Golden Summer

It's been seven years since the first of our three children graduated from high school and the emptying of our nest began.  And every year around this time when graduation is just around the corner, I think about how I felt at the beginning of that summer:

GOLDEN SUMMER

I want a golden summer

before change walks in the door

I want to memorize the days

before one is gone

and two remain.

I want bright blue sunny days

and starry moonlit nights

to laugh and talk and dream and play

before five is four

and life is strange.

I want to wake up early

while the house is still asleep.

I want time to hope and pray

to read and write

and think.

I want the tang of lemonade,

the smoke of barbecue,

the ripe sweet red of berries,

and soft-serve

ice cream cones,

I want to stay up watching movies

and play every game we own.

I want to s t r e t c h out every minute,

and I want time

to s l o w.

I want to bounce with roof balls,

to soar high with a kite,

to skim the air with Frisbee flair,

to dip and skip

in flight.

I want to think about what was

and soak up all that is

before I face the what will be

when summer ends

and change begins.

Playground Day

When my kids were young, once a year, toward the end of summer, we had a day we called Playground Day.  We would pack a picnic lunch and lots of snacks and sports equipment and set out early in the morning to visit all the playgrounds in town.  Back in those days each playground was different.  The one at the school was one of those amazing wooden labyrinth structures.  The one at Barker Playground had a tall metal slide.  Gardner Street Playground was their favorite with its curly slide and wooden merry-go-round.  By the time we got home in the late afternoon, we were hot and tired but happy.  When I was out walking today, I saw that the village has recently installed a new playground on the Hamlet Street side of Russell Joy Park.  It looks just like all the other playgrounds in town.  I know the wooden playground was prone to yellow jackets and splinters.  I know the steps to the tall metal slides were steep and the slides got hot in the sun. And I know kids sometimes tumbled off the merry-go-round when it got going too fast and they weren't holding on tightly enough. I also know the new playground equipment is probably more durable, as well as safer.  But I miss the old playgrounds with all their variety, and I sure do miss our old Playground Days.

Loaves and Fishes

I think one of the things that is hard about an emptying nest is the fact that it’s not really empty.  It’s filled with memories—both good and bad—and regrets.  The good memories warm you and lift your spirits most of the time, but they can also leave an ache inside on a lonely day.   The bad memories make you cringe or cry if you’re not quick enough to brush them away when they creep in at the corners of your mind.  But it’s the regrets that are most dangerous, at least for me.  I worry a lot about the things I got wrong as a parent even though there’s not a thing I can do about them now.  I drive myself crazy thinking about things I didn’t do but should have, things I did but shouldn’t have, and things I should have done differently or better. On a bad day, I can get myself pretty worked up over stuff like this, but here’s what I try to remember in my saner moments: I always did the best I could.  And I remind myself that all my efforts would never have been enough on their own anyway.  It’s like the story of the loaves and fishes from the Bible: on its own, the boy’s lunch was nowhere close to being enough, but in Jesus’s hands, it fed thousands.  The boy gave all he had, and God did the rest.  So I continue to trust and pray that God will take the loaves and fishes of my parenting and use them to work miracles in the lives of my children, despite the mistakes I made and the missteps I took along the way.

Wilbur

Wilbur arrived one spring day when Ben was about eighteen months old. An eccentric aunt had put him in a big cardboard box and used up a big chunk of her meager means to mail him to her first grandnephew.  Ben fell in love with him immediately. He drank his bottle leaning up against Wilbur; he sat in Wilbur's lap and read books to himself.  He chose to be Wilbur for Halloween the following year.  Since Wilbur was so big, he didn't often go places with us physically, but he was always with us in spirit.  When we grocery-shopped, Ben would call out, "Ra-a-a-w fish.  Wilbur wants ra-a-a-w fish" when we passed the seafood section.  When we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa in Pennsylvania, and it started to storm, Ben would frown and say, "Wilbur hates thunderstorms." Wilbur quickly became more than a favorite stuffed animal, he was one of the family.  So when most of the other stuffed animals got packed up and moved to the attic when Ben got older, Wilbur stayed happily in the corner of the room.  He tried to sneak along when Ben was packing for college but didn't make the cut.  Instead he waited patiently for Ben to return.  Ben's first apartment after graduation was very small, and there was no room for a big polar bear in Ben's tiny bedroom, so Wilbur stayed behind again.  But this week, Ben moved to a new place, a place of his own, a place with plenty of room for old friends. And once again, Wilbur is sitting happily in the corner of Ben's room.

