Category: Ordinary Moments

A Single Image

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Going back to Writing 101, Day 4: A story in a single image…

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Image is not mine but from Unsplash.com

When I was in college, I took several photography courses as part of a self-designed minor of study. One weekend during my senior year, I got the idea to go to the top of a mountain and photograph the sunrise. It was October, and around here, you never know whether October will be the back end of summer or the front end of winter. I remember getting up very early and piling on layers of clothing. While the forecast was for seasonal temperatures in the valley, the mountain was a different story. Two shirts, a sweater, winter jacket, hat, gloves… I was prepared.

It was still dark as my car crested the mountain and pulled into the small parking lot near the lodge. There was no sign of other people, though a couple of cars sat empty in the lot. The lodge was dark. I turned off my headlights and got out of the car. Stars blinked in the night, but the sky was just taking on a faint grey cast. I picked my way over the rocks to find myself a perch at the top of the eastern slope. I sat in silence; the only sound was the cold wind which swiped at the top of the mountain as if to blow it clean. I shivered, and I remember wondering if I would make it to daylight without breaking down and seeking shelter my heated car.

It didn’t get warmer, but slowly, the sky brightened. The first rays of morning sunlight winked over the distant horizon, and a layer of white fog blanketed the valley. The mountains, in varying shades of blue-grey, touched the sky tainted pink with the promise of a new day. In time, the color faded to a pale blue.

That morning, as I sat on the rock and watch the landscape change from night to day, I realized that there are some things that we truly must experience. I could take pictures to show to family and friends, but being on that mountain, exposed to the elements and taking in the splendor of the scenery as the day dawned was a moment that is meant to be captured by the eye and the brain and the senses, by being present and in the moment. It was a moment that created an image that will forever remain in the accessible archives of my brain.

Food heist

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One day, out of the blue, my daughter said to me, “I am not going to be a good mother because I would never be able to give up a good sandwich for one of my kids.”

Well then.

Giving up food items started is something I have done on many occasions. I can very distinctly remember summer mornings ten or so years ago when I would get up early and enjoy a moment of quiet reflection with a cup of coffee. Then I would make myself breakfast.

In the summer, one of my favorite breakfasts consists of a bowl of fresh fruit with vanilla yogurt. Usually, I start with watermelon, add strawberries, blueberries, grapes, and sometimes raspberries or peaches, depending on what is in the fridge. When I am done washing and cutting the fruit, and my bowl is an array of bright and fresh color, I add a dollop of yogurt, usually vanilla.

When the children were little, inevitably, just as I sat at the table and pulled up an article on the computer, a little person would appear next to me, jammie-clad and rubbing sleep from its eyes. The child would ponder my breakfast briefly before stating, “That looks good,” or the tougher, “Can I have some?” And my bowl would be usurped, slid across the table to the spot in front of another seat, and the child in question would consume the entire bowl while I created a new breakfast for myself.

While this was a common scene at the breakfast table, over the years, it has not been limited to the morning meal. My children descended from a long line of hunter/gatherers, and they can sniff out a good sandwich from two floors away. Nowadays though, I am more likely to point the kids in the direction of the ingredients than to pass them my own food.

So when my daughter says she doesn’t want to give up a good sandwich, I know where her thought originated. Being on the receiving end of the process is great, but the other end… maybe not.

Even still, I’m pretty sure my daughter will make an excellent mother one day. The truth of the matter is that if the sandwich [fruit bowl, etc.] is good enough, I’m not giving it up, either!

Wishes

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Yesterday was a quiet day. I spent much of the day working, and J spent much of the day on the couch reading and messaging friends on her iPad. Her brothers were off doing their own thing; one was planning an overhaul of our shed while the other one had gone to the beach with a friend.

Several times, I tried to entice her to come out on the deck with me and read, but the fact that I was working was not terribly enticing. Instead, she took up some creative pursuits: a chalk mural in our parking area, sketching, origami.

