Follow the Light

One facet of life I have learned to embrace in a town where "tan" is a verb is the absolute lack of any kind of schedule on most days. It takes some getting used to for us over-scheduled Americans with our color-coded calendars, but easing into the day and trusting it to bring it on is a lovely change of pace. I am never disappointed looking back at what has transpired when the sun sinks into the sea at day's end. While my friends in the States are waking up to a Saturday morning and negotiating the commitments of the day with their spouses about who will take X to indoor soccer and who will head to the hockey rink with Y, Bella and I are carrying our white plastic chairs out to the short wall that separates us from the beach to drink coffee and watch the world go by.

Yesterday we exited our casa with the intention of watching the surfers and reading her Wizard of Oz script since Bella is to be a munchkin in her stage debut. As we were settling down in the morning shade, we noticed a few trees down from us a double line of people extending from the top of the playa to the water's edge. Thinking it some kind of Little Mermaid wedding rehearsal where the bride emerges from the sea to join her landlubbing spouse, we turned back to Dorothy when Delbert, the rasta surf instructor, sauntered over and said, "Baby sea turtles are hatching." Now we have watched countless female turtles heave themselves up the beach and have worshiped at their feet with sand flinging in our faces while observing every step of the turtle-egg-laying process on many a star-filled night And recently I was paddleboarding around a mating pair of olive ridleys when an extra male-in-waiting surfaced right in front of me and exhaled loudly. But the running of the babies is the one step in the making of sea turtles that I have never seen. And the fact that a turtle dared to lay her eggs on Tamarindo beach qualifies as a small miracle in and of itself.

I grabbed my camera and we ran over to watch, arriving at the water's edge when what appeared to be the last little guy took his final sandy steps and was introduced to the salt water he would call home for the rest of his or her life. Baby sea turtles do not have sex chromosomes so the ole' pink or blue is completely dependent upon the temperature of their nest. If the eggs incubate at an ideal 83 to 85 degrees they will be a nice mix of each. Anything warmer results in all females and anything colder creates a hundred or more bouncing baby boys. As a wave washed over this particular baby and he was given the old sink or swim mandate, he never hesitated for a second, bravely paddling like a pro away from the crowd of humans photographing his every first step.

With a sigh of happiness and a prayer that this would be the one in a thousand to survive, we began our journey back to the land of Oz awaiting us in our chairs and were just settling down in Munchkinland again when we noticed that folks were still congregating at the top of the beach from whence the baby turtles began their journey. Some of the few things we understand about sea turtles include that they are born with a caruncle - word for the day. A caruncle is a sharp egg tooth which gives the pointy appearance to the little guy here. The caruncle is used by the ninos to break out of their egg shells and then it falls off, bringing to mind a sweet anthropomorphic image of the turtle tooth fairy depositing gifts of tiny molluscs under sea sponge pillows. Once the baby turtles come out of their shells (pun intended) they remain underground in their flipper-deep nests for days slurping up raw egg-yolk from their shells and building strength like Rocky in training, only not for a title match but to survive their first few days at sea during their crash course in deciphering food from non-food.

(This, incidentally, has become more of a challenge for the lonely little turtles thanks to all the tiny floating plastic pellets and tar balls we have introduced to their snack selection, which is one of many contributing factors as to why all six species of the world's sea turtles are listed as threatened or endangered and why you, too, can pay thousands of dollars per week to "volunteer" to save them in countries like this one while the rest of us are busy tanning.)

Meanwhile, back in their hole, the hatchlings chat amongst themselves and determine when it is time to move on up. Then, in a remarkable feat of sibling cooperation unknown in the mammal world, they all coordinate their efforts and work harmoniously to dig themselves up to the surface. Once they approach the light, they resist the urge to break free of the claustrophobic confines of their womb, demonstrating remarkable reptilian restraint by waiting until the sand cools off, which typically signals night. The wee ones can then emerge under the cover of darkness and avoid daytime predators as they scramble towards the sounds and sights of the sea, swimming away to the rest of their lives. The end.

Bella and I then observed people running from the top of the beach to the ocean cradling something in their hands. "What are they doing now?" we wondered as we abandoned Zelda, the wicked witch, to her unlucky fate and returned to have a look. To my dismay, I saw that our Tica neighbor was now on her chunky knees in her housedress digging into the turtle nest and pulling out handfuls of baby turtles and eggs. A group of misguided mammals all joined in on the action, thinking they could somehow improve on what these reptiles had somehow been successfully doing for over 200 million years without them and their supposedly superior intelligence.