Job Descriptions

When my kids were little, my role as a parent was clear.  It was up to me to love them, feed them, teach them, play with them, read to them, keep them clean, and keep them safe.  Now that they are young adults, my job description is less clear and my list of responsibilities is quite a bit shorter.  Some days this leaves me feeling a little obsolete.  I think this is one of the hardest things to adjust to when your children leave home.  Yet when I look back over the years since I left home myself, I’m reminded of how many times my parents and my husband’s parents were anything but obsolete.  For example, during our first winter in New Hampshire when we were reluctant to turn on our heat since we weren’t sure our minimum-wage jobs would cover the bill, my husband’s parents drove for nine hours to bring us a trunkful of firewood for the fireplace in our bedroom.  A few years later when our oldest child was our only child, he took a bite of soap while he was in the bathtub one day.  The soap left such a bad taste in his mouth he refused to eat or drink anything else, and almost before we knew it, he ended up in the hospital with dehydration.  My husband and I were sitting there by his hospital bed feeling lost and alone when we heard footsteps coming down the corridor: my dad's familiar shuffle accompanied by the click-click of my mom's Sunday heels.  My parents had driven up from Pennsylvania to take care of us while we took care of our son. Later on, both of our moms came to cook and clean and care for us when our other children were born and when we moved from one house to another and when I had surgery for thyroid cancer.  So I’m thinking maybe my job description now is this: show up when they need you.  This week, for me, it meant editing a May term paper via email for my daughter, providing phone support to my younger son who was in the midst of buying a used car on his own for the first time, and helping my older son assemble furniture and unload couches for his new apartment.  I’m not sure what it will mean in the future, but this I know: I want the job forever.

More Things I Keep Under My Bed

Although my dad had many health problems throughout his adult life, his death at age 70 came with little warning.  When he died, I learned that no matter how old you are, you’re never ready to lose a parent.  In the years since, I’ve learned that you never stop missing the parent you lost, and you never stop thinking of things you wish you could tell him.  At first, I saw him everywhere—in a stranger’s shuffle, in a colleague’s gray head, in the faces of my children.  I also talked about him to anyone who would listen.  And I wrote about him: poems, journal entries, stories.  Before we left town after his funeral, I took pictures of his room, especially his little office area: desk, chair, bookcase, file cabinet.  I also gathered up a few things of his to keep: one of the plaid short-sleeve shirts he always wore, the red chamois shirt he’d been wearing over Christmas, a New Testament that belonged to him and had his name scrawled inside in his distinctive handwriting, one of his pocket knives, a pair of black leather driving gloves he’d been wearing that still held the curve of his hands, a silver pen light he’d used for years.   I also took the contents of the file marked “Mindy” from his file cabinet; among other things, the manila folder held cards I’d made for him, postcards I’d sent from camp, notes I’d left for him or tucked into his suitcase, an index card with my various addresses written on it, and a green triangle made of poster board to which I’d taped ten silver half dollars and given to him as a Father’s Day gift once.  When I got back home, I put all of these things in a little flowered duffle bag, along with the sympathy cards I’d received, the obituary from the newspaper, and a poem I’d written and read at his funeral.  Every once in a while during that first year, I unzipped the bag just a little and breathed in the scent of my dad that still clung to those shirts.  In the years since then, I haven’t opened it at all—until today.  The bag was covered in dust, so I carefully took everything out and washed the bag.  I’ll tuck everything back inside as soon as the bag is dry, and I’ll put it back under my bed.  And for the rest of the night and the rest of my life, I’ll think of the dad I had and all the things he gave me that don’t fit in the little flowered bag: memories of playing blocks and four-square and push-the-button; strong, abiding faith in God; an uncompromising model of honesty and integrity, security that comes from knowing someone was always in my corner; and the strength that comes from knowing I was a well-loved child. And I'll do my best to pass these things along to my own kids.

Things I Keep in a Box Under My Bed

I have two old plastic snap cases under my bed.  One of them holds cast-off and never-used school supplies: a plastic protractor, spiral notebooks, page protectors, folders, erasers, and index cards.  For years it was the place the kids ransacked when they all of a sudden needed something for homework or for school the next day.  We all still rummage through it from time to time, so I suppose it will stay there awhile longer.  The other dusty snap case holds treasures.  In it are notes from the kids from over the years ("Mommy, I think I left my jeans at track!" "Dear tooth fairy, we lost my tooth and can’t find it . . . " "Hey there, Ma . . . just hoping you have a good week while we’re in FLA" "Mom, get me up at 5:45 or whenever you get up . . . I got work to do!").  It also holds pictures they drew, stories they wrote, tapes they made, and notebooks they kept.  There's a paper flower on a paper stem, one of the first things my oldest son ever made me and a little spray of fake flowers, the first present he ever bought me.  The box also houses three composition notebooks, one for each of my kids.  I started writing letters to them in 1991.  At first I wrote several times a year; later on I wrote less frequently, often around their birthdays.  The last entries are from 2009.  In each entry, I tried to capture who they were at that moment—I recorded things they said, things they did, favorite foods and games and TV shows.  My original plan was to give the notebooks to them when they left for college, but the timing didn't seem quite right.  Then I thought I might give them to them when they graduated from college, but I didn’t do that either.  I can’t quite decide just when they will be most ready to read them.  When they turn 30?  When they have kids of their own?  I guess when the time is right, I'll know it.  For now, they’ll stay in the box I keep under my bed.