"What is better than food?"; reboot; OMFG; a farty IOU

So says my Oliver who is a hell of an eater. Today in his camp lunch I packed some salami and a wedge of triple cream brie in addition to yellow bell pepper slices, a Granny Smith apple, and the requisite Pirate's Booty. He was thrilled. God love that child. Jack has a much more truncated palate but he's as enthused about all he does like as Ol is about his wider berth. At least both of them adore Louisiana food. Jack will eat your body weight in gumbo and red beans and rice, and the two of them can take down a loaf of stanky garlic bread like nobody's business.

This is really quite a critical quality, in my opinion. I'm careful not to say too much out loud or to over-exalt in front of them, lest reverse psychology wreak havoc on my desired outcome, but food and drink, and the pleasure that can be taken in trying, enjoying, sharing, and crafting them, add such a zest to life, such a depth of experience, such an opportunity for celebration and memory. And so I like what I so far see in terms of their culinary preferences.

***

So, I started this post last night when the house was finally quiet and I was feeling marginally zen. And then the stupid low-light or no blue light or whatever the hell program blocks whatever it is in screens that supposedly ruins your sleep flipped on and I couldn't see my pictures and Tom had conveniently forgotten how to adjust the timing of the stupid program's onset and I lost my bizness and called it a day.

The children had been talking loudly and nonstop since I'd picked them up at camp and then driven home through a gale-force thunderstorm -legitimately branches were blowing across the roads- as both asked me to "look at this, Mom" as if I have not been saying for a decade, "I cannot look at you while I'm driving." 

Apparently, they have heard and ingested that as well as they've heard and ingested:

1. "Please do not talk to me through the bathroom door. I would really appreciate going to the bathroom in peace and privacy."
and
2. "Please do not attempt to tell me something while I'm vacuuming. I cannot hear you and then you get annoyed because I cannot hear you but I have already told you that I cannot hear while the vacuum is on and if I stop and start as often as you attempt to talk to me, I will literally never get the vacuuming done."

I'm fully serious when I tell you that both happened yesterday after we managed to make it home through that storm which was as verbal as it was nature-made.

I would like to insert a brief mention here that while the children are attending the same camp, they are doing different programs there. Not only is said camp an hour and change round-trip two times a day (I did not know this when we registered) but also Jack's program finishes at 3 and Oliver's at 3:30 (another thing we were not told before or during registration). "Well," you are surely saying, "just pick them both up at 3:30." 

Ah yes, that is logical BUT Jack only has a fifteen-minute grace period and so in order to avoid a $30/day "late" fee, I must pick him up by 3:15 and then leave the pick-up location and return 15 minutes later to fetch Oliver. This is lunacy, people.

I would also like to assert that most of Virginia needs to briefly move to Boston so as to learn how to drive. Yes, I know that Boston drivers have a "Masshole" reputation, but I would rather drive on the roads with them and their excellent skills ANY DAY if it meant I could avoid (and therefore live) the incapable Virginia drivers who appear to not know or not care that minimum speed limits, lane markers, turn signals, and no-turn signs are NOT suggestions. Jesus h christ, people. 

Suffice it to say that when I returned to this blog post today, it was without the iota of zen I'd harnessed by last night. I agree with all I'd written yesterday but that foodly blush has been supplanted by the finding of the IOU Oliver was forced to write to Jack last night after farting on him, purposefully, again.

I'd threatened last time Ol did this and Jack came to me in raging tears (because really, Ol has a toxic arse) that next time he decided that laying one on his brother was a fine idea he'd owe him $10.

I don't know about you, but $10 is a hefty fine. I'll be damned if I do something stupid that results in me just throwing $10 away. There are many things I can and want to do with $10 and paying to fart on someone isn't one of them. 

Oliver seemed chastened. It has been a month since any issue, and I thought my intervention had worked.

Last night, after a hellish half hour of enforcing saxophone practicing and summer math review (don't even ask) after driving home though the cyclone, I threw in the towel and put on a movie for the kids so I could cook their dinner in peace and maybe read an article in the paper.

Soon enough, I hear Jack scream, "That's it. You owe me $10, Oliver. Mom, Oliver farted on me. He owes me!" And I said, "You are right, Jack. Oliver, pay up." I swear to G, y'all, Oliver moseyed upstairs and came back with a $20. I don't even have a $20 right now. 

"Jack, all I have is one of my birthday twenties. Do you have change?"

"No!"

"Fine, I'll write you an IOU. 'Jack, I owe you $10 for farting on you again. -Oliver"

There is a fair amount wrong with this situation but the amount of my fine, which Tom said seemed harsh, is clearly not part of the problem. 

I would love to continue venting but it's time to get in the car to approach the multiheaded beast known as Avoiding a $30-for-15-minute Fine Pick-Up. 

Thank the lord Tom and I are blowing this joint at 5:30 tonight and heading to FedEx Field for the U2 concert. Thrill of a lifetime. Seeing U2 in concert has been on my bucket list for years. Woot!

***

I'm going to attempt to regain some zen by sharing with you this picture of my first blackberry harvest from the bushes Mom brought me from Nanny and Papa's yard. The original plants are about 65 years old now. I'm so lucky to have two of them (or their offshoots).

When you've got a siphon but need a bellows

We blinked and now have just five days of school left. In September, Jack will head to sixth grade, and Oliver to third. It was a really good year for us in so many ways but also offered some challenges. A bully, a new job, changing expectations from teachers and coaches, new instruments and interests, a friend soon to move...

