New Year's Resolution: Starting over & your diet

It's no small feat to start over. But we've all done it a million times. For example, we've all started our diet over a million times. Starting over is a beautiful, exciting thing. You can taste it, feel it, envision it. You imagine the victory at hand. The anticipation and daydreaming is as good as anything else.

The run-up
You start thinking about all the mini Milky Ways you've eaten in your lifetime. 5,000 easy. You start thinking, who needs them? They make you thick, slow and drowsy. What's the sense? Every time you eat one, you think about how it's your last one. Right after the next one.

The disgust
Pretty soon you can hardly enjoy a Milky Way. The more you think about them, as you eat them, the more you love to hate them.

To prove how "done" you are with them, you eat the whole bag in one sitting. You are sick for the next 12 hours. When your honey asks you what the problem is, you are evasive.

"Did you eat something different today?"

"No," you say. And it's not even a lie.

The kitchen clean-out
You go through the house next and eat anything with sugar in it. You think about throwing it out, but what a waste of food. You think about giving it to your kids, but why would you knowingly poison them? Better to take a hit for the team.
Every cupboard is bare, only fruit remains, bruised, in your path.

The after-effect
You make it through the sick streak. That's it, you vow, never again. You've pushed your limits on the sweets and proven their dire effects. You eat a Twix while you think this. The more Twixes you eat, the greater your resolve that you can live without the Milky Ways.

The grocery store resolve
You literally dance your way through Tom's. You will not go down the baking aisle. You will not stop at the candy aisle. You won't so much as look at the cold wall of pop (liquid sugar, another favorite). No, you're the queen of grocery store resolve, bypassing all the evil and buying more fruit in a day than you have in a month.

The breakdown
You are shocked and dismayed to find out the corner gas station does not keep hours past 10 p.m. You would have gone earlier but there were key family members around who'd borne witness to the kitchen clean-out.

You start rifling through the house. Cripes, there has to be something sweet here somewhere. It's been two days. You haven't lost a pound, have only wasted money on fruit, organic no less, and you just considered looking in the kids' backpacks for food.

Wait. You've found it. A half opened bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard above the microwave. Expiration 2009. You must have missed this (consciously) during the clean-out, their value much less prominent in the face of a chocolate-caramel-nougat combination. Until now. Now just a morsel of chocolate will do, and do well.

Tomorrow, of course, you will start over.

Here's to a year of starting over, doing better, laughing more, trying again and, of course, eating chocolate.

It's a wrap: Christmas wrapping

Our dad once estimated that our mother purchased 250 gifts at Christmas. This was for us three girls with a few aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends thrown in (who were lucky to net one each). We think he was a little shy of the actual number.

While we can see our father's point that this was a tad excessive, we can't help but try to carry on the tradition. What are we teaching our children, you say? Relax. The spoils ain't what they used to be.

PSI
How can a budget-wise family fill an entire living room with presents, edging out even Santa in PSI (presents per square inch)? Pull the furniture in closer to the tree the night of. What was once a spacious great room is now the size of one over-filled closet, bursting with, if not 250 presents, the illusion thereof.

Go Big
Boxes come cheap. What's more exciting than seeing a huge box under the Christmas tree? But wait. Anyone, any age, loves the irony of finding a tiny, tiny (also wrapped) present inside. It's a game! Run with it. For children, the game begins when they discard the gift and commence with the best present of all: the box.

If you can come up with 2 or 3 cardboard boxes the size of your Great Grandma Simmerman, you are golden. Not only will they offer great PSI (forget global warming for this one day — increasing your footprint is a plus), they'll have a fort they can leave you alone in until school starts up again.

Flashy
Go for presents that make noise or light up. A crying baby doll? Leave her on. Wrap her. Kick her box every chance you cross the living room. Your child will be almost certain that she knows what's in the box. Let the investigation unfold.
Consider a tractor or pick-up truck with lights. Screw it, leave its headlights on when you wrap it, all night, all week if you have to (the kids will anyway the first chance they get). One vibrating, flashing almost-guessed gift is worth 10 quietly wrapped shirt boxes.

Lumpy & Ugly
Did you buy a Barbie swimming pool? A fire engine with an extension ladder? We urge you to miswrap them. Resist the urge to put these in a big box (remember, those are for the small gifts). Instead, bundle those unruly suckers up with one arm tied behind your back. Use lots of tape, duct tape if you have to. Make it ugly. Leave pretty for your grandmother's gift.

Give this thing attitude, enough to fill the room. Extend the ladder, attach Barbie to it. Pose her about to leap into the pool from the ladder. Have Ken trying to stop her or better yet, rate her. Wrap him and her and their heads all lumpy too. This will be, hands down, the first present your kids rip open.

Unwrapped
Don't forget the surprise factor of leaving a single toy unwrapped, on top of the (hollow) heap of overboxed presents. Give them the instant gratification of a fat fluffy teddy bear you got for just $4.99 when you bought $50 worth of screaming dolls at Toys "R" Us. The teddy bear will be the crème de la crème, the king on the throne, and the victory will be yours.

Well, no matter what your budget is this Christmas, we hope you take time to be a little creative with it. It's not about the number of gifts, we know. It's the thought that counts. But, remember, with a little sleight of hand, it can look like you came up with both this year. Merry Christmas!

The minivan affair

I've recently started a pretty intimate relationship with someone new.

It happens twice a day, sometimes three. I could do it all day, but 5 minutes is heaven too. I look forward to it the minute I drop the kids off at school.

It’s not with another man, it’s with my minivan.

The day begins like this: The kids and I leave the house late for school. We argue in the parking lot, I comb their hair with my fingers and double-check for hats and mittens. They will have none, even if they left the house with some.

Next we negotiate the crosswalk. Invariably we all decide to cross at the exact different moment. Several other minivans in carline are trying to judge if I can see the child I’ve lost and if I'm going after him or if I’m going to herd the one closest to me.

Inside the school, I finally bid them adieu. As in, I look up and they are gone. “Why do I keep walking you in?” I ask. “You don't even say good-bye to me!”

"You like to, remember?" they say.

"Yes," I say. "Love to."

Then, in 5 minutes, the chaos is over. They are shuffled into their rooms and I head back out to the parking lot. The oldest not only didn't let me kiss him goodbye, he took a swing at my head with his backpack to disguise the fact that I leaned toward him face-first. I'm, in a word, pissed.

Enter the minivan.

I slide into the front seat, shut the door. I lay my head back on the rest and recover from the “backpack incident.” It's me and my minivan, alone at last.

I check my rearview mirror. No one. I check the backseats, no one and a pair of mittens. I run my fingers through my own hair now, take one more look in the mirror and notice I look half hungover (I swear, I am not) but half decent. Most of all, there is silence, held in by metal and bolts and door locks.

The affair can begin.

I get out my cell phone. I check messages. I check Facebook. I click on a link to the newest books out this week. I read a little review. I think about buying the book even.

I text delightful repertoire with other moms sitting in other minivans in other parking lots at other schools. 

I keep my head down at all costs; eye contact is deadly. If a passing truck takes off my bumper, I will not look up. I am in the minivan space and, I do believe, invisible.

