Living on vacation

It’s sad how we spend very little of our lives actually living. The days seem to overfill with planning, as if to-do lists and schedules have a mind of their own. We go from one task to the next, always working, never completing. And at the end of it all we wonder why life passed us by.

This past weekend, Eric and I packed up the kids and the RV to check out a new campsite we’d heard about. It was another thing on the list that needed to get done. We chose a spot by the stream, a spot where we could hear the rushing water as we went to sleep at night, a spot too beautiful for the passing glance we gave it as we rushed about setting up our camp.

I had an agenda. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, and probably tried to follow it yourself in the past. The “Relaxing Weekend” agenda. We were going to go on hikes as a family, have picnics, sit by the river and watch nature. There was going to be at least one barbeque, at least one night spent drinking wine at the picnic table after the kids went to bed, and at least one morning spent sipping coffee and watching the sunrise. It would be memorable, it would be enjoyable, it would be that great weekend we always talked about later.

Except great weekends cannot be planned, because plans fall apart, especially plans where you try to script perfection. I clung to my preconceived notions of relaxation, so tightly I found myself whining by day two, complaining that our perfect weekend was not going as perfectly as planned. There had been no family hikes, no picnics, none of the memorable moments I’d expected to have. Eric told me to take a hike, and I don’t think he meant so I could check it off my list.

There was a playground a little further downstream, an old wooden one with a tire ladder like they used to make when I was a kid. Carter was obsessed by this playground. That’s all he wanted to do. “Go to the park.” It was his idea of perfection. Because he is three and because hiking with a toddler usually means hiking with a toddler on your shoulders, we ended up spending most of our weekend at this playground. I fought it hard in the beginning, because it wasn’t fitting into my plan. But then, late into day two, a strange thing started happening that never seems to happen at home.

I started to forget about schedules. I opened my eyes and let the day unfold around me. I didn’t try to shape it or force it or turn it into something it wasn’t: I just enjoyed it for what it was.

There was a little girl around ten who ran over every time we showed up at the slide. I will always remember her smile, the slap of her shoes on cement, how much she liked playing with my son. She had long blond hair, gold glasses, and a heart you could see right through. Her smile for us was shy, but her smile for Carter was true.

One warm evening as we were getting ready to go, Eric spotted a few lizards lying out on the sand. He spent an hour teaching Carter how to catch them, taking him down to the stream to find long, supple branches to tie into traps. They lay on their bellies for longer than I’ve ever seen my son stay still, trying to loop the nooses around the necks of the sleeping lizards. Carter almost caught one. Eric was more impressed by this than he’s been by the other developmental milestones. I’d never seen him so proud.

Brody and I sat in the sun on a blanket watching them, letting the wind redden our cheeks and tear our eyes. I watched my baby play with a flower, transferring it from hand to hand, feeling its petals, learning its smell. I only took it away when he tried to eat it, and then only after I’d let him have a taste. Eric brought over his catch, a lizard with a belly as blue as the night sky. I remembered how he used to do this when we dated, how he’d taught me to make my own noose out of a branch so thin the lizards won’t know it’s there. Sometimes the things that impress you most about a person are the least expected.

It was a perfectly memorable weekend, and there was no surprise when Eric rolled over on the morning of our last day there to tell me that he didn’t want to go home. I didn’t either. I didn’t want to return to plans and lists and days that fly by in a blink. I didn’t want to be too busy to know my family.

I don’t know how to bottle those moments, I only know they cannot be planned. They can never be expected or demanded. They must be savored. And perhaps in those few subtle seconds, when we are living and not just doing, we learn more about life than any years could ever teach us.

Lamenting the Demise of the Nap

Oh peaceful slumber, that golden double-hour in the afternoon where I am free once more.
Where tiny bodies release my legs, my arms and I can shower and read and talk on the phone with friends I never see anymore.
Why are you abandoning me?
Have I not treated you well?
I never took advantage of your precious minutes,
I never ignored your silent beauty.
Why do you deny me my joy, my peace, my bath?
Lay your hands on my tiny toddler once more,
let him fall under you spell.
Let me watch twenty minutes of TV that is not Noggin.
Do not turn your back on me, I pray you.
Haunted my shadowed halls until many years have passed,
until I am no longer tired and need a break,
until he is in college.
For I
Need you
More
Than He
Ever Will.

