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Bread and Jam
I am in training. I must stay up as late as I possibly can because I cannot fall asleep tomorrow night. I know that many of you will bristle when I tell you this, but tell you I must. Tomorrow night is our congregation's youth group lock-in. Yes, there will be boys and there will be girls and they will be spending the night under one roof. I know, I know... Oh, please, let's not even go there. I have a child, though, who wants to stay up all night long with her friends. And since my house cannot accommodate such an event, I will be spending the night with my daughter at our church building. My daughter is not interested in boys in any way except as potential friends. She abhors the implication of anything else. I don't know what the other girls or boys are interested in, but I am going to be there to protect my daughter's interests. I am also bringing along her ten-year-old sister since my husband has to be at work very early the next morning. If my husband didn't have to work, most likely we would be there as a family.
I remember clearly what it was like to be a thirteen-year-old. My parents were very different parents than Will and I are. I know we grew up in a slightly different world than our children are growing up in, but it wasn't that different. What were my parents thinking? I don't think they were thinking the world had changed very much since they were growing up, perhaps. I don't know. I look back, though, and I see parents who were too tired for the challenge. They were seduced into abdicating their authority over their children by sending us to both public and parochial schools. I believe that.
I think that parenting can be a very tiresome business. It requires you to be constant at all times. We are encouraged to let go of our children and scowled upon when we seem to pull them close. I don't believe it is our children that we are really being asked to let go of. It is our authority over them. We are told that we should gradually let them go so that they can be independent young men and women. Someone once said that during a ladies' bible class and it struck me as wrong. My girls were only toddlers, at the time. I looked up and said, "I don't think God expects me to bring my children up to be independent. I think that God expects me to help them to transfer their dependence on me to a total dependence on him." I truly think that God put those words into my mouth that night because I am just not that wise. They are words that I have kept close to my heart all these years. So, I will not let go of my authority over my children. I will not relax. I love my children and I love my God. It is foolish to think that raising children should be easy. But I can tell you that it can be joyful.
Ah, bread and jam.
Summer
Photo Meme: Beautiful (Thursday Challenge)
Summer seems like a blur to me. A somewhat colorful blur, but a blur nonetheless. I fear that I am quite exhausted by the whole ordeal. When I attempt to wrap words around the past summer, I end up speaking in terms of events, destinations, hours on the road, loads of laundry, accommodations, flight plans, gas prices and junk food consumed.
When I was a child, summer lasted forever. Long afternoons were spent reading books out of doors with my faithful dog nearby. Days were strung together in a warm haze playing with my sister and brothers in the woods and fields surrounding our home. A week or two was spent having tea and scones with my grandmother. I felt a peaceful security while camping in the cool, New England woods in a large tent with my parents and siblings so close and the soft pine scented breezes blowing through the canvas. Every summer, we drove to visit my (great) Auntie Geri and Uncle Leon and their friends Pops and Grace at their cottages at Hampton Beach. When we wanted to go swimming we found ourselves at Sandy Pond or Forest Lake. These things filled my summer with riches I find myself inadequate to describe.
I don't remember worrying about what I was going to wear, where I was going to sleep, or what I was going to eat, although, I will confess to wanting to know how much longer it would take before we were "there yet". It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that I never even bathed the entire week we were camping. I just took a swim every afternoon in the cool, sparkling water of the lake.
What is the difference between then and now? I know that most of us believe the difference lies in the fact that we are adults now. We have to keep the laundry going, make sure we have reservations, feed our families while traveling. And, yes, we have to know how long it will take to get where we're going, if for no other reason than to report back our ETA to the children every few miles. I have thought about all of this and something has become clear to me.
When I was a child, it wasn't about where we were going or what we were doing. It was about who we were doing it with. It was all about knowing that my grandmother would play game after game of Yahtzee with me every afternoon I was with her. I couldn't wait to go to her house and spend time with her. I always slept on a cot near her bed and woke to her musical alarm clock. "Oh! What a beautiful morning..."
I couldn't wait to meet Pops at the Hampton Beach playground where he would let me come in and play even when I grew too tall to "officially" be allowed in. Oftentimes, I would spend the time with him talking about things I sadly have forgotten and watching the thick, sweet smoke curling away from his cigar. My Auntie Geri would take long, early morning walks on the beach with me filling my tin pail with all manner of precious seashells. My memories of the beach are mixed with the smell of fresh paint from the summer my Uncle Leon painted the cottages.
I remember sitting around the campfire in the dark of night roasting marshmallows with my parents and siblings. Later I would listen to the night noises outside our tent and the snores of my father a few feet away from my cozy sleeping bag. I would wake to find my father cooking scrambled eggs and homefries over the fire.
My sister and brothers and I would spend rainy summer days playing in the enormous attic of our old, Victorian home scaring one another, getting reacquainted after months spent in classrooms separated from each other. In good weather, we would tramp through fields of grass taller than we were playing hide and seek. Occasionally, we would find a bobolink's nest in the deep grass.
When I was a child, it was about the people and relationships I had with them. I know that I can't become a child once again, but I think that, if I blink a few times and clear my eyes, I can see the people and not just the sandy suitcases and the prices at the pump.
