Roughing It (With Shampoo and Chocolate)

Our church has a Young Women Camp for girls from age twelvish to eighteenish.  Growing up, I loved it.  It was loaded emotionally.  I mean there were (huge) quarrels.  But there was also flag raising, and tuck shop, and campfire songs, and generally goofiness, and swimming in Lake Mush-a-mush, and bonding.

This is Mary's first year attending.  It starts tomorrow.  We rushed around, today, getting all the things she'll need (treats and toiletries).  I hope camp is a special memory for her.  I'm going too, as a leader for the third year girls.  Which means that I'll be able to look out for her, but from a non-smothering-Mama-what-Mama distance.  She's a little too grown up to want her mother with her all the time.  It's funny how perspective changes.  For your fifth and sixth years of camp, you're considered a junior leader.  I remember being a junior leader and feeling so old and thinking that the little first years were so cute.  Now I see junior leaders and think they're so young and I wouldn't call any of the campers cute.  They deserve words with more dignity.  Try smart, bright, zany, strong, mischievous, wonderful.

If I get a chance, I'll write.  I don't know whether there'll be good cell phone coverage at camp.  Some other things I don't know are how to be a Young Women Camp leader, how to get to the campsite, how I went from being that little sixteen-year-old junior leader to married in three short years.

Not a Scaredy Cat After All

This morning, it was sunny when I went to the dental clinic.  In the past, I've been afraid of dentists, but today, I was calm.  I lay back in the chair and opened wide, completely relaxed.  Three fillings and one hour full of drilling, suction, and bitter tastes later, I was happily making silly faces in my rear view mirror with numbed out lips.  I would do it again tomorrow.

This afternoon, it started to rain.  And then it thundered.  When I was a child, a thunder storm was the cue to go hide in the stairwell, away from windows, doors, and electrical outlets.  Today, I gave my vegetarian chili another stir (secret ingredient:  Diana Sauce) and enjoyed the shiver in my core. 

Sometimes, it feels like I'm afraid of a lot, failure, rejection, regret.  But on a day like today, I remember that many things don't scare me one bit.

Confessing

Hannah is four years old.  She has the sweetest little lisp.  She likes to draw...on herself.  So when she recently asked to use my permanent markers, I said no.

When she begged, I said no.

When she jumped around growling, "Please, please, please, please," I still said no.

But when she swore on the River Styx that she would take good care of them, I gave in.



*Confession is good for the soul--I know, because I do it every Monday*

We Made the Most Relaxing Mess

I've had a lot on my mind, so I went looking for an activity that would require very little concentration, effort, planning.  I found this bubble print idea.  It was soothing, relaxing, therapeutic.  I was especially surprised by how much my older children enjoyed this.  They even invited their friends to join us.  Not one of them was too cool to blow bubbles in paint with a straw.  I think if I did it again, I would add a bit more soap.  We needed several people working together to get a large mound of bubbles.  Looking back, I see again, three long-limbed girls, their heads together, getting spattered with red paint to help the littlest get a really good print.  Maybe I won't tweak the recipe at all.

 

 

 

 

 

*This post is part of a series.  I've set aside Thursday afternoons to do fun activities with my children.  In an effort to work out why it both draws and repels me, I choose these activities from Pinterest.*



I'm Not That Girl on the Fridge Anymore

Jared's track record for gift giving has been spotty.  When I turned nineteen, he took me to one of those places that give you a free steak for your birthday.  I was a vegetarian.  On our first Christmas after we were married, he put a toilet brush in my stocking.  But for Mother's Day last year, he really came through.  He went through our collection of photographs from over the years, and chose his favourites. Then he papered our fridge with them.  I was so moved.  When I discovered his surprise the house was quiet--I think people were sleeping.  I stood there in the kitchen alone with so many beautiful memories and wept.

Several days later, I showed my special gift to a new friend.  She saw those photos of the past ten years and didn't recognise me. 

I found my first gray hair this week, and my mind went immediately to that moment.  I am changing.  I am not the same person I was at twenty, and I don't look like her.

I don't know how I feel about that.  Being confronted with my mortality is unsettling.  I no longer have my whole life ahead of me.  I no longer can pretend as I did in my twenties that I'm merely playing at being a grown-up.  This is life and every twenty-four hours, I use up another day of it.  But then I'm excited, too, about the memories that will confront me from some future fridge.

		I took this last photo of myself today

They Say That Growing Up...

I tend not to enjoy coming of age stories.  They take me back to Hebbville Consolidated Junior High and growing up.  Is it always awkward?  I blush remembering my careless cruelty and exposure.  There was that teacher we drove to adult education.  Did I really say that?  And that?  There was that boy.  And that one.  A couple of years ago I smelled his scent in a crowd, his distinct scent, and turned to look.  There was that private note intercepted and read.  There was that special handshake.  And this intrigue and that fuss.  And that betrayal.  Bits of cattiness and clumsy earnestness. 

It was a good school and it was good to me and I have good memories too.  But I never think of it without a vague uneasiness.  It and that time in my life.  In Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro captures these moments so well.