Family

Blessed Burdens

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Laundry peace

Living off-grid means every scrap of laundry gets hung on a line, but if you think because the clothes dry more slowly I would be able to stay ahead of the folding, you’d be wrong.  

I can wash and hang three hampers full of biohazard-quality laundry in a single day, but the to-be-folded pile only grows.  I usually tackle it before Google Earth registers it as a new land mass, and I rarely mind the activity.  The rhythm of the sorting always stimulates meditation.  

Last Saturday, it stimulated something else.

Hoping to disrupt the strange biorhythms that, only on weekends as soon as I sit down before dawn to write, rouse my children and send them searching for snuggles and cereal, I’ve fled to the nearby country store to work before heading to Hubbard Hall, to help with the tech side of a blogging class.  The class has provided plausible cover for my morning escapes, and each afternoon I’ve come home thinking I couldn’t be more thankful for anything else that day than I was for a little grown-up time.

This last Saturday I came home to a different kind of grown-up time. A neighbor phoned looking for computer help.  I glanced around our kitchen/great room and at the laundry pile and said, “Come on over!”  He would be here in a few hours.  

Folding sessions usually occur after bedtime (the biorhythms only manifest when Mom is doing something fun), but  with impending company, I made an exception and began my folding dance, aided by my iPod and earbuds.  

The couch and table were soon dotted with neat multi-colored piles.  My antics immediately drove thirteen-year-old Jack to his room to study.  Seven-year-old Thing2, however, remained, quietly dancing over from the TV area.  

I sorted and thought about writing and chores.  I didn’t really think about the folding aside from which things should go to Goodwill.  Thing2 interrupted my ruminations, wrapping his arms around my waist as I was in mid-fold.

“Mommy, can I help?”  he asked.

“You really want to fold clothes?”  I asked.  

“No,” he said.  “But I want to help.”  He released me and spun around the living room.  Then he returned for another hug.  “Maybe I can play some music for you,” he suggested.  He sat down at the nearby piano and plunked out “Do-Re-Mi”.  

I took out my earphones so I could listen.  I kept folding, but there was no rhythm now.  Thing2 sang softly with the piano.  Too small items rotated out of inventory, sometimes taking with them a last tangible souvenir of this family vacation or that event.  Jack’s old shirts went into Thing2’s piles.  The piles grew and so did the memories.  

Well before the to-fold pile was gone and the folded clothes packed into baskets, the task ceased being a burden.  It was a reminder of the things that make a life worthwhile.  And, for once, I didn’t just make the best of the laundry pile. I was thankful for it.

Clutter

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A few weeks ago, we threw out a ton of stuff. I don’t mean we threw out a lot of stuff. I mean we threw out 1 Ton of stuff. The Big Guy and I filled a one ton container with odds and ends we’d collected over our seventeen years together, and, I’m ashamed to say, we’ll probably be able to do it again in another month. I don’t mean to imply that our house is filled with trash, but the purge was a stark reminder that I need to look before I leap more often.

A week earlier, I had queried my writing group as to whether or not I should put some of my doodles on T-Shirts. I had an idea, not just to make money off my work, but for a line of fitness wear and T’s for plus-size women (google “plus size fitnesswear” and you’ll see there’s a market there for someone). This particular leap was inspired a sour grapes moment that resulted in my own fruitless search for running wear, and the first few responses were encouraging.

The Big Guy is always encouraging, and I began researching ‘how to print your own T-shirts’. When I the writing group page later in the day, however, a-look-before-the-leap had appeared. It was from our group’s fearless leader:

“I would finish your stories,” it said. “Then move on to other projects”

I was still determined to have something fun and different for my first race in 3 years, and I had a few pieces of T-shirt iron-on paper, but the words “Finish your stories” stayed in my head the rest of the day and the rest of the weekend.

I made my T-shirt and put a few up on CafePress (just for fun), but with the race behind me, and pre-holiday fall cleaning in front of us, I knew the last thing I needed was one more project or hobby – however good an idea it might seem. Filling that one ton container was suddenly more than a way to de-clutter our house. It was a reminder that to win the important battles, I needed to stop collecting projects and just finish the ones that matter.

