The good old days

“Did you know birds can switch off half of their brain by closing one eye?”

That's my son. A font of interesting tidbits of information nonchalantly injected between each paragraph during our nighttime reading.

“That's how they can get rest and still be alert.”

I just finished the passage in Judy Bloom's “Superfudge,” wherein the title character, Fudge, is told by his parents that the pet Myna bird he received as a gift would definitely NOT be allowed to sleep in his bed.

“Birds don't really sleep standing up, you know," interjected my son. "They kind of squat. As long as their legs are bent, they are pretty much fastened on to their perch.”

Not only was my son taking issue with the author's facts about avian anatomy, but also her characters credibility.

“THAT kid is OUT of CONTROL! There is NO way in a MILLION YEARS a real, flesh and blood parent would let THAT kid have a bird. I could see them getting him a Beta fish, maaaaaybe, but definitely NOT a bird! It's irresponsible.”

I like to think it was a different era … one in which parents gave their kids more responsibility earlier.

“Back in the olden days,” I tell him (I like to use the phrase 'olden days' for nostalgia's sake) “Parents were usually pretty clueless … sometimes to the detriment of the unfortunate animals.

“That was before Betty White and the ASPCA. ... Before people called police if a farmer drowned a litter of kittens.”

The look in his bulging eyes told me I'd gone too far.

To him, the 'olden days' means being entranced by a red Muppet who spoke in the third-person and wore Pajama's 24/7; yet he assumes the olden days for me must have included Prairie dresses and horse-drawn wagons.

Honestly … I thought that way, too, especially when I found a picture of my mother standing next to a Freihoffer's Bakery horse.

“That was a novelty for the neighborhood … they mostly delivered by trucks back then,” my father had explained, noting the horse knew the route so well, he'd often walk a little ahead of the delivery man.

It was a story I'd heard so often I forgot the quaint memory wasn't first-hand.

Which may have been what I was thinking about when my dad gave my son of a vintage edition of Steinbeck's “The Red Pony,” as well as a Technicolor video for his ninth birthday.

“A boy and his pony … should be a heartwarm-y tale,” I said as we all sat down to watch Robert Mitchum and Myrna Loy make classic movie magic.

But as the kids become glued to all the wonders of late '40s movie special effects, I begin to remember what happened to children in the good old days …

You know … how they become orphaned and sent to work houses; or how their loyal yellow lab gets rabies and has to be put down. And how did I forget that the Brothers Grimm might have been more aptly named Brothers Grotesque in their original form?

Sitting there watching as the formula played out …

-- Lonely boy gets Red Pony as a gift

-- Red Pony gets loose

-- Red Pony is found

-- Red Pony gets sick

Wait? Did I even read “The Red Pony” or had I just pretended to have read it on some internet meme?

Better Google. ...

Turns out it gets worse:

-- Red Pony gets Trachiotomy

-- Red Pony escapes again

-- Red Pony dies in a canyon

And is eaten by vultures.

And there's more:

Farmhand feels so bad about the Red Pony situation he wants to kill his pregnant mare so he can give its foal to the boy.

What???? How was this even a children's book?

Of course, by the time I get all caught up, Little Tommy is covered in technicolor blood wrestling a vulture, and I can't turn off the TV fast enough.

“That was so scary, but that would NEVER happen!” announces my little zoologist. “Vultures have relatively weak legs and feet with blunt talons. One would never scratch a human like that.”

“I think Alfred Hitchcock would probably beg to differ.”

“Who's Alfred Hitchcock?”

“Another filmmaker from the olden days who made a bird movie. We'll probably watch that one next year.”

"Too bad I can't switch off my brain by closing my eyes."

An uncomfortable silence

Thanks to its ever-changing messengers, The News is a thing that enters my consciousness a sentence or two at a time. I used to devour it; now I can barely choke it down.

Each word more treacherous and painful than the next. There aren't enough cat videos to compensate.

I've long ago stopped reading the obligatory commentary that attaches to the end of every item like tentacles, growing unwieldy until it starts to tighten.

They are all surging rivers of discontent feeding an angry, roiling sea.

Instead, I use what's left of my psyche as a breakwater against the tide, and retreat into works of fiction.

We've often made it a family affair; selecting tomes that we can read aloud, and that will make us laugh, and cry, and cry some more until I feel a tiny sense of hope. I try not to let my anxiety seep through.

