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.

Vacation Magic Times Two

During the second week of summer vacation, our family went camping at Lake James, about an hour east of Asheville. I had anticipated the trip with equal parts dread and optimism. True, most camping trips thus far had involved torrential rains; soggy, grumpy, overtired kids; and Herculean efforts to get said kids to sleep. To add to this less-than-hopeful precedent, the girls had just begun full time potty training, except that the “potty” part was a misnomer, since, thus far, the toilet had played such a minimal role in their elimination. I was already feeling wrung out and worn down with the relentless chores of child-rearing and housewifery. Sopping up urine with paper towels and admonishing the dogs not to eat the poop on the living room floor while I dashed for a plastic bag just added the proverbial salt.

On the other hand, I was eager for a break from the daily grind. Plus, I wanted to be optimistic. I had such fond memories of camping as a child, my sleeping bag squeezed between my brother and sister in the dome tent we shared. I allowed myself to imagine my kids nestled together in their bags, chatting and giggling, before simultaneously falling into an exhausted sleep. I pictured Don and me sipping beers and gazing into the fire, the summer night darkening around us.

It was not to be. The first evening of our trip was still and hot, the tent sweltering. Don broke a sweat just reading goodnight stories. Three hours later, as I coaxed an exhausted Sylvia to sleep in our tent, I could hear Don muttering to himself in the kids’ tent as Dee Dee and Clayton ricocheted off the walls.

“This is hell. This is absolute hell.”

In the morning, we almost threw in the towel and high-tailed it back home. But there we were. I’d spent the better part of two days sorting through the camping gear, gathering supplies, and loading the car. Don had spent more than an hour the previous afternoon hauling wagon load after wagon load down the steep trail to our campsite. True, the night had been miserable, but leaving now meant that miserable was all we’d be.

“Let’s stay,” we agreed. Maybe with a little more time, the trip could redeem itself.

Miraculously, it did. Hiking along a lakeside trail later that morning, we discovered a sandy beach in a private little cove. Watching the kids bobbing around in the dappled sunlight, with the glassy waters of the lake stretching out behind them, all my frustrations from the previous night felt inconsequential. These were the moments to remember, the idyllic scenes that create that bright tapestry of childhood. I felt overcome with gratitude that we hadn’t sprinted for home, that despite the unrelenting travails of parenting toddlers, we’d managed to stumble our way to this magic place.

Swimming with the kids in our private little cove, I dove down through the sun-warmed water to the cool beneath. The fog of sleep deprivation, the quotidian tedium of my existence, the ennui that had engulfed me for weeks, the discouraging sense that I rather disliked my grumpy, defiant children-- all seemed to dissolve in the cool, dark water against my skin. Swimming just beneath the surface, I ferried the children around on my back, one after the other. My father used to do the same for my siblings and me on our Sunday trips to the beach, and I can still remember the powerful sweep of his arms through the green water, his black hair streaming, the unfamiliar skin on his shoulders oily and slippery beneath my hands. The memory is a powerful one, singular in the  treasured physical connection between us, the way the surface of the water both separated us-- how eagerly I waited for him to emerge-- and made him wholly mine.

As I swam underwater with Dee Dee on my back, I could hear her chattering away at me from above the surface, babblative as always, even with no hope of a reply.  A surge of joy rose in me. The world felt huge and light-filled again, and my love for my children pure and immense.

Later, perched on driftwood on the sandy beach, we ate peanut butter sandwiches and apples, and the kids sucked lemonade out of their water bottles, surprised by the sweetness. In the late afternoon the storms rolled in, and we ate our pasta dinner hunched together in the sodden tent. But soon the skies cleared and a cool breeze blew off the shimmering lake. The kids took a lukewarm bath in a plastic storage container, delighting in a fixture of the daily routine made so thrillingly new. They ate half-burned marshmallows for dessert, burned leaf after leaf in the fire, made up endless stories with their stuffed animals in the tent, and eventually-- miraculously-- settled down to sleep.

That camping trip was a highlight of the first few weeks of summer. “Our best yet,” I  said to Don cheerfully as we drove home, all three kids asleep in the back of the van.  “We should do it again soon.”

* * *

A month later, our annual family vacation was fast approaching. After a long road trip to South Dakota last summer, we’d opted to stay closer to home this year. We’d visit Congaree National Park near Columbia, then do some camping in the upstate before meeting up with my my brother’s family and my parents in Tennessee for a brief rendezvous before they continued on to Indiana. A week before we were to leave, Don came into the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth. I caught his eye in the mirror.

“I have to say,” I confessed through a mouthful of toothpaste. “I’m sort of dreading our

vacation.”

