The case of the wooden pants

When we first got our new fireplace -- a fieldstone beauty that is two-sided and can be enjoyed both from the living room and the dining room -- we had a hard time figuring out how to enjoy a fire without filling the house with smoke.  We actually installed heat upstairs (thank heavens, what were we thinking that we could live without it, especially with this nutty weather we are having) because we read that the cold air messed things up.  That didn't work.

Then we would crack a window, but that didn't do the trick either.  Someone mentioned that we needed a fan to blow somewhere, and Peter put one in the woodbox and I have no idea where it blew, but every time you wanted a fire you had to make sure the heat was on upstairs, a window was cracked and the fan was on.  None of this actually kept smoke from pouring out into the house, but it is the act of DOING something to correct a problem that keeps you going.  I guess.

Eventually the amount of smoke that poured into the room abated ... or maybe we got used to it ... I don't know, but I don't remember when we stopped all the shenanigans that preceded a fire, but now we just light fires, end of process.  (And very often it gets smokey, or smells smokey.  I guess we are truly used to it.)

Okay, that was a tangent -- I began this with the intent of discussing the log pants.  When we first got our fireplace ... Peter was putting logs on the fire when he held one up and said, "hey, doesn't this look like a pair of pants?"  Indeed it did, and we commented that we should have our friend Liz paint a zipper on it, maybe some other features, and so he leaned it against the stones, and that is where it has been ... well, no less than forever!  We never adorned it with telltale hints to make it look more like pants, because to us they just were a pair of log pants.  Never to be burned.  Apparently.

This past week Maddie was obsessed with fires, and kept one burning continuously until she used up the piles of wood in the garage.  Peter and I consider fire events -- we have them frequently, but we pull up chairs in front of the hearth, very often pop a bottle of champagne or other spirits -- but if we light one, it is our focus.  Having one so continuously was nice, but like I said, it used up a lot of wood!  So the other day Maddie eyed the pants, even took it in her grasp, and I said in horror, what are you doing?  You can't burn the pants!  They are older than you are!  They have been there forever!

And last night, Peter lit a fire, and we were sitting there, when he jumped up and announced that he was going to burn the pants.  Huh?  What was the sudden urge to burn up an iconic part of our family?  Was it because I did away with Christmas?  Now the pants?  What next!

This morning, while chatting with the kids (text, gmail chat, facebook chat) Maddie asked whether we had a fire last night, and I said yes, and told her that dad wanted to burn the pants.  Charlie's immediate response was YOU CAN'T BURN THE PANTS!  But Maddie understood, she is aware of the wood shortage!  But it got me to thinking, why not burn the pants?

In truth, they aren't that attractive, but what is more amazing to me is how long they have maintained permanent residence on a rather focal point of the living room!  They almost perished years and years ago when my sister's brother-in-law just assumed it was there to be burned, but we all shouted noooooo, and he looked at us all as though we were crazy, but he found another less treasured piece of wood to burn instead!  Why do we hold on to things so long?  But what strikes me even more is we never had a conversation beyond "hey, doesn't this look like a pair of pants?" as to whether we would invite the inanimate object to share our lives.  It just happened.

I think the pants should go -- not because they aren't kind of cool (I just love how they look as though they are sashaying ... swing the hips baby) but because the universe seems to be speaking.  A piece of wood that has gone untouched for 12, 15 years (maybe longer) that suddenly is being targeted as firewood in two consecutive days speaks to me that it is time.  It's time to let go of all of the things we hold on to without even knowing it.  That piece of wood hasn't been in my consciousness for years, and now suddenly it's all I see when I gaze into the flickering fire.  It is now trespassing in my cluttered brain.  One toss into the hot coals and it will be no longer.

And yet ... Charlie doesn't want the pants to be burned.  Should we have a family pants burning party?  Should they go with much pomp and circumstance, or should they fall quietly into the smoke and disappear?  Maybe the time to rid the world of the wooden pants isn't now -- when they have been brought back into focus -- when suddenly the thought of no longer having the pants adorn the hearth seems wrong, some how.

I don't know -- the pants do not HAVE to go -- but they have made me think about all of those things that just sneak into your life and take up residence and don't make a peep so you won't notice ... but when you do, you ask yourself, do I really need you?

Opting out of Christmas and going to Hawaii instead!

 

So this is just one of hundreds of amazing pictures we took while we were in Hawaii -- for almost  a month, which is just not long enough, no matter how that sounds!  This is how far we were from the beach in Maui.  Heaven.

But back to Christmas, because it had such little impact on us all, that I really think it must be dissected a bit!  Now of course, we didn't forego presents and all of the fanfare with nothing in its place.  No, we traveled 6,000 miles away and traded snow and Christmas trees for sunshine and beaches.  I'd do it again, and again, and again!  

