Time for something completely NEW!

I will no longer be updating this blog and will soon close it. As of right now I’ve transferred all the content here to my new blog and will be writing to that one on a much more regular basis. There will be more PICTURES! New FEATURES! Regular ESSAYS! PROFILES! MORE!
So stop by and reset your bookmarks. The planet has left the building….

http://noncomposmentismama.wordpress.com/

Peace, love and rescue

The school year has started and my days begin in darkness.

The alarm on my Blackberry chimes at 6 a.m., and my habit is to scan my e-mails through half-open eyes after hitting snooze. Then, I usually try to stretch the night out by 10 more minutes, to temporarily ward off the onslaught of breakfast and lunch prep, homework and school clothes wrangling, herding the kids like cats to the car …

On Sept. 10, however, I was shocked awake by the headline I read on my Blackberry screen: “Wife of lost hunter: I just want him home.”

Below that, the subhead included a name our family knows well. My heart sank.

Edna Nadel was Graysen’s daycare provider for three years. With the exception of a couple of girls over those years, Edna was followed about by a wide-eyed gaggle of little boys. She and I often joked that she should rename her daycare “Edna’s school for boys.”

She helped us raise our little spitfire son, and also saved my sanity regularly. If I had to work late she would feed Gray and hang out with him until I arrived. I never had to worry about paying a dollar for every minute I was late, though she was certainly worth such a fee.

Edna’s teenage daughter, who was home-schooled until she started attending the community college, was often around. Gray had stars in his eyes for “Tritrin” (Kristen) from a very young age. All the little boys did, in fact.

Then, there was Edna’s husband, Mel. He was a calm counterpoint to his wife’s energy. Some evenings I arrived I’d chat with Edna as she made dinner. She moved quickly through her kitchen, often talking faster than she cooked. She expertly moved from one thing (chopping vegetables, for instance) to something entirely unrelated (rationing goodies from the candy dish Gray was honing in on) without missing a beat. When Mel was there he’d just watch her silently, a loving smile on his face.

Now, Mel is gone. He vanished two weeks ago in the Pecos wilderness while on a hunting trip. When I read the headline that dark morning I was stunned. When I logged on to the computer a short while later to read the article, I was heartbroken. Alongside the article was a picture of Edna, sitting in her living room with her head in her hands.

“She’s sad because she lost her Mel?” Gray asked me, his brows furrowed in concern, after he saw the picture.

A week after his disappearance, a search party was organized by friends of the family to pick up where the State Police were leaving off. With no clues and nothing to go on, the official search came to an end.

When Chris heard about the new search he decided to join them.

Later, as he was making a list of things to take for the day I realized something rather earth-shattering: We have a child who is old enough, and wise enough, to go out on a such a mission. I turned to Soren and heard myself asking if he wanted to go too.

It was one of those surreal mothering moments in which you realize that your kid is [thisclose] to being an adult. I imagined for a second that my question about the search was akin to asking him what he wanted for his first legal drink.

It was a rite-of-passage moment … for both of us.

Soren’s eyes widened and he hesitantly said yes. Chris and I warned him of the strenuous nature of the search. Told him it could rain. Told him he could end up walking for a long time. Told him he might not find anything.

Also told him that he might.

As we talked, Soren seemed to slouch a bit less and straighten his shoulders a bit more. He said he wanted to go, and of that he was certain.

He and Chris packed daybags, dug out wool socks, gathered snacks, replaced flashlight batteries and went to bed early.

Before the sun was up the next morning, they were gone.

A few times that day I cast my eyes toward the mountains where they were searching. I also recalled an afternoon one year ago when Chris and I took the younger kids and the dog up to the mountains in the Pecos for some exploration and stream play. That evening, the late summer light caught motes of the tiniest bugs, and cast everything in a sheen of gold. The kids ran and played with their dog through the thick grass, and picked some late season wildflowers. At one point, just before leaving, Graysen and Chiara were playing in a lovely puddle on the dirt road above the stream when we heard a vehicle coming down from the mountain. We all moved off to the side to wait for it to pass, and were surprised when, instead, it stopped. The window went down and there was Mel, decked out in his camo, smiling at us. We said a brief hello and he waved at Graysen, who did a double take­ — it took Gray a minute to make sense of seeing Mel out of context.

Then, with a smile, Mel waved goodbye.

It’s a very small, almost forgettable moment from the past that has taken on a new meaning now. And as I waited last week for my own boys to return home, the hopeful sentiment Kristen posted to her Facebook page after her dad went missing — peace, love and rescue — came to mind and became my mantra.

