We are down to a skeleton crew of three, with Dad traveling and boy at camp. Dinner is never this simple when there are gluten-free folks in the house. We ran summer evening errands at the end of a golden day and picked up pizza on the way home, which is more of a treat for us than it is for some – and we like it that way.
Time, now, to park in front of the computer and wait for daily photos posted by camp.
It’s true – we are making extra loud noise just because we can. A few nights ago night we took strange special joy in letting our other two kids bicker and poke each other incessantly in the car, something we could seldom do because the sensory overload would be too much. And when my husband downloaded and cranked the volume on Journey’s Greatest Hits I didn’t need to ask why or tell him to turn it down. Journey is music from the past, with memories entirely adolescent and totally devoid of any reminders of the empty bed in the house.
It takes me back to Michigan summers, the Stony Lake Bar, Vernor’s, fried mushrooms and double cheeseburgers. Journey playing on the jukebox, us playing Ms. PacMan in the corner, and an endless stream of Camp Miniwanca gossip. My friend Sooz and I contemplated the merits of VW busses held together by duct tape, Gore-Tex, and why anyone would say “INsurance” when they meant “inSURance.” We laughed at teen-aged girls who earnestly discussed the finer tasting points of their favorite beer: Bud Light. I had a psychic reading done in that bar that, in hindsight, told me absolutely nothing. Sooz is still in our lives, witty and wise in ways we could never have foreseen.
And there were late nights driving through the Western Michigan corn and asparagus fields, windows down, music blaring. One night the moon was so large and full we turned off the headlights and drove only by the light in the sky. I still have my National Asparagus Festival tee shirt, the one that says Every Inch Edible – now that my eldest is the same age I was when I did and wore such things, I recommend neither the no-headlights trick nor the slogan on the shirt. But we sure had fun.
And now we drive through New England orchards in broad daylight, windows down and Journey blasting again as my teens sing at the top of their lungs and play air guitar – and when we go to the movies they make me play Ms. Pac Man because they can’t quite believe that I can kill at it.
Maybe everyone else has been doing this all along – cutting loose, being loud – but it’s new for us and it feels good in a way that keeps us from feeling sad about the boy we miss.
The first week of July is full of memories; for most everyone this is likely true with the holiday but this year I am compelled to make a list:
And this year we took our boy to sleep away camp for the first time. It is hard to say how pivotal this year’s milestone is, but I am more conscious of it here in the moment than any of the others, that’s for sure. And the image that goes with it is of our garden, where 19 years ago the only blooms to be seen in early July were the lilies on the right; all of the rest we have planted and tended ourselves with the expanding sunlight, a lovely cascade down from the elegant Japanese maple. We found that by taking down a birch and a pear tree we freed up enough water to sustain the maple, green the lawn and provide sun for the perennials. We didn’t plan it that way, it just seemed right to trade shade for sun near the house and all of the other things followed.
Off to camp for just over 24 hours and everything was just fine until we went to the grocery store and realized I only have to make one kind of dinner tonight. No special burger, dog, or pizza, just the regular stuff. I was okay with all that – happy, even – then, stashed under the checkout on the way out, I saw the ice melt with the Road Runner on the package, and no one said “Beep! Beep!” in my ear. I realized that for the next several weeks I will not need to invoke the local grocery store rules:
There are dozens more and they will all come back to me every time I go to a different store. There will be days when the suspension of the rules will come as the relief it is supposed to be, but today there’s just an empty space where the “Beep Beep!” usually is.
We love the Hallmark characters Hoops & Yoyo, and have for many years. They provided our first family doubled-over-in-front-of-the-computer moment, and our youngest memorized all of the dialogue from their tale of The Runaway Marshmallow (watch them all – you won’t be sorry). But even as we continue to buy Hoops & Yoyo greeting cards it has been a while since our marshmallow moments. Now our older boy is going to camp – sleep away camp – for a long time. We never really thought we would find a camp that would meet his needs and still be camp. It has been a long process to get to this point and I still can’t write about it quite yet except to say that the dialogue from The Runaway Marshmallow is all that stands between me and tears when I think about separating from my boy. We know that it is the right thing; we know that he will love it; we know it will be hard for all of us to not be together as a family for a large part of the summer. And so we make light of it by making all references to camp as “tromping back to camp!” I hope I will be able to write about it in a good way, and if not, well then I’ll be be back in September. The tromping begins next week; wish us luck.
After a long day…
Me: Do you know how much I love you?
Boy: A bunch.
Me: And how much do you love me?
