Giving Thanks

A few weeks after I posted “The Sweet Spot” on my blog,  a woman named Heather posted a comment. She had a question, she said. Could I please contact her?  I’ll admit I was pleased-- someone other than my friends and family was actually reading my blog! When I received an email back from her, it was a little bit of a disappointment, since it was immediately clear that she may not even have read my blog. She was on a mission, and she was enlisting any blogger she could find to spread the word.

Heather is an eight-year survivor of mesothelioma, a rare cancer caused by asbestos exposure. She received her diagnosis in the month of November, just a few months after the birth of her daughter. She was told she had fifteen months to live. Now, Heather is one of the few long-term survivors of this deadly cancer, and every November she pays tribute to her recovery by acknowledging something in her life that she is thankful for every day throughout the month. This year she’s encouraging other bloggers to write about something they’re thankful for, in order to help her spread her message of gratitude and hope

I wasn’t sure I was going to participate. I’m technically not even blogging anymore; why make an exception for someone I don’t know? It seemed like a nice idea, of course. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, why not express some gratitude? Still, nothing was pulling me towards the keyboard or making me sneak downstairs to hide out with the laptop.

Honestly, the last couple of weeks I have not feel grateful. Mostly, I have felt annoyed and grouchy, punctuated by frequent moments of rage. The girls have entered what Don calls the “Threatening Threes,” that notorious year when our three-year-olds threaten to drive us to the brink, and we in turn must constantly stop ourselves from threatening to throttle them. Dee Dee, having pretty much maxed out her measure of defiance and destruction while still in her twos, is really not so bad. She still makes a mess out of anything she can, although not her own feces anymore, and that is indeed something to be thankful for. She also provokes her sister mercilessly and listens about as well as our obdurate hound dog, Howie-- that is, not at all. Still, she is generally cheerful and enthusiastic, and can mostly be persuaded out of total obstinacy by the threat of a book not being read.

Sylvia, on the other hand, is driving me batty. Oh, she is still so sweet, so loving. The other day she climbed into bed with us at 5:30 in the morning. In the dark, I feel her soft little hands find my face. 
“Mamma, I like you. I love you!” she says, over and over again. I am still half-asleep, and the half that is now awake is not very pleased about it. Still, it’s hard not to respond to something like that. 

“I love you, too,” I mutter into the pillow. 

A few moments of silence. Maybe she went back to sleep? I am now completely awake. After all, it is very important that my brain be wholly alert in order to wonder if she is asleep. If she has fallen asleep, maybe she won’t be so tired and grouchy later. But if she’s asleep, the alarm will wake her! Drat, I should have put her back to bed immediately. But then she would have woken up Dee Dee... Can she possibly be asleep? Can I move my arm without waking her? 

“Mamma, I like you. I love you,” she says again, softly stroking my face. “In the morning, we’re going to have cereal!” 

And so it went until the alarm finally went off at six, when I gave up and staggered into the kitchen to make tea and pour cereal.

Yes, Sylvia is very sweet. She is also infuriatingly whiny, teary, clingy, and needy. Not to mention violent. She gets this look of total fury on her face and comes after you. “Mom, Sylvia just hit me/pushed me/pulled my hair!” It’s sometimes hard not to laugh, to see the violent rage erupting from such a cute little cherub of love. But then, of course, comes the requisite time-out, and the rivers of tears, and the wailing that goes on and on and shreds the last faint remnants of my nerves.

And what privileged tears they are! Tears because I won’t get her juice, or she can’t have a piece of gum, or it’s time to turn off Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Tears because I tried to help her pull her pants down to use the potty or moved her cup a fraction of an inch to keep it on the table. There is nothing in her little life to be truly unhappy about, and yet she cries and cries and cries.
"What are you even crying about?” I ask her, near tears myself. “Stop crying!” This, of course, does not help.

Probably it is worse because I was--okay, am-- a crier myself. In my sister’s old bedroom at my parents’ house there is a wardrobe with mirrored doors that go almost to the floor, in which I had the perfect vantage point to observe myself cry. The sight of how miserable I looked was more than enough to renew my waning sobs and bring on fresh tears. Oh, poor me, I thought, my face distorted with grief. Why did no one come? Did no one care? Oh, how sad I look! Boo hoo hoo hoo. Now I am the hardhearted parent who drags my wailing daughter to her room where, gratefully, there is at least no mirror.

