Nice Work If You Can Get It

This morning I woke up to the sounds of industry.

My husband, already in his shirt and tie and smelling like aftershave and soap (delicious), leaned over me and nudged my shoulder with his lips, "Just so you know, the lawn crew is here."

I could hear the lawnmower and the trimmers going.  He was giving me fair warning: Don't walk outside naked this morning and also, ahem, it might be time to get up.

I heard him start his car and the sounds of the garage door going up and down.  I rolled over and tried to sleep.  But it is very hard to sleep to the sounds of industry.  Sounds of industry smell like guilt to me.  (Which I can smell a mile away.)

I am in the last week of summer and it is a little like purgatory.  Can't go backward.  Don't want to go forward.  Limbo in my head, dread in my stomach, sludge in my blood, terror in my heart. 

David keeps telling me, "You know we had an amazing summer, right?  I mean, you know, right?"  He's making sure I know how lucky I am, telling me that I have nothing to complain about, reminding me that in my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine a better summer.  (And don't forget, he says with his flirty eyebrows, I provided it.  Don't worry darling, I am very good at showing my appreciation.) 

The thing is, I know that.  I really do.  It was amazing.  But that didn't stop me from crying myself to sleep last night.  Because even though it was the summer to end all summers, it's still almost over.

Insert swear word here.

And yet, the sounds of industry are all around me, nudging me back to work, back to school, back to schedule, back to getting up before eight.  And the guilt is close behind, telling me I have to do more in a day than slather sunscreen on my children's gorgeous, growing bodies or braid the girls' hair or go boogie boarding with my boys and wash the sand out of our suits at night. 

A couple of days ago I spent the day at the mall with my girls.  I sat across from them, sharing an orange julius while they chattered excitedly about the new year and new teachers and piano lessons and the first chair seat in the viola section.  And I wished I could be as excited as them.

But I could only stare at their suntanned, freckled, beaming faces and wish that it was just the beginning of June.

Or at the very least, that they could take me with them.

In one week, this house is going to be very quiet.

RIM thinks I should get motivated, make a plan, write out a schedule, get busy and accomplish a few things.  CIM just stares at the wall, lost in thought, lost in space, lost again. 

Because the truth is, when my kids walk out that door in less than a week, there is a part of me that feels like my purpose will walk out with them. 

RIM thinks that's ridiculous.  CIM just shrugs.  Because ridiculous or not, it's also true.

I had a full-time job rubbing sunscreen on shoulders and cheeks and ears and the tender lines of scalp where the braids were parted.  It was a very good job.  And I was very good at it.  And have you ever seen me boogie board?  I am like a professional.  I really am.

And well, damn, I really hate job-hunting.

P.S.  The nice shot of my very fine cleavage is a just a bonus to this post.  You're welcome.

Summer by the Numbers

[Editor's Note:  I wrote this post after the first half of our summer vacation, but never finished it.  I reread it again this morning and thought it was worth publishing for purely historical reasons (keeping the record and all that).  It is out-of-date and quite possibly of little interest to most of you.  I'm just sayin'.]

Last night I laid down on my own bed for the first time in 17 days.

The thermostat said 88.

The thermostat near the kids room said 91.  They slept in the family room with the fan on full blast.

We were home. 

Home from a cross-country trip of 5,280 miles

which adds up to about 86 hours sitting next to my husband while he drove me past country I've only read about in books.

On the way, somewhere in Indiana, our car quietly hit the 100,000 mile mark on the odometer and just kept going.  (Brilliant, Mr. Ford.)

We drove through 7 thunderstorms, the fiercest one in Birmingham, Alabama and enjoyed more gloriously sunny days than I can count.

I sat on the beaches of Michigan and Florida with my 4 brown children for 8 days and rubbed 10 bottles of sunscreen onto their gorgeous skin, over their bony shoulders, round bellies, and freckled noses.

I did 1 load of laundry every night.  Swim suits and towels only.

I filled 2 empty water bottles with sand, one with the grey, rocky sands of Lake Michigan, the other with the brilliant, white sugar of the Gulf of Mexico.  They are now sitting in my kitchen window as consolation.

On our way to the white sand beaches of Florida we passed Florida's highest hill at 345 feet above sea level.  I've never been anywhere so low to the ground as the gulf coast.  I imagined I was so low that I could hear the earth's heartbeat when I lay flat on the sugar sand with my ear to the ground.  It felt like I was back at the beginning, back at creation, when all there was was the slow, steady thump of the earth as it turned around its axis and the tides moving around and around to the beat.

