Able was I, ere I saw Elba

Scrabble is not the only obsession in our household.

As I drove the kids to camp this morning, Mattie asked me to open his window. He sits in the last row, beside one of those casement style windows, which only opens a few inches, and opens out, rather than up and down. I happily obliged him. He soon followed with a request to open Elliot's window (which is a real window in the middle row of seats.) My gut reaction was to say, "no" and offer some explanation as to why it's not a good idea to drive around opening and closing everyone's windows, but I caught myself and stopped. I was suddenly struck by the recollection of a newspaper article a friend wrote some time back. The article was about an M-n-M Sandwich, and implored its readers to consider indulging our kids more often, not with more toys or junk food, per se, but simply by saying "yes" to their often small and harmless requests. I was also simultaneously hit with a flashback to the days of my childhood, when car air conditioning was still unusual, and, as my father led us to believe, somewhat temperamental. (I have very strong memories of our first car that had air conditioning. It was great, unless we hit stop and go traffic. Then, we had to immediately turn off the AC to avoid overheating the car. We, coincidentally, only ever seemed to get stuck in that type of traffic on 95 degree days, when you could see the heat rising up off the asphalt.) So, with only a momentary pause to ponder these things, I silently rolled down both middle row windows. An unexpected hush came over the car. The wind was blowing our hair, and the sounds of the road and the city had come alive. I found myself reaching for the two front window controls without even being asked. With a smile spreading slowly across my face, I reached upwards and pressed yet another button. The sunroof slid smoothly backwards, and sunlight poured in. I'm not sure who was more surprised by this whole chain of events, me or the kids. I can't remember the last time I drove down the road with all the windows open. It was definitely better than I remembered. I couldn't believe how many noises we could hear, and how much more I felt like a part of the world. I was beginning to think about how many experiences I was depriving my children of, by figuratively keeping the windows closed around them at all times, when I was interrupted from my thoughts by Elliot. "I thought of another palindrome," he said. Palindromes, and homonyms, homophones, and sometimes rhyming words and names, are all topics of much interest and frequent discussion in our house. He spouted out his new discovery, "Radar. R-A-D-A-R." This was quickly followed by his exciting list of yay, gag, and redder, all of which had just occurred to him for the first time. Then, he announced, with even more enthusiasm, that he had also thought of a new pair of homonyms: steal and steel. So, with pleasant thoughts of palindromes and homonyms, we drove to camp, the wind in our hair the rest of the way. A man, a plan, a canal. Panama.