There is nothing like having young children to make you live in the moment, since, so often, a moment is all you get. The other morning, Dee Dee and Sylvia were sitting together in the armchair by the fire, a Curious George book open on their laps. Dee Dee was reading to her sister, prompting her with reading strategies. “Sylvia, now you say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen.’”

“I wonder what’s going to happen.”

Awww, Don and I whispered to each other. Look how cute. Don got out the camera. Within minutes, the book was splayed on the floor, and I was pulling Dee Dee’s hair out of Sylvia’s clenched fists and dragging her-- crying again-- to her room.

That evening after dinner, Dee Dee and Clayton went to play in the basement. Loud, mostly happy noises, along with the occasional crash, came up the stairs. We chose not to investigate. Soon, however, here they were again.

“Come see the pirate ship we made!” Clayton said excitedly.

“Come see the pirate ship we made!” Dee Dee echoed.

They trotted down the stairs with their identical gates, identical haircuts. I steeled myself for what havoc the making of the pirate ship had wrecked. But it was not too bad. They’d just arranged the pillows from the sofa on the floor in a very rough approximation of the shape of a ship. They immediately took their positions, clearly bursting with pride. Don and I stood side by side, admiring the heap of pillows on which our two children were now perched.

I remember my father once talking to me about the importance of choosing a partner with whom one shared interests. You could fall in love without it, sure, but it was shared experiences that would keep the passion alive. I remember thinking of my father’s words once early in my relationship with Don, while we rested on a rock during a mountain bike ride, taking in the view. I loved this, Don loved this, and doing it together, I loved Don more. In that moment, I got what my dad had been trying to tell me: these experiences would sustain us, the love we shared for things outside of ourselves feeding our love for each other.

Before we had kids, Don and I used to have lots of those moments: long bike rides and road races, backpacking trips and foreign travel, Saturday nights dancing to Sons of Ralph at Jack of the Wood. Now, like most parents I know with young kids and passions of their own, we mostly tag-team. I go biking in the morning, so he can go in the afternoon. I get up with the kids so he can sleep in, but then I head out to write before he even gets his coffee made.

But as we stood together in the frigid basement office, admiring the pirate ship made of pillows, I felt the same all-encompassing love as I had on that bike ride so many years ago. Just moments before I had been irritable with the chaos and sheer volume around the dinner table. Now I felt a surge of love for my kids-- for their imagination and enthusiasm and love for each other-- and I loved Don more because I knew he was feeling it, too.

So what am I thankful for? It’s too easy, too cliche perhaps, to say my family, although of course that is blaringly true. But I’m also thankful for small moments like those, moments that elevate me above the everyday tasks and frustrations of parenthood and allow my love and joy to be writ large on the quotidian canvas of my life.

I finally decided to heed Heather’s suggestion and write a blog post about gratitude last Saturday, as we left the annual holiday parade. The kids were cold and tired, and the van was a long uphill slog away. I’d start walking with the kids, we agreed, and Don would go and get the car. As soon as Don was out of sight, however, I realized that the street on which we had agreed to meet was still closed to traffic. I tried calling his cell phone to revise our plan, but it went to voicemail again and again.

We couldn’t continue the way we were headed, but I felt hesitant about steering the troops up an alternate street before I’d talked to Don. The corner where we’d stopped had a grassy shoulder. 
“Sit here,” I told the kids, attempting to drape our one small fleece blanket over all six of their legs.

“I’m cold and hungry and my feet are tired,” Clayton said, more observation than complaint. Dee Dee’s hands looked almost purple with the cold, and Sylvia had totally disappeared beneath the blanket. A cold front was blowing in, the sky a dreary gray and the wind blowing damp and cold. Cars full of fellow parade-goers going home were lined up in the street, and the relative coziness of their cars only seemed to underscore our own exposure. I called Don again and again, while the policeman directing traffic threw us puzzled looks.

Dee Dee chattered away cheerfully, but Clayton’s face looked pale and exhausted.
“Where’s Daddy?” he asked. “Will he find us?”

There was nothing traumatic or catastrophic about the five minutes we waited on that corner. We were not stranded on a mountaintop in a snowstorm. We were chilled, not hypothermic. Don called me as soon as he reached the van, and soon after we saw him creeping towards us in the line of cars. We cranked the heat in the van and made hot chocolate when we got home. But for those few minutes when I watched my kids sitting huddled together on a street corner, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude: for the cozy house we’d return to, for the food I could offer my kids, for the warmth of the wood stove that would greet us as we climbed the stairs at home. For those few moments, I felt viscerally just how fortunate we were. Thank you, Heather, whoever you are, for reminding me to notice.