Are We There Yet?

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WorldsFair

One of the ironies of our life is that our resident social butterfly, six-year-old Thing2, needs an enormous amount prodding to get in the car for any weekend outing.  And so it began on Sunday morning.  

Freshly exercised and showered, and ready for our weekly breakfast at Bob’s diner in Manchester, the Big Guy, thirteen-year-old Jack, and I had one more hurdle to leap before we began our Sunday adventure – convincing – rather, ordering – Thing2 to get in the car.  Pouting and mumbling about his desire to stay put and eat the sugar cereal du jour, Thing2 finally shuffled to his booster seat and got his seat belt on.  Anyone watching would have thought we were taking him to look at military schools (the idea did cross our minds).    Instead, he was pulled out of his cocoon.  

Something about the smell of bacon and coffee temporarily banished Thing2’s grumpiness.  But when breakfast was behind us and we hit the road again, the ride took on a different character for all of us. 

The Worlds Fair in Tunbridge – our destination – is  about 90 minutes from Manchester, and Thing2 kicked off the first half hour mumbling a litany of things he’d rather be doing.  We had mentioned the word ‘fair’ a number of times before, but I had made the mistake of telling the kids it was historical, and the only part of the day Thing2 could focus on was the driving.  Finally, the Big Guy and I caught Thing2’s eye and ears to make it clear that the rest of the ride did not need a serenade of complaints.  He adjusted his tone.  The last sixty minutes were mostly quiet, punctuated only by the occasional refrain of  ‘Are we there yet?’

When we reached the muddy parking lot at the fair ground, Thing2 had zoned out, but the bump between road and muck got his attention.  The smell of manure permeated the air.  Well-groomed, uniformed students from the nearby military college cheerfully directed us to a parking space.  There were no formal ticket booths – just a few more college kids (who didn’t look old enough to shave, let alone wear uniforms) taking admission and shepherding patrons through twine-lined ‘gates’.  

Thing2 clung to my hand, then the Big Guy’s, then mine.  He had already spotted the typical fair midway.  We headed up a muddy hill away from the typical and toward the heart of the fair.  

The heart of the fair is a permanent collection of old buildings – long log cabins, a metal foundry, a carriage barn.  The first log cabin contained artifacts of Vermont home life from over the last two centuries.  Period-costumed demonstrators brought the display – and Thing2 – to life as they showed us how quilts were (and are) made or how country stores used to operate.  The second building displayed a collection of tools, and the carriage barn contain, naturally, carefully preserved carriages and wagons once used by local farmers.  But, while the quilting demonstration and old-fashioned donuts had sparked the beginning of a sincere attitude adjustment in Thing2, what was outside perked up his wings, long before we got to the midway.

Alongside the carriage barn stood pop-up tents that, instead of the usual fair t-shirts and novelty souvenirs, sheltered antique engines.  All of the engines were running, producing little pops when air bubbles went through them.  A few of the displays encouraged visitors to try their hand at grinding corn, or winding thread or pumping water the old-fashioned way.  The whirring motors and spinning gears made their own music, and Thing2 began his dance.  

The rest of the afternoon we shuttled between rides and exhibits.  We stopped for maple-flavored cotton candy (it is Vermont after all) and ‘pour-your-own’ freshly-pressed cider, and Thing2 continued dancing until long after the Big Guy and I had exhausted our reserves.  The dancing and accompanying chatter continued until we were back in the car, rolling through the muddy field again.  

“We have to do this again,” said Jack before he nodded off.  The fair was still causing Thing2’s wings to flutter, however, and it was a long time before he slept.  The excitement of seeing something different would keep them moving even when he did close his eyes, and when I heard him singing softly to himself in his sleep, I knew we were there yet.

The Fountain of Youth

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“Advanced Maternal Age” read the chart when I peeked over the doctor’s screen.  I was only 38, and I’ve known women who had their first child in their forties, so I was a bit taken aback to be lumped into a category that labeled me as ‘old’.  

