Susiej

I spent the morning relishing in my new-found freedom. My little guy and I walked his brothers to school, and like two cats that got out of the bag, wandered around wondering what we’d do next. For so long, we’ve lived in 3-hour time blocks; scheduling our day by the morning a.m. bell at the school, and the half-day mark when we’d take his brother to kindergarten, and then the end of day bell that told us it was time to pick him up.

After a quick trip to the post office, we watered our dried-out dying plants, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drank tea. He built a dinosaur cage under my feet that I tripped over while I tried to clean the kitchen.

I finally decided to spend my long stretch of time finishing, rather than just doing, the laundry. My laundry pile has, for the last two days, stretched from the laundry room steps to the floor in front of the machines, and then like a river, backed up on the counter, where the baskets sit empty; waiting to hold the neatly folded clothes, except that the dirty clothes were merging into the freshly washed ones.

I can’t tell you what a joy it was to work continuously on just one task. The little guy played at my feet, changing costumes as quickly as I folded them, as we both got used to having one less heartbeat around the house. Soon, the laundry done; the laundry counter finally cleared, the wrinkles gone, and we lost track of time.

All was going well until the “noon on Wednesday” public service alarm went off. Like a ton of bricks, I realized he was gone, and today we weren’t late for kindergarten, for once. The empty hollow feeling came out of now where, and I quickly started wiping the counter, trying to push the feeling away. Soon, the feeling, not the sticky counter, became too heavy to ignore. I called my husband, and said, “The noon whistle just blew, and he’s not here.” He laughed. I hung up the phone, because by then, the tears were flowing in exactly the same way as the laundry.

I sat down on the sofa, and my little guy laughed and said, “Oh brother.” The hardest part was hanging on to my sadness, while answering his perfectly logical questions about why I was sad when after all, he was still here.

This hollow empty feeling was mysteriously absent when the other boys left for school. Yes, I was sad, but not like this. That sadness was easy to push aside with the babies I had to nurse, the cereal that needed to be poured, and trains that were constantly being built underfoot.

I reached for the phone, and couldn’t think of a soul on the planet that would care to listen to me blubbering on the other end about how empty the house is; how empty my heart feels. Will somebody please explain to me why my arms feel as if I just swam across the English Channel?

Of course, no one, except my Mom. My Mom, who stood in the kitchen with me when the other two boys went off to school for the first time, and stayed with me as we looked after the babies. She who remembered what a feisty little baby he was; what a feisty toddler he was. Someone to help me sort out, like the laundry, why it is that I feel so lost today without him, when I have three others that fill my heart just as much. Now, even she is gone too.

Or maybe she’s not… maybe she’s hovering around me today, and that’s why I miss her more than ever today.

So I called no one; I was afraid someone would offer to cheer me up, and take me out of the hollow river I was spiraling down into. I wanted to follow it to its end; to see where it would lead me; because I knew this is more about me, and less about him — my first grader who is doing just grand.

I gave in and plugged my little guy into Noggin so that I could sob into my pillow in peace.

So my Mom, or some muse, tapped someone on the shoulder. The phone rang, and it was one of my dear friends at the lake. She knew what today meant; and she called just to see how I was doing. My feelings were familiar to the ones she once carried. Relieved, I was, to hear from her; she understood the need to just feel what I feel — a feeling she remembers.

We hung up, and I continued my little sob scene.

What is so nice about times like these is when you know that someone above really is looking out for you. This became apparent when the muse must have tapped someone again, as the phone rang. It was my husband, asking “How was the first day!?”

“Why are you calling so soon… he’s still at school?”

“You mean you haven’t picked him up yet?”

“No… What time is it?”

I looked at my phone to check the time. It was exactly 2:47. School gets out at 2:50. And I was two and half blocks, and lots of parked cars away, from the boy I missed so much.

