The Wonderwheel

There was really only one problem with this week’s trip to Michigan, and that is the fact that we had to leave today.  The boys were bawling first thing this morning when they woke up, desperately sad that it was our last day.  It is a small consolation that we’ll be back again next year.  And, really, who wouldn’t be devastated to leave a place where you can play hide n’ seek with your cousins and brother for a full hour, devising new rules such as having to kiss and hug each other every time someone is found?

We managed to squeeze some last bits of fun in before hitting the road; we headed back to St. Joseph to wander the small downtown, take the boys to the bookstore, eat lunch, buy them a huge cookie to share from the farmer’s market, and then run around at the playground at Silver Beach for a while.  It was hard to drag ourselves away from scenes like this and this.

The mood in the car heading away from our vacation was quite far removed from the one shared on the way there.  This dawned on me when I realized that I hadn’t packed any books or magazines for myself in the front seat (on the way to Michigan I read a New Yorker magazine cover to cover and started a new novel, already in relaxation mode), nor had I checked to see if I had the correct adapter to run groovy tunes from my iPhone through the car stereo.  With three bikes on the back of our station wagon, there was no getting into the back of the car.

Lyle didn’t nap at all on this car trip either, but rather than exclaiming things like, “I CAN’T WAIT TO GET TO MICHIGAN!!!” over and over again, he screamed things like, “MY BUTT IS ITCHY AND I CAN’T REACH TO SCRATCH IT!!!!” (among other things) which eventually resulted in Matt having to pull over in the hellishly ugly industrial wasteland of Gary, Indiana to actually get the kid out of the car and, yes, take care of that itch.  A guy even stopped to hit Matt up for change in the midst of this classy moment.   Let’s face it - vacation was O.V.E.R.

It did occur to me, however, as we drove into our own fair city a short while later, that summer was in full swing here at home.  The warm sun was shining, the beaches were packed, the Taste of Chicago was going on in Grant Park, and Chicagoans didn’t seem to have the slightest idea that we were an itchy gloomy little bunch.   I decided at that moment that when we got home and gave Lyle a chance to nap for a little while, we were going to the beach.   Why mope around at home when the good times could keep on rollin’?

And so we did.  We headed down our block, hung out with some neighbors, ate a picnic consisting of whatever we had left in the house when we went out of town, and played together as a foursome in the sand until the sun went down over the houses.  Matt ran across the street to the 7-11 for milk so that we wouldn’t have to hit the grocery store until tomorrow, and we had a great evening.

When it comes down to it, real life is not half bad.  Not at all.  Even Itchy and Scratchy the boys agreed.

Tea party with the 3-year olds.

 4th of July parade in South Haven.

 Hugging Clifford at the parade.  They called him over.

Getting busted by the grandparents for cheating at Uno.

The kids and dads dig a new channel at our beach on a daily basis.

Strangely, the kids aren’t half bad at Frisbee.

Ready for the 4th of July dinner.

Not pictured but critical to the day:

Removing a huge tick from Baxter’s scalp with my eyebrow tweezers.  I kinda hope that by not having a photo someday I will be able to think about this without becoming nauseated.

 Lifeguards: The Next Generation

Jumping in the Waves.

Playing Bocci on the lawn.

Riding the zip line.  The boy loves speed.

Posing together to humor their parents.

 Vacation Cereal.

Swinging with happy cousins.

Swinging with not-so-happy cousins.

Playing Pretty Princess.

Heading to space with Pikachu face paint.

Letting Matt paint my face. Okay, so it’s a bit faded.

Trying out wheelchair basketball.

Sometimes you read blog posts that are just…perfect.

You know the ones I mean: you sit there, staring at your screen in wonder, loving the way you just saw the world through someone else’s eyes.  Someone who writes really, really well.

I felt that way when I read this post by Looky, Daddy!.  If you didn’t click over the last time I instructed you to, please do so today.  In this case, I sat there stunned that someone had found exactly the right words and mood to express how I felt about California’s recent legalization of same-sex marriage.

So strongly did I feel about this that I actually looked into the steps required to give Looky, Daddy! a Perfect Post award for June.  I have sat here, on vacation, sitting at a table with my adult relatives who are debating at least 85 controversial topics as we all pound M&Ms.  Now that’s dedication.  Congrats, Looky, Daddy! on the first Perfect Post Awarded by The Wonderwheel.

