The Worm Turns

As we face the prospect of our second daughter going off into to the collegial great unknown, I find myself looking back at the days when we helped each of them through their first school “projects.”  We never actually had to do the smelly volcano thing. Perhaps because where we live you can look out many windows and see a real volcano on a clear day. But there were plenty of projects over the years.

Mary sewed all sorts of things and I ‘helped’ build things.  There were costumes and models and all manner of baked goods. Once, we even built a life-size pumpkin carriage for the high school production of Cinderella. When they were very young, our cooperation frequently amounted to the kid painting what the parents had built. I built a collapsible puppet theatre for Daughter One's 4^th grade class and she painted it. Mary designed the ‘night sky’ for Daughter Two's room and Daughter Two helped paint it.

We helped Daughter One learn to sing and taught Daughter Two to pound nails. And now, Daughter One is a singer and Daughter Two is on her way to becoming an engineer.  And at some point, the tables turned.

We still help with their school projects. Sort of.  Daughter One practices for her directing class by explaining a show to me in technical terms and from the point of view of an actor, only dumbed down to reach my level of comprehension. And Daughter Two is the leader of her school robotics team. She and her friends  designed and built a robot that will be in competition this weekend against teams from all over the state.  And tonight, Mary and I spent the evening painting the team numbers on the cloth covers for the bumpers.

How the worm has turned.