And now some of the 941 pictures put to 2 songs in 1 movie.  My favorite line: "put the lonesome on the shelf."  My favorite part:  my kids dressed up like sugar donuts.  You can bet I tried to eat every one of them.

A Glorious Reprise

This morning after I finished my post about the glories of my summer, I went outside.  Savannah was in her grandparents' swing, pumping her legs in and out of the sunshine streaming through the maple leaves.  She was humming the chorus of "Angels We Have Heard on High," the glor-or-or-or-ia part.

I smiled deep.

And just a few minutes after that Olivia was making a "masterpiece" that looked remarkably similar to a ham sandwich.  When she closed the lid on the sandwich with the second piece of bread, she put it on a plate, held it high in the air and said to the room, "Look at my glory!"

David said, "Hallelujah."

Tonight in the last rays of a glorious gloaming, I floated behind my two youngest children and told them to hold on tight to the rope, to keep their elbows tucked in and their knees bent, and then I watched them take their first wobbly ski across a dark lake. 

And it was so glorious that I thought I could probably give those angels a run for their money.

Happy Glorious 4th

I don't know about you, but I am having a glorious summer.

The summer to end all summers.

I've been quiet about it, only because I've been lapping it up, stuffing my face with it, rolling around in it, sucking the marrow out of it.  Which leaves very little time for writing about it.  Really good revelling can be a full time job.

Can you believe the photo I got last night?

I've been bragging about it ever since I took it.  I especially like the light of the fireworks shining through Ethan's ears and off Savannah's hair. 

Glorious.  There is no other word for it.

The Oyster Bed, For Now

It is an oyster, with small shells clinging to its humped back.  Sprawling and uneven, it has the irregularity of something growing.  It looks rather like the house of a big family, pushing out one addition after another to hold its teeming life...It amuses me because it seems so much like my life at the moment, like most women's lives in the middle years of marriage.  It is untidy, spread out in all directions, heavily encrusted with accumulations and...firmly embedded on its rock.

It is a physical battle first of all, for a home, for children, for a place in their particular society.  In the midst of such a life there is not much time to sit facing one another over a breakfast table.

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea, pg. 74-75

I have been preparing for today for two weeks.  Nesting, I suppose.  I've been dreaming about it for even longer.  The children are coming home.  There will be time, once again, for staring at each other over the breakfast table.

Oh, joyful day.

During all my preparations, the cleaning and organizing and sewing and refinishing, my mind has been thinking.  Mostly about Lindbergh's oyster bed, the sprawling, heavily encrusted, humped-back oyster shell I live in, and the year I have just survived clinging to my rock.

I thought about it when I cleaned out the drawers and make a stack of all the children's clothes that no longer fit.

I thought about it when I filed the drawings my children had made before they could make letters.

I thought about it when we sorted through the toys they had outgrown and no longer use.

I thought about it when I sanded the finish off the chairs of our first real dining set that we bought before Savannah was born.

I thought about it when I took the teddy bears off the boys' shelves to make room for the certificates and plaques and baseball trophies.

And I thought about it when I folded up the winter quilts and put out fresh summer pillows on the couch.

The world has gone around its axis one more time.  

And I am feeling dizzy. 

Grateful, but also reeling, I watched my children walk out the door this morning and I'll admit I was a little melancholy.  Too much pondering, perhaps.  I told David that I needed to talk, but he had to go--to provide, to secure our place on the rock.

My children are coming home today.  They are coming home for the summer.  And they will come home for a few more summers after this one, maybe a dozen, if I'm lucky.  But I can see that one day they won't, that my summers staring at them across the breakfast table are limited and precious.  This year amid the spelling tests and math facts and tricky letter "e," I taught my oldest daughter how to shave her armpits and my nearly teenage son learned how to talk to girls.

I can feel the earth turning under my feet.

Three days ago I went to the bookstore and spent all of my birthday gift cards and some of my grocery money on books for my children's summer reading.  It was a sizable stack and when I got to the counter the woman said, "Wow.  Are you a teacher?"

I said, "No, I am a mother."

She looked up at me, surprised.

"I am a mother."

And I said it all the way to the car.  I am a mother.  I am a mother.  I am a mother.  And my time has come. 

I'm in the oyster bed, for now.  Lovely, crazy, wild, busy, teeming, untidy, exhausting, perfect oyster bed.  And we have made it, again, to summer, when the sprawling, spreading life stops for a few glorious months and it's just us.  Just us--across the breakfast table, across the game board, across the country.  With all the time in the world.

