son days
my friend katbird posted on facebook this week that friday was her oldest son's last day of kindergarten. in between his first day and this, she wrote, he: "learned to read and write and play the piano. he figured out math." (well good luck with that one, says i) "he grew two hu-normous front teeth. he can tie his shoelaces and ride a bike without training wheels (mostly). he can smack a baseball and shoot a hoop. he had his first communion and saved money for a good cause. he teared up for the first time while watching a movie (Kung Fu Panda II, go figure). wow. It blows my tiny mind. how could it not have blown his?"
that's a lot, for one little guy, in just a year. yes it is.
i knew this had been on her mind. she came into my office a few days before, talking about how much she hated Velcro shoes because how can anybody ever learn to tie shoes if all they wear is Velcro? i said the exact same thing into the air when mine were the age of hers. tying those shoes all by yourself seemed to me, as a young mom, the symbol of all there was yet to learn, and the independence of it. if my children could tie their own shoes without me, well, they might just do ok.
"all of a sudden, he could just do it," she said. yes. so sudden it takes our breath away, these things new to our children that we have known so long we can't remember when or how we learned them for ourselves.
i love the fact that, though she visited on the pretense of showing me how to use Illustrator, she felt at home enough with me in the purple office to plop herself down say just what was on her mind. and after we'd gotten our Velcro rant out of the way it was this: should she should jump more fully into her business, or stay in the 'life right now' she had planned as a stay at home mom, with her cool little boy and his cool little brother.
her boys are growing up and eventually away, and that seems a little bit (a lot?) at odds with her dream to embrace the artist she is. what if, as she sinks herself into that creative zone she misses the 12 things he will next learn to do in the next 12 days or weeks or months? "i don't feel like i'm doing any of my jobs well," she admitted. but the mother of the grown up children in me says that if she is thinking about that at all, she is probably doing just fine.
we've both had son days this week. i met mine for lunch at a busy downtown restaurant on a corner in the city where we both live and work. we moved here when he was on the cusp of three, clumping around in cowboy boots we found at a thrift shop. he wore them with jeans, shorts, with diapers probably. back then, he was not even three feet tall and often roamed the house brandishing a wooden gun carved by my father. and now he, actually, is marketing our city to visitors, conventioneers, even film makers. (just yesterday.)
that's a lot, for one little guy, in just a year. yes it is.
i knew this had been on her mind. she came into my office a few days before, talking about how much she hated Velcro shoes because how can anybody ever learn to tie shoes if all they wear is Velcro? i said the exact same thing into the air when mine were the age of hers. tying those shoes all by yourself seemed to me, as a young mom, the symbol of all there was yet to learn, and the independence of it. if my children could tie their own shoes without me, well, they might just do ok.
"all of a sudden, he could just do it," she said. yes. so sudden it takes our breath away, these things new to our children that we have known so long we can't remember when or how we learned them for ourselves.
i love the fact that, though she visited on the pretense of showing me how to use Illustrator, she felt at home enough with me in the purple office to plop herself down say just what was on her mind. and after we'd gotten our Velcro rant out of the way it was this: should she should jump more fully into her business, or stay in the 'life right now' she had planned as a stay at home mom, with her cool little boy and his cool little brother.
her boys are growing up and eventually away, and that seems a little bit (a lot?) at odds with her dream to embrace the artist she is. what if, as she sinks herself into that creative zone she misses the 12 things he will next learn to do in the next 12 days or weeks or months? "i don't feel like i'm doing any of my jobs well," she admitted. but the mother of the grown up children in me says that if she is thinking about that at all, she is probably doing just fine.
we've both had son days this week. i met mine for lunch at a busy downtown restaurant on a corner in the city where we both live and work. we moved here when he was on the cusp of three, clumping around in cowboy boots we found at a thrift shop. he wore them with jeans, shorts, with diapers probably. back then, he was not even three feet tall and often roamed the house brandishing a wooden gun carved by my father. and now he, actually, is marketing our city to visitors, conventioneers, even film makers. (just yesterday.)
i remember when he was learning some of the things my friend's boy put in his brain in the past year. how at not quite 5 he said: take off the training wheels, and we did and he was off, never turning around, never even wobbling. it had taken his sister three days to learn this new skill. how he would disappear for awhile and show up wearing a robot costume he'd fashioned out of leftovers from a packing box, staplers and tape. how later, his angular fingers began plucking the guitar strings into a tune i could easily recognize. and this: dear kat has many years, thank goodness, until she is on the sidelines of her own son's broken heart.