Now, another week has passed and Mel is still missing. None of the search parties have turned up any clues. Edna, Kristen and all who know and love them are still waiting, still hoping, still praying. Peace, love and rescue. If you’d like to know more or help out, please visit: http://www.findmel.webs.com.

© 2009 Ana June. All rights reserved.

Lost (and found) in transition

Graysen was in kindergarten for barely two minutes before I began to envy his teacher.

“Okay students,” she said, as I lingered near the door, “everyone freeze like a statue!”

Graysen froze, green marker poised over his coloring sheet.

“Now, put your caps on your markers and put your markers away …”

Before she’d even finished her sentence, Graysen had capped and replaced his marker. I glanced over at Chris and we exchanged a proud but defeated look that said: Who is this kid and what has he done with our son?

There were no goodbyes — Gray was caught up in his new adventure and we faded into the background, his faceless chauffeurs.

On that happy note, he finally, thankfully, transitioned into kindergarten.

August turned out to be a transitional month for everyone in our family. Chris took a break from weekly business travel, and began an artistic welding class at the community college. Visions of metal trellises for our volunteer morning glories are now dancing in our heads.

Soren started high school, and managed (somehow) to survive the verrryy borrring book he had to read over the summer.

Mira turned 13, which was also a transitional moment for me in that I now have two teenagers.

Chiara also had a birthday. She turned 9 on the 29th, and is excited about finally realizing her dream of learning to ride a horse. Riding lessons are our gift to her, made possible only because I finally moved through a transition and into a dream of my own: To work from home doing something I love without the constant distraction of my (wonderful) children.

Having achieved that goal I now have the flexibility that comes with not having to toe the line of arbitrary office hours, something I’ve been craving for a long time.

Perhaps I sound overly idealistic about the challenges of working for myself (which is a misnomer, since the work I do is still for other people), but I have, to some extent and with varying levels of grace, freelanced for several years. The only difference now is that I don’t have to hold down a full-time job at the same time.

When Gray was a baby I was, for almost two years, a work-at-home mom. When he was an infant, this wasn’t a big deal. He slept in my arms (his favorite place) and there was no interruption to the process of bonding that was very important to me (and, uh, him).

As he became mobile, however, I found it difficult to get anything done. My attention was constantly split from productive work time to real-life moments like the many I spent extracting non-food items (potting soil, rocks, dryer sheets, dog food) from Graysen’s mouth. Plus, he was easily bored. Almost as bored as Soren was with his summer reading, in fact. But back in those days, we were in a bit of a bind. I had to work to help pay the bills but I didn’t make enough to afford child care. I was stuck in a weird limbo of ineffective working and distracted parenting.

The balance tipped by necessity when Graysen was two and I realized a couple of things. First, he needed a peer group of people as short as himself. Second, I needed to be able to focus for more than one minute at a time. That’s when I put him in day care and went to work full-time, and for the next three years it worked well for all of us.

Eventually, kindergarten became that shining light at the end of the tunnel of full-time work and full-time day care payments. It represented a sparkling freedom I hadn’t experienced. Ever.

Energized by the pending transition, we pulled Gray out of day care a week before school to spend some time with him and help him shift gears more smoothly.

Once home, and out of his routine, however, Graysen got back in touch with his emotional inner toddler. He morphed into a tempest who fell to pieces over the littlest thing. This condition worsened when the older kids’ classes started up five days before his.

“Everyone’s having fun at school but me!” he sobbed after we dropped Chiara off at school on the second morning. He continued to vacillate between sad and angry and frustrated all that day … and the next day … and the next. We were shredded, especially knowing that nothing short of the first school bell would snap him out of it.

When the big day arrived, Graysen’s crabbiness and selective hearing evaporated like magic as he passed through the door of his classroom. His face was lit with a smile, his ears tuned sharply to his teacher. Watching this, I was pleased and proud and all of that but, yes, I was envious too. Graysen is the reason, you see, that we don’t have any markers at home that work. He never seems to hear us when asked to put the caps back on.

But … no matter. He survived the transition, and, more importantly, so did we.

Somehow.

Kindergarten or marriage?

Graysen is a month shy of starting kindergarten and is so excited he can barely
contain himself. Fortunately, he isn’t worried about the impending transition at all.

Quite the contrary — leaving daycare for kindy means that he’s finally “big.” In his ruminations about what it means to be “big,” however, he recently made a quantum mental leap right over the first 12 years of school, past college and career decisions right into … getting hitched.

“Who am I going to marry?!?” he asked, apropos of nothing, as we drove into town last week.