At least, that is what I am telling myself this morning.

Emptying My Pockets

I woke up this morning and knew it was time.

Just like that.

I have been hording my pictures of our vacation to British Columbia like presents on Christmas morning.  I always like to open mine last, to make the moment last as long as possible.  I eat the crust around my toast first for the same reason.  I save the butter-soaked middle for last.

Somehow, in my mildly mad head, I thought this post would signal the end of those magical three weeks.  (Which in reality, did actually end about three weeks ago.  Whatever.)  And I was not ready for it to be over.  But yesterday we went and bought new backpacks and bright, new underwear and a box of number twos with fresh pink erasers.

And today I woke up ready to empty my pockets.

This morning I dumped a used water bottle, full of the sand and shells of Cox Bay, onto a paper towel in my kitchen and set it in the sun to dry.  When it is dry I will put it in a glass jar and it will join the other bottles of summertime past sitting in my kitchen window.   

And this fall, when I am rinsing the morning syrup off the dishes in this quiet house, or wildly rushing to make dinner in the middle of lessons and softball games and orchestra rehearsal, I will remember our magical holiday.  There is a good chance I will cry a bit (let's be honest, it's me we're talking about), but I also think there's a chance that I will smile after the crying.  

At least now I feel ready to.

And now, a movie and some details.  Details first. 

We drove to Utah on a Sunday and spent the next four days playing with David's family.  We climbed Mount Timpanogos and the kids swam and we ate at all our old haunts.  While we were there, my beloved grandmother passed away and so on Friday we drove down to St. George for her funeral.  It was beautiful.  Full of music and testimony.  I know she liked it.  My favorite part was the letter she wrote to us, which my uncle read at the funeral.

On the fourth of July, the next day, we drove to Boise, ID to meet my brother Jacob, his lovely wife Lisa and their two delicious boys.  The next morning we caravaned to Port Angeles, WA and drove onto a ferry boat which took us all over to Vancouver Island.  We spent the night there in Victoria and the next day we walked around the city and fed the seals at the wharf and ate the best fish and chips I've ever had.  In the afternoon we got back in the cars and drove about five hours to a little surfing town at the end of the road called Tofino.

We stayed there for five glorious days.  We boogie-boarded, we beach-combed, we hot-tubbed, we whale-watched, we built beach campfires, we played games, we rode our bikes up and down the beaches.  I told you.  Magic.

Then we drove to Nanaimo, BC, (saw Cathedral Grove on the way) and boarded another ferry for Vancouver.  Once there, we drove about an hour north to Whistler, BC.  The next morning Jacob and Lisa headed back for Idaho, and we spent another four days riding the trams and ski lifts and zip lines of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains.  We slept and hiked and saw the latest Potter movie and four black bears.  While we were there, we shopped for souvenirs and heirloom tomatoes at the farmer's market and the stomach flu went through most of us.

We arrived home on a Saturday to a 100-degree house, almost three weeks from the day we left.

David keeps talking about going to Kauai next year for our anniversary.  I told him I only want to go back to Tofino.  For the rest of my life.  It was that good.

And now, our holiday in still-frame and set to music:

One Day of Summer

The moon followed us home last night.

We went to a movie for an impromptu date-night.  After pasta, with the dishes still on the table, we ran to make the 7:45 showing.

We saw

and if you want to have a really good time, you'll go see it too.

(You're welcome.)

And then I watched the half-moon follow us home from my car window.

And thought about how many ways there are to tell a story.

(If you go see that movie you'll know what I mean.  You're welcome, again.)

And then I lay in bed next to David and after five days at Girl's Camp remembered to be grateful for my bed and my husband and my circa 1988 shower, and then I reviewed my day.

We started cleaning the house, but got distracted cleaning out the drawers for the looming school year.  The process was interrupted when I realized we needed a few drawer organizers, but didn't have the heart to face the heat and run to Target.  As we sorted through candy wrappers and crumpled book marks and shoes that no longer fit, I asked the kids about their activities in the fall.  Which required a trip to the internet.  By then, everyone was hungry and so I went to the cupboards, but they were bare except for craisins and stale croutons and a sticky jar of nutella.  So we stopped everything while I showered and went to the store.  I very nearly melted by the time I brought in the groceries and felt amazing for just getting them put away.  So I rested a bit and moved the laundry one more station and helped the girls start an art project.  By then it was time to start dinner and I listened to Adele with my apron on while the sausage and onions browned in my pan.  Ethan talked me into a game of Go Fish and then David was home.