I thank God that my little guy is so resilient; the caped crusader jumped off the sofa, and ran with me. We found his brother, walking around the playground, the teacher holding his hand. His day was stellar. My eyes were puffy, hidden behind my sunglasses.

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It’s not leaving the lake that is so hard… the difficulty comes in facing the milestone the departure represents; another summer in the life of a child is closing. One step closer to the hard realities of adulthood. One step closer to losing my little guy to all day school.
Our last night at the lake, their laughter carried across the water, as they made snow angels in the sand. My hands were busy collecting laundry, picking up toys, and facing the one-million tasks that must be done before closing up and heading for home. I was too busy to catch these photos; but their laughter kept echoing, telling me, really, “to grab the kids and run for the hills before it’s too late!”

When I chose Firefly Summer as my summer read, I chose it for its title. Fireflies, summer, and childhood go hand in hand. Yet, the book was full of tragedies; so much that I found myself laughing at the irony of it all at the end. But, there was one poem that Binchy pulled in from Yeats, that captures my feeling tonight so eloquently:

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

The Stolen Child, by William Butler Yeats:

I’m terrible with all of this first day of school stuff.

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The school called me this week. They want my son to join the honors math class. His face lit up like a Christmas tree when I shared the news with him. Still, he was confused. He wondered why they would pick him — he’s always struggled with math.

His teacher explained that he may flourish in honors math; it’s taught differently than everyday math he’s had since first grade. Still, she cautions, the homework demands will be strenuous. “We’ll cover one new topic each night; he can’t fall behind one day, as each unit builds on the next.”

I want this so much for him. I want him to be able to walk through the halls and school and think “I’m gifted at math. My teachers think I’m gifted at math.”

Turning up the pressure a bit more, she added, “And, this honors class is actually deemed as a high school class by the state. So, his grade will go on his high school transcript.”

Why is it, I wonder? That our educational system seems to penalize those who have a passion and “gift” by giving them more work with dire consequences? Why do we push our prodigies so hard that we introduce the possibility of burnout at such an early age? The message is clear: if he chooses honors math, he’ll spend more time sitting at a desk.

Wisely, my son turned the offer for honors down. “I don’t think I can handle the extra homework.”

“I just want you to know that while you’re in this lower-level math class, we all know you can make it in the honors class,” I said. “I have no doubt about that. Your wise decision not to join honors is simply about time — not your ability.”

“I know Mom,” he said.

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The market just wasn’t right for a lemonade stand. So, they did the next best thing.

Their first customer

took 20 frogs. (You can get a good look at that ear drum… the one that tells you whether the frog is female or male.)

Of course, it wasn’t like mini-mall.

But still, I think their college fund is secured.
Best Shot Monday

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I drove the boat, nor was it as scary as the time I jumped out of an airplane, (except for the part when I was afraid my arms were going to come out of my sockets), but I did learn how to ski this week. First time EVER. The lake was perfectly well-drained of other boaters this week, making it ideally suited to learning and training. To some, skiing is no big deal; took me three times to his one. I whispered in my husband’s ear, right before he put on my skis for me, that I was terrified. He said simply, “I know you are.” We both knew I was doing it anyway.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when your sons are in the boat watching you, and you absolutely do no want to fail, even though you don’t know what you’re doing. Kids give you that kind of power.

If you let them. Kids do drain our energy; it’s too easy to let things just slid by, to stay on the chair when they ask you to throw the ball, to say you’re just too old to try something new — because we just might get our wish if we keep saying those words. The water was cold; the air was colder, and no I really didn’t want to ski — or so I thought.

The choices we make define ourselves as a person to our kids. Used wisely, this can give us great leverage in the years to come. If we use the power our kids bring us to stretch our boundaries a little, our kids begin to see us in a new way. At first, they may act a little bewildered, because you’re acting so weird. That quickly fades to a new sense of respect and admiration. This is especially helpful if you have a pre-teen, who isn’t quite sure whether he wants to take your word for things anymore or not. It’s good parenting to keep them a bit confused about what you’ll come up with next — once in awhile.