“What?” I queried, wondering if I’d heard him right.

“WHO’M I GONNA MARRY!” he said again, a bit louder to penetrate my motherly deafness.

I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw his little face twisted up in concern. He strained against the belt across his car seat. Looked genuinely worried.

I responded the way most parents would, I imagine. I told him he was only 5, and that he wouldn’t have to worry about that for many, many years.

Many … years.

“MOM!” he whined, obviously put off. I decided to rise to the occasion.

“I don’t know, Gray,” I finally said, “maybe you’ll meet a nice girl named …
Natalie.”

“No.”

“Annie?” I offered.

He shook his head vehemently.

By this time the older kids were giggling.

“How about a girl named …. Ocean!” Mira said through laughter.

“Nooo!” said Graysen, smacking his forehead in defeat.

Obviously, none of us were responding appropriately to a matter of such magnitude.

For Graysen, the simple truth was this: If he knew who he’d marry, then he’d be
really big. Even bigger than kindergarten, which, up until then, was the shining
point at the pinnacle of bigness. I suppose he thought that if he figured out the marriage bit, everything else would be cake.

When I was a kid I wanted to get married too. There was something compelling about the idea. Some je ne sais quoi about being somebody’s one and only. The difference between Graysen and me, however, was that I had figured out the specifics. I wanted to get married on horseback. On the beach. At sunset. To Michael J. Fox.

Later on, I had stars in my eyes for Jason Bateman … Keanu Reeves … Ralph
Macchio … Kiefer Sutherland … Mickey…Rourke …. (??!!)

Plus a few guys here and there from school. Sometimes I’d imagine myself marrying fill-in-the-blank on that horse on that sunset beach and ponder the cadence (or lack thereof) of my first name with their last name.

But no matter whose name was being paired with mine, there was always a sunset into which I would joyfully be carried until death parted us, etc. ad
infinitum.

All of that was when I was much older, however. When I was Graysen’s age I had no concept of it. I was way too preoccupied with other things, like the fact that I was never allowed to watch The Electric Company because it conflicted with my dad’s evening news (rest in peace, Walter Cronkite).

My son, however, is a different sort of child in a different sort of world. And because he’s the youngest, whereas I was the oldest, he has much to keep up with.

I imagine that he thinks marriage would give him some sort of advantage over his siblings, all of whom are decidedly unattached as yet.

Or maybe, just maybe, he’s motivated by his little loving heart. There is a girl in his life with whom he flirted coyly when she started daycare for the summer. She’s a couple of months younger, is super cute and … has an attitude that even rivals Graysen’s. She’s a spitfire who not only stole Gray’s little heart but … sort of broke it a bit as well. From what I hear, she defiantly drew on his coloring pad once. Then there was the time she threw Gray’s suave Hot Wheels sunglasses in the trash.

Despite all of that, Graysen is apparently in love. And during his weeklong
obsession over the oh whomever shall I marry!?? question, he proposed to this
girl. This happened just a couple of days after he got his hair done up in a mohawk—a style I suspect he chose in anticipation of the big moment.

But when he asked, and she accepted, Gray apparently — according to his own
account, in fact — said … nope. Never mind.

And that was that. He hasn’t mentioned marriage since.

On Tuesday morning, however, Gray’s daycare provider, Edna, handed me a
sticky note with a phone number on it. Apparently, the two little lovebirds have
backed things up a notch. Now, instead of marriage, they’ve decided to trade phone numbers. They want me to sort out a play date, which I’m thrilled and relieved about.

A play date, after all, takes far less effort to arrange than, say, a wedding.

Stalking the gaps at Glacier

“It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright … The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock — more than a maple — a universe. This is how you spend the afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”
– Annie Dillard

On our last day in Glacier National Park, I was focusing my macro lens deep within the sun-struck inner curve of a wildflower when I heard a throaty grunting noise that sounded like it was coming from the meadow just above the trail.

I froze and looked at my husband, Chris.

“Did you hear that?”

He nodded just as we heard it again. I looked up to the left hoping to see what made the noise, but all that was visible through the shaft of sunlight was the upward slope of blooming beargrass.

When we heard it a third time, I felt a chill. I’m no expert but the only animal I could imagine making a sound like that was a bear.

Chris and I decided in that instant that it was time to go. Quickly.

Wildflowers forgotten, we hurried down the trail, leaving whatever belonged to that guttural sound behind.

And on that note, our journey into Glacier came to an end.

We’d started making our plans for the five-day trip a couple of months earlier when Chris realized that we had enough reward miles to earn us two free plane tickets on United. Excited, we decided that a getaway was in order.

