Embracing Next

When I grew up in WI there were rumors of a state fair. But it wasn’t something people I knew went to. Pulaski Polka Days – yes – everyone went there in my small town but the state fair? It was…somewhere not near our town. It was a journey and I think there were cows and cheese curds.

Fast forward a decade (or two) and I now live within a short drive of a state fair that can reach numbers over 300,000 in a day.

And we go.

Three years in a row we chose not too. I’m not sure how it would have been with three boys all younger than eight.

We took our oldest when he was six months old and due to the noise he slept his longest nap ever. But three boys? I feared I’d lose them in the crowds.

This year I took all three on my own. We are cheese curds, cotton candy, and sipped on lemonade. We made sure to grab Sweet Martha’s cookies and managed to save a few for my husband. The boys experienced carnival games and the mysterious maze of wonders (perhaps not as mysterious as initially suggested).

Around 1pm the boys were ready to leave. I was ready to leave but, we had smiles on our faces, I couldn’t help but grin the whole shuttle ride home.

We did it. The MN State Fair.

Now I keep wondering if, maybe, we can squeeze in a few more hours before the Fair closes it’s doors…

I’m visiting my oldest brother. It gives me an opportunity to connect with someone who carried me around when I was small.

We were sharing stories of our childhood with our boys today and my brother brought this up to his son.

“Did you know I carried Aunt Kate around when she was a baby?”

I stopped and looked at my brother. Did he really carry me in his arms as I carried his own son when he was born? Did he really hold me close as I have snuggled my own boys day after day, night after night?

For some reason the image struck me as significant.

My brother and I haven’t seen each other in many months. We used to live in the same home, then for awhile the same city, and years later the same state. He now lives in Oregon and I still live in Minnesota.

I like having him in my life. A phone call or FaceTime here and there. A visit every few months. It’s the shared history, yes, but it’s also the ability we have had to change and adjust our relationship as we have grown and changed in our own selves.

I look at my own boys and see that I made the choice (and had the ability) to add brothers to their lives. It was because I value what I had growing up, the good and the bad. My siblings all helped me become who I am today.

I want my boys to someday look at their brothers and see in their eyes what I see in the eyes of my own brother’s. Someone who remembers the stories I have forgotten. Someone who can tell me he carried me around when I was small. Someone who can stand back and say, “you have become a person I still want to talk to, laugh with, and visit with.”

I know not every sibling gets along or stays tied to their siblings as they grow and change. Sometimes politics or life choices are simply too divisive. Or perhaps they never got along to begin with.

But I have always loved the dynamic of siblings bound together through no choice of their own.

Who was thrown into your family? Is it a brother or sister you might have chosen if you could have? Or someone who made you better because they challenged you?

And somehow we siblings grew up alongside each other, found our own way apart, and returned to each other again and again just to make sure of who we were, and get clear on who we are.

I haven’t posted in awhile because, surprisingly, adding a puppy to our household did throw the whole life thing into a bit of tornado.

There were boys. There was a dog. There were accidents. Both children and dog related. There was biting – also children and dog related (stop biting your brother! Stop biting the boys!!). But then there were snuggles, kisses, and time training…all of us.

I had a day, then another day, when I asked myself what on earth I signed up for. There was a fleeting moment of remembering all the terrible memories I’d successfully blocked when we brought a puppy into our home after our best dog Scruffy died.

Can we do this? Can I do this??

Seth and I sprinted away for our anniversary weekend. We found a puppy sitter for the dog, a Nana to watch the youngest, and a Grandma to play with the older two boys. I wrote lots of notes, packed many bags, and then we shuttled everyone to their places.

When my husband and I arrived at our hotel, free of any responsibilities for two nights, we collapsed.

Then, the two of us woke up and hiked. We laughed. We played. We are well and we saved the resting for a good night’s sleep at the end of it all.

Back home with the noise, the barking, the biting, I feel, if however brief it might be, this is how our lives are supposed to unfold. There is a dog, there are three boys, and there is a controlled bit of chaos that borders on overwhelming chaos some days.

And there is respite, always a tiny weekend of respite.

This won’t last. That’s what they said with the babies. And they were right. But the timeline differed depending on the parents, the child’s temperament, the consistency.

The rollercoaster of “sleeping through the night” one night and waking up several times the next. The changing of strategies because he was sick or the two older shared a room or so many shifting factors kept us on our toes, and informed me that sleep deprivation is indeed a valid form of torture.

