Author: kateleen17

Another Hygge party comes and goes. Our toes curl against the snow covered back patio as we talk about Covid and then, not Covid.

The fire embers glow distantly. We are so close and yet so far from the warmth. Next time, I think, next time we will build a fire in the center of us and then it won’t matter how many layers and blankets and toe warmers we add to our clothes.

The warm chocolate chip cookies at the start of the party froze to the plate by the end of the evening. Remaining sips of wine turned into red ice slushees.

But I laughed and I smiled more than I have in days.

Friends, new and old, willing to sit outside in 20 degrees and lower, are friends to treasure.

There were days there. Weeks. My boys would build forts inside; create war games that involved guns, swords, bombs, and barricades. They lingered on various devices – even the v-tech camera with silly games on it. I begged, I pleaded, and then I gave up.

Each day I took myself outside into the bitter cold and walked. For me, the outdoors is essential to my overall health. To my boys, well, they had other thoughts.

I missed the days they played outside for hours and hours. They created mudslides, forts, and potions in the sunshine. When the first big snow came they built a fort at the top of our big hill and sled down over and over again.

But then, the cold hit hard, and the boys came inside. Day after day the temperatures plunged. Negative one, negative five, negative ten. The wind chill sank as the sun shone brightly, albeit, distantly, against the blue sky.

“Just bundle up!” I said.

They turned their glazed eyes toward me and blinked.

Or they peered out at me behind a wall they created with pillows from the top of the staircase. I tripped up the stairs, down the stairs, and cursed under my breath at the “stuff” everywhere.

Saturdays we cleaned.

“Family clean time!”

For five minutes the floor would be free of debris, houses, obstacle courses, and bits of paper with tiny scratches and drawings on it.

“It’s warmer today,” I’d say.

They’d race past me, tackling each other against the wood floor.

“The floor is lava!” they’d yell one evening.

“He’s not letting me have the green ipad,” they’d yell another evening.

But they would not venture outside. Not even for a second.

Each day I’d go out, wrapping my face, testing out new mittens, lining my fleece lined pants with long underwear.

“We are doomed,” I said to my husband one evening, “our children refuse to go outside!”

Then we forced them onto a frozen lake.

“It’s family fun time,” I shouted, “so have FUN!”

And there was a moment, I am certain, they remembered what the outdoors can be.

Because later on in the week, my middle walked to the mud room and started to pull on his snow pants.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m going outside,” he said.

“Like, into the outdoors?” I stammered.

He looked up at me and pulled his eyebrows tight in a quizzical expression.

“Yes, mom,” he said slowly.

The next day two of them started pulling on snow pants, then coats, boots, hat and mittens.

“What’s happening?” I asked, peering around the corner of my writing room.

“Creating a cool sledding hill,” one said.

“An obstacle course,” the other added.

“Fun,” I said.

I watched them from the windows of our dining room as they played and stayed outside for hours. Sledding turned into fort building. Fort building returned to sledding. Just like I used to do.

I think I recall my childhood incorrectly sometimes. I tell my boys I played outside every day after school for hours and hours. I played after dinner and all weekend long. But maybe that’s just memories evolving the way I hope they will. I bet the truth is I had a childhood similar to there’s. Some days I wanted to stay glued to the screen, some days I played with barbies and Legos, and some days I really did stay outside past dinnertime.

Still, I’m going to savor this time. The floor is free of cushions, and soon my boys will come inside with rosy cheeks. Just the way it should be.

The red bird fluttering against the white canvas made me pause.

My writing room has become a kind of haven I knew I needed but didn’t know how much I needed.

The boys and Seth seem to sense the sacred space it is. They enter quietly, sit peacefully, and all of us settle in for work when we step inside.

The birds outside my window remind me that it is much more than a simple work space to me. Each day I cross the threshold onto a blank page. It is up to me what I dash across the page; a splash of orange passion, a blue reflection, or a rainbow of intricacies.

A new day offers opportunities to make mistakes or get it just right. Maybe today I will create the perfectly strung sentence. Maybe I will say the exact right thing to ring true in someone’s soul. Maybe I will fail softly or loudly.

But no matter what, something beautiful will eventually arise. Because each new beginning, each crossing, leads to red wings reaching up into the trees against the white canvas. A gift.

Words. I have a passion for them. Pulling apart scenes in my head and making them more approachable. Simple.

There are times I reach for my big book of fancy words but more often than not I prefer the simple ones.

