Grandma and Grandpa are on the road heading south; though they have stopped for the night now after a long first day of driving. They’ll be in Florida by tomorrow sometime, and even though we had a fun day at school; I still wish I could be there too!
I don’t want to jinx it, but he weather is supposed to be great again this week; and it’s amazing to be this far into winter without any snow yet. Some of the grownups around town are joking that we used up our quota of snow last winter, so we aren’t going to get any at all this year; but I doubt we’ll get quite that lucky.
One good thing about getting back to school today was that I could catch up with some of the country kids that I usually only see at school or church. Doing that involved a fair bit of hugging, which brings me to the subject that’s been on my mind for most of the day – the fact that Rowen and I are growing up. Specifically, sometime when we weren’t looking, we’ve both hit the puberty speed-growth stage. That was particularly obvious today when I realized that we were no longer the shortest kids in our class. I’m sure that a couple of the boys are not happy about that, but it’s not like we’ve jumped to the top of the class either. Some of the girls are three or four inches taller than the rest of us; including all but one of the guys.
The reason that I’ve been thinking about this a lot today, and want to write about it here, is because there are a few things that I’ve noticed that I don’t find recorded in any archive records; including Mom’s. That’s likely at least partially because there aren’t many records for women Magi Masters. Mom’s training was very different from mine; and her mother may not have even known that she had this ability. It stands to reason that Magi Master boys would be able to do this too, but I can only guess as to why none of them have ever mentioned or acknowledged the talent – or even an awareness of that kind of control over their physical bodies.
I’ll continue to study this, and it’s probably connected to my Healing power, but I am quite precisely controlling the changes going on in my body. That’s happening on a subconscious level, though I’m sure that I could take conscious control too if I wanted to do that; and I can observe everything that’s happening on that level. I should also note that there is a possibility that I’m aligning my growth and development with Rowen’s, since it’s probably not a coincidence that we’re still essentially the exact same height and nearly the same weight when she’s more than two months older. Having Rowen and I go through this together gives us a unique chance to study whether there are any marked differences between Magi Masters and Adepts; though each Magi’s specific talents might be more of a factor than actual power.
Knowing that I have this ability makes for some interesting hypotheticals. For instance, if you could choose your own adult body and features, would you? Since I can, even if I leave it to be directed and controlled at my subconscious level, how might that affect what would have happened without the ability? Maybe, if I am following Rowen’s lead on this, I’ll even start and stop developing at the same stages she does. That idea also brings up the question of whether I could or should help Rowen through the next couple of years by using my Healing power on her. It certainly wouldn’t be hard for me to make some of the more uncomfortable parts of going through puberty much easier for her too. If that’s a question for the Magi Council; I’ll leave it to Mom and Uncle Adam to ask. I love Grandpa Grant and the other guys on the council; but this is definitely not going to be something I’ll want to discuss with them anytime soon!
Moving on from thinking about that for a while; Rowen and I had a long after-school snack break with Mom, Ethan, and Ehlana; we got our homework out of the way; and then went for a walk to the park with the twins for the forty minutes or so we had until it was time to say goodnight to Rowen and head to our respective homes for dinner. For most of the guys in town, and probably a large percentage of that half of the population in the country; the only thing going on in the world tonight is the BCS National Championship match between undefeated LSU and one-loss Alabama. Our house was no exception; and Ethan seemed quite happy to cuddle with Dad after dinner and watch the pregame show while we waited for Aunt Leanne, Uncle Adam, Aunt Deborah, and Nick to join the game-watching party.
Having a chick flick movie night in the lounge was an option, but a narrow three-to-two vote that Ehlana and I lost kept us with the boys in the living room for the night instead. I’ve been compensating for that by playing on my computer too while stretched out on the floor in front of the nice, warm fire that Dad decided to have for the occasion; and I’ve been chatting with Rowen; sending and receiving a few email; keeping up with what’s new and exciting for the usual kid-centric topics around the web; and even took care of a little family business work.
Ehlana’s been passed around a bit, but she’s spent some time playing on her iPad too; mostly reading a couple of books while everyone else is watching the game and chatting. For the girls, the favorite topic of the night is Aunt Deborah and Nick’s wedding plans. Uncle Adam and Aunt Leanne will be in the wedding party; along with Aunt Deborah’s and Nick’s brothers and sister; their spouses or fiancée; and their respective best friends from College. While Deborah’s Maid of Honor was going to be helping out a lot, Aunt Leanne was again in the thick of wedding plans too, and now that Christmas was over; she and Aunt Deborah were going to really get to work on things like invitations and lining up all of the appointments for everything from dresses to cakes and decorations.
Though I wasn’t particularly interested in the football game, I’m sure that even the fans that weren’t happy about the Alabama-LSU matchup would have to concede that Alabama was good enough to deserve the number two ranking even if a few other teams may have had legitimate claims too. Nobody could doubt by the end of the game that Alabama had learned from their only loss of the season – to LSU – as they rolled to a twenty-one to zero win to earn the BCS Championship title.
As I write that, I can’t help but smile and think that you, a future Magi, reading this a thousand years from now will wonder why I’m even including things like football scores in my journal when my observations about a Magi Master’s control over puberty is much more important in the grand scheme of things. Mostly, I write about things like that because one thing I’ve noticed in the archives is that writing about daily life is often overlooked in favor of those ‘more important’ topics. That may have been necessary in the past because of writing restraints, but in our digital age, running out of parchment or ink – or even having too many scrolls or books to carry around – isn’t a problem. If you think this is too much information, try checking out the section of the archives that Mom started on Contemporary society. You’ll find everything you’ll ever want to know about how people lived in the twenty-first century. I only wish that I could pop into your ‘now’ to see what you think of that from your future perspective!
Anyway, once the game was over, it was time for our guests to head home, and for me to help Mom with getting Ethan and Ehlana changed and tucked into bed. She’d nursed them earlier, but they’d wanted to stay up with us instead of going to bed at nine-thirty or so like they usually did. It’s nearly one o’clock now as I write this, and I’m half-wishing that I’d gone to bed then instead of staying up too. The good news is that college football is done for another season – the bad news being that we still have a few weeks left of NFL football playoffs to go. I don’t really want to think about that now – or about anything else. It’s time to shut down both my computer and brain for a few hours. Tomorrow is going to be a long school and work day; and I’m really going to need the rest.