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!

Check out those femurs!!

A couple years ago I tried to make the switch from regular old pedals on my bike to those fancy clip-in shoes.  I went to a local shop, talked to someone briefly, bought some shoes, clips, pedals and then took them home, rigged everything up (ok, Jon did that, not me) and then sat out in the back yard clinging to the tree while I tried to get my feet in and out of those clips.  I couldn't do it.  Could not do it.  I never even got my feet in the clips once.  So I took everything back off the bike (or Jon did) and trudged back up to the store and returned it. They were not pleased with me. 
So yesterday after my shoelaces got stuck in my pedals for the 976th time, nearly tossing me from my bike into traffic, and I decided it was time to try again, I was nervous.  But I stopped by NOW sports (a different store from last time) and had a chat with a lovely young man.  I told him I had tried and failed once- I needed their easiest set up and some coaching.  He was enthusiastic- but told me I had to come back with my bike- they were open until 8 and they would not let me leave the store until I had mastered the technique of getting out of my clips.  I gave him a brief overview of my tree hugging failure and he said that he could stand for a little overtime if it took longer than 8pm.
I wasn't able to return until 7, and I was nervous.  But then I walked in and the first guy I talked to put me entirely at ease.  The whole evening became a laugh fest with three employees eventually helping me, all of them making minor adjustments to my bike as we went through the stages of fitting me out.  They kept telling me that I needed to get my bike tuned up, but by the time I walked out the door we all agreed that I no longer needed to schedule one- they had all taken turns tweaking this or lubing that, and by the time I rolled out my bike was gleaming, and silent- far different than the creaky screecher I had ridden in on. The highlight of the evening was when they had me up on the trainer and one guy stood in front of me yelling "Don't look down!  You can't look down to click in- you'll hit a parked car!"  Then he looked down and said, "Whoa!  That bike is not sized correctly for you.  Your seat is way to low.  Wait- look at those femurs!  Bob!  Hey Bob!  Come over and check out her femurs!"  So Bob came over and checked out my femurs.  I suppose I should have been flattered- long legs are a positive thing on a woman, right?  But they were talking as if these femurs were freakish, and sure enough before long they had out a little measurer and were getting the stats on the femurs.  My femurs!  But we all had a laugh, they got my seat positioned correctly, and I finished up my lesson.  When I went to the register to pay they told me the tune-up and 'mini quick fix' were free, but I should return for the real deal sometime soon.  I will.  They have won my return business.  I rode out the door confidently just before 8.