things I found

Here I am, waiting for the bus to bring my baby home from her first day in high school. It’s been, um, different around here since Wubby went to college. I’m not sure I like it. It took a week to get his room cleaned up, and there’s still a small shelf in there I need to dust. There was quite a bit of trash in that room, as well as some amusements, and some treasures. I found

• 10 black Sharpies – Wubby draws, in black ink. For the past four years I would buy a Sharpie, use it one time, and it would vanish. Now I know what happened to them!
• Hokey-Pokey Elmo – A gag Christmas gift. Since hubby and I are both Virginia Tech Hokies, we have a fondness for the Hokie-pokey. Wubby despises Elmo, but had to admit that this one was pretty funny.
• 2 air mattresses – Used on a trip Wub and I took to Gulfport MS to work construction the summer after Katrina.
• Dominican Pesos, assorted game tokens and $35 in change. (He found most of the change before he left, but he didn’t get it all.)
• A Japanese phrase book from WWII – It belonged to my father-in-law.
• 8 packages of guitar strings – Assorted types for acoustic, electric, jazz etc. Not one complete set in the bunch.
• A bluebird house – He made it years ago, with my dad, I THINK.
• 227 pencils, pens, erasers, markers – Various colors and stages of usefulness.
• My dad’s tuxedo.
• Crash Bandicoot 2 – The first Playstation game he ever got, a Christmas present from maybe 10 years ago. I love CB2!
• A bible – It belongs to the girl next door, who was his girlfriend for about a week. She knew she left it somewhere, but had no clue it was in Wub’s room. She was happy to get it back.
• Chickens – Little plastic chickens. A chicken alarm clock. A glass chicken. A garden decoration chicken. Wub LOVES chickens. I don’t know why, except that he was fascinated by the chickens that run free in Cielo (Dominican Republic community.) Personally, I think that chicken-clucking sounds should be included on those things that generate white noise or ocean waves or breezes, you know, that are supposed to help you sleep. Chickens clucking is the most soothing sound.
• Wubbies – Hoodies, actually. When hooded sweatshirts made their fashion appearance a few years ago, Wub adopted them as some kind of uniform. “Wubby” came from the movie “Mr. Mom”, I think. It was a special blanket that the baby had to have at all times. Wubby has to be wearing a hoodie at all times, regardless of outside temperature or destination. Mall – Hoodie. Church – Hoodie. Date at fancy restaurant – Hoodie.

There were drawings, paintings, clothes, games, toys, boxes, bags, electronics. You name it, it was in there. Everything’s all cleaned up now. I can see the carpet. The dresser drawers are empty, as is the TV cabinet and the CD shelf. I put a new quilt on the bed, and a new lamp on the dresser. I can use the room as a guest room now. All of the things I found in there have been sorted and stored, except one:

My little boy, all grown up.

He’s still in there, and no matter how far he goes he’ll always be there, in his room.

 

about house and Home

Housework is not my thing. At all. It was sooooo nice to be in the mountains, in someone else’s sparsely furnished house. No messes, no clutter. My house is a disaster. It should have yellow hazard tape around it. Really.

Remember the contractor that was going to redo the windows and siding on our house, oh, about 6 weeks ago? Well, they came Tuesday and did the windows. It rained on Wednesday so they didn’t come back until Thursday to start on the siding, which was totally OK because Wednesday was move in day at college for Wubby. He packed up the car and the van and off we went like it was nothing. Only we forgot to pack the sheets (twin XL, specifically for college dorm rooms) so by lunch time he was back home to get the sheets and eat. Then he was gone again.

It’s probably a good thing that he’s only twenty miles away because I’m not sure who misses who the most. I know his little sister misses him something terrible. And after all the mommy-ing and fussing and prodding….I miss him something terrible myself. He called from the dorm the first night and said things were ok but he was homesick. Twenty miles away and he’s homesick. And four years from now when it’s his sister’s turm, I’m not sure she’ll be able to leave the driveway. She was homesick when we were in Arizona, and we were all there together! She’s definitely a home girl.

I look at my kids and wonder how it could be that they are, for all practical purposes, grown. And how they could be such home-bodies. Then I remember growing up, moving a lot, and home wasn’t really a place. Home was where Mama and Daddy were.