Every year I start my Christmas shopping early in order to do it all online and avoid having to pay shipping charges to get it on time.  I am generally done with it about two weeks before Christmas, and then go into planning menus and the like.  The house is decorated by mid-Christmas in time for the book club Christmas party I traditionally have ... which is another big chunk of planning and plotting.  I didn't have to do any of that.

It was lovely.

The one thing I highly dislike about Christmas is the feeling/need to buy presents that no one really needs.  My kids have a LOT ... and trying to get them things that are meaningful and useful is no easy task.  I hate buying things that will never get used, and the other thing is that while I am shopping I tend to buy things for myself as well!  (Not that I didn't do that for this trip!)

When we decided to go to Hawaii over the holidays, I envisioned doing stockings and somehow making that work (I could barely shut my suitcase as it was) but then we all kind of agreed that we would do nothing.  Peter was the one that felt we should do SOMETHING.  And we did!  We had mimosas for breakfast and we toasted to Christmas.  Merry Christmas.  And then we went to the beach.

It was lovely.

And I never want to do Christmas the way we've done it the past 27-plus years again!  It is just a day, and to completely get rid of the stress of making that one day matter is amazing.  It is liberating and exhilarating all at the same time!  I don't care if everyone wants to buy one present for each other, or I don't care if we eat chinese food or pizza, in fact, what I do care about is not taking that on, solely, myself, ever again!  The biggest Christmas present you can give yourself is to ... opt out of Christmas!  And if we do happen to stay here (I am now a HUGE advocate of get the hell out of dodge for Christmas!) I will happily decorate the house, because I truly enjoy that ... but you know, that's about it.  I am not battling the grocery stores days before to get the perfect roast ... or making sure each kid has the exact same amount of presents ... I'm just not.  I have been liberated from Christmas past ... and it should be what it was while we were in Hawaii.  A few mimosas, lounging around all morning, and then off to do something fun!  Hanging with family should be present enough.

Aloha.

Caring

I remember when I was a kid and my parent's were watching the show, 60 Minutes.  I don't remember exactly what they were reporting on, as in which plant or where it was, but it drew me in (the ticking of that stop watch to this day gets to me).  As I watched about something horrible, something so incredibly mind-blowing (well at least to a child) it had something to do with nuclear power, and how this specific thing that a certain plant was doing was going to make people sick, in fact, it already had, and that nothing had been done to stop it,  I was blown away.  And then I thought, well, phew, at least now that is out in the open, it can be fixed and all will be well.

I was amazed that there was no further reporting on it, and that was a time well before google, and local newspapers didn't carry all that much in the way of national news, so I was always left with this nagging wonder.  What happened?  Did anyone follow up?  Clearly something SO AWFUL and now something that had been brought into the light, would end.

It was a disconcerting feeling, and to channel all of that angst, I began to chronicle certain news events that I found fascinating.  The impeachment of Richard Nixon -- Watergate -- I was so blown away by that, I can't even tell you.  I have scrap books filled with clippings, pictures torn out of Time and Newsweek Magazines, even big glossy photos from Life magazine ... I was obsessed, and read everything I could about it, listened to the evening news with a passion, and queried any adults I thought might be able to answer my questions.  I learned at a very young age that most people don't care.  They don't care about these monumental events, things that affect them because the President of the United States is kind of a big deal, right?  I was foreign to the concept of being sarcastic and cynical, but I suspect I cultivated those in spades by discovering that I lived in a world of people who really didn't care about stuff I personally felt that they should care about.

If I brought up nuclear power, there would be some that would say so what, we're going to have to do something.  (Okay, but did they happen to catch that segment on 60 Minutes where people were DYING???)  There were some who agreed that yes, it was a scary thing, but what were you going to do?  I followed the Clamshell Alliance when the nuclear power plant that now exists on the seacoast of New Hampshire had yet to be built, and I was frightened that when people talked about the evacuation routes that they had established would be parking lots and everyone would die, I wondered, really?  No one is going to stop this?

To this day, I read the news, I am up-to-date on current events (not bullshit, like sports figures that kill people or depressed mothers who kill their children or what particular housewife of whatever city is doing to whom or marrying whom.)  No, I have always read the news, and to this day, I find it very, very scary.  And you can't really talk to anyone about it, first because for the most part, people are more interested in all the stuff in parenthesis, but secondly because I don't think anything is reported with any integrity, so it all just leaves me wondering.  In addition, there are SO many outlets where you can read about things, it is borderline overwhelming, and my obsessive self can spend hours trying to put together snippets of information from various sources to try to piece together a coherent understanding of what may or may not be taking place.  Diane Sawyer is a huge disappointment to me, and I think partially the reason that ABC trains all of their anchors through Good Morning America these days is because they want them to be familiar and comfortable with reporting bullshit news.  They don't want real newspeople -- certainly not someone who questions authority and goes for the story regardless.  No, the only reason Diane Sawyer and any of the network news anchors have jobs is because they do what they are told.  That isn't reporting, it is faction-based news reciting.

