The football tradition begins

Sketch by Julia, October, 2006

I scanned this image nearly two years ago and only recently rediscovered it. At the time I thought it quite remarkable for its point-of-view and interesting proportions. The spareness of it is intriguing. It’s amazing what can be done with just a few lines going in all the right directions.  It’s a testament to the unihibited imagination of children.

• Arrive in Portland for a fun weekend getaway (up!)
• Oldest daughter immediately gets sick with a stomach virus (down!)
• Daughter recovers so we visit old friends, eat out, and see the sights (up!)
• Return to Seattle and get stuck in mammoth traffic jams (down!)
• A new work week begins (up?)
• Youngest daughter gets sick with a stomach virus at school, vomits twice at home (down!)
• Daughter still sick the next day but wife volunteers to stay home with her. Daughter recovers (up!)
• I get sick with a stomach virus (down!) but I don’t throw up (up!)
• It snows in Seattle over the weekend (way up!)
• But then it melts and a record-breaking rain storm overwhelms our downspout drain and floods Western Washington (way down!)
• Roto-Rooter clears our downspout drain (up!) but can’t do anything about the regional flooding (down!)
• Wife has birthday and we all go out for dinner and cupcakes (up!)
• Later that night oldest daughter vomits entire stomach contents in bed (down!)
• I’m cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night (way down!)
• The next morning she is fine and goes to school (up!)
• Today, youngest daughter gets knocked down in the school yard, hits head on asphalt, school calls to come pick her up (down!)
• The sky does not fall (up!)

So what next?

I know she’s super psyched to be recognized like this for her hard work and determination.

You can read more about it on her blog, which is to my mind one of the best written blogs you’ll find anywhere.

JULIA is five and walking alongside her dad, CARRICK. They are holding hands.

JULIA
If I invented something would I write a letter to someone about it?

CARRICK
(amused)
What do you mean?

JULIA
Write a letter about my invention, like what it does and what it looks like. With pictures.

CARRICK
(hesitantly)
I think that would be called a patent application…
Have you invented something?

JULIA
Umm… maybe.

CUT to CLOSE UP of CARRICK’S smirking face which he puts on to disguise the horror he feels within that his young daughter is thinking like an IBM engineer, or worse, a patent attorney.

DISSOLVE

This is her one month ago…

Amazing. I love that little gal.

1. My alma mater now costs two-and-a-half times more than it did my freshman year (1987). Annual tuition plus room and board is $44,160. Cripes.

2. At the local state university, the cost of room and board is more than that for tuition and fees, $8,000 vs. $5,985. (Guess who’s living at home if she chooses to attend the local state university?)

3. By the time my daughters are eligible to enter the local state university, we need to have amassed a pile of savings totaling $111,747, assuming an average inflation rate of 5.94% for college costs which may be on the low side. If they choose my alma matter, bump that savings account up to $704,959. (Holy shit. Guess who’ll need lots of financial aid if she chooses my alma mater?)

4. Undergraduate degree programs ain’t what they used to be, mostly because the students who enter them ain’t what they used to be. There’s a mad consumerist attitude amongst today’s college students, and who can blame them? They are laying out serious cash. How can you lose yourself in the life of the mind while forking over $44,000 a year? How’s an art history major ever going to earn that money back? It’s crazy.

I am alarmed but not totally hopeless. Somehow this will all work out. If you have kids who might go to college someday, and the trend is up in that regard (because everyone knows that a high school education isn’t what it used to be), then you should start saving right now. Look into starting a 529 plan. And have a nice day.

So, how is that, that baby, you know the one, who was, like, born but didn’t have a mother and didn’t have a father, or a sister, was born but, like, there wasn’t anyone else, how did that person get born? You know, like the first baby?

I do believe my jaw went slack. We were discussing all the various groups of siblings that we knew, and which were pairs of girls, which were pairs of boys, who had three girls, and so on, when this existential outburst came forth from my youngest offspring. She really was asking about the origin of the first human because when I asked, “Do you mean, where did people come from?” she nodded quickly with eyes wide open. Susan and I looked at each other with big grins and I said, “Now that’s very good question,” to which Julia smiled in delight that she had amazed us yet again with her uniquely perceptive mind. Of course, the answers, as we tried to explain to both the girls, were not entirely satisfactory, as it is a rather complicated subject and a neat and tidy answer does not this question yield (unless one were to stick to religious dogma and proclaim God’s divine intervention as the truth, the whole truth, and blah blah blah.) Nevertheless, we continued to have a very pleasant meal, buoyed by the lofty ideas and important subjects of our conversation.

It has been said before of Julia that she is a thinker, an acute observer of things both large and small, a sensitive little human with an eerie understanding beyond her years. After tonight, more than ever, I continue to believe these things about her. Lily is the leader, the doer of impossible things, and the brave warrior, while Julia is the philosopher, the psychologist, and the peacemaker. They make an excellent pair.