It had been a tough week. Dee Dee and Sylvia had been keeping each other up reading and playing long after their bedtime. Sylvia was sleep-deprived and weepy, Dee Dee grumpy and defiant. Back in the doldrums myself, I felt exhausted, impatient, and frequently enraged. The thought of battling with Dee Dee over bedtime for four nights in a row in a ninety-five degree tent deflated me. Nor could I summon the energy to tackle all the preparation and clean-up the trip would require. When I’d asked Don to check the weather forecast, I’d realized I was secretly hoping that we’d be rained out, but the ten-day forecast predicted one scorching, sunny day after another.

“Really?” Don said. “Me, too!”

With our dual confession, a weight lifted. We scrapped our camping plans and booked a hotel in Chattanooga on Priceline. Two rooms, free breakfast, air-conditioning, a swimming pool. The kids were ecstatic when we told them. “A hotel! A hotel!”  We could be staying at the Holiday Inn a mile from our house for all they’d care. They just wanted to watch PBS Kids ad infinitum, eat forbidden Fruit Loops for breakfast, and sleep together in the king bed.

Travelling with young children is never exactly relaxing, but our trip to Chattanooga came close. All the house rules were off. One afternoon, I spent a whole hour reading on the bed while the kids watched Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood on PBS and Don napped. I didn’t cook, I hardly cleaned, the dirty laundry simply piled up in the corner by the dresser. When the kids asked me to read them a book, I never once said, “Not right now. I have to...” And how pleasant they were when they had my full attention! It felt wonderful to like my own children again.  

The magic of Chattanooga was not the magic of the lake. But there was magic nonetheless. Rock City was my favorite. I’d seen the iconic advertisements and assumed it was some sort of touristy gem mine, not a true city of stone, with intricate pathways and lush gardens. I learned that the original owners of Rock City had considered calling it Fairyland, and I could easily see why. It was easy to imagine fairies flitting around those cool, dark passageways and lush and secret places.

Watching Clayton run ahead-- “Mom! Dad! Another tunnel! Come see!”-- I saw myself as a girl, exploring gardens with my parents on family vacations, proudly watching them admire a beautiful rose bush I pointed out, or a hidden bench we found tucked away midst the trees. There is something extraordinary as a child when you realize your own enjoyment is mirrored in the grown-ups you love. How marvelous it makes everything seem, to feel your own delight thus affirmed. We used to beg Mom and Dad to ride the roller coaster with us on our annual visit to Busch Gardens. How much more fun it would be if only they would love it too!

And how fresh it all feels through the eyes of your children: this tunnel of stone their first tunnel, this swinging bridge their first swinging bridge. I loved Rock City more because my children loved it, and they loved loving it because I did.

Is this what parenthood does? Suspends our own egos, relaxes-- for a little while--the tyranny of our own desires? Traipsing single-file with thirty other weary tourists down the underground tunnel on the way to Ruby Falls, with Sylvia, asleep, like a dead weight on my back and the cheery, practiced jokes of the tour guide grating on my nerves-- even that was worth it. “Are we really underground?” Clayton kept asking. “Are there people walking around on top of us?” Even stupendous Ruby Falls, when the tunnel finally opened up and the remarkable underground waterfall was revealed, was nothing compared to Clayton’s endless excitement to be below the surface of the earth.

And so it went, vacation magic finding us everywhere: in the civil war hospital tent at the children’s museum, where Dee Dee wrapped my leg in bandages and fed me medicine from a tin cup; at Rock City, when Sylvia wriggled off my back so she, too, could walk across the swinging bridge; at the top of Lover’s Leap on Lookout Mountain, where Dee Dee exclaimed with awe, “Look how high up we are!” It found me as I ran in the cool early morning through the streets of downtown, with the river, shining in the morning sun, opening up before me. It even found me unexpectedly, late one evening and long after the children’s bedtime, as I listened over the monitor to Clayton and Dee Dee talking in the other room.

Here’s your little cat, Dee Dee!”

“Hooray!”

“Do you want to make a little house for our animals?”

“Yes! I do! I do!”

“Shh! Don’t wake Herman. He’s sleeping.”

“My cat is sleeping, too.”

Normally with children who refuse to go to sleep, my patience is paper thin, my anger quick to rise. “They were being ridiculously cute,” Don will say about some post-bedtime shenanigans, and I’ll just growl about how they should be asleep by now. But that night, Clayton’s tenderness with his sister, and her pure joy at his attention, the sweetness of the little animal beds they’d made out of paper cups and Kleenexes, and the palpability of their excitement as they played together into night... Vacation magic had found us right there in room 309 of the Chattanooga Rodeway Inn.