To my horror, they started pulling baby turtles out of their eggs and rushing them down to the sea. When a few of us folks tried to curb their enthusiasm, myself included, by begging them to leave them alone, Tica threw her weight around and imparted her infinite wisdom that the nest was too deep and too compacted from, of all things, people walking on it and that these turtles would die if they did not save them. Save the turtles? Even though they did risk becoming breakfast for hovering birds and crabs, the process of crawling the gauntlet from sand to sea is considered to be a critical event in the new life of a baby turtle. They need the exercise to strengthen their flippers for swimming and they need to smell the particulates of their natal beach in order to return once they have survived their "lost years" at sea, having successfully grown to the size of a dinner plate instead of being served on one.

Saddened and concerned, we returned to Oz where only Zelda's legs were happily sticking out from underneath a house. Later that morning Bella and I were walking on the beach past the spot where the turtles had become swimmers when a couple stopped us. "We found this swimming around," the husband said, cradling a baby sea turtle in his hands with some combination of shock and awe. "That is probably because it is disoriented," I told him and informed him that this was where it had had its first swimming lesson that morning. "This would be a good place to put it down and let it crawl back in the water," I suggested. He glanced at his treasured souvenir and determined, "No, I think it's tired. I think I'll hold it and let it rest awhile." "Whatever," I thought resignedly, "I am sure you know best." We walked on, our heads filled with ruby slippers and swimming turtles, towards whatever the rest of the day would bring.

K3

Make New Friends

I am 49 years old and I just had my first friend cancel our friendship like a postal worker. No, obviously she didn’t kill me. She “resigned” as my friend. Now this is probably not the first time I have lost a friend and it is definitely not the first time I have been excommunicated as a family member, but that is another story. In fact, this may not even come as any great surprise to some of you. And it could be that I have joined the whining ranks of the “unfriended” on facebook but would I even know? Ignorance is bliss.

In elementary school I had fights with my friends but there were happy endings with skipping home from school together once again. I had an older brother and was somewhat of a tomboy, fancying myself as kind of tough, so this probably happened on a regular basis just so I could keep in shape for kickball.

High school brought the added drama of hormones to the playground and discrepancies usually revolved around boys. At the ninth grade dance my so-called friend’s so-called boyfriend persuaded me to tell him that so-called had in fact been “cheating” on him, promising never to tell her what I said and then proceeding to march right on over and create a big scene which somehow ended with the two of them happily making out to the teenage equivalent of make-up sex – an hour of rotating to Stairway to Heaven. And while their lips slowly chapped my own so-called date marched home to the tune of their lies about me ringing in his ears, closely followed by yours truly. A brilliant retreat except that I was staying at so-called’s house for the night, the unhappy details of which I have happily forgotten by process of selective brain cell loss. (Now that is an interesting concept coming as it is on the aching heels of a deadly drinking/disco combination at Super Wendy’s birthday bash the other night. Would that we could target the brain cells we’d like to lose.)

What I do recall about the ninth grade dance besides one more polyester dress with matching blue eyeshadow plus a bad experience with so-called’s sunlamp which has cost me a lot of money forever-after in the form of expensive sunglasses to protect my once-burned retinas (actually, that came later in preparation for the Starlight Ball or some other gropefest which must mean that even that friendship was rekindled, ah, yes, it must have been because she later became my brother’s girlfriend which once inspired him to punch the wall and break his hand. So really we all should have kept our distance.) But I do still wonder to this day what they told my retreating date to make him leave me standing at the ninth grade equivalent of the altar but was too embarrassedly mortified to ever ask him. Surely, it can’t have been very flattering. So MM, wherever you are, you should know that whatever they said, I didn’t do it. I was a virgin in every sense but especially in the ways of mean girls and their so-called boyfriends.

On beyond high school the friends I lost were usually of the opposite sex. Boys morphed from friends into lovers and girlfriends were more or less what I did in between. So I lost the menfolk in one way or another also. Sometimes that was mutual and sometimes as dramatic as losing them to their own awakening sexuality or to death - which was certainly neither voluntary nor a resignation. I lost the good graces of their families and sometimes our mutual friends as well depending on the severity of devastated dreams.

