Daylilies and Brown Cake

When my son Darton turned two, his birthday party featured trucks and "brown" cake--two of his favorite things at the time.  For the centerpiece I piled bright orange daylilies into an orange dump truck that had belonged to my brothers when they were young.  And now, every single year when I see daylilies, I know Darton's birthday is just around the corner.  Since he was born in summer, he was always home on his birthday, even during his college years.  But this year, for the first time ever, he won't be here.  So all week I've been thinking of birthdays past which included lots of breakfasts in bed, chocolate cakes, treasure hunts, egg drops, sports equipment, and parties in the backyard.  This year, instead of baking a cake and hanging crepe paper streamers, I'm putting a card in the mail with a check tucked inside for some new work clothes and a steak dinner.  And I'm counting the days until his next visit home. 

Home Alone

My husband and I don't travel much, and when we do go somewhere, we usually go together.  But today he and his sister are in Virginia visiting their mom on her 90th birthday.  And my college-age daughter is also gone this week. In the past on the rare occasions when I was the only one home, I had our faithful old dog to keep me company, but he died a year  ago.  So this time I really am home alone.  All alone.  And it is such an odd feeling.  Part of me likes the freedom and the solitude.  I don't have to cook--yesterday I ate cereal for lunch and a cheese sandwich for supper.  There's no noise, unless I make it; no one to object if I spend the whole day watching the Olympic trials.  And if I wake up in the middle of the night, I can turn on the light and read awhile.  But on the other hand, there's no one to eat with.  There's no one to talk to, no one to help me close the windows when a storm blows in.  And if I wake up in the middle of the night, there's no steady breathing beside me for reassurance.  I've (reluctantly) adapted to having my kids gone a lot of the time, but I'm not used to having Steve gone.  He's the one who's been with me the longest, the one who knows me best, the one I've come to depend on in ways I don't even realize except on days like this when he's away.  I'll be fine while he's gone--I'll swim and read and do schoolwork and housework and yard work, and about the time I tire of cheese sandwiches he'll be back.  And I'll be glad.

Gone Swimming

My dad never learned to swim.  Because of that and because he was big on safety, he wanted all of us kids to learn.  My earliest swimming lessons were less than successful--I clung to the side of the pool and cried.  But my parents didn't give up, and before long I was a swimmer.  I spent a majority of my summer afternoons at the town pool.  Although in those days, "going swimming" didn't really mean doing the backstroke.  It meant seeing how many somersaults you could do in a row underwater on a single breath, lying on a thin towel in the sun while talking to friends, going out to play in the park for a while, and doing can openers and cannon balls off the diving board.  It also meant sitting impatiently on the side of the pool with all the other kids for ten minutes every hour during the adult swim.  As I dangled my feet in the water, I watched the middle-aged women in their flowered bathing caps sidestroking their way across the pool; I used to wonder why they did it and what on earth was fun about those slow, steady laps they swam.  Well, now I am one of those middle-aged women.  My swim cap is black, not flowered, and I don't do the sidestroke.  But there I am, a middle-aged woman swimming calmly back and forth across the pool.  It started after a very stressful spring semester.  I was having trouble calming myself down, and for the first time in my life I had high blood pressure.  I had read that swimming was good for lowering blood pressure, so I decided to give it a try.  I started slowly, and before long I discovered I still really liked to swim.  I'm extremely nearsighted, so when I'm in the water with no glasses or contact lenses, I can barely see anything.  And when I'm doing any stroke other than the head-above-water breaststroke, I can barely hear anything.  So I once I'm in the pool, I'm in my own watery world.  The rhythmic strokes and the cool, soothing water did a lot to calm me down that first summer.  And the smell of chlorine on my suit and in my hair took me right back to my childhood.  Most of the time I swim at the college natatorium.  It's nothing like the pool of my childhood.   I don't meet up with friends anymore.  I don't jump off the diving board.  And I can't remember the last time I did a somersault in the water.  But once again I'm spending many of my summer afternoons at the pool.  Thanks for the swimming lessons, Dad!