But, where to go …? Though Chris and I are typically hike-through-the-desert types who are addicted to slick rock, arcing hot skies and expansive views, we’d both been feeling a desire to settle into a boat and paddle across an alpine lake somewhere quiet and cool. Devoid of outside demands.

The life we’re currently living has been inordinately stressful, filled with breathless obligation. Chris’s job takes him out of state a few times every month, leaving him shredded and me a single mom of four during the most demanding days of the week.

The kids are great, of course, and now that they’re all out of diapers and past the putting-everything-in-their-mouths-and-throwing-fits-in-public-places phase, they’re easier to deal with on the whole.

Still, we’re grappling with the new challenges that come with raising teen- and tween-agers, and 5 year-old Graysen is certainly a pro at making sure that things are never boring.

So though I adore my kids, and love spending time with them, I know that I can be a better parent when I find within the space of my life a space for myself. A space in which I might catch a glimpse of those gaps where the winds pour down.

Chris and I searched online, for that place we envisioned. We considered Mono Lake and Yellowstone. But when we saw photos of Glacier, we were sold. We bought a raft, dug out the camping gear that had been in storage since 2003, sorted out the kids’ schedules with their grandparents and made arrangements for the pets (including our newest addition: Squishy Fernando Sanchez, the fire-bellied toad).

When it was time to leave, I felt guilty as I waved goodbye to the kids — they had apparently started to miss us the day before our departure. As I drove away, and the distance between us increased, however, my guilt fell away bit by bit until all that was left was a sense of wonder. Chris and I were headed into territory uncharted by us personally, and the idea was thrilling.

Following a smooth, but no less stressful, set of flights to Missoula … past the mishap with our GPS after midnight that lead us not to our motel but into a residential neighborhood … beyond our close encounter with an argument in the Sporting Goods section of Wal-Mart, and our dispute over how much water to buy (or not) in the produce section … we finally arrived in Glacier, and  followed an old dirt road to our first campsite at Kintla Lake.

Described in the guide book as a place to go “only on purpose,” we knew it had to be our first stop. Ultimately, it wasn’t quite as secluded as we had hoped (the 13-space campground was half full) but it was beautful. Quiet. The lake, perfect. The next morning, when we pushed off the rocky shore in our modest little raft, we were very quickly alone in the world.

As we paddled, a loon called out in the distance. Fish jumped in a faraway inlet and the clouds poured down over the northern peaks, carving their reflections across the glassy surface of the lake.

And time, the beast that had for so long held us in a stranglehold, let go entirely. In the gentle silence, I saw that mysterious gap open before me.

I saw it again, three days later, when I heard that grunting sound on the wildflower-studded trail. The hair rose on the back of my neck and everything in my life narrowed into a primal instinct to flee. It was a rush touched by the fear-filled realization that as we were stalking the gaps, we were possibly being stalked by something else.

As expected, worldly expectations crashed down on us again when we stepped out of the wilderness. We had to repack our gear and race to make our plane. But we did leave Montana with the knowledge that we had interrupted our own dance on the edge of rage.

At least for a few afternoons.

Some pictures from our journey can be viewed here: http://www.anajunecreative.com
Click on portfolio, and scroll down to the Glacier gallery.

Dreaming of some flying shoes

I was folding laundry the other day when I heard the rising sound of running feet. Little toes striking the wood floor through the living room, up the hallway…then Graysen burst into the bedroom and leapt onto the bed with a wild look in his eye.

“Oh mom,” he said, “I need some flying shoes.”

“Flying shoes?” I inquired, folding his little tee-shirt that reads “Lover Boy.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, hand over his racing heart. “So I can fly over the monsters.”

According to him, there are monsters in all the darkened corners, lurking in empty rooms, hiding in the shower. Trips to the bathroom require an escort — anyone older and taller than he who doesn’t mind standing in the doorway as he plants himself on the pot and talks about random things.

Things like his dreams, which lately are filled with scary “monster guts.”

“Mom, in my dream Mira turned into monster guts with teeth!” he related during one of his recent potty breaks. In the same dream I turned into a pink monster ghost with four eyes.

Such is the stuff of a small boy’s nightmares.

When I was a child I dreamed that Zozobra ate my blankie and breathed fire on my house. When I was a bit older I worried that a lion or tiger would jump out from beneath my bed and grab me if I got up after the lights went out.

Later I had a quaking fear of nuclear war … and my dreams reflected that. I can still see one of them as though I dreamt it just last night.