Nor did it hurt that one of my lake neighbors came by and said, in full earshot of my kids, “I was shocked when I talked to your Uncle — all this time I thought you were in your late twenties or early thirties.” This really confused my son. (As soon as I find out what the neighbor wanted, I’ll let you know.)

Lots of yoga contributed to my lack of back pain; my shoulders were a bit sore. I’m so relieved I learned how to do this before I’m too old too learn; then it dawns on me that I must hurry up and learn how to slalom (one ski); before I’m too old! I wonder if I can find “ski” exercises to do over the winter so that I’ll be in shape for next summer. So, I go out the next day; listen to the instructions about leaning back, balancing, straightening one leg, bending the other, dropping the ski to the side, “Drop your ski when you’re outside of the wake,” he said.

“I’ve never been outside the wake.”

That’s a problem. There’s so much to remember right now… arms straight, but only at the beginning, knees bent, lean back… I’m still getting used to skiing. But, still, I feel the clock ticking; so I keep trying. I need hours of practice behind a boat before I’ll be ready for anything fancy.

“Slow down,” I tell him. I just feel so out of control when he’s going that fast. He’s only going 18 mph. When he skis, I remember that I drive the boat at thirty-four miles per hour. When he’s crossing the waves, he’s going faster than the boat… maybe 45-50 mph? The speed… is all I can think about. Free falling at  120 mph is one thing; but when you hit the water at 18 mph… sometimes you think your eyeballs just rolled back to the top of your head. Maybe this is one thing I just won’t do after all; today. I think I’m in a bit over my head. But let’s not forget; I did learn to ski.

Now that I’ve had a taste of “standing up on the water” (as my son calls it) behind a boat, the skill, the courage, and let’s not forget the thrill it involves,

I have a new sense of admiration for anyone who skis; especially those who slalom.

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but we found this barber,

and the view was perfect.

You have to catch him early; after a beer or two, he’ll turn you away. After your haircutt, he insists that you “catch” the bubblegum… it’s shaped like a baseball.

I know, school starts in days, and still we’re staying until the last possible second. Right now, two boys are out on a fishing boat with their Dad. The other two are running around on the beach catching frogs. My hands… are… free. And when they’re free, I can look up at the sunset on the water. This is a peace I know not at home.

Still, it’s so hard to leave the fresh clear water of the lake,

and the sunsets.

Truly, there are only just a few short weeks we have to pour love into this place. We’d still like to get a few more projects finished up before we leave. Once we were done with the deck, and painting upstairs, we thought we’d put in some new windows.

Today, we finished the new windows, and tore up and burned more junk in the garage. Our handyman, our foreman for the window project, walked around and found a few repairs that needed to be made. Like that hole where the tree grows out of the deck — it needed to be enlarged with the jigsaw. Tomorrow, we’ll start painting the bunk room. It will be nice to have that done by Labor Day.

And then, we found these awesome friends. “Friends” probably isn’t an accurate word; they’re more like a lake “family,” because we see each other at all times of the day and night; and some have been known to visit others while still wearing their pajamas. And, they’ve certainly seen us at our worst. When you need help, all you do is give the word, and the “family” comes to pitch in. And when we give food away, we can honestly say, “Will these cucumbers somebody else gave me be a burden?,” and you’ll get an honest answer. Even when you make bread they hate.

A heartfelt thanks to all of you for giving us, especially the kids, such a great time this summer.

We do quite well without so many things when we’re here. One wise friend from the lake, who lived quite happily on just a few basic shorts and t-shirts, arrived home and opened her closet and said, “Who in the hell bought all these clothes and why do I need them?” She donated a large batch of her clothes.

The kids are staying up way too late every night, as we seem to be setting our clocks by the rising and setting of the sun, more and more each day.

