Why I Write

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I write for our children. You will never find a political post or a ranting opinion piece on my blog.  Our kids know my politics. Instead, I want to capture our routines and quirks. Most of life is made up of the space between the big events. Writing is my way to tend to the quieter moments, the ones not captured in shiny smiling pictures. Our story lines may be unique to our family but the emotions are universal.

My blog is a reflection of my more adult parenting self. I recently destroyed the remaining journals from my twenties. When we moved I found the box with my young self’s painful scribble. I knew it was inevitable that at some point my kids would find the collection of notebooks. I decided it was not appropriate for them to ever read through that emotional sloppiness. It’s not that I want to sanitized my past  – it’s more that I’m certain my history can offer them more coming from my present vantage point.

It doesn’t matter how old we get, we all want our parents to hold a space that is safe. Those journals were not safe.  I kept them all these years to occasionally revisit and shed when I was ready. I have let go. It was good parenting to do so. The words that I write in this blog will wrap around my children like the strong fifty-year-old mother that I am now.  A safe place to return that will be familiar to them in the future in a manner they can not truly understand today.

Memory is a trickster, a concoction of experience, emotion and exquisite brain chemistry that can wash over the same event to create as varied interpretations as found from any Rorschach Test.  My earliest memory is of brilliant pulsating sunshine coming through the windows as I lay in a crib.  It’s my only pre-verbal memory and there is a physicality to it that is different.  It is our job as parents to be the keepers of our kids’ early memories. Those memories are a part of our identity as parents but more distant and murky for kids, like grabbing at laughter, a taste of sweetness or the warmth of the sun.  Our recollections can fill in the blanks of their early lives.  As they enter their teens and adulthood they move in more differentiated spheres and the roles reverse. They fill in the blanks for us, if they choose.

I do not pretend to represent my kids’ feelings but I can steward our stories through my filter. My rendition may be exactly as they remember or terribly skewed, but nonetheless, it will help to anchor them to their own version. They will also understand me better in the process. Our stories hold how we have learned to accept, adapt and evolve. My hope is that within these quiet essays they find reason both to celebrate and forgive as they move through their own understanding of how to create their lives.  We are in a constant balance act of trying to understanding where we came from and deciding where to go.

I write now because I am almost fifty and life is uncertain.  When I was ten, I used to lie in bed and do the math on how much time I had to live.  It calmed my newly-developed fear of death. Today I play the same game. If I am lucky enough to live into my eighties or nineties my children will be in their forties or fifties – my age now.

I’m finding the passage into my fifties to be remarkably opaque. I want to be around to guide my kids through their transition into their fifth decade but there are no guarantees and the fact of the matter is that I will be very old.  I blog to help preserve our story while it is still fresh in my mind and held together with functioning brain chemistry and decent recall. Most of all I want them to read how much I love them, as flawed as it may be at times.  In the end it’s all that matters.

 

I took the photo at the Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC.

Sleep

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Day Fifty – Sleep

I resent my need for sleep.  I came from underachieving sleepers.  Although not an official rule at my house growing up, there was no sleeping-in or napping.  It wasn’t an issue because no one wanted to do either, not even when we were sick.  We were awake and busy.  I didn’t realize that people enjoyed sleep until I went to college.

My husband and kids like to sleep – which is unfortunate for all of us because the only thing that bothers me more than my own indentured status to sleep is the sleeping needs of those around me.  I know it’s wrong, but I view sleep as a vice. There is an exception for children under the age of thirteen and pets of any kind.  I encourage these two groups to sleep as much as they want so I can get more done. When a person turns thirteen, it’s time to take wakefulness seriously.

Eli and Leo have teenage boy sleeping habits.  On school breaks and weekends, Leo is the master of the noon to three-in-the-morning schedule.  Eli is his apprentice. By ten in the morning I want to hit them both in the head with a frying pan as a reminder to GET UP!  My husband Matthew likes to nap.  He can sleep anywhere and at anytime.  This is a man who napped while I was in labor.  For over 22 years he has been immune to my snarky nap remarks.  His stubbornness has earned him a nap pass.  The twins are twelve and safe in sleep Switzerland until they turn thirteen.

For me, sleep is like anti-matter.  My wakefulness is surrounded by it like a black hole around light.  I’m truly bothered by how much more life I could live if I didn’t have to give up to the void those seven pesky hours a day.  By my calculations that is 2,555 hours or 106.45 days a year wasted on sleep!

My sleep habits have not changed much over my life span. I sleep on average about 4-5 hours a day.  I’ve tried to cut down my need.  I’m more or less functional on three hours for about a week but it catches up with me. Sleep wins. Leo tells me I need to try polyphasic sleep but that sounds too weird and it involves so many micro naps that I think I would end up annoying myself.

I’ve read that we need less sleep as we age.  Perhaps getting older may have one bonus coming to me after all, even if most sleep experts say the gain is just a little over thirty minutes.  It doesn’t make up for the reading glasses, the wrinkles and the grey roots, but I’ll take it.

It’s All About The Bun

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I notice a trembling during the first tumbling pass of her practice floor routine.  It’s an imperceptible shake of the scrunchie that only a paranoid eye can detect.  During the second pass there is a visible flop.  By the end of the warm-up I know I’m dealing with bun failure.  It’s just minutes to the official start of the competition.

From across the gym, the coach’s eyes meet mine for a moment and I mouth, “I’m sorry.”  The coach has the steely calm that you would expect from a former Olympic alternate.  In that second of connection, I know I’m on bun-making probation.  She summons my daughter to the side of the gym.  I watch as she crafts a perfect bun without a hairbrush or additional gel faster than a double back handspring, back tuck.

It’s strange what triggers my competitive drive.  I don’t care if I win races or games but I am not going to be humiliated by a bun.

I’m not a girlie girl but not quite a tomboy either.  I’ve had the same hair style, long and straight with bangs, for my entire life.  There was a three year exception for my break-up Pixie, of which a year and a half counts toward growing my hair back to my proto-type. I color my hair and that’s it.  I didn’t go through a playing-with-hair stage as a child nor do I embrace hair creativity as an adult.  It’s not a coincidence that both my girls have long straight hair.

Gymnastics is austere. The focus is on power, form, grace … and the bun. Nail polish, dangly earrings, make-up and visible undergarments are not allowed during competition and will result in deductions – as do bun failures and excessive fly-aways.

The bun is so central to the competition season, that parents, i.e. moms, are required to attend a coaches’ meeting on the how-to’s of bun-making. The tutorial is open to all parents but I have yet to meet the bun-making dad.  Until that moment, I lived blissfully unaware of the ConAir Bun Maker.  We are instructed that the end goal is a uniformly shellacked head with a frozen donut of a bun garnished with a metallic scrunchie.

Almost anyone can construct a bun that will make it through bars and beam, it’s floor and vault that tests your skill.