Each morning it’s like this. It’s only 5 minutes, but they're all mine. Later today I might find myself in my new relationship again after groceries. Or after a meeting or after a run. Some days it's before the run. Yes, it's starting to take precedence over everything I do.

I’ve tried to break up. Really, I have. It's bad for me, I know. It’s a waste of time, sitting in a parking lot, getting nothing done, precious minutes, day after day. 

But is it? I mined three good comebacks out of a single rendezvous just this week. And I can easily credit remembering everyone’s 2012 birthday to those 5 minutes of silence (and Facebook) each day. Not to mention the sins I’ve not committed because this one is so satisfying.

So, let’s face it. Next time you see me in the minivan going nowhere, just keep walking. I’m busy, I'm working, I'm otherwise engaged. Also, I'm invisible.

It appears that this affair isn’t ending anytime soon.

Running Late to School & The Shortcut

Get in the car. Now.

I have a problem. But only from 8:30-8:45 every morning. It never fails, when it’s time to leave for school, we're late.

I can get to school in 15 minutes. Really, it should take 20. Taking only 15 is the sign of a very bad morning.

The most contentious route is known as the “The Shortcut.” It’s a two-track that cuts off a millimeter of distance and possibly 15 seconds total travel time.

On good mornings, I take the paved road with maintained shoulders, white lines and stop signs. But if it’s a rough morning and the car ahead of me isn’t going fast enough or, worse, the speed limit, I know what I have to do.

I take The Shortcut.

“Watch for the white car!” I’ll cry, taking a hard right. We have our mark.

But it's a gamble because The Shortcut comes with a few hazards of its own.

It’s only a half-mile long but it crosses two terrains that minivans aren’t built for. The first is a swamp with unruly growth dragging along the paint on each side of the vehicle. But it’s not that the road is narrow through the swamp (in fact, two sane mothers driving after school drop-off can pass amiably and with a wave). It’s that the road is so rutted through the swamp that it requires hugging the edge of the road for the smoothest path. To do this takes nerves, agility and a total disregard for resale value.

Once the swamp is navigated, the next problem is the Hill. It’s not long but it’s got issues. The right side looks solid but reveals itself at the last minute to be a sandtrap longer and deeper than both tires on your passenger side. You want to stay out of this hole if you are hoping to make second bell.

The hill also features a nice blind spot – the moment you need speed to make the hill, you need to take the left lane at the last second to avoid the sand pit. This makes the Shortcut a fine idea except for one glittering moment of terror when you top the hill. Will you make it up? All signs point to yes. But will you make it alive? No guarantees.

The ultimate goal at this point is not to get to school on time or even alive. It’s to beat the white car to the intersection closest to the school. If we do, Mom has made it worth her time and money to bottom out the shocks on her aging minivan.

However, if the white car should pass through the intersection whilst we sit at the lone stop sign, things get ugly and fast.

“Cheater!” one of us (usually me) will cry. “You’ll pay for this!” another will cry (again, me, referring to the money needed to replace the muffler left on the washout below the hill).

In the end, I’ll tail the white car to school and calmly enter the drop-off line like all the other moms in minivans. But I’ll be in turmoil. Come tomorrow, do I risk another tardy, damage the van or get up 15 minutes earlier?

Clearly, the first step is to find out how many tardies the kids have left. No reason to take any drastic measures just yet…

Cleaning before a party: 6 must-dos

It's the worst part of any party: the cleaning. Not after. Before.

Dusting

The bookshelf looks fine until the fatal move - you pick up a toy to put away and there, in black and white, evidence that you haven't dusted since that in-law scare in mid-August. It isn't the dust that's apparent; it's the absence of dust in this one hot wheel-car-sized space. You wonder what kind of time warp exists wherein the toy isn't dusty, but the cabinet is. Doomed by 99 cents.

Vacuuming

Proudly, you do happen to vacuum more than you dust. Sadly, it's never the furniture. There is one arm of one loveseat that is the lair of your fattest cat. When you prop up a throw pillow (repurposed from its use as a nearby fort) you see that there is a wave, wave, of cat hair forming on the arm. It's been balled up, undoubtedly, by the elbow of your oldest sweatshirt during a Y&R lunch break. You can pick up the small cat-like roll in its entirety, there's heft, mass to it. Lucky break, you think.

Clutter

Everybody has clutter. But your clutter is world class. There are the kids' birth certificates in a Ziploc bag since Canada 2011. There's a skeleton that was never constructed, a pile of bones in a plastic dome. There are flyers on your fridge of all kinds of cool stuff, long over, that you never went to. You execute The Dump - everything in a laundry basket to be excavated at a later date.

Bedroom

Somehow you designed your house without hallways. Your bedroom is in view of the living room and the dining room. More than once you've been having polite chit chat over a cheese and cracker spread to look up and notice your black bra is hanging suggestively out of a dresser drawer. You haven't worn it since at least before you last dusted. Worse, you see your granny size panties (your secret to no panty lines in dress pants... and your secret for no use of the black bra) are on the floor. At first glance others must think it's a Frisbee. At second glance they think, man almighty.

Litter Box

It's in the basement but it seems to permeate the entire house. Solution: make bacon on the day of the party. Reminds everyone of grandma's house, also disguises what Tidy Cat can't.

Kitchen Table

You see nothing wrong with eating a four-course (joking of course, you never do less than 5) meal on plates pushed slowly into the midst of a lego explosion. A butter dish balanced on a beam of glow bracelets. A pot roast warming the toes of a Webkinz bear. But since you'd like to serve more than 2 muddy children and a windblown man in torn blue jeans at the table, you need more room. You emit the most feared words of Lego Lovers everywhere: Time to Clean The Table. Everyone knows that a put away Lego is as good as rubble.

 ~

In the end, it took longer to clean the house than it did to host the party. But your guests have been made feel welcome by the dust-free bookshelf, undergarment-free bedroom and toy-free table. What more could they ask for?

Hospital Visitors - When to go, when to stay

This is an excerpt from my book. It was one of the hardest pieces I've ever written. One of my friends told me this was hard to read - because it made her think of friends she'd lost and how much time she'd spent with them. 

I said, "So, should I run it? Is it too painful?" I felt the same as her, secretly, that I hadn't done enough for others. 

"Yes," she said, "you have to." 

"No, it's too hard," I said. 

"Yes," she said. "It will change lives." 

That is what made me run it. Maybe it will mean one more visit with someone you love.

The excerpt:

The visitors surprised them. The ones who showed up were the ones least expected. While long-time friends and family didn’t appear and, over this, Lainey wept. 

Instead, they called and sent cards and said all the right things, loving things, things Lainey treasured. But still, it was a quiet, empty hospital room. While Lainey’s life came apart, she shared it with people she didn’t know, dressed in white, clocking 12-hour shifts. And, in the end, she shared it with a small unlikely handful of friends.

There were Mike and Carla. Friends of her parents from the days when they all had small children in school together, who lived nearby but had lost touch with them. Mike walked in one day carrying a music stand. He didn’t wonder if Lainey would be surprised to see him or his stand. He nodded hello, set it by her mother’s bedside and propped a Bible open on it, made a little small talk and then shuffled out the door.