The quiet of my heart

I watch the sun warm his skin on this early spring afternoon and I am overcome by the feeling of wanting to hold onto this moment forever. I can watch the days pass in his face the way I watch the decades on my own. He grows, he changes, so much in such a short time it overwhelms me. His childhood will end before I know it, this fragility, this innocence, this purest form of love. I could watch it slip through my grasp like so much soft, white sand.

He is three with a bad haircut, three with a scar under his left eye and a small chip in his front tooth. Three with long legs and a heart that feels as if it wants to break free from his chest. He loves all, passes no judgement, knows only the kind of simple honesty that belongs to the young. He knows night follows day, laughter comes after smiles, and that a good day should always end in a bath. His tiny voice makes my heart sing.

I want to freeze this moment in my soul, hold onto this precious youth of his with the desperate grasp only a mother can posses. I take more pictures of him than I could ever keep; they could fill a room with their glossed-over memories. But each photograph does nothing to preserve his joy, his exuberance, his youth. They are a poor reflection of how real the actual moment was, and this truth makes me sad to look at them, though that doesn't stop me from taking them. They have become an obsession.

He is my son, and he will always be my son, even though he will grow big and strong and shed the pureness of his childhood. He will be a man. He will be a banker, a climber, a rock star. He will be filled with his own dreams and desires and wishes for his future. I will respect him and grow proud of all he has become. But in the quiet, dark parts of my heart, he will always be the sweet babe who wrapped his chubby fingers around my own. His eyes will always shine with the love he has for me, his mommy. He will always be my child. And there, in my soul, I will hold onto this moment forever.

Doin' the impossible

Why does it seem as moms that we often seem to attempt the impossible? Somehow I decided that it would not be beyond my abilities to take my 77-pound Labradoodle to the vet with two kids in tow on a very rainy day. Somewhere in my mind, I thought it was a task I was capable of taking on, probably the same part of my brain that decides it's an okay idea to begin scrapbooking the last two years of my life at ten o'clock at night after two glasses of wine. I am constantly thinking I can do the same things I did before I had kids, and while I'm glad I think so highly of myself, I sometimes wish I set the bar a little lower. Like around my knees.

So there I was at the vet's office, holding my toddler with one hand, my baby carrier with the other, my umbrella by my neck and um, yeah, exactly how am I supposed to bring in the dog? I was stretched thin and uptight, doing something I knew was ridiculous, so of course Carter decided to do the only thing he knows how to do in those situations. He threw a temper tantrum.

He was upset that I wouldn't buy the ridiculous $20 dog bones they sell there because he wanted to give Sparky a treat now and only now, even though we have $3.99 dog bones at home that I swore to him were just as good. Does anyone buy those dog bones? Or are they just there to make you feel bad that you're giving your dog crap at home? He cried like a banshee when they took Sparky away for his blood draw, screaming, "I just want to see him again!" like they were taking old Spark to the kennel in the sky. He rolled all over the floor, getting dog hair and God-knows-what-is-all-over-the-floor-at-the-vet's-office all over his shoes, his pants, his head. The ladies behind the desk looked at him like they were glad he wasn't their kid. And as much as I hate to admit it, I was thinking the same thing.

In Carter's defense, he's still suffering from a killer cold, a cold that has run rampant through this family, causing ear infections and bronchitis and exploding eyeballs, which, to quote Dave Barry, would make a great name for a rock band. And Lord knows a toddler who's sick and tired should be anywhere but out in public, out where people can stare and point, anywhere else but somewhere where he has to behave, because that is the very last thing he wants to do, and just merely asking him to will start the beginnings of your own familial World War III.