I don't watch any of that.

Instead of just saying I am against war and I don't think that the U.S. should bomb the hell out of Syria, I am really trying to grasp the subtle reasons why it should (or shouldn't) take place.  Why don't we have access to the "classified" information that would prove that chemical attacks have taken place?  Obama is slated to be on all of the major news networks, but again, I won't be watching those, so I find it very confusing.  According to an AP report,  in the U.S., the case for military action has evoked comparisons to false data used by the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  That concerns me big time, and seeking out possible "proof" of these attacks on youtube.com only bewilders me.  I found so many compelling videos on the Boston bombing that disproved pretty much the entire story that was being fed through mainstream media outlets, and once again, no one cares, and no one wants to listen.

Yeah. It's hard to be me!  And I can be wrong, I am sure, in some (I won't say many!) instances, but I will never believe that, mostly because I research and poke around and question EVERYTHING I have been told, and am always, always, always amazed that very few other people (that I know, I am certainly not saying the entire population) do not.

Which really brings me to the reason for this post, and it's the FACT that the NSA has been spying on us through illegal means, and no one seems to care.  NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE.  I don't get this.  Are there other little girls watching the news and thinking OH MY GOD?  I sure as hell hope so.  I sure as hell hope that there are enough people out there just as horrified as I am that we are being spied on my our own government and that our own government has its own liberties in place via the Patriot Act to do whatever the hell they want with us, whenever the hell they want.  There is a whole new generation being brought up to obey, and they are being fed genetically engineered food that makes them lazy and easy to manage.

Even as I write this, and I don't use keywords so that I don't get recognized right off the bat, I wonder why I live in fear of a technological BIG BROTHER while so few others think it's okay.  Or don't care.  Or whatever.  There are no cries of a miscarriage of justice ringing across the land, because it all just seems so ... so normal?  Same thing with the bogus facts that were engineered to shut down the city of Boston under martial law ... no one really cares.  They were put in harm's way, and everyone felt much better having the goverment's army take over their city.  I tell you right now, if I had been in that neighborhood, I would NOT have stayed behind closed doors, I would NOT have let anyone in to my home with a huge gun without a warrant, and it is quite possible that to this very day I would be rotting in some jail cell under the auspices of the Patriot Act, and Diane Sawyer would not report on it because she would be told that under no circumstances if she wanted to keep her job, should she ever utter the words Lisa Madden.

These are not paranoid or fantasy statements ... how often do you read about Jack Carter in the news?  How often did Diane Sawyer visit his jail cell?  Who is he?  He made a post on Facebook ...

“Someone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,’” he called, “to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts.’”

According to Carter, he ended the quip with “LOL” and “JK”— Internet shorthand for “laugh out loud” and “just kidding,” respectively. A witness to the conversation in Canada became worried nonetheless and alerted the authorities, who then arrested Carter and charged him with making a terroristic threat.  For the full story, please read this:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/justin-carter-criminalizing-free-speech-facebook-terrorism-in-texas/5342614

So I'm not really kidding.  You can go to jail for being a stupid kid and making a ridiculous remark.  I hesitate to write this, and hopefully no one reading this blog will report me, but when I was in Kindergarten at a school run by nuns, I was sent to the bathroom (this was the school jail) for opening a drawer that I was told not to open.  Joining me in jail were several other boys, not really sure what their crimes were, but while in there we emptied the toilet paper dispensers of every scrap of toilet paper and flushed it down the toilet, and we left the water running (hoping that it would run out at some point and the school would have to close) and we also devised ways of how we would kill the nuns.  One of my suggestions was that I would get Bat Man's car, and when the class went out for it's daily walk up the hill to some statue of something I never did understand what it was, I would "accidentally" hit the nun in the Batman Car.

If you google Jack Carter's name, you get next to nothing.  Because a kid going to jail for making a remark on Facebook isn't really that big of a deal, right?  The best thing to do is to tell your kids not to make such remarks on Facebook or anywhere else, and they will be fine.  That entire mentality is chilling beyond compare.  This is a scary world we live in, and it's only going to get worse.  Much, much worse.

This blog will one hundred million percent be catalogued in one of the multitude of data centers that have been built by taxpayer dollars.  There is no shred of anything out there that isn't sifted through, and if you write things against the state, then you sure as hell are probably assigned to a specific person who monitors your every move.  All of this, one hundred percent illegal, and all of it not being corrected by a population who ... oh, whatever.

This is why I don't write these posts ... because it is just a huge waste of time and all it does is stack the decks against my getting through this lifetime without a bulging folder on all of my thoughts, opinions and possible arrest comments.  It was actually prompted by the show, The Newsroom, which is fabulous in that it is about exactly what I am talking about ... not reporting bullshit, but reporting actual news, and how that is really almost impossible in this day and age.