this boy of ours hates to shop, so when in middle school he found a pair of tennis shoes that worked, we just ordered them over and over. have been doing that since.
this boy of ours hates to shop, so when in middle school he found a pair of tennis shoes that worked, we just ordered them over and over. have been doing that since.
my son arrived for lunch this week wearing a crisp white dress shirt and new slacks — (how did the three-foot boy become a six-foot-two man is what i want to know) — he is tall and thin and everything he wears hangs just right, and i couldn't help but think of that boy i sent off to college with a closet full of madras shirts. and bow ties. i taught him that, too, how to tie the bow tie. (now if he had always worn Velcro would he have been asked by his fraternity to teach his new brothers this particular skill as part of his pledge responsibility?)
the new business clothes he has taken to wearing since he started his first post-college job a year ago suit him. but i didn't recall buying the slacks.
"i went shopping," he told me. "my clothes were wearing out." he means the clothes i bought him just as he was about to graduate — two years ago. "i waited until jobanks had a sale." wow. i felt like katbird. how did this happen?
his great-grandfather, who bought all his suits on sale — so goes the legend — would be happy about that. a man who knows how to hang onto his money.
we had a nice lunch (of course, though he makes more than i do, i picked up the tab.) we talked about work with his high school buddy who is now his coworker, how they play trivia every week at a local bar. "do you win?" i asked. "not a lot," his friend said. "hey maybe you know the answer to this one. what's apgar?"
"what do you think it is?" i asked, and they both laughed. "we said it had something to do with engineering," he said, "nobody at our table is an engineer," though both agreed they had heard it before.
well yes, in a way. and then i told them what it was, a measurement, sort of, of how well you are engineered at birth — the first score of many you get in life. "he scored 9 on the apgar!" a new parent will say, like they might years later: "he scored 1600 on his SAT!"
"no wonder we didn't know what it was," my son said. "how would we know that? only parents know that."
what is it with sons and their hold on us? that they share so little of their lives as compared to daughters that we celebrate every single thing they do tell us? probably.
we welcome them home from that first year of kindergarten, our arms and hearts like sponges, absorbing the minutia of their days spent at lunch, on the playground, at nap and snack time. year by year their sharing becomes a little more guarded, but we welcome them just as hopeful, as we will a thousand times over — after their first great ball game, as they stretch their arms toward the finish in their first swim meet, after their first trip abroad. we hold them in their failures and their broken hearts, as they graduate from high school and college, and as they bury their friends.
and some of us — as my friend martha did her son a couple of weeks ago — get to hug the whole man after his first experience (and we hope his last) at war.
we wait for the details, celebrate the rare phone call, the ride to airport, welcoming every single chance we get to be the mother of them again.
this week, my friend lee celebrated her youngest son's high school graduation. the salutatorian talked of his friend, another mother's son — headed for Yale — who died in an accident, the result of a senior prank. he was the fourth mother's son to die in accidents in just two days in our city. (a daughter died, too.) it always happens during graduation week. these mothers do not get this chance again — any more son days — and i can barely breathe just thinking of their insurmountable loss.
to paraphrase, the salutatorian spoke to his classmates about what they each have been given, how our job is to figure out our God-given gifts and use them as best we can in the world. he got a standing ovation — something rare in the high school graduations of my memory.
as i read his words today, i thought about my gifts — my kids —and i wonder how well i have helped them become who they are, launched them out into the world as good people. have i, like katbird worries, not done a good job at mothering because i have been so focused on something else?
a little while ago, my phone jingled like robin hood's men announcing their arrival in sherwood forest.
'are you cooking tonight?' read the text.
sure. 6:30.
k. see y'all then.
k.yes.
another son day.
the new business clothes he has taken to wearing since he started his first post-college job a year ago suit him. but i didn't recall buying the slacks.
"i went shopping," he told me. "my clothes were wearing out." he means the clothes i bought him just as he was about to graduate — two years ago. "i waited until jobanks had a sale." wow. i felt like katbird. how did this happen?
his great-grandfather, who bought all his suits on sale — so goes the legend — would be happy about that. a man who knows how to hang onto his money.
we had a nice lunch (of course, though he makes more than i do, i picked up the tab.) we talked about work with his high school buddy who is now his coworker, how they play trivia every week at a local bar. "do you win?" i asked. "not a lot," his friend said. "hey maybe you know the answer to this one. what's apgar?"