Note: You can read the other Perfect Post Awards for June at Suburban Turmoil or Petroville.  It’s a great way to discover new blogs.  And then go back and read Looky, Daddy! again because he will never let you down.

Part of what I’m doing for myself this summer that’s creating more space in my life is giving myself a lot of time off.  Yes, yes, it’s true that if I don’t work there is no income, but if I don’t take some time off, I will become cranky and unproductive and that doesn’t serve anyone well.  If only I could figure out how to give myself paid vacation…

This week marks the first trip of the summer.  We are heading to the other side of this big blue lake to Michigan, where we will stay in the beautiful rental house by the beach with Matt’s family for the second year in a row.  The kids are out of their minds to get back there, and I don’t think it’s just because I allow them to have “vacation cereal” (as my brother and I called it when we were kids, allowed to have it on our summer trips to Cape Cod).  They have both hollered, “I’m having Fruit Loops on the first day!” multiple times.  God help us if their cousins have their eyes on those, too.  Their wish lists are long for these five days, and so we’ll be piling the bikes on the back of the car and bringing our floaties for the unsupervised beach front near the house, and probably pretending that the car breaks down as we pass McDonald’s on the way there.  Because that was one of the biggest deals of the past year, hands down.

And this year we’ll be watching the weather before going down to our beach.  Let’s hope this year’s stories from Michigan are a bit less dramatic.

Several months ago, the pastor of our Unitarian Universalist church gave an excellent sermon that resonated strongly with us.  A woman about our age and recently back from maternity leave after having her first child, she addressed the issue of “extreme living”.  Citing our culture’s deep fascination with “extreme” sports and various other highly esteemed extremes, she argued that a good many of us are involved in “extreme living,” including such favorites as Extreme Working, Extreme Spending, Extreme Drinking, and Extreme Eating.  She said it a lot more eloquently, but you get the idea.

She went on to discuss the importance of leaving margins in our lives.  A metaphor she used is that our lives ought to have margins around them, much in the way that a book page has margins, arguing that the text on a page would be far too difficult to read and even to understand properly were it not for those open, empty spaces around them.  When we are living our lives to the extreme - stretched to its very limits with no open spaces - we can neither see nor understand what we are doing.

Ah.  Right.  Ahem.

I haven’t had much in the way of margins in a long time, probably in about 5 years, but the good news is: I do this summer.  Every few months after our big move from San Francisco to Chicago two years ago, I have thought, “Now we’re settled!”  And then another six months go by, and I discover that we hadn’t been.  At all.  Perhaps six months from now I’ll look back on this summer and think, “P’shaw! I thought that was ‘settled‘?” but the difference in our lives and schedule from last summer to this one is tremendous.  I can’t get over how lovely it is.

What do I mean when I say I have margins in my life right now?  Well, it’s things like being more leisurely - and having longer workouts a few days a week - in the morning and not leaving the house until 8:30 or 9:00 for work since I’m not driving the carpool.  Not running Lyle to and from nursery school on my days off, and allowing him to nap as long as he’d like on those days, since we don’t have to go pick Baxter up at school at 3.  Having loads more time with the boys, and playing “road trucks” with Lyle on the floor multiple times a day.  I also rescheduled my clients when things got quieter for the summer so that two days a week my schedule is jam-packed but the third day I can work from home or get errands done, rather than driving down to the clinic.

It means that when Baxter learns to jump off the diving board, I have time to dig out my childhood photo album and show him photos of me jumping off the high dive when I was a few years older than him.  He loves this, and spends a long time poring over my childhood album, connecting with my experiences and laughing about photos of his uncles and aunts as small children.  When he asks for a photo to be taken of himself jumping so that he can “show [his] own kids someday when they learn to jump off the diving board”, I remember to bring the good camera and take such a picture for this purpose.  I am thinking straight and am able to do lots of fun extras.

Because I am spending the mornings with Lyle instead of sending him to school right now, he naps on my days off: he’s not clamoring for that time with me.  This means that, with Baxter reading entire chapter books in a 2-hour sitting (thank you, Animorphs), I can lie down and read a book or even fall asleep for one of my 10-minute cat naps while Lyle sleeps, something that has never happened before.  Some nights I even go to bed earlier than 11pm.  Blissful.

