Update on Sarah Parks' death

Silas Parks was arrested on June 30th. He was charged with two counts of homicide and one count of arson. The relief was unbelievable. So many people were feeling like it was just an open-and-shut case and there was a lot of frustration concerning the delay in his arrest. I understand why it took so long. I know the authorities were making sure they had enough solid evidence so that they could nail him as solidly as possible. Bastard.

Sarah's memorial was two days later on July 2nd. Travis wouldn't go. He said he knew it would be "too sad". I think he was really afraid of seeing me being that sad. All I did for a solid week was cry and he would put his arms around me or pat my arm. I am a really emotional person anyway--to the point that I can't watch a movie or even a commercial sometimes if it contains anything that will make me tear up a little bit. I get choked up easily (especially if it's anywhere near time for my period!) and it used to be okay but now it kind of freaks Travis out so I have to be careful. So he didn't go. Riley went and was so good. There were about 300 people there and the thing went on forever but she didn't complain and didn't even fidget very much. Not bad for a kid who hasn't been "trained" in this sort of quiet time by going to church! The service, of course was sad. Sarah was very active in her church and so it was a very religious service. Lots of singing, too. The thing that got to me most was the photograph montage they had going before everything got started. It killed me to look at those photos of her, so happy and smiling in all of them. There was even the class photo taken the year Trav was in her class. It was almost unbearably sad.

Things have quieted down for now. There hasn't been much in the paper about the trial or anything yet. One thing I did note, however: The articles in the paper were all listing the baby as "Serenity". I thought that was odd at the time because it just didn't seem something Sarah would name her baby. I read the police report and the officer stated that he confirmed with Silas that his wife was pregnant and Silas said that they had decided to name the baby Serenity if it was a girl and the officer talked with a friend who said that she had been with them (Sarah and Silas) while they were discussing names and that Serenity was the name Silas liked. At the memorial service, however, the program had two names on it: Sarah Jean Sheffield Parks and Lilly Ann. Hah! It makes me even more angry that, even after he killed her and the baby, he still tried to name their unborn child, even when he knew she didn't want that name! The papers are still listing the baby as Serenity and it bothers me a lot. I wish someone would set them straight. I don't know, maybe there's some weird, twisted law that says that the surviving parent of an unborn child gets to name it,even if he's the one responsible for the death. It sounds about right for our legal system. It makes me want to gouge out his eyes! There's hope, though. As Val said, since Silas is so young and fairly good-looking, "he'll probably be very popular in prison".

Look where I'm going with this! I need to do something to get rid of all this anger! I am really in the mood to sew this week but there's no time. It's Rendezvous 4 Kids this week, coming up on Thursday and Friday. Lots to do. I'm glad for that, it takes my mind off of all this other, negative stuff.

Sarah

I just don't know where to start. It has been a sad week for so many people. I know the whole town is in shock but it's hitting our little school especially hard. Sarah Parks, third grade teacher at the Moscow Charter School, died on Wednesday morning. Her body was found burned inside her apartment. Her husband, Silas, was at the gym working out. There was an autopsy and it was determined that Sarah was dead before the fire so the death is being investigated as a homicide. As if this isn't sad enough, Sarah was 20 weeks pregnant with her first baby. Now here's the kicker: she was abused by her husband. We don't know all of the details yet, but there has been at least one citation for domestic abuse in the past and there are records on file at the hospital concerning injuries to Sarah stemming from a domestic incident. According to some of the other teachers, her husband beat her up pretty badly a couple of years ago and the abuse has been ongoing ever since. This all came out after her death but, apparently it was common knowledge amongst her coworkers and a few people weren't surprised to hear that the death was suspicious. As of this moment, Silas has been questioned and released and there are no suspects in the case.

Sarah was a very quiet, sweet person. She was Travis's teacher the year before last and, though she wasn't his favorite teacher, she was kind and always had a smile. She was always smiling. She was from Texas, collected pigs and was so excited to be having a baby. The last time I saw her was at one of the baseball games about a month ago. Several of the kids on both teams were Charter School kids and a few of the teachers made it out to cheer them on. I had just heard that Sarah was pregnant and I stopped and said hi to her and asked when she was due. She told me October and she was just glowing. I felt that particular kind of happiness you feel for someone about to embark on the Motherhood journey and wished her well. It tears me up to think about it now, how happy she looked.

