Fill in the Blanks

On the sixth week after her father passed away, my oldest daughter presented me with a family portrait.

I told her I liked it very much. I like how Dad is standing tall, in front of the children, in a protective stance. I like how all the kids are huddled together, bonding, perhaps, in their collective memories.

I asked her, though, “Why don’t we have faces?”

She answered, “Because we just don’t know how we feel yet. We are ready to be laughing or crying at any moment. We just don’t know.”

Poppy (9)

On the sixth week after her father passed away, my youngest daughter presented me with a drawing.

I told her l liked it very much. I like how even though Mom and Dad are separated by space, they continue to share the warmth of a radiant heart enveloped in sunshine. I like how there is heaven and earth, stars and sun, and a calming symmetry between them.

I asked her, though, “Why don’t we have faces?”

She answered, “Because all the really important things you feel are on the inside.”

MH (5)

 

Social Sympathy

The Greenville Journal wrote a couple of articles related to social media and the role it plays in helping families and communities grieve and support one another during difficult times. I am honored to have been interviewed about how our global village supported us through Mary Hazel and Russell’s illnesses and continues to support us now.

 

How Strange

It was shower night. (We aim for every other night as my children protest when I suggest they clean themselves every single day. I pick my battles.)

I was putting away laundry in the twins’ room when I heard P call out to me, in the way that your kids do the second you walk out of the room, “Moooooooom?” Moooooooom?!”

“I’m right here,“ I answered loudly. Sometimes, lately, the kids have wanted me to be a little closer. “What is it?”

“Can you come in here?” she asked.

“Sure,” I surrendered, as I piled the remaining clean laundry back into the empty basket. I poked my head around the door, making sure not to let out all the hot steam from the cozy marble-tiled bathroom. I have been frequently reprimanded. “What do you need?”

“I need you to come in. Like all the way in. Please?” she added.

I scooted in, barefoot, and navigated around the broken tile that I’ve been meaning to replace for years. I perched on the nearby shower chair which remains in the bathroom though nobody needs it anymore. “What’s up?” I asked.

My modest daughter peeled back the fogged-up shower curtain and stood there with the hot water beating down on her back. She was holding a slim crescent-shaped bar of soap and looked like she had seen a ghost.

“Mom,” she whispered. “Dad used this bar of soap.”

I smelled peppermint, tea tree oil, and a little lavender. I took a deep breath. There were several long seconds of silence, but the understanding washed over me, too.

“He used this on his body, while he was still alive,” she said. “How strange that the bar of soap is still here. And Daddy is not.”

More silence. More deep breathing. Nodding.

“Mom, I don’t think we should use it anymore. I think we should save it. It was Dad’s soap. This is how he smelled.”

I told her that I had been having similar thoughts. When I emptied the trash from the bedroom for the first time after he died, I took inventory: a banana peel, an empty yogurt cup, a napkin, a tea bag. His last snack. And I thought, “How strange that the banana peel is still yellow.”

How strange that his phone is still charged, waiting for a text. How strange that his slippers are still poised under the bed ready to receive his tired feet. How strange that he still gets mail. How strange that the grocery list he started on a pink Post-it Note still waits in the drawer. How strange that the cat our daughter chose from the Humane Society on her eighth birthday outlived him. How strange that his laptop is still plugged into the same outlet, where he wrote his last journal entry, on the day before his heart stopped. How very strange.

On the afternoon I squeezed Russell’s right hand, and the palliative care doctor held his left, his voice cracked when he responded, “How strange…” He had just been told that the medicine was no longer working. “How strange that I never will finish writing my second novel. How strange that I won’t see the children graduate,” he hoarsely whispered. “How strange that I won’t be around to take care of my mother and father.”

And it is all just so strange. The negative space. The echoes. The ripples. The feeling that he has just been in the hospital a little longer than usual but will return any day now. The illusion that he is still whole in my mind, when I close my eyes.

We are only a month into this grieving process. I expect that eventually we will put away his razor. We will sort through his clothes. We will consume the last of the groceries we bought while he was still with us. And then, I’m sure, there will be a completely new and different kind of strange.

Eventually, I realized my daughter, soap sliver in hand, had been shivering at the shower threshold for some minutes. We had been staring right through each other, lost in our own strange thoughts. I got up from the plastic chair, held her wrinkled hands, and drew her small, wet body into a clean, warm towel where we stayed until the shaking stopped.

I wonder how long soap will keep in a Ziploc bag.

Epiphany

My oldest daughter, who is not fond of change, gets the post-Christmas blues even more profoundly than our Elf on the Shelf when he is boxed up and stuffed back in the closet for the next eleven months. (If she knew this was Blackberry’s perennial fate, rather than returning to his cozy home with Santa at the North Pole, she might never recover.)