“He works here,” her mother said. Her pale hand reached out and flipped a page of the Bible; then her eyes shut again.

Lainey looked at her sisters and then at the music stand and a small round of giggles rifled through them. Lainey played a violin in the air below her chin. Her sisters joined in, one on flute, one on the piano. They played a silent symphony until their giggles woke their mother and she opened small slices of blue eyes at them.

“You guys,” she admonished.

And there was her mother, back with them, laughing, the foursome complete again. It was a warm feeling, a blanket wrapping them up, holding them tight. Their mother was back in the fold, above the fray of illness, back where she belonged for a moment.

But when her eyes shut and she fell silent again, the music did too.

-----

The visitors she thought would sit and while away an entire day of misery with them, eat in the cafeteria, kill time in the waiting room, instead came and went, efficient as a breeze. In they came, hugs, kisses, an inch of snow predicted, then out, goodbye, hugs, kisses, until next time. Lainey would try to leave the room to give them a moment with her mother, but they’d always grab hold of her arm and insist she stay.

She knew why, the fear was understandable. Welcome to our new world, Lainey sometimes wanted to say, bitterness in her mouth, anger like a fire across her tongue. Other times, she caved with love, for they feared what she feared and she couldn’t blame them.

The two who did stay and while away the days with her, were complete and total strangers. They arrived dressed in Hawaiian shirts in the dead of winter, straight from an Alabama vacation. Gerry and Kenny. They were one of her parents’ first friends in 1968 when they lived in West Virginia.

Gerry kissed Lainey and her sisters all over their faces. “Oh, how I love your momma!” she said, her hot cheeks pressed against theirs. Lainey didn’t say a thing, nor did her sisters.

Her father took only a moment to recover on the far side of the room before he bellowed, “Kenny, you old dog, what the hell you doin’ here?”

The flurry of activity filled the room, pushing the grief aside in its hurry. “Hon, look who’s here.” Lainey’s father leaned in and said their names to her ear, to make sure she’d recognize the friends she hadn’t set eyes on in years.

“Who are they?” Lainey whispered to her sisters, unsure of how involved they should be in the visit. What did Lainey have to say to these strangers? How had they even heard the days were being counted? But here they stood, two angels of mercy. And they didn’t just stay an hour, or even an afternoon. They stayed for two full weeks, the last two weeks, coming daily to see her mother, and then finally, to the funeral, the first to come, the last to leave.

Over two weeks time, Gerry knit a winter hat for each of them, often at the foot of the hospital bed. She prayed for the mother, she prayed for the daughters. She ate meals with Lainey and her sisters and sent Kenny and Dad off to the golf shop in a blizzard to see if the weather brought on a clearance. She told stories of Lainey’s mother and father, the world before Lainey.

And Gerry didn’t once pay any heed to the looks of doubt on their faces, their desire that she should leave strong on their mother’s good days. Their desire that she should stay fierce on the worst days. In short, none of them knew what to do with the likes of one long-time friend named Gerry.

-----

“Your mother sent me a Christmas card every year,” Gerry said on the third afternoon, her hands bound by yarn. “But this year she said she might never see me again in this lifetime.”

Fear rolled through Lainey to realize that her mother had started her goodbyes. She said nothing, the tears there, held.

“I knew then that I had to come.” Gerry pulled a length of yarn free from the skein.

Lainey looked sidelong at the woman who had seen to it that her mother's goodbye be in person and felt a love unfurl in a tiny corner of her heart.

“Kenny and your father worked all night in the oil fields you know,” Gerry went on. “Your mother and I would stay up nights and wait. And oh, did we have fun!” She laughed deep, leaning back, her needles crossed, pressed to her soft bosom.

-----

But the best story came the night after her mother’s funeral.

“Your mother came to visit me the night after I got home.” Gerry said this as if there’d only been a change in the weather.

“What do you mean?” Lainey held the phone perfectly flat to her ear. She hadn’t seen or heard from Gerry in three months.

“The first night I got home, I went to bed and a light came in the room.”

“And you saw her?”

“No,” Gerry said. “I felt her.”

“How?” Lainey thought, Gerry was a lunatic after all.

“I knew it was her, no one else.”

“What kind of light?” Lainey sat down and sat still.

“A light that came from everywhere.”

“Like car lights through a bedroom window?”

“Kinda.”

Exactly, Lainey thought.

“But I knew it was your mom because of how I felt.” Gerry would give no ground to Lainey’s doubts.

“And how was that?”

“I felt peaceful,” Gerry said.

“And?” Lainey pressed.

“And, so did she,” Gerry said.

And something inside Lainey shifted, a small shove of hope up against the grief.

The beginning of school: Sanity returns

Here's our editorial from GTWoman's Sept/Oct issue... now that the kids have been in school several weeks, it turns out we're psychic because this stuff is all happening.

The summer was one for the books. Lots of hot sun, wild kids and laughter long after bedtime. It’s not to say we didn’t love it, but there is something delicious about the start of school…. when someone else starts telling your kids where to be and when.

Things that shall re-commence now that school has begun:

Electronics shall return to their rightful owner.
How many iPhone induced rages can a girl handle in a summer? Try about three a day at our households. Every time we turned around to use our phones, they were not where we’d left them. But rather, for example, Kandy's was running on a 1 percent battery in Star Wars sheets of a twin bed. Cue the rage.
Editor’s note: Plug in and repeat one hour later.

Staying up late shall be a treat.
The magic is back. We, as parents, can now grant this and take it away, ground and unground like sleight of hand. No longer is every night a debate. There are now five glorious school nights to observe and, when it comes to late nights, our reign is back in session. Be sure these don't coincide with wine nights.

Sports equipment shall be put away.
Kandy’s husband ran over a soccer ball a few mornings ago while leaving the driveway. A soccer ball the children were told to put away and/or shove under the back tire of the truck out of sight. The same soccer ball that spent the entire summer on the front lawn with various sides fading in the sun, killing perfect circles of grass. Not once did Kandy see the ball actually get kicked, touched or netted. The same soccer ball Kandy thought was a small, fierce animal each time she was the last one outside at night. To have it end like this seemed melodramatic yet fitting.

The couch shall be sit-upon-able during the day.
Cushions shall be in place; forts shall be dismantled. Oh the simple joy of sitting in the living room and not feeling the springs too low and too hard coming up to meet you. Also, being able to see the floor, the tops of end tables and the face of the TV is nice too. You’ll discover pieces of furniture you forgot you had. Consider it a housewarming party.

Lunch shall be actually eaten.
What if we sat through a whole sandwich and didn’t have to make another, wipe a face (ours included), draw an imaginary line between two brawling children, fish a Lego out of a milk glass or confiscate a deck of Pokémon cards from below the table? Delicious, we say, better than a sandwich could ever be.

Decent appearance shall commence.
Well, with Kerry’s girl Brook, that was never an issue…but as for the boys… tattered shoes, be gone. We can now demand a higher dress code. Hair shall be brushed, cut even. Toenails shall be clean, cut even. And PJs shall not be worn all day; clothes shall be donned. (We will, however, adhere to the opposite dress code.)