Telling my kids was so difficult. I haven't had to do this sort of thing before and I wasn't prepared. I had just gotten off the phone after hearing the news and was in shock myself. and very upset. Travis came in at that moment and saw me crying. He asked what was wrong and I put my arms around him and said, "I have some sad, sad news to tell you. Mrs. Parks died." I wasn't sure what his reaction would be. He hugged me hard but didn't say anything. I told him there was a fire and we didn't know the details yet. I asked if he was okay and he nodded and asked if I was okay. That was all. I could sense the wheels turning and so I just let him go. Later that evening Val was at a softball game and the kids and I were watching a movie. There was nothing on so I went to On Demand and found an old movie with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball called "Yours, Mine and Ours". I figured it was safe-comedy, 1968, PG. No problem. Well, there was a scene where Henry and Lucille are in their room on their wedding night. They toast each other with champagne and then embrace. Travis, out of the blue, says, "Oh man, now they're gonna have sex!" Of course he knows what this means (in ten-year-old terms, anyway) so I just let the comment pass. Riley looked up at me and said, "Mom? What's sex?" Are you kidding me? Now? We have to do this now? I have been prepared for the junior version of the sex talk for some time now. I have books and everything. But at 9:00 at night, after a long, emotional day, I was nowhere in the mood to have this particular conversation. So I crapped out. I said, "Ri, we will talk about this tomorrow. I have a book we can look at. Let's talk about it tomorrow, okay?" She agreed but ten minutes later she got up and went to the book shelf and pulled out the book and brought it over to me, saying, "Mom? Is this the book you were talking about?" So we had The Talk. I let the book do most of the work and it actually went really well. She didn't seem uncomfortable or anything and asked some really good questions. We got to the part about babies being born and Travis. all of a sudden, said,"Riley? Did you know that Mrs. Parks died?" Riley looked at me, eyes huge. "Mrs. Parks? Did she mom?" I said yes, she did. She wanted to know how and I told her that there was a fire in her house and she died. I hadn't even been sure that she knew who Sarah was. But she immediately started crying and I realized, of ourse she knew her. It's a tiny school and there are only 8 teachers and all of them share playground and lunchroom duty. Then Travis dropped the bomb. "Mrs. Parks was going to have a baby." Riley cried even harder. She grieved as hard as a little six year old girl could be expected to. I held her and answered her questions. "Were there any animals in the house? Did they die too?" I said I didn't know. Travis, helpfully this time, said, "I bet she had a doggie door so they could have gotten out!" That seemed to help. After a bit, she stopped crying and was distracted by a funny picture in the book. The next morning, she asked for paper and markers to draw a picture for Mrs. Parks. "BIG paper, because I have a lot to put in there!" Her picture is of a tall house being attacked by a giant, spiky fireball. There are stars in the night sky and, in one window, there is a figure lying prone. She explained that this is Mrs. Parks in bed and her husband is in another window. After the picture, she seemed okay. It really helped her to get it all down on paper. She keeps asking me what to do with it and wants to give it to Mrs. Parks husband so he can give it to her at the hospital. "I know she can't see it, Mom, 'cause she can't open her eyes." God.

Travis, in the meantime, hasn't said much at all. He did ask me once why he wasn't crying. I think he felt that he should be and was disturbed by the fact that he wansn't. I told him that people grieve in different ways and that kids, in particular, don't really know how to process news like this. The day after we got the news, the police announced that it was now a homicide investigation. We took Travis aside and told him that it looked as though someone hurt Mrs. Parks before she died. He seemed a little more upset by this news. Of course, every time I talk about it I start crying and he wants to hug me or pat me or comfort me in some way. I know this is a lot for him, but we feel that he is old enough to hear it. In any case, it is a small town and an even smaller school. He will hear the news eventually and we would rather he heard it from us than on the street.

