It’s five in the morning and I tiptoe down the stairs that spill out into our kitchen. I start the coffee in the exquisitely rare citywide silence that only occurs on holiday weekends. Yesterday was Thanksgiving and today is my oldest son’s 25th birthday.

I carry one of the kitchen chairs over to the cupboard. Heaving myself up with achy morning knees, I check to see if I have the powdered sugar that I vaguely remember tucking away on the highest shelf where I put the seldom used items. 

I do.

The flour, sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, and canned pumpkin are already on the counter. I collect the baking soda, vanilla, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder from the spice drawer under the stove and set the cream cheese and butter out to soften.

Our cat Ruby appears and sits by her bowl. She knows my early rising will result in two breakfasts and trusts that this quiet moment will be our secret. I’m always scolded by the veterinarian to put Ruby on a diet. I pretend to acquiesce but have no intention of making the effort anymore. Whenever we put her on a diet, she eats the dogs’ food and gains even more weight. Besides, her zeal for breakfast brings us both joy.

I return to the birthday cake altar and begin. My cooking is utilitarian. For the last ten years I have navigated meal preparation for two omnivores, one with a limited palate, and two vegetarians. Practicality and nutrition took precedence over creativity and flair.

My pumpkin spice cake is the only thing received with equal enthusiasm by every family member. It is my signature dish, if a baked good can qualify as such. Regardless of its merit, my pumpkin spice cake is my culinary legacy.

I discovered the recipe in a vegetarian cookbook displayed in the new arrivals section of the library around the time the twins committed to their meat-free dietary path a decade ago. Like many traditions, there’s not a clear account of how it became the go-to-birthday-cake for each of the kids, but we are all in agreement that it has been forever.

In total, our four kids have thus far accumulated seventy-eight birthdays. During the elementary school years I planned every themed celebration you can imagine. There were bowling, swimming, gymnastics, ice skating, capture-the-flag, and horse-back riding parties along with bouncy houses and backyard petting zoos. It all came to a screeching halt as each child reached middle school. I was set adrift by my sudden embarrassing status and fired as the party planner.

It’s at this middle school transition when the pumpkin spice cake takes on its true meaning and significance. Even after the eye-rolling and the stiff hugs become the norm of the teenager years, a birthday cake is the one offering of maternal love my kids can still wholeheartedly welcome.

The timer beeps and I take my son’s cake out of the oven. I look out the window and see that the sky has become a dark periwinkle. The dogs walk into the kitchen. I open the sliding glass door to let them out and stand in the coolness of the sunrise. I watch the horizon brighten and listen as the birds and the city awaken.

I think about my children and mull for a moment about the things I wish I could do over but then deliberately let feelings of gratitude replace the angst.

There are only perfect birthday cakes. 

Pumpkin Spice Cake (preheat oven to 350)

In one bowl place 2 cups of flour, 2 tsps of baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda, 2 tsps of  cinnamon, 1 tsp salt

In another bowl combine 1 1/2 cups sugar, 3/4 cup vegetable oil. Blend sugar and oil together with beater. Add 4 eggs one at a time, beating well before adding another. Then add one 15 oz can of pumpkin puree and beat well. Add wet mixture to the bowl containing the dry ingredients and beat well.

Cook at 350 for 30 – 35 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Combine 8oz of cream cheese, 1/2 cup (one stick) of softened butter, 1 or 2 tsps of vanilla, 2 cups powdered sugar (1/2 cup more if you like sweeter frosting) Beat well until smooth.

My newly licensed daughter maneuvered through Austin’s choke-hold traffic on her final practice drive to the dance studio before I left town for my road trip with my mother.

“What’s the plan for Florida?” My daughter asked, cheerfully unaware of my hyper-vigilant state. 

I rattled off the itinerary while scanning for road hazards.

“We’re in Jacksonville for the first three days with my brother, then Miami for one night, Key West for two days, one day in Sanibel Island with a stop in the Everglades, then to Crystal River and back to Jacksonville for the last two days.”

My daughter grimaced like someone just pinched her hard. 

“Does your mom know that you’re the Travelnator?”

That’s the name she gave me one afternoon on our trip around Iceland as she begged for permission to nap.