Ever so often, not least in times of forced change like the end of school always is, I am reminded that even the most seemingly smooth lives endure tumult. Even for the most joyous kids, growing up is tough at times. This year, I also relearned that adults don't stop evolving. Nor should we, although such maturation can be painful and tough. Our relationships-with self, friends, partners, family- stall, need work, offer deep happiness, worry us, comfort us, and frustrate. Growing up and growing older have more in common than I once thought.

When I became a mother nearly eleven years ago, I found that life both slowed down and sped up. So many hours seemed to disappear unaccounted for- what had I done other than feed, diaper, bathe, comfort? I loved babyhood, loved the ways my boys smelled -if innocence has an associated scent in concrete form, it's a baby- and felt, loved being able to hold a whole body curled in my arms, loved their little goat bleats and knowing what the varieties of those meant and how to answer and console. I loved the recognition of me in their eyes, loved watching those eyes take in the world around them.

But those same missing hours made many days blur into each other, July rolled into August into September seemingly overnight. And over the past decade, I have periodically paused, as do so many parents, perhaps especially those who stay home, and considered that while motherhood has brought so much to my life, it's also taken. It has taken time, energy, and freedom from my bank and invested that treasure in my kids' vaults. That balance sheet, even when the withdrawals are purposeful and enthused, so often shows various sorts of depletion.

We've all been tired enough to let things slide. We've come home late and fallen into bed without brushing our teeth or washing our face because really, who cares for a night. We've thrown stuff away or into closets instead of putting it up properly because time is short and people are coming for dinner in ten minutes. 

Without realizing it, I think we also do that in some of the relationships we most value. We take for granted that our parents will always be here un-aged, on our side, happy and secure. We imagine that we ourselves will remain youthful, strong, full of the stamina that got us to adulthood in the first place. We think that we really will go to sleep early tonight and exercise tomorrow. We think that our children might be the ones who never sass or say they hate us. We think that our friendships and marriages will last.

My father's mustache is so gray now, my mother has fervently disagreed with me in the past, they have slowed down some, the aches and pains of aging bodies infringing on the ways and speed with which they might sometimes like to live, the ways I hoped they'd always live.

I can now only put my makeup on in an arena of blinding lights. I am still strong and flexible but not infrequently I am afflicted by some sort of physical issue- tendonitis from over-gardening, an idiopathic frozen shoulder, a seizing piriformis, my first grays. I rarely go to sleep early, and I exercise about 50% less than I used to. I am tired 95% of the time. None of that was even on my radar ten years ago.

Both of my children sass, one has definitely yelled "I hate you" on various occasions and I'm pretty sure the other hasn't yet only because he's not of age. They are both exceedingly wonderful, developmentally age-appropriate, and frustrating and tiring on the regular. Also, and no one shares this nugget enough, their bedtimes get later and later, further stripping parents of the quiet alone time evenings once promised. 

Marriage is work. It really is. Vows and rings mean little without tending and gratitude and connection. It is so easy to lose sight of each other, to each take a kid or certain chores and tag team through life. It's so easy, and often appealing, to sink with fatigue onto the couch each night, and to tell yourselves that proximity there in front of the boob tube constitutes closeness. It does sometimes, but over the long haul you realize that roommates also sit together on couches and split chores, and are you married or are you roommates? You smooth things in one way, your partner in another, and over the years you enable and entrench certain behaviors which don't serve much of anything except getting through days easily. This is normal but I'm not sure it's wise.

Friends come and go, and often not the ones you expect. Some of my best college friends are still regular, treasured presences in my life, and others are but memories of the part of my story than happened nearly twenty years ago. It's easy to forget that as we are, everyone else is struggling and succeeding and growing and changing too. In real time. Not all friendships can weather such dynamic evolution.

Meanwhile, time is tight, America seems to be falling apart in several significant ways, some things have to give. We don't always wash our faces and stow things properly, you know?

For some, life nonetheless goes on in largely good ways. For others, this life, this world, all that is asked is harder, takes more, strips more. As would many of us if answering honestly, I have had feet in both realms, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes with full awareness, sometimes not.

The difficult times are when you sense that you're starting to feel like a humorless, one-dimensional version of yourself. As if you've had a siphon hooked to your lungs when what you really need is a sturdy bellows. You look around, and think, "Wasn't it just Thanksgiving? What year is it? Why have the kids outgrown their shoes again? What IS THAT on the sink?"

Two weeks ago, having looked in the mirror and seen Flat Stanley peering back, I grabbed the biggest pair of bellows I could find and plunged a stream of air down my throat. In doing so, I toppled and upended a few things, but instead of hiding them in the closet, I defiantly showed them the light, cleaned them well, and put them up responsibly. Amazing the fullness and fulfillment that can come from rightly inflating oneself.

This post made a lot of sense in my head earlier today when I was drafting it. And then I shelved books in our school library, and sat in the car forever running an errand downtown, went to the store, had two different school pickups, am sweaty and have had a headache since noon, and still haven't eaten dinner or figured out teacher gifts.

So, although I'm not completely sure this is wrapping up and making the points I'd hoped it would, maybe that's ok. Maybe that's what will resonate with you because you, too, are in a time of flux and are feeling slightly manic and also reflective. If you are, don't forget to inhale deeply. Don't forget to invest in your own vault, to wash your face, to get what you do deserve.

My boys and me