The Squirrels said the bluejays are not the only animals who find interest in tennis...

Usually, it is Ms. Bluejay, coaching me from the rafters, when she sees me with my children. Now, my times with my children are few and far between, at the courts, at least. She was around, but silent in her criticisms of my lack of motivation and lack of clarity to create the passion for flight in my children.

In years past, she would stand right over my shoulder and shout about what I wasn't including of my motivation for the motions of continuous wing motions that we share in common. Bluejays realize the relationship between flight and the swinging of the arms in tennis. They say that teaching your children to play that sport is as close to being a bird and tossing them from the nest that there could be. Especially the service motion is pecked at by her, whenever I see her. If you could do that motion 100times fast, you might be hovering over the ground. She loves it. She giggles on the fence thinking that I am trying to fly and teach my children to fly.

Now that my childrearing is at the end, we find fewer meetings to giggle about our commonality. This Saturday was such a moment. I drug Ez onto the courts from the swings for 15 or 20 minutes of "sharing" on the court. Shame that what used to be insistent and intense instruction and coaching has condescended to "parental sharing". I love what age does to relationships. The elder children know me in the intensity of my "overhead" They know the "better duck!" look on my face, when the drool to knock the hair off the ball comes into my eyes. Not Ez, he knows tennis as a peaceful time of secret abilities that he is not yet really privy to how the ball and the racket come together to form a rally. What is a rally? Mrs. Bluejay turns her back, she can't look at such a travesty.

Well anyway, the squirrels said they had found their commonality with the sport in the aim that I take on my serve. They said it is like when they choose a branch on the heights to jump to. They were aiming above me and a mommy was showing her little ones the joys of jumping from tree to tree. Sometimes hitting the branch you aimed for and sometimes falling to a lower branch. It was fun to see them enjoying the same interaction I was having with my little squirrel.

A Beacon in the Night and a Beacon in NY, I think they are the same thing, sometimes. Light us with Your Truth, Lord. I miss my dark and wonderful city!

Precocious or a rabble rousing Cow?

There we were traveling along a country road. Cattle on a thousand hills were here and there. I was gawking at the splendor so much that when a bunch of starlings darted out in front of the car, it startled me. It didn't startle my husband driving. Had it been me, I would've swerved. I had to turn and see who did that. I saw a giggling and running lone cow running from the scene of the crime. I laughed with her, that she had gotten those starling's back for the many times that they had startled her. She was leaping like a deer and glad that she had gotten the last laugh, that great Sunday Morning. I call her "Yitzahka". Don't you know it's Sunday Yitzahka?