Here’s to the arrival of fall! Enjoy the changes that accompany it and, come next summer, we’ll be ready to take on the craziness of a houseful of kids again!

Growing out your hair? Don't.

I’ve been growing out my hair for over a year now. I went through the predictable stages of hating it, loving it, eating it and other joys. Many of you recently noticed that I took several inches off, ponytail be gone. Here’s what happened and why:

Stage 1

The first thing to grow out on your head? Bangs. The rest of your hair stands still but the bangs go gangbusters. Bobby pins re-enter life for first time since wedding in 1996. Lose all 100 of the pack you buy, overnight. Find them all again as soon as you buy new pack.

Stage 2

Hair approaches ears with caution, then passes over.  Sleeping bad. Scratchy hair on pillow mucking up your ear on both sides. Every morning you try tucking it behind your ear only to have it spring out. You look and feel like a 7^th grader defying his parents.

Stage 3

Hair reaches shoulders. Not all at the same time. There are patches that descend the side of your head beautifully. You see only these when you toss your new hair in the mirror, hair that moves, a new phenomenon. You ignore the tufts of horse hair sticking out from under the cooperative layer. It needs to be cut off but you are still in the stage where you won’t cut a single fricking strand.

Stage 4

You hate it. It’s a goddamn mess, it’s in your eyes, face, mouth. All these women walking around with long hair are part of a silent suffering tribe who won’t admit that long hair is a pain. You look at them and wonder, why? But you say nothing. You can’t believe hundreds of years of long hair could be this troublesome. You’re doing something wrong, but what?

Stage 5

You take out some scissors. It’s a bad hair day. You just spit toothpaste into your hair when it came swinging forward to greet the day with you. You feel rage, you feel helplessness. The time has come. You are leaving the tribe, a bunch of snaggle-haired lying fakes anyway. You clip one, then two, strands out. What looks like a few hairs turns out to be about a million fanning out in the sink below you. Oh no, you think, my hairdresser is going to kill me. You put the scissors away. You decide to suffer a little longer, wondering how it will end.

Stage 6

Your hair stinks. You used to wash your hair every day when it was short, when you combed it and styled it with a towel. Now you’ve found yourself dreading the chore of washing horsetail, so much so that this could be day 3? day 6? since you used shampoo. You are clean from the neck down only. Also, you’ve gained 5 pounds and it’s all hair weight. You feel like a nasty pig. You realize you’re going to have to force yourself to care for this beast growing out of your skull. The price of beauty is mighty. A little part of you dies inside for you know this must be the tribe initiation. The cleaning, the time, the worship of caring for it becomes a rite, the hours invested too much to lose.

Stage 7

You are halfway through a turkey sandwich picnic and yet again, you pull a hair the length of your cranium from your mouth. The wind picks up the minute you turn your back and your hair races into your mouth. Again. Your friend keeps talking. She, too, is eating hair. Everyone pretends this is normal, tasty even. You feel the tribe closing in on you.

Stage 8

Finally, you reach your breaking point. Your hair is long and nearly all grown out. It’s sitting on your shoulders, you can feel it on your back. You sit through a doc appointment and notice you can feel hair on your back above the paper robe. It feels like a finish line of sorts. I’m done, you think.

Next morning, you go to the hairdresser's with the war cry, “CUT IT OFF!” The entire salon looks bemused and continues cutting their clients’ hair. Your hairdresser doesn’t even pick up her scissors. “You’ll make it, don’t worry,” she says. You’ll repeat this scene three more times, a few months between outbursts, reducing your plea finally to “Give me bangs, please? At least?”

Stage 9

You join the tribe. You decide you’re willing to buy lots of hair product, wash your hair a lot, dry it a lot, worry about it a lot. The deciding vote? You go to a concert and realize you can fix your hair up all pretty for the first time since your wedding. You ask your husband about 100 times, Isn’t this pretty? What do you think? I look like a new woman, don’t you think? Huh, don’t you?

He replies, “I like it short.”

Stage 10

You consider getting rid of him or the hair. Your decision sways each day. Finally you decide on axing several inches off. It took you 20 years to groom him, the hair only one.

Stage 11

You think about growing it out again, your bangs at least.

The Griswolds Go West

It was the classic All-American road trip: Badlands, Wall Drug, Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone. Played out in a 20-year-old travel trailer and a pick-up truck in the glaring heat of I-90. Two kids in the back, two overgrown ones up front. I've been talking about doing this trip for 10 years and we looked at the kids and realized another 10  could sail by just as easily.... that we had to go, it was time.

Mapquest promised the worst: 27 hours one way. But it came as no surprise. I’d grown up doing this trek nearly every summer as a kid. There was no way around it — it was three days of travel each way with a trailer and kids in tow.
Or, in our case, four days. Less one trailer awning, plus one flooded kitchen and the purchase of a brand new transfer case on the truck to the tune of $2,500.

The awning incident came on Day 1. There’s nothing good about a car pulling up next to you on the Interstate and the passenger making flapping movements with his arms before speeding off. When you take a closer look in the rearview, sure enough, your awning has unspooled and laid itself nicely along the top of your camper, flapping like a flag.

This was no big surprise either. The spring broke on the awning last year and we knew it was on the countdown. We figured a thunderstorm would take it out in the end. But this was a blaze of glory, even by our standards.

You see, the beauty of our trailer is that it’s old and it’s imperfect but it’s ours. Each new “incident” brings a wash of love over us. Remember when the bathroom trim came off in my hand that night? How about the time we noticed the plastic was burning through, melted from a fire in the overhead light? And don’t forget the day the latch on the fridge broke and the milk exploded all over the floor AND the ceiling. Them those are the good ol’ days.

So Tim secured the awning in the dusty parking lot of a failed 24-hour café in Iowa. Tool of choice? Duct tape. The awning was taped into submission, its arms taped tight. The awning was a lost cause, tattered, its final stretch a reach for the heavens in a prairie sky. We held a moment of silence to recognize that we would not, in fact, have the enjoyment of shade on this trip.

Next up, the day we went to Bear Country, U.S.A. This is a drive-through animal park. Elk, bear, big horn sheep next to your truck, hysterical kids begging to roll down the windows. Totally worth it. We went at feeding time and watched the wolves defer to the 20-year-old kid in khakis with a bucket of feed. “That boy is the Alpha Male,” I told the children, “leader of the pack.” This led to an age-old face-off between Tim and me on who was alpha in our family.

After dropping $40 in the gift shop, we headed back to camp, stuffed bears in hand, necklaces swinging from our necks. And when we pulled in, we noticed a small rain shower coming from beneath the camper, a lake forming in its path.

“Here we go,” Tim said.

Inside, a flooded kitchen, water running over the discolored linoleum and down through the floor and out into the campsite we were paying a hefty $39 a night for.

Tim opened the cabinet under the sink and water burst out in welcome, a water line loose, broken, routing water everywhere.

Small potatoes, people. This same floor was flooded once before. In fact, the rotting floorboards in the kitchen have given rise to a few doubtful moments when the larger members of the family make a breakfast of buttered toast.

Once that was fixed, it was time for the biggie.