I thought for a while there that the way I was going to handle all of it was to shut up, grow my own food, tend my own chickens, live far away from any metropolitan city (that will be swarming with soldiers and police) and pretend none of it was really happening.

I don't think that is in my DNA.  That little girl is really screaming now, she's been biting her tongue for a long, long time, but now is the time to figure out how to get people to care.  There has to be a way.  There just has to.

The Empty Nest

First off, the best way to delay the consideration of what an empty nest means is to go on vacation once you drop off your child at college!  I highly recommend this, because much as a honeymoon is an opportunity to chill after many weeks of stressful anticipation of the big event, a get-away provides the same venue -- different scenery, different routine, etc.  But, you do have to go home again!

The way I seem to be handling this almighty event is by being exhausted.  I have not cried, I do not feel morose, I do not miss him desperately, but I am bone tired, no matter how much sleep I get.  this morning, after a good 12 hours of sleep, I realized I was still riddled with exhaustion, which makes no sense because while we were away we got loads of sleep and hiked and had a great time ... unless of course you realize that no matter what type of super woman you think you are, you are STILL going to feel it in one form or another!

So I surrender, and am owning it, feeling it, trying it all on for size.  Maddie is still here, but she just finished work after a long summer of very little time off, so she is decompressing via a puzzle.  The weather is perfect ... gray and intermittent rain.  Perfect, you might ask?!!  Yeah, it just feels right.  I am not in the mood for a bright, sunshiny day that makes me feel as though I need to be doing something other than what I am doing.  I am honoring the transition, if you will.  Understanding that my body is aching and tired because it has concluded an amazing journey, and now it seeks rest.  Or maybe just affirmation, a pat on the back, if you will, for a job well done.  I don't know ... my outlet, which is writing, is where I turn, and here I am.  Just spitting out words and seeing what sentences they form!

Charlie is on Regimental Preparatory Training, which is yet another layer of the onion, in terms of one, you drop off your kid at school, that is big, you wave goodbye, and then you text and call.  But in this case, all forms of communication (cell phones, laptops) were put into storage as of Sunday evening, and he is radio silent until next Sunday, when his RPT is celebrated with a jump off the ship.  When you have a child who is resistant to authority (a DNA trait apparently, because I have that in spades) and who bristles at first, then grows angrier by the moment when someone tells him to DO something, it is a bit nerve wracking thinking of him being in this position for a solid week.  And then the ensuing six weeks are more of the same, though we will be able to contact him, and vice versa.  He didn't go into this blind; he knew what was in store for him, and he will come out of it with a newfound sense of confidence, of this I have no doubt.

I know how to let go, and I want to.  I foresee his future to be amazing.  He will travel the world, he will make amazing connections and friends, and I am happy for him.  But I am, alas, far more human than I thought I was, or at the very least mature enough to recognize that we don't get through anything without a little pain if we are actually listening.  And that is what I am doing ... I am listening to my heart, which is heavy, but my mind jumps from the gaping holes of no children around, to when they will be around.  I jumped right into planning our Hawaii trip yesterday, as soon as we got home, because that is a concrete placeholder of pure family.  A trip like nothing we have ever done before, over Christmas, in a tropical and beautiful setting.

As I sat on the balcony at the Bar Harbor Inn overlooking the ocean the past few days, there was a path that meandered the rocky shore right below me.  All day long people would walk by, it was a cornucopia of different groups -- parents and young children, parents and slightly older children, parents with babies strapped to them, parents with teenagers, families with grandparents, couples of all ages, teenagers, old people ... all of humankind walked by and it felt, at times, like a trip through Vacation's Past.  There we were, walking by, an older daughter, walking behind her younger siblings, vastly different in age, yet she somehow found joy in them.  There we were, just two children, the oldest already gone ... and so on.  I reflected on each stage, I remembered how hard it was to vacation with small children, the logistics, the equipment, the exhaustion.  Maybe that is what I am experiencing!  All that I held in all of those years is leaking out, bit by bit, shedding itself from my psyche ... at last, free to go jump on someone else! 

I have no desire to go back, but my perspective has changed in that as I watched families go by with the grandparents in tow, I thought, yeah, that will be fun!  And there is a good chance that I will have the opportunity to see what type of grandparent I will be in my 50's and then again in my 60s, as there is such a span between Hallie and Charlie (Maddie says she doesn't want kids.  I tell her I used to say the same thing!) So I do look forward to a future with small children, but on a different playing field. And I look forward to seeing what type of parents my own kids become, and also, how will they treat their parents as we grow older?  I keep telling them, as I have just spent a summer tending parents in the true spirit of the sandwich generation, that I am MODELING for them!

Let's hope they were watching!