“It’s just to track risk factors,” explained the doctor as she glided the ultrasound wand over my growing belly.  When I was pregnant with Jack, six years earlier, I already had a little of the feeling that the Big Guy and I were late getting in the Family Way.  Most people we knew had started their families within a year or two of getting married, while the Big Guy and I spent four years acting like teenagers together.  But, despite that most of our friends’ kids were grade school and beyond by the time Jack arrived, we never questioned our decision to take things slowly – until that moment.

My ultrasound was a little off, and we ended up needing to go to a bigger hospital for a closer look at  developing Thing2, but the possibility that he might have Downs Syndrome was not the cause of my age angst.  Rather, it was the slow recognition that I would be almost two generations older than my youngest child.  I would be hitting the ‘change of life’ when he starts getting pimples.  When he gets to his age of adventure, I and my body would be wanting to slow down.

Seven years later (Thing2 will be seven in October) I can still remember that moment in the doctor’s office as if it were seven minutes ago.  At the beginning of the summer, I about it a lot as I huffed and puffed to the top of the driveway.  On Labor Day, I thought about it again. 

Labor Day Monday, Thing2 and I ran in a race together.  I ran the 5K, and he ran the kid’s half-mile fun run.  It was a friendly crowd of five thousand people, and there were about 200 kids in the fun run.  I was excited for the 5K, but I was nervous for the fun run. Thing2 is a country boy – how would he deal with the four foot high surge of humanity flowing around the block?  Would he be scared? Would he get discouraged if he got tired?

The starting gun went off, and I had my answer very quickly.  Thing2 was at the back of the group, so we had time to get to the finish line.  As he came around the corner, he briefly faltered, but the smile never left his face.  He passed us, barely hearing our shouts of encouragement, and I realized that tears and not the soft drizzle were making my face wet.  

Thing2 crossed the finish line and waited for us in the kids’ area.  When we got to him, he had already collected his green ribbon.  I hugged him and raced to the starting line of my own race.  His smile never left my mind, and it propelled me – with a smile of my own – the entire 3.10 miles.

Our runs were the culmination of a summer of fitness and following my kids around mountains and into dried-up waterfalls and down sandy beaches.  It was a summer of being inspired to live better and do more with both my boys throughout.  I ran my last half-mile, singing to my music and thinking about the upcoming kids’ winter sports, and that seven-year-old memory came back to me.  This time, however, when I pictured the doctor’s office, it wasn’t the words on the chart that flashed in front of my eyes – it was the memory of the grainy black-and-white screen glowing with the image of my wriggling fountain of youth.

Dispatches from the Road – Down time

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Something about dropping everything seemed to open the floodgates. We’ve been on the road for almost 2 days now, and, except for posting a few photos to friends and family, my digital life has gone dark.

My creative life is exposing as page after page of my notebook is filled. It’s not just about having time either. It’s about the fresh perspective that comes from crawling out of our cave and getting to know different cross sections of the planet.

Dispatches From the Road – Romance and Better Things

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At five in the morning after a night of trying to stretch out while still fulfilling my duties as pillow-in-chief to six-year-old Thing2, the train seemed a lot less romantic than when we got on the night before.  The rosy glow was gone, but what remained was better.

We had planned an elegant evening meal in the dining car but, realizing we would need to bring our bags or leave them unattended, decided to take turns foraging at the snack bar.  In the time it took each of us to find some microwave pasta and sandwiches, Thing2 had befriended the four-year-old in the seat in front of us, scoring himself a box of crackers in the process.  

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It wasn’t late, but it was dark by the time we all finished snacking and eating, and Thing2 and his new friend had little trouble snuggling against their respective pillow-moms for a short summer’s nap.  They said goodnight to each other, and eyes were closed in a few short minutes.  It wasn’t romantic, but it was cozy. 

To Sir, with Thanks

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To Sir Paul,

This is a Thank You note from a long-time fan and a grateful parent.  About three weeks ago, our entire family traveled from Vermont to Boston to see you perform at Fenway Park.  We were a little nervous – it was our first visit to Boston in over a year, and we had high hopes.  Thanks to you, they were met in ways we hadn’t begun to imagine.

