New Candidate and a Funny Aspen Comment

Nothing political, but it's official:  after passing my Candidacy Exam I am now an bonafide "PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature."  Tons of work and stress going into it, but my adviser's cheering congratulations after my 5-person committee deliberated was well worth it.  Sick though it may sound, the whole thing, including the hour-long oral exam/discussion was sort of fun and I came home glowing and told Justin that it was easily the most exciting meeting with faculty since I arrived.
This Tuesday I started what has got to be the highlight of at least this semester, if not more of my time here at PSU: bi-weekly lessons in Old French with Dr. Lacy (he's edited just about every scholarly work on French Arthurian lit. in use today, it seems, and is just an amazing professor and scholar).  I can't even speak Modern French, but I'm reading La Chanson de Roland in the original (no worries, I'm taking 3 Modern French courses this summer to catch up -- after Latin, Gothic, Old English and Middle English, with only a bit of Italian still usable, finally a language I can use in the world/time I live in).
Justin and the kids are awesome and we're ALL getting a bit antsy as we wait for Spring--not the least reason being that there is nowhere to camp in PA in the winter as everything closes.  We're not sure we can make it to April...we might start "stealth camping."
Now, the promised Funny Aspen Comment:
Today at church, as Aspen snuggled in my lap and asked about my earrings and necklace she then pointed to my collar bone:
"What's this"
"My collar bone."
"Oooh.  Cool collar bone."

Poetic Ilana

On our way to her first official rock climbing class, Ilana recited this little poem she had made up today:
"Day gets short, night gets long,
blackbirds cease their little song;
Hush my darling, do not wake,
now the land the night will take."
I'm a proud Momma.  I love the sentiment, I love the word choice, I love the rhyming couplets of trochaic quadrimeter...
And this from the girl who also made it to the top of her climbing route tonight on her first try!

For the Parents of all the Amazing, Magical Cousins Turning 10 This Year

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
--Billy Collins

There are six of them that turn that first, big number this year; Ilana is the first in just a few weeks.  Hug them tight.  Kiss their skinned knees.  And let's all help them keep their brilliant wonder.