The breakdown arrived politely. It waited until we were 19 hours and one Mt. Rushmore into the trip. We left bright and early on a Tuesday morning headed for the Big Horn Mountains and beyond, Yellowstone. The parking lot simmered in South Dakota heat. Tim’s truck offered up an unusual hum, a rattle, a warning call.

“What now,” Tim said.

He ferreted out the problem, flat on his back in the parking lot of a GM dealership — not much fluid in the transfer case. The what? No matter, my tool man had us back on the road after a few quarts of fluid.

“Is it fixed?” I asked, filing my nails.
“Who knows,” Tim said.

Exactly 40 miles later, we knew. It was a major problem. Transfer case fluid had leaked out and blown all over the front of the camper in the 40 miles we’d traveled. We found a GM dealership three miles away and the guys took us right in. A new transfer case was needed. Cue the $2,480 bill. A weakness ran through my legs.

“Go drop your trailer down the road at the Rec Center,” the man in overalls said. “Bring the truck back and we’ll have it ready by 5.”

We were at once shocked and relieved. We were broke! We were alive! We lost one day! We lost only one day! We didn’t know whether to cry or cheer.

But when we pulled into the Rec Center, fanning our credit cards out for selection, my mom handed down a little bit of heaven and tipped the scales in our favor.

For what stood next to the Rec Center? A water park bigger than Mt. Rushmore itself. And only $7.50 a person for the entire 90-degree day. It was unheard of bounty in our time of need.

“Get your suits on!” I called. Thank God, I thought. I’d been imagining an eight-hour day in a parking lot with a deck of cards and two small badgers.
So we played all day in the park. I was talked into doing the rocket red slide once, which made the kids look upon me with something close to kinship. I quietly booked a chiro appointment for the day we returned home.

Tim shook off the setback after hiking back to the rec center on foot and rode the slides all day with the kids. I read my book in the shade, wrote a little and avoided eye contact with the red slide.

The truck was done at 5 as promised. The kids were happy but tired. Tim and I were broke but resilient.

“What a great place to break down,” we said that night, penniless, lying in our camper with our duct-taped awning and waterlogged kitchen floor. “Isn’t vacation the best?”

Canoe Marathon & Feeders

“Of course I’ve heard of a canoe marathon!” said no one, ever.

This is my life. I am deep in the underworld of canoe racing. Few people have heard of it, fewer have done what I do each July – wade into the AuSable River in the dead of the night to drop food and drink into a canoe splitting through the water in a chase for the finish some 120 miles away.

A crowd-pleasing battle for 12th & 13th place.

The setup is this: The 2-man canoes enter the water at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. They paddle all night nonstop into Sunday afternoon for 15-16 hours from Grayling to Oscoda, Michigan.

"Feeders" do this: We meet them every two hours along the way and do a “feed.” This means handing them a jug with a long tube that they can drink from while they paddle, along with a container of food (fruit, energy gel, sandwich) that they tuck inside their canoe. We are also sure to include a stash of all-important pain pills.

These feeds take place in the river, thigh to waist (in crisis, neck-) deep, in the middle of the night. This includes a lot of reaching down to make sure the thing wrapping around your leg is a weed and not a snake. There's also mass confusion. There are, after all, dozens of other feeders standing in the river, in the dark, wondering which team is theirs, this black boat or that black boat in a stream of 70-plus boats in the black night.

Added joys include wet, slick clay river banks, dropoffs and crowds cheering so loud you can't hear your boat call for you or you for them.

So here's the exact scene: Me, standing in a river in shorts, old tenny shoes, freezing, heart pounding, holding a grocery sack from Tom's.

What 30 hours of no sleep looks like

Yes, Tom's. They are racing in $4,000 canoes but the secret to success lies in the cradle of a free plastic grocery bag from Tom's. Their precious fruit, Hammer gel and Advil swings above the unforgiving course of the river, a hair-width of plastic away from instant loss should I lose my footing or the seam of the bag give way. 

In my other hand is the drinker. Again, the advances in canoe technology pale in the face of an 89-cent plastic 1.5 Liter water bottle from Walgreen's and a couple pennies worth of 1/4 inch tubing from Ace. 

While the men have perfected their rafts, time stands still in the feeder arena.

But with our goods in hand, we stand and wait. Early in the night, we are in the river plenty early, worried we'll miss our team. The count begins. They were 15th at last sight, but that doesn't mean they won't show up in 30th position or, worse, 10th, taking us by surprise. The entire thing is a gamble. Anything can happen. And all they ask is that we be ready for it, their shining moment or their sloshing comeback.

This means we have a good one-second gap as the boat whisks by to ask one question and one alone, the war cry of feeders everywhere: "What do you need?"

There's no room for niceties or cheering, we are finely tuned machines of plastic bags and drinkers. Ask and ye shall receive.

Behold the call of "Chocolate milk!" or "Pills, more pills!" We shall deliver. Never mind that they ask for these things at 3 a.m. when there is not a store in sight, or, if there is, a closed one. This brings the kinship of a group of feeders to light. For the parking area at each feed spot is a bartering arena, Jell-O and Tylenol passing hands in an urgency matched only by the Olympics. For if there's one thing that every feeder wants as much as seeing their team make it to the finish, it's for their friends to do the same.

Well our boys placed 13th this year out of 72 boats, 15 of which did not make it. But the best story of all that will become lore for years to come was this: The paddler who said he didn't want any food.

No food? But his feeder didn't hesitate, she simply plucked the food from his boat and sent him on his way. Only to watch him turn, pause, and holler, "Where is my @#$%ing food????"

Us feeders secretly take these stories back to shore with us and revel in the glory of our men losing their minds, right before us, by their own doing.

"They're maniacs," we say. "Fools," we agree. "Nuts," we conclude. In the end, we pride ourselves on being the sane ones as we trudge down a dirt road in the middle of the night in soggy underwear. 

The Tooth

Victim on left

Well, the mystery’s finally been solved after 30 years, the one last great debate. An astute dentist in Traverse City did it: Cracked open the cold case of “The Tooth.”

It started three decades ago outside of my mother’s best friend’s home. Mom and Dad disappeared into the house for a quick hello and to drop off a dish on a warm September night. They left their 6-year-old twins in the backseat with one instruction, a warning that came from the end of my father’s ominous finger: “Do. Not. Fight.”

Well, fighting is what we did best. No way were we going to be able to divide the backseat down the middle, after dark, without witnesses or line judges. There would be war, tears and, as it turned out, blood.

It started with standard issue pushing and shoving before the house door even shut behind them, moves that were well perfected and evenly weighted between our identical thin, bony bodies. We could shove each other all day without so much as causing a shift in the air. It was the cowboy boots worn that night that would set the stage for a whole different battle.

The night was clear, the moon a half crescent above the car windows that went up or down with crank handles. Inside, Mom and Dad were trying to wrap things up just as their daughters were getting started.

The brown vinyl seats set things into action. Pushing and shoving turned to sliding and falling and finally, kicking and screaming. We were fighting like any decent blue-jeaned girls from the outskirts of town would over an absolutely invisible line in the dark.

That’s when it happened. One of us kicked the other. Square in the mouth. And out came part of a tooth. A front tooth. And plenty of blood. No one remembers much after that except Dad going absolutely ballistic.