Are You Staying Cool Enough, Babe?

We are on day three of temperatures near ninety degrees here in western New York.  Every summer we get several stretches of weather like this, and every summer I wish for central air.  Earlier this month, we went so far as to call for an estimate. “Let’s just see what it would cost,” I told my husband.  The answer: a LOT.  As it turns out our 120-year-old house is not well-suited for central air—something about no cold air returns upstairs and other things I don’t remember because I didn’t really understand them to begin with.  The bottom line is we’re back to fans and window units in two of the upstairs bedrooms.  Seeing an air conditioner in the window always make me think of my dad.  All the years we were growing up, he had one in his bedroom.  I remember feeling that blast of cold air when I walked in to borrow his scissors or to ask him a question in when he was working at his desk.  Years later when I had grown up and moved away, the first question my dad asked when he called on hot summer days was “Are you staying cool enough, babe?”  I wrote this poem a few years ago, and on this hot summer day I am thinking of my dad and of the way parents never stop taking care of their kids.

Are you staying warm enough?

he would ask when he called

on cold winter days

ever since he heard

that our dog's water froze

in her dish

in our cold New Hampshire

kitchen.

It only happened once

a long time ago,

but he never forgot.

"I'll send you some money

to help with your heating bill.

Turn your thermostat up a few degrees

I don't want the kids to be cold."

Are you staying cool enough?

He would ask when he called

during summer heat waves.

Despite my reassurances

of fans, backyard wading pools,

and sprinkler parties,

a second call came one summer day.

"Be watching for a surprise delivery.

It should be arriving soon. . .

Oh, I'll go ahead and tell you:

I got you an air conditioner.

You need one room to cool off in."

I wish I could call him today

to tell him

that a crazy hot June

drew us to the old air conditioner

that's been resting in the corner

of the bedroom through

several temperate summers,

buried under rolls of wrapping paper,

blankets, and stuffed animals

I want to tell him

how his grandson

lugged it up the stairs alone

and helped me wrestle it into

the window.

I want him to know that one room

is now blissfully cool.

But he's out of range

of phones,

of cold snaps,

of heat waves.

And I can't tell him

that although

we're warm enough in winter

and cool enough in summer,

I miss the asking,

and I miss my dad.

Picky Eaters

I'll admit it: I was a picky eater as a kid.  So when Steve and I got married, I loved being in charge of the meal planning—finally, there was something I liked for dinner every single night!  During those first few years of marriage, I collected a lot of new recipes and soon my wooden recipe box was filled with dishes my husband and I both loved.  Then we had kids.  Even though it’s never been proven (as far as I know), I suspect there’s a picky-eating gene, and I passed it along to all three of my kids.  The tricky thing was, they were each picky in their own way.  So this made meal-planning challenging over the years.  Now some of you non-picky eaters are probably thinking if I’d just been firmer with my kids, they wouldn’t have been so picky.  Well, I am here to tell you I tried EVERYTHING over the years.  The one thing I refused to do, however, was to make mealtime a battleground.  Having a pleasant dinner together was more important to me than winning the war over food.  So maybe you’re right, perhaps I was too accommodating, and I suppose I was also more than a little bit sympathetic.  I knew how miserable meals could be when you didn’t like meatloaf or country pie or liver and onions or all the other foods I pushed around on my plate over the years.  So when our kids were growing up, we settled into a pretty predictable pattern of meals.  It wasn’t that we never had meals one or more of the kids didn’t like, but recipes everyone liked ended up in the rotation a lot more often than dishes that only two people liked.  So for a lot of years, I rarely pulled the recipes for some of those early favorites out of the recipe box.  In fact, I forgot about a lot of them.  But then it happened—one by one, bit by bit, my kids’ palates started to grow up.  And suddenly, cooking became a lot more fun again.  This summer in addition to experimenting with new recipes, I've been cooking up some of the old ones.  This week, I’m two for two.  On Father’s Day, I made Lammel Supreme, a chicken dish that dates back to our college days. And last night we had Garden-Style Pizza (zucchini, carrots, and mushrooms on an oatmeal crust), a recipe I copied down from a magazine during the first days of married life.  Both were hits with the kids who were home for dinner, and both brought back fond food memories for my husband and me. Although the kids still have their favorite (and least favorite) meals, they are willing to try just about anything now, something I never would have imagined ten years ago! (Let me know if you want a recipe . . . )