We got to our seats in Fenway just about quarter to seven and not before shelling out a sinful amount of money for T-shirts.  I rationalized this was the only time we may get to see you perform.  And, even though a friend who had been to your sound check earlier in the afternoon had warned us that you were late, we decided it was more fun to wait inside a ballpark that had so many memories for the Big Guy and I than to stand around Yawkey Way.

About forty minutes after we sat down, an introductory slideshow began scrolling up the two massive screens on either side of the stage.  I’ve been listening to your songs since I was in the womb, and my husband has been a fan since seeing you perform on Ed Sullivan, and loved seeing the photos of you and the Beatles and your more recent years.  We’ve done our best to move the tradition forward to our kids, and even they loved seeing the photos of you growing up and growing your own family.

Our six-year-old, lovingly known as Thing2 around our house, waited as patiently as I have ever seen him wait for anything.  When the first song began, about an hour and a half after the scheduled time, he was just starting to want to go back to the hotel, but when the first notes began to echo through the ball park, you brought him back.  You also brought me and the Big Guy to our feet.  The three of us were singing and dancing and clapping as you belted out, “‘Eight Days a We-e-ek.. ‘Eight Days a We-e–eek””.

My older son, twelve-year-old Thing1 who is about to be thirteen and, while not your oldest fan could possibly be your most devoted one, was sitting in his sit trying to cover his face with his hands so that he wouldn’t be recognizable if pictures of his parents dancing like idiots made it onto a concert tour DVD.  But we kept dancing, and despite himself, Thing1 began to silently mouth the words to the song.

Everytime I peeked at him, he rewarded our dancing a look of mortification.  But somewhere between ‘Eight Days a Week’ and ‘We Can Work it Out’ and your soul-lifting introduction to and rendition of Blackbird (I can scarcely remember a more uplifting moment than sitting in the dark with 30,000 people singing along with your guitar), Thing1 had an epiphany that could only have happened here.

As the Big Guy, Thing2 and I were dancing and clapping, Thing1 and I glanced across the aisle and noticed another set of parents with a pair of young sons around 10 and 12.  The mother of the family was also dancing, but the dad – about the same age as the Big Guy – was lost in the music and the moment.  Clapping his hands, waving his arms, and stomping his feet as he sang along, word for word.  He looked younger than his two horrified boys sitting beside him.

For me it was confirmation that we had all found the fountain of youth for a night.  For Thing1, it was something different.  Watching the other two boys trying to obscure their own faces as they tugged at their dad’s sleeve, begging him to dance less effusively, it dawned on my twelve-year-old that all kids have the same problem.  They have parents.  And they can’t get rid of us until they get out of the house.

Any other night that knowledge might have been depressing.  He might have thought about his future independence, but that night, Sir Paul, that knowledge became freedom.  And for the first time ever, I saw my son begin to sing along – out loud – in public.  For the first time in a long time, I saw him shed the inhibitions he had begun to take on with his adolescence, and, as he did, he began to find his way back to himself.

So, not only for the unrestrained joy I got to see on the face of my six-year-old, but the serenity Thing1 got from accepting the parents he can’t change, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Abbyroad

Sincerely,

Ma Barlow

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Magic Reclaimed

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About a year ago – almost exactly a year ago – I wrote a piece about a very special place not far from our house.

Hubbard Hall, a community theatre and art center in the one-traffic light town of Cambridge, NY, had been on our radar for a number of years. My husband became involved with their theatre company and returns at least twice a year. Then I got pulled in by a writing workshop/group that is moving into its second year. My sons are the most recent members of the flock, and it was their experience at summer theatre workshops that prompted my piece last year.

Jack, my oldest, was already navigating the self-conciousness that comes with early teen years and thought he had no interest in being in a play.  Thing2, my six-year-old, never had much of a shell, but, like a lot of kids his age, he sometimes takes a few minutes to get used to a new classroom before letting go of my hand. In the presence of the Hubbard Hall Magic, however, Jack came out of his shell, and Thing2 discovered new worlds.  Both kids came away from their camps with new friends and new outlooks, and every subsequent workshop begins with Thing2 exclaiming, “Oh I LOVE this place.”