Early summer ruminations

As I sit here on the porch of the cottage, draped not in sweat as I have been for the past weeks, due to the humidity, but sheer gratitude for its absence, I watched a woman drive by in her great big Suburban, brushing hair out of her face, looking in her rear view mirror at the kids in the back seat and saying something to them, and I thought, that is me.

Or was me, but I felt that part of me drive by with her -- that harried woman on "vacation," with her children, husband to join at a later date or a weekend, and I ask myself, why did I bother?  I truly don't know, perhaps we women are just hopeful that changing geography, adding a lake (or in my case an ocean) to the mix will some how change the fact that we are in charge of these willful, energetic, non-stopping, chattering small humans.  But of course it does not!

I remember one year on Martha's Vineyard, Hallie was nine or ten, Charlie was three I guess, Maddie five, and we were staying at this crazy hotel in Vineyard Haven, right on the beach.  The beach being the harbor of course, but it was easy for me not having to pack them into a car on a daily basis.  The hotel room was dark and uninviting, so we mostly spent our days on the beach.  Charlie, always a handful, downgraded day by day, until he was launching into full blown temper tantrums throughout the day.  The Suburban was packed to the gills for the house that we were renting later in the week, and I had it shoe-horned into a parking space in the small lot, so just packing them into the car and driving was more or less out of the question.  We just had to deal.  And then it started to rain.  And rain.  And rain.  Now the four of us were crammed into this small, dark (and dank at this point) room, and I was pretty much at the end of my rope.  We were going to go out to dinner, but then Charlie went into overdrive, and through the maze of Lego's being hurled around the room, I lost it.  I screamed and yelled and cried and wished that I was anywhere else but there.

Hallie took over, somehow placated the tyrant toddler, and then walked across the street to a pizza place and carried back a big box of dinner.  We survived that night, as we did many after, but the woman in the Suburban triggered that memory hard for me!

In addition, as I was laying in bed this morning with the cottage windows open, I could hear children screaming out on the public dock.  I checked my watch and smiled, remembering many mornings when I had to get up super early with small kids and sort of follow behind them in a semi-daze from drinking far too many cocktails the night before to drown out the sorrows of a day with small children, and as I lay there reading my book, I thought, ahhhhh, I am so glad that isn't me!

And I recalled when we were staying at the community of gingerbread houses in Oak Bluffs on the Vineyard, where houses were much like here on Blodgetts Landing, only feet apart, and Maddie and Charlie would wake up at the crack of dawn, get on their bikes, and ride around the circle.  Laying in my small bed in the teeny tiny house, I would hear their voices the entire loop, and then cringe when Maddie would do something to get Charlie to yell or cry.  I would go down and stop them, tell them to come inside and have breakfast, do anything I could to keep them somewhat quiet, and feel the stress just dripping off me in waves.  Ahhh, vacation.   That year the owner of the cottage called me and yelled at me, literally, saying that he had received phone calls from other cottage owners saying that my kids were being loud.  I see.  There was a grumpy old man in the Pepto Bismol cottage (the one in the brochure that the tour groups would stand and gape at on a daily basis) who clearly hated renters.  Both of the kids said that he yelled at them every time they went by. Coming from a small community myself, I was somewhat sickened by their sense of entitlement overall (many of the owners would ignore you when walking by), while renter's would happily greet you and their children played with mine.  So as I listened to those children early, early this morning, I was glad that my response was to just be glad it wasn't me, as opposed to following them back to whatever cottage they are renting and then calling the owner and telling them that the renter's children were loud. Good lord.  I will never understand people who immerse themselves in a sea of people, then get mad that those people breathe.

Right now there are two fathers with their sons on the public dock, fishing.  The dynamic is interesting, in that one father is all about taking pictures of his son, with the fishing pole, casting the line, reeling it in, and the other is clearly afraid of getting hooked by his son's pole while he casts, and keeps running away .  Interestingly enough, all this boy seems to want to do is cast!  He reels it in, the father helps him hold the pole behind his shoulder, then he runs, he casts, reels it in, and repeat.  The picture taking duo caught a rock bass, which initiated a long round of photos, with the fish on the pole, with the fish off the pole and the father holding the fish and taking a picture of it while the little boy screamed EWWW. Interspersed with the other set doing their casting, reeling, running away dance.  Quite fascinating.

I call it dock TV.

Perhaps I am innoculated from years of listening to small children yell, laugh, fight, scream, bang and crash, but community noise doesn't bother me.  With one exception.  There is an autistic boy who stands at the end of the dock and fishes, who makes this humming noise, which gets louder and louder and louder, and then abates a bit, then revs back up, and when he catches a fish, he gets very, very excited and screams and yells and jumps up and down.  That part doesn't bother me, but that humming noise makes me bonkers.  When he was little he used to stand close by where I was sitting, and push a boat in a circle, in the water, around and around accompanied by that humming noise.  For hours.   The good news is that he was never up for the entire summer, so it wasn't a constant.  The bad news is that at 29, he still does it, but the boat has been replaced by his fishing ritual. (The humming gets louder and louder when he reels in the line) and then re-starts after he casts and begins reeling.  I hyper-focus on it, I realize that, but like all of the triggers, the woman in the Suburban, small children yelling at dawn, it appears to be a part of my DNA to feel that way!