Wild Mint and Index Cards

Early in my parenting years, I read a quote that said something like "our children don't from us what we offer, they take from us what they need."  I can't remember where I read it or who said it, but I do remember that it offered me a bit of comfort because the task of preparing my little ones for life seemed daunting--how could I possibly teach them everything they needed to know?  Yet the quote reminded me that it wasn't a one-way street and that my children might get what they need in spite of me rather than because of me.   Well, as my kids grew older and got ready to strike out on their own, the fear set it again--Had I done my job? Were my kids ready to face the world?  Then I thought back to my own parents.  There were some basic things they taught me directly—like how to iron a pillowcase and how to balance a checkbook.  But most of the other stuff I picked up by watching them.  Big things like how to live out your faith and why it’s important to work hard.  And little things like how to recognize wild mint along a creek bed and why it’s a good idea to keep index cards on hand. Did I know everything I needed to know when I moved out of my parents' house?  Nope, of course not.  In fact, there are still plenty of things I don't know.  But I took what I needed from my parents and then I figured things out as I went along.  And I have to trust my kids to do the same.

Today Is the Day

 

Even though I don't like clutter, I have to admit I'm not very good at throwing things away.  I'm not sure why.  It's probably partly because I'm sentimental by nature and everything reminds me of some dear memory.  I think it's also connected to the old "as soon as I throw it out, someone's going to need it" worry.  And it's partly my kids' fault--they never forgave me for selling their Disney Sing-a-Long videos at one of our running-out-of-money-at-the-end-of-summer yard sales (even though, at the time, they said they were done with them).  The sneaky thing about clutter is if you keep it around long enough, you stop seeing it.  Take, for example, the shoe collection in this picture.  There are hiking boots from two of my kids' eighth grade backpacking expeditions (eighth grade was six years ago for my daughter and eleven years ago for my son, soccer cleats (no one has played soccer in this family for at least ten years), old sneakers (kept around for creek-walking, which hasn't happened in recent memory), a nice pair of lightweight running spikes (injuries ended my son's competitive running days several years ago).  So today is the day.  I'm ready to take my first small step in reducing some of the clutter my kids have left behind.  I should have done it long ago.  But that corner of the porch looks so bare now . . . and my daughter's hiking boots are still in pretty good shape and I think they still fit . . . and could someone else use those nice running spikes?

Watching Them Sleep

I've always liked watching my children sleep. There's something about seeing them in those unguarded moments that links the present with the past.  My 22-year-old son was home over the weekend, and when I saw him stretched out on the couch, time collapsed, and I remembered him not only at fifteen, when I wrote the lines below, but also at all the ages he's ever been. 

A mother sits
watching her son sleep.
She thinks back to when
he napped curled up on
just one cushion of the couch.
She thinks farther back to when
he slept in her arms.
She remembers how his little body
relaxed against hers when
he dropped off to sleep.  She
recalls the sweet curve of his cheek,
the tickle of his soft baby hair
against her lips when
she kissed his head.
Now his fifteen-year-old body
stretches the full length of the couch,
his feet still in T-Mac sneakers
dangle off the arm.
She hardly ever gets to watch
him sleep anymore.  At night
he sleeps behind a tightly closed door.
She wants to smooth back
the blondish hair that hangs
over his forehead
and kiss his teenage brow.
But she knows she can't.
It would wake him,
he would object.
He wouldn't like the idea of
being watched while he slept
(or being the subject of a poem).
Instead she sits in silence watching him
for as long as she can,
fixing the image in her mind,
so she can pull it out
years from now
and remember.