After my first bun trials, I fantasized about the practicality of fashioning a bathing cap with a super-glued bun hair piece for the girls to wear at meets.  Half-jokingly, I shared my vision with the other moms at the gym.  Many reacted with thoughtful consideration. These are confident women leading productive lives, and yet bun angst is an accepted part of parenting a gymnast.  We all have our individual coping mechanisms.

This is my process.  My daughter sits on a stool to provide 360 degree access to her hair. I’m on a step ladder high above her head – again for access.  It takes a Conair Bun Maker, 16 clips, 4 elastic bands, hair gel, a can of hairspray and a scrunchie to make one bun.

The first challenge is to double elastic a smooth pony-tail at the correct height on the back of the head.  Gel. The Conair Bun Maker thingy goes to the base of the ponytail and the hair is fanned out over it.  Two more elastic bands and more gel. Then comes the white water rapids of bun making – wrapping and clipping the hair to form the perfect bun.

My middle aged eyes make it hard for me to see where all the clips go. My reading glasses help but they fall off my nose as I look down from my osition on my step ladder.  Once in place, I apply more gel and we head outside with the can of hairspray and a scrunchie.

It’s always a battle; even the most relaxed girls get wonky.  Somehow it always ends up as bun-maker mom vs. gymnast.  There’s a lot of worry and doubt on both sides during the twenty minute process.

After the bun is done, everyone is exhausted from the performance anxiety.  We pack up the competition bag with extra clips, hairspray, and elastic bands in preparation for the unlikely, but always possible, unfortunate occurrence of failure.  Mercifully there is an immediate car trip post styling where we decompress and arrive at the meet with the bun business behind us.

That is, until vault and floor.  That’s when even the most adept bun-making mom holds her breath a bit.

With many seasons of buns under my belt, I am secure that I have this down.  I can proudly declare that I’m a better than average bun-maker.  I still stress too much during the process but I have not had another failure.  At meets, I marvel at the buns that are on the tail of the perfection bell curve.  That will not be me, I have worked hard for my place just slightly to the right of the midpoint on the curve.

Parenting has made me master the unexpected, from potato gun-making to cello tuning. By now everyone is aware of the benefits of  learning new things to maintain an agile brain as we navigate our later decades.  I am not able to cobble together enough time to learn a new language and I’ve never been a big fan of word jumbles or Sudoku. Instead, I will stick with bun-making until another new and odd skill presents itself on my parenting path that will challenge my middle-aged brain.  Older parents are lucky in that regard.  It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Busy-ness

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Beware the barrenness of a busy life. Socrates

I’ve been on a to-do list bender since I returned from Montana at the end of July.  I awoke this morning on a ladder putting up Halloween decorations with a pounding busy-ness hangover. It takes me a moment to remember the month and then the giant spider in my hands places me in the outside ring of the holiday eddy.

This is progress. I usually come to, lying on my stomach, under a pine tree at the Christmas Tree Farm with a saw in my hand.  In other words, at the bottom of the eddy without an air tank.

Two months have passed in a blur of one college send-off, three different schools and schedules, and two teams with alternating practices and weekend competitions. Stuffed in the cracks, like crumbling mortar in a brick wall, have been work hours, the pets, the yard and house chores, meals (so many meals), teen/pre-teen wrangling, a car accident, and marathon training.

A to-do list is a familiar drug for me.  I convinced myself that I had detoxed in Montana and kicked the habit.  However Busy-ness was patiently waiting for me in Austin for its favorite season of school beginnings, non-stop holidays, and five family members’ birthdays.  It lulls me back into dependency.  Busy-ness starts out congratulatory and pats me on the back for a job well done. The rush seems manageable.  I say yes to a couple more commitments.  Of course I can handle it. Look how much I’m accomplishing.

The point of no return is all too familiar. I stop reading my email, the text notifier makes me wince and the kitchen is never clean.  I start to cover my tracks with later nights or getting up early to get a head start. Sleep is the first essential to go, then showering. There are numerous projects lying anemic and unfinished around the house.  I stop seeing friends and other adults except for my husband and the parents at gymnastics meets.

The exhaustion is subtle at first and then I find myself looking off into middle distance in a trance.  I’m pretty sure that’s how giraffes sleep.

I tell myself that everyone is doing it.  I-Am-So-Busy is the modern battle cry, the ubiquitous background noise that we all accept for normal.  Who am I to slow down? Busy-ness hooks me with the real needs of the people and community around me, but then on the down low, heaps on a whole lot of shoulds.  It’s the shoulds that keep me writing a longer to-do list.  We all have our register of shoulds and they’re usually accompanied by guilt and fear.

There was a time before my weakness for Busy-ness.  When I was in my early twenties I considered myself rather spontaneous, maybe even a bit reckless with my time. Then came marriage and Leo.  I loved the constant motion of parenting. Matthew and I approached this new project with tremendous gusto.  Eli was born five years later and I still had my to-do list under control.  It wasn’t until our twins arrived, two years after Eli, that the needs and shoulds spiked and Busy-ness had me by the throat.

At almost fifty I can honestly say that I do not want to be busy anymore.  I don’t find any glory in it like my younger, want-to-do-everything-right, self.  My friend Shelly looked at me the other morning and announced that women in their fifties are dangerous because they don’t care what people think anymore.

For me, that’s the key to getting clean and sober from my addiction to checking off another task.  At forty-nine-and-a-half, I’m beginning to understand what she means. It’s not that women in their fifties don’t care, they just don’t let other people’s reactions define them anymore.

I am at the start of my recovery process.  Busy-ness is my siren and will always be waiting on the rocks.  It will take the form of compelling volunteer opportunities, sparkly projects and creative extra-curriculars for the kids.  I will need to be vigilant, especially in this vulnerable season.  I can go back to sleep, anesthetized by the shoulds, as easily as I came to this morning on the ladder.

Perhaps getting older will make the shoulds less compelling and the needs more manageable.  I know it will be liberating if I’m able to maintain the shift, like crossing off ten things on my to-do list permanently.  For now I will finish the Halloween decorations because I want to, not because I should.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is what are we busy about? Henry David Thoreau

 

20 Miscellaneous Things That I Learned On Our Road Trip Through Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks

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   1.  I love technology more than I thought.  It was refreshing to be unplugged but when we found a lodge lobby with a Wi-Fi connection it was like eating an entire box of frozen thin mints with milk.

 2.  The happiest people at national parks are the older couples with matching sweatshirts on cruiser motorcycles traveling in packs.

3.  Being a teenage boy is an interesting experiment but I’m profoundly thankful for my gender.

4.  Flexibility, kindness and patience are the only essentials for a road trip. Everything else you can buy at a gas station.

 5.  Bears Part I:  I’m really scared of bears. I could endure being trampled, charged and butted by Elk, Mountain Goats, Moose, and Big Horn Sheep but being attacked by a bear just seems so bloody.