Sun. Butter. Mug. Coffee. Snow. Child.

Each word is a word most can relate to and there is a feeling attached.

Mug takes me to mornings I can linger over my cup of coffee in my writing room with the sun lamp beaming over me. Warmth and safety drift over me when I hear the word mug.

But sometimes words overwhelm me. I can’t find the exact right word to express how I’m feeling. Even the fancy book of words doesn’t have what I need.

Moments like these twist me up like a massive ball of rubber bands. Pull one free if you can; likely you can’t. They are entangled, like me.

So I stand there, among scraps and books and words; waiting for the right one to find me.

“Um, are we going to walk across the lake??”

My eldest seems concerned but my middle is excited. The youngest is eager and cold so runs toward the frozen lake.

“Yes,” I say “how cool is that?”

I glance behind me and my husband gives me a smile.

It took us 45 minutes to pack the snacks, the waters, the extra mittens, the normal mittens, the face masks, and the back up snacks. We used the time to get them bundled in snow pants and boots as well, slipping their coats on after they got out of the van.

“Brrr!” Our youngest says.

Maybe it’s 10 degrees? Probably even fewer degrees as we step onto the wide open thick ice. I feel the wind slicing through the open air and tuck my chin further into my scarf.

“My stomach hurts,” my eldest says.

“You were reading on the way here,” I say, “it’ll go away when you move more.”

“Brrrr,” my youngest says again.

I look up ahead, somehow my husband and middle are miles ahead of us and miles beyond them is the kite festival.

“Ugh,” my eldest says, dramatically flopping onto the ice.

“Can we go back,” my youngest says.

His pink face speaks volumes of how cold my own face feels. I pull my scarf free and wrap it around his face. He laughs.

“Mom, I can’t see!”

I tug the top of his scarf down slightly.

“Peek a boo!” I say, “what happened to your face mask?“

He shrugs then stretches his arms out to me.

“Can you carry me?”

“I can’t walk anymore!” My oldest says as he stumbles and skitters across the snowy parts of the ice.

I look up ahead and feel my stomach rumble. Who’s idea was this anyway? Why didn’t we eat lunch first? The food trucks at the festival feel so far!

My husband and middle are picking up the pace as we fall farther and farther behind. My husband thrives in snow and cold. Usually my middle is a disaster in the cold so I take a moment to enjoy his racing feet across the snowy ice as I allow my youngest to reach out to me again and pick him up.

Four year olds are heavy. There’s a reason they learn how to walk at one or one and a half. He drops his head on my shoulder snd snuggles in. The sweetness of his breath against my face almost overwhelms the weight of him.

“Gah!!” My eldest says again and stumbles once more, “can we go back!!”

“Knock it off!” I yell. My hunger and chilled face are enough for me to handle but carrying 40 pounds and a maybe sick probably not actually sick eight year old stumbling next to me pushes me over to anger.

“Get yourself together. You are not sick and if you are it’s your own fault for reading in the car! Now walk so we can get to the kite festival and have FUN!”

My eight year old’s face starts to scrunch together.

“You don’t believe…”

Then he sees my face, turns away toward the festival and walks. Stomps. Across the ice.

I drop my youngest back down carefully and tell him Mama needs a break, he needs to use his legs again.

When I look up again the kites finally seem closer and my husband and middle are waiting for us.

I take a deep breath, grab hold of my youngest’s hand, and we finally close the gap and become five again.

Later, we are fed. We are still cold. And I am carrying my youngest back from where we came. We watch the kites fly. My oldest smiles. I apologize. I take another moment to do what I said we should do and enjoy a moment. I kiss my husband on the frozen ice, once, then twice.

What will I remember of this day? What will they remember?

Together we watch the kites fly.

When I was small I climbed trees.

At the time I assumed it was something everyone did and something everyone really should do.

I’d greet people hanging upside down from favorite trees in our small plot of woods behind our home.

“If you’re looking for Kate,” my dad would say, “just look up.”

I loved being up high but I also loved the climb. It was an obstacle I wanted to puzzle together. Which notch for which step up?

Some trees were better than others and some trees became more homey and comfortable than others.

But climbing is still something I love to do.

When my family and I went to Alaska I took a special thrill climbing Flat Top – three times.

When I moved to the state of Washington I delighted that my first few steps on the sidewalks took me either up or down – flat wasn’t as easy to come by.

Trees aren’t as comfortable to climb in my 41 year old body but when my oldest boys reached up and grabbed hold of the tree in front of our new home then started to climb, something fluttered in me.

