A summer's day

I took Snuggler and Little Guy to the city pool today. This is what it looks like when it's empty:



A sign posted by the entrance says the pool's capacity is 1,407 people. There were not that many there this morning; we arrive when the pool opens, and leave after an hour or so. I'd guess there were 250 people there, so we had plenty of space. It's very big.

It's a long, hot walk to the pool, a mile or more each way through city streets. We stopped on the way home and bought piraguas. The old man scraped ice off his big block of ice, tapped the ice it into a plastic cup, and rounded off the top by pressing a funnel on it. Then he squirted syrup (my kids chose coconut) all over the ice, and stuck a stirrer straw into it. Very refreshing. I suspect he charged us more than if we were Hispanic, but at $1.25 each I'm not going to worry about it.



When we were still eight blocks from home I decided the kids needed something salty, so we stopped in a bodega and bought a small bag of pretzels. Then we wilted our way home, where we sat in front of fans and prayed for the breeze off the river to pick up.

Musings on hard times

Way back when I was single, I took a vacation trip to Spain. My plan was simple: I rented a car in Madrid, and drove until I found a place I wanted to stay. Then I tried to persuade the inn owner to rent a room to a single woman, found a restaurant that would serve a single woman, and went back to the inn to bed.

As I drove south I went through a mountain range. The road was a two-lane highway, and it was only after I had entered a long tunnel that I realized two important things. First, the tunnel was unlit. Second, I didn't know where the headlight switch was on my rental car. Far, far ahead I could see the end of the tunnel.

The question was whether or not I could get there before crashing. I couldn't stop, because a car might come up on me from behind. I couldn't see where the wall was, except by occasionally tapping the brakes to check by dim brake-light.

It was the most terrifying quarter mile I have ever traveled. And when I finally emerged into daylight, the road lacked a shoulder onto which I could pull over so I could heave my guts out. I had no choice but to keep going.

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I have been feeling glum the past couple of days. The road ahead of me appears very long and dark. It is hard, after having traveled a rough path for a decade with Big Guy, and a long stretch with other woes, to contemplate handling yet more difficulty. The one reason I know I can do it is that I can't afford not to. Like driving in that Spanish tunnel, I don't have any choice but to keep going.

The I-don't-want-to's of life are long and numerous. They easily morph into I-can'ts. But as soon as you say 'I can't', chances are that you're lying to yourself. This is one of the huge benefits of big, big problems: it doesn't matter if you don't want to. You have to. And then you learn that you can.

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I saw a friend yesterday I haven't seen in a while. She asked how I'm doing, and I replied, "A lot of my prayers these days start with, 'Really, God? I mean... really?'" We laughed. Sort of. She has been through a lot this year, too; I spent a couple of weeks this spring coaching her through her 15yo's hospitalization for depression. It was something helpful I could do. Being helpful gives me joy and a sense of purpose.

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I am a person of faith. I believe that everything happens for a purpose, yet I don't believe that purpose always has to do with me. The Bible verse that people like to quote in hard time, "For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'" (Jeremiah 29:11) comes smack in the middle of what God said to a nation that was being exiled to Babylon for 70 years. Yes, exiled for a lifetime. And that promise was made to an entire nation, not to an individual.

Lemme tell ya, bad stuff happened to those exiles. They endured misery until they died. The promise was true -- it just didn't happen to come true in their lifetime. There are times when the greater good subsumes the individual good. There are times we're called on to be the ones who suffer for no currently-visible reason.

It's taken me a while to be okay with that. Hope doesn't necessarily have to be the kind of hope we 21st-century Americans are accustomed to having. We think in terms of personal outcomes and personal goals and personal happiness. If you ever get to the place where you have to let go of all that, it's actually kind of a relief. You can start thinking about having hope in God, rather than hope in what God will do for you. And you start to understand -- just a little bit -- that what's going on here on your section of the face of the earth this week or month or year is neither the beginning nor end of the story.

Quick update

We returned from Cub Scout camp yesterday, a day earlier than the rest of the pack, because I had to teach a nature class on ladybugs today. It's a popular class, though not with my family: one year I rushed out and left a container with a couple hundred ladybugs open on the counter. The house swarmed and the kids complained. This year I was careful to close the container.

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Camp this year began with a thunderstorm at bedtime. Four scouts neglected to bring flashlights, and since coincidentally they were rooming together (two in a tent), they had a dark time of it. But at least they didn't have to see the spiders who came in to get out of the rain. A third of the pack had no rain gear.

On day two our kids went exploring (an intrepid 20 feet behind our site) and one came back shouting, "I saw a raccoon with a black and white tail!" Another asked if raspberries are poisonous. This is what camping with city kids is like.

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I have received a pile of email following my piece a couple of weeks back in Daily Guideposts 2013, which mentioned that Andrew was out of work. Yes, it's true, even two years later. For reasons I won't go into, he is not looking for a full-time job at this time.

Yes, that does make life a bit complicated.

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Snuggler is still a long way from well, but seems to be a bit more stable. We have been painting the girls' room, which is the kind of project one can do in stages, according to how much energy one has. We should have it finished by the time Dancer returns at the end of the month.

While I was away, Big Guy turned 17. He seems to think that means he needs to acquire a sudden case of maturity. I told him I didn't feel like an adult until I held Eldest in my arms, so if he chooses just one way he wants to grow up this year, that's fine.

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One thing I learned at Cub Scout camp is that every kid is working on something. Some kids need to learn honesty, and others courage; some are learning to manage anxiety, and others are in the process of taming a temper or reining in impulses. It's rather refreshing to see so clearly that it's not just me, and not just my kids: it's all of us. We've all got ways we need to grow. It's normal.