To learn more about Heather’s story, visit mesothelioma.com/heather.

The Sweet Spot

Today, I watched both the sunrise and the sunset over the ocean, which is not as implausible as it sounds. It is November, after all, and all fall the sunset has been creeping slowly to the south, although until this evening I honestly hadn’t noticed. This morning, the sun rose like an iridescent tennis ball above a blue-gray court of water; this evening it hid behind the high rises but turned the sky a cotton-candy pink. Sea gulls stood on the beach in puddles of pink water, pink clouds billowing out above them. I passed a woman walking a German Shephard who was barking and pawing at a horseshoe crab. On the seat of her gray sweatpants were the words “Love Pink.” At that moment, it was hard not to. The whole beach was pink, and everyone was happy. Two teenagers in bikinis splashed each other in the waves, pretending the water wasn’t freezing, while the rest of us pulled up our hoodies and smiled at each other. Kids trotted down the beach with their beaming parents; no one was tired or grumpy or had just lost their temper. Everywhere I looked couples were holding hands or kissing. I hadn’t even left yet and already I was trying to figure out when I-- no, we-- could come back.

The last two summers, Don has suggested a beach vacation, but both times I have dragged my feet. I just couldn’t bear the thought of sun-burned, mosquito-bitten kids with sand in their diapers trying to sleep in a sweltering tent. And I know Clayton. He goes in the water once and immediately wants to change into dry clothes. Then he’ll play in the sand for twenty minutes and announce, “I’m all done playing.” He doesn’t seem to understand that it’s supposed to be a day at the beach, not an hour.

All in all, a beach vacation just seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Why not just go to a lake? There was sand, there was water. Wasn’t it practically the same, only without the salt and the inflated prices and the five-hour drive? No, Don insisted, it was not, although he did not push the matter. “There’s just something about the beach...”

Today, I got it. There is just something about the beach. Even Myrtle Beach, with its ugly building and neon lights, has that something. All afternoon I couldn’t pull myself away. A thousand thoughts were buzzing in my head, but there was something in the steady roar of the waves that hushed them.

I’m in Myrtle Beach for a TESOL Conference. I came to earn credits towards the renewal of my license, and to escape, for a few days, the tedious requirements of my children. I’m leaving with an energy and a vision I haven’t felt in some time. This morning, after the sunrise, I rode my bike the five miles from the cheap hotel I’d booked on priceline back to the Marriot and settled into the front row of the big conference hall for the final plenary speaker. Over the next hour and a half, my shrunken little educator’s heart grew two sizes. Kelly Gallagher is one of the most inspirational speakers that I have ever heard. I wanted to be him, with his badass powerpoint slides and his books he tried so modestly not to plug. I could imagine every one of the ninth grade students he teaches being in love with him. I was a little bit in love with him.

After all the hate and disrespect thrown at us in North Carolina recently, Kelly Gallagher’s talk was a cool breeze off the ocean. Sure, he’s an educator, not a legislator, but still it was deeply reassuring that there are people out there who, one, have a clue about what makes a difference in education, two, are making noise about it, and three, are still in the classroom themselves, doing their best to make that difference.

And he wasn’t the only one. Yesterday’s plenary speaker basically shouted from the proverbial rooftops that we should do away with the dreaded five paragraph essay and teach real writing instead. She made me want to finally stand up to the sour-faced teacher at my old school who is still using the exact same moldy lesson plans she taught from twenty years ago and say, “See!” Of course, not all the sessions blew my socks off in quite that way. Still, my rusty teacher toolkit is practically bursting with new strategies that I can’t wait to try out once I get back to teaching.

This fullness I’m feeling... I know it’s not just the professional inspiration and the vibrant colors in the sky. My brain feels swollen with ideas, my heart stuffed with a sense of possibility. I know at this stage in the game, I’m probably not going to go after that Ph.D in Applied Linguistics that part of me hankers for. Probably it’s too late to be an English Fellow with the State Department. (Or is it? The flyer I picked up said there’s an allowance for dependents, so I might as well check the website.) Still, I feel something shifting. All those teachers, they’re fighting the good fight. Maybe I’m just getting ready to join up.

At last year’s conference, I felt like hiding my name tag; I was ashamed of the empty spot under my name where my school affiliation should have been. “I’m not in the classroom right now,” I kept apologizing. This year, it’s different. That empty spot-- I know what goes there, even if it’s not printed: “Mom.” I actually feel proud of that. It’s taken the better part of the three years that I have been out of the paid workforce, but it seems I’m finally feeling good about the identity piece of the path I've chosen.

