had a restaurant for white people and a separate section for black people. Now I could go anywhere I wanted."

Of course Son doesn't fully get it right now. When the silliness is temporarily silenced and he really hears the stories, the incredulity takes over and he can barely manage to picture how this happened to people who are still alive today. Out of the blue he may say, "once, black people couldn't go anywhere they wanted and they couldn't ride just anywhere on the bus because it was the law."

He is learning and it's not all pleasant but what the program and I hope to have him realize is that not one of us has made it this far on our own power. He is free to get those books from the library and learn in his school and dream of being an astronaut because of the fights and sometimes deaths of the ones who came before us. And not all of them are in the distant past. It was 1920 before ALL women had the right to vote. It was 44 years later before ALL blacks could freely vote too. It was 6 years after that when I was born and it was tonight that my father still called it, "partial freedom."

Son will come to his own understanding one day, though my charge as a black mother and a Christian, is to help him channel any rage he feels into the promise that God has given him in and for his life so that he can experience the full freedom and joy he was meant to feel, all while grounding him in the reality that is the world we live in. It's a tall order. But I am a believer that God knows what you can handle and He knew I couldn't handle raising twins. He knew I couldn't handle a chronic illness greater then the eczema I often battle. But He must have thought I had what was needed to handle the black experience in America. Not necessarily the worst of it, but bearing the brunt of the result of it.

When that light went on in Son's head as he declined to be linked to his own self-named character who could have been killed with his slave friend just for being himself, I just hope it didn't turn out some other light that I want him to keep on. His book has a little ways to go and there is much to learn in the process to convey everything we wrote in the outline. But I am proud of my little writer and frankly I am proud we are part of this legacy of struggle and strength. It is my job to make him proud too.

And The Verdict Is..

Yes. Son and I have found out the Family Project for his summer camp program this summer. And yes, we DO have to write a book. I ought to get paid for my clairvoyance.

But I've got an idea and that is lightyears ahead of where I was at this time last summer when told of his project.

One of the things that was suggested by the IT Guru there was that we purchase this little baby called a Wacom tablet. Now, I've got taxes to pay, a vacation coming, stuff I want to do for the house, treats to buy for the kids' rooms when they leave to go to the grandparents and the last thing I want to do is spend more money. But I admit, this baby is cool. Son loves to write as much as I do and he loves to draw too, so it's not like this would be a waste of money for either of us. I'll think about it. But if you want to write your own book, this is a great way to illustrate it and write it electronically in your own handwriting. Very cool, even for non-techy me. And it's not that expensive. Very tempting. Now, I can imagine a lot of the kids will do the same things, especially if they end up getting and/or using this Wacom. So I doubt I'll buy it for THIS purpose. Hopefully my idea is just seemingly complicated enough that no one else will do it. I do like to be different if I can. Oh, wait. This is HIS project. Yes, yes. I misstated that. He likes to be different. There we go. That's what I meant. Yes I did and you can't prove otherwise.

Son and I have much reading to do. And planning to do for this book. Get me to the library!