Just like I remembered...

Excitement in the neighborhood yesterday when the ice cream truck (jeep) pulled through. We raided the change jar with a sense of urgency, not to be passed by. The whole scene reminded me of being a girl with my cousins running from the backyard of my grandparents' house to greet a similar vehicle cruising down South 24th Place.



We've been a little stir-crazy around the house this weekend, but today Macauley and Megan have been busy saving the world. They've been following me around everywhere I go (still in their pajamas in the middle of the day) asking me to give them "missions." After it taking them all of 1.5 minutes to rescue Flippy the Dolphin from being tangled in a commerical fishing net at the bottom of the sea (and tracking down the boat that irresponsibly dropped the net) and then about the same amount of time to find Michelle Obama's diamond ring somewhere in our yard, I told them their next mission was to find something else to do far, far away from me, as I was out of imagined precarious situations and needed space. They're off to the park now and I might go check on my booth. Or just flop down and read some more, which is what I've been doing most of the weekend.


Another Jodi Picoult...this time The Pact, about a girl and boy who grew up next door to each other their whole lives and the discomfort and intimacy that develops as their brother/sister relationship evolves into something more mature. Who knows where these two superheroes will be years from now, or what they'll be to each other then, but for now, they are permanent fixtures in one another's worlds.

I can always find a little something in Picoult's writing that registers with me. This time it was the teenage boys description of how he knew he really loved the girl he'd known his whole life:

"There was an attraction," he said carefully, "but it was more than that." He chewed on his lower lip for a second. "Once, we broke up for a while. I started hanging out with this girl who I'd always thought was hot, this cheerleader named Donna. I was like, totally infatuated with Donna, maybe even when I was still together with Em. Anyway...every time I was with Donna I realized I didn't know her too well. I'd hyped her up in my head to be so much more than what she really was...When Em and I got back together, I could see that she had never been less than what I'd figured her to be. If anything, she was always better than I remembered. And that' what I think love is," Chris said quietly. "When your hind-sight's twenty-twenty, and you still wouldn't change a thing."

I've only know Ryan half of my life, actually a bit less, but it seems like longer since I was 19 when we got together. So young. I wonder what would have happened if I'd grown up knowing him instead of meeting him in college. What if we'd actually met when we crossed paths at a track meet in high school, as we've figured out we must have over the years? What if we grew up chasing after the ice cream truck together with beach towels as capes? I don't know. But I do know he's never been less than I figured he would be. And he's always even better than I remembered.