But the funny thing was, years later, no one could remember who kicked out whose tooth. Both of us claimed to be the victim. My mother feigned memory loss, so upset was she to have her tuna casserole play such a key role in our childhood. My father, so furious about it all, was never interviewed.

For years I claimed my final memory of the scramble was a size 3 cowboy boot framed against the night sky. After that, the rest was dark. During a Business Law class in college, I scoured the chapter on statue of limitations.
But the final verdict wouldn’t come for another 15 years when I decided to whiten my teeth and, as it turned out, one tooth did not brighten along with the others. One front tooth.

Yet, my senses had been dulled and I didn’t connect any dots. Of course, I have one stubborn tooth, I thought, trying to bleach it longer than the others. Then I started seeing a few photos of myself with that one tooth staring out at me, a shade darker. Still, I made no connection. I simply headed to the dentist for an opinion on the problem tooth.

After prodding and poking, the dentist said, “Do you realize that tooth has been repaired?”

Realization hit me there sitting on another brown vinyl seat. I’d been trying to whiten whatever kind of material a dentist in 1980 would have used to fix the damage of a boot heel.

I’d had all the evidence I needed on the front of my face all these years.

Yes, the case was cracked. It hadn’t occurred to me that dental work would have been involved. I was only 6 at the time and I’d blocked out all my other dental visits, hadn’t I? It all made sense.

But when I told my sister, thundering in my righteousness, she just laughed. I, however, was handed a quote for a thousand-dollar veneer. And that is how it ended: the case cracked, 30 years later.

GTWoman's Computer Sale Decision

We are celebrating 9 years with this issue. Nine! Can you believe it? We can’t either! We will be celebrating at our Sept. 12 Network Nite. It will be a fine time, complete with birthday cake, to reminisce about our little tiny beginning that involved a Monte Carlo and a computer sale.

Let’s set the scene: Two hysterical twin sisters, entrenched in another week of sleepless nights, one with a newborn, the other with a toddler, sitting in the parking lot outside of the Computer Haus in Traverse City. Time? A half-hour before closing on the final day of the year, Dec. 31, 2002.

The shop had one computer left on sale, last year’s model, the master machine of all magazine designers worldwide - the Apple. Priced at just $2,000. Two grand! Would the two panicked sisters drop that much moula and actually launch a magazine?

Here’s a glimpse inside the white Monte Carlo, a car worth little more than the computer itself:

“Are we gutsy enough to do this?”
“Of course we have the guts. The question is, are we stupid enough to do this?”
“Stupid? We got stupid in spades.”

At this point, we got stoked on our ability to make a mistake with a steady and mighty hand. Next, we had to decide how to finance this business idea, a plan sketched out on a few sheets of yellow legal paper in our hands. All while the green digital clock ticked on the dashboard. Snow was piling up on the windshield, the short winter day was leaning in, waiting on what would happen at the stroke of 5.

“Tomorrow is New Year’s Day; they’ll be closed…”
“And we’ll have to suffer through one more day of indecision.”
“Worse, the computer sale might be over.”

This was no Kohl’s coupon (Kohl’s did not exist in the Traverse City conscious yet). This was a much weightier decision. Neither of us had $2k lying around to lose. But we had credit and could agree, with eyes bright and shiny with hope, to lose one thousand dollars each if this magazine tanked before the ink was dry.

But it wasn’t this that hung over us in the car that day. The most telling indecision was who would keep the computer if we didn’t make it.

Looking back, that was possibly what the whole success of GTWoman hinged on. The inability of a set of twin sisters to come to any kind of agreement that didn’t part out dividends to the exact penny. If pressed, neither would be willing to take on the debt of the computer alone, nor give up ownership in half of it.
The only choice, thanks to a stubborn streak, was to make the magazine fly.

That $2,000 un-splitable-in-half computer was the start. The rest, we bartered. We bartered for a website, we bartered for business cards, we bartered with photographers and ad designers who wanted to get their name out. We put together a prototype in a three-ring binder and asked a couple of women to write sample articles to showcase. Whoa. A three-ring binder, you say? Yes. We know.

The things that didn’t cost money came in great quantity after that: bad ideas, good ideas, arguments, laughter, success, failure and then, again, success.

Now nine years and four computers later, we still laugh about those final few frantic moments in the Monte Carlo and the day we made our first and best uninformed, crazy, reckless business decision together.

Things I don't want my kids witnessing

Things I don't want my kids witnessing now that they are home for summer break:

My clothing. Are they noticing this is the fourth day on this pair of yoga pants? Probably not. My closet has countless identical pairs. When I find a pair of pants long enough for my giraffe legs, I buy in quantity, 30 percent coupon or no. But the children might be taking note of the peanut butter smear that's been on my front hoodie pocket since school let out.

My lunch break. So, the kids are wondering just how much I can balance on the arm of the couch? There’s a plate, a bowl, and on a windless day, a full glass of water. These are the very things they are forbidden to do. The very things they watch me spill and curse and clean up with a screech of “See why I tell you to eat at the table?”

My phone time. What is it to them if I talk on the phone while folding laundry and emptying the dishwasher and basically going about my day with a phone growing out of my head? But if they see I'm busy, especially busy (folding and a business call, for all they know) there's surely an emergency needing attention. If I'm only folding they are nowhere in sight. Ever.

My living room. The boys like to create videos for YouTube. It might be a how-to video on Angry Birds or a showcase of their Lego collection. But it's nearly always a tell-all on their mother's lack of patience as I go blowing through the background launching missiles and shouting orders. I never realize there was recording taking place until I hear the playback and I'm all like WHAT crazy thing are you watching now? Only to recognize our living room in the next instant.

And that is the worst of all – to get a flash of life from another perspective. The house is in shambles and I’m in shambles. But if I look closely, I can see, too, that the kids are laughing and running, spilling Cheezits and dragging blankets and building forts and making a real show of torturing me. 

But it makes me laugh, after the initial shock, to witness that, to see that the summer fun is here, in all its messy, crazy glory. Bring it on!

SAHM Working from Home

We’ve been SAHM and Working Moms for almost a decade now. Many of our readers are surprised to find out we’ve pubbed GTWoman Magazine from home since Day 1. Who would have guessed we could run a business AND climb the sand dunes in a single day? Well, here’s a look at how we balance the isolation of working from home with the need for human interaction, thanks to technology…

Facebook, of course. We have a GTWoman Facebook page which is a great place to hang out and browse pictures from our events that include things like fancy high heels, people halfway through a bite of food and the latest “bunny rabbit” ears given to a buddy holding a glass of wine.

But Kandy tried the unthinkable on her personal FB page — keeping her friends list to a tight, close few. Still the friend requests came in and the temptation stared at her for weeks, then months. Finally, last week, she went crazy and friended 74 people in a single day. Seventy-four! But, she promised herself, she wouldn’t read up on them and she’d still stick to her closest friends on the newsfeed.

Wrong. Turns out 74 new people are waaay exciting and interesting to read about and get to know online. It’s like a big old shot in the Facebook arm. There’s new families to “meet” and new funny sayings to read and new biking groups to virtually race. FB has proved itself yet again as the ultimate Water Cooler for the SAHM.