At the end of the conference, I ran into a woman who had done her student teaching in my district. She’s clearly an awesome teacher; I’d gone to her presentation last year and been awed by the work she’s doing. Where was I now, she wanted to know. “Still with my kids,” I said. She got this look in her eye and told me she was pregnant. She was trying to figure out what to do about work once the baby came.

Probably she’ll stay in the classroom. Most teacher moms do, which is probably why it can feel so lonely on this side of the fence. But talking to her about the challenges ahead-- how will she manage to pump at work, how much time can she off take without losing her job-- I felt at peace. Being a full-time mom has been the hardest job I’ve ever done. It’s not the same kind of got-to-keep-all-the-balls-in-the-air hard that I know working moms face, but it’s its own hard. And I’m finally starting to feel proud of the work I do.

This afternoon, I walked down the beach, searching for shells to take home to the kids. It felt good to miss them, to imagine their happy little faces as they sorted through the treasures I’d brought for them: the hotel pens and pads of paper, the hard candies-- meant to lure you to buy books-- that I’d swiped from the publishers’ tables. I had that post-conference glow, and I smiled to myself as I realized that I might be able to hold onto it for a while, since it won’t have to endure, on Tuesday, all the buzz-killing minutia of an ordinary day of school.

When I get home, I’ll store this year’s conference binder next to last year’s. The glow will, inevitably, fade. Still, I’ll type up my notes and read Gallagher’s books and a thousand more that Dee Dee and Clayton and Sylvia will hold out to me. Gallagher talks about the “sweet spot” of teaching, that elusive place somewhere between making kids hate reading by shoving text analysis down their throats and leaving them alone to flounder in incomprehension. I look forward to trying my hand at that again. For the moment, with ten years of my career behind me and surely decades more to come, I’m glad to be enjoying this sweet spot, with my children.  

Travels (Part 2) and More

“Momma, it’s Aunt Claire! Aunt Claire is here!”

Claire is, of course, my sister, and thank goodness! Claire is exceptionally smart and extraordinarily strong. She is principled and generous, introspective and kind. She is also an incredibly hard worker. In addition to raising two young boys with enviable energy and patience, and teaching full-time at a community college, she runs an impressive homestead, complete with gardens, goats, turkeys, chickens, fruit trees, and berry bushes. When she’s not milking goats, she’s freezing beans or canning peaches. When she is not reading chapters of Lemony Snicket aloud to her boys or taking them camping, she is making zucchini muffins, shelling hazelnuts she’s harvested herself, turning compost into her garden beds, or cutting her lawn with a carbon-neutral reel mower.

Claire came to stay with us soon after the girls were born. My memory from those days is hazy, but I have a vivid picture in my mind of Claire, standing at the kitchen island, kneading pizza dough while reading Science magazine. If the girls had been big enough for the Ergo then, she would have had one on her back.

In this way, Claire’s company can be, at times, a little daunting. She makes pizza dough while reading science articles I’d struggle to understand under any circumstances; I’ll pull a frozen pizza from the freezer and maybe manage to check my email while it cooks. Last semester, even with all her other responsibilities, she managed to audit a geography class and do the homework diligently. I’m lucky if I catch the news headlines on NPR. Claire regularly writes letters to old friends, practices the piano, meditates.... I struggle to remember to spend five minutes in the morning doing Kegels.

Claire and I mostly keep in touch through handwritten letters. In July, she sent a letter in which she expressed her hope that one day my family could join hers at The Lady of the Lake family camp in northern Idaho. It was a special place for her, she said, and she would love to be able to share it with me one day when my kids were bigger.

But family camp is always the third week in August, just when school starts here. When I go back to teaching next year and the kids start school, I knew it would be virtually impossible to make the journey. Waiting until my kids were older wasn’t an option; it was now or never.

“Let’s do it!” we agreed over the phone one morning; by noon I’d bought four plane tickets from Asheville, North Carolina to Spokane, Washington.

When I told them about my plans, my friends raised their eyebrows. Two connections? Ten days? By myself? I started to second guess my decision. Just what had I gotten myself into? I talked to Clayton about our plans, trying to prepare him for what was to come.

“How many days in Washington?” he asked. “Show me with your hands.”

I reluctantly held up all ten fingers, anticipating his concern. Clayton doesn’t like to be away from home for long. He looked at me, and then he raised the thumb and index finger of his left hand, carefully holding down his three other fingers with his right.

“Two,” he said. “I think two days is good.”  