“Yes, I made her sign the waiver,” I answered with the appropriate Travelnator edge. 

Movement is my medicine, a panacea to the worry and anxiety to which I’m prone. I respect life’s relentless forward momentum. It begs me to be resilient.

I had concocted the Florida trip as a prescription for my mother. Surely my remedy, an epic action-packed adventure, would provide the cure to heal her too.

During the decade that my dad angrily flailed further into dementia my mother increasingly became confined in their home like prisoner. Her life paused as his faded. 

In the end, Alzheimer’s is truly a disease with two victims. 

My brother and I live too far away, with busy families, to have been able to give her any meaningful relief during the worst of it.

She said that she felt like Rip Van Winkle after my dad died. In the year and a half since his death, my mother has worked mightily to reestablish herself but the scars from those barren years are still tender.

The trip started with a bang, literally. My brother works for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department. He took my mom and me, along with my nieces, 15 and 10,  to the indoor shooting range to learn how to fire a handgun. It was a first for both of us as well as for my youngest niece. 

Everyone in the front office knew my bother so we were led into the private shooting range for our initiation. I had not seen my brother and his family for four years. The intensity and power of this new experience was galvanizing and softened the awkwardness of getting reacquainted.

This was the beginning of a parade of firsts for my mom. She took Ubers and stayed in Airbnbs, walked among the pulsating Miami crowds, sped through the Everglades in an airboat, and snorkeled with manatees in the Crystal River.

It was a list of activities that I carefully arranged months prior. Everything went like clockwork except for the one thing that didn’t.

Dry Tortugas National Park is located 68 miles west off the Florida Keys, in the Gulf of Mexico. The park preserves Fort Jefferson and an undisturbed tropical ecosystem with some of the best, and most beginner friendly, snorkeling. 

The park is accessible only by seaplane or boat. On the recommendation from my son, who turned green on the boat, I booked the seaplane. My mother had never been snorkeling. I thought that Dry Tortugas would be the perfect place to teach her before we went to Crystal River to swim with manatees.

In my mind this was going to be the crescendo of our road trip.

I felt a pang when I watched a fickle cell of clouds form in the morning and then a gut punch when the former Alaskan bush pilot cancelled the only afternoon flight. The last ferry had already left.

I panicked. I wanted this experience for my mother. It was a crucial element of the road trip cure.

I walked over to the little office that served the compound of historic cottages where we were staying. The three staff people listened to the condensed backstory of our road trip and then sprung into action to find an alternative adventure.

The weather passed and in the span of thirty minutes my mom and I found ourselves running to the schooner that would take us kayaking in mangrove islands and snorkeling over sponge gardens. 

The earlier storm scared off the other tourists so there were only eight people on a boat that usually brings out twenty. There was an off-duty crew member along with his visiting mom and niece which seemed to help make the group take shape faster and soon it felt like we were sailing with friends.

The road trip was back on track. Forward momentum.

We sailed for about an hour and then anchored off the mangrove islands. The crew put the kayaks in the water and we loaded up. The afternoon sky was beginning to pink up and was reflected on the still water. We followed the guide around the mangroves as she gave us a history of the area, picked up huge horseshoe crabs, and pointed out hidden birds.

We paddled back and prepared to snorkel. We lined up as they passed out flippers, masks and kids’ swim noodles so we would float and not disturb the bottom.

I could sense my mom’s nervousness. I went over the instructions again and told her that I would go first and wait for her in the water. I scooted off the platform on the side the boat and swam out a bit to test my mask.

I turned around to see my mother with her head up. Her mask was half full of water and her snorkel dangled to the side. She was propped up by the bright orange noodle under her armpits. 

As I got closer I could see the fear in her eyes.

I swam up to her with a smile and asked her to hold still as I made the adjustments needed. I rearranged my noodle so I could use my legs to help support her body. I looked directly in her eyes and reminded her that she would be able to get the hang of it and that we had plenty of time. 

Calmly, I lifted her mask to let the water drain. I placed it back on her face and told her to take a small breath in through her nose to create the suction needed. I reached around to either side of her face to tighten the straps to make the mask fit her head better.  

Her eyes continued to tell me she couldn’t do this. I smiled again and said she could. 

