Gift From The Sea

More than 50 years ago, in 1955, the wife of Charles Lindbergh (yes, the one who flew across the Atlantic) took a few weeks away from her family (yes, the one that had lost a baby to a tragic kidnapping 20 years earlier) and traveled to Captiva Island on the Gulf Coast of Florida. By herself. There, she contemplated her identity, her place in the world, and her role as a woman in her family. More than 50 years later, the words she penned in eight short essays still ring true when I read them today. Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea has refreshed me during these past dreary weeks, deep in winter's grips. Her images of the sunny seashore account for some of this, but it is her treatment of woman's identity that grabs and holds my attention so that I can read the whole book in one sitting.

The Gulf Coast is filled, dare I say littered, with seashells. As Anne Morrow LIndbergh collects the shells that were no doubt plentiful all around her, she relates each of them to an essential part of her psyche. Solitude, simplicity, evolution. She considers her role as a women in a nuclear family, as wife and mother, while children are young and after they have left her alone. What she consistently comes back to is that woman should relish in her own self, rejuvenate herself daily, annually, and through each season of life. Remind herself that she is an individual, and yet eternally connected to her family and her world that is always around her.

I've been to a few of those old beachside bungalows. They usually have only two or three electrical sockets in the whole structure, simply wooden furniture, maybe an old television. The sink in the kitchenette is porcelain and stained, the floor is linoleum and covered with woven polyester place rugs, and the shelves are lined with ancient bleached shells and coral. As Lindbergh writes of her seashells on her desk and ruminates what significance they hold, I can't help but imagine what calm and peace she must have felt there on the Island, sitting in her quiet cabin listening to the sea, separated from all those who knew her intimately. The ability to relax and reflect must have enabled her to find pervasive truths of her life that ring so true in my own. I must not be the only woman ever to have responded this way as a result of reading the short book; it's now being published in its 50th anniversary edition.

What I find the most remarkable about the essays is their timeless quality. Lindbergh made her trek to the sea and wrote these words before the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s, yet the identity issues that she grapples with still ring true with me today. Who am I if I don't take the time to be still and listen to myself? What does it mean for me to be in a relationship with my spouse and with each of my children? How much am I adversely affected by the clutter of unnecessary things and ideas around me? She certainly wasn't the first one to discuss these ideas, nor the last. But she succinctly discusses each one for just long enough to get the gears in my minds turning and then curtly stops in order to let my mind continue thinking.

Maybe I'll reread the book again next winter when I need to feel warm and refreshed again.

Resolutions? Here's My Plan.

It's time to start thinking about those New Year's Resolutions, friends.

Lose weight!  Get organized!  Pursue purpose!

Do we make the same promises to ourselves year after year?  I know sometimes I do.

This year, some of my intentions will be the same, but I am focusing on living a true life.  We've all heard that there are so many good things to do that it's easy to say "yes" and lose ourselves along the way.  In general, this hasn't been the case for me, although I have certainly walked through overcommitted times where I felt I was doing good stuff that wasn't necessarily the right stuff for me.  All in all, though, I'm fairly good about focusing.  Sometimes, too good.

This year I have a few thoughts, rather than resolutions, that I want to pursue for 2010.

• I have 6 years until my oldest son leaves for college.  It doesn't seem possible, but there it is.  I just had him, I swear, and now he is in full teen-years mode.  This year I will focus on trying to understand the young man he's growing into, to encouraging his gifts, to supporting his faith.  Really, these goals are no different than those I've had the past 13 years, they just seem bigger now, somehow.

• In the coming months,  I plan to jettison the activities that aren't closest to my heart and focus more energy on the ones that are.  

• As I do every year, I'll spend time with good friends.  Some years are harder than others.  I'll try my best to make sure this year isn't one of them.

• Keep running.  And doing Pilates.  And, as long as my knees and hips hold out, playing basketball.  These are activities I enjoy that help my heart beat stronger. I love that.

• My husband and I will celebrate 18 years of marriage this May.  We've been blessed with a strong committment to one another through thick and tthin.  My vow for this year is to make sure he knows how glad I am that we chose one another all those years ago.  I'd choose him again in a heartbeat.

Happy, almost, 2010 everyone.  Let me know your hopes, dreams & goals for 2010--how lucky we are to see another year.

Fall ing In Love

When I was a kid, fall was always my favorite time of year. I loved the new schools supplies, the seemingly endless potential of a new school year, and anticipation of the coming holidays. Fall was my season.

When I worked in student activities, fall was always my most dreaded time of year. I worked in higher education, and as such, my fall was full of late night student events, meetings, and work commitments. I finally moved into a less stressful, lower paying job the fall I worked three months in a row without a weekend off. Fall was my burden.

Once I demoted myself, I made a commitment to regain fall as a season. I called 2007 my "FOF"-- fall of freedom. We pumpkin patched, hot-air-ballooned, and fall festival-ed our booties off. But that first FOF was hampered by my health problems, my resulting anxiety, and then by recovery from major surgery. Fall was my trial.

Now that I am staying at home with the kids, fall has regained some of its former luster for me. I reveled in buying Noise's school supplies. I gingerly marked every individual crayon, marker, and scissor for my kids. We've trudged through pumpkin patches, apple orchards, and parades all over our county. We've baked and s'mored and walked in the woods as a rainbow of leaves gave up their fight all around us. We've cheered on our football teams, fired up the fire pit, feasted on the first soups of the season. Fall is my home.

I have fallen in love again, with fall.

Activities and vacations and summer camps, oh my!