"what do you think it is?" i asked, and they both laughed. "we said it had something to do with engineering," he said, "nobody at our table is an engineer," though both agreed they had heard it before.
well yes, in a way. and then i told them what it was, a measurement, sort of, of how well you are engineered at birth — the first score of many you get in life. "he scored 9 on the apgar!" a new parent will say, like they might years later: "he scored 1600 on his SAT!"
"no wonder we didn't know what it was," my son said. "how would we know that? only parents know that."
what is it with sons and their hold on us? that they share so little of their lives as compared to daughters that we celebrate every single thing they do tell us? probably.
we welcome them home from that first year of kindergarten, our arms and hearts like sponges, absorbing the minutia of their days spent at lunch, on the playground, at nap and snack time. year by year their sharing becomes a little more guarded, but we welcome them just as hopeful, as we will a thousand times over — after their first great ball game, as they stretch their arms toward the finish in their first swim meet, after their first trip abroad. we hold them in their failures and their broken hearts, as they graduate from high school and college, and as they bury their friends.
and some of us — as my friend martha did her son a couple of weeks ago — get to hug the whole man after his first experience (and we hope his last) at war.
we wait for the details, celebrate the rare phone call, the ride to airport, welcoming every single chance we get to be the mother of them again.
this week, my friend lee celebrated her youngest son's high school graduation. the salutatorian talked of his friend, another mother's son — headed for Yale — who died in an accident, the result of a senior prank. he was the fourth mother's son to die in accidents in just two days in our city. (a daughter died, too.) it always happens during graduation week. these mothers do not get this chance again — any more son days — and i can barely breathe just thinking of their insurmountable loss.
to paraphrase, the salutatorian spoke to his classmates about what they each have been given, how our job is to figure out our God-given gifts and use them as best we can in the world. he got a standing ovation — something rare in the high school graduations of my memory.
as i read his words today, i thought about my gifts — my kids —and i wonder how well i have helped them become who they are, launched them out into the world as good people. have i, like katbird worries, not done a good job at mothering because i have been so focused on something else?
a little while ago, my phone jingled like robin hood's men announcing their arrival in sherwood forest.
'are you cooking tonight?' read the text.
sure. 6:30.
k. see y'all then.
k.yes.
another son day.
view from the pew
i'm not a front pew sitter. left side, five pews from the back, right on the aisle is where you will find me on Sunday. But this weekend, at least for a little while, my view was from the front pew.
my friend melanie had the vision, and i joined her with a dozen other women to make it happen. We planned for almost a year, to gather women in our church and their friends to celebrate story, the story found in each of us, as a way to connect to our God-created creative center.
and it finally happened. and for two days we talked. shared. wrote. drew. listened. celebrated. sang. ate. wept. laughed.
patti digh, our keynote speaker, gave us challenges. one was to turn around to the person behind you and ask: what do you love to do? the young woman behind me looked lost when i asked her, had no clue how to answer this question. i'll tell you what i love to do, i said. make yeast rolls. get my hands in the dough. turns out she loved to dig in the dirt, and though the rabbits were eating everything she put out, we shared a love for peonies.
another exercise: look into the face of the person on the pew behind us. for two minutes. the woman behind me was elderly, my mother's age. as i stared into her green eyes, watched her eyebrows lift into sly smile, dip into frown, i pondered the story in her wrinkled skin.
then, patti said, said, close your eyes, think of your favorite childhood game, your first love, a place where you feel safe. open your eyes. see the woman before you. she has the same remarkable story as you. introduce yourself.
i asked carmen, my new friend, about herself. she is the wife of a retired priest, was there with her daughter, and when i heard of her husband's occupation, looked at her name again, something struck. could she have spent time my hometown, been friends with my mother? yes, in fact, she did. was.
and there were other stories. a young woman with colored dreadlocks came from south carolina to meet patti digh. when she left, she left behind beautiful drawings to remind us of her presence. mothers who came with grown daughters. cancer survivors hoping for a fresh start. mothers caring for young children. others caring for aging parents. all eager to renew purpose in their lives. to learn how to live their lives as art.