But then I had Soren, and the nightmares changed. The monsters I began to fear didn’t resemble the ones that have found footing in Gray’s imagination. Mine were more tangible — they were anything that would hurt my child. Bringing Soren into the world meant that I suddenly found myself looking into the eyes of a person for whom I would have both died and killed.

It was the first time I’d felt that way to that extent.

At first it was confusing and painful to love him so much. I felt like an open wound, checking him at naptime to make sure he was still breathing … rushing to every tiny cry. I accidentally poked his tummy with a diaper pin when he was just a few weeks old, and cried harder than he did.

We passed those first few weeks living at the most basic level of instinct, every emotion profound and extreme.

The vulnerability was exhausting.

I went through this to some extent with each of my four kids, and eventually came to better understand that raw side of myself. But though I hoped that my deeper understanding would make the rawness easier to bear, I can’t say that it ever did.

It’s one thing to picture a tiger under your own bed, and quite another to imagine it lurking beneath your child’s.

When I heard of the accident at the end of June that killed four teenagers and left another in critical condition, I felt that raw emotion rise up inside of me. Though I didn’t know those kids personally, I could connect myself and my experience to each of them on some level. Two of them attended my high school; the others, my daughter’s school. One of them was in her gardening club.

But there it ends, aside from some connections through mutual friends.

Still, there’s something about that raw state of being that makes every child my child. I cried for them.

I cried as well for the mother of the driver who hit them. In a different but still very painful way, she lost a child too.

In the days following the accident I’m sure I wasn’t the only mother who proclaimed something like “that’s it, my kids are never driving … or … leaving my sight again ever.” And given that Soren is now old enough to take driver’s ed, I spent a lot of time thinking about this very matter.

But he and I talked about it, and I found myself telling him that a devastating accident could happen to anyone. In this society, I told him, we rely on agreements.

“I trust, for example, that the guy in the truck over there will stop at the stop sign,” I elaborated, pointing as I drove. The guy stopped.

“But,” I added, “we can’t always know that they won’t break their agreements. And we can’t happily live our lives assuming that they will. There’s a very fine line between being paranoid and being cautious.”

I’ll admit that I was relieved to hear Soren say he isn’t in any hurry to drive … yet. But when he is ready it will be appropriate of me to let him step away into that big new responsibility by degrees. Even the child who brought me to the very edge of myself for the first time must grow up someday.

Perhaps he’ll wait long enough, however, for someone to invent some flying shoes … so that he and every other child in this great big world can fly over the monsters.

© 2009 Ana June. All rights reserved.

Cover girl curse

The Whole Foods checker looked at me funny when I put two copies of the March/ April 2004 Mothering Magazine on the conveyor belt.

She picked them up, glanced at them both and said, “you know you have two copies here?”

“Yes,” I replied, wondering if she’d see the obvious.

“Okay,” she shrugged, then scanned them, bagged them and took my money.

I walked out to my car feeling somewhat invisible but also relieved. I didn’t really want to talk about the fact that the pregnant person on the cover was me.

When I later looked back at the picture, however, I began to understand why she didn’t notice. In the two months since the photo was taken, I had changed quite a bit­— especially around the middle.

And there was something else. Something that perhaps only I would notice. The person smiling out at the world from the face of that magazine was someone with hope in her eyes.

By publication, that look had faded into anxious despair, and the bolded words by my head on that cover spoke to the irony of the situation better than I could. They read: “Facts you need to say ‘No!’ to a Cesarean.”

As I held the magazine and read those words I couldn’t help but think that fate had been tempted … and I’d lost.

Midway through my second trimester, I went to the hospital with subtle but regular contractions. At first, I talked myself out of worry. We were all settled in to watch the Super Bowl and it seemed inconvenient, if not alarmist, to call attention to what was probably nothing.

My instincts told me something was wrong, however. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my contractions were more than “Braxton Hicks,” the so-called practice contractions that start up a few months before actual labor.

To be on the safe side, I went in to be checked at the ER because my midwife was out of town, and it was there that I was diagnosed with a complete placenta previa.

The ER doctor who looked over my ultrasound  results blandly told me that there was an 85 percent chance the placenta would grow away from my cervix and I could give birth naturally. If it didn’t, he told me, I would need a cesarean.

That was something I already knew. A year after I had Soren, I started a course in midwifery. I read everything I could find about birth — natural and otherwise. I scrutinized anatomy tomes, pored over nutrition tables and practiced suturing on pigs’ feet. I became a certified EMT, and began an apprenticeship. Then, on a blustery October afternoon, I was called to attend my first birth. I stood by with towels and watched in awe as a baby girl came bursting into the world after just a couple of hours of labor. The air in that sunny room was electric, and the experience of holding the baby a short while later was numinous. It never left me.