I hear it again. It won’t last forever. The whining. The whimpering. The crate hate.

As long as the crate hate is shorter than 18 months – preferably much shorter than 18 months – it’s all good.

As long as my expectations of what they tell me are mostly met – it’s all good.

Too tired to write…

I wasn’t sure what was storming within me as I watched all the dogs play in Door County. My sister brought along her puppy, and I watched my boys interact with the puppy and the other dogs. This was nothing new. All my siblings have dogs. The boys have often played with them to varying degrees of success. But this time was different.

This time, my mind started running.

The oldest isn’t allergic to these dogs. They lick him and he’s fine. He pets them and he doesn’t sneeze.

My middle ran with the puppy and my sister worked with the boys on how to behave. They snuggled with the dogs in the cabin and offered to take the dog outside.

I watched the puppy leap into the dynamic bravely.

My boys asked for a dog a long time ago.

I was quick to say no. My oldest did have some allergy to dogs and my husband has never been interested. Which is to say, all the work would fall to me.

After cry-it-outs with three boys, potty training with three boys, and the simple responsibilities that involve continuing to raise three boys my answer was always no, no, no.

They stopped asking.

A year ago I brought up the idea of a dog to my husband.

Our youngest was three at the time and we were still heavily in pandemic world.

“We travel so much,” he said, “is that really how we want to spend our money and time?”

I spent a few more days contemplating. Then one of the boys got sick and likely potty training of the three year old took a dive.

Nope.

But this year feels different. In our new neighborhood the boys have found friends they play with for hours at a time. The three of them also play well together (most of the time) so when we returned from Door County I discovered I had time, actual time, to myself.

The house was getting clean. I was writing. Meals were cooked. Dishes washed. Strength training completed. Boys read to and taking on more household chores. My list was checked off and yet there was still time remaining.

I brought up the dog again. This time after my oldest suggested a snake.

Or…

It’s day two with our puppy.

Last night’s sleep was terrible and I felt like I was thrown back into cry-it-out years. We’ve experienced three accidents (one at 4:30 in the morning) and I am not averse to texting my siblings or flipping through my training manual as another unfamiliar experience enters our new world.

That time I had? Now has a puppy to fill it. It feels like this open space was meant for him.

And this cry-it-out doesn’t seem like it will last quite as long. We are crate training him. He sits in front of the door already before we let him in or let him out. He snuggles with all of us and politely flops down beside us when he is too tired to play but just wants to be near.

We have a dog. A doog the boys say. Embracing next…

When I was 16 I worked at a Camp as a kitchen aid.

I loved working there. We worked breakfast then took naps. We worked lunch and hung out with whichever counselor was on break or canoed the lake or read or wrote. I couldn’t believe I was earning money for all the time I had to play, relax, and nap.

During that summer a counselor and I biked into town to follow through on an experiment.

“Does each fruit loop actually have its own flavor or are they all the same?”

All of us ate a lot of fruit loops that summer, it was another perk of life as a kitchen aid – easy access to all things food.

We laughed as biked down the road through trees and cabins and sunlight blinking in and out of leafy branches.

It was our first escape from camp. We never felt a need to escape, and yet, freedom always brings an element of excitement.

At the gas station we purchased a large box of fruit loops then met outside and sat on some grassy patch of lawn. We closed our eyes and tasted the sugary cereal. First yellow, then orange, blue, red.

“Well?”

We closed our eyes again.

We weren’t quite certain.

I’m not sure why we felt the need to bike all the way into town to get fruit loops. Maybe we imagined the real thing made the difference in flavor, versus the generic in the kitchen. Or maybe the fruit loops were on lock down, as the head chef sometimes felt a need to do.

Whatever the reason, I am certain the fruit loops tasted better after the bike ride, laughter bubbling beneath our closed eyes.

“I can’t tell?” My friend said.

“They’re different,” I said, “each one has its own scent. I’m sure of it.”

She shrugged. We sat for awhile longer, chatting and laughing, until it was time to head back to Camp.

This morning I woke up early. Our youngest has a nightmare and woke crying and sleep was over for me. After I made my way downstairs I remembered the boys had requested fruit loops.

“We never ever have had them Mom. Please.”

I walked to the cereal cupboard and took the box out, carrying it with me to the couch. As I laid down I grabbed a few and popped them into my mouth.