I know there is a party this weekend at home, yet, this is the last full weekend before the rat race of school and homework starts all over again. We need these last hours of peace before the tide turns to fall and winter; and we find ourselves running around from sports practice to sports practice. I, I will admit, need the peace more than anyone in our house. The thought of leaving early isn’t one we can consider.

We’ll need some time to adjust to being land-locked again. A dishwasher, cable TV, instantaneous wifi, sidewalks, a supermarket a couple of minutes away, and a bathtub will certainly help. And so will the familiar faces of our friends back home.

For an awesome tip on a money saving way to bring adventure into your kid’s lives, read here.

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The following story may or may not be true. But most certainly, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Blueberries are Mary’s favorite. Not the blueberries themselves; just the idea of piling into the car with all the kids, and heading to that one Amish blueberry patch, where the kids fill their buckets with less blueberries than the ones that fill their mouths. The family picks enough blueberries to settle on the the breakfast table all winter long as the “bubbling blueberry pancakes” are devoured by all the kids.

The price, $.50 a pound was good… but it was a far drive. Sixty miles round trip. “Was the price of the blueberries worth the cost of gas it took to get there?,” her friends wondered and asked. Still, it was a tradition. One cloudy morning, Mary’s son wanted to head off to the blueberry patch. “Please, can we go today,” he pleaded consistently.

Mary wasn’t feeling it… but her son was so insistent. “Don’t you want to wait until Dad’s here… he’s our best picker?”

“Come on Mom. We’re out of blueberries.”

If picking blueberries was that important to the kids, the memory was far more important that the silly cost of gas.

The son piled the buckets into the trunk of the car, seat belts were buckled, and off they went. Before they arrived, however, there was one slight little delay. Mary got pulled over by a state trooper. She was sure the man was after that blue sedan that had just sped around her on that country road; but no, he wanted to talk to Mary.

Mary remembered that her purse was in the trunk of the van with the buckets. She opened her glove box to find the registration, and said, “Honey, reach back in the trunk and get my purse for me.”

Mary’s son unbuckled his seat belt, and then stopped…. the state trooper, with the dark glasses, big hat and guns came barrelling up to Mom’s car window. Mary’s son sat frozen in his seat.

The trooper seemed to have the same effect on Mary; she began talking exactly like Porky Pig while the officer blasted her with questions about why her registration was expired, why her son wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and did she even know how fast she was going?

She answered as best as she could, but the officer simply said, “You don’t make any sense,” while he wrote her the ticket.

All Mary could think about was that instead of $.50/pound, the blueberries now cost an extra $150. Plus, she thought a lot about how she really didn’t want to go there in the first place today. But, on she went, trembling a bit. Instead of singing “Happy Trails To You,” her kids kept asking, “Who’s going to babysit us when you go to jail?,” as they drove down the country roads to the Amish blueberry patch.

The road was closed that led to the blueberry patch, with no detour guiding the correct way to go. Still, Mary figured it all out, and couldn’t help but thinking that the “road closed” sign truly was a sign that meant, “Just stay home. “

When she finally did arrive, Mary was shocked to see the familiar rusted gate closed, and the field devoid of cars. The sign revealed it all. Tuesday, today, they were closed.

Mary thought of the gas used to get all the way here, the time, the lack of blueberries in her freezer, and that blasted ticket, and so she did the only thing she could do. She taught her kids how to trespass — into an Amish blueberry patch.

As her kids climbed over the barbed-wire fence, she realized that a better man, her husband, would have done the right thing; he would have calmly turned the car around and tried again tomorrow. “But not me,” Mary thought. “I’m just too weak to do the right thing.”

As almost a reward for her efforts and suffering, the blueberries were some of the biggest they had seen in years. Lots of rain left the blueberries plump and abundant. In less than 45 minutes, they had filled their buckets.