But in my defense, I had to get things done, which brings me back to my point. Why do I think I can do more than I am truly capable of doing? Maybe it's the killer cold I've got right now that's fogging up my ability to think rationally. Or maybe it's just the Thera-flu. But I do this when I'm healthy, I do this on a daily basis, I do what all of us moms do. Too much. Sacrifice for the good of the brood. I wish I could stop, I wish I could do less, but then, who would do it? Who would take care of the kids and the house and the laundry and the shopping and the dogs with their annoyingly expensive health problems?

I'm a mom. It's my job. And when you see those moms out at the store with their whiny kids in tow dripping snot down their faces, the moms with the messed-up hair and the Goldfish stuck to their shirts, give them a break. Give them a hand. Hell, give them some Thera-flu. Lord knows we need it.

Common Courtesy

It was drop-off time at preschool last week when I noticed Carter's new best friend had one heck of a cough. Ugh, I sighed to myself, here we go again. Although it's hard to confine a three-year-old to the house, where his only choices are to watch mom do the laundry or watch his little brother drool all over himself, and it's even harder for me to contend with him confined to the house without anything to climb or ride or jump on besides various parts of my body, it's just something I do without question when he's sick. Why make every other mother within commuting distance as miserable as I am? I don't really need to make enemies when I still haven't made too many friends here yet.

But why does it seem that no one else feels that way? Why do other moms have to send their kids out into the world feverish and snotty-nosed? And why do those kids have to be my kids' favorite playmates?

So now I've got one kid with an ear infection and green snot trailing down his face, another kid with a fever and bronchitis, and a ticking time bomb in my own white-cell depleted body. Although I've just about drained my personal Airborne stash, I know it's just seconds before I come down with a combined version of the nasty viruses my kids are harboring.

But I'm doing the good thing. I'm sacrificing myself, my health, my sanity, for the good of all kidkind. I'm keeping my boys home and safe and warm to recuperate and return to good health.

I just wish everyone else would do the same. Who knows, without playgrounds and preschools, maybe we'd finally win the battle against the common cold.

Spoke too soon

Apparently, nature decided to let me know how little I really knew about being a mother. She laughed at my inability to occupy my three-year-old, her chortles strong enough to shake the trees. She, in her ancient wisdom, her centuries of rearing species after species without any kind of thanks, decided to unleash her anger, or maybe just her moodiness, by whopping our house with a winter storm.

Wind rocked the windows at almost sixty miles an hour. Rain fell sideways, sloshing out of the gutters and filling our cul-de-sac. Civilization couldn't keep up, and we lost power at nine a.m.

Twenty hours without electricity is a dream to those who still haven't had the lights come back on. But twenty hours without heat, without light, and without Curious George are nineteen-and-a-half too many when you're trapped indoors with your own tiny hurricane.

At least it's hard to see the clutter, hard to see toys scattered about and cheese sauce sticking to the counters when you're living by candlelight. We built Lego houses for hours, read stories, made pancakes, slept an afternoon away. It got cold, colder than our spoiled California bodies are used to, and the baby spent the night cocooned under our covers.

We made it through, and I took my teaching like a tablespoon of castor oil forced down my throat. It was bitter, but it was necessary. I don't need to complain about how hard it is to take care of my preschooler. Because Mother Nature is listening.

Cabin Fever

Some days in California are sunny and beautiful and clear, others, like this cold January day, are ugly and gray and rainy. They type of day where the sky seems to be upset with the earth. Where the rain pours in sideways. Where even the dogs huddle for cover.

I tried to chase the boy outside today to play in the rain. Isn't that the best part of being a boy? At least, I imagine it would be. No worry about messy hair or mud on your nice pants. Just being three and outdoors seems all a boy needs. But not today. Today he needs Mommy and Scooby-Doo and thirty-two snacks before noon. Today it is too wet to play. So we sat, on that cold, cold wet day.

