Today I went sightseeing in D.C. with Dylan.
We had a reservation to tour the city while riding on segways.
We had to be there at 9:30 a.m. The website made it very clear that if we were even five minutes late, we would lose our reservation and forfeit our tour. It was not a cheap tour. And D.C. is not next door. We had to get up early.
I needed to be awake by 7:15 to get out the door by 7:45. Dylan needed to get up by 7:00 and, if we were lucky, he would remember to eat breakfast before we left. Dylan always takes longer to get ready in the morning than anyone else in the family.
As is usually the case when I am worried, I barely slept. I was worried that Dylan wouldn’t get up in time, and/or that my alarm wouldn’t go off, so we would sleep through the entire experience. I woke up when it was pitch black – twice – then again in early morning light – three times. When I finally woke up for the last time, it was 6:30 a.m. Half an hour later, I gave up on sleep and rolled out of bed.
Several times during the night I thought, If I were going with someone else, I wouldn’t have to worry so much.
I started getting ready for my day. At 7:20 a.m., I stood silently outside of Dylan’s room. Dylan’s bedroom door was still closed.
Do I let him sleep? I wondered. Should I pretend to bang into the door to wake him up? Or should I sit down on the top step and cry? I truly believed that Dylan would sleep through the segway tour, and we would both miss it. Why was I expecting Dylan to be responsible enough to get up and go?
And then I thought, I am NOT missing this! And I threw open the bedroom door with a flourish.
There was Dylan, still in bed … but sitting up, listening to music, and typing something on his iPad. He was wide awake, but hadn’t bothered getting out of bed.
“I’m going to kill you!” I said without thinking.
“Why?” he said, unruffled. “I’ve got tons of time.” He kept typing on his iPad.
“PUT DOWN THE ELECTRONICS!” I whisper-shrieked in a very muffled voice, so as not to wake Shane. “Get ready FIRST!”
“Okay,” he said. He finished typing, plopped the iPad onto the bed and got up.
It was the beginning of a beautiful day.
No, really.
He got ready, made himself a healthy breakfast, took his vitamins and got in the car without any issues. We were in the car at 7:45, arrived early to our segway tour, and had an absolutely wonderful time together. It really was the beginning of a beautiful day.
When we got home, we both took a very serious power nap.
People who don’t live in the Washington, DC area can be surprised by its summer weather.
Summer here can get hot. It stays in the upper 80’s and 90’s for most of the summer – which usually starts at the beginning of May and doesn’t end until the end of October. It goes above 100 degrees on a regular basis.
It is sunny nearly all the time, which means standing in the direct sun can add another ten degrees to what – in my cloudy hometown of Pittsburgh – might be what “87 degrees” is expected to feel like.
And the humidity can be absolutely brutal. Unlike the hundred-degree weather in the western parts of the United States, where the desert makes the air particularly dry and relatively comfortable on summer days, the hundred-degree days here feel like a sauna. When I open my door in the morning – sometimes every day for weeks – it feels like I am opening a giant oven. The heat gushes into the house in waves.
So when I decided to get married – outside – in August, people were skeptical.
I felt completely confident that it would be fine. We got some shady pavilions for guests, for the reception. The service was outside, too, under a very big tree in a local park.
At one point, I got a few signs from God that I was doing the right thing: a deer in the woods, a groundhog nearly climbing up my leg as I sat on a picnic table. (The stories of how these are “signs” would take too long.) So I never, ever questioned the weather.
When our wedding day came – August 7, 1999 – our guests arrived in droves. They sat in their chairs outdoors and we got married under a tree, as expected. We had our reception with the help of some shady pavilions.
And the weather was absolutely glorious. It was not hot, nor humid, and there was a light breeze blowing the entire time. We all loved the experience, which was entirely untraditional. It turned out better than anyone could have anticipated.
But I often wonder about the weather. Our summers are crazy hot – but not that day.
So I looked back at the “weather history” on the internet. For our area, for that week in 1999, the high temperature was 98 degrees. This could have happened on my wedding day, but it did not. Instead, the mean temperature for the week was 82 and the average temperature for the week was 73.
It was perfect! I thank God for that. After all, He sent the deer and the groundhog, to let me know it would be okay.
This past weekend – in 2017 – showcased the same glorious weather. I spent as much time as possible outside, enjoying the breeze. The week before was typical sauna weather – which made this past weekend so much more glorious.
Today is our 18th anniversary. I also thank God for getting us this far. I think the weekend weather was a fitting tribute.
And I think that someone mighty special must have gotten married outside this weekend, since God did it all again for them.
With Dylan in camp for a week, I’ve had lots of time to spend with Shane.
