Role models

We once again vacationed at Camp DuNord this summer.  At some point Jon and I did actually discuss doing something different, but the kids rioted at the thought.  We would ruin their lives if we didn't go back!  So in early August we packed up and headed toward Ely.  We stopped, as tradition dictates, at the fancy Italian hotspot, Sir G's, for dinner before heading out to camp.  Our pals the Neilsens met us and the laughter began.  Dinner was dominated by a Q and A with Pete Neilsen, the newly minted 14 year old who had just completed a 14 day Widji trip in the BWCA.  As he regalled us with his tales of adventure, I noticed that he was sitting tall, shoulders back, looking confident and proud.   And why not?  This kid just went on a 14 day wilderness adventure!  Without his parents!  He sterned, he portaged, he cooked, he grew.  Later, Wally and I were chatting about the changes in Pete- about how he idolized his counselor, how he had become steeped in the religion of the 'widji way', how he came off trail and begged his parents for two things:  fresh fruit and a good book.  Sign my kids up!  I'm thinking if you can get your boys 14 days in the wilderness with a college student who reads the campers good literature, kneads bread dough on the bottom of the canoe (not while it is in the water!) and talks about his yearnings for fresh fruit, well, what's the problem with a little idolization?  I saw the trickle down effect while we were at DuNord.  Apparently Pete's counselor carried a backpack at all times- equipped with a good book, a bottle of water, and other small necessities.  So now Pete carries a backpack.  By day 2, Theo was strutting around with his own bag on his back.  And Eli was asking quiet questions about widji, planning out his own route up through a couple trips at St. Croix and then onto the intro widji expedition.  The only problem with this plan, if they follow through on it, is that we better start saving money now! Those widji trips are not cheap.  But what kind of price can you really put on confidence, self-realization, and maturity? 

The appliance anniversary

Over the course of the summer our fridge has gone on the fritz, the dishwasher refuses to clean anything that hasn't been pre-scrubbed, and the dryer is only drying loads of 3-7 socks at a time.  For the moment we have only chosen to replace the fridge, but there is more appliance shopping on the horizon, that seems a sure thing.  Luckily our 17th annivesary approaches.  How do you think Jon will feel about a big old gift certificate to ApplianceSmart?  Or perhaps Sears is more sexy? 

Gretty Crocker

I am seriously getting in touch with my inner homemaker this summer.  I haven't yet gotten up the guts to actually try canning my overflow of produce (botulism postively petrifies me!) but I've done a lot of cooking up and then freezing.  The feeling of contentment i get as I spoon the pizza sauce into the jars and toss them into the freezer is well worth the time spent stirring the pot on a hot Sunday evening.  And I am already looking forward to cracking out a potent little parcel of pesto for some hectic mid-winter meal and sniffing my way back to these lazy summer days. 

Hands on!

Theo has always been a child who needs to touch, to move, to connect.  Every single dinner ends with Theo swallowing his last bite, pushing his plate back, looking for the nearest parent, thowing open his arms and saying, 'Snuggle?'.  This is adorable in the winter, but when it's 92 degrees and there's no breeze, I'm not such a fan.  Although he is hard to resist.  I usually have to make him wash up first because eating for Theo is a very hand's on experience.  He likes to feel that food- a fork is way too much separation between his touchy greedy little fingers and the wonderful textures of the offerings on his dinner plate.  But he does wash up real well. 

What I've noticed this year, as Theo ventures out more often on his bike, is that this touching moving feeling thing doesn't translate so well to biking under his own power.  He does firmly plant his hands on his handle bars and keeps them there, but something must be just vibrating through his nervous system as he rides.  Every thing he sees, or feels, or thinks, seems to translate into a movement in his arms, which are, of course, connected to his handle bars, which steer his bike.  So his trip down to the end of the block is nowhere near a straight line.  He is veering left and right and sometimes swings right back around the way he came.  All of this movement seems to go unnoticed by him, but for the parent behind him it's nervewracking.  The other day when we rode to the DQ I was sure he was going to plow into several parked cars, but luckily his most violent swings seemed to line up with empty road, or better yet, vacant alleyways.  One time we were riding along to the south when all of the sudden he jerked to the left and was 10 feet down an alley before he came to a stop.  I called out, 'What's up?' and he answered, "I don't know!  My armpit itched!  I seem to have itchy armpit disease!"  Then he laughed, turned around and headed back my way.  Sort of.  I've really never seen anything quite like it.  But here's the key- it doesn't seem to bother him so much.  He teeters this way and that, careening down the road with a grin.  And it does seem that maybe, just maybe, the veering is settling down a little the more he rides.  I just hope that he gets this under control before he is behind the wheel of a real live automobile, or we are going to have to find ourselves some seriously good insurance. 