jill staton bullard, was one of our breakout speakers. she started a movement when she watched a fast -food company throw out good food because the day shifted from breakfast to lunch. Jill asked this question of her group: tell each other about someone who has changed your life. the room soon filled with babble. next question will be harder, jill said: now tell each other about people whose lives you have changed. we don't own that one, she says. other speakers talked of the angels in their lives, how God works in the garden (i hoped my gardening friend was in that one), feeling God's presence in art, in the pew, in the world around you.
the weekend ended with a eucharist, a celebration of all things woman, with kites and candles, hymns and wine, bread and prayer.
as i sang, i looked around, at my friends mel and barbara and martha on the pew beside me, lee and linda and sandy and charlotte in pews or standing all around, nell and patti, a generation apart, singing in unison from their own pew. somewhere behind me i knew were grace and diana and katherine, dawn and lynn and sally, frances and diane, marty and laurie and countless other women who are important to my life, and i could not keep from weeping.
it was the kites i noticed then. two young women, sisters — twins — flailing dove and spiral above as all our heads lifted, watching them soar.
+++\
please check back tomorrow, as I will post more pictures.
my friend melanie had the vision, and i joined her with a dozen other women to make it happen. We planned for almost a year, to gather women in our church and their friends to celebrate story, the story found in each of us, as a way to connect to our God-created creative center.
and it finally happened. and for two days we talked. shared. wrote. drew. listened. celebrated. sang. ate. wept. laughed.
patti digh, our keynote speaker, gave us challenges. one was to turn around to the person behind you and ask: what do you love to do? the young woman behind me looked lost when i asked her, had no clue how to answer this question. i'll tell you what i love to do, i said. make yeast rolls. get my hands in the dough. turns out she loved to dig in the dirt, and though the rabbits were eating everything she put out, we shared a love for peonies.
another exercise: look into the face of the person on the pew behind us. for two minutes. the woman behind me was elderly, my mother's age. as i stared into her green eyes, watched her eyebrows lift into sly smile, dip into frown, i pondered the story in her wrinkled skin.
then, patti said, said, close your eyes, think of your favorite childhood game, your first love, a place where you feel safe. open your eyes. see the woman before you. she has the same remarkable story as you. introduce yourself.
i asked carmen, my new friend, about herself. she is the wife of a retired priest, was there with her daughter, and when i heard of her husband's occupation, looked at her name again, something struck. could she have spent time my hometown, been friends with my mother? yes, in fact, she did. was.
and there were other stories. a young woman with colored dreadlocks came from south carolina to meet patti digh. when she left, she left behind beautiful drawings to remind us of her presence. mothers who came with grown daughters. cancer survivors hoping for a fresh start. mothers caring for young children. others caring for aging parents. all eager to renew purpose in their lives. to learn how to live their lives as art.
jill staton bullard, was one of our breakout speakers. she started a movement when she watched a fast -food company throw out good food because the day shifted from breakfast to lunch. Jill asked this question of her group: tell each other about someone who has changed your life. the room soon filled with babble. next question will be harder, jill said: now tell each other about people whose lives you have changed. we don't own that one, she says. other speakers talked of the angels in their lives, how God works in the garden (i hoped my gardening friend was in that one), feeling God's presence in art, in the pew, in the world around you.
the weekend ended with a eucharist, a celebration of all things woman, with kites and candles, hymns and wine, bread and prayer.
as i sang, i looked around, at my friends mel and barbara and martha on the pew beside me, lee and linda and sandy and charlotte in pews or standing all around, nell and patti, a generation apart, singing in unison from their own pew. somewhere behind me i knew were grace and diana and katherine, dawn and lynn and sally, frances and diane, marty and laurie and countless other women who are important to my life, and i could not keep from weeping.
it was the kites i noticed then. two young women, sisters — twins — flailing dove and spiral above as all our heads lifted, watching them soar.
+++\
please check back tomorrow, as I will post more pictures.
architectural digest
Today in our little class, I asked the women sitting in the chairs circling me to do a couple of silly things. The first was to tell us the reason for choosing the shoes they had on today. The question came to mind when I saw the truly funky shoes worn by my new friend, the very cool Katherine— tall suede wedges that zipped up the back of her heel. I don't even know what the style would be called, I am so far away from trends, but I know I could probably not stand in them, they are that cool. And the zipper would just mean BLISTER for me. I am so not that cool.