We’ve gone out to lunch, to the zoo, and to a museum. We’ve played board games and card games, built with Legos and Contraptions. Shane’s been learning magic tricks – again, since he was a serious magician for three years in elementary school. So I’ve watched lots of card tricks, which are pretty amazing actually.
Shane and I have spent lots of time talking, sometimes philosophically. We’ve had some serious conversations and some silly ones. For the most part, we just chat about whatever comes into our minds. Getting to know him, one-on-one, is a pleasure.
Like his brother, the older he gets, the more there is to like.
And Shane is very, very funny. His wit is so dry, it’s like sandpaper.
“Most people don’t get my jokes,” he said to me as I nearly buckled over with laughter one day. “I don’t know why.”
“They have to be smart,” I told him. “You have a very intelligent sense of humor.”
“But sometimes people laugh at me when I don’t even mean to be funny.”
I laughed again. “Sometimes you are funniest when you don’t mean to be,” I said.
“See?” he said. “I don’t really get how that happens.”
“Sometimes you point out something so obvious, it’s funny,” I told him. “Not everyone thinks like you do, so they don’t think about things the way you do.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s funny.”
“Well, when you tell someone about the way you see it, it can be wildly entertaining.”
“But when I say it, I don’t think it’s funny,” he said.
“For those of us who like seeing things in new ways, though, it can be extremely funny,” I said. “It’s a good thing to be funny without trying. People aren’t laughing at you; they’re laughing at the way you describe things, because the way you describe things can be very interesting.”
“I guess,” Shane said. “But I’m not sure why sometimes I’m funny and sometimes I’m not.”
“I think we all feel that way.”
I don’t know if he understood what I was saying, or even if he’ll remember talking about it.
But I sure have loved spending time with him, laughing when he’s trying to be funny, and when he’s not.
Shane helps me see the world in a whole new way.
It happened again. With Dylan in day camp, I went back to my old ways.
His “camp” is an electronic music extravaganza, so he is working in the classroom all day.
Being “in the classroom” means he has to focus.
I got up early, and worried that he wouldn’t be ready in time. The first day, I checked on him in the bedroom. The second and third day, I checked on him in the bathroom. He was late, I knew, and I pushed.
Then I went downstairs and started making breakfast. I made sure he had his vitamins and plenty of water. I pulled out some coffee for him. I made sure he had a breakfast that was rich in animal proteins, so his vitamins would work properly. I gave him a pack of gum, asked if he wanted any snacks, and panicked when he wasn’t in the car on time.
And today, only three days into my coddling behavior, I blew up.
“NOT ONLY ARE YOU LATE EVERY, SINGLE DAY,” I screamed, “BUT YOU DON’T EVEN SAY ‘THANK YOU’!”
“It would be better if I did everything myself,” Dylan said. (He did not scream.)
“FINE!” I screamed back. “THEN DO EVERYTHING YOURSELF AND I WILL JUST SIT IN THE CAR AND WAIT FOR YOU!”
“Okay,” he said. “But you’ll be doing everything for me again in no time.”
Sigh.
These are not new words. My throat has hurt from this exact screaming speech before. This is certainly not new territory.
So why, I wonder, did I go back to my old behavior so easily? Why do I insist on doing everything for him, even now that he is old enough, and quite capable, and even eager to do things on his own?
Having pondered this only briefly, one thought stands out. Maybe it’s because Dylan is my baby, and I use him to make myself feel needed. When I feel needed, I feel better about myself.
But this is not okay. Using him for anything is not okay, let alone for my own self-esteem.
And I know it’s not okay, so I back off to an appropriate distance most of the time.
Then he goes to day camp, and I go kerplooey.
Maybe I need to get another dog.
When I was growing up, I wanted to have a whole slew of kids. I believed that life was like The Brady Bunch and that I could choose three boys and three girls of my own. I always wanted a huge family.
I picked names out for the boys. All my life, I only had names for boys. In my college years, I decided I wanted to have six boys.
When I actually (finally) got married and had kids, I ended up with 2.5 boys. My stepson is totally awesome, but since I do not “parent” him, I usually exclude him from my blog. I was thrilled to watch him grow into the fine young man he is today, but he never, ever needed me. He had two perfectly wonderful parents of his own.
I like to be needed. For me, it’s what parenting is all about – even if it means being needed from a distance.
Now that I have kids of my own, and since I am too old to have any more, I regularly consider whether or not I really want another baby.
And when I really allow myself to ponder the question, I realize the sad and shocking reality.
I do want another baby. In fact, I want more than one. I still want (at least) those other four kids.
I want them in the worst way.
I regularly wish I had gotten married about 15 years earlier, so I could have had more kids. My husband didn’t want more children – and I was, of course, nearly 40 when I had my second child. Bill was worried about money mostly, and retirement. He’s ten years older than me.
I even considered adoption because of my age but, for us, that didn’t make any sense. So we got a dog instead.