6.  Bears Part II:  I love bear mace. Spraying bear mace is probably just a distraction for the mind before being killed by a charging bear but it makes me feel safer on remote hikes.  I saw a lot of bears but never had to use it.  I’m thinking about buying a can for the house.

 7.  Bears Part III.  According to FAA rules, you cannot board a plane if you have just been sprayed with bear mace.  As my mace was being confiscated at the airport, the boys begged the security checkpoint person to let Eli spray Leo outside.  The security personnel and I both said no.  (Side note:  Leo is the same person who wore a dog collar to see what it felt like to run through an invisible dog fence.  According to Leo, it only hurts for a moment and then freedom.)

 8.  I’m the Mom.  It’s a line that will always be there.  The boys and I love each other but we are not friends.


9.  Every road trip needs a theme song.  It has to come about organically.  You will know when you hear it.  If you are wondering – Safety Dance, Men Without Hats.

 10.  Many of the most famous sites at the parks were underwhelming. There is a big payoff to being curious and asking for advice from people who can direct you off the beaten path.  Good rules for everyday life.

 11.  Eli and I are still scared of heights.  Leo is not.  We are both scared that Leo is not.


12.  The boys can survive without me.  Construction work closed the only road through Glacier National Park.  I got caught in East Glacier while Leo and Eli were at our place in West Glacier.  I could not get back until the morning.  They didn’t realize that I was gone until 11pm.  They were not worried, they knew I had my bear mace.

 13.  Jack Horner, lead paleontologist and curator at the Musuem of the Rockies, served as the technical advisor for all of the Jurassic Park films. http://www.museumoftherockies.org

 14.  When you find the best huckleberry pie in Montana eat a lot of it. Better yet, find out how you can have it sent to your home.  http://www.huckleberrypatch.com

 15.  A road trip doesn’t change you or your relationships but it does give you a different perspective and a lot more wiggle room to take notes –  that’s a good start.


17.  Montana ranks third in the country per capita for microbreweries behind Vermont and Oregon. I want to go back to Montana with someone who is of legal drinking age. http://www.bigskybrew.com/Home

 18.  Glacier National Park is our favorite, followed by Grand Teton and a far trailing third for Yellowstone.  If you can only visit one park, make it Glacier.

 19.   I can still run down mountains at full speed.  I hope I can do so at seventy.

 20.  I really missed my husband, Matthew.  Our kids are passing through. Matthew is here for the long haul.


This is the last road trip post.  I promise.

The Unexpected

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As I walk into the airport bathroom, a nun is putting a bouquet of fresh flowers in the center of the counter supporting a long row of sinks.  She is a tiny old woman wearing a neat blue and white habit, a pressed matching belted dress and comfortable shoes. It isn’t until I’m in the stall that I appreciate the quirkiness of the scene.  Determined to ask the nun about her unorthodox altar, I hurry in the cramped stall, caught in the tangle of my computer bag, luggage and purse.

Another voice enters the bathroom and compliments the flowers.  The conversation quickly turns to tears as the admirer tells the nun that her son and his wife refuse to baptize her only grandchild. She also confesses to not liking her grandson’s name – Wolf, short for Wolfgang.  By this time I’m standing at the sink watching their conversation reflected in the mirror. The miniature nun takes the lanky grandmother’s arm and tells her – in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear – to love her son, his wife and Wolf and then let go.

I like her practicality.  If there is a God, I think God approves of the nun’s suggestion.

The two walk out of the bathroom shrouded in a discussion about prayer. I want to follow them and listen but I need to be at my gate. I never get to ask the nun to explain her mission. Perhaps she is the patron saint for travelers like me. Travel is my go-to remedy for spiritual discomfort.

At almost fifty I’m at a natural place to make changes to my life.  I’m having a hard time figuring out how that will translate into action.  I don’t want to shake the Etch-A-Sketch clean but I know I need to draw things differently to better match my goals. My Mother & Sons’  Road Trip through Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks was in my mind going to be the headwaters of all cures.  I imagined epiphanies of intense beauty and majesty.  There was the hope that geysers, snowcapped mountains, red rock canyons, and summertime icebergs would clear the fog and a focused vision of my future would appear.

It didn’t happen that way.

It has been almost three weeks since the boys and I returned from Montana and I find it hard to describe our eighteen days together.  I would like to report that we all came back as improved 2.0 versions of ourselves but that would be too predictable and neat.

The scenery was spectacular and yet each of us saw it through a different lens.  For me the landscape was endlessly invigorating and just the fuel for the forward momentum I crave.  Leo saw the tactile earthiness of it, a test of his physicality. More often than not Eli saw monotony in so many mountains and lakes and liked our days in Missoula and Bozeman best.

The differences surprised me.

Instead, the common ground that best shapes my memory of the trip is more subtle and usually comes with a DQ vanilla cone while listening to Leo give a tutorial on new music or Eli’s hilarious recounting of Greek mythology.  All garden variety experiences that could have happened anywhere but became more noticeable in the confines of the Ford Focus.  It had nothing to do with the dramatic gestures that the landscape had to offer. The road trip stripped away the routine of daily life and left us exposed. We did not have our usual places to hide and there was an unspoken contract to negotiate new rules of engagement.

Some days were more successful than others.

It starts as a friendly Romaine lettuce leaf war between the boys while I am driving the country roads of Montana on the last leg of our trip.  Leo, in the back seat with our box of leftover food from the previous stop, starts eating lettuce loudly, bothering Eli our resident mesophonic.  From behind the driver’s seat headrest, Leo begins hiding my eyes with lettuce as I drive.  It’s funny the first couple of times.

He tries to force feed Eli lettuce, which ends with both boys taking off their seat belts in preparation for in-car combat. At the same time I discover I missed our turn and have driven sixty miles out of our way, adding another hour to our three-hundred-mile drive. The lettuce blinders, Eli’s refusal to re-belt and the Code Red level of teenage boy excess energy bouncing around the car has me yelling and threatening like a scene out of a formulaic road trip movie.  I pull over and abandon the Ford Focus.

I could not have found a stranger place to stop.  The wide gravel roadside is more like a parking lot.  There is a deserted rusted trailer, the kind that delivers new cars to dealerships; a guy cleaning out his car, furtively watching our antics; and an odd dilapidated ranch house at the far edge with a sign in the window that read Sodas 50 Cents.  I decide to grandstand and tell the boys that I will not get back in the car until they apologize.  As predicted, the game is on for Eli and Leo digs around the car for change to buy soda at the misplaced ranch house.

We are at that point in the cycle of a family meltdown where we all bring out our lists of each other’s faults. I find that we carry our clipboards a little too close. The boys love to make fun of my yoga practice and warn me not to hit them with my hippie-yogic-bullshit.  I do the adult thing and break out into a few yoga moves next to the trailer.  Mind you, we still have an audience of one during this tirade.

At this point nothing makes sense.