But here I am midstream in life and I am reminded of the song we sang as wee Brownies while toasting marshmallows around the campfire: “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.” We sang it in rounds. Over and over. Until the fading echoes of the final verse tickled the stars above and we all shivered from the beauty of our high young voices and from too much sugar. Maybe it was the s’mores, but somehow those words stuck with me. I don’t discard friends. I am the one sending hundreds of smiling greetings to all holiday corners of the globe each year. I have moved around a lot, as you might surmise from the title of this blog, and I drag my friends along with me, ready or not. I love to laugh and to make new friends and the writer in me loves to listen to other people’s stories. I have friends I see daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, and annually. I have friends I never see and rarely if ever hear from but still I wonder about them at 4 a.m., hold them in my heart and hope they will darken my doorstep again some day. Some of you might agree that I am a good friend to have; some of you might be reading this with a sneer on your lips. Thanks to the world-wide-web I have no idea who reads this but I am smiling at you all as I type.

I may have lost friends along the way, even as recent as recently, but the deliberateness of this particular incident is what is new. No guesswork about, “I resign as your friend.” Can you do that? What if I don’t reciprocate? My friendship is not a commodity, after all. There are no returns nor refunds. It is given freely, like the sunset. You may forget about it or choose not to look but it is there, sinking into the sea with a glowing smile every evening all the same. And it goes on and on and on.

As a supposedly mature adult whose life is more than half over, what is my response to this? Enter serenity prayer stage left please and endow me with the wisdom to know the difference, por favor. Enter Maya Angelou stage right and remind me once again that if I don’t like something, change it, if I can’t change it, change the way I think about it. Enter that hokey song and know when to walk away or when to run. I certainly won’t beat her up on the playground. I could spread rumors like in high school, but never mastered the art of subterfuge. So I guess that leaves accepting her decision with grace and humility, moving along and wondering when I might run into her in the marshmallow aisle at Auto Mercado.

My response so far? “Wow.” I know, a simple yet profound palindrome. So, strike up the fire and unwrap the Hershey bars. It’s time to add a new verse and sing along. “Make new friends, but keep the old, if they unfriend you, that’s pretty cold. Or welcome to the fold. Or send them some mold.” I’ll have the s’mores ready in case she wanders by at sunset. An open invitation.

K3

Star of Wonder

“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea . . . Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." . . . They went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.” - Matthew 2

Dear Friends and Family, near and far,

On the twelfth day of Christmas I am finally sending you our holiday epistle. I apologize if you were hoping for twelve lords a leapin’ instead. We have been busy embracing each of those dozen days in their entirety, this being the only time of year we are all together as a family. We have been lazy and indulgent in the welcome presence of each other with long days on the beach walking, shell collecting, swimming, shadow tagging, reading, surfing, and teaching Bella to ride her bike at low tide. Each day begins with morning coffee watching the surf and ends with the sun melting into the Pacific in front of us.

If life is a beach, ours is here in Costa Rica. In August I moved back to Tamarindo with the three youngest kids where we live on the playa in Casa Azul and rarely miss a sunset. I have traded my glittens for a bikini and sleep with the sounds of the surf outside my window. It is lovely to be back, basking in the warmth of the tropics and in the smiles of our friends.

We have kissed the yurt-filled 2010 farewell and will send it on its journey into the annals of the past once this missive is concluded. 2011 is stirring to life now and resolutions for its success and productivity are set firmly-ish in place as we each begin following the stars which lead us onward. I am still searching for the literary agent who will lead me down the path to publication. Andy is busy expanding Silke communications and firing up his sawmill with periodical tropical excursions here to see us. (No, after 22 years of marriage we are not getting divorced!)

Hannah was selected to be Captain of the Varsity Crew Team in her Senior year at Georgetown and is hoping to lead them down the path to victory. She will be graduating in May with a degree in Physics, a minor in Portuguese, and a pre-med concentration, hoping (along with her father) that these credentials will lead her to employment and into med school.

Christiana is in her freshman year at University of MA in Amherst and beginning her journey to perhaps become a wildlife biologist.

