Shark and Bear

This was the last week of school.

It’s already been a strange imitation of elementary school for two months – they have been learning, but it just doesn’t feel like “real” school. Still, not having that extra bit of structure during the day is going to be hard for the girls. Camps are canceled too, which is what they (and we) normally look forward to over the summer.

My first thought was that they are going to have a summer “like we used to have growing up”. Meaning that you get kicked out of the house every morning and you just play in the yard/woods until it’s time to eat. But when I was growing up, there were usually other kids to meet up with outside. We have kids everywhere in this neighborhood but they can’t play together this summer. So once again – a strange imitation of something familiar. Fortunately, the girls have each other.

Having school just end felt too anticlimactic. Especially for Melina. Diane is going into 3rd grade, so she is comfortably in the middle of her elementary school experience. But Melina is transitioning into middle school – she is now a Sutherland Shark and not a Baker Butler Bear. So we went over to Baker Butler and took some “graduation” photos. Note: the cap is a black plastic folder duct taped to construction paper.

Note: The girls’ bus (#99) happened to be parked on the side of the school

Later that day, Melina and I had this exchange:

M: Can you believe that I’ll be going to college in 5 more years?
Z: No, you won’t.
M: 6 years?
Z: Nope.
M: But (counting on her fingers) 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, right?
Z: What comes after 10th?
M: <laughing>
Z: <now also laughing with Melina> I don’t think you need to worry about college.

This was a notable conversation not because of her terrible math, but because she was laughing too at the end, clearly in on the joke instead of feeling offended. That feels like an important social development. Should serve her well in college, whenever that is.

…

We saved a bird this week:

At the end of our morning walk, we saw a cat watching birds. Then, we saw two cardinals. One cardinal was on the ground, and the other was dive bombing it. The cardinal on the ground was chirping and trying to hop away – and given the choice between us, a cat, and the other bird, it decided we were the smallest threat. It hopped really close to me and was favoring a wing. I hovered over the top of him, which kept the other animals away. After a few minutes like this (my hand was 6 inches away from him), it seemed pretty clear that he couldn’t fly. Melina ran back to the house and got a shoe box, and we put him inside and took him home.

The whole way back Karen and I explained that he was hurt, and that he would probably not make it. We didn’t want the girls to be devastated when it happened. Melina said she was going to name him, which I promptly discouraged. I heard her lean over and whisper to her sister “his name is baby”. Crap.

“Baby” spent the morning in our laundry room, in the shoe box, on top of a heating pad. We put some shredded tissues in the box with him too, because the Internet told us to do that. My home office is the basement now, so I heard the occasional chirp. After a few hours we decided to go outside and open the box. Expectations were low. But as soon as we opened it he flew right out, and up to a high tree branch! We think he may have just been stunned. The girls were thrilled to have helped him, and Karen and I got to breathe a big sigh of relief.

Graduation and cardinal-saving were pretty big highlights, but this week was filled with so much more!

We got to take two really nice (socially-distanced) walks. The first was a creek adventure with our friends the Gleasons:

And the second was a lake loop (plus mulberry picking) with Pop-Pop:

We also spotted our Osprey again this week. He perched up in a tree across the lake, and we decided that Karen and Melina would keep an eye on him while Diane and I went around the lake to get a closer look. Even with 4 people, two cell phones, and an osprey that didn’t change trees, I’d say it took about 20 minutes for Diane and I to find him once we got to the other side of the lake. He could be watching us every day and we would have no idea. He was way up in the tree and it was hard to get a good look at him, but at one point he started cleaning his talons and I got this shot:

Nature is awesome. In addition to our cardinal and osprey encounters, we are continuing to find more cool bugs. The dragonflies are starting to come out (this one is a calico pennant), and we also found a cool horned passalus beetle in the yard. The beetle was especially neat because I see these all the time but never realized they had a big horn (don’t notice it looking down, you need to be on their level).

This week was also our 16 year wedding anniversary. We kind of felt like we already celebrated when we did stuff for our 20 year dating anniversary a few weeks ago. But we got out our honeymoon photo album from Costa Rica and showed the girls the neat stuff that we did and the fun places we stayed. Maybe in 4 years (20th wedding anniversary) we will go back with the kids and re-visit some of our favorites. All the Costa Rica talk also made us hungry for the “desayuno típico”, so we put that together for breakfast. So. Darn. Good.

So here’s to the next 16 years – to bears, sharks, birds, friends, family, and whatever adventures are waiting for us!

Karen’s note: in more depressing news, we have had to cancel three trips so far during this pandemic. Our big trip to Mexico that was supposed to be in June, or *backup* trip to the Eastern Shore to make up for cancelling the Mexico trip, and also our trip to Portugal and Spain in October (our flight was cancelled and we were forced to make the decision this weekend). It is devastating, all the other wonderful stuff we have been doing definitely helps to soften the blow.