Hahaha, now the fathers are fishing and the two boys are sitting on the dock side by side, their legs swinging, completely oblivious to the fact that they are having quality father-son time!  And now the dynamic has totally switched.  The photo-taking duo had to return to cottage for potty break, and the other set were joined by wife and daughter.  Daughter wants to fish, little boy (who had zero interest 3 seconds ago) also wants to fish.  A little yelling, a little stomping by the boy, father running away when daughter casts, mother comforting boy.  Every action of that little boy is Charlie.  He may be all grown up now and headed to college, but his spirit lives on in every little boy to come.

Isn't turning fifty nifty!

May 28

 With the milestone of Charlie's graduation a distant memory (just kidding, it was a wonderful weekend of family, food, drink, talk, laughter, togetherness ... and a lot of rain!) now it is time to get to the business of turning 50.  When I turned 30 I was pregnant with Maddie, and well, turning 30 is the first big number because you WANT to turn 20, though really you want to turn 21, and there is some cultural yard stick that we have set up that turns the new decade numbers into Over The Hill, and all that stuff.  I was attending 30-year birthday parties where there were black balloons and Depends being given as gifts.  But that wasn't the 30th birthday party that I wanted!  I wanted a big party, I wanted to celebrate.   But I was hugely pregnant and really, in no mood.  At all.  So I said that 30 was just going to be passed by, but that was fine, because when I turned 40 it was going to be a HUGE deal.  Enormous.  Big.

And so it was.  A trip to Puerto Rico, a huge party complete with big tent and a band ... good times.  But I started the path to 50 right there and then ... and said that while 40 was all well and fine, 50 was going to be HUGE!  Not just a day, but an ENTIRE YEAR.  The turning-50th year was going to be a blow-out celebration from January 2013 to January 2014.

And so it has!  A trip to Sedona, one of my favorite places on the planet, was the kick-off trip in February, followed by a surprise gathering of close friends on the Cape in April, complete with Lisa requisites -- on the water and with a sunset!  In early May, a trip to Mexico and traipsing around the Mayan ruins -- all before my actual birthday.  Which is tomorrow.  And I have no plans, because really, the actual day is pretty trivial as I've clearly already embraced the concept.  To me, it happens to fall at a time in my life where I am completely ready for it.  I don't look at aging as losing something, but as gaining everything.  With each passing year I become the person I am meant to be ... and that could never be accomplished if I stayed a certain age, or within a time frame of my life that seemed especially worth holding on to.

There have been many stages of my life that have been challenging -- I am not alone in this, of course -- but I have steadfastly carried on, always knowing that things would get better, easier, more fulfilling, and with so much more peace.  And they have, and I am appreciative of all of the years behind me, for bringing me to all of the years ahead of me.  I feel poised for greatness, as I have always felt, but with the knowledge that I am not any more special than anyone else.  And what a relief that is!  All those years wondering why this greatness wasn't manifesting itself ... and being frustrated by that, but having faith that it would happen.

It's a process, to have that AHA moment, as Oprah would say, when you finally realize that the waiting for the greatness to happen is kind of a waste.  The greatness is what has already happened, and whatever that was --  it was your greatness, it was your life.  The cliche "living in the moment" means enjoy your life, stupid, because you ain't getting another one! 

I used to wake up in the morning wondering what I was going to do that would be meaningful.  This was important to me, at one time, because I wanted to lead a meaningful life.  As I rushed the kids to get them ready for school, as I threw some breakfast together so we could continue to rush to that magic moment in the day when I would know for sure that I had spent that day well, the hours were filled with so much, a general rushing that makes me wince now, but that I remember oh so very well.

It took me a lot of years to relax, and I know that I am fortunate to have the opportunity to have done so (and continue to do so!) because I have a husband who doesn't care to remind me on a regular basis that when I quit work (ten years? ago) it was only for THE SUMMER.  I filled those working hour holes with anything I could for probably at least five years, which is why, if you think that you HAVE to work, because you would go crazy "sitting" at home, you really should realize that you have to re-program yourself.  The one thing that I have never concerned myself with, was worrying about being bored.  I am never bored -- ever.  The one thing I love more than anything is freedom -- the freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want.  When I was a kid, I did not have the freedom that I craved because of school, which I hated more than anything.  In fact, the only time in my life that I have ever had headaches, was then.  Remove the problem ...