Before I went to bed I went around and kissed my children in the dark.  The vacuum was still out and the contents of all the drawers sat in little piles around their rooms.  The laundry was only half done and all of it unfolded.  The bathrooms never got started and the floors still made sticky noises when I walked across them.  The dinner dishes sat in the kitchen sink and the detritus from the bottom of everyone's backpack was in a sad little pile on the counter. 

He asked me how I was feeling.

I said, "It's complicated."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning you have an early meeting in the morning and so you don't have time to hear it all."

"Can you give me the gist?"

"No.  I'd have to sort it all out first."

He gave up then and started kissing me. 

But it's something like this:

The fall is coming.  If not on the thermometer, then on the calendar.  And with it, my doubts are returning.  My inadequacies.  My worries.  The questioning and disdainful voices in my head.  And yes, my regrets.  They are returning from their summer holiday.  I can hear them rearranging the drawers in my head.  Making room.  Leaving freedom and hedonism and possibility and joy and confidence in a grubby little pile on the shelves of my memory.

What, too maudlin for a Wednesday morning?

I'm just getting started.  (David was right to interrupt me with kissing.)

I only have 13 days left.

And that seems very unlucky, indeed.

Pining for Eden

The thunder woke us up last night.  I couldn't think of the last time I heard thunder in Arizona.  And even now the world is slowly dripping outside my window.

Strange.  (Bordering on spooky.)

Half asleep, I said a big "Wow," holding out the vowel too long and asking David if that really was thunder.  He grunted in the affirmative and rolled over.

I said triumphantly, "See, the whole universe is mourning our fall from grace."  But he was already asleep again.  He doesn't believe in seeing signs in the weather.

I, however, tend to.  Just for the melodrama if nothing else.  Reading the mind of heaven by the inflections in the clouds.  Almost as good as reading David's eyebrows.  (Which I am brilliant at, by the way, no matter what he says.)

Last night in the dark, while the skies rolled above us and added their own consternation to mine, (I love it when the universe agrees with me), I thought about our magical days on the beach at Tofino. 

And pined away the rest of the night.

I pined especially for July 10th.  The best day of my entire year.   

That morning we rode our bikes to the beach at low tide, when the fog was still thick and sand dollars littered the beach, a fortune free for the taking,   

and the kids scrambled over the tide pools and filled their pockets with the discarded homes of sea creatures.

 

We rode the bikes all the way down McKenzie beach

and flew the kite,

and then nearly got lost in the fog on the way back home.  We followed the shoreline until it ran out into the rainforest.

Home for lunch and hot-tubbing, and then we stuffed ourselves back into the wet suits and spent one last glorious afternoon on Cox Bay.

See what I mean?

Easily the best day of my year.  In the top ten of my life even.

Go ahead and wistfully weep with me and the Arizona sky.  The universe has given its approval.  

I intend to pine until the sun comes out. 

There's No Help For It

We are home and I am feeling like Eve.  Cast out of the garden.

And the lone and dreary world feels suspiciously like hell.  Complete with the fire and brimstone and severe heat warnings.  

Am I overdoing it?

(It's one of my talents.)

We had an amazing time travelling through five states and one province and a couple of trips across the ocean. 

And all of it together.

Undivided for three whole weeks.

Yesterday I asked David if he was worried that he wouldn't be able to leave me in the morning and go back to work.  He grinned at me.  And confided he was indeed having his doubts.

But there's no help for it.

Him to the hospital.  Me to the laundry.  The kids set to the dusting.  And the air conditioner back to round-the-clock vigilance.

And then two memory cards full of pictures to sort and print and frame. 

But slowly.  With plenty of wistfulness and nostalgia thrown in for good measure.

Luckily, I am full of both.

O, Canada

I spent today tugging my children in and out of their wet suits and toasting smores over our beach campfire.

The stuff of my dreams.

We woke to sunny skies.  The best omen of all.

And so we hauled nearly everything in the house to the beach and spent the day together in the ocean.

It was one of those days I wish I could live over and over again.

We swam, and boogie-boarded, and flew the kite.

I rode my rented beach cruiser from one end of the bay to the other and climbed the jagged rocks that surrounded it.

I swallowed a hotdog with mustard and sand, and a gallon of the ice-cold Pacific.

And my children played,

and played,

and played.

Tonight when I heard David's breathing slowing down for sleep, I tucked my head next to his and whispered, "Did you know it was going to be this good?"

Eyes closed, he gave me a satisfied grin. 

O, Canada.