Email. It used to be that email was the solve-all for SAHM. We could work day or night, between feedings and brawls, when our hair was standing on end, when the house was as well.

But it seems there’s a stirring underfoot. Our phone is ringing more and more. It appears (studies are still out on this) that women like to talk. Email, while all good and dandy for the usual rigmarole, still doesn’t cut it for real-world connection.

All over the region, there’s a new movement underfoot: The “working” lunch. Kerry's been known to schedule three working lunches. All on the same day.

Texting. This is a godsend to those working at home who need an instant pick me up. It’s easy to catch a friend, any friend, as bored or as unmotivated as you are at any time of the day.

One day whilst simultaneously working on their websites, Kandy sent her friend a text that said something along the lines of “I'm stuck, what’s the next step?”
She got a reply moments later that she will save, probably forever:

What kind of friend puts a  random paper shopping bag over her head in the heat of working? Someone who is good, very good, at this SAHM thing. Could you ask for more than that from one working mom to another?

So enjoy our "Motherhood" issue and rejoice in the power of technology to keep us together, no matter how much work keeps us apart!

Kids and Money

We are constantly at war in this house over money earned, money saved and money lost. It’s everywhere we turn:

Teeth. Due to thunderstorms and turbulence, the Tooth Fairy didn’t make it into Nelson’s room on a recent April night. A day later, she left a dollar. Another day later, Nelson lost it. Where? What mysterious force resides over the room of my child? I believe it goes by the name of “disarray.”

Coupons. Grandma had the 9-year-old go through the checkout line at Bed, Bath & Beyond to use a 10% off coupon* on a spatula she wanted. *(Limited to one per customer.) Money saved! Grandma let them keep the change from the $20 bill. She was out $4 to each child. Money lost!

Nelson gave me his $4 to “hold onto,” which was reabsorbed into my cash until a week later when he came looking for it. I wasn’t sure if it was in my purse, on my dresser or in a cash register at Lake Ann Grocery. I gave him the only thing I could find, a $5 bill. Money lost!

Wallets. Each of my boys has a wallet. Neither knows where it is. What’s the point of keeping track of an empty plasticy-thing that folds in thirds? None apparently. Not even the one with a Luke Duke driver’s license in it. Instead the children prefer Ziploc bags, usually handed over by an adult who has just cleaned the spare change from his pocket.

The bags become all important, jangling to and fro. Until there’s a scuffle. The bags are dropped and, when retrieved, look identical to each other. Who had $2? Who had $3? Here, let me top that off for you and everyone has $3 now, just like you both seem to remember. Money lost (me)! Money earned (them, as usual)!

Chores. Kendall wanted to save money for a DS player: $100. An impossible sum, or so I thought. But he had a hefty start of $40 from his birthday. Money saved!

The next chunk he earned by way of chores. Empty the dishwasher? 50 cents. Fold the laundry? Nothing. Fold and put away the laundry? Nothing. Fold and put away his brother’s underwear? $1. Get momma her book from across the room? Late evening is a seller’s market. Money earned!

Chores, Grandma Style. I got plenty of help around the house until Grandma’s accounting came into practice again. Kendall had earned his way up to $85 in a few months’ time. I was impressed. Also I was thinking I’d get another month of complaint-free labor out of him.

Until he went to Gram’s for the afternoon and earned $15 for weeding the garden. Some of the garden, some of the weeds.

When I picked him up, he was ecstatic. Work finally made sense to him. He was wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. $100 total in a wilted baggie. Money earned!
Nelson looked on incredulously until Gram offered him $1 in hush money, which he took without negotiation. Money lost!

Chores, thanks to Grandma. Now my little laborers are on the verge of forming a union. Their prices are getting higher, their woes growing larger. Nelson wanted $1 tonight for helping Tim fertilize the lawn. His contribution? Asking Tim how the fertilizer spreader worked. Now he’s charging us for speaking, it appears.

On the same night, Kendall did a fab job of hauling away all the cuttings from the garden and I bestowed $3 upon him for an hour’s work. (Hey, the union is still just a dream.) He looked at me, raised his eyebrows, stuck out his hand and said, “Five!” I gave him $4, glad he didn’t ask for Grandma’s rate of $15. Money saved!

Hauling wood with Dad

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from my work-in-progress — a novel about losing my mom and finding her again, leaving home and going back and about childhood. The parts like this, about my lovable swearing father, made me laugh when I wrote them and repeat them to my friends as long as they would listen, after.

Lainey spent each fall throwing wood through a small basement window at her father’s head. It was a homegrown production.

The cycle was this — her father cut it in the backyard, his daughters stacked it on a trailer, he drove it to the house, the girls unstacked it in the garage and dropped it through the window into the basement, where her father once again stacked it. It seemed to Lainey to involve entirely too many steps.

The day of the wood’s arrival was a dark day at the household. The rumble of the lumber truck was no match for the terror in the tiny sound of her father squeezing the handle of his oilcan as he greased the chainsaw.

The delivery was 30 cords, enough to heat the three-bedroom ranch through the winter, with two to spare for the countless times Lainey and her sisters left the backdoor open.

It began with her father cutting the timber into small, manageable pieces the depth of his woodstove, while his daughters stood by to grab the pieces and load them onto the trailer.

“Get it!” her dad would holler over the chainsaw, nudging loose pieces on the ground toward Lainey, his boots scuffed leather. He had no patience for her tentative nature around dismemberment. This was about production, not the ability of his crew wearing Guess watches, flannel shirts and blue jeans. He had not, Lainey thought, done a very careful screening of his workmen.

However, stacking the wood became an art form. The big chunks, split with an ax, went in a row on the front and back end of the trailer, solid and steady, one tucked into the other. The girls had small competitions to see who could stack the tightest, neatest end rows.

“Mine’s higher than yours!” one would hoot.

“But mine’s stronger,” another would say and kick the structure, solid under the strike of a size 7 Ked.

Eventually, the hell-cry Get back to work! would sound when her father noticed the competition for fine craftsmanship was actually a detriment to the process.
The trailer was big enough for two 1980 Ski-Doo snowmobiles, one facing each way, and small enough that the Honda three-wheeler could pull it filled to capacity with firewood. The bed of the trailer was plywood warped with age and balanced on one axle with a metal fender over each tire.

And this was pivotal to the entire operation: the clearance between the fender and the tire.

The trailer could take the weight of wood until it almost touched but did not touch the tire. Any less, and it was wasted space. Any more, and the trailer was pegged to the ground, and Lainey would be charged with unloading what she’d just loaded until the trailer rose to make clearance.

This was a waste of time, her father would address his crew when this happened, Could you not see it was getting too heavy? Are you blind? Be it good times or good eyes, all were in short supply for the man who continued to saw and curse and yell directions at his crew.

Once the trailer was loaded, it was time for the step that Lainey hated the most — helping him back the trailer into the garage. The trailer fit inside the garage door with an inch to spare on either side. And even as Lainey told him “a little more to the left,” he was going right.

“Am I gonna make it, damn it?” he would bellow.