Micah will graduate from CDSG here and his college applications have headed off into cyberspace. Hopefully a few acceptances will travel back in his direction soon.

Isaiah is studying in a bi-lingual fifth grade class and his preferred path lately has been along the face of the waves out in front of our house as he and Micah learn to surf.

Bella is starting her academic journey and on track to master the art of reading in the first grade. She is full of joy and very observant of the feats and foibles of her older siblings. And parents.

As we head towards 2012, we are hoping the Mayans were math-challenged. But just in case they were not, we hope you are living your dreams. May the stars you follow be worthy of song.

“Westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to Thy perfect light.”

Bring me to your Chef!

I am teaching 16 first and second graders which is why I am not blogging very often and why, in all likelihood, you will probably be hearing a lot of classroom anecdotes if you hear from me at all in the next months. Last week was our big Thanksgiving program at school followed by our Feast, even tho the Costa Ricans are not big fans of the pilgrims, or pil-GRAMS, as Alexa calls them with emphasis. But being an American school we pulled out all the stops and I ate three turkey dinners before the week was over. I love turkey and I am, after all, a living example of what the pilgrims were to become, twelve generations after they hit the rock. So I can never get enough turkey and can whip up a pilgrim hat with little prelude.

For the occasion and to honor my forefathers, my amiga and I wrote an original Thanksgiving play called, with great imagination, "Thanksgiving Play." I wanted to write "Thanksgiving, the musical," but Bono was busy on Broadway working on Spiderman. So we settled for something with less of a score. Like every other first and second grade classroom in America, and one or two beyond its pilgrim-loving borders, we enacted the whole story starting in England with the King as villain disallowing his subjects to pray as they please, then moving on to Holland where the children became naughty because, after all, this was the home of Amsterdam so what were they thinking anyway and they were praying freely but in Dutch, what?! In an act of linguistic desperation, the pilgrims hired the Mayflower and the ill-fated Speedwell which you may, or may not recall (I had forgotten it myself) which proved to be holier than thou and began sinking soon after they set sail.

The pilgrims limped back to Holland where their kids once again had to translate every blooming conversation their parents attempted which, incidentally, is something my own kids can relate to in our current cross-cultural living situation. When they had successfully crammed all 100 pilgrims onto the Mayflower they set sail for America again, take two. When given a replica of the Mayflower to color in class, many of my students chose to decorate the sails with brightly colored flowers - get it? - in a much-improved version of the dingy white ones which were impossible to clean and with which those plain folks grew quickly bored and which might have cheered them up on their two month voyage had they simply admitted that plain and boring was not necessarily the only pathway to heaven. There being no floating hospitals in the midst of the Atlantic, at least not in 1620, Oceanus was born at sea and he was a boy but in a brilliant stroke of artistic license coupled by a shortage of boys in our class, we cast he as a she.

Finally the pilgrims hit the rock, which is yet another brilliant stroke of artistic license by the history makers, as you surely know if you have ever been to Plymouth to see the famed Rock which sits in a cage and typically results in exclamations of disbelief and a vast sense of being both underwhelmed and somehow misled by both history books and first grade teachers everywhere even though you find yourself squinting at said stone as you are simultaneously blinded by the flash photography of busloads of Asian tourists who seem quite happy with this scheduled stop at the rock on their tour even tho the rock is really more like a pebble. But maybe the Japanese are used to things being a little smaller than previously imagined. Meanwhile, back at our story, the pilgrims hit the promised land where they see not only that they will be free to pray as they please but that they had better get started because it was November in New England and, as Rumor (brilliantly played by Bella) notes immediately, "There are no flowers here!" Which, in our play, is succeeded by similar sentimental expressions of surprise and dismay culminating in Rumor lamenting, "Who will help us?"

This is where Squanto appears to save the day by showing them how to use the very first organic fish fertilizer to plant their corn and pease (simple living somehow included adding an extra -e to every word), all of which leads to the following year when the stalwart survivors decide to forego hiring prestigious party planners from the island of Mannahatta and opt to plan their own simple and organic, yet humble, first Thanksgiving feast. In reading this part of the story in class, Camillo - a native Costa Rican who would ultimately go on to play Chief Massasoit - was supposed to say, 'I will bring my chief." Instead, with a slip of the tongue coupled by an inability to read, which is probably how most of history has evolved, Camillo said, "I will bring my chef." Which was probably a better idea anyway.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving,

K3

When trees fly...

