Susiej

This photo, taken a few happy weeks ago, is my touchstone for how I will define the summer of 2010.

Yet, summer is not cooperating with me. Summer wants me to identify its memory with something more sinister. This was before my husband started crossing the continent on airplanes, and we started just missing each other at home, and at the lake. Our schedules are completely out-of-sync, and in late-night panics, I wonder if there will ever be a time again when our heartbeats occupy the same time in space.

This was before the great accident of the summer, which, in the words of my husband, “changed everything.” Since that accident, I’ve been on my own, while my husband is busy traveling, and the workload seems to have tripled. All the things that my son could do before he can no longer do. So, I am doing all the work that he once did, and we are taking care of him. The younger boys haven’t quite embraced the concept of “picking up the slack.” When people ask my husband, “How’s Susie’s break at the lake,” he says, “It’s not really a vacation any more.”

I know how to be strong, and I want to appear that all is under control — but sometimes I am not. I’d really love to have an adult give me a break in the evening. But my husband and I have been like ping-pong balls in opposite sides of the court lately. When I was home for surgery, my husband was in Seattle. Then, through some fluke of flight scheduling, I came back to the lake, anticipating seeing him here, only to learn later that an emergency meeting sent him right back home less than 6 hours after he arrived. The kids are happier here at the lake, so that makes life easier here, and the thought of packing for another 3-hour car ride with the boys, only to turn around and come back in a few days seemed silly. When we were home, the boys rarely ventured outside. So we settled in and stayed. Besides, you lake friends do make life bearable.

While those solo moonlight boat rides to watch the shooting stars may have happened only a few weeks ago, they feel stretched in time, sitting in past decades. Uncle Bud and Aunt Joyce are coming Friday morning; they always are a refreshing break. If all goes as planned, I’ll be in my husband’s arms again by Friday afternoon. Until then, this is my touchstone.

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Filed under: boy, love stories, the lake house by SusieJ - 1 Comment →

The two of us sat outside, under an arched portico, at a marble table that was meant to seat ten. Next to us, there was a table of 6 giggling girls. They had stolen the chairs from our table, before we arrived, leaving us with a single padded wicker bench, curved to match the outline of the table, which had enough berth to easily seat six. Yet, we sat close enough for our knees to touch, leaving the outside seats of the bench bare and desolate. He ordered the Sapporo we would share, and our sushi — tuna and salmon for him, tempura for me. “Please bring us extra wassabi,” and “extra ginger for me,” we neglected to say. We switched up the bench so that it faced the street, rather than the eclectic modern bar, so that we could people-watch.

Then the sky opened up and sparkling puddles formed on the sidewalk and the busy street, while the people ran for cover under awnings and jackets; others folded their bodies into the taxis that appeared out of nowhere. Rings of rainbows glistened under the streetlights, as we huddled closer together for warmth, despite the propane heaters that stood guard behind the marble arches. Water danced on the cement ledge in front of our table, splashing water all over our table, and the cars swooshed the water from the street across the sidewalks. We scooted our table back further underneath the portico. The drivers of the cars impatiently blew their horns at the slower drivers, while their windshield wipers tried to keep up with the downpour.

The sushi took forever to come, which was how we discovered the strange unisex bathroom in the back, by the bar. I watched him sip his Saporro, and my eyes lingered a bit over his jaw, and his shoulders, defined from that time he spends in the gym sometimes after work. When the sushi finally did arrive, it felt like the smoothest rolls we’d ever felt against our tongues. After dinner, I ran to the that unisex bathroom one more time, and along the way, reached out to the valet, who was drenched, despite the tent, to hand him our ticket. I got soaked just from reaching out to him. When it was time for us to leave, the sky parted wider, and the rain beat down on our heads, harder yet, while we tucked ourselves into our car for the short drive home.

We were grateful for the show the rain gave us, and grateful that our food was late. We were grateful for the table of giggling girls who stole our chairs, and for the people who inadvertently provided our entertainment. We are grateful for the 17 years of marriage that has left us serendipitously contented, at ease, and happy, despite the rain, the rainbows, sunshine and more rain.

I am grateful for the simple miracle of frozen time – how can my heart still flutter the same way it did 23 years ago when he asked me for a kiss on New Years Eve? How decades can feel like yesterday…

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Filed under: Life, love stories by SusieJ - 3 Comments →

It’s all I can do to not share this scene with you via You Tube. But I’ll have to wait until next Friday. For now, you’ll have to guess. This should be fun. Below is the dialogue from a scene in a movie. See if you can recognize what movie this is from:

“Let’s not go out for dinner. Let’s stay in.”
“We have to eat.”
“We can eat here. I’ll cook.”
“I thought you didn’t like to cook.”
“No, I don’t like to cook. But I have a chicken in the icebox and you’re eating it.”
“What about all the washing up afterwards?”
“We’ll eat it with our fingers.”
“Do we need any plates?”
“Yes. One for you and one for me.”
“Mind if I have dinner with you tonight?”
“I’d be delighted.”

You have until next Friday, March 5, 2010 to email me your guess, to sjotest AT (spelled out to avoid spam) yahoo.com.
If you’re correct, you’ll be entered to win an Amazon Gift Card and this gift.

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Filed under: Laugh, Life, contest, love stories by SusieJ - 1 Comment →

Dear Kids,

The three days that herald Memorial Day Weekend leave us full of greed, year after year. All winter long, we hunger for these 3 days so that we can hammer through so many of the warm weather projects that we can’t touch all winter.