I’m in Down Dog ready to be the last Warrior standing. I look at my hands pressed into the cracked ground and realize I’m being swarmed by raisin-sized ants. My arms and legs are covered. I scream and Eli comes to my rescue.  Meanwhile Leo is walking back from the ranch house with cans of soda and gives me a Diet Coke. Truce.

Ants save the moment.  A reminder that the smallest things can both start and stop the biggest arguments.

We make it back to Bozeman without further mayhem but it takes us until the next morning to catch our rhythm again.  We have breakfast on the postcard-perfect Bozeman main drag, visit the world class dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of the Rockies and slack-line at a local park before catching our plane back to Austin.

A perfect last day together, the yin to the prior day’s yang.

My tendency after a lettuce-like incident is to over-analyze and pathologize the situation to death.  If it were up to me we would talk it out ad nauseam.  In contrast, my teenage boys have no use for my armchair middle-aged-mom psychology. They roll with the absurdity of life more readily and don’t nail their self worth to every itchy interaction.  We have all come out of this trip with a higher tolerance for the fluctuations within our relationships.  One moment does not have to define the next.

Without a lecture or forced meaningful conversation the boys re-taught me the power of second chances and DQ vanilla cones.  I don’t have to take everything so seriously.

During our road trip I did not have an epiphany to guide me through my fifties and I was certainly not cured of my defects.  I’m a little more comfortable with life’s messiness, my own loose ends.  I learned that my constant need to move brings me full circle to the value of standing still and that inside jokes and road trip theme songs are as life-affirming as any mountain vista.  The tiny nun told me everything I needed to know in the airport bathroom three months before I headed to Montana with my boys.

We need to love each other and just let go.

Absolution

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At each place we stop on our trip through the Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks the quarters are close.  I have a ringside seat to the lives of other travelers. This morning at Lake Yellowstone, while the boys sleep, I stand at our cabin’s bathroom window and watch as parents with two girls load up their car. They are tidy in matching outdoor attire, hair brushed and breakfast bars in hands.  The packing process is orderly and efficient.  Their coolers, tote bags and supplies are color coded and all have predetermined places in the back of their car.  The entire process takes minutes and not one outside voice is used by any family member.

This is the norm of the families I watch at the National Parks which adds to my suspicion that my family is a bit high strung.

In contrast, we are loud and emotionally messier than any of the families I have encountered.  I find this at home too, so I should not be surprised – but I am.  Our departure is always chaotic as we push our need for one more experience to the edge. I beg for a late check-out as the boys haphazardly stuff things into our suitcases. Once again we decide that we’ll shower at the next stop.  Leo and I grab something to eat but Eli is vociferously complaining that he does not have access to any of the four foods that he finds acceptable.

Like the spectacular physical surroundings of the parks, the emotional terrain has been humbling too.  We all come to this trip with different motives. I have the dream that this will be the ultimate bonding experience for me and the boys.  Our eighteen days together will absolve us from all our sins and we will be saved.  Saved from every slight that has occurred between us.

Now I admit that’s a colossal expectation to put on one road trip.  I have a pragmatic front that I wear on the outside.  My realistic self tells friends that I have no expectations and that my only goal is for us to get along. Both are true, like a novel with two plot lines.

Leo has no time for absolution. I keep forgetting what nineteen is like.  His energy and focus is all about experimenting with his newly minted adulthood and the physical challenges of climbing and pushing past his previous limits.  His expectations are as simple as what mountain to climb.

Leo can’t even fathom my middle-aged desire for emotional closure.  He is at the beginning of his life and absolution is something for the old.

This road trip has been most challenging for Eli.  He is thirteen and still has one foot in childhood and another in teenagehood, which makes him almost impossible to predict.  He can go from being sweet, to angrier than a cornered badger, and back to sweet again in one afternoon.   He wants Leo to be his best friend and that is this trip’s greatest hot spot.

What has surprised me the most is how they both accept me as one of them.  I feel myself morphing into a teenage boy.  I eat more junk than I have in the last decade, don’t shower, run up mountains, swear more than I should, and am amused by their scatalogical jokes.  I have to stop short of a complete transformation though.  In order for this trip to keep moving forward without bloodshed, I must access my most potent and covert parenting skills.

I learned that I am a mother first – the ringmaster of the road trip show.

Our car rides are the weakest link.  At some point in every leg of the trip the boys begin trash-talking and wrestle over the seats of the car. It’s all fun and games until one is pushed too far and then they fight like bear cubs.  Eli is always the loser. When we arrive at our destination, the emotions pour out of our car as if our Ford Focus was just pulled from a lake.

The boys go to their corners and I manage the detente.  It usually involves Leo taking a short hike by himself and Eli and I going off on our own.  In a couple of hours we regroup and the slate has been miraculously cleaned.  Then there is laughter, campfires, and plans for the next activity.  We are loud, unkempt, and definitely don’t do transitions well, but our in-betweens are pretty darn good.

Therein lies all the absolution I need.

Life on the Verge Road Trip

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Day One

We arrive at the log-cabin-style Bozeman airport on the last flight of the evening. “If rabbits had an airport, it would be like this!” Eli shouts over his shoulder as he and Leo play wheeled luggage roller derby, weaving in and out of the stragglers walking toward the rental car area.

We turn into the parking lot of the Lewis and Clark Motel in downtown Bozeman at midnight. At first glance it looks like your typical rundown 1970’s kitsch–the real thing, not some groovy hipster version. It doesn’t take long for the visual to become far more complex. The lobby is a strange mix of Billie Holiday music, grandma’s living room, a casino and a Buddhist shrine. It smells of smoke and carpet cleaner – in a good way. It’s a sepia colored collage of mixed mediums.

We love it. Well, Leo and I love it.

We are greeted by Micheal-Ann and her most remarkable lilting voice.  She ends each sentence with an upswing that emphasizes the last vowel sound of the second to last word. We are all hypnotized.  Her co-worker is not.

The motel is famous for its banana bread which can be purchased by the loaf at the front desk. It’s made by the current owner’s mother who was the original owner. We eagerly request a loaf as we check-in.  Micheal-Ann goes to the back office and returns with an enormous frozen brick of the stuff wrapped in Saran Wrap. To speed up the defrosting process, Micheal-Ann suggests that we cut slices and hold the bread in our hands for 10 minutes. We go to the room and proceed to eat half the loaf while it’s still frozen. Who can hold banana bread in their hands for 10 minutes?

The best banana bread ever.

As you might expect from a motel with sliding glass doors to the rooms, portable AC units, plastic cups and a paper strip over the toilet seat, our non-smoking room smells liked smoke. Eli mentions that he wishes he had a black light to find out exactly what kind of trail has been left in the room during the last thirty years. Leo and I advise against it.