Later, after the head of the day had cooled, I came downstairs from a refreshing shower. She was cleaning up small strips of paper from the floor in the living room. They were squished and rustling in her left hand. She held out her right hand as if to give me something.

“I don’t want your trash,” I told her, as I walked by. “Throw it out.”

“It’s not trash,” she said. “I have something for you.” Whatever “gift” she had was paper in her hand, white and rustling just like the trash.

“Throw it out,” I reiterated. “I know it’s trash.”

“No, Mom, it’s not trash. Just hold out your hand.” I sighed, weary and worn down. I held out my hand, fully expecting it to be filled with her paper scraps.

Two tiny folded paper stars fell into my hand. “Oh!” I exclaimed, drawing in my breath. I was surprised by their simple beauty, their tiny-ness, their perfect star-ness. “They’re beautiful! I love them!”

“They’re wishing stars.” She smiled. “The first ones didn’t come out at all, but I figured it out.”

Beautiful! And what could be better to fall into your open hand than two paper wishes?

 

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The Dog

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The expiration of the dog has come full circle.

Ever since my daughter went away to camp for the first time, and the paperwork said not to send mail that contained sad news (i.e. an announcement that the dog died), our non-existent dog has died each year while the kids are at camp. At some point during their week away, I send a letter announcing that the dog has died, and the kids are amused (although sometimes their bunk mates are horrified!). The expiration of the dog has been an ongoing joke for five years now.

This year, in a strange twist of events, I was the one who went away from home. J and I traveled out of state for an athletic competition. The boys were busy with their own activities back at home, so my boyfriend stayed with them, and kept them company.

When the kids go away, it has been my pattern to wait until a few days have gone by before I deliver any news about the dog. When I left, however, C couldn’t wait to tell me about the dog. Apparently, he felt the need to get it out of his system right away. Perhaps he thought he might forget as the week went by.

I had barely landed and settled in my hotel room halfway across the country when the message came. And it was a doozy of a message! Just in case you thought we’d be all right, Mom, here are some of the things you feared could go wrong. Oh, and the dog died.

Interestingly, when I got to the part about the dog, I knew that everything was under control, and I could relax. This trip was the first time that I had left home for more than a brief while, and I was on edge, concerned about what would go on in my absence. I had voiced my anxiety to the boys in the days leading up to my trip.

As it turned out, I had little to fear. The boys are older; my boyfriend is competent; and just maybe my neighbors were doing a little “neighborhood watch” in my absence….

But I’m glad ‘the dog died’ early in the week. That message relieved me of my worries!

Going nowhere

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We were on vacation recently, staying in a place that has all sorts of fun things to keep active kids of most ages occupied and entertained. One of these attractions is a Fun Barn in which there is a bounce house, a ping-pong table, a climbing wall, and an area in which kids (um… and adults) can have nerf-ball battles. This area is caged in with netting and has hundreds of foam balls with several air powered shooters strategically placed around a climbing structure with a slide, making it easy for groups to have rousing battles. So we did.

It was after dinner on our last night. As four teenagers and two adults, we were able to have quite a battle before some younger children showed up, and we had to turn the energy down a notch. It was getting dark by then, so we decided to leave the Fun Barn to walk back to the lodge. It was chilly for the end of April, but the days were getting longer, the snow had finally (mostly) melted, and the flowers were starting to bloom. We could hear spring peepers off in the distance.

As we exited the Fun Barn, J wanted to go to the playground. It was getting dark, and the sign posted on the playground fence claimed the area closed at dusk. But a simple sign would not deter J. “Let’s just go see,” she said, running ahead with W to check out the playground. “The chain’s not up!” she reported of the yellow plastic chain used to discourage after hours playground use.

Gleefully, the two of them slipped through the gate and ran to the merry-go-round. Not a carousel merry-go-round, but a playground merry-go-round—the kind that most schools did away with years ago as children flew off when they spun too fast and couldn’t hold on. My two each grabbed a side and started running to get the merry-go-round moving.