Katherine had the first turn and admitted that she had hidden the shoes in her purse before going out of the house to church, so her husband couldn't see. She was supposed to be adhering to an austerity plan of sorts I think, but she just had to have those shoes.
Other shoes, other stories. Toes tired of standing in business woman pumps chose favorite boots instead. My friend Lee had on her very stunning 50th birthday kick-ass boots, because that's what she was feeling like today. Kicking ass.
Another woman, with very wide feet, talked of finding her first fashionable shoes at the Wide Shoe Warehouse, and how much better it made her feel to be wearing something stylish, rather than tennis shoes. Still another said she was wearing her mother's shoes — black paten loafers — shoes her mother had given away because they were too wide for her slim foot. The mother of three girls, a set of twins and one other, preschoolers all, she said that trendy shoes for her were out of the question. I had seen this mother as I headed from the car to church — she trying to stop one of the twins long enough to put a bow in her tousled hair. One daughter cried the entire walk down the long sidewalk.
Most of the women my age (including me) wore low heeled shoes, while the younger women wore spiked heels or boots, so high I know would fall off them and hurt myself if I tried to walk in them. I have a narrow foot, and shoes have always been such a problem for me to find. Only the expensive Italian ones seem to fit my foot, so I tend to keep the shoes that do fit for a long time, wear them out. These days it's flats usually, and the fact that nobody anywhere is making narrow shoes anymore means that pretty much every pair of shoes in my closet does not fit me properly, except the old walking shoes. So of course I have bunions.
My mother has a closet full of Ferragamos, all quads. She told me once that because I wore her size (my sister wears a 7.5 I think), she would leave them to me. I haven't worn a quad since I started pounding my feet, running after toddlers 28 years ago. I couldn't squeeze my big toe into my wedding shoes if I tried. (I think I finally gave them away last year.) Nor could I wear a single pair of my mother's shoes. (Metaphor intended.)
But what if I really want the antique corner cupboard or the silver or the wing chairs in her living room? Do I have to get shoes I can never wear?
The other silly question I asked was three-fold: What did you want to be when you were 10? Who are you now? And what would it take to be the person that 10-year-old wanted to be?
Laura wanted to be Farah Fawcett,to marry the boy who sat next to her in fifth grade. Cool Katherine, who is very tall, wanted not to be. And she admitted to playing with Barbies (I played with them, too), and to spending time dressing them and fixing their hair so that now she tells her friends what to wear. Marty wanted to be Nancy Drew. Velma, the oldest in our group, said she just wanted to get out of the house. Which she did, the same year I was born.
I didn't share my answer. I couldn't think of anything I ever wanted to be, except a writer, and everybody already knew that about me.
And then I remembered: Once upon a time I wanted to be an architect.
When I was just learning to read, one of our reading books contained stories about a neighborhood being built. I remember in first grade, being fascinated by the houses, each one in a different phase of building. What drew me where the bones of the house, the stick built structures standing there before they got their skin.
At 9 or 10, my friends and I drew houses. Using fountain pens we sketched out family rooms with shuttered picture windows, balconied second-story bedrooms, carports with flower beds circling around them, curving staircases that always led to white-carpeted rooms. I loved in particular to draw the floor plans, carefully placing bay windows and walk-in closets — I might have even used a ruler to get the lines straight... I can't remember that now.
But then, math intervened. I just wasn't good at it. I could do long division pretty well, but by the time I got to algebra, I got all mixed up with the abcs and xyzs, and though I did do pretty well in geometry, forget about calculus.
When I lie awake at night, sometimes I think about the fact that a whole room stands above me, with all my daughter's trinkets held there, and I am grateful that I don't have to worry about that floor falling down on me, because I am confident the person who designed my house knew more about math than I do.
Even today, when I walk into a house I admire or marvel at a skyscraper, I sometimes wish I possessed the vision and the expertise to design it. But the people who inhabit those buildings on a daily basis have to be thankful that I didn't try to fake it. To be the architect I dreamed of being at 10 would have been disastrous. For many.
So gosh, how can I connect the girl I wanted to be at 10, to what I have become?
Well.
There is an architecture to sentence structure, and a lot of it, when I think of it. And though I might misplace a metaphor or misspell a word or two, I doubt that even my favorite college professor would get so much as a concussion from reading what I write. And as far as I have been able to figure, math is rarely if ever involved. Thank goodness for that.
sbr
Katherine had the first turn and admitted that she had hidden the shoes in her purse before going out of the house to church, so her husband couldn't see. She was supposed to be adhering to an austerity plan of sorts I think, but she just had to have those shoes.