This year, we were blessed with warmth and your feet pattered around the grass barefoot. As we plowed through one task through the next, I reached that tipping point when one task piled on top of another so quickly that I questioned my own stamina for handling the work required to handle a lake house.

Charlie, the Heron, visited us.

All day long you played. You used the boxes from the furniture we bought to build a horrendous fort in the basement – the bunk room. Most of your time was spent at the neighbor’s building a “lake” on the edge of the lake out of sand. I worried about you and skin cancer all day long; do you have enough sunscreen? Did I miss that spot above your upper lip where cancer attacked me? Is it time for more? When I went down to your “lake” to apply your second helping of sunscreen, sand was impossible to separate from your skin and the sunscreen, so I ended up rubbing it all in together to create a combination mud mask, sunscreen. I wonder, how do you interpret that? Certainly not as an act of desperate protection from someone who loves you. You don’t have the perspective yet.

When I wasn’t de-cluttering the house from the junk we’ve collected over the past three summers, I was out in the garden building your fort. A fort that is undeniable taking up valuable real estate in the garden, as I have enlarged its size by four times since last summer. Will you even play there this summer? Your Dad was busy assembling our new furniture, which you helped build too. A little bit.

Then night fell, and your sprits seemed to soar up, in an inversion parallel with the setting sun. You caught four frogs within the first few seconds after the sun dropped. Dad started the bon fire, and you came into the kitchen searching for marshmallows and graham crackers. While you were busy with the frogs, we took the chance, while we had it, to pull out a few of the boxes from your fort and fan the flames of the bonfire. I’m sorry… but there was no way to walk though. “It was a fire hazard.” Not sure what that means, but that’s what my parents told me when I was a kid and I got out of control.

The bullfrogs are mating; we could hear them in a symphony across the lake. You searched through your drawers for long sleeved shirts, and “long-sleeved pants”, as the mosquitoes were out. Then you headed off in the canoe with your Dad, and your flashlight, to gawk at the frogs. One made it inside of the canoe, but soon jumped completely free and back into the water. There were tears.

Then there was the annual wrestling to get your teeth brushed, and finally we hit our heads on the pillow and you were all blissfully quiet.

As night fell, most of the projects we knocked out were invisible to the naked eye; grown-up stuff that we often find so important, and necessary. You show us, everyday, especially when we’re at the lake, how simple and clear your needs truly are. You would feel complete, I think, in a simple cardboard box that is close to the water’s edge. For a second, I think I would be too.

This weekend, your parents reached their 16th wedding anniversary. We just want you to know, life couldn’t be sweeter; and we’re learning every day, especially from you, what really does matter in life. Sweeter every year.

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Filed under: boy, love stories, the lake house by SusieJ - 2 Comments →

Dance club is a clandestine ritual that parents can only attend by invitation, when you are lucky enough to be asked to serve as a chaperon. I was invited.

First,  Dad was out of town, so the boys and I huddled around the computer together as we watched You Tube videos that explained how to tie a tie.  After several failed attempts, with the clock ticking, we bailed on the Windsor, and just went for a basic knot.

My son and I left, already sweaty from the stress of our preview, the tie dance. Here’s what I observed about dance club.

• The girls stand in a line; the boys line up directly across from from the girls to form parallel lines.

• The instructor serves as DJ, and coach, calling out the dance steps they’ve learned so far with his very Madonna-like microphone. He changes the music seamlessly (covering several eras of music).

• On cue, the instructor tells the boys to move down the line every 5-7 minutes. The girls stay put, as a different boy moves down the line to dance with a new partner every few minutes.
• The instructor has been teaching dance club at this school for 35 years. He’s elderly, and he’s hip.
• The kids have learned a lot… the mashed potato, the cell phone, the electric slide, and the box step.
• Also, the dip.
• I felt a bit cheated when the instructor said, “How many of you gentlemen dipped your Mom’s last week?”  I did not get dipped.  I’ll be looking into that.
• During the box step, the participants are asked to discover three new facts about their partner.
• It was the boys, some of them, that found their groove, and had arms flying and heels kicking in a flurry of excitement. They were truly enjoying themselves, and were sad to see the time ending. This surprised me. Some boys didn’t want to move, at all.

• Girls enjoyed dancing with other girls, and often paid more attention to the girls beside them, rather than the boy across from them.
• The energy radiated off the four lines of kids dancing in unison was intoxicating.
• During the Box step, the music was The Bee Gees, How Deep is Your Love. Tears filled my eyes at the prospect of realizing many of us will all be together again, in some shape or form, as parents at our children’s weddings. I looked around, and many other Moms were wiping tears away as well. I hope I am standing with every one of them at some wedding in the future.  Just so we can say, “Remember when…?”
• If none of those Moms are there at the weddings, I will trust that the Moms I am with experienced something similar, somewhere else, and I’ll try to form that bond with them, and share a tear.

I waited for at least 35 minutes for my son to finally make it down the line to where I was standing… close to my Nikon D80 camera. I lifted the camera to shoot, and my son’s face, in a panic, mouthed the word “No!” to me.

I chose to go with the “building trust” route, and gently put my camera down. I shot only hands and feet.

Next year will be even better, and I can’t wait to be invited again.

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Filed under: Tears, boy, love stories by SusieJ - 4 Comments →

A Mother’s Ring is something I’ve always coveted.  I’ve never bought one because Mother’s Rings look too matronly.  This one is perfect.  See more of Mad Maggie’s Designs, here.

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Filed under: love stories, try this by SusieJ - 7 Comments →