Anyone out there feeling the tremors of upheaval as summer approaches? Like the whole world runs in a careful balance until June and then, WHAM-O! SUMMER! OK, well, I confess, I'm feeling the tremors coming.

I have a 15-year-old daughter. Every summer since she was 2-years-old, when I resumed working full-time, we've been working out summer plans. Sometimes things are perfect, other times it's been a headache beyond recognition. To cut to the chase, when all is said and done and when the school year begins again in the fall, I am the happiest one of all because it means things fall back into a normal flow of things.

We've done it all. She's traveled to see her grandparents and other family out of state. She's done day camp and overnight camp. There have been one-day programs at the library and the art museum and the science museum. Cooking classes, sports lessons, theater in the park. You name it, we've tried it. I've seen her jubilantly board a bus that carried her away for a 7-day journey without so much as a hint of hesitation. I've also seen her throw a full out, full-body temper tantrum that lasted all morning and the rest of the day because she did NOT want to go to the lake that she begged me for weeks to let her go to with her friends.

The current school year ends in less than three weeks. We are still working out my daughter's summer plans. Granted, at the age she is now, she could sit at home and watch reality shows and Oprah all summer, munching on potato chips and downing Mountain Dew after Mountain Dew. But that wouldn't make me a good mom, see. She has to do things that are productive, character building, and fruitful. (a-HEM.) So on the docket are the following activities: swim team pre-season training, driving school, and fine arts camp. Seems simple enough, right? Just narrow down the choices, pick the options that fit into a schedule, and then make the necessary arrangements. Oh, if only it were so simple. Let's start with swim practice.

Swimming is a sport of heavy commitment and consistent practice. That being said, my daughter hasn't been in the pool for over 6 months. She has about three local options for daily practice during the summer and she could also join the all-city water polo team for their summer season. The glitch? My daughter's father scheduled their family vacation through the first week of the summer. Since this is the first week of practice, it would mean the girl would be behind when she finally did return from vacation and show up for practice. The coaches frown on such a thing. So she's settled for the less rigorous practice at a pool farther from the house that she can start later in the summer.

Then there's driving school. This being my oldest child, I had no idea what a pain it was to get a driver's permit in Michigan. In order to get a driver's license when I was a kid, I went down to the appropriate office the Saturday morning after my 15th birthday, took a written test, and got a permit to drive with an adult for a year. No driver's ed required. But this is not the case in Michigan. The requirements to get a driver's license are convoluted at best, not the least of which is mandatory driver's education. It's not offered through the state or the public school, though; you have to find a private company that does it. AND PAY THEM to do it. Wha...? What's more, the classes are two hours a day, every weekday, for a consecutive two and a half weeks. This essentially means if your kid does anything extra outside of school, it's impossible for them to go through the class during the school year. Needless to say, I've debated many times whether she really needs to learn how to drive at all...

And then there's fine arts, the mother of all expensive summer activity options. Last year, my daughter went to Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. She loved it. She adored it. She had no idea how much it cost. Even with a scholarship last year, we spent over $1000 for the 11 days she spent there. I know, that's not a lot when you're talking about overnight fine arts camp, but when you're talking about money, that's a lot of it. She got a couple scholarships again this year, but we were still looking at big bucks out of pocket in order for her go again. And in case you didn't realize it yet, when is she supposed to find time to go to overnight camp when she's also got swim team practice and driver's ed going on? So we switched gears and thought she could participate in a local summer stock group that puts on a musical every summer. Three weeks, six hours a day, two performances at the end. Then I saw the price tag - $750 + membership fees and materials fees. Wow. That's a lot of money just so you can be in a musical. Finally, in the 11th hour, her school orchestra conductor announced last week that the orchestra students are able to go to Interlochen with one of the other city's orchestras in August for a week. They would get to work together, do workshops, and basically prep for the next school year together. $340. Better than the previous two options. They would arrive back in town late on a Monday night, the Monday of the first day of regular season practice for swim team. So it's off the bus from orchestra camp at midnight, go to bed, and up at 6a the next morning for swim practice.

Oh, and one more thing. There's a new baby girl due in our family in August. I'm nervous because I don't know when to expect my obstetrician to say, "that baby must come out NOW." (For the whole story, you can check out my personal blog.) I get the bad feeling that my daughter is going to be off in the north of Michigan at Interlochen, playing her heart out on her viola...and miss the day when her sister is born. But I can't bring myself to tell her she just has to stay home and miss out on Interlochen.

It's exhausting. I really don't consider myself one of those parents who over-schedules and spoils my kid. She's done things that she wanted to do, and I've tried to give her as much down time as a kid needs, just to read and play and enjoy herself. Still, it's clear to me that life is getting faster and faster for her as she ages, just as it does for all of us. Next year she wants to have a summer job. And either I'm ferrying her to and from work...or she'll need a driver's license...oh my.

Spring in the Midwest

I love it when Spring finally springs in the Midwest. Every year I think it is taking for-ev-er but every year it comes.

The leaves leaf, the grass greens, the noses run, the throats tickle.

Yes, every Spring for me is allergy season. My eyes itch, my nose is like a faucet with a bad washer, I feel like I need to clear my throat constantly.

It seems to be that my baby girl (child #3 for those who don't know me) has inherited my seasonal allergies. Her nose runs constantly when we are outside, yet clears up each night when we have been indoors for a few hours.

I suppose it is the one drawback of having the four seasons...well, besides the bitter cold of winter and the unbearable heat of summer. Oh and the allergies return in the Fall.

Remind me why we love living here again?

Remembering the Days of Summer