A brief detour...

Now I realize that this blog is about Devon, but I can't resist a little digression to mention some wonderful writing I read in the most recent fiction issue of the New Yorker. It's all about war writing, and one piece just had excerpts from letters, emails and other correspondence written by US troops serving in Iraq. They really ran the gamut from a doctor serving on the USS Comfort, a medical ship (floating hospital, really), to a Captain who was writing a letter to her church in Littleton, CO (home, I believe, to some of the biggest mega-churches in the country) and was clearly thrilled to be flying over the same land where the Israelites were banished for 40 years and where Babylon was doomed to fall, to a leader of a communications unit who spent his days arguing with Iraqi locals who have an appointment to see a Pakistani diplomat or who claim that the sharpened tire iron in their truck is a "family heirloom." I loved this piece because for me it brought a war that is so far away and disassociated from my life (and I'd suggest from most American's lives) into sharp focus through the myriad of small details that make up any one experience. Here's a Staff Sergeant describing what it's like in Iraq, "Go to your vacuum, open the canister, and pour it all over you, your bed, clothing and your personal effects. Now roll in it until it's in your eyes, nose ears, hair, and...well you get the picture. You know it's just perfect when you slap your chest and cough from the dust cloud you kicked up." That really captures something. The personal lilt of each voice, the details that each person chose to emphasize -- I guess at the end of the day, the personalization of each missive spoke to me in a way that media articles haven't and humanized a war that the entire country is keeping at arm's length.

I'm now stepping off my soapbox and getting back to the topic at hand... Devon has really been fixated on driving recently, and in the last couple of weeks it's gotten to be almost an obsession. Each time we're in the car, she'll first yell, "Key! Key!" until you hand over a set of keys -- any keys -- for her personal use. And then she'll start shrieking, "Dive, dive!" insisting that she drive the car. That usually consists of her standing in the driver's seat, putting the key in the ignition (she's gotten so adept at this that she immediately knows the right key to insert) and then wiggling the steering wheel and pushing any button or lever within reach. For a long time she'd do this when you parked the car, so I usually spent an extra 5 minutes or so letting her "drive." But now she's doing it while the car is moving -- in effect, demanding that you pull over en route and let her take the wheel. It would be funnier if her yelling about driving weren't quite so incessant.

Tonight Walt realized that we had to go back to 8th Ave (after picking me up at the train station) because the drywall people are coming tomorrow and he's going to have to make a 6am Home Depot trip (sans Devon, obviously). There is some insulation to install and plumbing to do before the drywallers start their work, and since they're arriving at 8am, Walt has to be moving early. So we had to drive all the way back across town, and stopped in the Haight to grab a bite to eat before picking up the other car (this is a car that my friend Alexandra gave to us when she moved to Paris last month -- so it's a real windfall car -- a '84 Volvo that's built like a tank, good for hauling stuff). We had to listen to about 10 minutes of "Dive!" before we distracted Devon with a straw. I suspect she'll be hugely disappointed when she learns that it's going to be 14-1/2 more years before she can really drive.