The best part of our first hours in Montana – the laughter. We are so giggly that Leo, our most nocturnal family member, scolds Eli and me to be quiet so he can sleep. This is the beginning of our Life on the Verge Road Trip. Leo is on his way to becoming a man, Eli a teenager, and me an old woman.

Let the journey unfold.


A Different Kind of Grownup

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When I walked into my parent’s house and saw my dad coming down the stairs I immediately became a different kind of grownup.  I felt it come on lightning fast like a superhero costume change.  I’m now a frontline grownup at the edge of the mortality cliff.   

My father is evaporating.  He has recently been diagnosed with Pernicious Anemia. It has whittled his athletic six-foot build and mostly likely caused permanent neurological and cognitive damage.

Our conversations on the phone of late have been repetitive but at times lucid and linear.  What stood out more for me was his light tone and desire to keep the conversation going.  Standing in front of him, I waited to see how he would react to me in person.  I wasn’t sure if his memory loss would anchor him to his past resentment toward me or his softer recent acceptance.

I was never a daddy’s girl.  He was uncomfortable in the parental role past the baby stage.  If he was born today, with more flexible societal norms, he would probably choose not to have children.  His frustration with the chaos of parenting came out as rage.  His temper was most often directed at himself rather than others.  The implosions were messy, though, and cleared a room.  For me, his anger blotted out the sun and put a divide between us that was not easily bridged.

Let me be very clear, for all his rage he never raised a hand to anyone – not once.  He was hard-working and sacrificed his health for his family.  As an adult I have come to admire his restraint.  To keep that hurricane inside took a toll.  I will never know the source of the storm but I saw it lessen in strength when he retired from his law practice and had my mom to himself.

For fifty years my father has loved my mom with the loyalty and devotion of a turtle dove.  Fatherhood has been a very distant second to being my mom’s husband.  My mother was and still is a beauty at seventy-two.  Although he would never say it, I think that my father has always thought that my mom was a bit above him.  She is still robust and sharp.

The discrepancy is real now.

I’m not comfortable with the word spirit but it’s the only noun I can think to use to describe how my dad is evaporating.  I have seen it before with my grandmother and my friend Marcia as their physical selves were winding down.  There is a part of my dad that intermittently leaves as if practicing to leave for good.   I see it on his face and can feel it energetically when it happens.  My mom says that she see my dad hold on to himself when he is sitting – almost like he has to keep himself contained.  He is losing pixels right before our eyes and all we can do is be kind.

The new grownup I have become has enormous empathy for my father.  I want to be patient.  I find it easy to listen to the same stories and answer his questions again. My dad’s unwinding has made him more peaceful.  I was worried that he would be angrier but he is not.  There are still flashes of rage but they are short lived and during this past visit they were never directed at me.  He was happy I was there.  My kids didn’t bother him like they used to.

I had to leave at four in the morning to catch my flight.  While trying to sneak out and not disturb my parents, my dad appeared on the stairs.  He was confused at first about what I was doing but then remembered enough.  My mom had asked me to wake her when I left but this moment was for us.  I knew I would be back in a couple of weeks and I needed to be alone with my dad.

This was our first visit where the emotional undertow didn’t drown us.  It has taken thirty years for us to reach this point.  Neither of us are mad any more.

People can be haunted as much by what is left unsaid as said.  Too much has been left unsaid between my father and me.  On the stairs I told him that I cherished our visit and that I loved him very much.  We hugged and he walked me to the car in the darkness of the early morning.  He was all there for this moment.

As I drove into the sunrise I was certain that we have both forgotten why we didn’t get along.

Twenty on the Inside

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We live in a neighborhood that serves as the main off-campus housing stock for the University of Texas.  I find comfort being around the students.  They make me feel the same hope for the future as I do when I hold a baby.   About two-thirds of our short dead-end street is college rentals.  I’m surrounded by migrating herds of twenty-something-year-olds which is not to be confused with feeling like a twenty-year-old.

We have a kitchen window above our sink that faces an identical window in the rental house across the fence.  My window seems too small and high for me to bother with a curtain.  The prior over-the-fence tenants always had theirs covered.  The young childless couple that moved in has pushed the curtains to the sides.

Our schedules are different.   We are rarely at our windows at the same time so our curtain game of chicken has been a benign exercise.  Yesterday our separate universes collided.  I looked up and caught them in an early morning embrace at the sink.  I couldn’t make myself look away until they saw me.  I plunged my gaze into the sudsy dishwater but looked up again.  It wasn’t the sweet embrace that had me mesmerized, it was a nostalgia for a freedom I had forgotten that drew my eyes back.

People my age and older are always saying that they feel the same on the inside as they did when they were twenty.  They obviously are not around herds of twenty-something-year-olds.  My insides don’t feel twenty and the couple next door made it screamingly apparent.  For one moment I felt, not just remembered, the scene I was witnessing – the simplicity of worrying just about yourself. When I was twenty I didn’t register this time-specific freedom, but I do now.

My almost-20-year-old man/teen son is even greater proof that I do not feel twenty on the inside.  He is home for the summer after his freshman year at college.  He is too old to be under our roof and too young to know how to make plans that are based on more than a belief that everything will work out.   As he awaits an epiphany, he is happy to sleep, hang out with his brother, help me and ride his bike.

It kills me to watch him loaf.  I have the industriousness of a Daughter of the American Revolution New Englander.  I worked summer jobs from the time I was thirteen.  Leo is caught in the golden handcuffs of a full academic scholarship.  There is a part of him that thinks it gives him an excuse to just let things unfold.  He has discovered that not much unfolds without a plan.

Leo believes that he can duct-tape a summer together with foolhardiness, a backpack, a ticket to Bonnaroo and what’s left of his Texas Tomorrow Fund moneys.  For him that is a recipe for happiness.  I’m not saying I can’t experience spontaneity and wonder as an almost-fifty-year-old parent to four kids but my happiness is far more rooted in other people’s survival and well being.  I have a friend with four kids who says that she can never be happier than her least happy kid.  This is something that a twenty-year-old can not understand.

What has changed my insides are the four kids I have on the outside.  Once I had kids the twenty-something part of my brain was wiped clean and a parenting app was installed.   Even on the days that I want to run away I begin my getaway plan with a grocery list for what the kids will need while I’m gone.  About halfway through, I realize that I can’t leave until I finish the alphabetical master list of where everything is located.  It just wouldn’t be fair.

I was much more like Leo when I was twenty.  Around him I see the aura of mania and fearlessness glowing from his seemingly endless youth. That feeling is not mine anymore nor should Leo understand my responsibilities.  He has the space to make spastic decisions and fork-in-the-road mistakes.  There is more room for him to roam. I had my turn and I played hard.  I don’t want to feel twenty again. I have lived my way into feeling fifty.