“Yeah, I said, YEAH!” Lainey would scream back, sometimes without even looking. Let him rap into the trim of the door and go absolutely off the deep-end, she would think.

But if he did rap the trim, she would crap her pants. No way was it a good scene. The taillights on the trailer stuck out the farthest and, with just a hair scratch, would catch the white paint and peel a long, fine stretch of paint free for all the world to see, or similarly, her father.

Never was the trailer backed in without some kind of situation unfolding. But once it was parked, her father became the jumpy one. For his job was to stack the wood in the basement. And their job was to relay the pieces down through the small access window from the garage into the basement. They would drop the pieces, one by one, letting them fall eight feet to the concrete floor below in a thundering whack at the feet of her father.

“Drop them straight down,” her father warned every time. “Don’t throw them! Jesus!”

And, of course, the day came when her mother wailed him in the head with a piece of wood big enough to kill him.

“Ow!” came the howl and Lainey and her sisters crowded around the little window.

“Are you OK?” Lainey’s mother called, reaching for the next chunk of wood.

Her father did not answer, enjoying more the silent suffering that brought them to the window.

“Dad!” his daughters insisted, “Answer us!”

As they peered into the dark hole, their eyes dilated, trying to assemble the scene below: a man slumped over, grabbing his forehead with a leather glove, the other hand on his waist for emphasis, a blue streak coming from his mouth clouding the basement.

“Who threw that?” he finally asked, deadly quiet, checking his head for blood.

All three girls looked up at their mother, who was standing behind them, arms crossed.

“I did not throw it,” she said down the hole at him.

“The piece of wood is six feet across the basement floor!” he countered. Indeed, the chunk had some steam behind it from the looks of things.

“I did not throw it.” Her mother was nothing if not consistent.

The argument went on like that for some time, her mother denying, her father counting out the feet between his head, the window and the wood. This was reassuring. If he could fight and holler and curse, then he would live. Unfortunately, it also meant he'd live to get another load in before nightfall.

The event became family lore, one of their favorites. And, while at the time, Lainey hated the sawdust in her eyes and the scratches on her arms, she remembers now what it felt like, the satisfaction of that last load. She treasures now what her father taught her about hard work. And what her mother taught her about good aim.

Baby boy in NICU

Here's an excerpt from my book, based on when our son Kendall was in NICU. (The first part of the story is here in a previous blog post.)  Such a hard time and I'm sure many moms can relate. The best part was this though...

They admitted the baby for seven days. They released Lainey in one.

“I'm not leaving this hospital without him,” she told anyone who would listen.

“We have to,” Nick said.

“Do we?” Lainey asked and did not gather her things. She climbed into the bed and waited for the nurse.

The nurse saw it on her face when she walked in. “You can go now,” she told Lainey, bustling with activity yet waiting.

“I'm staying,” Lainey said. “Until my baby can leave too.”

Her son was down the hall in NICU, an IV needle taped to the side of his soft head, living under an incubator. Eight glorious pounds in a sea of miniature babies. When Lainey went down to nurse him or hold him, she saw babies that were no bigger than a pop bottle, wires and tubes lacing each body. Her heart stopped and began again the first time she saw him like this, a patient.

But she soon learned to unhook him from his alarms and, even sooner, how to divert the nurses when she did it wrong and set off the beeping. She swaddled him to her breast and tried to feed him without pulling the IV from his head. Mostly she rocked him and fed him a bottle because he didn't want to work for his food.

There was a pale white rocker next to his incubator, next to the divider swinging between her and the next baby. She tucked into the rocker, her elbow touching the curtain and watched the efficiency of the nurses and tried to stay out of their way. But she did not give up a second with her son, not even when they looked sidelong at her for spending the entire day underfoot. Why, she marveled, would I leave him in the plastic of an incubator when I was here to hold him, keep him warm?

She felt sorrow for the mothers and fathers that came in before 8 or after 5. She was one of the few who could stay and did. She bundled her baby in blankets and cried into them often, pressing her cheek against his soft downy head, praying the medicine was working, her bruiser baby made just as small with IVs and monitors.

"I suppose we don’t need this room just yet," the nurse told Lainey, closing her chart for the last time and walking away.

This is how Lainey became a vagrant at the hospital. The room hers, a bed constantly unmade, her clothes strewn about. She feared that if she left the room neat, they would think she’d left. Lainey paced the halls each day checking capacity. Nick’s cot stayed next to her bed, both of them waiting, sleeping, worrying, waiting, Lainey rising every two hours at night to feed the baby. They worried they’d be sent home, they worried they’d never get there.

On the fifth day, the doctor delivered the news: Her son was in recovery, his lungs clear. He could go home at the end of the seven-day antibiotic treatment. But for now they should see it through.

Lainey waited until the midnight nurses came on in NICU. She went tired, happy and scrubbed to the elbows as usual.

“We want him,” Lainey told the nurse, “in our room.” Laney looked at the baby, her baby, and back at the NICU nurse.

“Not a good idea,” the nurse said.

“The doctor gave him the all clear.” Lainey started unhooking his alarms. She was five days into motherhood and a fierce love was rolling in, replacing the meek fearful one she’d harbored all week. She removed each sensor with ease. She covered him with blankets and turned to leave NICU.

A nurse touched her arm to stop her.

“Don’t go,” she said.

“Please move,” Lainey said. She stared down the nurse, the same nurse she worshiped. For the first time, she felt like his mother, her child at last in her possession. The woman looked down at the pink-faced football player in Lainey’s arms and said nothing. She went back to the patients who needed her more.

When Lainey returned to their room, Nick sat up in his cot.

“Look who I have,” she whispered. She leaned over and revealed their wee child in her arms, his little hand clutching at the striped blanket.

“Kendall,” he whispered and cupped his baby boy’s head, his hand covering it from ear to ear. “But how?”

“He’s ours,” she said. Lainey and Nick looked at each other. They were alone at last with their baby, their precious treasure.

They put him in the center of the narrow bed and Lainey climbed in on one side, Nick on the other. There was barely room for the baby, but it was enough and they unwrapped him. They looked at his toes, his fingers, his belly. They patted and caressed each part. The parts they’d only seen with a nurse hovering or during a complicated diaper change around cords and tubes. Now they took their time and looked at every wrinkle and crook. He fussed only a little and even that they marveled over, the sounds he made.

“Let’s keep him,” Nick whispered.

“Yes,” Lainey said. 

She left the bed to peek into the hall for nurses coming to arrest them while Nick climbed into his own cot. He held out his hands, “Here, let him sleep with me.”

Lainey, in theory, had slept 9 months with Kendall tucked up against her. Tonight would be Nick’s first. She swaddled their baby and put him down, IV facing out, the collar of his blue jammies fuzzy against Nick’s smooth bicep. Lainey watched as long as she could, waiting until the baby fell asleep, before letting her eyelids fall shut.

When she awoke an hour later, she looked down to find her boys, both of them, in the same position. One arm up high and crooked by his ear. The other across his chest. She saw the resemblance of father and son and bowed her head with the emotion that came with it. Tonight she was a mother, Nick a father. Their son, a boy in jammies gone AWOL. I’m good at this already, she thought.