There was a meeting last night for parents at the Charter School to meet with counselors and to discuss how to talk to our kids about this. I felt really validated afterwards. I had already done all the things they said to do. Maybe I'm a better parent than I think? There will be a memorial service on Thursday. One of the parents, who is the school board chair, spoke and said that he has been in constant contact with both sides of the family and that both plan on being at the memorial service, including Silas. He reminded everyone that, as of now, Silas has not been charged with anything and is not considered to be a suspect in the case. It will be strange to see him there. I know everyone is thinking he did it, including me. I have a feeling, though, that there will be more developments between now and then. I hope so. I think we need to get a little closure. I can't imagine what Sarah's family are going through and how hard it will be to see him and his family. God, no one should ever have to go through this.

Let's Hear it for the Girls!

Yay for Girl Time! This is one of the things I love about having a daughter: getting to revisit my own childhood and do the things I loved doing or never got to do. Don't get me wrong, I love my boy. He is my first born and will always have a special piece of my heart that no one else can have. And I have a feeling that, at thirteen or fourteen, he won't be standing at the top of the stairs screaming "I HATE YOU!" until his throat bleeds. Nope. That's a teenage girl thing. Maybe that's why I'm trying to squeeze in these "special moments" while I can.

Let me e'splain: On Sunday, Val and Trav drove to the Confluence to go fishing. Since we were spending the day together, Riley declared "Girl Time" and produced a formidable list of things to accomplish. First on the list was a tea party. We have these once in a while, though mostly of the ersatz "pretend" sort. Riley has a lot of tea sets (I have a problem, okay?) and most of them are small and cute. We drink invisible tea and sample invisible treats. This tea party, however, called for something really special. I brought down the good tea set--a demitasse set I bought in an antique store when Riley was a baby for just this sort of occasion*--washed it and set the table. I had bought cookies to eat but Riley insisted on making cupcakes and so we spent the better part of the morning baking and frosting. I made pink lemonade "tea" and we had our tea party. Looking back, I wish I had let her invite a friend, but I wasn't up for cleaning the house or dealing with another kid on the weekend so it was just us. It was a great way to spend a part of the afternoon.

Here are the cupcakes that Riley frosted and decorated. I was impressed by how careful she was. Notice how precisely each individual sprinkle was arranged. OCD or just a byproduct of the fact that, by the time she got the cupcake frosted the icing was too dry to catch any of the sprinkles? Hmmmm. . .

And notice, please, the cute frog plate that the cupcakes are on. I got two of these at a local antique store for two bucks each. One is a little cracked but they were so darn cute. And, hello! Frogs! If there had been owl plates I would have probably peed my pants.

*I only had a tiny china tea set when I was little, doll sized, not even big enough for my tiny fingers. I always wanted a "real" tea set that I could have actual tea in. Maybe that's why I collect tea pots and teacups and why my daughter has seven tea sets herself. I can't resist them.

Craft Projects

The primary reason I started a blog (other than to get my creative writing ya-yas out) was to document my crafting. So far I haven't said much about it. I haven't been very good about taking photos until recently. I don't even have pics of all the quilts that I've made. Anyway, here is the acorn I finally (finally!) finished for my friend Ursula. The inspiration for it was a pair of squirrel scissors I found in a craft catalog back in November. At least the photo in the catalog made them look like a squirrel. I had to get them because of my recent squirrel encounters, but I couldn't justify buying them for myself just to satisfy my insane scissor fetish (which I really do have). Nor could I get them just because they were a "squirrel thing", which I've decided I now need to collect. I was just starting to do amigurumi and was frustrated because, until I got the hang of it, everything I made that was supposed to be spherical ended up looking pointed like the tip of an acorn. I kept thinking about making an acorn and then one day I ran across something on a craft site somewhere where someone made a crocheted acorn bag for keeping sock knitting projects. Aha! How perfect was that? My friend Ursula knits socks and also collects scissors. The plan was perfect: give her the scissors (which I could still admire from afar) and I would make her this nifty acorn. Perfect, no? Except that when the scissors came they didn't look anything like a squirrel. In fact, they weren't recognizable as any sort of image at all. When I showed them to anyone, the most popular guess was "Um, beaver?", which at least is a mammal. Other guesses included "tree stump", "kangaroo" and "something made out of wood". I can't even show you a picture of them because the catalog in question has discontinued that particular item. Probably because of so many disappointed customers. Anyway, I made the acorn bottom according to the instructions, except that I made it out of wool and felted it. I thought it would be too difficult to get the size right for the top if I felted it too and I liked the idea of using yarn with some texture. I used an acrylic boucle, which was wonderfully stretchy and imitated a shaggy acorn top. I surprised myself and got it right on the first try. I had originally intended to make sort of a hinge so that the top would be a "flip top" with just a button in front to keep it closed. After some thought, though, it seemed to make more sense to put four buttons all around like the instructions said to do. I had some trouble with the closures fitting over the buttons and am still not happy with that aspect of it. I may get it back from her and do something else. When I do, I will make sure to take a better photo of it. This one sucks. I was on my way to give it to her and was in a hurry and didn't want to take the time to set up the camera or anything so it's way too dark. The buttons, by the way, aren't what I wanted. I really wanted to find something cute like squirrels or acorns or oak leaves. Of course, I couldn't find anything like that. I have thousands of buttons but couldn't find anything that worked. I finally went to JoAnn's and found the leaf buttons. Not the right kind of leaf for an acorn, but the color looked good and, hey, they're leaves. You get the idea, right?