Nothing was missing in our old home. We loved so much about the neighborhood and the yard and yet here we found something I hadn’t expected. A tree for my boys to climb.

They climb the tree often. They wave to neighbors and to their Grandma visiting. I watch them curl into the crook of the middle branch and it settles over me, this is what we needed. A tree to call home.

Just look up.

There’s a book out there circulating that talks about the “good enough” parent.

My friends and I talk often about our own parents and how a concept like “good enough” wouldn’t cross their minds (or so we think) because they were just trying to get by with what they knew best. And maybe do better than the generation before them.

But my parents were good. They weren’t perfect, but they were good. For me to take it a step beyond what they did feels like reaching much farther than I have the capacity. Along with that, many books floating around are offering their two cents as well. All of the books are written by experts. Can you feel the pressure mounting?

Enter stage left, a pandemic.

There are times I search for meaning behind the happenings in our lives. It feels self involved to say maybe the pandemic stepped in to remind us we are incapable of perfection and striving for “good enough” is about as far as any of us should push for.

So I won’t say that.

But it has forced me to step back, over and over again and ask myself, “that wasn’t great, I wish I could do better, but given the energy I have after all that’s going on around me – is it good enough?”

I want to give my children everything. I want to raise them to be strong, caring, and considerate people. I want to keep the dark, pathetic sides of myself from them and keep the scary, awful parts of the world far away. I want them to always have joy, health, and success in life.

Yesterday a contradiction of all my desires for my children rose it’s weary head as I held my eldest child down for a PCR test. He was not happy. He was miserable, angry, and frankly acting like an anxious crazy person (said by his anxious crazy mom). My heart broke over and over again as we tried to work through his anxiety and he refused.

But I was also frustrated with him and furious with this stupid pandemic and confused about what the right thing was.

I looked over at his doctor and she could tell my decision making skills were stuck. God bless these health care professionals who are asked to step in far too often. She called in another nurse in the office and together we held my son down and the doctor swabbed as gently as a person can in that scenario.

The PCR test came back negative but what if it hadn’t?

My eldest and I drove home and he twisted his face away from me the entire drive. His eyes were full of fury and I worried that this would be the trauma he would bring up in therapy someday down the road. That this would be my “great big mistake” as a parent.

I recalled, out loud, in a soft voice, a moment where I also didn’t want a medical test and how I also kicked and screamed and threw a fit. Up until that moment I had forgotten when my mother brought me in for a blood test because she was concerned I might have diabetes…or was trying to trick me into eating less sugar?? Either way, she did what she did because my health was the most important.

“I don’t know why they have to have tests that are painful or annoying,” I said to him as I looked out at the snow covered road in front of me, “but that’s how we learn if something is wrong…and sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.”

Later on he’d rest his head on my exhausted heart and he’d laugh at the dinner table when I described his test as my “low” of the day and he too would claim it as his low.

I was never going to be the best parent. Not even once did I think I’d achieve that trophy but I think the pandemic has tipped it even farther out of my grasp.

And maybe that’s okay.

I accidentally swore in front of my eldest today. I swear so rarely that it surprised him, and surprised me that I did it when he was around. He looked at me, and I saw the wheels turning, the pieces of me as he knew me to be before re-working themselves.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I got hurt and it slipped out. It’s not a word I like to use.”

“I know Mom,” he said.

He smiled and later told his brothers and my husband, “Mom swore.”

I rolled my eyes but the truth is, I want him to see my imperfections. I want him to hear my apologies. I want him to understand that to be human is to fail.

Still, each day I try to be enough. Maybe tomorrow I’ll even reach “good enough”.

There’s a great deal of noise in my life.

While I was driving the other day I realized the radio wasn’t on and my phone wasn’t talking at me and there weren’t any children in the car.

All I heard was the rumble of the van’s motor. The thump of a pot hole as I drove over it. The whistling of the cold wind stirring up the empty branches as I passed by.

All of this just above the unusual sound of nothing.

At first I reached for the radio knob but stopped myself as it hit me – silence just isn’t something I allow room for anymore.

On walks I listen to podcasts. At home I’m listening to my husband or the children or the tv or the radio.

As winter walked in and Omicron took over, I think I decided I couldn’t handle even a second of silence. In that second or minute I am reminded of all the people I am muffled against.

Over the weekend my husband installed curtains to soften the sounds of airplanes in our Mendota Heights neighborhood. It was never terrible but with the grey curtains tucked around each window I chose to lay back and listen.