I emptied out her snorkel and asked her to open her mouth and bite down. I carefully pulled her lips over the edges. I reminded her to keep the seal tight.

“Try again,” I said.

She tentatively put her face in the water and nothing leaked.  

She swam ahead of me, her flippers rhythmically moving up and down. She stopped, lifted her head and nodded back that everything was working.

I watched my seventy-five year old mother snorkel for first time in her life.

We sailed back to the dock through a brilliant rainbow and a postcard sunset; my mother laughing, silhouetted by syrupy golden light. This is my favorite and most lasting image of our trip together.

Carl Jung says, “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically … on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” 

I sense this angst in my children when they randomly ask me about my regrets. They are searching for the affirmation that I’m at peace.

With that same childlike desire, I hoped that the Florida trip would be big and bright enough to blot out my mother’s unlived years with my father and release me from the helplessness I feel in the face of her frustration and sorrow.  

We expect life to follow our plan but it seldom does. I’m not one of those people who believes that everything happens for a reason. I think it’s a dangerous lie that we tell ourselves and others. 

The only thing for certain is life’s relentless forward momentum. We cannot outrun the unexpected any more than we can erase the past.

The best we can do, is to try again.

Spring reminds me that nothing in nature blooms all year long.

It is time to write again.

What a powerful lesson is the beginning of spring. All around us, everything small and buried surrenders to a process that none of the buried parts can see. And this innate surrender allows everything edible and fragrant to break ground into a life of light that we call spring.   – Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

I took the photo at Laguna Gloria, Austin, TX. The 33-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture, Looking Up, is by artist Tom Friedman.

No one really likes artichokes even though we think we should. To be specific, I’m talking about the cut from the stalk version and not the cleaned up marinated-in-a-glass-jar kind.

Every spring I announce to my family that I’m going to serve fresh artichokes. I tend to skew towards all in so I present the proclamation as if dinner may change their lives.

I buy the odd vegetables with great anticipation. When I get home I reacquaint myself with their thorns and creepy prehistoric hairy centers.  An artichoke is the stegosaurus of the vegetable world and when bolted has an unexpected Dr. Seussian magenta bloom.

It looks like something you shouldn’t eat.

I trim the thorns and steam the orbs for what seems like forever. Then there are the individual sides of melted butter, lemon and hollandaise sauce to prepare.

We all gather at the table and I give the primer, again, on how to eat an artichoke. Everyone complies and drags their teeth along the often tough, fleshy leaves.

My family tries to meet me at my enthusiasm but truth be told the strange vegetable doesn’t usually live up to the hype. We each think to ourselves that we could easily live without another artichoke.

I know it’s not an obvious comparison but it seems to me that many Americans treat their one precious vote like an artichoke and have come to the conclusion that voting isn’t worth the trouble or disappointment.

There’s a lot of red, white and blue lip service given to democracy and our duty to participate. Of course we all know that the reality is much messier than the story we tell. Like the artichoke, there are many thorns in the process and all our country’s isms are under the leaves in the hairy prehistoric center.

But what if someone told you that eating an artichoke might prevent one senseless shooting death. Most likely you would eat the artichoke, right?

VOTE.  It’s easier than eating an artichoke.

End note: Need more information? Ballotpedia is a nonpartisan online political encyclopedia. Founded in 2007, it covers American federal, state, and local politics, elections, and public policy.  Ballotpedia’s stated goal is “to inform people about politics by providing accurate and objective information about politics at all levels of government.” ballotpedia.org

This year Valentine’s Day, Ash Wednesday, and my fifty-fourth birthday are stacked on top of each other. It’s the first time since 1945 that Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day share the same date.

I take this as an auspicious sign.

Since I was a teen, I rebelled against my Valentine’s birthday and the sentimental, craft-store imagery of hearts, candy and flowers. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone tilts their head and through a breathy smile says, “Oh, you’re a Valentine’s baby, that’s so sweet.”

From the beginning of my romantic history, the specter of my Valentine’s birthday loomed large like sick-green tornadic clouds in the rearview mirror. Even my earnestly supportive husband of twenty-six years is often rendered celebratorily paralyzed during the month of February.

In response, I have shooed away my birthday and Valentine’s Day like unwanted flies. Having the two combined sounds like it should be more special than each stand-alone event but the mashup has never equaled my imagined script.