In this silence, a part of me can travel the world, meet people I imagine might be soul mates, and visit all the secret gardens I haven't the skills to tend. Surprisingly, I can also bring things back with me; things that change me just a little bit.

These stories make me feel off kilter and slightly groggy, but otherwise contented. It is a strange effect.

I can shut my eyes and cast off into a dreamless night.

It's only temporary.

The world has a way creeping in through the curtains, bubbling over like a wave before crashing into something else. It nudges this sleepy introspection, gently shaking me awake and into the current.

I wish I could say this awakening sends a jolt through me, enough to snap me back to some gasping-for-breath reality I must have had as a youth; anything that could stir my senses into frenzied action.

But I can not.

Sometimes knowledge weighs on me like a stone, dragging me down through the shimmer to the deep and dark.

No matter where I look, I can't see a clear way out. Do we tell the kids? Do we wait until they ask? Do we go around or through?

This uncomfortable silence is the new normal. More doors and locks to protect us from ourselves. The only thing I can do is keep holding my breath. 

Until the boy, on his way to school Monday morning, notices a flag at half staff.

I knew he hadn't overheard our whispers. He had been too busy with childhood to notice us with our coffee, heads down in our phones. The little attention he paid to our mouths covered by hands, came out as advice:

"Drink water. That's what I do if I try to eat something too hot."

But, now, in the car and with the neighborhood rolling along beside us, his eyes leaped from pole to pole, and the lowered flags worried him.

"Has someone important died?"

"Yes, dear. Many someones."

"Many? Were they Soldiers?"

"Yes, some of them were. And some were mothers or fathers or sons or daughters. People who will not come home to their families."

"Was it a war?"

"No, it was a nightclub in Florida."

He looked confused.

"An unstable man with a rapid-fire gun killed many innocent people."

"Oh, I thought we only lowered flags for the military."

"We lower flags to show national sadness.”

But it's not enough. It's just a sign of respect; it's not respect itself.

For the rest of the ride, we sit in silence, with tears, wondering what we can do.

Can't complain

How's it going?

Before you answer, I can assure you I know. I have access to the internet and a few spare seconds each minute to hit “refresh.”

I see the problems.

The Grand Old Party is likely to nominate a cartoon character and his punchline for president.

The Democratic presidential candidate wore a $12,000 suit to address the topic of income disparity.

And we're almost all Berned out anyway.

Besides we have so many more fires to tend in the outrage.

We have overly romantic notions of the past and an uneasy anticipation of the future.

We are still asking what she was wearing and what was he doing in that neighborhood? We want trigger warnings and trigger locks so we can continue to go off half-cocked.

We like to raise our voices. Point fingers. Puff up our chests until we are filled with equal parts anger and hot air. We are, after all, entitled to our opinions.

There are no accidents. There's only prevention, or persons responsible or blame.

Fat is good. Sugar is not only bad, it's toxic. "Natural" on a label means nothing. And there's mostly cow's milk in your sheep cheese. Welcome to marketing 101.

Oh, and Target knows more about you than you do.

I mean who can keep track anyway?

Oh … look, cute cat catches laundry.

Are those cupcakes? You found them on Pinterest?

Is it strange that I feel better?

The Internet has provided an exceptionally efficient way to “infect” change. With a virus … oh wait … I get that confused. Virus is bad. Viral is good. Unless it's bad. Neither really matters since it's all entertainment.

Mostly harmless. Fun.

For instance. …

Did you know today is National Sewing Machine Day?

Or is it tomorrow? I've gotten conflicting dates in my considerable research.

I just hope there's a parade. My Janome Hello Kitty ¾ craft sewer in sea-foam green would look lovely on a float. It might even win an award!

I'd say it would be buttoned up, but I'm not sure how that feature works.

And that's not all …

It's also National Audio Book Month and Perennial Gardening Month, which dovetail nicely since you can enjoy both activities at the same time. Something that is not the case with International People Skills Month butting up against National Zoo and Aquarium Month.

That could pose a problem ...

Wherever we meet in cyberspace this week we seem to define ourselves as kid people, or zoo people, or ape people. We cannot be all three if we want to keep our following.

Which reminds me …

It's National LGBT Pride Month. Which is awesome, but didn't appear up front in an internet behemoth's algorithm when I searched “National Holidays and Observances in June.”