I have the perfect illustration of the difference between a twenty-something and a almost-fifty-something’s insides.  Leo left the two new suits I bought him over spring break on the bus when he returned to college.  He announced the loss with a shrug when I picked him up at the airport at the beginning of summer.  I forgave him readily. In contrast Leo gave me endless grief for not knowing the whereabouts of his air soft guns and pellets.  I asked him to ponder his his suit-less state of being while on his high horse.  He grinned a touché grin and said that he had expected more from me. After all I am supposed to know where everything is.

Let me say it again,  I do not feel twenty on the inside.

How My Son’s 8th Grade Graduation Made Me Realize I Had No Business Going To My 30th Reunion

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May and June are not just for weddings. It’s also the graduation and reunion season. I’m not good at big events even though I truly wish I was one of those people who can glide effortlessly through hours and days of celebrations, small talk and smiling for the camera.  I know for certain that life is easier for those festive easygoing types.   

Planned events make me twitch.

My 30th high school reunion is next weekend.  It’s one of those things that happens when you’re almost fifty.  If I grew up on a normal trajectory, my 30th reunion would have occurred last year.  Instead I got an extra junior year in boarding school to make up for a catawampus fall semester swirling the drain in my hometown and a spring semester living with my Aunt Joanne and Uncle John in Trumansburg.

No I wasn’t pregnant, although that was the rumor.

My parents decided that they couldn’t fix me.  Aunt Joanne and Uncle John had a history of straightening out the cousins who went off course.  I wasn’t exactly a bad kid.  I was a cigarette smoking, Boone’s Farm drinking, walk-down-the-railroad-tracks-after-school kind of bad.  It was small town boredom and I didn’t see a bigger, brighter alternative.

It turns out that Aunt Joanne and Uncle John couldn’t fix me either.

So it was off to Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding school in western Massachusetts.  Because my first junior year was a bit of mess, the plan was for me to repeat the year.  My advisor’s logic was that it would erase my first go-round as a junior and help to get me back on my academic feet.  In an instant my place in the ranks of the class of 1982 changed to the class 1983. It turns out that Northfield Mount Hermon did fix me.

Every time I think of the school, I thank my lucky stars for the fortunate turn in the road that got me there.  At the time I was incapable of understanding the significance of the opportunity but I took it nonetheless.  The enormous gratitude I feel for that second chance swayed me to think that I was capable of attending the weekend-long reunion in spite of my past head-on collisions with big events.  That and the constant stream of reunion invitations appearing in my mailbox and Facebook page.

My track record with all things pomp and circumstance is ridiculous.  I completely blocked out my high school graduation except for a blurry vision of myself in an ugly polka-dotted dress.  I didn’t attend my college graduation and spawned a first-born who refused to attend his high school graduation.  I made another attempt when I finished my master’s program.  The University of Texas scheduled the ceremony for the School of Social Work poolside at the aquatic center.  It was like getting my diploma at a swim meet.

Eli’s 8th grade graduation last week threw a much needed glass of cold water on my delusion that I could go to my 30th reunion.  I held to the hope that his ceremony was going to be different, maybe even perfect.  In this fantasy we all would be dressed nicely, cry appropriately, take lovely family pictures and go to dinner.

Piece of cake.

I will not go into too many details in order to protect the guilty.  Let’s just say that my second son also exhibits symptoms of a deep dislike of ceremonies and formal wear.  The tone was set when we were all running late.  I left without earrings and makeup on one eye.  There was screaming and crying on the drive.  Before we left the house Eli announced that he was not going to the planned school dinner after the ceremony but I figured he would come around.  A contrarian to the core, I have watched him soften and change his mind a million times.

My fantasy didn’t have a chance.  There were no pictures or dinner.  His version of perfect was to go home and start his summer.

After the graduation experience I stopped looking for last minute flights to Boston. Although I have never been to a reunion, I know I would not do it well.  My children have confirmed that I have an anti-ceremony gene.  There is something about the confines of event-generated emotional expectations that just makes me crazy.

I absolutely treasure my time at Northfield Mount Hermon but I don’t have to attend my reunion to prove it to myself.  I’m not like the smiling people in the reunion propaganda emails who have kept in touch with their friends from school. Sometimes I wish I was but I accept that I’m not.

I have built another life – a good life.  My most meaningful days tend to be the ones that just appear and often come in small packages like playing ping pong in the backyard or a spontaneous beer on the porch with a friend. I do have to admit that there is a quiet voice that says that it just might be different with the girls.

A graduation or two will tell.

Back to the Garden

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photo by Elizabeth Breston

When I’m angry, I clean.  When I’m weary, I water.  I have been standing in my garden with a hose a lot this week, watching for the neon spring green of a leaf or the flash of a bloom to emerge.  A reminder that life goes on.

My friend Terri believes that a good gardening effort, regardless of the outcome, reflects a certain level of mental stability.

She says a garden requires enormous patience and more sacrifice than expected at the onset.  It starts out all seedlings, sunshine and anticipation and then come the bugs, blight and the Texas heat.  A garden teaches the lesson of giving without guarantees.

Unconditional love of the plant kind.  A good place to practice.

I’m not sure what my gardens say about my mental health but I know I go into the garden to find equilibrium through working with my hands.  In a world that makes it too easy to retreat into my head, a garden invites me into my body.  I can feel my energy enliven my senses and limbs, bringing my awareness back to the earth and into the moment.

A recent episode of Nature, “What Plants Talk About,” proposes that plants demonstrate a level of consciousness similar to behaviors attributed to the animal kingdom including altruism and family recognition.

I hear the same from Nate, the arborist working with us to save our 250-year-old Post Oak.  He loves trees and sees them as sentient beings.  Perhaps plants are not so different from us – just quieter.  To commune with their rhythm and recognize our similarities we have to slow down.  We have to participate.

This is how I come to find myself in the garden with my hose in hand.  It is not to retreat from life but to renew my belief in living.  To remind myself of the seasons and cycles.  To remember how to nurture and tend to the things that bring meaning and hope.

“..when man was put into the Garden of Eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.”  Voltaire, Candide

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/what-plants-talk-about/video-full-episode/8243/

The Magical Being Business

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I am no longer the Easter Bunny. In December of 2011, I quit the Magical Being business after 18 years.

My husband is a secular Jew. He never understood the parallel Pagan/Christian holiday track nor did he harbor a desire to learn the Magical Being trade. It was a solo venture that started out with tremendous enthusiasm and ended with lame excuses why the tooth fairy missed another pick-up.

Over the years, there have been many all-nighters of stocking stuffing, basket making and midnight tooth harvesting. When my first child, Leo, was born I didn’t give it a thought and suited up. About age 5, my young scientist began asking questions about the magical beings who entered our home and left presents, candy and money.

“Are they real?” he would ask.

At first I squirmed and said yes. Then came the Socratic dialogue circle of  me answering with “What do you think?” to his “I don’t know, what do you think?”

This went on for about a year until I came clean and revealed the woman behind the Santa suit. Leo did not take it well. He didn’t care that the Magical Beings were not real, he had that already figured that out.  He cared that I lied.