Except no cat in any kind of hat has shown up in at my door today to entertain us by balancing the fish on a plate. The only kind of Things that have run down my halls are my boy and my dog, and they did not have my dress on a rake. What do I do with my first toddler on a rainy day? Go to the movies? Sometimes I am unable to imagine what it is kids like to do. Add to the fact that I am a Girl, that's girl with a captial, undroppable "G," and that means I really do not know what to do with a boy who is three on a rainy day. He does not want to color with sparkly pens, or make play-doh animals, or anything else that involves sitting. He wants to run and run amok, and he's acting like a wild animal trapped in my living room.

If anybody has any ideas on what to do with my bored boy, comments would be greatly appreciated. Now I must go put on my earplugs...

Boxing Day

As I sit with baby in my lap enjoying the first quiet moment I've had in a holiday season, I'm thinking about all of the things that make Christmas memorable. Things change so much from year to year now, as they never did before. As we look back at the photos from holidays past, we can see time pass before our eyes. As a relative said last night, my husband and I could go up to the snow on Christmas Day, take a great photo, and use it for next year's card. But the kids would change so much, the photo would be outdated. It seems we do not change much from year to year -- a dozen more gray hairs or a few more crow's feet -- but our kids change drastically. They get hair where before they had peach fuzz. They grow taller, leaner, more steady. They get teeth. They get dimples. They get little snotty attitudes that weren't there the year before.

It is so important to cherish each day in their little lives. To savor the small moments as well as the big. The first handmade ornament. The first cookies and milk for Santa. The first Christmas as a family. Because next year, the little boy in my arms won't be a baby anymore. Next year there will be no more gummy smiles. Next year the big boy will teach us about Santa. Next year will be nothing like this one. They don't seem to change too much from one year to the next, but when we look back at this year, whether it be next Christmas or ten Christmas' from now, they will seem so small and young and little, and so very far away from who they are now.

Too True

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Book Review: Chill Out, Josey!

Chill Out, Josey!

Somehow I've gotten on the list of Christian book reviewers, which doesn't really bother me because I love getting free books to review, but it just gets a little difficult when review time comes around. I'm also new to the whole chick/mommy-lit genre (I'm more a Stephen King-type gal), so there's another road block I must get past. But I'm enjoying a whole new category of books that I can read in the tub and relax with, and it's a nice change to read something that doesn't start with "It was a dark and stormy night." (Peanuts excluded, as Charlie Brown is fairly popular around here).

Chill Out, Josey is the second book in the Josey series by author Susan May Warren. From what I gathered, in the first book (Everything's Coming Up Josey), protagonist Josey ran off to Russia to find love and adventure, only to have her childhood sweetheart chase after her and declare his undying love. In book two, Josey and Chase (yes, that's really his name) are living somewhat happily ever after back at home in Minnesota. Except happily ever after has a different definition for Chase than it does for Josey. She dreams of suburban bliss, with two little kids in the backyard of their house on the lake (FYI, Josey, it ain't always bliss...). Chase dreams of saving the world, of living his life with purpose. Josey compromises for the sake of her marriage, and before she knows it, they are settling down in Moscow. To complicate matters, she finds out she's pregnant days before their big move. It's silly, it's fun, and it's not deep, but tub reads never are.

It's interesting to read about Josey's struggles setting up their home in Moscow. Warren herself spent years in Khabarovsk, Far East Russia as a missionary for SEND International. Though she never gave birth in Russia, she spent two pregnancies there, and I'm sure many of Josey's triumphs were those of Warren's as well.

The hardest time I'm having with these small-press releases is the amount of errors that run the length of the story. (To capitalize, or not to capitalize the Cold War. You decide.) It seems they never make it past a final editor, and as a result, often have loose ends floating around the main story that never quite get resolved (not really a problem in this book) or just seem as if they should go through one last revision. I wouldn't place all the blame on the authors (though they probably should know better, but you know us writers...), I would simply chalk it up to a lack of staffing/funding at the publishing company. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad enough to detract from the book, it's just that I usually expect a certain level of, well, dare I say perfection, from a published work. A blog, for that matter, you never know what you're going to get...




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