Month: October 2015 (Page 1 of 7)

The kids  are coming home for a football game today. We’ll have two daughters, one son, one son-in-law, a boyfriend and a girlfriend here. Soon the house will be full and noisy, the dog will be leaping and whining with joy, and I will be cooking and eating, laughing and talking, then hurrying off to the game.

Afterwards we’re going to a local brewery to celebrate our victory (or, drown our sorrows), then  home for  Halloween festivities–caramel apples, spiked cider, pumpkin carving and maybe a scary movie (Alfred Hitchcock is my limit of scariness).

I’ll have candy ready for any trick-or-treaters that come, but with the 45 steep, dark stairs up to our front door, very few actually ring my doorbell. Usually it’s only the kids on the street that we know and later, teenagers with pillowcases bulging, rounding out their candy haul.

I’m dashing off a post today to finish off my 31 Days Challenge to post every day in October–I did it!

It was fun, it was a challenge–I was really dragging at about day 22–but it has been well worth the effort. It has helped me get past perfect-post anxiety, both in content and in proofreading (if you get my posts by email, I’m sure you noticed some typos before I caught and corrected them). To get them posted by midnight I had to hurry up my editing and just hit “publish.” A few times it was literally at 11:59 pm.

At the end, I find myself back at the beginning. My little nest is again full and busy today, but it will be quiet tomorrow. So, today I will enjoy my family, and tomorrow I can get back to reflecting and writing. It may not be every day, but it will be steady.

In the guest room closet, there are two big plastic bins: our costume boxes. They hold an assortment of hats, masks and clothes that we use for dress up days at school or any time someone needs a costume.

We pulled them out at the beginning of this week for my high school junior to cobble together outfits for Spirit Week.  The contents were spread over the queen-size bed and picked through every morning as he was putting the finishing touches on the day’s look.  I put them away today.

There’s a top hat, beard and tuxedo jacket that made a great Abraham Lincoln one year, and a rubber mask that looks like an old man–so realistic it’s creepy. There’s a tall green Goofy hat, a Jack Sparrow pirate hat complete with dreads, and Mickey Mouse ears from a Disneyland trip.

Three graduation gowns are in there, a red one, a yellow one and a black one from various graduations. My husband brought back a kimono from a trip to Japan; it has never been used as a costume but I keep it  because it would be a great one. A pair of white, feathered angel wings folds in half to store flat until needed.

There are three cowboy hats–two foam and one wool–a leather vest, bandanas and a cap gun.  Martial arts gear–two gees and various color belts–ended up here when they were retired from active use. There’s a billowy bridesmaid’s dress,  a girl scout vest full of badges, and two pairs of suspenders–one in a yellow preppy print, the other in red sequins. The yellow and red striped socks and  shiny beads with peace signs are gone,  currently in use for the final day of Spirit Week.

As I folded and tucked the contents back into their storage boxes, I pictured some of the great combinations that had been made from these pieces, and the fun we had transforming ordinary items into creative outfits.

The contents have changed over the years, from gowns and shoes, used almost daily when the girls were playing house with their play kitchen, to capes and masks for super heroes swooping around the house, to the strange combination of things now.

I’ll keep my costume boxes around for a while–at least until everyone graduates, and maybe longer . You never know when that pink kimono or  a graduation gown will be just the right piece.

Writing for so many days in a row is hard. This month of writing has been like a mental Jenga game. I have ideas and experiences in my mind, and I push them a little to see if they move. If they are solid, stuck in the pile, I keep tapping and nudging other ideas until one moves, and I can pull it out.

Then I start to write, and the memories flow and I start to see things differently. I begin to untangle how I feel and what matters to me. There’s a tall tower of stories as we near the end of 31 Days, and I’m still pushing on those blocks. Today, none of them seem loose enough to push out.

There are more stories and experiences I could write about, but today the words aren’t coming, the sentences are clunky and dry. Those stories aren’t ready to be told yet.

This is new. My full nest has occupied so much of my emotional and physical energy for the last 28 years that I never thought to nudge my thoughts and memories to see if they would come out in words on a page.

There were certainly plenty of words throughout those busy years, so much talking and listening and reading. Those were the stories that started stacking up in my mind, to be pulled out later, in no particular order it seems, the blocks in my mental Jenga game.

Some writers can’t help but write; they have stacks and stacks of journals and stories and poems. I have liked writing, and done it when I needed to communicate–emails, Christmas letters–but I never could maintain a journaling habit, or took the time to sit down and write just for the sake of being creative.

What I love about writing is the words themselves, the way the right words in the right order can create an image and communicate an idea in a way the captures a truth or a memory. Any form of them feeds me; I have been content to absorb them in listening and reading, and to share them in talking. Until now.

Maybe it’s because there are fewer people around all the time, less talking, less listening, and the stored up words and stories are starting to come loose. Maybe it’s that I want the stored up words in my head to be written down in case I don’t ever get a chance to tell them; I want to capture them for those who might want to know them.

I’m an observer, a gatherer; I’m not a person of quick, decisive action. I’m comfortable with indecision, always waiting as long as I can to make sure I have all the information. I’m a believer in waiting to see how a situation unfolds.

I’m not great in emergencies, I need time to think before I act. When a crisis arises, I’m the one saying, “Let’s take a step back.” When I say I have to think about something before deciding, I’m not trying to avoid commitment–I really do have to think about it.