This particular blueberry patch is a self-serve kind. There is a shed that holds the scale to weigh your blueberries. There is also a plastic box, held together with a rubberband, where you leave your money. It’s full of change so that you can make your own change if you need to. To the left of that box, there is a spiral bound notebook with a pen that asks you to record your name, the number of pounds you picked, and amount of money you left.

Mary picked nine pounds. She also noticed on the sign that the price went up from $.50 to $.60/pound.

Mary picks up the pen, and writes her name, and then 9#, and then, $5.40. She opens her purse, and sees that all she has is a $1 and a $20. So, she opens the box to make change, and sees there are only quarters and pennies inside. She digs in her purse some more and finds some quarters and change. Then, she picks up her pen, and changes the 9 to a 3, and leaves $1.80 in the box.

To sum up, in less than one hour, Mary has broken the speed limit, drove with an expired registration, trespassed on private property and and stole from the Amish. As she drove home, she had only one thought: maybe she would never see her Mom in heaven someday after all. More importantly, she wondered if she’d every be able to forget this day on those cold winter mornings when her kids sit at the table eating those blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

Update: Mary went back, with husband, to pick 15 more pounds, and squared everything up with the Amish. She is now paid in full.

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I got a call from one of my great friends, who just happens to have a son in the same class as one of my sons. She’s enjoying herself immensely in Hawaii at the moment.

She asks me casually, “So, did he get his three journal entries done?”
“What journal entries?”
“You know… their homework for the summer… three journal entries and a postcard to the teacher?”

To be honest, if anything did come home in his backpack during the last week of school, I never looked at it. And, you know all that stuff people say about, “It takes a village to raise a child?” This is what they’re talking about. It takes a village to stay on top of all those things we have to do for our kids. Good friends know this.

So, I found some paper that didn’t have water stains on it, managed to find a pen, and asked him to write. All he could come up with was:

“I got up, ate my breakfast, brushed my teeth, and went tubing.”

All true, but no substance. So, we did what any parents would do, who are concerned about their kid’s education. We borrowed skis, and we threw him out in the water behind the boat. We threw him a rope, and this is what happened:

My husband, the skier, says, rarely do they get up the first time. So, how’s that for a journal entry, kid?

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Enough paint passed through my hands this summer that I can clearly say that I spent the summer at painting camp.  I should call it “boot camp,” because all that I learned about painting this summer left me with one very sobering truth — which I’ll get to later; but it has a lot to do with Adam and Eve and the Tree of Life.  My camp session all started when I was just itching to throw some of that white paint on the cabin walls while the boys were busy with the frogs. But I had a few obstacles. The ceilings were sad and dreary, dingy yellow, covered in water spots and holes. The first lesson is to paint the ceilings first.

One of my neighbors at the lake is a professional painter. So, I asked him to stop by, take a look at the ceilings, and give me a quote “just for the ceilings.” He arrives, looks up and around, and agrees, that the ceilings do need lots of help, but he’s not interested in painting while he’s on vacation.

And it gets worse: He’s serious.

So, he starts coaching me – explaining what I need to do, and how to do it. Lots of talk about “caulking, caulk guns, thick rollers, splattering, you can do it, filling holes, brushing it into the grooves, and three coats.”

He gave me work to do than I didn’t even know I had before he arrived. I began to call him my camp counselor. Still, he kept saying, “You can do this.”

Mind you; this is just on the heels of the deck project we just finished. But, my husband was back at work, and i was looking for a challenge. — you know, a “project.”

Looking back now, if I had known how difficult the job would have been, I wouldn’t have started. Even though my camp counselor often shook his head and said to me directly, “This is a BIG job.” And, “This is HARD WORK.” Warning signs I should have heeded. I think I was so tired of looking at water-stained ceilings every night when I laid in bed when I opened my copy of Firefly Summer, (read about the book I highly recommend here), that I was ready to do anything to improve the conditions. And who better to get this job done than me?