With the addition of Ash Wednesday to the mix, I must admit that I harbor a quiet yearning for something extraordinary to flare.

More accurately, I need a plan.

It’s been a stale start to 2018. I’ve been trying to reboot but the absence of concrete goals past my birthday’s horizon makes me anxious. There are no sparkly adventures or deadlines, no moves or significant transitions. I’m not comfortable with what seems to me like standing still.

We, humans, are meaning-making machines and from that charge, I desperately want to assign significance to my birthday falling on Ash Wednesday. I want this rare occurrence to usher in a dramatic shift.

I grew up wedding-and-funeral Episcopalian in a predominately Catholic small town in the Northeast. More than anything I wanted to go to catechism with my friends and get in on the mysterious spiritual goodies that I imagined being doled out every Wednesday after school. I wanted the rituals, the Friday night fish dinners, and the white confirmation dress.

As an adult, I’m not a practicing anything, but I still love the Lenten season. I’m drawn to the story of Jesus having to wrestle his demons, literally and figuratively, alone in the desert for forty days to find the clarity and strength to go forward.

There’s a nurturing austerity to the traditional pillars of Lent – prayer, fasting, and service – that disrupts habitual thinking.  Ash Wednesday requires change and begins a season to look within, try something different, and think about purpose and mortality.

The message of Lent is a fitting theme to my fifty-fifth year ahead. It honors my discomfort, even my jaded achy birthday neediness.

My husband and I do not usually give each other birthday gifts. So I was surprised last night to find the box that he left on my side of the bed. It was a necklace of tiny blue stones that catch the light just enough to draw awareness.

It’s perfect.

This morning I awoke to the kind of quiet that only happens after it rains. The wet streets muffled the traffic and the sunlight was muted and made tangible by the fog. It was the first time in a while that stillness made me feel sturdy and protected.

I take this as an auspicious sign.

Note: I took the photo in Grenoble, France.

“You’re so controlling,” Twin A screams as she steers to the side of the road.

This outburst comes after lurching through our neighborhood with a grand finale turn that made me swallow the gum I had been manically chewing to distract me from my death seat position in the car.

Twin A comes to a stop, gets out, and storms down a side street. Twin B, who had been sitting in the back, also flees the car. While running to catch up with her sister, Twin B turns to give me a look of disgust that makes me feel old and mean.

I remain in the passenger seat and take note of how thankful I am to be parked.

A tippy three-legged stool is the best image I have for the relationship between my twin daughters and me during these teenage years. Teaching them to drive has been like sawing off one of the legs.

“We’re gonna walk home,” Twin B calls.

“Fine,” I think poutily as I plunk down in the driver’s seat.

It begins to rain so I loop around and find my driving students walking. They get in the car and the accusations start up immediately.

“We think you are sexist! You were way more laid back when you taught the boys how to drive.”

The sexist branding makes me crazy and they know it.  Some variation of this conversation has been constant since the girls’ 16th birthday passed four months ago and they didn’t get their licenses.

It’s true, in the beginning I didn’t worry as much about the boys driving.

My relaxed attitude changed fast after our oldest son ended up under an eighteen wheeler on a snowy Chicago highway and then soon after our younger son embarked on a rogue morning adventure that ended in a car-totaling accident at a four-way stop.

Mercifully no one was hurt during either accident but this double miracle only serves to make me more fearful about the girls driving. I worry that all our family’s accident passes have been used up by the boys.

If that is sexist, then so be it.

To assuage my fears I’ve read all the guides on teaching teenagers to drive. They feature pictures of relaxed parents and teens smiling and list suggestions like, “Keep things light, ignore the slip ups, and praise good practices.”

Unfortunately for my girls, I’m the parent screaming STOP while grabbing the wheel and stomping my imaginary passenger-side brake on a simple straightaway.

As with the boys, we have invested in measures to help the twins become safe drivers. They’ve taken classes and completed professionally taught road hours.

The girls’ instructor is about eighty years old and drives on busy roads with newly permitted students with a sweetness that I truly envy. He gently admonishes me to increase the girls’ practice time.

“Perhaps it would be helpful to have your husband take on the driving hours,” he suggests.