In the relative quiet of my half-full nest, I am finally able to take my own advice to step back and evaluate the experiences and stories and words that have made up these beautiful, messy, crazy, fun years as the mom of a large family. I can move to a different perspective and see the connections, the patterns and the threads that run through our lives and tie us together.

Now is the time to write.

When you are one of six kids, your birthday is a big deal. It’s a special day, swirling with dreams of parties and gifts and being the star. It is one of the few days that you get to be the center of attention. I was very aware of the high stakes.

I tried to keep ahead of the hype by only having parties with friends every other year, and not starting slumber parties until age 10.  Even though I kept the festivities at a reasonable level, it was a feat of juggling to keep everybody’s parties, cakes, presents and expectations from crashing down.

My craziest birthday juggle was the June after my youngest was born. My kids’ birthdays are pretty evenly spaced, with the exception of the two June babies,  who are two years and one day apart.

The baby was three months old when my daughter turned five one day and my son turned three the next day. I had the brilliant idea to have two parties at once. For some reason, likely related to sleep deprivation and hormones, it seemed like a good plan.

We had a butterfly-themed party for my daughter and all her friends, and a truck-themed party for my son and all his friends at the same time. On the same day, in the same house. The main entertainment was a little plastic swimming  pool, a slip n’ slide and some sprinkler toys in the back yard. It might have worked beautifully if it hadn’t been overcast and chilly that day.

My oldest daughter made a cute  butterfly cake for the girls’ party, cutting a  9×13 cake into pieces and arranging them on a platter to look like wings. Decorated with frosting and candies, it was a sparkly, girly cake.

There was supposed to be a Twinkie in the center for the body, but I forgot to buy it;  we had to make a last-minute substitution. She was devastated that her creation wouldn’t be perfect, and made me promise never to reveal the terrible secret: We used a frozen fish stick instead of a Twinkie. Covered with frosting, no one knew, and we whisked it away before anyone could take a bite of it. (Sorry honey–it was time we came clean.)

The cake for the boys party was a little easier to pull off–we made a chunky chocolate cake and pudding concoction, loaded it up into a big, clean plastic Tonka dump truck and had a  Dirt Dump Cake that the little boys loved.

My mother came to help me feed everybody lunch, oversee the water fun, keep the gift-opening activities on track and hold the baby. I don’t remember much of the party, but I do remember my mother after everyone finally left, stretched out on the couch, sleeping with the baby in her arms.

There were many more parties over the years–scavenger hunts, bowling parties, park barbecues, ceramic-painting parties, Build-a-Bear trips, and even a food-drive party, with all the gifts donated to charity. At the end of  every birthday, I felt a sense of relief; whether all the birthday dreams had come true or not, we made it through.

By the time they got to high school, parties by mom were replaced by activities with friends, and I was more often the driver than the planner. Some of the older kids wanted to have a dinner and special evening alone with the parents–their birthday wish was some undivided time. Our household got smaller as the kids moved out, and the preferred birthday celebration became  just getting the family together for dinner and cake.

For some reason, birthdays bring with them expectations that are hard to even name; there’s a sense that something grand should happen to  mark the day, that it should be an especially fine day, full and happy. Too often, there are tears of disappointment or hurt rather than that glowing warmth that I want them to feel. It’s impossible to create a perfect day for them. The best I can do is try to tell them how loved and important they are to us with parties and gifts and songs.

Even though it’s hard to squeeze it into a busy day sometimes, I also try to tell them again the story of the day they were born. That, after all, is what we are celebrating, and for me and my husband, those days were as close to perfect as we can imagine.

My husband is a whistler. He can do clear bird calls, or loud, attention-getting whistles through cupped hands. I often hear him whistling tunes as he works. Early in our relationship, he started using a particular bird-like whistle with four short notes to get my attention when we were separated or in a crowd.

Over the years, it has been useful–the whole family has learned that when we hear that little tune, dad is nearby. It’s a beacon sound.

I whistled the call now as I was thinking about it. My quiet, breathy version doesn’t really sound like my husband’s crisp, strong whistle, but the dog still went crazy. He picked up his tennis ball and his chew toy to greet him, whining excitedly by the door. When there were no footsteps, he went to the front window. He heard the whistle; dad must be home.

We are conditioned to stop and look for him when we hear that–even the dog knows it. We didn’t plan to use the homing whistle. It just happened–I don’t really remember how it started. It just worked. Things like this are better when they aren’t planned, when they develop naturally from a need and a response.

Over the years, there have been countless situations when we got separated and needed to gather everybody together, or when we planned to meet and were trying to find each other. Sporting events, grocery stores, city streets, airports, Disneyland–anywhere we were together, someone was bound to get separated.

It’s comforting to hear the familiar sound and know that we are close to finding each other. It doesn’t feel like a summons or an alarm, like the school bell that signals the end of recess. It’s a happy, friendly sound, drawing us in.

Dad’s whistle can be heard above crowd noise or traffic, and over a distance. It’s not so loud or piercing that it’s startling or out of place, but I do notice people looking over when they hear it. Only once have I heard someone else use the same tune. When I heard it, I stopped to look around for my husband, and was surprised to see another family responding to the sound. I was surprised–how did they come up with the same one?–but I felt a camaraderie with them.

We spent many years gathering the family out of the crowd, whistling into the busyness to bring us all back together. Now we are seldom all under the same roof; I wish it was still that easy, to call them home to us with those four little notes.