Amazing Grace

By Cornelia

Please excuse a very proud mom's ramblings this morning:


Tomorrow morning, the young lady above will be graduating from the eighth grade. This was taken about thirteen years ago on her grandmother's porch in Portland, Maine.


She's worked very hard at school, but she started her own education at home in Manhattan, with a pronounced fondness for great literature, such as Pat the Bunny.



I think it was around the age below that she uttered her first sentence, in Boulder, Colorado:


Sadly for her mother, the sentence was "Mummie farted." Given the gales of laughter that followed her initial utterance of those two words, she repeated them a rather large number of times over the next several days.


It was around the age above that she began to sing the Alphabet Song. For a while, the lyrics were "A B C D E E E, E-E E-E E-E EEEEEEEE." Her record time without pause was an hour and a half in the back of the car, on the way to pick up her dad at the Denver airport during a snowstorm.


It was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that she formally began school. This was after she'd taught herself to read at age four, halfway through Treasure Island with her dad.


The first book she read alone was this one, about a week later:



After that, she learned a bit of attitude:


And discovered fashion, especially gold lame and pearls:


We then moved to California, where she went to a very small school for the first three years:


There she discovered her love of math and science. I am including the picture of her dissecting a pumpkin, because the one of her dissecting a cow's eyeball is too gross for me:


For the last three years, she's gone to a small middle school and worked very, very hard at all kinds of academic things.


And all kinds of extra-curricular things (such as a visit to Ben & Jerry's in Vermont):


Last summer in the Adirondacks, she caught her first trout:

And learned to disguise herself as a deer:


Somehow, she's grown up a great deal in the last year:


Next year she will be going to school in New Hampshire:

I wish for her that it will be a gateway to a wonderful life, because she's truly a wonderful kid:


When it gets cold back east, I hope she will listen to this, to remember home:

We are so proud of you, dear Grace!

In other news: Robert Gregory Browne and Brett Battles are venturing into the podcast world. They've started a series of talks about writing, which, in the near future, will also include interviews with other authors and publishing industry professionals. Their first podcast on writing characters is now up. You can find it here: http://www.battlesandbrowne.com