Other shoes, other stories. Toes tired of standing in business woman pumps chose favorite boots instead. My friend Lee had on her very stunning 50th birthday kick-ass boots, because that's what she was feeling like today. Kicking ass.
Another woman, with very wide feet, talked of finding her first fashionable shoes at the Wide Shoe Warehouse, and how much better it made her feel to be wearing something stylish, rather than tennis shoes. Still another said she was wearing her mother's shoes — black paten loafers — shoes her mother had given away because they were too wide for her slim foot. The mother of three girls, a set of twins and one other, preschoolers all, she said that trendy shoes for her were out of the question. I had seen this mother as I headed from the car to church — she trying to stop one of the twins long enough to put a bow in her tousled hair. One daughter cried the entire walk down the long sidewalk.
Most of the women my age (including me) wore low heeled shoes, while the younger women wore spiked heels or boots, so high I know would fall off them and hurt myself if I tried to walk in them. I have a narrow foot, and shoes have always been such a problem for me to find. Only the expensive Italian ones seem to fit my foot, so I tend to keep the shoes that do fit for a long time, wear them out. These days it's flats usually, and the fact that nobody anywhere is making narrow shoes anymore means that pretty much every pair of shoes in my closet does not fit me properly, except the old walking shoes. So of course I have bunions.
My mother has a closet full of Ferragamos, all quads. She told me once that because I wore her size (my sister wears a 7.5 I think), she would leave them to me. I haven't worn a quad since I started pounding my feet, running after toddlers 28 years ago. I couldn't squeeze my big toe into my wedding shoes if I tried. (I think I finally gave them away last year.) Nor could I wear a single pair of my mother's shoes. (Metaphor intended.)
But what if I really want the antique corner cupboard or the silver or the wing chairs in her living room? Do I have to get shoes I can never wear?
The other silly question I asked was three-fold: What did you want to be when you were 10? Who are you now? And what would it take to be the person that 10-year-old wanted to be?
Laura wanted to be Farah Fawcett,to marry the boy who sat next to her in fifth grade. Cool Katherine, who is very tall, wanted not to be. And she admitted to playing with Barbies (I played with them, too), and to spending time dressing them and fixing their hair so that now she tells her friends what to wear. Marty wanted to be Nancy Drew. Velma, the oldest in our group, said she just wanted to get out of the house. Which she did, the same year I was born.
I didn't share my answer. I couldn't think of anything I ever wanted to be, except a writer, and everybody already knew that about me.
And then I remembered: Once upon a time I wanted to be an architect.
When I was just learning to read, one of our reading books contained stories about a neighborhood being built. I remember in first grade, being fascinated by the houses, each one in a different phase of building. What drew me where the bones of the house, the stick built structures standing there before they got their skin.
At 9 or 10, my friends and I drew houses. Using fountain pens we sketched out family rooms with shuttered picture windows, balconied second-story bedrooms, carports with flower beds circling around them, curving staircases that always led to white-carpeted rooms. I loved in particular to draw the floor plans, carefully placing bay windows and walk-in closets — I might have even used a ruler to get the lines straight... I can't remember that now.
But then, math intervened. I just wasn't good at it. I could do long division pretty well, but by the time I got to algebra, I got all mixed up with the abcs and xyzs, and though I did do pretty well in geometry, forget about calculus.
When I lie awake at night, sometimes I think about the fact that a whole room stands above me, with all my daughter's trinkets held there, and I am grateful that I don't have to worry about that floor falling down on me, because I am confident the person who designed my house knew more about math than I do.
Even today, when I walk into a house I admire or marvel at a skyscraper, I sometimes wish I possessed the vision and the expertise to design it. But the people who inhabit those buildings on a daily basis have to be thankful that I didn't try to fake it. To be the architect I dreamed of being at 10 would have been disastrous. For many.
So gosh, how can I connect the girl I wanted to be at 10, to what I have become?
Well.
There is an architecture to sentence structure, and a lot of it, when I think of it. And though I might misplace a metaphor or misspell a word or two, I doubt that even my favorite college professor would get so much as a concussion from reading what I write. And as far as I have been able to figure, math is rarely if ever involved. Thank goodness for that.
sbr