I left my heart in Lilliwaup

*As a writer, I was always taught to remove myself from my subject so as to avoid sappy, over-emotional pieces. Sorry. No can do this time. Proceed carefully, this has the potential to go knee deep.

Sleepaway camp seemed like such a great idea in the doldrums of Winter when Maddie and Parker were fighting like cats and dogs, it was pouring rain outside, we'd played 'Sorry' innumerable times, seen every episode of Hannah Montana and our waistlines couldn't stand another cookie-baking-and-decorating activity.

But we dropped Maddie off Sunday for 4 days and 3 nights of Girl Scouting adventure in a picturesque spot at the foot of the Hood Canal - Camp Robbinswold.

The past few days find me attached to my cellphone and when home, toting around that phone, too. I am a wreck! Nighttime has been the worst for all of us. Parker looks out the window and says a prayer for Maddie's safety, Eric and I can't even talk about it, we get lost in books or ESPN and hope to drift off to sleep.

I'm better than day one, where I cried at any mention of Maddie, daughters, Moms, camping, college... You can imagine how fun I was to be around, especially since the house is testosterone central this week. I know this is just the first of many, many, independent adventures for her. We are all looking forward to hearing her stories and seeing her pictures and just having her light in our house again.

As we left, I heard an exchange that I've been replaying all week. She introduced herself to a girl that was there alone (most campers came in pairs): "Hi. I'm Maddie, this is my friend Amy. You should bunk with us. It's going to be awesome!"

You REALLY should write these down...

Somehow, I've ended up with kids that say and do some of the most outrageous things - even on the scale of kidspeak. Sometimes I think Art Linkletter could have saved himself a lot of time and just come to hang out with Maddie and Parker.

So, the latest experience that has me shaking my head and wondering what I've done to karma happened yesterday at the public swimming pool in front of about 50 parents.

Parker, who has been taking swimming lessons for THREE years now, has just this week decided that he is terrified of the water. Day one of lessons was alright, a little panic, but still had a kickboard to hang on to as he made his way across the pool. After class that day, he grabbed his towel, stood in front of Eric and I and announced, "No kickboards tomorrow. I'm probably just going to drown." (NOTE: He can swim - he has been for 2 summers now. He's forgotten this.)

So after enjoying his "last meal" (a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats), we headed off to his execution. Parker jumped in the pool and immediately popped back up to tell me he wasn't feeling well. "You can do it!" I encouraged from the full bleachers. And he started out. He made it 90% of the way across, literally one of his own body lengths away from the other side, began treading water and yelling that he was drowning(his head never went under water). His teacher shoved him to the wall and he climbed out. Because of the screaming and thrashing, we had the attention of the entire audience.

I pulled out every parenting theory I'd ever heard about. I sat on the deck, hugged, encouraged, cooed at, coaxed, threatened, grounded, everything short of beating him and throwing him back in. All to no avail. So we headed back to sit and watch his class and I told him he was going to have to call his Dad and tell him what happened, this he found the most upsetting. Here we stood in front of the aforementioned full bleachers and Parker began to scream -

"You don't care about me! You want me to die in the pool! You don't care about me at all! You wish I was dead! You don't even love me. You would be happy if I drowned!"

So I've been found out. I had a son just so I could have him killed in the community pool.

As you can imagine, I received SOOO much helpful advice from several parents in the stands and filthy, dirty looks from several others.

Does anyone know when the ballots are available for Mother Of The Year?

NPR: Walking in the Light

Paul Thorne wrote this essay and read it last Sunday on the NPR program Walking in the Light. Here's link to the essay, but I encourage everyone to listen to it in his voice.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91740464

75 Days... not that I'm counting

We officially have 3rd and 1st graders! Maddie and Parker finished up their school years yesterday.

It is only the first day, but I am wondering if we've made a mistake planning our family vacation for the Fall...

We will get into a groove, I just hope it isn't a rut of arguments and sibling bickering followed by me screaming at the children and kicking them out of the house. Who's with me? Anyone? No?

September 3rd, here we come!

It was colder in Siberia...