Still, it makes me sad to know that I only have 2.5 kids, when I really wanted more. I don’t have that Brady Bunch life with kids all over the place. My boys are nearly grown, and there aren’t any new kids to replace them as they leave home. I wish it weren’t almost over, like it is.
It makes me sad that I waited so long to have kids. To be fair, I had no choice but to wait, in order to marry the right guy for me.
But still. It makes me sad that there was a gaping hole in my life for so many years, and I didn’t even know it was a gaping hole.
Or more accurately, it makes me sad that I tried to fill a gaping hole for many, many years – but didn’t realize that giving my time to my children was a more worthwhile endeavor than any of the ideas I had in my youth. My ideas for gaping-hole fillers were utterly pointless.
I am old now, and I know this. I didn’t know anything then.
I guess I feel the gaping hole coming back, as the kids are growing up. And to be honest, I don’t have any idea what to do with it now.
Dylan has been practicing his driving with Bill.
He’s driven for a couple of hours, and Bill told me Dylan has been doing really well.
I have not been practicing with Dylan. I didn’t think I could take it.
But Dylan has been acting responsibly.
For a teenager, Dylan is acting really responsibly. He’s been getting up on his own – and getting ready for the day. When he wants to do something, he looks at the calendar and figures out a time to do it. Then he asks. He knows which days he has to work – even if he doesn’t know his whole week’s plan – and he lets us know when he’s ready to go (on time). He usually even gets in the car with his stuff. If I give him a note with times that we need to do things, he sets reminders on his phone so he knows when to be ready.
So when he worked for hours last night (although he forgot to wash his uniform beforehand), and then he got in the car and asked to drive…
I said, “NO. You have to be kidding. Forget it. No way.” It was nearly midnight, and the road from his work to our home is mostly two- to three-lane highway which, not coincidentally, was also undergoing construction. I made all of these points very quickly.
And Dylan works at a concert venue. The concert had let out for the evening, so getting out of the area was an extra challenge. Nearby roads were closed for about a mile, except for those covered with special police crews directing traffic. Pedestrians swarmed places where pedestrians don’t normally swarm, and cars were stopped in long, long lines.
“I know a better way to go,” Dylan said. They say that people with ADHD would make great lawyers, because they are constantly negotiating.
“No,” I said. “I don’t need a better way to go. I need less stress and that means I will drive.”
So I drove – until we were about a mile from our house. Then I stopped the car.
“Ready to drive?”
“Okay,” he said, and got carefully into the driver’s seat. He made seat adjustments and checked the lights and put the car in neutral and slowly hit the gas. The car didn’t go.
“It’s in neutral,” I said.
He was already on it.
He put the car in drive, and pulled out. He drove slowly and carefully, like a new driver is supposed to drive. He knew when to turn on his turn signal (and did) and hit the brakes gently when he needed to come to a stop. When he got to a red light, he braked just behind the appropriate line.
I held my breath the entire time. My heart was stuck in my neck. But I tried not to say anything panicky.
And it worked. Dylan drove all the way home without incident, and parked the car in the garage perfectly.
My son is learning to drive.
We were at a hotel this weekend, and I wanted to give Shane an opportunity to “take charge.”
“Here’s the key,” I said, tossing him the key card in its envelope. “You can let us in.”
“Okay,” Shane said. We got off the elevator.
“Which way do we go?” I asked. “What’s the room number?” A large, handwritten “504” was inked with bold, black marker on the envelope.
Shane took the card out of the envelope. He turned the card over a few times.
“I don’t see any room number,” he said.
“Where else might the number be?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He put the card back in the envelope. I could see the black marker from where I stood, four feet away.
“Do you see any numbers on there at all?” I asked.
He fumbled for another minute. He hemmed and hawed. He turned the card over and over, flipping to and from the black-marker “504.”
Finally, with great pride, Shane said, “504! It says 504!”
We started walking toward our room.
Then Shane said, “I thought it said, ‘SOY.'”
When I looked back at the envelope, indeed the “5” looked like an “S” and the “4” looked like a “Y,” so I could clearly see the word, “SOY.”
Why on earth, I thought to myself, would a key card say SOY?
Sometimes, though, it just doesn’t matter. We laughed about the SOY card all weekend long.
Getting old is not easy.
I ran into some friends last week. We talked about our health issues, our friends’ health issues, and our friends who recently died.
“The days of weddings and baby showers are over,” I said.
“Yeah,” someone agreed. “Now it’s just funerals.”
I’m on my way to one such funeral – but this time, it hit closer to home. This time, it’s my uncle – my dad’s older brother – who is gone.
And that’s what it feels like; he’s just gone. He always lived far away from me, but he was always there when we went to visit. Now he’s not even there, and quite honestly “gone” just doesn’t seem fair, or right. It doesn’t even make any sense.