To his disappointment, I inform him that my husband is even more skittish.

It is up to me to get the girls on the road. I’m just sixty practice hours and two driving tests away.  I remind myself that my track record is good with milestones. Each of our kids is out of diapers, tie their shoes, read and write, and two have successfully left the nest.

I fully realize that getting a license is THE game changer for every teenager moving toward independence. I want the girls to embrace this new freedom.  And yet I’m surprised to feel more tentative than I did with my sons. I think of the girls’ accusations.

It’s not just about the driving. As the headlines scream everyday, the world can feel like a more threatening place for women and girls. Although the dangers have always existed, the current political and cultural climate has dramatically brought this reality to the surface.

While teaching the twins to drive it has been difficult to relay a message of caution, both on the road and off, without hampering their sense of mastery and adventure. Added to the generic warnings about drinking and texting I think of desolate parking garages and flat tires at night. The stakes seem higher for the girls.

That’s not sexist, it’s the truth.

On the morning of the first anniversary of my dad’s death, I stood at the kitchen window of my parents’ house that overlooks the marsh. I took a picture of the view just as I had done a year ago.

I scrolled through my phone to find last year’s photo. In a magical thinking sort of way, I was hoping to spot a difference between the before and after images that would reveal some profundity.

As my eyes moved between the pictures, I awakened again to the power of nature’s cycles. The inward, restorative season is never more apparent than in the middle of a Maine winter and yet I know with certainty that spring will return.

My mother and I had a quiet day together to honor my dad. We sat by the fire and talked, made homemade black beans and rice, took a freezing walk on the beach, completed my mom’s application for her first ever passport, and both came down with the flu.

Life goes on and in that simple truth lies both pain and rebirth.

January 14, 2017

January 14, 2018

Two-thousand and eighteen will be born tomorrow and she is coming into a world that needs our help. There’s no wiggle room to make self-defeating and ultimately abandoned resolutions. Let’s shift from individual goals and focus more on BIG Love and Interconnectedness. I know that my list of intentions for the new year is a tall order but duty calls.

Kindness is a superpower available to everyone. Use it.

Give back and volunteer. It’s the fast way to get out of your head to see and feel the big picture. Put your feet under what matters to you and connect.

Love fearlessly. Look for the real thing and don’t accept imitation or drama.

Whatever your age, today is your prime. You always have something to offer.

Master your mind. You are just one thought away from another perspective. Ask yourself how you would live differently if you could erase all the negative chatter that rattles around in your head – then live that way.

Stay curious and gladly admit when you don’t know the answer.  Be solution focused.

Discipline is freedom. Most of life’s successes are based on showing up consistently.

Welcome 2018! We’ve got your back.

Endnote: The painting, The Lifesaver, is by the extraordinary local artist John Cruz. Please take a moment to discover his work. http://www.johncruzartist.com

Long term visioning and planning has never been my strong suit.  I’m not a plodder and tend to leap before I look.  Reading the news from the class of 1987 in my college alumni magazine is a humbling reminder of how productive the frogs are who plan for a few hops ahead.

Reading the class column becomes a blur of fabulous jobs, PhDs, throngs of uber-successful offspring, just finished books, and global volunteering stints.  How do they do this?  I admit that my focus can be a bit wonky but I have an impressive energy level.  I just don’t understand how some people squeeze so much from their 24 hours. The back pages are filled with frogs who must have an extra gene for planning their lily pad track.

As I put down the magazine and pour my umpteenth cup of coffee, I remind myself that people who report into their colleges thirty years after graduation are in a high-achieving micro-niche.  Most of us garden variety frogs don’t remember that much of college and have trouble with our next leap let alone tidying up our leaping image for people we haven’t seen for three decades.

I’m positive that no one wants to know that I’ve arrived at a stage in my life with my husband and four kids where I have found the time to shower regularly, garden a little, walk the dogs, prepare lots of meals, and herd my imperfect family through the day.

Matthew is fascinated by my alumni magazine in the way that you can become interested in a stranger’s story overheard at a restaurant.  He pulls the glossy edition from our mailbox and grins.

“Oh look, my alumni magazine has arrived.” He emphasizes the my.