The memory of my adventures at camp floated toward me as a savored the round sweet fruit loops. I closed my eyes and tried to decipher if each one had its own flavor.

It’s hard to tell, I thought, each one seems to blend into the other.

After a few more I tucked the bag inside the box and closed it up.

Somehow those fruit loops in my memory tasted much better than they do now. They were sweeter and had a semblance of something special.

I smiled.

Or perhaps the laughter, the bike ride, the friendship, the camp…perhaps the experience of it all is what made those fruit loops all that much more sweet.

It’s hard to say for sure. But I have a good guess.

At the pool today I jumped off the diving board. At the end of the board I mused to myself, I can’t even remember the last time I did this.

Because it hasn’t been a thing for me. Leaping into a deep pool. In fact, diving or jumping off the diving board was my least favorite part of swim lessons growing up. Then, time went on and all I remembered as I told my boys I was going to jump, was that I loved swimming. I loved the water. I was once a fish.

At the end of the board I shrugged and jumped before fear could step in – I also jumped before taking a breath.

Down under I struggled a second, maybe two. How does this go? The force of the water pressing against as I reached for the surface. I was too busy trying to prove something; trying to shove fear aside. I forgot to breathe.

After my jump my oldest found a desire to take a turn down the slide that also dumped into the deep pool. I knew he’d been observing the long slide at the other end of the pool but when his eyes settled on the short slide next to the diving board he started to muster courage.

I like to think my jump spurred him ahead to take his own leap, but my oldest does things when he has made up his mind to do them.

My mother fear stepped in as I watched him wait at the top of the slide. I said nothing as he turned to head back down the stairs.

“Maybe not,” he said.

But he stopped on the third stair and turned around. At the top of the slide again his seven year old brother shouted.

“Don’t do it, too deep.”

The seven year old was calm in his words, almost lazy in his attempt to deter his brother from going down the water slide.

But it made my oldest pause.

“Don’t do it?”

I waited with the four year old beside the end of the slide. I hoped the oldest would go down but I was nervous. How would he respond to the end of the slide? My oldest can swim fine, but he also isn’t always comfortable in water. How far down would the fall push him? Would he sputter and gasp his way up?

I waited. We waited. A second. Two seconds. Five. I glanced up at the top but there was no movement either forward or back.

Then, we heard his body sliding down the tunnel, watched as he flew out of the slide and splashed into the pool beside us. He rose within seconds and swam to the stairs.

“That was awesome!”

It was the first of many runs down the slide for my oldest. He asked me to take a video as well.

Perhaps he learned by watching me, perhaps not, but I know he took what I did and improved upon it.

He took a breathe – and that made all the difference.

I love vacationland. It’s new to me or has returned to me? After having kids the only time I captured even a semblance of vacation was when I was away from my beautiful boys.

But this year, vacationland has returned. The kids are old enough that there are moments, even an hour or more in a row, where I get to do exactly what I want to do. Or, even better, the five of us align and enjoy each other in some fun vacation activity.

Ice cream. Tennis. A bike ride. Playing tag on a playground. Browsing an art gallery (okay, that was just for the husband and I). Bonfires. The list does actually go on and on.

When it was time to head back to “the real world” I was borderline despondent.

No, I thought, I want to stay.

“Then why didn’t you stay?” A neighbor asked at our return.

I paused to think but I knew the answer right away. I had asked myself the same question as we drove the five and a half long hours home.

Why not stay?

“Because,” I said, “then vacationland would become ‘the real world’. It would lose the magic and luster that elevates all of those experiences.”

We can’t live in Disney World – we would know the back of the Stars Wars theme park is simply metal bars. If we stay at the beach year round we will notice the sand mites and the sharp shells and roll our eyes at the tourists.

We can sprinkle moments of sparkle into our everyday lives. Moments we learned from vacationland. We can read at night instead of turn on the tv as we were used to. We can grab a tennis racket and head to the courts when we have a free day. We can sneak away to a new ice cream joint in the city down the road.

But no, I don’t want to live there. I will daydream now and watch the magic build again for next time.

A few weeks ago a friend shared with me that she stopped running.

“I hate it,” she said, “so why do I keep doing it over and over, day after day?”

Another friend shared the same thing with me. Running? Not a love thing for them so why do it?