Something doesn't seem right about that … Although it may have gotten lost in all the other things we could be celebrating:

*National Pet Preparedness Month

*National Accordion Awareness Month

*National Migraine Awareness Month

*National Sorgham Month

What? Sorgham? That can't be a thing …

It's also National Cataracts Awareness Month … so maybe I should get my eyes checked.

And whose idea was it to have National Dairy Month share the same calendar slot with National Dairy Alternatives Month?

If there IS a conspiracy, that right there is proof.

Conspiracies can be tiresome.

No matter. I have a solution!

Here, sign my petition. I think it will take the World Wide Web by storm.

I'm lobbying for the resurgence of “Can't Complain,” a floating holiday to be used at any time of the year, and especially when some idiot asks you “How's it going?”

And the cupboard was bare

The cupboard was finally bare, and Old Mother Hubbard had no plans to refill it.

"Ahem," she sneered at me from above her nose. "This is MY story ...

"And I just want to revel in the clean lines of my closet before you go ahead and tell it," she huffed and puffed with design-show flair.

It was quite a sight.

As she sat in the pretty, pre-teen room sifting through the remnants of her pre-pubescent life, I was gearing up for a post-teen apocalypse and assembling boxes to contain the remains. Though we had long-ago repainted the peptic-pink of her little-girl walls with two coats a tropical turquoise -- We pronounce the shade of bluish green tur-kwazzzzz to make ourselves laugh. .... "We bought our Tur-Kwazzzzz from Tar-Jhaaay. Ah-ha-ha-ha." -- she hadn't outgrown her belongings.

Every bit and piece we had pushed to the middle of the room and covered with a paint-speckled tarp found its way back into her life once the color had dried. And though I knew this reordering would be for a limited time only, the baby dolls perched silently on their old shelves, and plastic people with flocked fauna continued to congregate in their plastic houses. Each evening when I came to kiss her goodnight, they would have moved like magic. A rabbit under the bed. A doll at the desk. Miniature clothes hanging on drawer pulls and door knobs.

"Let's clean this up in the morning," I'd say, using what I thought of as The Royal "Us."

Only the threat of keeping her from being Belle Ball, would get the plebeian "She" to tidying.

A clean house is low on my priorities, too. I usually wait to nag until minutes before any nobles arrive.

So I had barely noticed how, slowly, over time, these trinkets started to disappear. Her door is always closed now, a barrier to the cats as we had agreed but also to prying eyes that might be none-too-excited about the scatter rug she's made out of her stash of barely-worn clothes.

I tried to remain calm with each offering she leveled with an outstretched hand. It was her job to sort, my job to pack. Slowly her abode would be emptied of coloring books, scented pencils and the big-eyed stuffed animals she had collected in droves. Tinctures and glittery tints she could apply to her face in the off-school hours are taking their place.

Until all that are left are the picture books.

As I began stowing the books, she's snatched one back.

"Oh ... I remember this. It was my favorite!"

Another favorite and a third made their way back to the shelf.

But in between, she would hand me volumes she no longer wanted (or needed) and I would have to decide: trash or treasure? With each book I would sigh. Every other breath, heavy on its release. I couldn't stop holding my breath.

For as long as she can remember, and no matter where we lived, she always had a library in her closet. A little nook that fit shelves of colorful books, and when she was small enough, a comfortable chair where she could lounge, swinging her legs in repose with an early reader.

Now she wanted to fill it with clothes.

Most of the collection I obtained during lunch breaks on payday at a book outlet on Fourth Street during the nine months she was baking. I read to her from Dr. Suess, and bell hooks, and Mother Goose as she gently kicked inside.

The petite platinum-haired woman at the counter would look up and smile as I came in every fortnight looking for pretty pictures and poetic prose I could use to narrate our lives: Goodnight Moon, ABCs, and One Two Threes, Mama Always Comes Home, My First Day of School, Felix Feels Better ...

I liked to watch her delicate fingers move as she searched for the penciled-in prices and re-form the stack.

I rarely spent more than an hour's worth of work.

She didn't seem to mind.

"Sleepy Pendoodle," my girl said with a snort, starling me out of my memories and handing me a dusty pink colored picture book with dreamy watercolor illustrations. "That's a silly title."

The binding made that satisfying crackling sound when I opened it as if it were stretching its spine after having been awoken from a long rest.