So, I put Maeve aside, I set to work with my caulking gun. The stuff spewed out everywhere, because I didn’t learn until a week later than you need to release the thing after you squeeze it. Up on the ladder, caulking the cracks between the ceiling and the quarter round, I felt like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory trying to use up the caulk that dripped on the floor after each squirt before the drips dried to a cement. I learned, by experience, that a wet finger works better than a t-shirt to smooth out the line.

Once the ceilings were done, I had to caulk the vertical lines on the paneling. This truly seemed like a wasted effort; but my camp counselor assured me this was critical. Whenever I saw him walking by, I’d call him in to check my work. Soon, I got the drift; caulking the lines was very much like getting rid of the gaps people’s teeth. No one likes to look at dark lines.

I could see the boys clearly from every spot in the house while I worked. When I got too hot, I jumped into my bathing suit and challenged one of the boys to a race. I’m an excellent swimmer; but I let them win. At the end of every day, I had some form of white stuff attached to my arms, legs and toes.

Three tubes of caulk later, I was still days away from being done, and miles away from that dream of picking up a paintbrush and hittin’ the walls. Every morning, I’d figure out which sections of the room I’d work on, and see myself farther ahead than what I actually achieved. I felt like I was getting nowhere; this was a job that I just couldn’t seem to conquer.

Now, I could clearly see why my camp counselor didn’t want to do this job. Truly, as my son said, “He didn’t want to have white fingers like you, Mom.”

The priming involved using a brush to work the paint into each and every groove of the paneling. Slow and tedious work. There were endless delays of running out of caulk, primer, fat rollers – and time-wasted trips to the paint store. Some days, I just skipped yoga; other days I forced myself into to it. Stretching out my back made it easier to stand on the ladder for hours the next day.

One morning, I was fed up with the house being such a mess, so I decided I would finish the job by bedtime. I woke up at 6:30; and carefully laid out the drop cloths, and figured I would have at least three hours of painting done before the kids even stirred.

But of course I dropped something heavy, and woke everyone up. Soon, the kids were traipsing through the drop cloths, mucking everything up. They did learn their lesson from last time, and stayed out of the paint. Still, I was determined, and started rolling. Paint drips fell where there was no drop cloth, furniture was in the way, and I’d step into a drop of spilled paint on the drop cloth and soon I’d have little white footprints across the floor. My two feet were worse than the 8 feet of my boys.

Of course, my camp counselor dropped by to see me in this whole mess of disorganization. He was polite enough not to say it, but I could tell he disapproved of my “lack of planning” and “disorganization.” All he said was, while looking at the paint puddles was, “I thought you were coming down to borrow my drop cloths?”

“Ammonia works great at cleaning up latex drips,” I said. Still, I noticed that I ceased all painting while he was there.  I found myself waiting until he was safely out of view before I dropped my roller into the pan and started covering the walls.  I’m still not sure why I did this, as clearly he could have taught me a few things about technique.  Probably, “Information overload.”

For lunch, I pulled the last bottle of root beer out of the fridge, stuck it in the freezer for awhile, and drank it with the take-and-bake-pizza my son prepared. The kids gave me that pleading look when I poured that frosty root beer, with the fizz spewing out, and I simply said, “THIS is my reward. Hands off.”

By the end of the day, the walls were creamy white, smooth as silk, with no gaps between the teeth.

I truly was done – except for one wall. I ran out of paint, and this wall was the sacrificial lamb. I even had time to clean up all the drips before the sun went down. My painting coach was amazed – from what he saw at the end of the day, as contrasted against what he saw in the morning. He said something very nice about, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman so determined, who could get more done, etc.”  I think he was just trying to hire me.

However, I learned one painful truth about an awesome new paint job.  Painting will transform a room, and your eyes.  Like the Tree of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, the fresh paint will make you aware of  flaws you were never saw before.  All of that second-hand furniture I was so tickled to have now looks, In a word, “pathetic.”  My camp coach’s wife, who was admiring my work, said it best, “Yes. You do need some new furniture.”

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