Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

That’s my question, folks. I have ideas and plans for schedules and such, but there are also the church camps and the reunion and a still-up-in-the-air trip and my hubby’s surgery, and I worry that the whole summer will whirl by between one blink and the next. Today is the official last day of school–only my two younger kiddos are going/have gone–until August 14th. (Which feels ridiculous, but clearly other parents are filling out the calendar survey differently than I do.) Wish us luck!

In the meantime, I finally got around to listening to Maizy Chen’s Last Chance, one of last year’s Newbery Honor books, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Maizy and her mother drive from LA to Last Chance, Minnesota to spend the summer with Maizy’s maternal grandparents; it’s a different world, sure, but spending time with Opa and Oma is a good thing–even if it’s because Opa is sick. Luckily, he’s not too sick to tell Maizy stories about his grandfather, who emigrated from China when he was young. How that grandfather ended up starting a family in Minnesota in the 1800s is one of the book’s important stories; how Maizy deals with her mother and Oma’s arguments, her Opa’s illness, and the social ups and downs of life in a small, mostly Anglo-Saxon town is another. Even while she’s learning about what it meant to be a ‘paper son,’ she’s learning that while sometimes it’s easy to recognize hatred, enemies–and friends–don’t always look like what they really are. Her story has nigh-universal appeal while also providing an important glimpse into the challenges of being an Asian-American today; it’s well worth your time.

On the sort-of-home-front, I wrote 17 PTA checks yesterday, but that might actually be IT. Hallelujah!