Claire raved about family camp. The mornings full of activities for kids and parents alike, the afternoons swimming and boating down by the lake. An art show and a parade, and contra dancing every night. And the music! Everywhere there would be music. It sounded great, I agreed. And yet, I didn’t empty out my savings account and drag my kids across the continent for family camp. I did it for my sister.

Watching my children grow into their roles as brothers and sisters has made me think often of siblinghood, of what it means to be a sister or a brother, and of how those relationships impact our lives, often from as early as we can remember.

Siblinghood is an odd relationship. Our siblings are the playmates we don’t get the luxury of choosing-- or refusing. As children, we surely spend more hours with our siblings than with anyone, probably even our parents. If we are lucky, they are the friends we will know the longest, and the ones who will bear witness to all the many stages and phases of our lives. Our siblings know us deeply, not just the personas we eventually learn to present to the world, but all our private faults and secret insecurities.

It is not an easy bond. My little brother used to come at me down the narrow hall to our bedrooms, both arms flailing wildly from side to side. “Oh no! It’s the washing machine,” I would yell and try to escape into my room. (Our mother was unsympathetic; “You must have provoked him,” she would say, and I’m sure she was right.) But it was with my brother that I first learned the art of compromise. Sure, I would play with Action Man, as long as he was Barbie’s boyfriend. Cars? Okay. It was fun to devise all the relationships between them. That red sports car was the mom. That green truck the dad. It was like playing house on wheels. In one particularly memorable scenario, a yellow hatchback was to be married; I insisted we make her a wedding gown out of toilet paper. (The first time my brother played cars with a friend, he was in for a big surprise.)

But all those hours spent together making automotive wedding dresses-- or whatever other thing siblings might do together-- don’t necessarily effect a life-long closeness. I met a mother recently who confessed that her antagonistic relationship with her brother nearly destroyed her parents’ marriage. When it comes to having siblings, there is no guarantee of affinity. I’ve met plenty of parents struggling to come to terms with the fact that their children just don’t get along. And yet more often it seems that the opposite is true, and, as the parents of siblings, we get to watch as our little ones plant and tend the seeds of a deep and enduring love.

I watch, fascinated, as my own children navigate the often turbulent waters of siblinghood. There’s a certain cry the girls make only when their brother is tormenting them. “Clayton, leave your sister alone!” I scold, often without even looking. But more often these days they disappear outside together, or close themselves in Clayton’s room, and I hear them fighting knights or playing with transformers and army men. When the girls tire, Clayton is quick to compromise. “Want to play baby dolls now?” This morning I walked in on them, and saw Dee Dee scrunched up in the doll bed.

“Can I be the baby now?” Clayton was asking.

“Just three more minutes!” she told him.

At bedtime, both the girls beg for a hug and a kiss from their big brother, and he dutifully complies, basking in their love for him. Clayton, at nearly five, already plays it cool with his affections, but they are transparent nonetheless. Early this summer, as we walked out on a dock on Lake James, he herded his sisters away from the edge with both arms. “Mom!” he  said, panic in his voice. “Don’t let my sisters fall in!”

A biologist would probably say it is in his genes. Clayton shares half his DNA with his sisters, so he’s got a vested interest in keeping them alive. But there is something more there, too. A child’s family is his rock. When I was in third grade, I made a little clay pot for my mother on my new toy potter’s wheel, painting it while my brother looked on. Around the outside I wrote in dripping letters, “We love the family.” That little irregularly shaped pot has sat on the kitchen windowsill in my parents’ house for decades, and every time I see it there I am struck by how much those four words say. The inclusive “we,” the love expressed, not simply for the individual members of our family, but for the unit itself. As a child, one’s family is a haven of belonging in an unknown world, a circle of “us,” drawn tight and safe amid the madding crowd.

We grow. We go out into that world, and make our place in it, and find that the tight circle of our birth family need not be drawn so bold. Years later, it is our children who say family with a capital F. The circle is drawn again, the delineations clear. We are The Family. No matter how irritating Clayton finds Dee Dee’s voice (“I don’t like the way she talks,” he tells me) or how furiously the girls fight over books, or toys, or a spot on my lap, they are all on the inside, together.

Only now, as a mom, I see how the edges of all these family circles can overlap, like the rings of a giant Venn Diagram. My brother and I lost as young adults some of the closeness of our childhood, but now, with children of our own, I feel our bond renewing. I am grateful. I want my kids to know and love their cousins. When they draw the circle of their family, I want Anand and Eashan, Emil and Walker, to be on the inside, even if that bright nucleus of Witsell remains.