I gave up my pursuit of midwifery roughly 10 months after that, when my daughter, Mira, was born, but the lessons stuck. So when I saw the words “complete previa” typed in capital letters on that gray-green ultrasound screen, I felt every plan I’d made for my final homebirth shatter before me. I began to prepare myself for a cesarean.

I posted on numerous parenting websites, asking the burning question: What can I expect? I was launching myself into uncharted territory that, to me, was far more unsettling than the gentle process by which I readied myself and my home for the births of my older three. And through it all, despite the anxiety I felt during those last couple of months (previas pose an increased risk for hemorrhage and fetal distress) I was still slightly hopeful that things might change.

In the end, however, I became part of that 15 percent of pregnant women with previas who have the odd experience of sitting down with their doctor and a calendar to select their baby’s birthday. My husband, Chris, and I picked a date and that was basically that.

On June 4, 2004, I walked through the doors of the hospital’s labor and delivery unit feeling very pregnant but otherwise fine. I was shown to a bed, given a few forms to sign, and offered a gown (which my then 3 year-old daughter, Chiara, would later compliment me on).

As I changed into it I couldn’t help feeling completely defeated.

At 8:16 a.m., beneath the glare of surgical lights, I felt the earth open within me. Everything shook, then stopped. The world was still for a split second before a small but angry voice rose into the air for the first time. Graysen Christopher Moss Riedel, all 7 pounds, 3 ounces of him, had arrived on the scene, and was none too happy about it.

Now, five years later, my perspective has shifted. I have grown to realize that I played an active role in ensuring that Graysen arrived in this world alive and well. I trusted my intuition and, in doing so, avoided an emergency. Trust and intuition are, after all, two hallmarks of home birthing, and I am eternally happy that I listened to myself, my body and my baby.

Happy 5th birthday, Graysen. Next stop: Kindergarten this fall!

(Visit http://planetmom.wordpress.com/june-4-2004-a-birth-story/ for the complete story of Gray’s birth.)

The magic number 15

Camp Elliott Barker
Angel Fire, NM
July 1987

It’s just past dawn and my world is walled in by a thick fog that swirls around me as I lead my horse down the camp road.

At first, the light is thin. But when the sun clears the eastern hills, everything brightens, softens through the fog.

If I believed in a heaven of sky and clouds, I’d think I was already there.

I’m 15 years old and working at my first paying job as a horse wrangler at the residential camp where I spent several summers as a camper.

My friend and fellow wrangler, Joy, is leading her horse a few paces in front of me. When we awoke, the fog was so dense we couldn’t see more than a foot in front of us, much less find the other horses in the huge pasture. So we saddled our two wrangling horses and decided to go out scouting for the gate at the bottom of the camp road. We figured that when we found it we could ride out along the fence line until we saw the rest of the herd.

But as we walk through the camp and down the road past the parking lot, the fog is so thick we begin to doubt that we’ll ever find the gate. We don’t talk. The only sound is the plodding ring of our old camp horses’ hooves. They walk with their heads down, indifferent trail horses. Mine, however, is exceptional.

Though fairly even-tempered, Honky is a former a boy scout camp horse who once, while tied in a paddock, was attacked by a mountain lion. The double row of scars that streak his hind quarters look like some furry captain’s bars. Sometimes he resists being tied. Wind and rain frighten him. I imagine that he hears padded cat feet on the breeze. Just the week before, I stood in the driving rain, sinking into the mud with water running into my eyes as I coaxed Honky in toward the fence for tie-down. He tossed his wet head, but kept looking at me. One hoof at a time through the muck until he was close enough, then I flipped his lead rope around the rung into the appropriate knot.

Now, he walks through the fog with his ears relaxed, eyes fixed on the road ahead of us.

Suddenly, the light brightens above, casting our shadows against the shifting fog which thins in an instant and begins to pull away. The edges of the road appear and the world widens into sloping grass and wildflowers. I stop to watch in awe as waves of fog roll in the rising heat, break on an invisible shoreline of moving air and shatter against nothing before lifting away.

The morning falls open all around us.

We find the gate and lead the horses through. As we climb into the saddle we see the herd grazing, knee deep in the summer grass. We ride toward them at a lope, and one by one their heads rise, grass hanging from their lips. Soon they are all running and we’re caught up in it. The morning air rushes past and the world blurs as I dig my heels into my Honky’s sides, urging him on.

Then we funnel into the paddock, morning light etching the breath of our horses into the dust that swirls as the fog had before.