My eyes began to sting as I turned the pages. I felt the swish of a sleepy puppy, and a little girl with mismatched socks and sticking-out braids who would try to awaken him.

"Why did you get that book?" She asked after I had read it aloud one last time and slid the slim volume into the box.

"She was an unusual and lovely character," I answered. "She reminded me of you."

She was silent as her slender fingers reached into the bin and extracted "Pendoodle."

"I think I can find room for just one more thing."

Fight Club

There are only two major rules of Fight Club:

Number 1: You do not talk about fight club.

And Number 2: You DO NOT talk about fight club.

It seems simple, and logical, but in this day and age of InstaKvetch, we rarely hold back. Not talking isn’t the same as not speaking.

In the heat of the moment and its radiant aftermath, our anger overtakes us and we usually burst forth in a litany of protest.

We are not ourselves.

We are marriage's blind rage.

We are familiarity's contempt.

We are our own worst enemies.

Until death do we part.

We forget that you don't talk about your sparring partner. You don't flesh out the details of ugly, darkened moods. We smile in pictures.

You DO NOT talk about fight club.

You don't talk about all the ways the other person hurt your feelings. Or misconstrued your words and turned them against you.

You don't talk about petty frustrations any more than we speak of serious infractions.

You don't talk in front of the kids.

Especially not after you've yelled behind a closed door.

You don't talk to your friends.

You don't talk in front of the neighbors.

Though they may have heard you over the fence.

You don't talk about choosing sides.

If you're smart, you don't post transcripts to Facebook looking to garner awkward support. You stay mum at the water cooler. You mind the gap between treadmills at the gym. You keep a stiff upper lip.

Membership in this club is exclusive and requires this kind of dedication.

You don't talk about how serious you are about your commitment to the organization.

But there's more you can't do.

You don't joke about what will happen when the kids grow up. Or when they've left the nest.

You certainly don't talk about planning what you'll wear to the funeral. Or who you'll start dating when an acceptable amount of time has gone by.

Unless you're planning your own "send-off." ... But you won't get to pick your forever wear. Chances are you won't meet Elvis or hang out with anyone from the 27 Club.

Gallows humor, in this instance especially, is tricky and better left unsaid. Most folks won't laugh, even if you laugh first.

No … There's not usually much laughter during fight club.

And then there's the worry that the joke might just come back to haunt you.

There's not a lot of variation, either. We often circle around the same old arguments.

Of course there are exceptions:

Each member of fight club hops around a ring, dancing and jabbing in accordance with their own rules.

Timing is everything.

That moment of explosion, the point of impact.

A top, closed too loosely under pressure, often gives way. It's hard to predict where it will land. How much damage it will do.

Unforgivable betrayals ...

Like when I watched Game of Thrones without you.

Or when you tracked mud across the freshly washed floor.

Or when I declined your invitation to play Words With Friends.

A thousand little swipes resulting in a thousand invisible cuts, which will be covered in a thousand tiny bandages. And then doused in wine.

Until one of you reaches for something stronger ...

A deep breath. … A white flag. … An apology.

And understanding.

Eventually, we all have to talk about fight club.

Tinsel Town

Next stop: Tinsel Town

I'm going to miss her crooked smile.

At least, I think I will.

I say 'I think' I'll miss it, because I'm not sure I've seen my daughter wear the expression enough lately to have it implant on the part of my brain that might withstand the coming of age and infirmity. What I know for sure is how much I'll miss the six thousand dollars it will cost to wipe that ever-so-fleeting grin off her face.

But that's genetics for you -- the need for braces doesn't skip a generation just because you want it to … unless you choose Invisalign (or in her father's case, do-it-yourself dental adhesive and rubber bands, which modern dentists tend to frown upon).

Ah, necessity! The mother of all invention.

Which is why I had made myself an appointment with the orthodontist -- without the kid -- to be thoroughly convinced this money for corrective dental work wouldn't be better invested elsewhere. Say ... a nice bridge somewhere warm ... or an island time-share of my dreams. Or college.

Honestly, her smile doesn't seem that crooked to me. Her teeth are straight enough. There's enough room between each nicely-sized pearly white but not too much. Nothing overlaps.

Of course, I would be a tough sell. After all, I had already sold myself on the notion that with a little watchful waiting, not to mention the use of expanders and extractions, braces might not be a forgone conclusion.