The ties between my sister and me have held us close over many years and across many miles. She is my closest confidante and my first friend, my role model and my inspiration. I went to Washington because she wanted to share a special place with me, and I wanted to honor our bond by going.

Family camp on Lake Coeur d'Alene was indeed wonderful. I will cherish my memories of our time there: Clayton flying off the dock into the lake, his jubilant face suspended above me; Dee Dee’s shout of glee every time she spotted her uncle; Sylvia’s body curled against mine in the narrow bunk of our room. I will remember Clayton’s pride when he told his favorite knock knock joke over the microphone, and the way the girls-- Sylvia on my back, Dee Dee on my sister’s-- held hands as Claire and I hiked side by side along the path to Inspiration Point. I will remember the thrill of contra dancing after breakfast, and the immense love I felt for my children as we paddled a canoe together out on the clear waters of the lake.

My kids remember best the song that was sung to them as they headed to their beds, a lovely song about a train of sleepy kids bound for Morningtown.

Clayton’s at the engine.

Dee Dee rings the bell.

Sylvia swings the lanterns,

To show that all is well.

Somewhere there is sunshine,

Somewhere there is day

Somewhere there is morningtime,

Many miles away.

Dee Dee’s face would light up with wonder as they sang. Her name! In a song! And really, it was the best part of the day, summer camp at its most magical. I loved it, too. It was such a rich metaphor, the way the lyrics held my children tight in their own little verse, honoring the circle that is our family, while the chorus of voices sang on, glorying in their harmonies, rejoicing in the greater circle that holds us all.

Travels (Part 1)

We are hustling through the Atlanta airport. Our flight to Minneapolis leaves in less than half and hour. Sylvia is on my back in the Ergo. In one hand, I am holding the handle of my carry-on, a roll-y backpack bulging with books, markers, coloring books, play dough, snacks, pull-ups, water bottles-- everything to help get us through this three-leg, three thousand mile trip to Washington to visit my sister. Looped over the handle of my carry-on are two kids’ backpacks, each carefully packed the night before with all the favored stuffed animals and a random assortment of toys. With my free hand, I cling tightly to Dee Dee’s paw; this is no time for her signature sprint away from me.

“Stay close,” I tell Clayton. “And hurry!” Despite my nightmares, our first flight has arrived on time, and I am determined to make this close connection.

We pause momentarily at the top of the escalator, the moving steps descending rapidly in front of us. Dee Dee shrinks back, but there’s no time to find an elevator. Clayton bravely steps on, and I lift Dee Dee up by one arm and swing her onto the moving stairs in front of me.

At the bottom, I see the train that will take us to our terminal, and I hustle toward it instinctively. But the doors are already closing; we won’t all make it. The people inside see me hurrying and reach their arms out to hold the doors.  I shake my head at them; we’ll wait for the next one. But Clayton hasn’t sensed this unexpected pause in our momentum. He shoots past me and leaps through the closing doors of the train like the hero in an action movie.

The doors close behind him.

“Clayton!” I scream. The other passengers’ mouths are frozen in perfect Os. There arms reach out as if to force the doors open, but already the train is accelerating away, taking my four-year-old son away from me.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” I chant. I remember I said the same thing the time I discovered Dee Dee and Sylvia on my bathroom floor a year ago, their hands full of candy-coated Advil. “Oh my God,” I kept repeating as I rushed them into their carseats, my cellphone pinned between my ear and my shoulder, calling 911.

“No Mamma say, “Oh my God,” Dee Dee said through her tears as I sped out through our neighborhood.

“No Mamma say, “Oh my God,” she wailed as the woman from Poison Control on the other end of the line reassured me that they were fine. My heart in my throat, I turned the car around.

“Okay, Dee Dee,” I managed. “I won’t say ‘Oh my God’ anymore.”

But “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” I am saying now, as Clayton disappears into the tunnel. My stomach plummets in my gut. My little boy!  “Oh my God.”

Dee Dee and Sylvia immediately start to cry. “Clayton!” Dee Dee wails. “Clayton!”

“Tayton!” Sylvia echoes. “Tayton!”

“It’s okay,” I reassure them. “We’ll find him. We’ll find him.”

“It’s okay. We’ll find him,” I chant now. With the train gone, it is strangely quiet, misleadingly calm. My heart races. “We’ll find him,” I say again, and I believe it. Children get lost in airports. I’ve heard the announcements over the loudspeakers: “Will the parents of ... please come to....”  A strange calm comes over me. I am not rushing now. We will find Clayton. We will find him.