“When I say THREE, jump on!” called W. “One, two, THREE!” They both landed with the muffled thud of rubber soles on metal platform. They hung their heads off the edge, hair flying up in the centrifugal force. They completed this exercise several times before their activity diminished to lying on the platform while the movement slowed, looking up at the branches of the tree above.

“Mom, can I have your camera?” J asked, and I handed it over. She started taking pictures from her spot on her back looking up at the sky. She spent several minutes clicking, checking the the screen, sighing and trying again.

What she didn’t realize was that it was too dark for pictures. And she also didn’t realize that what she wanted to capture was not the branches above her and the moon in the background. She wanted to capture the moment, the feeling of a beautiful spring night, vacation, and family time spent together. She wanted to capture the spinning, the breeze, the feeling of going nowhere, and the thrill of the ride.

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Perspective

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Every now and then, we catch a glimpse of our children’s lives through reflection on our own experiences, past and present. Recently, I had one of those moments… when my thoughts on my children’s attitudes suddenly clicked into place in a new and unexpected way. It was an “ah-ha” moment, of sorts.

Over the weekend, I was introducing my sister to some people who grew up one town over from our own hometown. Since it was a small town in a rural area, growing up in the next town implies that we shared a fair degree of history. We knew some of the same people, competed as rival schools in sports, hung out at some of the same places, frequented the only local movie theater, and shopped in the same stores.

As we briefly discussed the fact that my sister graduated from a different high school, my mind wandered back into the past. My sister and I had different teachers. And just like any school, a handful of teachers were known to be “difficult,” more in their behavior and attitudes toward students than in their educational expectations.

For the most part, I had teachers who were memorable in positive ways: they wanted to teach, and they genuinely liked working with students. However, there were exceptions. There were teachers for whom unflattering nicknames had been passed from one class to the next for near generations. And it was one of these teachers with just such a nickname that I stumbled over while I was taking my ‘mind journey’ down memory lane over the weekend.

And after stumbling, I sat sprawled on memory’s path, realizing that we hadn’t been very nice back in high school. And then, I was pulled to the present, to the words I had recently said to my son when he called one of his (male) teachers a diva. “You shouldn’t be disrespectful to your teachers, C. They have a tough job teaching you guys all the things you don’t think you want to know.”

Gulp!

There I was, stuck straddling a line. As a teacher myself, I would normally advocate for the teacher in this instance. Getting up in front of a classroom full of apathetic, sometimes ungrateful (insert year here: sophomores, seniors, you name it) day after day is not an easy task. It can be brutal.

Then again, being a kid in a class with a teacher who has forgotten what it is like to be a teenager—a teacher who hasn’t updated his or her approach to teaching since the age of the dinosaurs, and chooses not to (ever) smile—is not easy, either.

Suddenly, I realized that what I perceived as “disrespect” was really something of a rite of passage. As we work to figure out our relationship with the world and how to deal with people we don’t necessarily want to get along with, but need to get along with, we seek to find a comfortable place to fit them into our experiences. We use nicknames to diminish these people so they are slightly less intimidating and they fit more neatly into our experience. For teens, this can be the way they survive the classes that otherwise threaten to bore them, annoy them, or terrify them.

And straddling this line between kid and teacher is the constant battle I face as a parent. This is the battle that determines if I am successful or not. I am constantly faced with the need to remember what it was like to be in my children’s shoes—whether they are teenagers or toddlers, while still teaching the skills necessary for them to function in a world which requires an ever changing mix of diplomacy, sensitivity, and candor.

For the most part, my children are respectful and polite when they walk out my door and into the world. Perhaps then, they really are learning what they need to know to make their way in the world. Perhaps a little name-calling, in the right context, can help to put relationships in perspective.