Q: So where have I been?
A: Oregon.
Q: Doing what?
A: Building "high-quality overwintering habitat" for coho salmon which were listed as "threatened" species in 2008.
Q: What?
A: Have you heard about the ARRA? How about the Economic Stimulus Package signed by Obama in 2009? I like to think of it as the modern-day WPA and if you have driven across America lately you understand why. All across our wide nation are men and machines toiling away on highway and bridge projects being brought to you by the ARRA.

In our little neck of the woods up Canal Creek we just flew 312 massive fir trees via chinook helicopter (no relation to the fish) which strategically placed them in designed structures across the creek to build coho habitat. Functioning rather like larger, more expensive beaver dams, these structures will create "stream complexity" and deep pools where the wee ones can hang out for a year or so without being eaten or flushed out by heavy winter rains before they are ready to make the transition to bigger and better and brackish and saltier waterways.

If you have never seen a 23K lb. tree fly, believe me when i tell you that it is a sight to see. We only managed to get a portion of the 1000 trees planned for four different waterways before the rains began and the fish moved upstream but we will hopefully continue where we left off next year flying trees and spending almost a cool million ARRA dollars. I thank you, America, and you, President Obama, and the coho do too.

Here is another photo from my trip. And no, these are not coho, these are chinook. This is Andy and I celebrating our 22nd wedding anniversary by catching the first legal salmon of his life. (You will have to ask him about the others.) IN the two weeks I was there, we went to an 18-year-old birthday party, a 50th wedding anniversary, the Governor's Gold Awards in Portland, the laundromat (where I folded my clothes while eavesdropping on an interesting conversation about channel catfish in Arkansas), the pool, and Target where I erroneously got in the 10-item lane with over $300 of stuff (including a tropical-scented deodorant that I think I bought after smelling way too many because it reminded me of Costa Rica but ultimately made me walk around smelling like a bad candle) and where I instantly made several new enemies in Eugene, Oregon. Lo siento.

I got my hair cut, co-hosted our monthly writing workshop featuring my favorite pen pal and funny tween author Dale Basye and a Conversation Project for our town to help decide what Waldport wants to be when it grows up. I opened my first business checking account for my first business--Coho Consulting--and ate the best chocolate creme brulee EVER at Panache in Newport, don't miss it. We had dinner with friends at their house and at our yurt and in general had fun playing yurt without the kids around and ate so much salmon I am afraid I am now, absolutely, part fish. We saw a dead stellar sea lion on the beach, purportedly from leptospirosis, and I came upon a smaller California sea lion resting at the tide line who looked very hungry. Hopefully he will have more salmon to eat soon.

K3

Go Ask Alice

Fifteen months ago (a lifetime for some) we met Alice. That's her there on the left. Although you can't tell in the photo, Alice has no tail and was raised at Capitan Suizo, a hotel on the beach in Tamarindo. At the time we were renting a house two doors south of the hotel and now we are living in a tree house two doors north where the local gang of howlers wake us up at 530 every morning--who needs an alarm clock? Some nights they sleep in the tree over the house and have their coffee klatch directly overhead, flinging their noisy news and bits of breakfast onto the roof and pooping, well, you get the picture. When the gang moves through the 'hood, one male consistently stops to peek at us over the edge of the roof or to otherwise come closer for a chat. We finally noticed that he had no tail but was clearly a male, the dangling white cojones not leaving much room for speculation.

Last week Bella and I stopped by the hotel to check on the progress of a lora (olive ridley sea turtle) they were rehabilitating and on Friday at sunset we stood on the playa and waved goodbye to her. (I am certain she was Maude or Mildred, but that is another story blogged about earlier.) Talking to Hector, the hotel wildlife guy, I asked about the overtly friendly howler hanging around the 'hood and he informed me that our tailless socialite is none other than Alice, herself! Turns out young howlers are rather amorphous in their private parts and that Alice was a bit of a misnomer. The good news is that the local gang has accepted her-m because it also turns out that a tail is a critical component of howler attraction and so, alas, poor Alice is not considered much of a threat in the mating department. The bad news is that Alice's lack of a tail will probably preclude him from getting any. So, Alice must be content to hang around as best he can, socializing with distant relatives, and generally making a life for himself.

