Amy Writes

You know how, in cartoons, the characters are running full speed ahead when they see something interesting and try to stop? You hear screeching and see dust billowing and watch as they hop-hop-hop on one foot while the upper torso tries to head in the other direction? Well, it was kind of like that. I was moving quickly (running would be inaccurate, here) past an auditorium toward the lobby bathroom when something caught my attention. Wafting out of the auditorium were the familiar strains of a tune I know well. My peripheral vision picked up a sleek black shape on stage and two men studying it - one seated, one standing. Involuntarily, my body shifted directions and I froze in front of the open door, mesmerized. For a second, until I remembered where I was running. Or not running. I returned to the lobby to hear pages 5...6...7... still being pretty flawlessly performed on a beautiful piano to an audience of none. And I thought: 'I can do that.' I can play Rhapsody in Blue. Al...

At 9:30 every Thursday, I enter my daughter's classroom. A few of the students (including my own daughter) look up to subtly acknowledge my arrival. Then they keep working. I love this. Then the teacher quietly gets up, hands me a stack of projects to complete, and returns to her group of reading children. I love this, too. I survey what needs to be done and my brain immediately starts putting things in order. These need to be pasted. These need to be cut. These need to be laminated. Staple these. Copy that. Put that stack away. Within seconds I have a plan that maximizes efficiency, and I go to work. I don't know if anything satisfies me more than busy work done efficiently. Or, for that matter, anything done efficiently. Today I got to visit the school's reading book room and I found it magically soothing. Shelves and shelves of neatly labeled bins containing books ordered by letter and number. Nothing out of place. Nothing sloppily shoved into a spot where it doesn'...

Well, it happened. Everyone warned us that it would. It is the concern most widely expressed by most of our Christian friends when we have the "Public School" conversation. Our daughter was exposed to ( you might want to be sitting down for this... ) evolution. (cue dramatic ba-ba-BUUUUHHH music) Technically, she was introduced to something akin to the big bang theory. It didn't happen in the way we would have expected. It wasn't a teacher reading from science curriculum or another student engaging her in a heated debate about faith or telling her she was stupid for believing in a Creator God. It was sneakier than that: she brought home a reading book. It explained the origins of the earth. As she read Earth: The Water Planet aloud to us my mind started racing. First, I was annoyed. "Come on," I thought. "She's a first grader. It's a reading group book, for reading. Not a science lesson. Couldn't the teacher have chosen something less contr...