Peg Kerr's Journal

I had all sorts of good intentions about this weekend, mostly involving cleaning up the yard and the house. But the heat and humidity has sapped away all of my forward momentum, and I don't think I'm going to do any of it. I've really had difficulty the past couple days. We don't have central air, and Rob hasn't put the window air conditioner into our bedroom window yet. I'm having difficulty breathing, and I get dizzy standing up. I had real trouble standing up for the hymns in church today. There is a pollution/ozone warning in Minneapolis right now, so maybe that's it. It's truly inhuman in Fiona's room (my old office), the hottest room in the house. Rob and I have decided to get her a window air conditioner. Fiona's been having trouble sleeping, and her appetite has all but disappeared. Which is not good, as her appetite is small anyway.

I've had some wonderful talks with Fiona over the past couple of days. We went to a coffee shop to escape the heat for a couple house and talked, and then came home and talked some more. She really has grown up enormously in the past year and discovered a lot of things about herself. We've talked about all sorts of things: money, her plan of study at school, her hopes to take a semester abroad, ideas for majors, fanfiction, alcohol use among her peers, writing and anxiety, her friendships, our family dynamics, politics, personal ethics, self discovery, her memories of growing up, and our family traditions she wants to carry on to her own family some day, and more. I'm so very proud of her. She's quite worried about the future (starting with the immediate future, as in, OMG, will I find a job this summer??) I'm trying to be as sympathetic as I can without increasing her stress by pressuring her; that would be absolutely unhelpful. But she's suffering a lot of anxiety about student debt, and I can't blame her. God, it would terrify me, too. I wish I could do more to help; I wish we had saved more for college. But we really couldn't do any more than we did. I still feel damn guilty, though. I've been sending her links to some of the Occupy Student movement, which is doing a lot of political work on student debt. I've been checking in with her regarding how she's handling the transition home. She says that we've drawn a good balance on treating her more like an adult (some of her friends are actually jealous, as they've had rougher transitions going home for the summer); I've said she's made it easy because she really is a good kid about checking in, keeping up apprised of her plans. She's been suffering friend withdrawal.

Delia is doing pretty well at the moment. School's out for the summer, and she has a week before she starts her summer job. She went out garage saling with the new boyfriend of the moment yesterday, and then spent some time at the local lake beach. She had a new friend sleep over last night that she met at this local teenage program she's just got involved with, Treehouse. They cut and dyed her hair last night. The cut is a sort of artsy angled cut (a little ragged since her friend did it, but she's pleased with it). She chose not a wild color, as I would have assumed she would, but a sort of chestnut brown, quite like my hair color actually. I approve. I figure that Delia's essential inner restlessness will drive her to experiment with a lot of different identities, and as an experiment, hair dye is a pretty mild one! (There was one unfortunate incident: a streak of dye that landed on some wood paneling in the bathroom which they didn't spot it and clean it up quickly before it set. Oh well. It's been our house for twenty years, and of course there is going to be occasional collateral damage.)

Fiona graduated last Friday, and we had our open house on Sunday.

Here is the beautiful dress that Delia sewed for Fiona to wear under her graduation robes:





( The sisters together )

The graduate and her family (Delia, me and my parents)!

Fiona's high school graduation June 3, 2011

( With the Boy )

( At the party, we had a taco bar )

( We also had a chocolate fountain )

( We gathered in the backyard )

( Here's a great picture of relatives from Rob's side of the family )

( After the party, she was all tuckered out )

I saw this on the excellent blog Gay Family Values here. Apparently, ABC ran an experiment to see what bystanders in a restaurant would do if they witnessed bigotry toward a gay family. The results were surprising and really moving. Well worth your time. When I think of families like Mitch's, and what we're going to be going through here in Minnesota for the next seventeen months as we argue about the Minnesota amendment, I'm heartened to see people speaking up to object to bigotry.

We have an appointment for Delia with the doctor tomorrow to get tested for mono, too. Yeah, they can't DO anything. But at least we would have a diagnosis to help us deal with the school.

And she would know if she has to tell another interested party.

Speaking of interested parties, it's a pretty good bet that Mitch has it, too. He feels run down and lousy and so chilled that he actually wore a sweater to school. For Mr. I-don't-need-a-coat-even-if-it's-January-in-Minnesota, this is unprecedented.

Fiona and her boyfriend Mitch went to a play at her high school last night. While they were there, freezing rain began to fall. We got a call from her fifteen minutes before her curfew, informing us that they were fine and the car was mostly fine, but they had slithered into a snowbank on their way down a hill.

I was impressed and appreciative that she had called right away to let us know they were going to be delayed. I was even more impressed that Mitch then called his dad and told him he didn't think he wanted to risk driving any further, and could his dad come and pick him up?

A friend following shortly behind stopped and helped lever them out of the snowbank, and then brought Fiona home. Mitch's dad, unfortunately, got into a three car-tap-the-bumper incident on the way to pick up Mitch, but everything seemed fine, no harm done...until a 17 year old girl who was going much too fast for the conditions plowed into their rear end as they were all out exchanging insurance information. Bummer.

Mitch called shortly afterwards to make sure that Fiona made it home safely. As Mitch's dad and I discussed in church this morning, we were all impressed with the good judgment they displayed last night.