Embracing Next

Three years ago I was a runner. Proud, lean, delighted in my feet and the body I could move for miles.

I wasn’t fast. I don’t think I looked particularly fabulous as some runners who fly by me do but I was 100% a runner. And I was trim. Slim. Lean. All those words suited me, and I never even knew I’d wanted those to describe me – until they didn’t.

I was a runner and then a day later I wasn’t.

What the hell?

It was a bad dream I couldn’t shake. In a blink I was 10 pounds, 15 pounds heavier because when I couldn’t run I couldn’t do anything.

My feet hated me. Thighs thickened. The stomach smooth despite three babies, churned into something that bordered on the dreaded beer belly.

What the hell?

Who was this? What body had I jumped into overnight? I would look at dessert and it added two pounds. A glass of wine would show up in the folds of my belly the next day.

I am not vain. I do not care. But also, I do, I am.

No one else noticed. Or, everyone was kind, polite, respectful that bodies change.

Because they do. And I loved all the changing bodies around me but I struggled with mine.

I cared. It began to erode my self-worth. This wasn’t the body I had loved, treated from time to time with scones and ice cream, but mostly pampered with as much sleep as my boys would give me, balanced meals, and movement – miles and miles of movement.

First the movement stopped. Then the pandemic isolated all of us. I sank.

A pebble who became a stone who clunked to the bottom of the river as a solid rock.

It took time. It took ridiculous amounts of patience…I bet you think I’m going to say I’m a runner again. I am slim again, lean.

You would be wrong.

Through patience, persistence, and a different kind of self-love, I learned to move my body a new way. Three years later and I still daydream of running again. Sometimes I even take my feet out for a spin around the block. But running still keeps its distance, my feet still call foul. No, this new movement is something I used to say I would never do, I used to say I hated. Just as I once said I would never run; I was not a runner.

Apparently, I am comfortable finding love for the things I hate.

Strength training.

These days I can lift weights I never thought I could. I can do push-ups unassisted. I can squat with a kettlebell clasped to my chest and not cry. I can be proud of how strong my body can be instead of how slim I can get.

My feet still hate me sometimes and running might never be something I will do again but as long as I find something, some way to move my body, I’ll get through. I’ll find joy.

In summer, for a child, there is not enough time.

There’s the Lemonade Stand. The friends to play with. The pools and lakes and rivers to forge through. The imaginary worlds to explore.

I told my boys an hour of screen time per day (at most) and all three were surprisingly agreeable to this.

As they roam the streets of our new neighborhood I think I understand.

They want to play. With people. In person.

Today the three threw together a Lemonade Stand and lasted an hour in this heat before one rushed to a friend’s and then the other two followed. The lemonade stand’s cups blew in circles beneath the little table and chairs. It looked sad, left behind. But this is how it is this summer. There isn’t enough time for all the things they want to do.

They have plans! And really, so do we.

“I wrote plays,” I said to my boys.

We were watching the Tony Awards and my mind was swept away.

There was a time before I was “Mom”. A time I daydreamed about rushing off to New York City and pursuing an MFA. I even started the application process.

But this small town Midwestern white girl got in her head. I wondered who would care about what I care about. The small things, little moments, love, deep things, serious thoughts.

I wasn’t gay, queer, borderline this or that. I wasn’t West Coast or East Coast. I wasn’t, I believed, interesting. Not anywhere close to their level of interesting.

I also didn’t think I’d be good in a tiny apartment. With one bed, three roommates, and rats for pets. Suffering for my art was something I couldn’t do. Not like that anyway.

But as I watch these plays, Broadway shows. Actors and actresses and directors and writers – I want my boys to know.

I wrote plays once, and maybe someday again…

We were bored. Barbies in the morning. Playing in the woods behind our home in the afternoon. Creating new recipes in between times. And then, we were bored.

“Why do we have to live here,” I said, “in the middle of nowhere. Where there’s nothing to do.”

In the boredom we learned. We daydreamed about future projects and created and found new ways to play.

The boredom lasted seconds. Minutes at most.

Mom would suggest cleaning. Washing dishes. We would always run, the wheels turning as we escaped her work.

It was summer, after all, we were on break. There is no room for work when we had days and days of play to do.