But I laughed a little -- that nervous, forced laugh one has at sudden surprise -- when her mug flashed up on the orthodontist's monitor during our pre-installation parent consultation.

"See there," the doctor said, pointing the tip of his pen at the screen. "The reason you can't see her teeth when she smiles ...

His voice didn't trail off. He finished his thoughts with the same quick, articulate efficiency he started with, but I can't tell you how he explained the whys and what-have-yous of her appearance. It was all a blur, as my mind started to coil around this astounding new observation: In the TWELVE YEARS that I have been a full-time Mom (and part-time Tooth Fairy), I had not managed to notice how her teeth are barely visible when she smiles.

Honestly, I tried to keep up as the doctor moved on, thoroughly explaining the scans of her mouth and each potential realignment. So many tiny flaws I'd never seen. How the space between her two top front teeth didn't line up with the space between her two lower front teeth? Missed it. He showed the degrees of asymmetry with a confident precision, using terms such as overbite, cross-bite and dilacerated roots.

"Di-what-erated roots?"

"It's just a small curvature of the roots ...Nothing to worry about, though it could be a treatment limitation. It might not allow for perfect alignment."

Who needs perfect? Definitely not me. I wouldn't notice Perfect if it bit me in the face with its crowded teeth.

Spread before me was a transcript of everything he was saying in plain English, so I could relax.

Still, I was marooned on a fog-socked island of thoughts, shipwrecked; it seemed, once more by realizations that all these things about her smile, hidden behind closed lips, had eluded me.

I have to admit feeling a little relief as the slide show continued and he explained all the good that would come as a result of tinseled teeth.

One of the most important changes would be that we'd finally be able to SEE her smile.

The running joke

If you hadn't already noticed, you will begin to see us now, all decked out in our phosphorescent shirts and swiftest shoes, traipsing over hill and dale, even in the driving rain.

You can't fathom how much we've planned this excursion even as we protest that we haven't. We've traversed this course in our dreams ... Or more likely, instead of sleeping. We've considered every little thing from what rests on the tops of our heads to what cradles the tips of our toes.  We know exactly how much compression we have in our socks.

Wave as you go by, but please, not with your middle fingers. We can't help ourselves.

Race days are upon us, and we are desperate to get in our mileage. We're not trying to ruin your commute.

On Saturdays all through the winter, some of us have dragged ourselves out of bed at six a.m., laced up our sneakers and picked a destination. Five miles here. Ten miles there. Lather. Rest. Repeat. We called it maintenance.

Back then we were only serious, not seriously obsessed.

We weren't what we'd call diligent, no matter what we told you.

There was always a time (or three) when we just stepped outside for a moment, turned around and went back into the warmth.

But each passing day, our numbers multiply, and we're starting to talk shop.

"Are you a pronator or a supinator? Are you working on a forefoot landing? Have you tried a foam roller?"

We happily take questions, but shhh shhh: don't ask us how the "jogging" is going. Our answers might not be civil.

Our non-running significant others laugh as they putter around the house with their second cuppa. We've tried to make converts of them.

They put up with us and our driving forces, but they can't help but make comments:

"When I want to go 13 miles I get into a car ...."

They understand our degrees of insanity.

Every Spring our obsessive-compulsive disorders come roaring back from their winter hibernations. Fueled almost entirely by gadgets that track us whether we are awake or asleep.

They plant ideas into our heads about how far we should go and how fast. They remind us via email that last year we were better, faster.

We hate them as much as we can't live without them.

We pray to the god of muscle strains to pass over our houses, as evidenced by our Google search histories:

"To stretch or not to stretch, that is the question."

The results aren't definitive no matter what you've read online. New York Times says ... Might as well give the Giant 8 Ball a shake.

We try to step lightly. Lean forward. Pump our arms at our sides. Careful not to cross our meridians.

At the coffee shop where we gather later to super-charge our running highs with caffeine, we talk about our plans with others we know by pace.

There's always someone selling us something that money can't buy. Some of it sounding off limits in polite company.

Tempo Run. Hill Repeats. Fartlek.

"Have you heard about the 4:1? It's not the latest model -- that would be the 15:15 -- but it's a solid choice if you are going to walk any of your intervals."

We make jokes about ourselves and our pronouncements.

Especially during the low moments.