I loved to work, I loved my job, I loved how I worked at every job at the newspaper and I loved having kids.  But the combining of those two things was one hell of a loss of freedom!  That many years of no hours to call your own turns you into a bit of a thief -- for the only way to find the time to do something you love (for me it was writing) was to steal from someone else.  I shortchanged my kids, but I always felt that I made up for it in the times that I was relaxed from doing my own thing and would sing silly songs and be in a lighthearted, teasing mood.  Who knows, they are all great kids, I didn't damage them too much!

June 3

This is always such a busy time of year, and I left this blog as a draft with the intent of getting back to it that day.  Ahhh, but such a great example of what it is to be okay with such things ... so what if you don't finish something right there and then?  You can always do it later.  As someone who had to adhere to publishing deadlines, this is a sheer and total luxury, this laissez faire attitude.  I even actually learned that drop dead deadlines in publishing can be stretched, a little secret I stumbled upon far too late in my career, but probably just as well.  I am a born procrastinator.  Hence the reason my garden is still not planted.  Again, another example ... whatever.  It will get planted and it will grow.  Of this I am sure.

What I really wanted to write about was this morning.  We woke up at the cottage after a crazy evening last night, when the sky turned colors none of us had ever seen (green and the darkest, scariest black) and then we had a lot of wind and rain, and surrounding thunderstorms.  We didn't really seem to get a lot of thunder and lightening right over us, but it was pretty crazy.  We were on the dock, looking up at the little circle of blue sky and sunlight that was literally surrounded by storm clouds, all wearing wet bathing suits as it was deathly hot and muggy as it had been for days, and the only relief could be found by swimming, when the wind picked up.  And up ... and then the temperature just completely changed ... so startling and sudden that Peter remarked that it was like an evil presence had infiltrated our space.  We went from sweating to cold enough to have to change into sweatshirts!  Very wild.  But oh so welcome.  70 degrees never felt so good.

Oh yeah, back to this morning.  Oh how the mind wanders.  So it is Maddie's birthday this morning, and I was trying to decide what we could do to make it special, when Charlie came out to the porch excited that he had received notification that he had to build his schedule for school at Maine Maritime this fall.  Maddie told him that there was a way to do it that she had perfected, and she told him to get pen and paper.  For the next hour at least, I sat beside them and watched as they worked together to build his perfect schedule.  Maddie insisted that he have as few afternoon classes as could be engineered, and then she tried to have no morning classes on Monday, she told me to go to some website to see if there were any comments on professors to try to narrow down which classes to take in what time slots, and Charlie literally squealed in delight at some of his course names (extreme sea survival) while Maddie kept saying 8 classes was a lot, but he insisted he didn't care because they were going to be SO MUCH FUN!

After the perfect schedule was obtained, he tried to send it in, but he had to have lectures matched with certain labs, so that created a whole scheduling snafu and they had to go back to the drawing board.  At this point I decided to make breakfast, and Maddie had grown weary of the whole thing, and then Charlie was begging her to keep helping, telling her that she was so amazing at it, and I just had to laugh ... I love how they get along and I completely treasured every moment of the morning ... despite the fact that there were so many things to get done.  But this won't happen next year as Charlie won't even be home until sometime in July, and if I've learned anything, it's just to go with the flow.  How great is that?!

Like this post:  It began with the intent of talking about my birthday, and alas, that has come and gone!   The day that is, not the year!  (Friends surprised me at a local restaurant, it was great) and oh so many days ago I know that I wanted to impart that ultimately, I have no problem turning 50 and that all I want to do is celebrate it.  But I can't seem to stay on track.  It's as though I want to discuss how focused I am, and present and all of those buzz words now that I have reached a time in my life where that is all possible, but all I can think about is the fact that the garden needs to be planted, the cottage needs to be thoroughly cleaned before Peter's mom arrives and if I am going to juice, I should probably do it!  It is as though all the things I want to talk about, aren't even really true!  And yet ... they are, because while I am trying to be all Zen, I am really just trying to rush through this and get to the next thing ... and yet ... the KNOWING of this is what makes the difference, if that makes any sense.    I am zen, but I'm really not because I've never really been zen, and I've never met anyone who is, but ... wait a minute, what does zen even mean?  (Japanese school, of 12th-century Chinese origin, teaching that contemplation of one's essential nature to the exclusion of all else is the only way of achieving pure enlightenment).

EXACTLY!  That is exactly what I am not, but what I am totally doing (so therefore, I am always in a state of trying to reach zen.)  I guess.  Does it really matter?  Does age?  Okay, gotta go, Charlie is ready to help me in the garden.  And that truly does matter!

 

 

Graduation ...

Unrolling your "Santa Ball" but really watching to see what Maddie is getting!

