About a month ago my husband and I went to our preschool’s annual auction. I have attended a great many of these things over the past dozen years. My favorite things to bid on are experiences that it would be hard to arrange otherwise.
This week I cashed in on two of the experiences I won. The first? A ride to school in a police car! Our local police department donated this. Two officers showed up at our house Tuesday morning and drove the 4-year-old and the 9-year-old over to the preschool (I drove over in my car to take pictures and then took the 9-year-old to his school). It was so much fun for the boys — definitely a memory.
I also won a playground meet-up with the 4-year-old’s two teachers. So we arranged to do this yesterday. My little guy got to play with a few friends and his teachers away from school, and they had a picnic dinner and ice cream. It was a beautiful day after a rainy start (a friend and I were running together in the AM and I wound up ducking into a parking garage while waiting for her it was so bad!) and so a lovely way to spend a late afternoon/early evening.
There were also less fun parts of the week — like putting $1000 into car repairs for the 2011 car that I’m having my son drive (since he’s driving it I want it to work really well). But hey.
In the meantime, here’s another sonnet, written after my trip two weekends ago…
A memory
This little table, sitting on the street
two little chairs, both facing the same way
the evening air is filled with springtime, sweet,
as all the city gathers, end of day,
to murmur, clinking glasses as the birds
chirp greetings, flocking through the rooftops, trees.
The sound of laughter, nearby, muffles words
that float like flower petals on the breeze.
In four days, we’ll be home, we said, we thought
into the future, after this was done.
It seems so long ago, and yet is not —
tomorrow driving home, the wheel begun
to turn, but in the meantime, church bells sing
of happiness, of Paris in the spring.
Those are such creative and fun auction items!
@Elisabeth – they were fun! And clutterless, which is always good…
What a neat way to look at auction items. I usually don’t give them a second glance, but you’re right. There are often really cool experiences that would be hard to arrange otherwise.
Love the sonnet- I can feel the warm Paris breeze!
@Lori C- thank you! And yep, experiences are the way to go on these things…
Love the sonnet!
@JGold – so glad you liked it!
Once my parents won a VCR at a raffle. This was back in 1987, so kind of a big deal. We watched so many movies on that thing! I don’t especially have a desire to hang out with my kids teachers, but it sounds like you had a lovely experience. So yay!
@Omdg – that would be cool in 1987 – kind of like winning an iPad now. Someone once raffled off several iPads before one of my speeches and it is the happiest an audience has ever been except for when the bar is open for a speech.