Rites of passage

I teach a seminar at my school on rites of passage. We look at cultures throughout history and throughout the world and examine how they have moved young people to adulthood. The conversations in this class are usually lively- the kids I'm talking with are either going through some sort of passage or they're not, and in either case, it's something they really want to talk about.   Part of our discussion is always about how these rites of passage are often hard for their parents- not only are the kids changing, and changing into something that at first seems a little more dangerous, a little less controlled, but everytime a kid goes through some sort of passage, why then, so does the parent.  And most usually this means that there is some self-relization about that inevitable, never-ending, aging process.  For the most part, I have been able to have these discussions with my teenaged students and mentally flash back to my own experiences as a teen in the 80's.  I usually have been able to identify with them, not with their parents.  But that time is coming to an end.

Here's how I know.  We were up at Camp Dunord this August and we spent quite a bit of time in canoes.  For the first few days Eli was eager to try out his paddling, from the bow. But then one day he saw his cousin Sam trying out the stern and he got the crazy idea in his head that he'd like to try that.  And try it he did.  And not only did he get it, but he liked it.  And while that is fabulous and great and cool- it's so neat to see him back there in the stern, taking a little control, being in charge of our route, it's also hard, because to see him back in there in the stern I have to twist around from the dang bow!  I hate the bow.  I always thought that it was just less comfortable (you can't rig up a lounger from the bow so easily) but now that Eli is actually in the stern and I am pretty sure that I am never going to be welcome back there again as long as he is in the canoe, I see it from a whole new angle.  I hate the bow because you are not in control!  This here is a big self-realization for me.  Some of you others may be thinking, finally, she figures out that she is as much as a control freak as her very own dear mother.  Sorry Mom.  But it took Eli moving from the bow to stern for this to sink in.  Not only am I not in control, but Eli, my child, is.  Help.  And so as I prickle up with pride to see my first born become capable and strong and comfortable in the stern, I find myself a little uncomfortable up here in the bow.  And then I get to thinking, this journey has really only just begun.  This is only one of the very first small steps toward his move to eventual (or so we hope!!) adulthood.  And even though now he's still at the stage where he will take some coaching from the bow and he really doesn't quite notice when I sneak in some steering-type strokes from the front, as we travel further down this path I think my input will be asked for, and maybe required, less and less.  And I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Actually, that's not true. Right now I'm pretty sure I feel quite uncomfortable with it.  But I know, from my teaching experience, that this is actually how I am supposed to feel.  I just wish that made me like it more.  I know I know I know that I shouldn't get all hung up just because Eli moved into the stern during a little canoe trip across a bay at Burntside lake.  But to me it marks the beginning of his passage into eventual adulthood, which I admit would be a problem if he never made that leap, but it made me come face to face with the fact that I'm moving on to something else here too.  Something that starts with the word middle and ends with the word aged.  I can not bring myself to bring those two words any closer together for the time being.  The good thing about these transitions is that if they are done right, we have some time to make adjustments along the way.  And so far, Eli seems very content to have me in his bow.  There might be a day when he wants to throw me right out of the dang canoe.

Thea

One night on our river trip, a few of the girls (Mary Beth being culprit number one!) got the idea to fashion up some new hairdos for Theo.  In the end, I don't know who was more pleased.  Theo took quite a bit of delight in being temporarily re-christened 'Thea'.  I don't know if this is going to be a reoccuring element in Theo's 'new look'.  Time will tell. 

The Dutch Invasion

So, when our dutch friends came to visit, we thought, hey, the challenge of finding places for all of them to sleep and eat and live in our house seems too easy.  Let's also try to completely outfit them for a trip into the wilderness.  Luckily we have a lot of family and friends who like REI.  And so outfit we did, and then the 10 of us, plus another family of four, headed out for 3 days on the Namekagon.  Was it delicious.  And I'm not just talking about MaryBeth's penchant for 5 course camping meals, I mean the whole dang trip.  One would think that heading out with 14 people, 5 canoes, 4 tents, and 48 tubes of sunscreen would be a bit chaotic, but this trip flowed as smoothly as the river itself.  By the time we were rounding the first bend from our put-in, Eli was in the water floating alongside.  Soon most of the other kids joined them.  To hear their whoops and giggles as we passed through shallow ripples or deep channels was a delight.  And the adults all quickly figured out how to rig up a kind of lounging situation in the sterns of the canoes.  When it got too hot, I could simply roll off my lounger and into the refreshing waters.  It did, admittedly, take more effort to get back into the canoe, especially from mid-river in deep water, but I got pretty good at that as well. 