We read it together and laugh, not at my classmates’ lives but at our fallible selves. Matthew and I have attention challenges at the opposite ends of the spectrum. When we operate together, we form a rather well-functioning unit.  I push him to leap and he reminds me to look.  We agree that together we might be alumni magazine worthy.

Several years ago I had an essay published in my alumni magazine where I told the story of how skydiving with my oldest son prepared me for dropping him off at college.  It was the only time I’ve made contact with my alma mater since I graduated.  Perhaps my classmates think I’m too busy skydiving to get a PhD.

https://ebreston.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/how-skydiving-prepared-me-for-my-first-college-drop-off/

Friday is our trash day so I get up early to pick up our two dogs’ business before the garbage truck arrives at our house. My daughter comes out on the patio and looks at the weighted HEB grocery bag and asks me about its contents with a hopeful look that perhaps I have brought her an extraordinary breakfast treat.

“It’s a bag of shit.”
“No really, mom, what is it?”
“Seriously.”

There’s an eye-roll and she returns to the kitchen to contemplate what to eat now that I have ruined her breakfast fantasy. I return to my task, hearing the garbage truck rumble, brakes squeaking, a few streets over.

It’s the Friday before Mother’s Day weekend. I think about my Mom in Maine, alone on her first Mother’s Day after my dad’s death, and then about my own kids.

Mother’s Day is May’s cultural emotional land mine, only to be followed by a second sucker punch, Father’s Day, in June. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to diss the annual Mother’s Day brunch if it’s a true celebration, but for many the day is conflicted, at best.

I think back to the bag of shit that I’m holding and the approaching garbage truck. And then it hits me – a thought, not the garbage truck.

Picking up the shit is the price we all pay for being able to love and care for other beings. You have to search it out because if you pretend that it’s not there, you’re going to step in it. Not only that, but you have to keep doing it until the very end of the line.

There are no perfect moms and kids, even if we all want to pretend it to be true on Mother’s Day. The reality is that what spans between unconditional love and the bag of shit is what it really means to be in a relationship of any kind.

So whether you love, like, or hate Mother’s Day remember to give yourself a break. Relationships are messy and there’s a lot of never-ending cleanup. But that’s the brilliant part of it too, because if you are alive and willing, you can pick up the shit.

Seriously.

Wild Love

Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness

Give me your hand.

– Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Joanna Macy

I’m not a practicing anything, but each year I design a DIY version of Lent for myself. The season arrives on the calendar just as my lofty, good-intentioned New Year’s resolutions fade.

The new year promises a quick fix while Lent is the real deal – transformation through disciplined action. It’s a forty day contract.

Prayer, fasting, and service, the traditional pillars of Lent, provide a container to hold my wandering attention span. There’s a nurturing austerity inherent in the rituals that helps me filter the distractions of everyday life.

Where I live, this penitential season is marked by the pairing of the natural expansion of spring – tender neon green leaves, noticeably longer days – and the measured restraint of deliberate choice.

I feel that true freedom, not the mindless kind that comes with passivity or the jagged edge of defiance, can only develop with discipline. It’s about finding balance through confronting the interplay between sacrifice and renewal, effort and ease, life and death.

Too often I’m like a fish jumping at every bait that dangles above the water – work, teenage drama, the internet, even happiness. We all know the feeling of twisting and flailing on the line, hook-in-the-cheek caught.

Most religions have a prescribed season to examine what catches us. A time to anchor our most spiritual questions back to the body, while simultaneously providing the discipline to tame our habits so that we can concentrate on a higher purpose.

It requires an often uncomfortable, committed, day-to-day effort that seems too big to make during the sweltering heat of summer or the reprieve of a Texas fall and winter. It’s spring where the overlap of Life and Death is the most visible.

The acceptance of duality is at the heart of being fully human and ultimately gives us room to renew, forgive, love and eventually die.  As my friend Erika says, “We are not here to struggle, nor are we here to stay the same.”

We come spinning out of nothingness,
scattering stars like dust.  – Rumi

In memory of my father 12/15/1939 – 1/14/2017

As new parents we all pledge never to utter a disparaging remark to the sweet child angelically sleeping in our arms, swaddled in their first baby blanket. You promise yourself that only encouraging words will flow from your lips to their ears. You will never scream, red-faced, “Because I said so!”