YESTERDAY!!! Yup. 56 here, 61 there. How much of this can we endure? It's such a long, cold Spring, I keep wondering if we can go back and accept that Maryland job... It's mid-June and we still have the hot tub turned up over 100, and it's too cold!

What keeps us going is Eric's reignited baseball "career". Yes, Eric and yes, hardball. He joined the Liberty Bay Pirates this year. It's a national league for 18-50 year old men who don't want to play slow pitch. They've got wood bats and throw-back unis. We've outfitted ourselves with catcher's gear a go-go and he's out there recapturing age 18 again... Maybe with a few more aches and pains, but having fun none the less.

As a matter of fact, they had their first game this weekend and beat the South Kitsap Reds 11-2! Eric, solid as ever, went 3-5 with 2 singles(one was technically an error, but who's technical?) and a double. Fun to watch, fun to see him having such a blast.

He keeps telling me how good it feels to get out there again. Finally, he convinced me to take some batting practice off the machine. Now, it's been 15 years since I've done this. My ever-patient son sat at shortstop loudly whispering, "Strike 8... Strike 9..." Before I told him to shut up. Pathetically, it took me at least a dozen pitches to just tick one off. But then, I did. The first few were grounders that could have been fielded by any SS over 4 1/2 feet tall, luckily we didn't have one of those.

At one point, the kids were talking out in centerfield and I hit one squarely at them and (formerly) secretly took great joy in yelling out, "HEADS!" Then I had a flash back to these babies that I carried and cooed over, protected from all things scary or dangerous, and here I was hitting hardballs at their heads with an aluminum bat. Know what? One week later, still kinda funny. As a side note, always good to let your kids know you have tricks up your sleeve that they would never have imagined. They knew I'd played at some point in my looong life (but who cares what she did before we were born?) but had never seen it. Anyway, it gave me a touch of legitimacy when I boss them around. And it felt good.

Pirates game #2 this Saturday at Snider Park (where the kids play and I used to go watch Eric when we were first dating.) Talk about your trip down memory lane. Wish them luck and loose hamstrings.

Lessons from Parker

Parker is about a week out of his baseball season and has moved on to being Eric's team's official batboy. Whatever it takes to make the next 9 months pass between seasons. He get to attend his first baseball camp this summer with a group of team buddies from this year and last. He's jazzed beyond belief!

Our boy batted a .791 on the season with only 2 strikeouts in 43 at bats! As excited as Eric is by this number, I feel the wet blanket side of my personality rising up to wonder how long a kid can keep that up? No. No. No. The right response is that he'll only continue to improve, right? :)

He had a lot of fun this year, regardless of wins or losses. It was a lot of fun to watch because on our team, we tended to get a little caught up in scores and wins. But Parker never really cared about that. He celebrated great plays, by both himself and his team equally. He loved a good solid hit, a fast run. He probably walked away from 75% of the games asking, "Did we win? It felt like we won." Not that it mattered. Pretty great attitude, not just for the ball field either...

The Aisle Not Taken

I ran into a friend yesterday that I hadn't seen in a couple of years. We were very close in high school. We used to have the best time together.

But yesterday, here I was in the grocery store after picking Maddie up from school. Parker had just woken from a nap and I had carried him, shoeless, out to the car. Maddie was looking particularly haggard due to PE and I had just finished mowing the lawn (hadn't changed, blades of grass still stuck to my feet). Isn't this always when you run into someone you haven't seen in a while?

Anyway, she is living this very cool, nomadic sort of life - flying off to find jobs around the world, wherever the mood strikes. She had just returned from one such jaunt and was planning on leaving again in a week or so.

I looked at my cart full of children, fruit snacks, juice boxes and milk and wondered about the paths we all take in life and how two people who had really been close could end up in such unrelatable places. I was a touch jealous at the footloose nature of her life, but Maddie was stroking my fingers as we spoke. It was all good.

We said our goodbyes, with the obligatory we'll-talk-soons and headed off again in our truly different directions.

But before we left the store, I wheeled my sweaty self and grubby kids over to one of the ethnic food sections to buy something for dinner...