He really cared.

It was at that moment I put down my glass of Kool-Aid and thought about what I was doing. His brother Eli was a toddler at the time so I was at the fork in the road. Do I continue along with my Magical Being identity or bag the whole thing?

I went about restoring Leo’s trust and re-packaging the Magical Beings as symbols of wonderment and generosity. My secret desire was to make all holidays extensions of Thanksgiving. I wanted the Magical Beings to become magical turkeys. I wasn’t going to lie, instead I would be even more vague and confusing in all my responses to the inevitable questions.

I don’t know why I didn’t just stop then.

I’m not a club joiner. It’s not characteristic of me to hold on to the status quo but there was darn little for me to replace it with. Lacking a Martha Stewart gene, a religious affiliation or grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in town, it was hard to fashion my own traditions. So I stuck with Magical-Beings-Lite.

The enthusiasm for all things holiday, except for Thanksgiving, was draining from me. Eli, a contrary skeptic from the beginning, never bought the stories. As long as there were filled stockings, chocolate eggs and a couple of bucks under his pillow he was good to go.

It wasn’t until two years later when my twin girls, Georgia and Q, were born that I put down the Kool-Aid for good.

Their first Christmas came around and my inner feminist could not serve up my daughters the notion that an old fat white guy came down the chimney and gave them presents because they were GOOD. No way!

Here’s the rub. The girls really wanted to believe in Magical Beings. They wanted the whole package and were not very interested in magical turkeys.

I reluctantly returned to my less than half-hearted status quo path and my feminist anti-consumerism soap box. Not easy rails to straddle. I was going to have to take it slow for the girls.

Every year I dismantled a little more of what I didn’t like and kept the traditions that matched my world view. I added more gatherings with friends, travel instead of stuff and service work. I bought less, way less.

Finally, to my delight, I began hearing the Magical Being push back from the girls. For years there had been rumors at school that the the whole thing was parent run. I jumped on it and spilled the beans. They didn’t care. They had been listening to my holiday rants since they were little so they were not surprised.

I think they always knew it was me and that the magic is, and was, that I love them.

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Raising Otis Two

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I have a long history with English bulldogs.

My father had the breed as a child and then planted the tradition for my brother and me with a long line of bulldogs. There were Margaret, Muffin One, Muffin Two, Otis, Seamus, and Toby. The only dog on that list with a scandalous history is Otis.

Otis was my dog. I bought him after I graduated from college and moved to Austin. A bit lonely and directionless, I did what many of us do:  I fell back on my imprinting. Like a lemming jumping off a cliff, I bought myself an English bulldog puppy from a trailer park in Manor, Texas.

I loved Otis. Unlike most bulldogs he was muscular and active. He hiked, camped, fetched, and swam. He also saw me through the breakup with his co-owner.

It was during that breakup that I went home for Christmas to see my parents. I brought Otis to New England with me. My parents had Muffin Two at that time. Otis was quite taken with her and my parents’ soft furniture and stable life.

I should have seen the writing on the wall.

Because I was in the midst of reorganizing my life, it was decided that I would leave Otis with my parents while I straightened things out in Texas. The plan was for my parents to send me Otis after I moved to my new place and settled into graduate school.

Otis never set another paw on Texas soil again.

I will spare the details of my parents’ dognapping and its resolution. Otis lived out a most happy life with Muffin Two and my parents. My father still refers to Otis as the best present I ever gave him.

Revisionist history. It worked for my parents. For me the story was was lost in too much emotion and too many loose ends.

This past Christmas my family adopted an English bulldog puppy, Otis Two. There are very few redos in life. For me raising Otis Two is one of those rare events.

Our son Eli has wanted a micro-mini pig for years and as Christmas loomed he sensed my husband’s weakness for begging and pleading. We all joke that Eli is my husband’s inner child. If Eli wants something he knows where to go. I knew I was in trouble when I heard my husband talking to the pig expert at Texas A&M.

A pig sounded like a lot to take on. By this time I had watched one too many YouTube videos of pigs eating their owners’ homes, literally. Despite my threats, it looked like we were getting a pig. Pig breeders were sending us pictures and Eli had almost daily correspondence with one pig person in Dallas. I thought the lecture about pet responsibly and caring for a pig would scare Eli off, but no.

As a mother to four kids, I knew who was going to take care of that pig and started thinking of a Plan B.

It came to me that a pig looks a lot like an English bulldog. If I had to end up taking care of one or the other  –  the bulldog wins hands down. But then I hesitated. I’ve been to enough therapy to catch imprinting when I’m in it. After the first Otis, I have been the proud caretaker of two Rottweilers, a German Shepherd, and a Tibetan Spaniel.

I broke the English bulldog cycle, right?

Eli was not keen on the bulldog idea at first, but then I found a kind-hearted, reputable breeder in Arkansas who had a four month old male, Chi Chi, that needed a home. Eli warmed to the idea and the breeder and I exchanged references. Her mom was sick and she needed to get the dog to us quickly. She would meet us halfway in Plano.

On the drive, Eli and I were deciding on a new name for Chi Chi. Still circling around his pig issues, Eli was thinking of Wilbur. I suggested Otis once and then let it alone. To me it’s the best name for a male bulldog – but it was not my dog – at least not yet.

We were both nervous about the transaction. What if the dog had a bad temperament? We decided on a code word that either of us could use and I would immediately go into back-out-of-the deal-mode.

Nervously waiting in the hotel parking lot off IH-35 we saw a Suburban drive toward us. It had big bulldog magnets adhered to the doors, bulldog vanity plates, and a stuffed bulldog hanging from the rear view mirror. The breeder opened the back door and there in the crate was Chi Chi.

Eli looked at me and said, “I want to name him Otis, after your dog.  He looks just like him.”

Otis Two is now everyone’s favorite family member. He is slow-witted, farty, snorty, and ridiculous looking, but he is pure love.  I call him furry prozac because he calms the frenetic buzz that runs through our family.  Eli remains devoted to Otis Two beyond my expectations and I have resisted the urge to win him over as his favorite.  However, I do absolutely love him.

The circle is closed – gotta love the redo!

End Note

If it had not been for the dognapping, I would never have met my husband.  After Otis One, I adopted a Rottweiler named Toby from another trailer park in Texas.  At the time, my then future husband had a German Shepherd named Maude.  Our dogs met at the 9th street dog park early one morning and were inseparable.  Matthew and I married 2 weeks later and have been married for 22 years.

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How Skydiving Prepared Me for my First College Drop-off

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Wrap legs under the plane. Roll out. Bend knees. Spread arms. I repeat these instructions over and over again in my head. It’s the sequence given to me by the ex-Navy SEAL strapped to my back as I ready myself to take my first tandem skydiving jump.

I feel like I’m in a movie that begins with an intense action scene and then flashes to the past to explain the backstory.