My energy level has been non-existent this week, partly because we found Elk Knob last Friday and hiked to the top and back. It’s a beautiful place. From the summit you can see up into Virginia–White Top and Mount Rogers; Roan Mountain (I think) in Tennessee; Grandfather Mountain, Beech, Mount Mitchell, and tons more North Carolina mountains. The hike will, one day, be very pleasant. It’s a new state park and the trail is under construction. The first little bit is very easy. Then the trail just ends and you’re left with an old logging road that goes straight up to the top. One mile and 1000 feet in elevation, straight up. It’s a difficult trek. Even the kids, who went lickety-split all the way up said later that it was a hard walk. I stopped several times, thinking I just couldn’t go another step. Then I’d muster up some courage or stupidity or something and go some more. Hubby kept encouraging me, feeding me blackberries. A few yards shy of the summit I sat down on a rock and just cried, saying “I can’t do this anymore. Let the fibromyalgia win. I quit.” (Actually I usually say “Let the Wookie win.” Our family lexicon would be frightenly dull without movie quotes!)

But it wasn’t the hike that I couldn’t do any more. I think I realized, for the first time, just how close we were to watching the first fledgling leave the nest. What I was really grieving was not the limitations of my stupid fibro. I was the end of my son’s childhood, and maybe the end of my “young” adulthood. He’s out there now, in the world, learning to make it on his own. Yes, we’re helping and we’re always here for him, like tomorrow after church when he’ll be here looking at the outside of our house and shaking his head, and then packing up more stuff from his room before he goes back to school. I guess you don’t really grasp how monumental the task of parenting is until you let the first one go. At least I didn’t.

So, about home. It has always bugged me to hear someone say something like “Look at the beautiful home.” It’s a house, definitely. It might be a home. Then again, it might not. A house is shelter. A home is relationship.

If you’re about my age and you grew up in this part of the country, then you might remember that Beech Mountain used to have a theme park at the top called “Land of Oz.” It’s gone now, but the gazebo is still there. Back in the day there was a sculpture of Dorothy and Toto in the center of the gazebo, with the quote from the movie:

if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!

For me, in terms of place, home is the mountains, even though I don’t live there now. But home is really where my family is. Home. It’s the messy house where I sit pecking away on my computer, listening to the TV as my little girl sits on the couch, gnawing on beef jerky. And where my husband is currently crashed in the bedroom after spending the day painting gutters. And it’s the house across the way where my mom lives now.

And, in spite of the messiness, it’s where I wanna be.

 

Hair

Husband just told me that there’s horse hair in the car. Figured I’d been to the barn and loved on daughter’s horse, thus transferring horse hair to the car. The problem is that I visited the horse yesterday, when he was driving the car that he thinks has horse hair in it from my visit to the barn that occurred when he had the car.

Confused? I was too.

Because it’s not horse hair. It’s my hair.

I drove the car on Tuesday. I got a haircut on Tuesday. My hair was short to begin with and now it’s shorter, but not short enough. I may have to get it trimmed some more this afternoon, so it will stand up on top and be spikey.

And it will start to be its natural color, which is a mystery to me since it hasn’t been its natural color since 1977 or thereabouts.

It’s CG’s fault. Yes, I’ve been too chicken to see what shade of steel grey is naturally growing from my head. I used to pay a professional to color my hair, but haven’t done that in quite some time. I have, however, become rather adept in doing it myself so that it at least appears to be a hair color that does occur in nature, on people. Just not on this people.

To me, grey hair is a badge of honor. Something that you earn from years of being a grown-up and dealing with grown-up issues the way a grown-up is supposed to. My mom has beautiful hair; her sister has beautiful hair. They’ve earned it. My mom earned it from years of working hard to take care of me and my dad, and her parents, and her siblings. She earned it working in corporate America, being a strong woman in a man’s world, telling the truth instead of saying what she knew people wanted to hear. She earned it from living through the illnesses and passing of her parents and my dad, her partner through forty-three years of growing up and grown-up life. She earned it by leaving her hometown and moving here to be with us.

Now she’s entering a new arena, uncharted territory. She’s in love, and it’s an amazing thing. My baby girl hasn’t really fallen for a boy yet, just her horse. But the symptoms are the same. She talks about her love; when she can’t be with her love, she wants to be, and counts the days or hours until she can be with him again. She wants to know everything about him, and each new detail adds another piece to the unfolding map of him. She wants to learn about his interests, and wants to share her interests with him. She wants to try things she’s never tried before, because he enjoys doing them.

The first time I saw my daughter gallop around the ring on her horse I was terrified and elated, all at the same time. Terrified: what if she falls off? What if she loses control of her horse? She could get hurt, very badly. Elated: man does that look like fun! They are both, girl and horse, having an absolute blast doing this. Yes, it looks scary, but look at them together! They aren’t scared; they’re having too much fun to be scared. Little girl lost some confidence with her riding abilities and is now afraid to gallop. I’ve encouraged her to try it again. Her abilities are more than adequate; she just needs to get past her fear.