I'll Walk

"It's hard to explain how a few precious things seem to follow throughout all our lives . . ." (--Kenny Loggins, "House at Pooh Corner").

My mom didn't have a car or even a driver's license when my siblings and I were young, so we did a lot of walking, especially in the summer.   And Mom did a great job of making walking fun--we'd sing along the way, skip to a certain landmark up ahead, stop to play Pooh Sticks at the creek, hide in stairwells, and sometimes stop for banana popsicles on the way home.  When I got older, I walked to town and to the pool by myself most days, singing show tunes along the way. Later, when Steve and I were newly married, we moved to New Hampshire. Our old Pontiac broke down on the trip north, so after we returned the U-Haul truck, we had no transportation other than our feet.  We walked everywhere those first few months in Concord. It ended up being a great way to get to know our new town, and even after we got a little car, we still took a lot of walks, just for fun; we walked around beautiful neighborhoods and dreamed of our future.  We were still a one-car family when our oldest was born, so after Steve started teaching, Ben and I walked wherever we needed to go on weekdays.  Even after the other two were born and we acquired a second car, the kids and I still walked to town and to the playground and library; well, I walked--they rode in the stroller or the wagon, then pedaled tricycles, tractors, and eventually two-wheelers.  In those days, I rarely got out for a walk by myself.  I didn't even realize how much I missed those mind-clearing, thought-organizing, perspective-restoring walks until I started taking them again after the kids got older.  Later on, when our nest first started to empty and I was struggling with my sense of loss, I walked and walked and walked, often with tears streaming down my face.  I consciously tried to vary my routes so people wouldn't start worrying about "that crying woman who always walks past here."  I'm in a better place now with the whole empty nest situation, but I still walk a lot, especially in the summer.  I headed out for a walk around nine this morning; I was trying to beat the heat, though it was already eighty degrees when I left the house.  I had my iPod with me (I've been on a Louisa May Alcott kick for a while now--I've listened to Little Men, Good Wives, and Jo's Boys and am working my way through Eight Cousins now), but like most days so far this summer, I didn't get around to pressing play until I was nearly back home again.  I was too busy noticing things: a grandfather lifting his grandson up to press in the code on the garage door, neighbors chatting across a hedge, a young dad pushing a barefooted baby in a stroller, explosions of color in cheerful, well-tended flower gardens, and a white-haired woman watering the hanging baskets on her front porch--she had these great pulley-gadgets that allowed her to easily raise and lower the baskets (when I complimented her flowers, she told me all about her new gadgets and demonstrated them for me--two for $5 at Home Depot for anyone who's interested).  As I passed the White Inn, there was a sprinkler watering the grass; almost without thinking, I slowed my pace so it would spray me as I passed.  I walked on, feeling a little foolish but refreshed, and all of a sudden, I was reminded of my little girl self walking with my mom.    And that's when I realized going for walks is one of the things I've been doing my whole life.  And I'm never just walking: I'm thinking and praying, planning and dreaming, watching and remembering.  And sometimes, like today, I'm even skipping a little bit on the inside.  My mother taught me well.  I hope my legs hold out and I can keep walking the rest of my life.