This is my backstory.

At the beginning of his senior year of high school, our oldest child, Leo, asks my husband and me to skydive with him to celebrate his graduation before he leaves for college.

We agree. It’s a long time away, and it seems like an abstraction.

There are several hurdles to get over as well. For Leo and my husband, Matthew, it’s the 230 lb. weight limit, and for me, it’s my pathological fear of heights.

Weight can be lost but there is no diet for fear.

In January, Leo is halfway to his goal, Matthew is hovering at the 230 lb. mark, and my anxiety is in full bloom. Before I know it, August is here. Leo is at 200 lb., Matthew is still hovering, and I’m opting out. We have three younger children. I rationalize that only one parent should jump in case “something” happens.

So how did I end up in my very own action scene?

Jump day comes, and our family and Leo’s two friends caravan to The SkyDiving Temple. I’m along to applaud their bravery and take pictures.

There is a glitch.

When it comes time to weigh in, Matthew is hovering on the wrong side of 230 and is grounded. All spring and summer I’ve said that I will be the jumping parent if Matthew doesn’t make the cut.

When I get the news, I hesitate, but then do the unimaginable and agree.

I suit up as Matthew changes into lighter clothes and begs for mercy for the few pounds he is over. The manager grants his request, but it’s too late for me to turn back now. I’m going through with this.

It’s decided that Leo will jump twice, first with Matthew and then with me. Different planes, one surviving parent.

Back again to the scene on the plane.

I’m sitting on the edge of the open door, legs wrapped as told. Leo jumps first. I’m too stunned by what I’m about to do to assimilate the fact that I just watched my son tumble out of an airplane.

A strange determination comes over me. It’s as if there is no other choice but to roll out. Before I can think again, I’m free falling from 12,000 feet at 125 miles per hour.The astonishing part is that I’m not scared.

I do not feel the crippling fear that comes to me at the edge of a high balcony or a cliff. Apparently, the brain cannot calibrate for the distance when skydiving.

In 60 seconds, the chute goes up, and the deafening rush of the free fall is replaced by the purest quiet I’ve ever experienced. It’s at that point when the ex-Navy SEAL points out where Leo is coming down. It’s the first time I think about him since we were on the plane.

He looks so far away.

He lands and greets me as I touched down. He beams as he hugs me. He never thought I could do it.

Forward to my movie’s epilogue.

The weekend after our jump, Leo and I fly out of state to drop him off for his freshman year of college. There are no parachutes or ex-Navy SEALS this time, but it’s as big of a jump for both of us.

For him, it’s easy. He is ready to free fall into his future and the thrill of young adulthood. Leo does not need the weight of my hugs, tears, and gargantuan parental love to ground him. He needs me to watch him float through this transition from afar.

For me, rolling out of an airplane is easier than driving out of the university campus without him. This is not a tandem event. I have earned this solo emotional jump with nine months of pregnancy and 18 years of parenting.

We spend my last night on campus walking, laughing, and talking. Leo gives me my instructions and lets me know it’s time to jump. He is going first, and I will follow. Unfortunately, the heart can calibrate for the distance. I trust that we will both land softly on the same earth in different places.

We will be very proud of each other.

I never thought I could do it.

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Previously published as Taking Wing, How skydiving prepared me for my first college drop-off  in Barnard Magazine, Winter 2013.

Almost Fifty

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Fifty is NOT the new Forty.

Trust me, I’ve been forty and I do not feel forty, not even forty-three or forty-five. Maybe on a good day I can pull off a perky forty-seven.

Let’s face it, fifty is fifty.

While talking to other tail-end boomers and reading what the media and blogs tell us about being middle aged I find that there are four major approaches to turning fifty out there.

The first and loudest camp is the pro-fifty crowd. By listening to this group you’d think that middle age was just one big find-the-best-part-of-yourself fest. This group plans to never age or die. They eat kale, do triathlons, change careers and have great postmenopausal sex.

Then there’s the survivalist group. They definitely know they are aging and want to stop it at all costs.  They also eat kale but on a restrictive life-extending 1,000 calorie diet. Many in this group get an extra colonoscopy each year AND will tell you their triglyceride levels at a cocktail party.

On the flip side, there are those who have given up. They have lost their jobs, their health insurance and well being. This group of fifty year olds do not have a lot of hope. It’s a young world out there and it’s hard to find your way. This isn’t just an outlook but a social/economic/political issue.

Of course there are those who don’t give a damn and are just living their lives.

If we boomers are honest, we can recognized a little of each of these perspectives in ourselves. Much of the noise out there sounds a lot like whistling in the dark to me. I for one am not whistling. The tune I was trying to carry is being drowned out by the ticking of the clock. It’s not the biological clock of my thirties, this is the sound of mortality.

I have been genetically fortunate and have made it to 49 with few physical bumps. I eat kale, even grow the stuff in my backyard.  I exercise, practice yoga, keep socially active and try to keep my brain thinking about something other than grocery lists and the kids. I guess I lean more towards that first camp except for one thing.

I know I am going to die.

This line of thinking can leave me feeling like the third group in a nano-second. I am old and it is over.  As a counter balance, I am fortunate to have many thriving friends and mentors who are Old. Capital O Old. Our culture hates the word, particularly middle-aged people. I use this word with the greatest of respect. If we are lucky the ultimate destination is OLD.

Ask any person in their seventies if they are living the new fifty and they will chuckle.

Standing here at the brink of fifty, I am fully aware, but not-so-accepting, of the fact that in a hop, skip and blink of two decades I will be seventy. One of my Old friends once picked up a comb and ran her thumb down the teeth, smiled and said, “This is how fast the time goes.” For me the sense of urgency is palpable.

I realize that I need to get off my lower-than-it-used-to-be butt and move a bit faster toward living. To do more, love more, make more mistakes, keep promises, show more kindness, make amends, take more risks, follow through. Let go of the hesitation and leap; to hear the clock as a heartbeat, a breath. A metronome for staying in the present.

When I tell people that I’m almost fifty, it is more often than not greeted with, “You’re at the halfway mark.”

More whistling in the dark.

If you look at statistics, I passed the top of the mountain about a decade ago. I’m more like at the timber line on the other side, going down.

Time is an illusion and the mountain analogy is too. In actuality we are all dancing from the most fragile, beautifully shimmering thread of the present moment. There is no solid mountain beneath us. There is no thinking, eating or exercising our way out of this predicament. It is universal. It doesn’t change if you are almost fifty, twenty or eighty.

When my friend Marcia knew she was losing her battle to cancer she organized a glamorous birthday party for herself. People came from all over the country. It was her pre-funeral. She didn’t hide it. She wanted to celebrate her life with the people she loved while she was alive and feeling well enough to have fun.

Marcia always said, “Nobody gets off this planet alive, so what are you going to do?” LIVE.

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‘‘One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.” – Paulo Coelho