Silence.

No voices. No shouting. No airplanes. No loud backfiring cars. Just a soft quiet I hadn’t been comfortable with for a very long time.

I now try to sit with the silence. In my writing room, the van, and even on my long walks.

There is no such thing as true silence. Even with our new curtains I consider the noises outside “softened” instead of gone. But without turning on the radio, looking at my phone, or craning my neck in search of distraction or entertainment I recognize the true dilemma of silence, and maybe the struggle beneath the sickness this pandemic causes.

In the quiet moments we are left alone with ourselves.

“One more set everyone!” The trainer said through the screen.

I assumed she was referring to everyone but me but still I answered, “no more sets, all done for me.”

But once a student always a student, so I joined her in another set. Wall push ups, squats, kicks, boxing, and whatever else she told us to do.

I hate strength training.

Every single article I read describes the values, the benefits, and the essential nature of strength and conditioning.

I nod and say, “not for me, thanks,” but the articles are getting super personal.

A woman in her 40’s…

Okay Marge, now you’re starting to act like all this mumbo jumbo is something I need to do.

I walk. I do yoga. I am an active individual. Why are you pushing the squats on me too? Don’t I do enough?

If you want to add extra years to your life…

Okay, okay…I’ll try.

I do the first set. The second set. The third set.

Marge, I’ll see you next time.

Except, the day after I can’t walk. I moan. I groan. I whine to my husband, “I’m dying. I have Covid.”

“You don’t have Covid.”

“But there’s aches and tightness, I can’t move my neck or my legs or my arms.”

Strength and conditioning, Marge says.

“Arg!!” I yell.

I vow to never squat again. I will never push that wall away or kick or punch. I will just stick with what works. The yoga and the walking.

“Enough Marge!”

Another article pops into my feed. The algorithms are trying to remind me what I already know – I am better, stronger, and will live a much more full life…if I listen to Marg.

“Another set!” She shouts the following day.

And I do it. Because going through the hard stuff is worth it. At least that’s what they keep telling me.

The other day I was feeling off. Maybe my neck was sore? Maybe my throat? Body aches or muscle soreness from the workout out the day before? I sneezed.

Is it my turn?

I read the news far too often and apparently I shouldn’t be going into stores, wearing cloth masks, or spending time with anyone indoors.

Sigh.

I don’t want Covid. I don’t want to go to the hospitals right now for any reason. But I do miss the parts of life that filled me up and I’m trying to find a balance of health and sanity.

I do go into stores. I do send my kids to in person schooling. My youngest and oldest will only keep cloth masks on but the rest of us wear K94 masks or N95. I just enrolled my oldest in Tae Kwon Do and my middle is in Gymnastics. Should we be more careful? Yes, we should. But each month that ticks by of this crazy pandemic feels like yet another month of real life. And how do we want to live real life?

As it is play dates are rare or outside. You’ve already read a blog about how I no longer linger in coffee shops. Activities are mainly outside (in our lovely MN weather) and school is…not the same. My husband continues to work from home and I continue to juggle the various sick leave the boys are given because they walk down to the nurse’s office and any symptom (even symptoms created by vivid imaginations) are taken seriously – as they should be in a pandemic.

Remember when we were young and unless we had a broken leg or we were throwing up, Mom sent us to school. Maybe that was just me.

Somedays I feel like tossing my hands up and yelling. I can see myself swinging our front door wide open and scream into the -5 degree wind chill, “I can’t do this anymore!!!”

But thankfully, I have lived a few years and I have had many moments when I’ve been on the verge of collapse.

After my mom died.

When I was a teenager (choose a year, any year).

When I had babies.

When I had toddlers.

The list could go on. This is hard. There aren’t any clear answers (what works for you won’t work for me) but on the days when I contemplate tossing in the towel I remember all the other moments I almost caved but chose not to.

“Go to bed,” Dad used to tell me when I said I was done, “tomorrow will look different.”

We can do this. This is the rough part of being alive. But we keep at it.

The sunrises can be stunning, especially those particularly -20 degree mornings.

Snuggles from babies are undeniably tender.

Toddlers show the greatest and most innocent kind of love.

Those who knew the ones you loved and lost tell you that you look like her. You have her laugh, her smile, her eyes.

I might get Covid. I might have Covid (with testing these days, who the heck knows) but I also carry with me perspective.

After the trying days, the end of times kind of months, the longest shortest years, there is another chapter.