Over the spring we got a little disconnected from this magical place. I’m still at the Ministry of Encouragement hosted by author Jon Katz, but our little group has been going in different directions for a few weeks. It’s been temporary, but disconnection can morph into discouragement if left to fester.

So now, a year after I first wrote about this magical place, I’m sitting under the same oak tree on the same rotting picnic bench watching the same kids emerging from the murderously hot buildings as they scamper from rehearsal to craft projects. Thing2 and two of his friends become involved in a very sophisticated game of make-believe, laughing and waving their arms and looking like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Parents go in and out of the nearby Battenkill Books, seeking company and relief from the heat.

The scene is completely ordinary and completely magical, and in that moment I’m reminded of the things that inspired me last summer when I couldn’t stop writing. I’m still a big believer in the Ministry of Encouragement, but this is the perfect way to be reminded that I found it at the Church of Possibility here at Hubbard Hall.

Sinner on the Tread of an Angry Scale

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Some mornings I feel like I’ve joined a cult. Every morning I step on the scale, hoping to see the digital digits in decline The amount of decline, however, can vary with the time of day or what I’m wearing or even where on the scale I step as I try to disperse my weight over the greatest possible surface area. I perform my ritual dance – tap to zero, step up, step down, repeat as needed to produce desired results. Sometimes the ritual can last as many as five minutes, but most mornings my devotions are rewarded.

There are a more than a few days, however, when I creep to the altar. Like a penitent kneeling in the confessional, I slough off every possible bit of mass before stepping, naked, onto the scale. Sometimes I think I can hear it speak to me.

“You seem troubled…”

“Forgive me, it’s been three days since my last weigh-in.”

“So I see. Have you anything to confess?”

“I’m too embarrassed.”

“There’s nothing to fear. Step closer. After all, you know you can’t hide your sins from me.”

“No. Well, I have sinned. It started with this pint of Ben and Jerry’s. See, I was trying to eat local and – ”

“Everyone makes mistakes once in a while. Except for me, of course. I’m 100% accurate. Just step on and see.”

“Yes, well there were several once-in-a-whiles this weekend. It’s a bit of a blur.”

“Step on and we’ll see what your penance will be.”

I do a mental rundown of my sins in the last twenty-four hours, wondering what the penalty will be and quietly greatful the scale doesn’t come with a buzzer or alarm of any kind. I tap-to-zero and then step on the pads between the outlines I’d drawn years ago. My penance began immediately and painfully as the numbers climbed by whole numbers. I dance a little longer, but the number only increases with my rationalizations and excuses.

A few minutes later, chastened, I creep from the treads of my angry scale. But unlike an unburdened magdalen, I don’t leave the shame with my confessor. It follows me, gnawing at my faith in the possibility of another possibility. But, while my faith is shaken, fear of the numbers will bring me crawling back in another day.

 

 

 

 

 

The Family That Plays Together

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The diet is mine.  Fitness is a bit of a family affair – or at least it’s a team effort as far as my life coach and son, six-year-old SuperDude (he really does have super powers), is concerned.  Trailing me on my morning runs up and down the driveway and around the parking circle, his endless chatter and questions distract me from any aches or exhaustion.

We walked and ran this road a few years ago when I was on my last diet.  Pound after pound, SuperDude chased me around my makeshift track, hugged me, and greeted the morning sun with me as we Downward Dogged and Mountain Posed our way through the summer.

He’s older now, but while wisdom threatens to peel some of the fantasies from his vision, his primary power is stronger than ever.  Even as I sit down to write and draw, he’s at the video cabinet finding the perfect routine for tomorrow morning.  And in the morning he’ll cajole and pull me off the couch.  He’s half my size and his chirping and chattering will be powerful enough remind me once again that every gram of muscle I rend from my own fat is not converted just for my own sake.

Pictures of Us

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My sister-in-law’s been going through her attic and stumbling on ancient family photos along the way.  She’s scanned them and emailed them to us in groups.  Most of the photos are of individuals or groups posed carefully and solemnly for a camera that required the subject to stay still for several minutes.