We spent the next 3 days floating, swimming, eating, and solving two-minute mysteries.  The weather was on its best behavior and the bugs seemed mostly to be on vacation elsewhere.  We didn't spot as many sturgeon as last year, but just seeing one was enough to put me newly in awe of these relics from the age of the dinosaurs.  Our Dutch pals, fresh from living with 23 million friends and neighbors in Shanghai, were amazed by the solitude and beauty just two hours from the cities.  It proved to me once again that it is worth the effort to dig out the stove, the gas, the PFD's, the sleeping pads, to dust them off and to get out there!

Flashforward to the teen years

This past July we had to do some changing up in the house in order to make room for our favorite family of six from the Netherlands.  Despite the fact that not one but two of the blow up mattresses we procured seemed to pop, all things went mostly according to plan.  What was a surprise to me was how much my own two boys would take to being temporarily relocated to the basement.  I was just going to have them sleep on the futon couch down there and call it good, but in the days of prep before the dutchies arrived, Eli got in on the act.  When I was off trying to locate spare sleeping bag number 5 and 6, he got busy in the basement.  By the time I returned he fashioned up a labyrinth of extension cords to plug in the CD player he had dug out of the Goodwill bag, an old discarded desk lamp he had duct-taped to overhead plumbing pipes, and a clock (pilfered from my bedroom!), all without diverting power from the air hockey table or Wii console.  He pulled an old side table into duty as a headrest and found my grandmother's silverware box to use as a tissue holder.  Kleenex have never had it so good, residing in a velvet lined case.  He then dug through our rack of CD's, popped in some vintage U2 and declared the 'room' his for the foreseeable future.  When he started talking about plans to move the bookshelves down from upstairs to make his walls I had to put a temporary stop on the remodeling process.  And here I had been worried about how he would feel about being relocated from his room for the week.  I never once imagined it would jump-start the teenage years.  But now the Dutch pals have returned to China (because even though they are our very favorite family of six from the Netherlands they did come to us from their home in Shanghai) Eli has returned to his upstairs bedroom.  It might have been the spiders, or the constant creaking hum of the dehumidifier, or maybe just the general gloom of the unfinished basement, but whatever the case, I'm glad to have him back.  He did not leave his penchant for redecorating in the basement, however.  He somehow talked his brother into switching beds with him, and once in possesion of the bottom bunk he quickly got out his favorite roll of ducttape and fashioned up quite the cave using spare bedsheets.  But so far no extension cords, cd players or old school U2.  The teen years seem to be back on hold for a bit here.  whew.

Developing his new look

For awhile now our little man Theo has been growing out his hair.  And it is nice hair, it should probably be grown out.  I just hope that he settles on some hair style that doesn't require the constant head flick to get the hair out of his eyes.  There are some boys at my school who have a pretty constant tick which I think spells lots of chiropractic care in their future.  This brings me to my prediction that there is a whole generation of boys who are going to need therapy a few years down the road for hip/knee problems.  How those saggers have to walk to keep their pants up can not be good for the body long term.  I know, I know, that fashion before function is the name of the game for teens, and I myself would have to sit down and undo 37 safety pins before I could get out of a pair of jeans back in the 80's, but I don't think that silly fashion did any long term damage to my body....  But I digress, back to Theo.  I had him in for his yearly physical earlier this summer and he was chatting with his doctor, the lovely Sandy Sackett.  I love how they interact- he can be a little shy with some adults, but he just bares his soul to Sandy.  During this visit she asked him if he had many of the same teachers that his older brother had.  He said yes.  She then asked, "Well, do they ever get the two of you mixed up?  Accidentally call you Eli?"  To which Theo responded, "They used to, but lately I've been growing my hair out and developing my own look."  Sandy did an excellent job of surpressing a giggle, raised her eyebrows at me over Theo's head and said, "Are you now?".  Yep.  Yep he is.

Kitchen Confidential

Today I spent about 6 hours in the kitchen, trying to get a handle on the outstanding produce before we head out to DuNord for awhile.  I made:
3 jars of salsa
1 big jar of cucumber refrigerator pickles
1 ice cube try of some seriously potent pesto
6 loaves of zucchini bread
and a big tray of my mom's infamous 'no-bake bars'

Ok, there are no vegetables in the no-bake bars, only sugar. 

I found that the ingredients I was working with really did not go well with a little wound I have on my finger.  First vinegar, then hot peppers, then onion, garlic, tomatoes, lime juice.  I was suffering.  But the bounty in my fridge and freezer make it all worthwhile.

And here's the confidential part of this little tale.  The wound- it's from when I sliced off a little piece of my finger earlier this week while making pasta salad for a neighborhood potluck.  Not a lot of my finger, just a teeny little fatty section next to the fingernail.  But I never found it.  I was chopping onions at the time and it just got mixed in.  So my potluck dish was probably not 'vegetarian' as I claimed.  Don't tell the neighbors!