Temperature Check

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It has been a cold winter; there is no question about that. Even in the early days of March, the morning temperature still hovers around the 0° point. One day recently, I went into the kitchen at just about the crack of dawn and glanced at our indoor/outdoor thermometer. The outdoor temperature read -1°. This fact barely registered in my brain; the morning low had been nearly the same for days, maybe weeks.

I went about my early morning business packing lunches, filling water bottles, and overseeing the consumption of breakfast. My mind was not fully on the task at hand because I was pondering the day ahead. W came to the kitchen, puttered around for a minute longer than usual, and fixed himself breakfast. C stumbled down the stairs next. He stood in front of the open fridge for a moment, declared the space void of anything edible, and began packing his backpack.

Sandwiches were made, thermoses filled. I moved on to water bottles. J made her way down the stairs, popped a bagel in the toaster, and sleepily sat at the table. I pulled the pitcher of water from the fridge and began pouring it into the bottles.

“OH MY GOSH!” J exclaimed, startling us all. “Why is it so cold out?!”

Why the alarm? I wondered. Not registering that I had already checked the temperature, I looked at the windowsill. The thermometer read -17°. My mind ticked back through its stash of morning snapshots. Confusion tugged at the edges of my memory. It wasn’t that cold a few minutes ago. Was it? Had it really dropped so fast? What was going on? All of these thoughts slipped through my mind, one after the other, like a deck of cards being shuffled.

Overhearing the conversation, W came in to the kitchen from the living room. “I suppose I should change that back to Fahrenheit, huh?” he said. He picked up the thermometer and pressed the Celsius/Fahrenheit toggle button. He ducked his head to hide the mischief evident in his satisfied smirk as he made a quick retreat to the other room.

Yes, we always have to be on our toes in my house. You just never know who is up to mischief!

Invisibility

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One day, when my children were fairly young, I discovered that I had the power of invisibility. While this discovery was totally unexpected, invisibility has been a useful trait over the years.

My children were preparing for bed one night. They were somewhere around the ages of four, six, and eight. I had set them to the task of getting into their jammies and brushing their teeth in preparation for bed.

I was exhausted, as I so often am at the end of the day. I went in my room to lie down for a minute—my own mommy “time out”—while I waited for them. I started to zone out, my mind drifted, though I remained attentive. I remember over-hearing their kid conversation. My oldest was talking about something that had happened on the school bus that day, and the manner in which he spoke was just a little different than when he spoke to me. The tone in his voice as he relayed the event to his sibling was one of authority. It was pure kid-to-kid conversation, and as the oldest, he knew the most.

I heard my name mentioned in the conversation. Then I heard little footsteps in the hall, stopping at the door to my room. My room was dark, but light shone in from the hallway.

“Mommy?” a tentative voice asked into the darkness. I was tired and almost asleep. I didn’t answer. The footsteps retreated. “Do you know where Mommy is?” the little voice asked her little brother.

“No,” brother responded.

“I can’t find her,” said the little voice. She had barely looked, but brother didn’t know that. “Will you come downstairs with me to look for her?” And two sets of footsteps padded down the stairs and around the first floor while I puzzled over the fact that she had stood in the doorway of my room and not seen me lying on the bed. I heard a far-off voice inquiring into the dark basement. And then the footsteps came back up to the second floor.

“Where is she?” the two little ones continued to look for me as they conversed about my whereabouts. Hand in hand, they walked into my dark bedroom and passed inches from the foot of the bed as they checked the bathroom—also dark. They turned around and walked out the door, still calling to me despite my presence just a hair’s breadth away. I smiled in fleeting satisfaction that I was somehow invisible.

However, the discussion right outside my door was growing emotional and slightly panicky as the children considered how I could possibly have disappeared. “Hey you two,” I piped up. “I’m right here. You walked right by me.” To myself, I marveled that I could be invisible while I was in plain sight.

These days, it’s not so easy to be invisible. But when I am, I have learned to use my invisibility carefully. Sometimes, I try hard to conjure this power with no success; other times it just happens. Driving the car—especially with a car full of kids—I tend toward invisibility. Other times, I might be invisible from a different room.