The clothes and the hair are different, but the stories they tell are very familiar.   There’s a great-grandmother who once wrote and published short stories.  There’s a great-grandfather who owned a music store.  I’m hoping to see a photo of a great-grandmother who was a Mohawk and the story of whose union with the family I hope to discern someday.

I’ve always been a history buff, and especially a family history buff.

It started one summer when my aunt and uncle were visiting and my uncle was relating the story of how they had met and married despite strong objections from my aunt’s mother (my grandmother).  He was German, and she was American, and my grandmother was very unhappy at the idea of my aunt moving so far away in an era when long-distance phone calls were still extremely rare.  My uncle was not so easily deterred and, after having received a reluctant refusal, had flown from Germany to Chicago and then driven 6 hours to find my aunt and make his case.  As he told the story, remembering how their 50+ year marriage had almost not happened, a tear ran down his face.  I, like all the other females at the table, decided this was the most romantic story that had ever been told in our family.

The next day, I began to wonder if there were other stories that had simply not been told.  Subsequent trips to our annual family vacation spot became research opportunities, and when a knowledgable aunt was visiting, I began tape recording them as they related the family stories.

In that time I’ve learned about another pair of star-crossed lovers whose parents, a generation ago, had objected to their marriage on the grounds that they were different races and from different countries.  That couple is still married.   I learned how my grandparents, despite Grandmother’s summers spent near Grandfather’s home town never met until they were adults because they lived in completely different worlds.  And I’ve learned that I love the stories of how people come together.

We live in a world where the stories that make the headlines are about people being driven apart.  They’re about lives being blown apart.  Often, the even the storytelling becomes a wedge, breathing distrust into every disagreement until the participants hardly recognize each other as members of the same species.  Over the past year, I’ve made more of an effort to look for the other stories – the ones that bring people together.  I used to be embarrassed about my love of romantic stories of people overcoming odds to be together, but now I think they’re an expression of faith that people can actually do that.

I’m looking through the photos and stories of my husband’s family, one photo stands out.  It is a picture of a husband and wife, the husband staring at the camera while the wife leans her head on his shoulder.  They both have wistful smiles on their faces.  It’s from the late 1800s, and their clothes date the picture more than the aged sepia.  I know their world was a million miles away from mine.  When I look at the serenely happy and casual pose, however, I realize that they look a lot like us.  It’s a story worth pursuing.

Of Beanstalks and Boys

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I had planned on re-dubbing Thing1, my twelve-going-on-twenty-year-old 'Goliath'. At the time, I was just getting used to reprimanding and rewarding my first born while looking up at him, and the name seemed to fit him. But despite his occasional flashes of teenaged angst and backtalk, my giant is a gentle one.

 

I've used pseudonyms for my boys, not so much out of fear of stalkers, but because I want them to have as much control over their identities online as I would want over mine. The stories I tell about them and the Big Guy are my vision of them, and someday they will want the chance to define themselves. But now, as Thing1 is evolving and daily declaring his independence, the nickname that fit him just a year ago, doesn't seem to do him justice.

 

I love the name we gave him. It's different. I wanted the nickname I gave him online to evoke the same feeling I have when I hear his given name. So I began running through a list of names, finding things that rhymed until I hit 'Jack'. Initially, I discarded it, continuously rattling off names as I shut the door to my office to let him Skype with his friends. I went across the hall to throw another load in the machine and while I continued the end-of-school project of sorting through hand-me-downs. As I was grumbling to myself about how much more expensive it was about to be to buy men's pants for my firstborn, I came back to the name Jack.

 

It's not particularly different, but suddenly it fit him. He has been growing like a proverbial string bean, but lately he's a bit more like Jack than the beanstalk. He's headed to overnight computer camp this summer. It's his first time away from family, but it's also the first time he's made his own choices about his education. He wanted to go to learn. He chose which course seemed most interesting. He's the one making decisions about how he'll finance and build a new computer.

 

This boy who has begun to thrive on challenge is so much more than a mischievous imp (although he's still that quite often). He's ready to make his own adventures. He's Jack.