With less than seventy-two hours until the beginning of a new school year, I will put away my summer nagging-mom-lectures and pull out of moth balls my more academically oriented annoying-words-of-wisdom series.

Before I box up this year’s summer lectures, I’ll share my top five.

1. Do something other than sleep or look at a screen.

I first recount how when I was young, kids their age were expected to live outside in their free time and entertain themselves – and free time came after chores and a summer job. Parents gave their kids a bag of beef jerky and an apple, then pushed them out the door. If you were lucky they gave you a pack of matches. Look at what electronics have done to this generation. How will they survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

2. I’m old, please don’t waste my time.

Do the math, I say. If I’m lucky, I may have twenty-five to thirty good years left. I ask them, with my best disappointed parent face, if they think that I really have the time to hear the 367th raging debate about whose turn it is to sit in the front seat. I have found this to be my least effective lecture. Thinking like teenagers, several decades of mom lectures isn’t something they want to stretch out. They don’t mind if they shave off a few of my last good years with their constant arguing

3. I know I’m embarrassing, that’s my job!

I have come to embrace that I’m an embarrassment and everything is my fault. I mortify my teenagers several times a day, purposely, with the things I say, do, and wear. That is when I’m not cooking dinner, driving them somewhere, handing them my credit card, or helping with a problem.

4. You’re driving me crazy with all your meaningless teenage drama.

This lecture is almost always given using my outside voice. It usually takes place in the car, so technically I’m outside. Of course, I worry about scarring the kids with my outburst, so it’s followed by an apology, which also sounds a lot like a lecture. By the end of the apology no one in the car knows what I’m mad about anymore and the bickering stops. All is quiet but it’s not a victory, because now they think I’m crazy and embarrassing.

5. Do you think I’m your maid?

This is also an ineffective lecture because yes, they do think I’m their maid. Is it really that difficult to start the dishwasher, put more toilet paper in the bathroom, or close the cabinets without the sneer and the eye-rolling? Again, how will they ever survive the Zombie Apocalypse if the washing machine confuses them.

I took the picture at JuiceLand, Austin, TX

Look, I really don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive, you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. ― Mel Brooks

I was an only child for my first decade of life. It suited me well as a content introvert. I was the kid who preferred bike riding solo, stomping through the woods alone, or making forts for one in the dunes at my grandparents’ house in Maine.

Even though I was always in motion, I was not athletic, graceful, or team oriented. I ran cross-country but never pushed myself. I spent my teen years too self-conscious to truly commit to any sport and spent way too much time hating my body.

In my early thirties I became a jock, although still preferring solo sports like running, biking, and weight lifting. It was the first time since childhood that I listened to the voice that reminded me that movement is my preferred medium.

My twin daughters have always been physical. From their first tumbling class, they were both hooked and continued on to competitive gymnastics. A couple of years ago, after an injury, G switched to competitive dance.

The worlds of dance and gymnastics are often called out as breeding grounds for negative body issues. Fortunately, I’ve found the opposite at my daughters’ studio and gym where healthy body awareness is the norm.

Somehow my daughters and their teammates have managed to deflect much of the numbing photo-shopped perfectionism that screams at them from every screen, billboard, and magazine. I give a lot of the credit to their coaches who emphasize creativity, strength, and discipline over size and shape.

By my early teens, my body was an enemy to battle rather than a partner, beginning the unconscious unraveling of the natural mind-body connection. As I entered middle age, I believed that I had patched that relationship.

The co-owner of my home yoga studio has a welcoming smile, laughs easily, and wears her body effortlessly. She incorporates what she call a shaky meditation in ALL of her classes. About thirty minutes into a traditional practice, she switches gears and leads the class in enthusiastically dancing around the studio.

Yes, in the middle of practice.

The first time it happened, I thought it was a one time thing and awkwardly went along with the group. The second time, I was so annoyed that she interrupted class again – to dance – that I wanted to roll up my mat and go home.

I love her yoga instruction enough to begrudgingly tolerate the dancing. Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t mad but afraid.

Afraid of looking stupid; afraid of being too old to dance in front of strangers; afraid to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t as comfortable with my body as I had thought.

