Three Things Thursday

1. When my son started his fourth year of school (he had just turned five) his teacher assigned each of the children a color on their job chart. (There were only 7 students as it was special ed.) At the orientation I saw that C. Riley had been assigned green and was a little resentful. He so wasn’t a green boy. Couldn’t his teacher see that he was clearly blue or red, in a pinch? Those colors had been given to others boys. Soon green was C. Riley’s favorite color and it bugged me. I know it was ridiculous, but it was just one more area where his needing to go to school so young interrupted our life and defined who he was. I got over it and for years, if there was a choice of color in anything, I bought green. About a year ago he decided blue was his favorite color and I kind of missed the green.

2. Every time I considered going back to school to finish my degree I got pregnant – all three times. With C. I had taken one class and was looking at programs. With L. I was working the logistics and with Beansie I just considered it.

3. For the government class I took before I got pregnant with C. Riley I wrote two papers covering decisions made by the Supreme Court. That was when I really “got” that the Law is interpretations of the Constitution. I realized it was language. It had always seemed so dry and boring and suddenly I understood it was navigating writing. At the same time a friend was fighting her wealthy in-laws for custody of her daughter. Her husband had cheated on her while she was pregnant and she discovered it when her daughter was a newborn. After the divorce she had a break down and the in-laws immediately swooped in and tried for custody. Friends helped her pay for an attorney, who wasn’t terribly good. For a while I wanted to go to law school with the idea of having a mainly pro bono business to represent women like our friend. But I was soon sidetracked by beginning to become the mother of C. Riley H.