Another perfect morning settles.

I am 22 years older now, but remember the nuances of this day clearly. It stands as a morning that defined something for me. It taught me that there is so much beauty in the world, blocking our vision at times, perhaps, but perfect even as it’s blinding. I learned that I can see … but that I don’t have to know the exact path ahead.

I learned just a little bit more about trust that day.

When this issue of the paper hits the stands, I will officially be a 15-year veteran of this thing called motherhood.

And on the eve of Soren’s 15th birthday, I would like to make a wish of my own. Soren, I hope that you one day find yourself in some swirling mist that steals your bearings entirely. I hope that you center yourself and trust your feet. I hope as well that one day you will stand in awe as the world cracks open all around you in stunning beauty that will change you forever.

Never stop seeking that magic … those moments that break you down and lift you up again all in one instant.

But … a warning. If you, like me, land a magical job that offers you a rare glimpse of heaven, don’t under any circumstances go AWOL in the middle of the night and wander around at 2 a.m. in a tiny New Mexico town full of rocking biker bars. Because if you do, you will lose that job and go home early to spend your summer days bored to tears in tract house suburbia earning nothing.

Believe me, I’ve seen heaven and I’ve also seen, shall we say … the flipside.

Torquening Pistoners and the King of Non Sequiturs

We were halfway up an old mining road in Bland canyon, this past weekend, with all four kids and my mom, when a crazy large rock (that didn’t look quite so crazy large in the high-noon sunlight) caught the undercarriage of our ‘85 Landcruiser.

The scrape of metal on stone made us all wince.

“Uh-oh, that didn’t sound good,” said Chris, my husband and fearless pilot of the vehicle we call “The Moose.”

We’re not used to high-centering The Moose.

He jumped out to take a look for gushing fluids, exposed vital organs … stuff like that. Came back looking relieved.

“Nothing major, just scratched the pumpkins.”

“The pumpkins?” I asked, then braced myself for what I call the “torquening  pistoners” explanation.

You see, I don’t get cars. I know they have parts. They need gas and oil. Sometimes they also need … parts. They need pistons and, uh, torqueners.

They also cost a lot, break down at inopportune times, pollute the atmosphere and get too easily scratched by wayward mailbox handles (oops).

Beyond those facts, though, I also know this: two of my guys absolutely love them.

Graysen is the newest car geek in the family. This is his paternal heritage — Chris’s dad is into cars and two of his brothers work professionally with them.

The other thing he gets from that side of the family: a propensity for speaking in code.

For example: Chris’s comment about scratching the pumpkins …. on the car.

Then a short while later, after we were back on the road with the scratched pumpkins continuing to do whatever it is they do, we heard a smallish voice in the very back seat remark on the scenery.

“This looks like a Bokugon!” Graysen squealed in delight. Then added, “where the wild animals fight!”

With thanks to both my guys, I was hit in that moment by a surreal realization. I hadn’t planned on it, but there I was, spending my Sunday explore bouncing along a rutted road through a Bokugon on a set of pumpkins.

I couldn’t have planned something more … interesting.

Cars aside, Graysen long ago earned the nickname “The King of Non Sequiturs.” This couldn’t be a more fitting title for my small boy.

Recently, Graysen was drawing what appeared to be the 10th in a series of airplanes. Perhaps it was his father’s constant business travels that inspired his art that night. Or maybe it was his recent deep need to fly on an airplane, sparked by accompanying me to pick up his aunt Jen and his 4 year-old cousin, Chloe, from the airport (which was exciting but subsequently depressing when he realized that we wouldn’t be getting on a plane).

Whatever it was, he was happily drawing planes and runways and little stick figure pilots and I asked, simply, “Why are you so into planes right now?”

Without missing a beat he replied: “well ‘cause everyone closed their windows and me too.”

Which, of course, explained everything, namely this: the boy has a reputation to maintain.

A couple of months ago, I found a mother-themed “interview” on Facebook that another mom wrote to use on her kids. Delighted by the possibilities for uber weirdness, I popped the questions into a Word document and sat Graysen down on a chair across from me, and posed the first question.

1. What is something mom always says to you?
Graysen: Um like, go to the car, go to the door, and uh … eat when you have cookie doughs. And take out your eyeballs … and take out your hair! That’s what mommy says! (Hmmm. Okay … next question.)

2. What makes mom happy?
Graysen: I don’t know … flipping the socks? (Huh?)

3. How tall is your mom?
Graysen: Uh like 60 lbs or 70 hundred. No, 600. (Wow, that’s … tall.)

4. What is her favorite thing to do?
Graysen: Jumping on my head! (?!?!?)

5. What does your mom do for her job?
Graysen: Like jumping like a frog …? (Maybe I should try that on the next deadline day!)

