Bittersweet

I just got an email from George Bush, thanking me for my latest correspondence. I assume he's referring to the one asking that he not pardon Scooter Libby. Actually it was more of a demand. But let's not get semantical.

W. didn't mention either of my other recent requests, namely, that he withdraw all US troops from Iraq by next Saturday; and, in the interests of national security, that he contact someone in the State Department to hightail it over to the White House with ten gallons of Bertoli Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and help him pull his head out of his ass. You'd have thought Laura would've been working on this last thing, but she's fairly debilitated herself these days given her ongoing struggle to pry open her eyes.

In keeping with this winsome patriotic breeze wafting through our lives, my daughter got a letter from W. He congratulated her on having received the Presidential Award for Academic Excellence (an oxymoronic phrase if ever there was one, on second thought, omit the "oxy"), given to students with a GPA of 3.6 or above. My daughter wanted to tear the letter up. It didn't help that I spit coffee on my flip-flops in a convulsion of laughter when I started reading the thing. But I assured her that the letter came from the Office of the Presidency, not from this particular President himself, who everyone knows is as dumb as a box of rocks.

Last Thursday was my daughter's last day of school. A Very Big Deal. Not only was it her last day of Fifth Grade, it was her last day of Elementary School, and her last day at the school she's attended since Kindergarten. With the exception of her Second Grade teacher, a possible reincarnated Nazi, she's had a good run of it thus far. While her classmates have been the usual mix of nerds, jocks, terrorist cheerleaders and serial-rapists-in-training, she's managed to navigate these lily-white, middle-class, 97%-original-nuclear-family-of-origin waters in relative calm, canoe unswamped, paddle still in hand. Though there were a few dicey portages, and at least one unanticipated rapids I can think of.

Now here we are, stranded on the deserted island of Summer. And if Climate Change can stop its advance long enough to allow this 40-days-and-40-nights of rain to cease, I can step back from the ark-building detail and enjoy these next several months of sun and mosquito repellent. Before the inevitable typhoon of Middle School (I've already got my name on the list for the portable morphine drip). When all bets are off. When you're USCWAP. Or a canoe. Or a map.

A week ago, walking my daughter to the bus for the last time, I mentioned the word bittersweet. A word I've always loved, logophile that I am. She'd never heard of it. How can something be both? she wondered, and I tried to explain. But to her it was a taste thing, and as usual I was mixing too many metaphors, and then a crow started in with its two cents, and then the bus pulled up. I watched the door fold open and my throat filled, with all the words I hadn't spoken, and never could. I was remembering the first time I put her on this bus. I was remembering her little legs negotiating the steps, her little face in the window, her brave wave. It was her first day of Kindergarten, a beautiful, silent Wednesday in September. September 12th, 2001, to be exact.