Sledding With Boys

The last weekend in January I realized that I hadn't been sledding this year. Sledding at light speed down a steep hill at least once a year is one of the things I have to accomplish or the year feels incomplete. I quickly dropped everything and gathered enthusiastic boys and gear and roared off to the nearest snowy hill.
One downhill run and its accompanying rush satiates me in my old age and I soon trudge uphill breathless, flushed and content. Besides, my true purpose during sledding is to staunch the flow of blood that inevitably pours fourth from one boy or another.
Things always begin well. My sons wore varying degrees of sensible winter attire ranging from a fore thinking teen in multiple layers to a child (who shall remain nameless) who never wears anything other than nylon shorts and t-shirts (lest he happen upon a winter basketball game unprepared). The three lined up for a traditional and reasonably safe “on-your-butt, facing forward sled slide down a hill.” After only one conventional run,however, things rapidly morphed into stunts resembling Evil Knievel on ice.
As I watched, a huge mountain of snow was rapidly built and my sons joined forces and labored with never before seen physical displays of energy and enthusiasm. The boys gathered vast quantities of snow and pounded the mounds into dangerous slopes worthy of extreme downhill skiing.
Within minutes the mound was deemed absolutely injurious and potentially lethal enough and I positioned myself to view the landings and to gage whether the inevitable injuries were emergency room quality. After 16 years of three sons, my blood pressure rarely jumps a degree in casualty situations unless true carnage is evident. I've witnessed hundreds of stitches, staples, contusions and abrasions- many brother on brother inflicted. I do show more concern for injuries than my husband, however. This same man, who when witnessing our first sons' newborn shots, grew teary, turned pale and had to leave the room has now grown disturbingly blasé regarding our sons' bodily safety. When one of our children roars in screaming with blood spurting, he will without fail, glance at the wound and then utter his stock injury advice: “Rub some dirt on it.” Sam: “Dad, come quick! I think I can see some of James' bones sticking out!” Dad: “Rub some dirt on it.” Thus, I feel more comfortable personally attending events where fractures and contusions are likely.
I stood in my perpetually tense condition while one boy after the other tried out the slope. For several heart stopping seconds, huge air was achieved. Inevitably, the landing was hard and spectacular wipe outs followed. My attention was briefly diverted to some girls playing quiet snow games like making snow angels and building snow houses ( mystifyingly tame pursuits inconceivable to my boys), and when I turned back Ben, my 6'4, 14 year old flew past while standing upright and shot down the hill doing about 100 mph. All was well until half way down. His unsecured feet abruptly lifted from the sled and he made a short lived but valiant running attempt to stay upright. Legs pistoling wildly, he couldn't continue the warp speed and with a last wild flail of the arms, began a painful looking downhill tumble. He came to a sudden halt, and lay face-up and unmoving at the bottom of the hill.
The rest of us assumed our customary stance of watching for signs of life and when there were none, his brother Sam chivalrously decided to slide down hill to check his brothers' vitals. As Sam sped past, Ben sat up at the same moment Sam's shot out his arm to stop himself. Face connected with nose and the eruption of blood was remarkable and refused to dry up.. As we trailed back to the car; a walk of a good quarter mile, we paused occasionally to remark on the vast trail of gore Ben had left in his wake. One face bloodied and bleeding, others bruised and contused, we grinned all the way home.