Another reminder that life is about re-working the same issues over and over. I’m still not thrilled about the shaky break in practice but I’ve made it a tool of discovery.

I’ve learned four simple truths:

1) The relationship you have with your body will be the longest, most intimate relationship of your life. Treat your body like a trusted friend, even when it’s injured or ill – especially when injured or ill.

2) The thoughts that you feed your body are EQUALLY important as the food you choose. Self-loathing and body shaming are akin to living on Twinkies and Big Red.

3) When you find yourself holding your breath, or breathing shallowly, it’s like losing the internet connection between your mind and body. Most likely you’re checking out of the present moment. Explore why, with curiosity, not judgement.

4) Remember that for most things in life, we’re all just one inhale and exhale away from a new perspective.

There are no prerequisites needed to reclaim your body except for an appreciation for being alive. You do not have to wait to be thinner, stronger, or more flexible. You do not need special clothes, take a class, or find a guru. You do not need permission.

Dance.

“My therapist and I even have a joke about it: shit is truly fucked up when I start threatening to take a road trip.”  ― Chris Gethard

There’s a Monster Zero Ultra in one cup holder and a 32 oz coffee in the other. An empty, crumpled coconut Donettes package is balled up on the floor between the seats. The girls are asleep – one stretched out in the back of our rented Ford Focus, and the other is curled like a Pillbug next to me.

I’m beginning my twelfth hour of driving on our road trip through Colorado. We began in Denver and made quick stops in Steamboat Springs to see a friend and meet her young son, and then Glenwood Springs to swim in the world’s largest natural, hot springs pool. I have a little over an hour before reaching Telluride, our final destination. The Ford Focus strains to make its way up the mountain road at fifty miles an hour.

I’m in heaven

My first real, non-parent organized road trip was with my cousin, Susan, and Kirsten, the Finnish exchange student who lived with her that year. We drove from Ithaca, New York, to Washington, DC, during spring break. I was sixteen but didn’t have my license yet.  I lied to my cousin, who was not thrilled about driving, about my limited experience behind the wheel.  Susan let me drive for most of the way each leg while she and Kirsten slept.

I learned to drive on that trip.

It was the combination of getting away with something that I shouldn’t be doing, along with the self-mastery of a daring new skill that imprinted on me a life-long need to keep moving and the unwavering belief in the curative powers of a road trip.

I have never had a strong attachment to any one place and seldom return to a location I’ve already visited. The world is too big and interesting to waste travel time and money on repetition.  A road trip is the ultimate, liberating vertical leap out of routine.

Up until the time I married Matthew, almost twenty-five years ago, I was a chronic geographic Houdini. When we meet, I was months away from a move to Alaska.  Back in those days, a spontaneous change of scenery could fix just about anything.

Slip away, no goodbyes, and off to a new life.

It’s been close to three decades since I’ve disappeared to somewhere new, but that doesn’t mean the urge has left. It’s just under the surface. To this day, I think about escape plans like other people play word jumbles or crossword puzzles. I have a brain full of blueprints of lives imagined.

It’s just a habit, a mental exercise.

My husband does not share my restlessness and his hardwiring has him happy to stay put with our kids, animals and the internet. Although he respects my wanderlust, he prefers that when I travel, I take at least one of our kids as an insurance policy that I’ll return home – sort of like an alcoholic might take their sponsor to a cocktail party.

Matthew and I did not create easy children and much of our parenting time is spent refereeing or just yelling – it’s a fine line. Our four kids don’t travel well together and we have long-ago determined that the family vacation is over-rated.

I know there are plenty of families that vacation well together. But for us the combination of strong personalities, age and gender differences, varying sleep patterns, eating requirements, and interests, along with Matthew’s need to be connected to work is just too much for one little old family vacation to carry.

Instead, we divide and conquer and lately the tactic translates into a road trip for one or two of the kids at a time.  I’m my best parenting self on road trips.  I remember what it’s like to enjoy being around my teenagers and they remember that I’m not just an old, embarrassing drill sergeant.

Every family has their reset button – game night, meals, sports – and for us, it’s the road trip. It may not be cheaper than therapy but it has a far longer therapeutic half-life.

I took the photo as I began the drive into the mountains to Telluride.