Fried egg Fletcher

Last night Fletcher, who I was trying to get ready for bed, invented a new game: He was an egg and I had to "crack" him into a frying pan while daddy was the spatula and had to flip him over. I know this sounds weird, but it turned out to be so hilarious we all couldn't stop laughing (and we certainly didn't get calmed down and ready for bed for quite awhile).

So this is how it worked: We were all on me and Matt's king sized bed. Fletcher, sitting on his bottom, tucked up his legs and arms into his oversized Dolphins jersey and bent his head down inside the neck hole. I rolled him forward, "cracking" him into the 'pan' at which point he unfolded his body flat and then Matt (the spatula) picked him up and flipped him over a few times till he was "done" and then we "ate" him all up by tickling him all over. It was even more fun when I decided I wanted my egg scrambled, which led to crazy havoc with the spatula.

Man, that was just a really great family memory, and one I really want to remember. It is one of those times when taking a photo wouldn't have counted. There were no real eggs or pans, and it was all just make believe, nothing to photograph, but I want to keep that mental snapshot in my heart's wallet always.

And then there's Gwendolyn, moody, sulky, so full of emotional turmoil and angst. I hesitate to write about her here so as not to embarrass her. She is full of private inklings and cranky inclinations and tumult; she reminds me of the breaking of the bay from my Michigan childhood. In the spring when the ice cracks up on Lake Michigan there are these booms, loud as thunder, while the surface is still smooth and flat as ever then soon there are three and four foot thick walls of blue-green ice colliding and spiking and arching and banging and diving up from the water like deformed frozen trick dolphins and the scene is so calamitous and terrifying you want to run away screaming and stay there transfixed by the insane process of nature! But soon the ice floe is out to 'sea' and warmer weather arrives and there's the beach and the blue-green waves and the gorgeous lake is back to same-old-same-old. I guess it's just adolescence but it is MY daughter's adolescence and it is intense and scary and lovely and I just yearn for the days of same-old-same-old that lay somewhere in the foggy future. If you have a teen, I feel for you...