Here are some of the felt ornaments I made for Christmas this year. I had a lot of fun doing them and have been on a felt kick ever since. I made the balls by wrapping wool roving around small yarn balls and then felting them in the washing machine. I was worried that my front-loader wouldn't do the trick but I put them in with a load of jeans on hot and it worked just fine. I got a little carried away with a few of them (see the black and gray one with all the bling on the right? Val named that one "The Harley Davidson").



Here's some more detail. Again, sorry about the bad photography. I'm obviously not a photographer.

I would like to make some of these in egg shapes for Easter and decorate them. I have been doing a little bit of needle felting but so far haven't fallen in love with it the way I am with this or felted crochet. Maybe it's too slow. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm holding a very long, extremely sharp, barbed needle and rapidly punching it up and down a fraction of an inch from my fingers. Yeah, I think that's it.

Soon to come: quilt photos. I don't have many and I need to take pictures of the one I've made recently. I want to photograph them outside because the light's so bad in the house, but the weather's been so dreary. It's sunny today but still really cold and I'm just not going to make it outside today.

Twenty nine degrees!!!

Well, I haven't been writing on here every day like I had planned (big surprise), but I am going to blame my internet carrier. They suck. There's something wrong with the signal in our area of the city (so they say) and it will "take some time" to get it fixed. Meanwhile, I am paying for high-speed internet while not actually getting high speed internet. It's not that huge of a deal, unless I am trying to do something like upload pictures onto my blog (!) or watch a video online. I have threatened to go back to dial-up because I swear that was faster. I am gritting my teeth and waiting it out because the last time a repairman was here (one of many trips in the past two months) he promised they would get it resolved soon.

Having said all that, today it seems like things are going well as far as these issues go. The extremely cold weather has made it worse and it's warmer today--29 degrees, which seems downright balmy compared to the teens and single digits we've been experiencing the past few days. When I got up Monday morning it was -12. Minus. Twelve. Degrees. That's damn cold. So 29 feels like summer right now.

Brand New Day (Era. Country, World, whatever. . .)

Wow, what a day. And in the words of Tim Russert, what a country! I am finally proud to be an American again! Whew!

It's been a emotional day. I cried all through the inauguration ceremony. I would have loved to have been in a crowd watching it--there was a live thing going on at the Kenworthy, or even with a few friends, but I'm babysitting today and it just wouldn't have worked with a two-year-old in tow. So I sat here and cried alone. So different from the tears I shed four years ago. Those were tears of anger and despair and fear and bitterness. This is a different feeling--hope?

Welcome back, hope. It's been a while!

Yes, that's a robin in the tree outside my window and, yes, that is frozen fog on the trees. Because it's frickin' January!

I always feel so sorry for these guys when they show up waaaaay too early (which they do, every year. Stupid birds). There were six of them outside my window today and they all looked really confused, like, "Dude! You think maybe we took a wrong toyn at Albakoikey?"