Boy: A lot.
Me: Which is more?
Boy: A bunch.
Me: So I love you more than you love me?
Boy: Yep.
Well okay then!
Any holiday that results in the world being filled with flowers and slightly burnt toast can’t be all that bad. Our mother told me that some of the best days of her life as a mother were when her own children had kids of their own and felt the weight of responsibility that comes with holding a newborn. She paused for emphasis and raised her hand with a flourish and proclaimed: “Instant respect!!” And she treated all of us like people all the time – no talking down – never really couching her guilt trips (there were many; they can be useful) in a way that diminished motherhood itself.
A feminist who disdained the very word, she understood the power of matriarchy and wielded its grandly. And her belief that children are gifts from God, given to us to teach us about ourselves as part of a the pursuit of the divine was probably her greatest lesson to me. She believed in everyone having a divine purpose and often said that pride was her biggest obstacle to pursuing the path laid out for her. I get that.
Mom said she had to remind herself that she could neither control nor shape the fates of her children (though that really didn’t stop her from trying) but the more powerful thing she said was that her belief in divine providence reminded her that she could neither take credit for our successes nor blame for our mistakes. And while there were times I thought that statement was a cop out, I can see how she thought that when I look at my own children; I don’t know that much more about them today than I learned in the first 24 hours in the hospital after each of them was born. They have all been so much themselves from the very first moment we met, and yes, I factored in the autism. Certainly we must give them all the tools we can to release the full potential they have; to keep them healthy and safe but most of all to help them know and understand the power and meaning of love. It sounds simple and it’s pretty straightforward until you have that moment as a mother where the greatest love means letting go.
When preparing for meetings I find myself glued to the computer, doing research, typing notes, reading and organizing old files – mission statements, health care plans, meeting agendas. I am bushwhacking; managing the jungle of information in front of me in hopes of paving a road for us to walk on, hoping to keep us from falling off of some existential cliff that I imagine is there if we do the wrong thing or miss the wrong cue. My mind and my fingers move so furiously that the rest of me is paralyzed and exhausted. I don’t want to cook or clean or be social; all I want to do is sleep and prepare, sleep and prepare. I am a tenacious, insufferable, boring, anxious, obsessed stick in the mud. On-screen diversions – Facebook, The Times – don’t count because they are filled with reminders of the task at hand and then tend to divert in the wrong direction.
But I was prompted last week by a parent wiser and stronger than I, that motion – physical, heart-rate elevating motion – is necessary to calm the psychic storm that comes with these moments of transition. She faces some of the same issues I do and she is making herself run; I will have to be content to walk, but I will do that and whatever else I can to get out into the daylight. I will take a walk, get my hair cut, and go to the hardware store and get things that have been languishing on my list for weeks.
The last time we were retooling at home and school like this, the same novel sat on my nightstand for three years, unopened, collecting dust. By the time I got around to picking it up I was so tired of looking at it I gave it away instead of reading it. The moment had passed. I don’t even recall what book it was; I only remember that moment of picking it up at all is that it happened when I was talking on the phone to my cousin who was dying of cancer at the time. We were talking about things left undone and I mentioned the book that was sitting there, and she told me how she had managed to pare down her life to only the essentials and divested herself of the distractions of television, newspaper and computer. At that moment I realized that there would always be something better to read than that book.
Now the books – good ones this time! – are piling up again (sorry, Walter Issacson, William Trevor, David McCullough) but at least I am learning to make it mostly non-fiction or short fiction. I must finish it before bed or know how it turns out. I am interested in knowing about the journeys of all kinds of people in the 20th century, and so the book that rescues me today is Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies. I’ve seen so many of the movies he made and he writes so easily and compellingly about the process of film making that it gives me something that is both easy jump into and easy to let go of when my attention is diverted, as it so often is at these times. At this moment, it is the right mix of nostalgia, entertainment, and clarity of process that makes me happy and still keeps me learning.
This is from a couple of years ago and it is a sweet photo but at this moment it is an example of all I want to overcome. Now, suddenly, as adulthood looms for real, the endearing photo of a birthday hug from Elmo only tells me that we need to do more to make the adult world accessible and palatable – no, joyful – to our boy. Adulthood is daunting to all of us, so how do we differentiate childlike from childish, nurturing from insulation, love from coddling, wisdom from denial, bravery from cruelty? The lines between all of these things shift on me, all day, every day.
We have the rain, the sun, the black clouds, and somewhere there is a rainbow. But I don’t see it.
I Wouldn't Have Missed It 