No matter where I am when this power overtakes me, I have come to realize that in my times of invisibility, I must remain quiet and listen in order to get the greatest benefit.

Snow Wonder

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I went out the other evening to pick up my daughter from her team practice. It was snowing, though with the winter we’re having, I prefer not to acknowledge snow. I will admit, however, that it is beautiful when it is falling, even when the snow banks are already eight feet high and the grass may not reappear until July.

When I arrived in the parking lot, the carpool had not yet gotten back from the gym. I rolled down my window to talk to another mom, and her young son opened the back window and began playing with the snow that was gathering on the car. “What’s that?” I asked him.

“Snow,” he responded.

“No,” I shook my head. “There’s no more snow. That’s bugs. They’re spring bugs.”

“It’s snow,” he told me without a hint of question in his voice.

“It’s little tiny bugs. Lots and lots of them. Those bugs only come out in the spring.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s snow,” he said, and he rolled up the window. Clearly, he was done with my silliness, and he didn’t need me to change what he already knew.

My daughter arrived, and she immediately hung her head out the window to catch some big, juicy snowflakes on her tongue before we drove off. “Can you put on your high beams when we get to the back road?” she asked, settling back in to her seat. The snow was lazy, but steady as the car pulled out of the parking lot.

I smiled to myself. “I’ll try,” I told her, not making any promises. I never knew how the traffic would be, but the back road was usually not heavily traveled at this time of night.

When we turned onto the back road, she was disappointed to see there was a car ahead of us. I slowed down and the car pulled ahead and disappeared around a bend. I flipped on my high beams while I had a chance. The snow took on a life of its own, speeding toward our windshield like stars whizzing by a spaceship.

As we traveled down the road, the snow suddenly stopped; then a few feet later, it started back up again, like we had driven through a brief tunnel or a hole in the cloud.

An amazed exclamation of “Whoa!” escaped from my daughter. Her word, her tone of wonder, were perfectly synchronized with my own thoughts. The break in the snow was so unexpected, so incredible, so wonderful, “Whoa!” was a perfect reaction.

To share a moment of natural wonder with one of my children is always special. The fact that her outer reaction exactly mimicked my inner reaction let me know that somehow, as I have parented her through so many every day moments, I have taught her to appreciate the ordinary wonders in life.

Periodic Table

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We were discussing the periodic table at dinner last night because … well, doesn’t everyone discuss the elements at dinner? It was just the boys and me at the table—J was off doing whatever thespians do on opening night. The conversation started with, “Let’s see how many elements we can name that start with the letter….” It might have been a fun game when I was in high school and actually remembered the elements; but I’m resourceful, so I was making them up.

I made up elements that included the names of our cats (Potonium). I made up elements after some random foods (Maltedmilkballium). And I made some with names that were just plain silly (Phantomite), but elemental, nonetheless.

The boys were getting bored with my silliness (interesting role reversal), so they decided to switch it up. “Let’s name the elements in order,” W challenged his brother. “Hydrogen.”

“Helium!” I shot in before anyone else could. I knew it was the only one I had a chance of getting right.

“Lithium,” C added to the game.

“Beryllium,” W continued, and they both seemed to wait for me to jump in. Nope. I got nothing.

“Boron,” C guessed.

“If you took regular chem, this would be a piece of cake,” I told him. He looked offended. “No,” I back-pedaled. “You would have had to memorize the periodic table. I memorized it when I took chemistry.” Of course, I only took two years of science in high school because there was ART, after all.

“Yeah Mom, but that was back when the periodic table only had five elements,” W informed me. Ow.

Yes, to my children, I am “old,” and they love to tease me about it. And someday, they will be “old” to their children, as well. It’s the circle of life. One day, when W is talking about the periodic table of elements at his dinner table, the circle of life will come full circle, and I will be the one laughing.