But what do I do? Do I follow him? Do I wait here and pray that some good samaritan will bring him back? The second option seems the smartest, somehow, as if I were a child lost in the woods, remembering her parents’ oft-repeated command: “If you get lost, stay where you are!” But when the next train arrives with a great rush of air, I step on, lifting Dee Dee in beside me.

“Don’t worry. We will find him.”

As we pull up to the next stop, my heart is in my throat. What if he isn’t there? But there he is, waiting on the platform with two rugged young men in backpacks. I could kiss them, but as soon as I see Clayton safe I am rushing again. We can make our plane! “Thank you! Thank you so much!” I gush at them as the train doors close again, my family intact inside them. “Thank you!”

Clayton is dry-eyed and accusatory. “Why didn’t you tell me that wasn’t our train?”

“I didn’t have time! You were just like a superhero, making a flying leap!” I am making light, for all of us. He looks unconvinced.

“Hold this,” I tell him, handing him a strap from the carry-on. “And stay close!”

The rest of the journey goes as smoothly as one could expect.  Dee Dee cries each time our plane takes off. She is such a daring, adventurous girl, but the loud noises on the plane terrify her.

“It’s okay, Dee Dee,” Clayton comforts her. “It’s just like in the book. Remember?”

As soon as we are airborne, the girls need to pee. We troop down the aisle. They are endlessly fascinated with the airplane potty. 
“My pee is blue!” Dee Dee marvels. While I help them with their underpants in the impossibly small space, Clayton locks himself inside the lavatory on the other side of the aisle. This scares him more, I think, than his solo train ride. By the time we arrive in Spokane, my voice is sore from reading so many books over the hum of the engine. I am also dazed with exhaustion and relief. But we made it.

My sister is waiting at baggage claim, an Ergo already around her waist. She lifts Dee Dee effortlessly onto her back. Dee Dee beams at me.

“Momma, it’s Aunt Claire!” she says. “Aunt Claire! Aunt Claire is here!”

I smile back at both of them. “Yes, Aunt Claire is here-- thank goodness!”

To be continued...

Solo

Don took all three kids to Georgia and Alabama this weekend to visit his family.  As much as I love my in-laws and enjoy watching the cousins play, I opted to stay home this time. This isn’t the first extended period I’ve had to myself; last fall I went to an out-of-town conference for a long weekend. But this is the first time in my own house and on my own time.

Friday

Oh no, they’re gone.

What if they’re crying? What if Dee Dee pees in her carseat? What if Sylvia’s too sad without her mom? What if they won’t sleep at Granny and Papa’s and are exhausted and miserable? What if the DVD player stops working and Don is miserable? What if they have an accident... No, I will not think that way.

I told myself I would not spend this precious time cleaning, but look at this house. I won’t enjoy being here unless I clean it up a little. I’ll just tidy up and sweep the floors. I might as well mop, too-- it won’t take long with no one here. And I’ll just clean the bathrooms and change my sheets and unload the dishwasher. There, done! Ugh, look at the front of the oven, all streaked with who knows what. But I will not spend any more of this precious day cleaning. If I clean the oven door, I’ll want to clean the sticky cabinet doors, and the refrigerator handle, and--I know myself-- I won’t stop.  It is after eleven already-- the time is slipping away!

I’m going for a bike ride-- a nice, long bike ride. But it’s almost lunchtime and I’m hungry. I’ll just eat those leftovers quickly and then I’ll go. But, wait, you’re bolting your lunch again! This is exactly how you’re not supposed to be eating this weekend. You’re supposed to take it slow.

But I want to go biking! Quick, eat up! You’ve got to fit in the bike ride now, because you have a massage scheduled for three. Okay, fine, quick-- eat! But next time you’ve got to eat slowly.

Why does my family being gone make me miss my mom so terribly? Mom! Mommy! I miss you.

This country is beautiful. Fields of ripening tomatoes, horses grazing, mountains. I love this, all of it: the effort, the heat, the sweat, the speed, the views, the freedom. I feel strong-- I could bike like this forever. Mommy, I miss you.

Home again. Shower. Snack. Sheets off the line, onto the bed. Better head downtown for that massage. Ahhhhh. Time’s up already? My legs are tired and I’m hungry. Ice-cream! I just took so long deciding on a flavor that the server sat down to wait. Oh, the luxury of time.

Mmmm. Mint goat milk ice-cream. Savor it.

Now, to write...

Time to go again. Friends, dinner, wine, music. If only I could sing like that.