But I tried to make sense of it to my kids – to explain the sadness – so that they would understand.
I looked at them: 13 and 16 years old, full of energy and life, questioning how things are, who they are, brimming with excitement for the next challenge. They don’t really know – thank God – what it’s like to have a close family member die.
“It’s very hard,” I told the boys. “Because you don’t feel different when you’re older. Your body may look different, but your mind and your soul are the same. You don’t change that much by getting older, except on the outside. Your feelings don’t change.”
They looked at me blankly. Shane looked at Dylan, to see what he might do. Then I remembered: Shane idolizes his older brother. Every breath that Dylan takes has meaning for Shane.
Like many younger brothers, my dad idolized his older brother, too. In fact, he still does – and why not? His brother was an awesome man.
For years and years and years – for his whole life – my dad has turned to his brother for advice, ideas and conversation. And now, that decades-long conversation is over.
There is no replacement for that.
But how do you explain that to someone who hasn’t lived long enough to appreciate it?
“Shane,” I said. “It would be like if Dylan died.”
I saw a flicker of understanding on Shane’s face – and another flicker on Dylan’s – like they’d been smacked hard, but very briefly, in the face.
“Oh,” Shane said. Dylan looked down at his phone.
They didn’t say much about it after that.
And I didn’t have much more to say.
With the kids at camp, I roll out of bed every morning whenever I want. I stay up as late as I want, too. I don’t have to get up and feed them, or take them somewhere, or go anywhere with them.
So I eat whatever I want, wherever and whenever I want. I go wherever I want, whenever I want. I could have gone on a three-day cruise, and the kids wouldn’t even have noticed.
But I did not go on a three-day cruise. In fact, if I were to go on a cruise, I would want to take the kids with me. They would love that. I would love that.
Instead, I am rolling around in my bed till 10 a.m., with absolutely no reason to get up. I don’t see any reason in the world to get out of that bed. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody needs me.
Luckily, I have a dog, or I might have been in that bed all week.
I get up and let the dog outside, feed her, watch her go back to her position next to me on the floor. She sleeps all day.
Now I see why.
No one depends on the dog. If anyone says, “Let’s go!” she leaps to her feet and gets in the car first. But if no one says “let’s go,” she just sleeps.
I’ve discovered that I can’t stay in bed for more than ten hours without getting a headache. And I don’t enjoy all that sleeping. I just don’t have anything better to do.
This is one week out of my life. It feels like a life utterly wasted, but with softball season over and my husband back at work and my job taking place during the school year, I have absolutely no reason to be.
This does not bode well for when the kids move out. In fact, I sense impending doom.
The kids were ecstatic after summer camp last year. They clamored into the car, smiling and chatting non-stop for the entire ride home. They were joking, deeply philosophical, funny, and mature. Both boys had grown at camp – in a very good way.
So, after camp last summer, we signed up the kids for the following year. By doing this, we saved $100 each, and scheduled our low monthly payments to be automatically paid with a credit card so we wouldn’t have to think about it.
And we didn’t think about it – at all. In fact, when we changed the kids’ schedule from Week 2 to Week 4, we didn’t even notice that the automated payments stopped.
So when the deadline for payments was looming, and I discovered a hefty amount was still waiting to be paid, I kind of freaked out.
I called the camp. “We thought it was paid off,” I said. “We don’t know what happened! What can we do? Is there some way we can still pay in installments?” We had just come back from a very expensive vacation, and suddenly paying two almost-entire camp tuitions seemed rough.
“This is odd,” said the camp representative. “It looks like your automated payments stopped when your kids changed from Week 2 to Week 4. I’m not sure why it did that. Let me look into it and call you back.”
A few minutes went by. She called me back.
“We are so sorry,” she said. “The system just didn’t transfer over automatically like it should have.”
“That’s okay,” I said, “but what can we do? If we could have another month….”
“No, no,” said the woman. “We really appreciate you pointing out this glitch in our system. To thank you, we’d like to take care of the balance for you.”
“What?!” I nearly toppled over in my chair. “That really isn’t necessary!”
“We want to pay the balance for you. If you hadn’t pointed this out, we wouldn’t have known it existed, and you’ve kept this from happening in the future. We are happy to pay off your balance in full.”
They paid hundreds of dollars for my kids to go to camp this year. I couldn’t thank them enough. And while I tried, and wrote them letters, and thanked them profusely, I think a plug for this incredible camp is in order.
My kids love this camp. The counselors are phenomenal; the activities are thrilling, and the electronics-free zone gives the kids a chance to experience life the way it should be experienced: actively, in the outdoors, with new friends, with all the necessary comforts and all the freedom they require.
Maryland’s River Valley Ranch is an absolutely fantastic place.