Pura Vida.

Con Mucho Gusto!

One of the more endearing terms used by Costa Ricans with frequency is, "Con mucho gusto," which is often shortened to simply, "Mucho gusto." Any time you try out your amateur Spanish by thanking someone with a "gracias," or really showing off with a "mucho gracias," the automatic response will be that simple phrase--Mucho gusto. It is a lovely retort and I prefer it to our standard, "you're welcome." Whether you are in a restaurant or the grocery check-out line, any time you find yourself giving a perfunctory thanks to someone they will respond, "with pleasure," or "with much pleasure."

One of the sure marks of an amateur writer these days is the use of what we were taught to call the exclamation mark or point. Fairly soon into your writing career or your MFA program you will learn to indicate all forms of excitement and horror along with all adverbs by simply choosing a better verb to denote the exact extreme emotion you are attempting to convey. (Thus, the blurb at the top of my blog.) I freely admit that I, myself, am a formerly-frequent user of the now-dreaded and tres-gauche punctuation mark I used to put at the end of almost every sentence of every email I ever wrote to denote my happiness and excitement to my friends and family. Then I had a friend tell me her husband says reading exclamation marks makes him feel like he is being yelled at. This was certainly never my intent and thankfully I have never written to him or he would have run from the room, hands over eyes, screaming with a trail of periods following behind. And then I had an editor tell me you are allowed maybe three exclamation marks per book. What? Well, admission is the first step and I trainable. So I am well on my way to being the writer formerly known by her profligate usage of the exclamation mark. Not to mention those pesky adverbs...

Now without further ado, let me put these two seemingly disparate paragraphs together with a little Memorial Day tale. On Sunday we had a brief break in the rain here on the coast where a 3-day weekend fills every road and all vacant spaces with campers and I don't mean tents. I mean enough equipment to duplicate all the comforts of home BUT you are "camping." Seeing a bit of blue open up in the heavens above was all we needed by way of encouragement and we headed for the beach which was uncharacteristically packed with people, many of whom actually thought that frolicking in near-freezing water was great holiday fun. Until they did it. We had a nice long walk to the "big stump" which is a huge redwood remnant that has been sticking up out of the sands since Andy can remember and that is something on a beach where full-length trees are tossed about like match sticks by the waves and tides and nothing stays put. Except that stump. Bella packed snacks and books and we took a stump break and the five of us generally enjoyed ourselves to the point where we even stripped down to one layer for a moment or two.

Our journey yielded not even one intact sand dollar, given the hordes combing the intertidal zone, and upon our return we sat down to put on our shoes because in spite of the fact that the weather is worse now than in the winter, we bravely marched forth in our bare feet in deference to the calendar more than anything else. As we sat collecting ourselves Isaiah began to write a B in the sand with his stick. "Look, a "B," I noted to Bella sitting next to me, "I wonder what Isaiah is going to write?" "E," I continued, I guess he is writing "be."

She laughed with the assurance of a 6-year-old, "No, he's writing Bella." (Note: Here my natural inclination is to end her sentence with the exclamation point that follows almost every sentence of a 6-year-old with all their enthusiasm for even the most mundane aspects of life, all of which, of course, are still new and exciting to them. But I have learned to slap the little finger of my left hand when it wanders too close to that now-rarely-used key which can only be touched when typing the number 1.) And sure enough, Isaiah continued to write two L's and an A. "Bella," Bella exclaimed period. But then Isaiah continued to draw another line.

"Hmmm, now what is he writing?" I asked her, "Kittel?" But just then he lifted his stick and then poked it back into the sand with a flourish and finality, to her delight.

"A Gusto Mark," she exclaimed. (Again, see note above.) We all looked at each other and at her with curiosity and laughed. A gusto mark? I have no idea where she got this name for the punctuation formerly known as an exclamation something. Did she learn it in Kindergarten, as she said? Or did she hear the teacher wrong and put her Spanish and English vocabularies together in a cheerful new Spanglish punctuation term? Either way, it is a very fitting name for the much-maligned sentence ending which has fallen from grace. But I think Bella could well be on her way to changing that. (Or her middle name is not...)

K3

PS The photo is of the very-excited Bella at her dance recital which was akin to Christmas with the counting down of days and everything.