The Old Dairy Diner

I walked into the flower shop in my hometown this week and stopped just inside the entry. For a moment, time flashed back 30 years. In my mind's eye, I saw the place when it had housed the old Dairy diner. I saw the lunch counter before me, lined with familiar faces that I had watched eat lunch and dinner hundreds of times.
During my childhood, my grandmother worked late in her home beauty shop each Thursday, so for several years,my grandpa and I had a standing dinner date once a week. We always went to The Dairy. We sat at the far right edge of the counter that ran the length of half the building and along the far wall. It was a comforting routine to take our same place along that line of stools. The seat I always wanted has a close view of the many photographs of the young waitresses that had worked there over the years. Their pictures lined an entire wall and examining them kept me entertained until my standing order of plain cheeseburger and fries would arrive. They were all very pretty girls with elaborate hair . They seemed exotic and glamorous to a little girl in a dowdy bowl cut. I remember thinking that it was very kind of the Millers, who owned the Diary, to care about their waitresses enough to display their pictures.
My grandpa was a frequent customer and everyone knew him. He often talked his construction business with other men and many a house renovation or addition was planned at that counter. My job was to sit quietly and listen. Any nonsense like running around, whining or being obnoxious and demanding while out to dinner-such prevalent behavior today, was pleasantly absent from most restaurants in my childhood. It would have never occurred to me to misbehave, first because I enjoyed being there, and I certainly would not have wanted to risk my grandfather's displeasure or jeopardize future dinners together. An added behavior shaping incentive were the many customers who were also weekly visitors to my grandmother's beauty shop (back when ladies had time to get their hair fixed once a week). They would have informed my grandmother if I had misbehaved.
I passed the extra time after finishing my favorite dinner by covertly watching other diners, eavesdropping on conversations and surreptitiously spinning on my stool. If I drank too much pop at The Dairy, I might have to brave the long trip to the upstairs bathroom. I dreaded using the bathroom because I had to make my way up a long flight of stairs to an upper storage area full of boxes and old machinery that always seemed gloomy and dark. The little bathroom was all the way in the back; a tiny light glowed from the cracked bathroom door on the other side of the long room. I was convinced it was haunted up there and my over-active imagination made my heart race with visions of unseen eyes that seemed to be watching me walk through the gloom. The trip back down was a heart pounding, feet- flying sprint back to the warmth and safety of the lunch counter and my grandfather.
If I ate all of my cheeseburger ( never an issue), I might be offered a piece of lemon, chocolate, or coconut pie made by Ms. Peck while my grandpa finished talking contracting, or hunting, or fishing to a wide, jovial audience. Each Thursday night was an event.
After coming out of my reverie,I finished up my shopping and as I paid my bill, I noticed they have on display an old ice cream container from The Dairy. It was so nice to still be able to walk through one of the warm places in my memory.

Sitting Vigil

After my brother Nick died, I had the same recurring nightmare: Nick was near death and we were unsuccessfully trying to get him medical help. In the nightmare, phones wouldn't dial, doctors were unavailable, ER departments were distant and I had no way to get him there. Desperation borne of grief, the dream reflected the sense of total helplessness in the face of loss.
Last week my 13 year old, Sam, became suddenly and terribly ill; he developed a high fever with stiff neck, vomiting and left-side paralysis. We raced to Kirby ER and were met with Wayne Matthews who is someone you certainly want to see in a crisis. Before I could pull Sam from the car Wayne had him out and was racing- running with Sam in the wheelchair. Competence, matched by compassion- that is Mr. Matthews. The medical field has been increasingly pressured to form to a business model, yet Wayne is a beacon of what works for patient care- of how we should take care of our sick. Within an hour we were whisked by ambulance to Carle where Sam was admitted into the isolation ward.
The big fear was bacterial meningitis- which can be deadly within hours. In those hours before the antibiotics were started, while we waited for doctors to results testing, I was plunged once again into that old nightmare, “Please help now!”
Medicine doesn't work the way it does on television with everyone scrambling and immediacy of treatment. Often, it is a wait of hours, and of methodical tests, analyzing results. Walking with a barely conscious child while an youthful orderly slowly pushed the bed through the labyrinth inner hallways of Cale towards to MRI department was slow torture. I repeatedly resisted the urge to scream at the hapless Carle employee, “Move it! Push faster! This is an emergency” Elevators took eternities to arrive.
Waiting in the darkened room, with Sam sedated, waves of fear, near panic,would occasionally wash over me, dropping my core temperature like a plunge into polar water.
I have heard people say that after living through grief or surviving the death of a child that they now have nothing to fear. They knew they could survive the worst. Strange how I came through it feeling the opposite. I survived grief the first time, this doesn't mean I could stay afloat again. In fact, I have serious doubts. It's like being asked to repeatedly survive being adrift in the ocean for years on end. Life grants no immunity to those who have managed to once swim to the other side of grief.
Sadly, I didn't learn the one thing that grief should have permanently taught me; that I am not in control. Instead of realizing the futility of hyper vigilance, I try harder to keep everyone safe. Sometimes I wish, like a friend once said, “that we could all just sit in the living room and hold hands.” The worry is exhausting. Grief counselors might say my worry is related to post traumatic stress syndrome. I say life is as it has ever been- wondrously perilous; none of us gets through unscathed. The knowledge of what we can loose in a heartbeat is a heavy burden, yet that same knowledge has given me the gift of constant gratitude. Painful knowledge that perhaps shouldn't be medicated away.
As I sat in the silent, darkened hospital room, Sammy quite after a morphine injection, I glanced out of our 8th floor window and saw the Life Flight helicopter arriving with an unknown families' tragedy. It was a stark reminder that things could be much worse.
In the dark quiet, I began to think about the hundreds of thousands of parents who were doing just what I was at that moment; sitting vigil over a sick child. I felt a quiet yet strong pulse of connection with all those watching mothers. It gave me strength. To be a parent is to allow your heart to be exposed to all the elements of life- a supremely dangerous and exhilarating endeavor. As it is, as it ever shall be.
We were lucky . Within hours of falling ill, my child was in a clean hospital bed being attended to by a host of nurses and doctors all intent on healing him. As the life flight helicopter took off yet again to attend to someone desperately hurt or ill- someone whose mother was no doubt praying, I whispered again, “we are so lucky.”
Thank you to my friends and family who helped us so much while Sam was in the hospital especially to the Van Tines for their ever present support and care and to the Richardson's' who showed Sam that he has some awesome friends. Thanks you to the pastor at the First Christian Church who visited with us and offered warm, supportive words and prayer.

