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Frying Pan Park

Frying Pan Park

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As soon as I pulled into the gravel parking lot, I knew it was a mistake. I hadn’t been to this farm park since the girls were young. I was missing them enough as it was. What was I thinking of?

Some sort of therapy, I suppose, the kind where anxious folks expose themselves to ever-increasing doses of what they fear. So I hopped out of the car and started my “treatment.”

There was the big barn where we’d admire the baby pigs and the field where we’d watch the young goats rut and run. There was the chicken coop, the old tractor, the field where the pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys (given to several American presidents, who chose not to slaughter them) now run free.

Mostly there were the shadows of my three daughters. One running ahead, a second clambering on a fence and the third holding her nose because “this place really stinks, Mom.” For a moment the memories overcame me and I had to stop and compose myself.

As I stared at the light on the early fall fields, a young father raced ahead of me, his two children pulling on his arms. He looked harried and hassled — and seeing him helped me remember the high drama of those days, the endlessness of them. My trips to this park were often out of desperation.

But I also recalled the way it felt to pull in the driveway after one of our outings, secure in our togetherness, feeling, as I rushed to start dinner, that everything was exactly as it should be.

Shopping Alone

Shopping Alone

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It had been two weeks since I’d shopped for groceries. Two weeks of eating the ultimate leftovers, what’s left in the freezer after the kids have gone. But having exhausted most staples, I headed for the store.

I begin in the dairy aisle. No gallon of skim, just a pint of whole milk for my tea.

I skip the cold cuts, the Lunchables, the Fruit Rollups.

No candy or cookies or crackers. No goldfish! Kid cereal successfully bypassed, too; I go for the granola instead.

Meat, eh! Fish, double eh! I even pass on pasta. I settle on salad and one of those rotisserie chickens, the kind someone else cooks for you.

Before I leave I move through the produce aisle. The pears, I always bought them for Celia. The apples, those were for
Suzanne. Claire has always loved melon.

So I buy all three — pears and apples and
melon — just for the memories, you understand.

(Photo: 123RF)

Back to School

Back to School

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They have new tennis shoes and big smiles. Their adventure is about to begin. But “they” aren’t mine.

It’s the first day of school in Fairfax County. But for the first time in 20 years it doesn’t matter. No kid of mine is boarding one of those big yellow buses. Or getting a ride or driving herself to school, either.

And this is fine.

I miss the little people my children once were. But I love the young adults they have become.

As for nostalgia, I’m channeling Alice Cooper:

School’s out for summer

School’s out forever!

(Celia on her first day of kindergarten in 2000.)

Empty and Full

Empty and Full

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Yesterday we drove Celia, the youngest, a few hours up the road to college. For the first time since we bought this house in 1989, I awoke to no children living in it.

Until this morning the adrenalin carried me along. The list-making and packing, trying to make her transition as smooth as possible. But now the adrenalin is gone. The children are, too.

All the years of other-oriented living, of pushing my own needs aside for theirs, they haven’t come to a complete halt, of course, but they have come to a new phase.

I think of those amusement park rides that begin with a slow boat float through a cool tunnel only to shoot riders down a channel of water with a stomach-churning drop and a plume of spray.

What I thought would be easy turned out to be hard. Very hard. And at the end of the ride (the end of one phase of the ride, I should say), I’m exhausted, curious, wistful.

I’m empty — but I’m also full.

The van on the return trip. Those bags are empty — but the car is full.

Two for the Road, One at Home

Two for the Road, One at Home

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Yesterday I haunted the Air France website, checking first to see that Celia’s flight to Paris had arrived, then to see if her flight to Africa had taken off and, finally, to be sure that it had landed.

It did! She arrived in Cotonou, Benin, on Beninese Independence Day. Her big sister was waiting for her. What seemed preposterous two years ago — that I would have even one daughter in Africa — is now even more so. I have two!

Two girls on an adventure, two girls buzzing around on the backs of motorcycles (trying not to think about that part), two (girls) for the road.

Luckily, I also have a daughter who travels more conservatively, who even as a toddler would ask, “How we get home, Mama?” when we were on vacation.

We need both types: the micro and the macro. The ones on the road and the ones waiting for them back at home.

Scentscape

Scentscape

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Walking through a field of clover the other day, I caught a whiff of childhood. The sweetness of the  purple flower mixed with the aroma of cut grass, loamy earth and hot sun. The scents were radiating from below, up past my knees and into my nose.

But there was a time when those smells didn’t have as far to travel. A time when I was closer to the ground. We all were.

No wonder, then, that the world was full of fragrance. That we were storing up a lifetime of olfactory memories and triggers, a scentscape.

It was the world, and we were just coming alive to it. And it can be there for us again. Just take a deep breath.

One Year and Counting

One Year and Counting

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Suzanne left for Africa a year ago today. She packed a large bag and a small bag and slipped out by rail to Philadelpia. (“That was a very emotional goodbye for a trip from Washington to Philadelphia,” another passenger said as they were boarding the train.)

From Philly she went to New York, Belgium and Benin. For the last ten months she’s made her home in a small village on the edge of the Sahel. She teaches school, and this summer is working in a girls’ camp and at a health clinic. She is completely immersed in village life. She loves the people and they love her. She’s the happiest person I know. 

The months that led up to her departure crept by in slow motion, like time does on a roller coaster inching up that first hill. Now we’re on the downward slope. It hardly seems possible that Year One has passed. It now seems entirely possible to make it through Year Two.

Still, I seem to miss her more and more. Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays and, ten days ago, a graduation — all without her. The phone keeps us together, a family of the air, and that will have to do.  But now that she’s almost halfway done, I’m allowing myself to dream of a time when we’ll all be together again. Even being on the same continent will do.

Last Day of School

Last Day of School

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Graduation is behind us, so why do I care?

Because it’s a ritual, I guess. Because this is the last day the big yellow bus will come to our corner for two and a half months.

Because Fairfax County Public Schools close for the summer today and when they reopen in September it will be the first time since 1994 that one of my children isn’t enrolled.

This is a good thing, of course, what is supposed to be. But today, just a brief backward look, not of longing or of regret, but of fullness, significance. A nod to time passing. A nod to change.

A Dad, Dancing

A Dad, Dancing

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I’ve learned through the years that dancing is one of the most embarrassing things you can do in front of your adolescent children.

But like so many delightful reversals of age, that all changes. At this point in my life, to see a parent dancing is encouraging and endearing.

Though my father would rather be jitterbugging to Glenn Miller, he recently took his cane out for a spin and bounced along to the Beatles.

So here’s to fathers everywhere, especially fathers dancing.

Graduation Day

Graduation Day

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All you really need is a camera and some tissues. At this point the graduate will take care of everything else. Processing in, taking a seat and, when her name is called, shaking hands and receiving her high school diploma. But to get to this point has been a group effort. It always is.

When I graduated from high school I didn’t understand what the fuss was about. Celia is probably feeling the same way. Milestones don’t mean as much when the years they mark are so few that they  get along fine without them.

But parents of graduates know better. They know that rituals take us from one place to another. They know there are few moments when you can say that one thing has clearly ended and another has clearly begun.

High school graduation is such a moment.

So, hats off to the graduates … and (if I may say so) to their parents, too!