I’m still behind on things.  I will always be behind on things.  I also have major changes coming up in my practice in the next few months and I am going to be operating outside my comfort zone in multiple ways.  I am aware of an undercurrent of anxiety about these things because I am having stress dreams for the first time in years.  But having some margins in my days - not living life to an extreme - leaves me feeling relaxed enough not to be concerned about that.  Things will get done.  My comfort zone will shift to include all of the new things I’m going to be doing; I have great support people in place to help me with each new endeavor.

From this vantage point, where I am not over-committed all day every day, I can see the text of my life.

I’ll be fine.

I just added a nifty bit of code to my home page ( on the top right of this page).  It appears to be a “guest talk widget”, which I assume means you don’t have to be on gmail to use it, but we’ll see how it works.

If I’m available, you’ll get the green light.  Stop by and say hello!

NOTE:  Now that three readers have stopped by for a lovely series of chats, I can tell you that it works.  I also have the following request: identify yourself to me before we chat!

Riding my bike through the leafy sun-dappled streets of my neighborhood at 6:15 this morning en route to the gym, I had a lovely experience.  Two different middle-aged men paused on the sidewalk to greet me with a smile and a hearty “Good morning!” as I rode past them, our paths intersecting for all of one second.

This was not creepy: they didn’t want anything.  There was nothing lascivious about their tones (which is not always the case in a big city - I’m not always this lucky).  It was a simple greeting, much like you’d get on your way into church as someone smiles and shakes your hand.  I responded in kind, thinking how improved my morning was for these brief interactions with strangers.

I thought about this again as I biked back home later, and decided that I would make an effort to do the same.  As I passed other bikers and pedestrians on the streets and alleys around my neighborhood, I smiled and gave them a cheery “Good morning!”  Previously tired and passive-looking citizens on their way to work broke out in smiles and automatically returned the greeting.

Not a single other person in this string of interactions looked anything like me.  Faithful to the demographics of this neighborhood, they and their ancestors hailed from all over the world.  I was struck by how the simple act of saying “Good morning” to strangers in my neighborhood left me feeling more connected to my community and the world at large.

Good morning, Wonderfriends!

Pass it on.

Does anyone remember this post?  You know, the one in which I waxed poetic about swooping in and rescuing an overtired, fussy 3-year old from his lonely bed and letting him sleep with me?  Because these years go too fast and he’ll remember what a sweet mama I am in his heart someday?

Okay.  Listen up:

DON’T LISTEN TO A WORD I SAY.  Even I knew it was a mistake that night, but I did it anyway.

Because if I thought that getting him to separate from me and go to sleep was difficult before that night, I was drunk.  You hear me?  Drunk.

He now tries to coerce me into all of the following, in varying order depending on the night:  a) sleeping on his floor with him all night; b) sleeping with him in the playroom bed all night; c) sleeping with him in my bed all night. And if I say anything that does not end in “sleep with you all night”, I am doomed to huge heaving sobs and screams that would wake the dead.  He has not yet made himself sick, but we were damn close tonight.

All of this is wildly unpleasant for the 7-year old who inhabits the top bunk.  My new secret weapon is to send him out of the room to the playroom bed “so he can get some sleep” (as if anyone within a 20-mile radius would sleep under these conditions), which sends the 3-year old into cataclysmic spasms of insanity.  After about 10 minutes tonight, it was so worth having the big guy back where he belonged in the top bunk that it was suddenly a far smaller deal that I wouldn’t sleep on his floor all night.  That was an unexpected bonus.

And that 7-year old?  He is the BEST sport about all this crap, you have no idea.  He’s like a pawn in the whole business, but he loves when I go out and sit by him, rolling my eyes and asking his advice.  I would listen, too, if I could hear his voice above the screaming and yelling.

If DCFS comes and hauls me away tonight, will you go to bat for me? Tell them it took everything in my power, but I didn’t lay a hand on that boy; truly, I didn’t.  I actually only raised my voice once (but it was LOUD).  And since they were tired enough for an early bedtime, he was asleep by 8:15, in the end.

Does that mean I won?   Because it sure doesn’t feel like it.