I dropped Charlie off at school early this morning as he was heading out on his senior trip -- a whitewater rafting adventure in Maine.  Over the past two years I have not driven Charlie to school, because as soon as he got his license he was on his own.  But I thought it was very fitting that we should end his high school years as we began them .. in the car for our half hour trek to school.

You were so fashionable back in the day!

As I drove there and back, I realized it seemed utterly incomprehensible that I drove him to school, every day, back and forth both morning and night, for two and a half years.  Somehow in the last few years it has become such a distant memory that it feels as though it never happened.

My children, they can walk on water!

It is interesting that all three of my children are photographers!

In fact, all of it, the nine years of sheer and torturous hell we went through until he finally ended up at a school where he at last flourished, doesn't seem real.  I can still vividly recall his toxic fifth grade teacher who gave me a pit in my stomach the size of Montana the day I went into the classroom with Charlie to get homework as he had stayed home sick, and she talked about him like he was that nasty piece of chewing gum that someone sticks on the underside of the desk, seeming to think that I would agree with her that he did EVERYTHING wrong, and was just impossible, while I watched him wince at her every word.  That was my last day in that school, as it was Charlie's.  While the teacher carried on about his every negative quality, I quietly went through his desk and cubby and gathered all of his personal items, then took his hand and dragged him out of there, and straight to the office, my face red with pure anger and disbelief that any child would be treated so horrifically, and told the principal why Charlie was no longer able to attend school under the tutelage of such pure, hot hate.

Charlie captained boats from a very young age, and decided to turn it into a career when a Newbury policeman said he was the best "docker" he had ever seen.  Positive feedback is an amazing thing.  It can be life changing.

Those five years he attended public school needed to be undone in the next two years, and we threw massive amounts of money at the cause, looking for any solutions, while all the while he just wanted to go back to school with his friends.  I made a terrible error and let him return to the same school system that had abused him (I don't use that word lightly either, that is exactly what happened) and he eked through 7th and 8th grade and ran into yet another toxic teacher (or maybe there were two, I don't remember) who was always more than happy to give me a long list of her grievances about Charlie but never had a solution up her sleeve, ever.  When he didn't get into Proctor (because of toxic teachers?) we thought that was the end of the world, but boy were we wrong.  I'd already begun to see the changes the school had undergone under a new headmaster and wasn't happy during Maddie's last two years, so it was nice of the universe to intervene and put up a roadblock towards that mistake!

Charlie was my travel buddy between the south and the north every spring. Here we are at Monticello.

Charlie did well at Tilton, and during his freshman year there were under 20 kids in the class, so there was no getting lost in the crowd!  Don't get me wrong, the years were not without mishap -- though to be perfectly honest they weren't that serious, usually just comments about immaturity and peer issues -- and we were thrilled from year one that his grades were consistent, his teachers spoke highly of him and the only negative thing that was ever said was that he could try harder, or live up to his potential.  All of his teachers saw the smart kid that he was, but I don't think one of them ever succeeded in getting him to go the extra mile!  But from where I sat, the extra mile didn't need to be taken if the kid was happy, doing well in school, and was happy!  You live with an unhappy child who struggles with school ... you learn to stop caring about things like potential when there could have been potentially any number of OTHER outcomes.

Here is the boat you will be living on in the fall!

Today I dropped off a mature, confident and happy young man, who was joking with his other senior peers as they walked into the building holding their sleeping bags and backpacks, ready for their last adventure together.  He graduates on Saturday, and then in the fall he goes off to Maine Maritime Academy, where he will fulfill his most recent dream of being a ship captain.

Charlie receives a plus-five award at Tilton.

 I know that people say that it goes so fast ... and it does ... but it also goes slow.  There are countless nights of sleep lost over this child, days I wanted to just give up and hand him over to someone else!  But he repaid me in spades by being a "good" kid in high school, and there is a lot to be said for that.  I've never had to worry about him with drinking and driving or doing drugs, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for that, because I am not sure I could have taken it!  His allotment of angst was used up in the earlier years, and truly, I've forgotten most of it, unless, like today, I think back and realize it's been a long, slow road!  And yet, like I said, it seems impossible that I ever drove back and forth to Tilton two times a day, and yet I did, and I did everything else that I did to get that kid to where he is today ... so we both graduate on Saturday!  He from high school, and me from active parenting.

For me it has been 27 years, over half my life with children in my house with their wants and needs (and yes, I know I ignored you all plenty sitting at my computer writing for days on end, but still, I am sure I fed you more often than not!) and while this big old house will be empty, I know without a doubt that he is ready, the last to fly the nest, and of course, the best (sorry Maddie, that one is for you!)  But all kidding aside, Hallie, Maddie and Charlie, you are the three accomplishments I look upon with pride and amazement ... three incredible individuals, with your own talents and desires, all of you confident and strong, hard working and compassionate.  I am immensely proud to be your mother!

Little chicks are flying the coop!