Home at last. How clean the house looks. How empty.  Feed the hungry dogs, lock up, read one page of The New Yorker. Whew. So much today. Tomorrow I will slow down, I promise.

Saturday

Today I:

* emailed my Italian friends that I have not heard from in years.

* signed up on twitter. Why? I thought I might read the news headlines and educational articles, but I’m surely kidding myself.

* ordered a book of Italian short stories with parallel texts, ostensibly to brush up on my Italian, but really because I’m secretly plotting next year’s solo getaway.

* used up all the eggs to make ginger ice-cream.

* wrote. Two days in a row. Halleluiah.

* ran to a our friends’ yard sale. They’re moving to Pennsylvania, where teachers actually make a living wage. Scored, among other things, a pair of little girl’s sneakers, some pirate action figures for Clayton, and a Dora doll the girls will certainly fight over, but I couldn’t resist.

* ate lunch: cheese toast with garden tomatoes and Greek yogurt with blueberries and cardamom. That’s better-- slow. Still found myself getting up multiple times during the meal. It’s a hard habit to break, it seems.

* finally got started on Rebecca for book group. Not too gripping yet, but at least I’ve made it past the first five pages.

* went to the grocery store and talked to my mom on the phone for a few moments in the cereal aisle before the connection was lost. Mommy! I miss you! It’s so easy shopping without three kids in tow, but I do find myself missing the free popcorn.

* unloaded the groceries and made curry. I honestly don’t think I’ve made this dish since Clayton was born. Oh, how subtly they change our lives.

* went for another run. This morning’s twenty minute jog to the yard sale just didn’t feel like enough. Some friends are coming over in less than an hour, but the house is, miraculously, still clean.

* had a marvelous evening with friends. Love, words, tears, inspiration, connection. Just what I needed.

* couldn’t sleep. Too much sugar right before bed, or maybe too much love. Kept thinking about my dear, dear friends and all the resolutions for the new school year that I made tonight.

Sunday

I had plans of going hiking today, or driving up to Graveyard Fields to see if the wild blueberries are ripe, but somehow I couldn’t leave this quiet house. I ate a luxurious breakfast of melted brie on toast with homemade blackberry jam, and nobody asked me for a bite. Even the dogs were still asleep. Then I sat on the porch and wrote a long overdue letter to Chiara, my Italian roommate, and finally got going on Rebecca. Reading novels like that makes me feel sixteen again, when I devoured Jane Austen because I was too proud and too embarrassed to be seen reading Harlequins.  

Around ten o’clock, I thought, I could still go somewhere. Mountain biking, or on a solo hike. Don and the kids wouldn’t be home until close to five. But I drive so much and am home alone so little. Instead I caulked around the bathroom tub and the kitchen sink, and got to cross both off my summer list. Even better, I don’t have to spend the next nine months feeling grossed out by the old, mildewed caulk and wondering when in the hell I’ll get around to redoing it, or how I’ll ever manage, under normal circumstances, not to use the sink while the caulk dries. As soon as I finished, I threw away the summer list, and started a new one.

Leftover coconut milk curry for lunch with green beans from the garden. I admit I appreciate my solitude the most when it’s meal time. One plate to put in the dishwasher, perhaps one pot to wash (this time in the bathroom sink). I linger over every bite. It is ludicrously easy to live alone.

Today, I am feeling buoyant with the love of friends and the powerful connections I felt last night. Impulsively, I head into West Asheville on my bike, not even bothering to check the air in my tires. Today, everything feels so easy. I explore some new neighborhoods, and then find myself pedaling by the houses of two different friends. Neither one is home, but it doesn’t matter. It is like I am weaving a metaphorical web of my community on my bike. At the house of a third friend, her two beautiful children peer excitedly through the screen door. “Someone’s here!” they yell. They are getting ready for their own bike ride, so soon the house is quiet and my friend and I chat together in the living room. We are both excited for the new school year, the familiar routines and the strange new freedoms we will enjoy with kids in preschool part-time.

On my way home, I follow the river. The water is fast and high after all of the rain we’ve had this summer. I stop on a bench and eat melted trail mix while I watch the water and daydream. Peace settles over me, and I think with gladness of my family’s return.  

Home again, I pick green beans and blueberries from the garden, and then treat myself to yet another snack of crackers and goat cheese, plus a little of the ginger ice-cream we never got around to eating at dinner last night. I might have spoiled my dinner, but I treasure my last meal alone. An hour and they will be home. I sit on the porch and write.