That car looks like a grasshopper

We had to make a trip to the airport this morning, and since that brought us more than halfway to the Henry Ford Museum, we decided it warranted a visit. We bought our tickets for the upcoming Titanic Artifacts exhibit, and then spent the morning looking around the newly opened Driving America exhibit. Fun cars, even more fun sets and props, and a couple of interactives to boot. We ate local foods for lunch, built wooden cars on a miniature assembly line, and spent the rest of the afternoon reading outside in this summery spring weather. Good stuff.

Drive-thrus and Drive-ins

"That car looks like a grasshopper"

"and he's talking to the ladybug!"

Working the Ford assembly line

Springing into action

We saw a play this morning: Strega Nona, as performed by our favorite local theater troupe. We laughed uproariously, and when it was over we emerged into a world that was bright and warm, so we took a picnic to a nearby park. 

Driving the pharaoh's ship

Scaling the mountains of Tibet

Flying on a dragon

An archaeologist at work

Imagination is a fantastic thing.

spring

With spring comes rebirth, renewal, a fresh start. We could some of that right now. Eighty degrees makes this an unusual spring, and all the sun and bright blue sky makes it almost possible to forget the losses and vulnerability that have shadowed the past week.

So we begin again. We spent three days helping with tornado cleanup, and another helping at the donations center. The weather has helped immensely. There's been no rain since the storm last week, and a gentle breeze has started to dry things out a bit, and given people a chance to sort things out. Calvin has taken both the tornado and the loss of Moose in the kind of stride that only youth can exhibit. It has encouraged me to put away my own sorrow and move forward.

We've had our windows open, and we're exploring like we always do. Math, science, art, piano, history, and whatever comes our way. We've worn out our welcome in Mesopotamia, so Calvin drew a few pictures and closed the case today before we watched a video, (Egypt: Engineering an Empire) to start us off in Egypt. I suspect we'll spend a lot of time there. I have a few things to catch up on blog wise—some art to share, some book reviews, and another list or two of learning tools—and I'll get to them just as soon as I remember how to breath properly.

Saying goodbye

We have learned lately that there is little limit to the amount of change that a day can bring. Less than twenty-four hours and our lives have been changed forever.

I used exactly this title five years ago when we had to say goodbye to Diamond, and now we lost have another beloved member of our family in saying goodbye to Moose. He'd been getting old, but the loss was still sudden. He woke up yesterday acting a little under the weather, and by midnight he seemed to be suffering from vertigo, but after an emergency vet visit first thing this morning, we learned that a cancer, which we weren't aware of, had caused sudden catastrophic damage. And again, as with Diamond, we found ourselves having to make the decision to let him go.

We had twelve wonderful years with little Moose, and not one of them would we trade for relief from the sorrow we feel now.

 

Strength of community

We live in the small village of Dexter, and if that rings a bell for some reason, it may be that you've seen us on the news lately.

On Thursday morning Calvin and I went to a play put on by our local theater group. It was the debut of a play written to spark interest in Michigan maritime history, and was about a family shipwrecked in Thunderbay in a dreadful November storm. Having lost their ship and all its cargo, the family, now ruined, is beside themselves with joy for having escaped with their lives. The show was very good, very well acted, and really tugged at the heartstrings.

Thursday in the afternoon Calvin and I practiced the piano, watered the seeds we'd started indoors, designed a "snack delivery system" to bring food from the kitchen to the sitting room (think zip line), and read a little on ancient Mesopotamian religions. Late in the afternoon we were coloring with chalk, and had just decided to take the dogs to the mailbox, when the rain started to come down lightly. We were still considering the mailbox when tornado sirens started going off. We spent the next hour or so in the corner of our basement with flashlights (no power) hearing intermittent strong gusts of wind and hail.

We were unscathed, and thankfully so, but over the first few minutes after we emerged from the basement, as power returned and the news started reporting, it became clear that not all of our little town was so lucky. Watching the news we could see whole streets of downed trees and two businesses were gone, and when they started showing images of a neighborhood with missing roof tops, second stories, even whole houses, we realized that the live footage was coming from the helicopter just outside our own window. The neighborhood right next door had been ravaged.

I've seen images of tornado stricken communities on TV, more so than ever in the past few years, and there are two thoughts that go through my head now. First, that I never believed it would happen here. Second, that there is a lot that those images cannot convey: like the smell that comes after a tornado, a smell of soggy paper, freshly cut wood, pine, electricity, and natural gas; or the extent of the debris, for even today we were finding in our own yard, nearly a half mile away, wood, plastic, insulation, and even people's personal items; or the extent of the damage, because even though only ("only") ten houses were gone or deemed unsafe, actually hundreds have considerable damage, and when standing in the streets the reach of the destruction seems enormous. No photograph can convey that.

Amazingly, thankfully, no lives were lost, and no serious injuries sustained. Many families lost the ship and the cargo, but all the families are still together.

I would never remark to someone who has lived through this on how thankful they must be for their lives, or that all the other stuff can be replaced. That is for them to say, and they will say it and feel it also, but in the days following, when the relief washes away, next there will be time to realize what has been lost, and not all of it can be replaced.

This afternoon Calvin and I put on heavy gloves and ragged clothes and walked across the street , trash bags in hand, to help our less fortunate neighbors. We were assigned to collecting debris from their neighborhood park. While I picked up pieces of glass and drywall, still in the color of someone's dining room or bedroom, Calvin kept to picking up shingles and splintered wood. Far more than building materials, though, it's the irreplaceable items we found that wrenched the heart: the baby book pages, crumpled and torn; the check, obtained and not yet cashed; the child's blanket way up high in a tree. I could not save the baby book, and the blanket was out of reach, but the check I brought home so I could track down its rightful owner. Another woman found a wedding photo in the gutter, posted a picture of it on the community Facebook page, and was ultimately connected with the owners, who had lost nearly everything else. Many of us lost nothing, but there's a feeling of shock and vulnerability that courses through the entire town, and everyone seems to feel the need to reach out and connect with others. There are only little things that we can do, but the whole community has come out to do them.