Update

Thank you all for your prayers. I'd love to say we've turned a corner, but I am resting in the fact that our road is curving toward a better direction. Snuggler is, I think, out of immediate danger. Fortunately, sometime in the past couple of years I stopped being afraid of (and discouraged by) the hard stuff. I love that kid!

Dancer is in Miami, in technique and pointe and toning classes all day, except when she's learning repertoire. The night before she left she went to the ballet, so she could see the Famous Ballerina perform. Then it was up at 6am and off to the airport. She is tired beyond tired, and maybe beyond that!

Eldest is in week three of her summer job. She is working for a professor who is developing a program to teach kids to program computers. She is doing "back end" work; I gather that's the part one doesn't see, but don't tell her I have no idea what she's really doing.

Big Guy got his SAT results, which were extremely pleasing. Dancer was happy with her SAT II/Biology score, too. I have sent in my end-of-year homeschool report on Little Guy to the regional office, and officially closed out fourth grade. We are still awaiting the results of Little Guy's OT evaluation. I have to schedule an appointment for him with the the developmental optometrist.

We have no big plans for summer. I think we are going to paint the entire apartment, once I teach the kids how to spackle and paint. Little Guy and I are heading back to Cub Scout camp in July, because one can never get enough of large spiders and hyperactive 9-year olds. Big Guy is going to tour two colleges here in the city. Three of my kids will have birthdays.

It's hot, it's humid, and life rolls on. It's not always comfortable, and some days last way too long, and still: it's better to be moving on than to be stuck where you were. As Winston Churchill said, "When you're going through hell... keep going."

And on my other blog...

Praying through our tears.

It has been a very rough week. Please keep Snuggler in your prayers.

A small insight about why kids don't share everything with mom

I observed a mother and her teenage daughter interacting the other day, and suddenly understood why kids can tell total strangers the secrets they won't tell their parents. It's because our kids love us.

When our kids love us, they don't want to hurt or disappoint or worry us, or have us think less of them. And they know that no matter how good a face we put on it, deep down we have a reaction. When a child is hurting, he or she can't afford to deal with our reactions on top of that.

That is why a parent can't be a child's therapist or complete confidante: because love gets in the way.

We will always know our children better than anyone else. But a child can count on a professional to be impartial. There's no risk of losing desperately-needed approval and affection. Which means that sometimes the reason kids don't confide in us has nothing to do with lack of trust, but with an abundance of love.

Brain cells, manna and zucchini

It's been a quieter week than any in recent memory, quiet enough that I am inclined to take my spare brain cell out of cold storage and see if I can get a synapse going with the remaining functional one in my head.

Brain cell. I bought my spare at Giantmicrobes.com

After the frenzy of May I have a lull in my workload. That means I'm thinking about what I might do with my life, which direction I should head, what I should write next. This is hubris, of course. I know that other people make and actually execute plans for the future, but that is not how my life goes. When there's a job I'm supposed to do it whacks me in the face. When I make plans of my own something major derails them. I have learned to prioritize flexibility over five-year planning. 

I am mindful that the just-enough just-in-time flow of work that characterizes my professional life is a huge gift. The flip side of it that I have far less control over my life (and budget) than I'd like. Manna is great for a short-term crisis. But after a number of years of it, I'd prefer a different solution. 

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I've pondered manna a lot in recent years. It's occurred to me that one major challenge for the wilderness generation must've been their perpetually whining children. Never mind that 5 p.m. low blood-sugar meltdown; imagine the daily complaint, "Manna again, Mom?" I imagine  the parental reply was often a bit testy.

You'd think that after a decade or so the kids gave up asking, and that perhaps the parents clued into the fact that their own whining to God sounded a lot like their kids', but this was not the case. We are slow learners, we humans, especially in spiritual matters. Forty years in the desert of day-in, day-out dependence on God for survival might be enough time to trust him day-in and day-out, but probably not. 

I sometimes suspect that Adam and Eve left their spare brain cell behind in the Garden of Eden. You know which one I mean: the one that allowed them to remember the lesson they had been taught.

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When I was a girl, my dad had a truck garden a few miles from home. The summer I was 17 and had my first full-time job, the family went on vacation without me. I had to tend the garden in their absence. It was a bonanza year for green beans and zucchini, and I picked and hauled home a grocery bag of each daily. Then I sat on the front steps of our suburban home, snapping ends off of beans in the evening, watching the neighborhood or chatting with friends. I'd blanch the beans, let them cool, and put them in freezer bags.

The zucchini were another matter. There are many ways to cook it, and that summer we tried them all. I like zucchini. But after you've had steamed zucchini, baked zucchini, zucchini bread, zucchini casserole, stuffed zucchini  and stewed zucchini, you begin to realize that no matter what you do to it, it's still zucchini. Slice it, dice it, rice it, spice it -- it's zucchini.

There are lots of things in life like that. When I use my spare brain cell, I know there is nutritional value in zucchini, even when you're sick of eating it. There are things we learn when we are forced to go past what we like, past what we want, past what we think we can stand. There are good things we can learn from not-getting our desires, from not-escaping a hard situation, from being pushed into learning 400 ways to cook what we've been given. 

There are things you learn about zucchini that you suspect you could have gotten through life without. There are things you'd rather have not learned.

Perhaps what we want is for zucchini (and manna) to be optional. We appreciate it when we know we need or want it, but only then. The rest of the time it's just zucchini.