Christmas Memory

In looking back over some old Christmas notes to friends, I came upon this glimpse into life with boys as it was almost a decade ago. The boys were then 4,5, and 6. Here is one of my favorite Christmas memories:

Christmas 1999
As you know, I am the mother of three young sons, and I take my parental role very seriously. I have read many books about boys, how to help them become promising young men, how not to damage them unduly, how to prevent them from creating a homemade atomic weapon and blowing up the neighborhood, etc...
I was pondering the idea of hardwiring today and considering that while some mothers' experience sons like Thoreau who, while tiny, lisped sweetly, "I am trying to look through the stars to see if I can see God behind them."
I have sons who say things like yesterday's gem:
"Hey, if we melted down this silver baby Jesus nativity scene, we could make a bunch of bullets."
Surely there must be a reason for my sons to emerge from the womb screaming for blood and glory, and refusing all toys except projectiles. Bereft of toy guns by me, their idealistic mother, they deftly mastered the art of shaping their toast into the shape of a realistic looking guns and pointing them at me and saying "Bang!" by mere toddlerhood.
I feel I am swimming against a raging stream of testosterone- and losing the battle.
Yesterday, I noticed my lovely and realistic 500,001 piece Bethlehem village looked... odd. Looking closely, I discovered someone had carefully placed 100 or so small, plastic soldiers complete with full battle gear at strategic locations throughout the village. Especially daunting was the prone soldier holding Mary at bay with what appeared to be an AK-47.
Kind of authentic really.
Only last night did realize how very little control do I hold over these testosterone laden young mammals. We were doing the traditional kids get to make candy activity with peanut butter balls and chocolate. The boys were busily crafting small spheres of sweetened peanut butter and Christmas music was playing softly in the background.
All was a Christmas postcard.
I heard some smothered giggles and emerged from the kitchen just in time to see my middle son, Benjamin, in the act of chocolate-covering the most perfectly rendered set of male genitalia. Replete in its perfection... he had indeed created peanut butter balls.
Wish me lots of luck with these guys, please. I will need it.
Merry Christmas Everyone!

Recipe Box

I opened my grandmother's recipe box this week. I was trying to get a head start for Thanksgiving and wanted to make and freeze her poppyseed cake. Along with Texas cake and carrot cake and pumpkin pies,her poppyseed cake made an anticipated appearance each year. While thumbing through the thick collection of recipe cards , I found myself pausing to remember many friends and beauty shop ladies who shared recipes with one another on a weekly basis. Many familiar names topped the carefully written recipes. “From the Kitchen of Dorcas Herren” announced the recipes belonging to my piano teacher, Mrs. Herren. She arrived at my grandmother's beauty shop every Saturday morning before dawn to have her hair done for over 20 years.
As I read her recipe for peanut butter bars, and Amish friendship bread I remembered how competently her hands flew across the keyboard and how she never once was grumpy at my obvious lack of practice. I read so many names and could see the familiar faces, now gone.
I read my great-grandmother's recipe for lye soap and wondered how she managed a chore involving dangerous, combustible chemistry and simultaneously keep watch of her 17 children. I wish I would have thought to ask her how she managed.
I found favorite foods of my grandfather- like the mock strawberries my grandmother would make at Christmas. They were made with condensed milk, sweetened coconut, and strawberry Jello and looked and smelled like real strawberries. Not caring for coconut, I never thought they tasted as good as they looked- but it was the comfortingly familiar process of making them that announced that Christmas was coming. I found the Swedish Meatball recipe and recalled how much Papa loved them and how my grandmother had made the tiny, labor intensive meatballs by the hundreds for my parents' wedding reception.
I found an old photo of my brother, Nick, tucked between two recipes. Nick is wearing a chef's hat and rolling out pizza dough. I remembered that day and taking that picture. It was a good, happy day- one of thousands spent together. I am comforted that he knew how much he was loved.
I finally found the poppyseed recipe, but was momentarily daunted to find that it only listed the ingredients- not directions how to put them together. My grandmother must have assumed that whomever made the cake would have the experience needed to put it together. I should have payed attention. I forged ahead, overly confident in my abilities to remember how the batter should taste.
The resulting mixture looked familiar and as the cake baked, I was hopeful . During the last 5 minutes, however, it collapsed completely. I must have botched critical steps. Luckily, my grandmother is still with us, I have time to ask her, time to learn.
The recipe box is a tiny time portal. It can connect me with faces and events that once were. It contains glimpses of a life lived well- with family and close friends. I can open the box and within seconds, am transported to Christmases and holidays spent with people I loved, whom I love still-but whose time with me was limited. We are never certain how long we will remain together for grief and loss visits us all. Although I sometimes ache for those who have passed, I am grateful for having the chance to know and love them. I think of the wise words a friend once told me about loss: “ The holes in our lives created by those who leave us are enormous and will never truly go away, but somehow, we reassemble ourselves around it.”
I hold the recipe box in my hands- it feels warm and alive with the voices and faces it contains.
A mini Pandora's box of love and memory. For this, I am truly thankful.