The muscle pulls. The shin splints. The traveling aches and pains that we all fear will not only sideline us but cause our early retirements.

We lose count of how many times we decide to quit this thing called running before it quits us.

"I'm giving up racing," we've all uttered ad nauseam, only to be lured back mid-sentence by an upcoming entry deadline and a free t-shirt.

Baseball Ready

Baseball season sets my teeth on edge.

It's not that I don't like the game, exactly. It's more that I fear it.

I fear the hot sun and the foul balls that make their way into to stands. I fear the crowds and the crowing that make the experience uncomfortable for pretty much everyone.

But most of all, I fear that my kid is going to get hurt in every way a kid can get hurt.

From the moment my kid looked up and said he wanted to play in Little League, to the moment he stood out in the field – all decked out in his local business-sponsored duds – all I could do as I sat in the bleachers was pray he wouldn't get a line drive to the head.

He'd never see it coming. Not the way he did cartwheels, chased butterflies and laid down in the outfield, making angels in the grass. And he'd never live down the ribbing from his teammates if he survived.

People are as serious as a heart attack about baseball.

“Baseball ready,” is the mantra all of the best coaches use. And with those two words alone, you'll see a team of wrigglers straighten up and start catching pop flies.

Magic words aside, I can't relax.

Each year as baseball season rolls around I hope my Champ won't play. Each year I hide the papers that come home from school announcing sign-ups. Each year he finds them and demands to be signed up.

“This year is going to be GREAT,” he exclaims. “I loooooooooove baseball.”

And, each year, I reluctantly sign him up.

I know all the things that make baseball great. You have a simple game, with simple rules, wrapped up in a blanket of complicated histories and DNA strands of statistical facts. Anyone can play, but few play at all-star status, and fewer have the encyclopedic knowledge of a savant. There's as much reason for dubbing baseball our national pastime as calling bread the staff of life. It's all that and a bag of roasted nuts.

If I am truthful, I will say my boy's ability to focus on the game has improved from last season to this one. He may only do a few handstands during practice or when the other team is getting in its lineup. But there are still painful faces and tears when he strikes out.

Soon, I know, he'll come around. His face will stretch back into a smile.

Strangely, though the season is new, I find I am less anxious than I was.

I just hold my breath and clap between plays. I never yell anything.

Time, I tell myself. Time and practice. Every skill we learn takes time and practice. And as I watch, he scoops up a grounder and tosses it to the pitcher. I exhale a little of my pent up breath. He'll get there.

I have to suck all the air back in, however, when he slides on both knees in the grass as if he were reenacting a scene in “Risky Business” during a lull in play.

A new fear has arisen:

The team uniform called for white pants.

My people don't camp

My people don't camp.

I wish when I said this statement, it sounded as arrogant as it reads. But when it tumbles out of my mouth the words are filled with disappointment, having been all but deflated of their rarified airs.

No matter what I do, my people don't camp.

I've always owned a tent. I've always had gadgets that would help me ease back to civilization if ever I got away from it: backpack, sleeping bag ... collapsible cups. I can barely pass up packaging that purports waterproof matches.

I've just never been able to convince anyone else that camping in the great outdoors would be an adventure worth having.

You see, though my parents were fond of taking the family on annual trips to Boston and Cape Cod, they preferred clean and modern motels with pools or walking access to the beach.

And the mechanics of these weeklong rituals back in the late '70s went without question.

To ask my mother if we could go camping would have been akin to asking if we could go to the moon.

Or worse:

Into a war zone where the enemies are mosquitoes and public showers.

It was safer to ask the man at the front desk to explain the tide charts every couple of hours. At least he'd give me two wrapped peppermints to get rid of me.

My mother just told me I would grow up and do whatever I wanted. If it was to be the moon ... "Well, good luck with your uphill battle."

Mothers, bless their stubborn hearts, are usually right.

Though my people have changed over the years, through marriage and periods of gestation -- I even have a husband who relishes his bi-annual camping trips with his boyhood pals -- the closest we've ever come to camping as a family is pitching a tent in the backyard ...

And then moving it into the living room when the sun went down and small bodies with big imaginations decided a zipper wasn't much protection from all the noise the wild suburban kingdom is prone to making.

But I haven't lost hope.

I even caught a glint of it for a moment this year, when my husband mumbled something about the guys planning a weekend camping trip for the families.