I give credit to my parents and maybe the small town I grew up in too. There weren’t camps and sports and summer school work to participate in. Reading was suggested. I imagine practicing math facts too. But outside of that, there really wasn’t a lot we had to do.

So we played. We created. We sipped lemonade from our lemonade stands. We picked raspberries from the bushes in our front yards and sold those too.

On weekends we rode our bikes to the gas station at the end of the road and bought all the candy our money could afford.

We collapsed onto the front lawn after too many cartwheels and looked up at the swirling blue sky above us, searching for clouds that could be pillows or unicorns.

Sometimes I nodded off, the grass it’s own supportive mattress. The clouds created a softness I could sense, even if I couldn’t touch.

Boredom came, but it always went. It was the blank slate, empty page, we needed to begin something new.

Growing up I was not a person who daydreamed of my someday home. I didn’t go down the path of white picket fences or city home or country home.

I knew I wanted to have the role of a mother and I knew I wanted to write.

Later on, with each apartment, and then home a dream started to form.

A front porch. I wanted a front porch.

Several dwellings later and it has finally come true.

I sit right now on the front porch of a home that feels partially ours and partially the home of the family who first lived here, the ones who created the front porch and all the space inside.

I think I wanted this porch so I could fulfill what I see a porch offers – a welcoming.

Singing on the front steps, greeting friends and family as the come by to visit for a few hours or a weekend. And yet another space to read on, while waving hello to neighbors I am only just getting to know.

When we bring children into the world we are curious.

Who are these little people? What will they bring into the world with them? How will they evolve and change over the years? Beneath all these questions is another, will they be like me or my spouse? Will they develop a similar passion for the arts? Will they cheer for the Packers? How much of me or my husband will come through?

Our oldest loves the idea of hunting. He loves fishing. These two things do not, at least directly, come from either my husband or I.

I grew up a “townie” in a small village where kids would take the week of hunting season off and go to some cabin or camp in the woods, so I was familiar.

My husband grew up a city boy in Madison, WI. He knew boats and fishing well but never developed an interest and nowhere near any sort of passion for all the blood and guts that seem to go hand in hand with hunting and fishing.

Yet, here is our oldest, casting away at the end of a dock at our friend’s cabin. Our friend patiently teaching him how to release the mouth of the fish from the hook and toss the small ones back in.

There is our middle, creating his own form of fishing where he pulled fish after fish out and quickly grasped how to release the sunnies back to the lake.

A few years back the oldest caught a Walleye that I sautéed and we ate.

On the drive to the cabin the eldest asked when he’d get to learn how to hunt and he started making a bow while he was there.

We didn’t teach him any of this. We didn’t leave a hunting channel on accidentally or surround ourselves with fishing magazines.

My husband and I play music, we write, I love to bake. We read. We love to socialize and laugh with friends. We play board games.

And yet, there, in our small crew of children, a love of hunting and fishing turned on.

I can still ask, who will these boys turn out to be because I won’t let them commit to anything just yet. This is their time to try, test, explore, and ask questions.

These boys, 9, 7, and 4 have already shown me, they are every bit their own person, and I am eager to learn more.

I’m an adult last I checked. A 41 year old woman with a home, three boys, and a fantastic husband.

And yet, when summer begins for my boys there is a moment when I am struck with a desire to kick up my heels and join my boys as they celebrate the end of work the end of structure the end of doing all the things.

Secretly I’m with them. Screens all day! Play whatever I want, whenever I want. Eat all the KitKats and Crunch bars and ice cream with pretzels.

Who’s with me???

But there is a reason no one followed Bluto in Animal House.

Shh. Don’t tell my boys yet, but there will be work there will be structure and there will be a balance of different kinds of foods (though maybe more heavy on the sweeter side of things).

Even in summer, perhaps especially in summer, there is value in work so we can enjoy the sunshine and warmth even more. There is value in doing all the things when we can kick up our feet in the knowledge we have earned this reprieve. There is value in purpose, dedication, and commitment.

But tonight, I will give them their moment. I will take it too.

Summer has begun, we’re free!!!!

Prepping for my fourth colonoscopy isn’t a dream nor is it easy when there are three kids running around the home.