After the Election

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs.

The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side.

It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonderIf I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make good neighbours?

Isn’t itWhere there are cows?

But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.”

I could say “Elves” to him,

But it’s not elves exactly,

and I’d ratherHe said it for himself.

I see him thereBringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand,

like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

Removing the Blinders

Bright before me the signs implore me

To help the needy and show them the way

Human kindness is overflowing

And I think it's going to rain today

-Randy Newman

My oldest son recently made his first solo trip to Chicago. With trepidation, we put him on an Amtrak and sent him off to his Aunt Tess in the Windy City. He arrived uneventfully and had a great time with my little sister- who showed uncharacteristic restraint, by the way, and wisely refused to allow him to get a tattoo.
After he came home, he related that one of the strongest impressions the city made was the many homeless families camped on each city block.
Statistics provided by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless show that Chicago has over 80,000 homeless people and shelters serve 15,000 any given night. Chicago is one of five cities that collectively have over 50% of the nation's homeless population,many of whom are mentally ill -displaced after deinstitutionalization and a broken mental health system, but many are also victims of family violence.. There are more than 18,600 homeless students attending Illinois Public schools- a truly staggering number. The causes of homelessness are many and often complex and Chicago has a vast network of good people trying to help people find shelter, however,my son saw only the desperation and despair. He saw statistics in human faces and it was a revelation.
Through my work with the Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Council's 6th Judicial Circuit, I see suffering family violence creates and which often leads to homelessness for women and children. Last week, I participated in hosting a large conference in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Working in collaboration with the 5th Judicial Circuit, our own Piatt County Sheriff's Department, Prevent Child Abuse Illinois, HOPE,Dove,Inc, A Woman's Fund,Kirby Hospital, Piatt Probation, Safe from the Start,DCFS, and others, we were able to bring nationally renowned domestic violence speaker, Mark Wynn for a day long conference.
Mark is a 20 year member of the Nashville Police Department and served as a Lt. to the Domestic Violence Division. He is also a survivor and witness of years of brutal domestic violence. He brings his wealth of experience and training to law enforcement, yet the message that resonated with me-the image that will stay with me longest, is the same one that I have learned and witnessed throughout my years working with domestic violence; the image of children hiding under their beds, hands covering their ears, eyes squeezed tight- waiting for the violence to end. Mark related how he and his brother would hide under the bed and listen to their step-father brutalize their mother. They once even planned how they would protect their mother from further abuse by killing their step-father. They replaced the whiskey in his bedside bottle with roach killer and waited. The abuser drank the entire bottle, but fortunately for him and for the boys, he showed no adverse effects. Mark said they just kept waiting for their step-dad to flip over on his back with his legs up in the air, stiff like those bugs. Luckily, that didn't happen. I can't tell you how many times I have heard similar tales from child victims.
Contrary to the beliefs of wishful thinkers who profess, “we don't have those kinds of problems in Piatt County”- I assure you, we do. Sometimes we are blinded to the suffering of those around us, not by indifference, or because we have been hardened by the realities of suffering on our street corners, but by the absence of visible suffering. We are sometimes shielded by our own affluence. Immaculately groomed lawns are not violence proof. Although out most vulnerable citizens may not be living in cardboard boxes on our street corners, they are here. There are children in Piatt County who have become adept at finding hiding places and are waiting out the violence. We have domestic violence, child abuse, and even homelessness in this county. I have seen families without homes camped near corn fields. We must ask ourselves, can we do more to help in our own towns?