Summer Nights

When I was a kid, I loved summer evenings.  Summer afternoons at the town pool were a close second, but the time between dinner and bedtime was my favorite time of day.  The summer evenings of my childhood meant playing kickball with my dad, having campouts, catching lightning bugs, playing hide and seek, and cranking homemade ice cream.  Early summer mornings have taken over as my favorite time of day—I love sipping coffee on the porch while the day is still new.  But when the kids were home, I still loved summer nights.  I loved the extra daylight hours for playing outside, followed by baths and summer jammies and bedtime stories on the porch when they were small.  And when they grew older, the nights were filled with summer soccer, Around the World, roof ball,  four square, and glow-in-the-dark Frisbee. Even up through last summer we often played tennis or Kan Jam after supper while it was still light and board games or cards when it got dark.  But this week none of my kids have been home, and I have to say I’m struggling with the time between dinner and bedtime.  I’m not really enjoying those extra daylight hours—I don’t know what to do with them.  Oh, I garden and read, and sometimes my husband and I walk or watch a little TV, but for once, time is heavy on my hands.  I find myself doing crossword puzzles in the paper and playing Spider Solitaire to pass the time until I can go to bed.  Thankfully, my girl is coming home from camp today, so I’ll have a reprieve for the next couple of weeks until she’s gone again.  But this past week has taught me that I’ve got still some work to do in figuring out this new stage of life.  

The Last Time

When your kids are babies, the milestones are all about "firsts": first tooth, first step, first word.  When they get older, especially at the end of high school and college, the milestones start being about "lasts": the last cross-country meet, the last basketball game, the last concert, the last night of the last musical,  the last night at home before college, the last time your child comes home for the summer . . .  If you're like me, you kind of brace yourself for these big lasts, but there are a lot of smaller lasts that slip by almost unnoticed: the last time you held one of your kids, the last time you felt your child's little hand in yours, the last time you read a bedtime story, the last time you packed a school lunch, the last time you signed a permission slip, the last time you all went somewhere together in the family car . . .  Maybe it's just as well that we don't always know it's the "last time" while we're in the midst of living it, but I think there is a lesson in there about being wide awake and present as we move through our days and about not wishing any time away, regardless of how tired we are or how hectic life is because big or small, first or last, we don't want to miss any of the moments.

Coming and Going

A couple of weeks ago, our oldest stayed here in his old bedroom for a few nights in between moving out of one apartment and into another one. When he left, he took more of the things he'd left behind. His dvds are no longer stacked beside our TV.   His boxes of books are gone.  His room, though not yet empty, is looking less and less like his room. The day he "moved out" left me feeling sad and lonely all over again. This morning, our youngest left for a week to work at a camp.  Not a big deal, I know--she'll be back on Friday.  But when she left, she took the car that just this past weekend became hers.  As I watched her drive away, she seemed so grown up and so independent.  She needed no help packing up, no help getting where she needed to go.  And here I am feeling a little lost and lonely in a big empty house again.  It's not just that I'll miss her this week, though I will, or that all the comings and goings are hard to keep adjusting to, though they are.  I think that what is underneath it all is the ongoing realization that life as I've known it for so many years is changing.  My kids are right on schedule--they are growing up and becoming independent.  I wouldn't want it any other way, but that doesn't make it easy.

Coming or Going

The screen door screeches.

The screen door slams.

Coming or going,

Going or coming,

The sounds are the same.

But what a difference

It makes to me—

Your going away,

Your coming home.

             --James Stevenson             

Kayaking, Prince Edward Island, and Pizza with Black Olives

I think one of the most unnerving things about this stage of my life is that I don't quite know who I am anymore.  When you become a parent, you do what’s best for the family, which often means putting your kids’ needs ahead your own.  You tend to do what they like to do, go where they like to go, and fix what they like to eat. This all worked out pretty well for me over the years for several reasons.  First, it made life easier.  Second, if my kids were happy, I was happy.  And third, one of the great things about having kids is that they end up leading you in all kinds of directions you never would have gone in on your own.  However, as I've discovered recently, somewhere along the way while I was doing things with and for my kids, I kind of lost track of myself.  And now without their plans and schedules and preferences guiding me, I feel a little disoriented.  I don’t know what I want to do or where I want to go or even what topping to order on my pizza.  But I'm thinking it's about time to start finding out . . . .