And, the final question …
8. What makes you proud of your mom?
Graysen: Yep, I was a talking dog!

And … yep! I can believe it. Nothing surprises me anymore with this kid. But the best part is that he keeps ‘em coming — he’s full of these random quips and bits of wisdom that makes me scratch my head.

And during our great Sunday explore through the Bokugon on the scratched pumpkins, my little King of Non Sequiturs wrapped my surreal experience up all nicely when he suddenly shouted “OW!”

“What happened?” we all asked.

“I bit my narder nipple cheek!” came the reply.

Um … of course. In fact … that happens to me all the time. Those narder nipple cheeks can be a real pain. Especially if you take out your eyeballs and jump like a frog in the Bokugon.

Trust me.

Bleep this

There’s a new sheriff ’round these parts. He’s short, has a bit of a pot belly and he snores when he naps. He enforces the law with an iron, albeit diminutive, fist and he’s forever on the lookout for “miscreants.”

He’s our new language cop. Also known as Graysen.

My dad, who now lives in Arizona, visited last month and spent an evening trying to carry on an adult conversation while simultaneously doing coin tricks with the kids. As he was getting ready to leave, he was talking about something with Gray’s daddy, Chris, when suddenly he committed a serious infraction in the eyes of the language cop.

He said “what the hell.”

Graysen’s eyes lit up, and he charged up to my dad full of spit and vinegar to scold him with one small finger raised.

“You don’t say what the HELL!”

Dad was so engaged in what he and Chris were discussing that he didn’t hear him the first time. So Graysen said it again.

And again.

And … one more time for good measure.

Finally, Dad looked down at his little spitfire of a grandson and said, “what’s that Gray?”

Graysen grunted, obviously annoyed not only by the egregious violation of the rules but also by not being heard in a timely fashion.

“You don’t say what the hell!” he repeated.

I could do little else but stifle laughter, for I instantly recalled how this very same child recently uttered the likewise verboten “cr*p” over spilled soup one afternoon.

He is also the only one I have ever heard use the word “footcr*p” in response to a stubbed toe. Or, well … in response to anything, actually.

And, of course, in chastising his grandfather, Graysen did manage to say “what the hell” roughly six times himself.

Personally, I find this so amusing that it’s hard, at times, to lay down the law. Must be why Gray stepped in — I was shirking my duties. He’s taken things to a whole new level, however.

For instance, he jumped on my case recently for telling him to “shut” the door.

“You don’t say shut, Mom. That’s a bad word.”

Then he got in his dad’s face the other day for saying “flipping.”

‘Cause that’s apparently a bad word too.

Too bad he wasn’t around when the other three kids were younger. He’d have been even more gainfully employed in this law enforcement capacity.

All three of them went through the experiment with language in one form or another. For Soren, the word of choice, when he was 4, was “d*mmit” which he got from super-good-influence me.

I figured it was innocuous enough so I didn’t say much. But when he started using it with great and random frequency, any and everywhere, I decided it was time for a talk.

I had a hunch that making certain words completely off limits was an approach destined to failure. Certainly, there are words in the English language that I don’t feel comfortable typing here without inserting stars for vowels.

“Cr*p,” for instance.

But I am uncomfortable with banning these words outright because I know that only makes them more alluring. Anyway, I want my kids to understand their meanings, that they do exist and, most importantly, how powerful they are.

In Soren’s case, a simple discussion about how that word was fine to use as long as it was used at home with family only was sufficient. I gently told him as well that it might hurt other people’s feelings to hear him use that word. This spoke to his natural empathy, and he understood. Case closed.

Later, I noticed that with a gentle boundary in place, the word lost its power and Soren stopped using it.

Perhaps he isn’t the best example of this, however. He groks these sorts of boundaries better than most … and certainly better than his small brother. I could warn Gray till I’m blue in the face that something might hurt someone’s feelings, and he’d just look at me askance as though to say, and I would care because …?

On a certain level, though, he must care ­— he is the self-appointed language cop, after all. But maybe that’s just another part of his plot to usurp control wherever and however he can.

Bless his shining and sweet little miscreant heart.

Still, he’s stern. And charmingly convincing. He’s actually called me on a few things that have inspired true contrition in my heart. Cause you see … sometimes he’s right.

With that in mind, I’m glad the kid can’t read yet. If he read this installment, there’s no doubt I’d be in really deep … um … footcr*p.

Or something like that.