stargazerlily

I am posting.

I have a play to write. It's for the first grade. Writing plays for first graders is difficult. Mostly, it's hard this time because I chose Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf for my story this year, and you try cutting that down into a 20 minute play, complete with musical numbers. At least I have six weeks until it's performed. That will give me time to work it all out. The children are so keen to start working. I have to block right away as I get it written, so that they can learn the gestures and movement along with it.

M is encouraging me to go to WisCon, even for a few hours, from Saturday to Sunday. Will people be available for fun during that time? I haven't ever been away from the boy for that long before -- certainly not overnight, but I think he can handle it. M will be here, and it's only one night... I overheard a colleague tell someone else that her fourteen year old daughter had only ever had a babysitter once, and that was the only time they had been separated , except during school, for more than a couple of hours. The daughter has always attended the school where her mother worked. I can't even imagine. The daughter is an only child, and seems happy and well -adjusted.

I used to write things, you know. Other than class plays.

I also used to sing with a choir. I even acted in plays. And I saw my friends more than once or twice a year.

Over the Water by Maude Casey.

So not the book I was expecting. So beautifully written in the voice of a 14-year-old (or so?) girl on a visit to her mother's family home in Ireland in the 1960s from her home in England. It was painful to read at times because of the subject matter (emigration, child abuse, poverty, adolescence, farming), but the transformation Mary experiences in this one summer after the death of her grandfather is astonishing -- she is learning who she is, both as a member of her family and of her homeland, and as an individual with her own destiny to claim.

I cried through about the last third of the book.