I chose Memorial Day Weekend to start the low fiber diet and drink the awful prep and…remember the colors of my bathroom walls.

The boys invited a friend over, and then more friends over. I was fine with it, after all, my husband was home and managing them all while I tried to ignore the scent of oatmeal banana pancakes sizzling on the griddle.

(“Wait, you can’t eat anything?” My husband asked that morning. Nope.)

But when I pulled out a giant jug from the cabinet and grabbed not one, not two, but three Orange Gatorade’s from the refrigerator, the boys tuned in. Their friend tuned in.

“You get to drink all that Gatorade??” one son said.

“Yes,” I said.

Then I dumped all the Miralax, the white powder swirling against the clank of my wooden spoon, into the glass container.

The boys know about my colonoscopy. They know what happens and they think it’s all a bit silly. They also know why I’ve had so many, and that seems a little less silly to them.

“What’s that white powder you’re pouring in?” The friend asked.

I sighed. By now I assumed all friends would be gone but the boys have made neighborhood friends, lovely friends their ages and boys run in and out of our home and in and out of their friends’ homes, back and forth, just as I’d wished. Except for every once and awhile. Like now, when I don’t really want to explain to a nine year old why I’m dumping 8.3 ounces of Miralax into 64 ounces of Orange Gatorade.

Thankfully, they are boys. And before I can will up any sort of answer, they are off to their next game or adventure.

I am left alone, in peace.

The following day I got an amazing nap and kind nurses who told me they were there in case anything should go awry. I got a clean bill of health. I got a sigh of relief.

Yes, colonoscopies make us giggle. They also save lives.

I still wonder what might have happened if my Mom’s colonoscopy had happened sooner, if they had gone past the blocked part of her colon.

And each time I wonder, I find it easier to drink that Magnesium Citrate four hours before the procedure.

Small potatoes, I think, for a large sigh of relief.

My oldest lined up his Lego guns on our bed.

He named each one.

I cringed.

My oldest made guns out of his fingers when he was four. My anti-gun husband and I watched as nerf guns stumbled into our home from neighbors. As squirt guns fell through our doors from family.

Conversation after conversation.

We don’t like guns. This is why.

My oldest sat me down and explained, “I don’t like guns either Mom. But these are toys. These are different.”

My boys are sweet, tender, generous. Their imaginations flourish around all the weapons. A reality that I have fought for years.

Then. Another school shooting. I want to toss every last gun out into the garbage. I want to scream.

“Mom,” he says as he leans into the bed my husband and I share, “it shouldn’t be so easy for people to get guns.”

He straightens the tiny Lego. His freckled nose looks up at me, green eyes blinking.

“What about the guy who did this? Why wasn’t anyone there to help him? Stop him?”

The boys I am raising don’t see their toy guns as stand-ins to the real things. The connection my husband and I make and so many adults make just doesn’t exist in their minds.

My oldest loves the history. Knowing the names. Playing. Just as he loves the history of war, plagues, and so much more. That doesn’t mean he wants to participate in a real war, grow up during a real plague (no choice on that one – thanks Covid), or live when there weren’t cell phones.

He just loves to learn, play, and absorb.

He and I talk some more. I listen to him, he asks questions, I share what I know. We try to take in all the time we are given.

“I’m going to do something,” I say to my son, “it’s our job to do something when the wrong keeps happening.”

He nods. My wheels turn. I pray.

Enough.

Getting away from the warmth of the city to the northern edge of the state gave me time.

Returning to trees full when they’d only just been budding days before feels like I was gone longer.

Three days.

Are the boys taller, their hair longer?

I rub sunscreen into the arms of my youngest before he heads to school today. When did he get sun?

My boys are different. I am different. The oldest is quiet. Is he normally this quiet?

I step back from the three and watch weeks fly by, months, years. Is this how it will feel when they walk across the podium at college graduation?

They’re taller. Hair is longer. Is he quieter than he was before?

Who are these boys that I am helping to raise? Who will they be in the weeks and months to come?

I think I’ll stay for awhile here with them. I will lean in a little more closely. I will watch and memorize and breathe in their childhood.

I don’t want to miss the in between time from bud to leaf.