The Mitchell Messenger: June 2009

(pictures--lots of them--below)

June was fantastic. Seriously. Despite kicking it off with a nice round of sickness (swine flu undoubtedly . . . but a couple of days worth of fevers and a cough or two?--we weren't complaining), we managed to stamp out the bugs just in time for Theo's birthday party. Of course it rained the day of his party. Hard. Fortunately I learned my lesson last year (yeah, summer doesn't hit by June 5 around here), and his party was indoors at the Saskatchewan Science Center this time. In addition to the regular fun stuff at the center, there was an amazing lego exhibit and a fire show that felt like a Harry Potter potions class. After a couple of hours of play we rounded the afternoon out with a volcano cake (which was nearly as nice indoors as it would have been across the street at the park as we had planned, except the sparklers on top didn't exactly meet the fire code) and presents. Between a robot and rollerblades, yeah, the kid is spoiled.

We came home from the party and started packing. Twenty-four hours later we hopped in the car and hit the road, headed for Cincinnati *cut to grinding noise coming from the wheel-bearing we had just had replaced* SCREECH! We turned around, plopped the kids into bed at home (it was Sunday night, so we had to wait to visit the mechanic again). Monday morning we hit the autoshop at the crack of dawn, then did the whole thing over again. We drove without stopping until Tuesday, then the fun began.

Is it any wonder I miss Cincinnati so much? It felt like coming home. Especially since the first thing we did is drop Aaron off at the airport! Ah, the memories. He caught a plane for the Chorus America convention in Philadelphia (yes, I should have him do a whole blog-post about that, but don't bet too much money on it actually happening . . . long story short: he saw some cool concerts, sat in George Washington's church pew, and saved Dale Warland's life--not bad for two days). Meanwhile, I hit the park with some friends, then took the kids to the art museum and a butterfly show at the Krohn conservatory. We picked up some Graeter's black raspberry chip ice cream, ate Chinese food at the little restaurant where we used to go nearly every week (fantastic food for a family of six for under $20?--um, yes), and gawked at the sinfully low prices at the grocery stores and gas stations. Is it bad that we miss $1.75 milk more than almost anything else?

After Aaron got back, it was all about him. He graduated Friday, decked out in his velvet trimmed crimson doctoral robes, and we couldn't have been more proud. Dr. Rivers, his major professor paraded him around a bit, and let slip that he is nominating Aaron for the highly regarded Julius Herford prize for outstanding dissertation in choral music. It's an international award, and a great honor to be nominated. On Saturday, the school of music held an additional ceremony to honor its graduates. Despite sitting up in the balcony, we still managed to disrupt things a bit when Sera politely dropped a croc on the head of someone sitting below her.

Fortunately for the kids, after all the sitting there was plenty of food. There's nothing quite as fun as telling them that all the food on the buffet tables is free. Possibly they didn't exactly need seven plates of grapes, but who's counting? We also enjoyed meeting the new choral faculty at CCM, who coincidentally received his Master's degree here at the University of Regina, where Aaron teaches. His wife grew up in Regina and we met on facebook through my playgroup friend Alisha. The internet really does shrink the world in amazing ways! It was fun to meet her and their three children, close in age to our own, at a barbeque for the families of the graduates. We wound the celebration up with dinner at our favorite pizza joint, Dewey's. Uh-oh, my mouth is watering again.

We filled the rest of the days with visits to favorite haunts and good times with dear friends. Spoiled Theo got to have his birthday dinner at El Pueblo, complete with a sombrero, a Mexican birthday song, and fried ice cream. He loved it. Also, the salsa there is to die for. On Sunday we attended church in our old ward, and it was easy to remember why I sobbed when we left Cincinnati two years ago. The hall teemed with women holding one another's babies, the nursery sucked Sera straight in with some play-dough and a "Cookie Grandma" during snack time, and the big kids got a joyous welcome from old friends (so much so that Theo insisted that they needed him to stay for two more weeks to help with a Sharing Time presentation). It's nice to be needed in our ward here in Regina, but I can't help missing that special love that we always felt in the Montgomery ward--like someone had our backs no matter what.

We visited the zoo and the museum center, a bird show and a Reds game, Newport on the Levee and King's Island (which our kids plan to buy when they grow up, visit every day, and occasionally treat their parents to free tickets). Somehow we managed to see three different fireworks displays in there (Cincinnati has a thing for "Rozzi's Famous Fireworks" it seems--which is fine by us, since we don't get a whole lot of fireworks in our neck of the woods--er . . . plains). Then we wound the whole thing up with a night at the Cincinnati Pops, joined by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I've seen the MoTab a lot of times in my life. I've even heard them sing most of the songs they sang before. But this concert was special. Erich Kunzel, the director of the Pops was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and isn't expected to live much longer. He hasn't stopped performing though. He scheduled all his chemo treatments for Mondays so that he can still conduct concerts on the weekends. He called an requested that the Tabernacle Choir join him for a concert this season, and he talked Neil Armstrong (yup, the astronaut) into narrating A Lincoln Portrait. It made for a breathtaking evening, full of Americana--just what a couple of Canadian transplants needed to make them wax all nostalgic. Yeah, I totally cried. After that we managed to run into Ryan Murphy, newly appointed assistant director of the Tabernacle Choir, congratulate him on his appointment, and catch up a bit on him and his family and their big move from Boston.

The next day we had to leave. Was I sad? Yes. But you know what else? I was also ready. Visiting Cincinnati filled me. It reminded me that life isn't just about having fun and letting other people entertain and serve me. I needed that reminder. There's lots to be done here in Regina, and our family has a responsibility to do some of it. I knew that when we moved here, but somehow in the deep of winter, in the cold of the prarie, I forgot. Or maybe I just got used up. Now I'm ready to go again--ready to take whatever life throws at me . . . at least for a while. Which brings me to the fireflies. I used to love sitting out on our front porch on summer evenings in Cincinnati. I would stare out into the darkness for a while, then a spark of light would catch my eye. Those little fireflies were tiny, for sure. But that flickering yellow-green light captured me, riveted me. Sometimes I would watch them for hours. They weren't reflecting light, or catching it from something else and then transmitting it. They were making it. Making their own light and then sharing it with the world. I think it's my time in life to be that way. To stop leaning on everyone else all the time and start shining a little light of my own.