I’ve thought about this a lot because for the past three years I have tried to get back into running. Sometimes I am very good about my “breaks”. I am patient and I ease back in gracefully then stop when my feet just don’t feel ready. There is too much pain and I fear what repercussions I will receive if I don’t stop, rest, and try again after I’ve done more to heal them.

I have added strength training into my life, acupuncture, and continue to stretch, ice and roll my feet out. I have set aside three weeks to run consistently and see what happens at the end of these three weeks. Could I manage the pain? Did the pain level stay below five? Could I still be the parent I want to be given adding running back into the mix?

I am going slow.

But why? Do people still run in their 80’s? 90’s? Is this an exercise I will bring back into my life only to watch it fade away again in a few years?

I read an article about the senior games where a woman in her 90’s still runs a few miles every other day.

“I love it,” she said, “it keeps me going and keeps me enjoying life.”

That’s the thing. I haven’t found something active I love as much as running. There’s biking, walking, swimming, and so much. But when it comes to cardio running sucked me in and despite my best efforts I cannot shake it.

I ran again today. The soft heel drop of my shoes fading beneath the music of Sia. If you saw me you would have noticed my smile. I can’t help it, running brings me joy.

Now, if only, I can keep going.

Maybe I’ll need new feet or maybe, just maybe, all the things I have been doing these past few years will finally see me through.

Certain establishments my three boys settle into perfectly. Wide open spaces. Forests. Beaches. Malls. Ski resorts. All of these offer endless possibilities for three boys of various ages.

A recently opened coffee shop where everything is clean, new, and for sale – not three boy friendly.

I wanted to check it out. It was on our way home from the latest adventure we shared. It was right there and yet – I knew better.

The boys were tired. They were hungry. Already I worried they might leap out of the van before we made it home. And yet – sometimes even we’ll seasoned mothers make mistakes.

If I’d been smart, I wouldn’t have stopped in the first place. If I’d been half-way intelligent I would have turned around the moment the three burst into the doorway and I saw the gold fringed orange pillows lining the window seat with $100 tag hanging from its side.

I looked at the menu and read items with names like “mozzarella, basil, and tomato flatbread,” or “quinoa”.

Move it along, the smartest, quietest section of my brain whispered.

“Iced latte and two flatbreads please,” my actual voice said to the woman at the counter.

Fancy food takes time. Much time. Much, much time while three boys raced the floors , bounced on the yellow velvet chair beneath elegant hanging plants wrapped in bamboo.

Hungry boys fought over who gets to sit in the window seat while the expensive peach crocheted lap blanket slid toward the floor.

My iced latte arrived.

“Mom,” someone said, “I am so, so hungry.”

“Can I have a chai?” Another said.

They pretend to drink the $9 candles. They offer hot sauce from the table to each other. The youngest grabs two of the glass balsamic bottles and clanks them together.

Who is the idiot that ever thought this was a good idea?

Me.

To be far. Sometimes, rarely, the three can be their very best selves. They can sit calmly, listen with nodding heads, and wait with the patience unknown to most children.

This is not that day. I did not set any of them up for success. It was a train wreck before we even started.

The food arrived and guess what? The three boys looked at the fancy flatbread aghast.

“What they hell is this?” Their eyes said.

The middle was already offered me condolences.

“Sorry mom, sorry. We’ll try to do better.”

The youngest tried. He pulled a slice off the plate and promptly dropped the balsamic covered mozzarella flatbread on his shirt.

The oldest just stared. His mouth twisted in terror. What the hell is that green stuff sprinkled on top?

I grabbed to go containers and shoveled both flatbreads into the tiny boxes. I wiped my hands and the hands of the youngest; the shirt of the youngest.

“When we get home,” I said, “ you eat whatever I put in front of you.”

“Yes mom,” the middle said.

Out on the coffee shop’s large front lawn the four of us could breathe again. I took a sip of my iced latte and sighed at the perfection of it.

My arms jumbled the boxes of food but the boys could feel the calm the openness offered. There was nothing to break out here. They instantly slowed down. They stopped touching each other. They meandered toward the van.

The two oldest grabbed books and began to read. The youngest buckled himself in to his car seat.

“Well,” I said, “that went terribly.”

“What did?” The youngest said.

I sighed. Parked at the stop sign, walked around to the other side of the van and re-closed the passenger side door then returned to my seat and fastened my seatbelt – again.

We drove the last few minutes home in silence. Well, except for the constant chatter of the youngest, unaware of any other way to be.