Now I see my mom, preparing to do her own gallop around the ring. But this time I feel much elation; little fear. She knows enough about the things that should terrify her, and me. And yes, it looks a little scary to both of us. But, oh is she having fun!

It’s a picture of joy.

Back to my “horse” hair.

The question is not about whether or not I can handle the display of my hair’s natural color.

The question is: have I earned the right to wear it?

 

endings and beginnings

Sunday was my turn to play again. It was also Graduation Sunday and my baby boy is a graduate, or will be on June 14. He might as well be now, since he just informed me that he doesn’t need to be at school tomorrow until 9:30, and Thursday he gets the day off, which leaves one exam on Friday, one next Monday and the last next Tuesday. Then he’s free until next Friday when he has graduation practice before (finally) the big day next Saturday.

I agreed to play last Sunday because I thought it would keep me from being nervous for my son. It did, and it didn’t. We have two worship services; he had already spoken at the first one. So I had a chance to choke up and swallow the huge lump in my throat when I saw him walk in the sanctuary in his gown. And I got to choke up several more times during the service as I listened to each of the seniors talk about their journey thus far and where they were hoping to go next. And of course to just cry when my baby spoke about open doors and open hearts. When the time to play the prelude came around things felt pretty normal. I began the piece, a very easy one actually, and it was going ok.

Then I looked up and saw my son, along with the other graduates, walking into the sanctuary. And I lost it again, got lost in the notes and just started trying to find a G chord to land on so I could quit playing. I just wanted to end it and get away from the keyboard. What began as a relatively smooth rendition ended close to disaster. Beginning to ending; it was terrible.

But the graduation services, and the luncheon that followed, were wonderful. Our pastor recounted that these students were bed babies when he came to the church eighteen years ago. It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been eighteen years, but it has. We’ve known some of these families since before kids. Our children have grown up together in Sunday school and day care and church clubs. During the luncheon our youth minister provided a way for the students and family members to offer blessings to one another. She gave each student a key chain. There were keys on each table. Anyone who wanted to speak a blessing to the students also gave them a key. (a bad description of a very meaningful experience…) We listened as students and parents and friends pronounced blessings upon one another. It was humbling to hear others speak kind words to our son, and to hear him speak kind words to his friends. All in all, a wonderful ending to a wonderful day.

The next two weeks will be filled with endings, and beginnings. My little boy is finishing high school, winding down his childhood and taking some baby steps toward adulthood. Ending and beginning.

We’ve had some ups and downs during his four years of high school. Actually, it’s probably been more downs than ups. High school started out tough for him, personally and academically. But each year he’s gotten better and better, so that now he will be finishing on a high. Rough beginning, super ending.

In August he’ll be going off to college.

A new beginning.

 

I Knew It!!!

I knew it wouldn’t last.

It was nice to think that it might, but alas some things are just not meant to be.

Remember that suddenly diligent senior that moved in here recently? Well, he left and my son came back. Not sure where he’s been, but he doesn’t seem to have learned anything on his journey. He has a mountain of papers to fill out and return to GU to get his financial aid award in place. Needs to be done this week.

He has a way of shirking certain responsibilities that is driving me crazy (crazier, actually,) especially when those responsibilities involve tasks that require him to use his brain for anything other than his art, his music or his girlfriend–subject for a future rant-petite. So, this morning as he’s straigtening his hair–subject for a future rant-grande–I remind him about the forms by telling him, “When you get home this afternoon, you will complete your college forms before you fix a Jethro-snack, talk or in any other way communicate with girlfriend, or hide in your hidey hole room.” He says “Oh yeah, I was going to ask you about this afternoon. Lydia (not the girlfriend, the girlfriend’s girlfriend) is in a play at her school and it starts at like six and I was wondering if it would be ok with you if I went.”

And I said, “When you get home this afternoon, you will complete your college forms before you fix a Jethro-snack, talk or in any other way communicate with girlfriend, or hide in your hidey hole room.”

No wonder I think I’m crazy. I keep saying things over and over and over and the same thing happens, which is not much. Insanity is produced by the process of doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result. So I get his dad involved and tell him to please communicate with this alien and tell him to get his crap done because I’ve already invested several hours into it and all he needs to do is read and sign.

I am pretty (definitely) sure that 30 years ago when I was doing the go-to-college dance that I also did the paperwork. With a typewriter. And white-out. And erasable ink. And duplicate copies of forms. Yeah, I know, the times they have indeed changed and everything is more complicated now, blah blah blah. And he is finishing that darned senior project next week.

But, for heaven’s sake, what will he do come August when he moves on campus and has to take on RESPONSIBILITIES?

I know.

He’ll fall down a few times, learn some lessons and come away changed.

Like the rest of us.