In my mind, I could see us all gathered on an island in Maine. Our tents pitched as if in a catalogue village. Kayaks portaged and waiting at waters' edge. Folding chairs set up around a blazing campfire. Me walking around with my tin cup of coffee, surveying it all ...

I could almost smell the bacon sizzling away on a camp stove.

Of course, it could have been a display area, over to the left.

We do find ourselves in outdoor equipment stores quite often. My husband is looking for luggage. Kids are looking for backpacks. I am looking for woolen socks. After awhile, the children, having wandered around and found nothing appealing, will settle in among the camp chairs display, try them all until one has the right fit.

There they will stay, quietly staring into their pocket pals until we have decided on purchases.

I wonder aloud if we should look into buying a bigger tent for the upcoming camping trip. There's a preseason sale ...

"Oh, Sorry," he said, with the sound he makes of sucking back air whenever he has to eat his words. "Timing didn't work out on that trip this year."

See? There's no getting away from it.

I stand there, wide-eyed and gaping-mouthed. A small hand tugs on my coat with urgency.

"I need to peeeeeee!"

Our people don't camp. Our people just hang out at camping stores and pretend.

"At least this place has a bathroom."

Minimum wage

As we wait at the end of our driveway for the school bus to arrive, my daughter paces around, scuffing her feet just enough to kick up loose gravel.

Hands in her pockets, shoulders inching upwards, her posture braces against the crisp air, giving herself protection from the wind the way a jacket with a tipped-up collar might have ...

If she'd worn one ...

I won't pick that battle, nor the one that should present itself an hour later when I stand out here with her brother, who will undoubtedly be wearing shorts.

The truth is I like being out here. I like that she still lets me stand beside her, cracking jokes and making a silly spectacle of myself when the mood strikes.

I know these days are numbered.

These days most of her friends require a buffer zone between their too-cool selves and their hot-mess parents.

Not her. Not yet, anyway.

She fixes her eyes on the ground and kicks up another pebble. It glances off the grass and disturbs a clump of wild violets.

Even though there was no harm, she recoils as if the rock had hit her.

"I didn't mean to do that," she says, apologizing to the weed.

She's fond of its purple flowers, she tells me, noting the pretty petals are closed up now because of the morning chill, but will open fully to greet her when she steps off the afternoon bus.

She's taken an interest in them because the lawn has recently become her "chore."

A chore for which she is paid handsomely.

For twelve years she has led an existence unencumbered by responsibilities other than the most basic and pressing:

"Feed the cat before she eats the walls."

"Clean your room if you want your friend to come over."

"Feed the cat!"

"Pick up your stuff."

But mostly her job has been this one, solitary constant –

"Feed." "The." "Cat!" – and a series of prodded peripherals. “Could you please, for the love of sanity, put your dishes in the sink?!”

Thusly, her economic situation has been financed by saving up Christmas cash and birthday money instead of an allowance, and cute-faced begging.

But that's getting old. She has needs that I don't see as such and therefore refuse to finance.

See we had always planned to give our children jobs, but we couldn't decide whether we should pay them for household tasks.

"I don't want to pay her to do her own laundry or the dishes, or setting the table," my husband interjects. "She shouldn't get paid for ... "

"... doing the things I will eventually do for free when I get sick of waiting," I finish his sentence.

And there's the rub: without the incentive of recompense, and in the absence of near-constant nagging, three out of four humans in the household have been miraculously oblivious to the mess.

Until now.

Now, since she's short on cash and big on shopping, she's been noticing things that need doing:

Loading and unloading the dishwasher.

Washing and folding laundry.

Cleaning bathrooms.

Raking leaves.

Mopping floors.

Vacuuming carpets. …

But it's her father who has the big jobs.

Building fences.

Landscaping.

Welding ... stuff.

"Two-fifty an hour for housework," we agree after some negotiation. But her little brother, acting as her agent, wasn’t satisfied. "Five bucks an hour for general carpentry and landscaping. That's my final offer."

His intervention was worth the extra portion she’d shaved off her dessert that evening. We would have paid more; she would have settled for less.

And I have to admit, not being the only one who cleans the cat box would be a bargain at twice the price.

But twice the price IS calling her toward my husband’s directives.

“Mom. … Can you pick up some grass seed next time you’re out? There’s a patch of lawn I want to fix.”

I think I may have to rethink my minimum wage if I want to keep her.