She says a prayer for Blackberry every December 24th because not only does his departure signal the beginning of the end of the holiday, she genuinely misses him and the magic he brings. She cries every year when the Christmas tree is left bashfully naked on the curb to be manhandled by city workers on recycling day. There are fewer tears with each passing year, but still. We extend Christmas as long as possible by waiting until Epiphany to take down the decorations. We bake cookies, build a fire, and recount our favorite holiday memories. The children also look forward to opening the very last present under the tree on Twelfth Night. Mostly we do this in an effort to ease our daughter back into the mundane world of routine as gradually as possible, where there is typically a stark lack of magic and wonder.

Last week, I rubbed her back and sang her to sleep because she was sad about returning to school. When I asked her why that made her sad, she whispered, “Time is just whooshing by and I won’t be little for much longer.” She is eight.

My instinct is to tell her not to worry. I realize this only makes her more anxious because she cannot help it.

In an attempt to cheer her up, I reminded her that we were planning a wonderful summer vacation with the extended family. She perked up a little.

“So, we’re going back to Pawleys Island again?” she asked hopefully.

“Oh, well…not this year,” I answered carefully. “We need a bigger house since there are more of us going.”

“So we’re not staying at Seacliff again?” she asked.

Seacliff, the splintered, weathered, oceanfront house we have visited so many times with the kids, is not fancy. It is exactly the opposite of fancy with its multitude of faded sticky notes advising you to jiggle the toilet handle so the water doesn’t “jump out” upon flushing, instructing you to lubricate the curtain rod with soap before attempting to take a shower, and warning you to never, ever, ever move the special screwdriver from atop the unreliable thermostat. (I am not exactly sure why, but I am not going to be the first one to find out.) Seacliff, the place we love to tease in the way only you can mock one of your own siblings, was the single house we could afford – in the offseason.

“No, Baby, not this year. We are going to stay in a cute house at St. Simons Island instead,” I encouraged. “It’s called Avonlea.”

“Oh,” she said flatly.

“Do you want to see pictures?” I offered.

“No, not really. I am sure it is fine.”

“Why are you sad?” I asked.

“Because it will be different,” she replied.

“Different doesn’t have to be bad,” I said. “There is a pool and bunk beds and a golf cart…”

“I understand,” she said. “But that house doesn’t have all our memories in it.”

I couldn’t let her know how much I understood exactly what she meant. If she sensed my wistfulness for the time when my toddling twins first ran down the beach, holding hands and laughing as the wind tangled their hair, I would never have a chance to convince her otherwise. This was the first place we vacationed after the baby’s first clean cancer scans. Countless fortified sandcastles destroyed by high tides, sweet Jack and Ruby who vacationed next door, ghost stories of The Gray Man; I had to check myself.

“That’s true,” I countered. “But we have the opportunity to make new memories, different ones.”

“Can you show me the pictures of the old house instead?” she sniffed. I obliged.

“See that blue couch? That’s where DanDaddy always reads us bedtime stories. And that screened-in porch is where we always eat our Cheerios in the mornings. And there’s the outside shower where we wash our treasures before we spread them out on the porch to dry. And remember the year you had Mary Hazel in your tummy and you didn’t even know it yet? That was the year we danced to The Beatles in the living room. And every night, we walked across the road to the creek to see the sunset and ring the bell on the dock. Remember, Mom?”

“Yes, I remember all those things,” I nodded and smiled. “What wonderful memories we made!”

“I don’t want it to be different,” she said. “I don’t want things to change.”

“We can’t stop things from changing,” I said. “We can remember the special things and look forward to new adventures at the same time.”

“I feel like the old house will be sad if we don’t come back.”

I wanted to tell her that the house wouldn’t know, that it doesn’t have feelings, but I didn’t.

“I’m afraid that I will forget everything,” she said.

What can a mother say to a daughter whose soul is older than weathered Seacliff itself?

Sometimes, I find myself overwhelmed when trying to take the weight of the world off my daughter’s shoulders. But I think the world is probably better off being inhabited by tender souls who feel too much. These are the artists, the thinkers, the poets, the saints. Would I take away all her worry in order for her to be a happier little girl? As her mother, yes, I probably would. But sometimes, even mothers do not get to choose.

I hope my daughter will grow up to understand one day that it wasn’t the house that made those vacations special; it was the fact that she loved and felt and noticed all the things she held important. Knowing she is blessed with her father’s keen memory and her mother’s sentimentality, I am hoping to read her memoir before I leave this world, knowing the reward for her anxiety just might be a beautiful thing.

Until then, I will continue to sweep up the piles of dried pine needles and wait until my daughter is happily distracted on a play date before I drag this year’s Christmas tree to the curb and throw away the last of the wrapping paper.

 

The Sweet Spot

The hustle and bustle of the holidays are weeks behind us now. The stores magically disappeared the work of elves before I could finish singing the last verse of the Twelve Days of Christmas. A new holiday is already upon us, drowning us with reminders in the forms of super-sized, heart-shaped Whitman’s Samplers and cheaply constructed plush toys bearing promises of eternal devotion. And my dear seven-year-old daughter repeating at regular intervals, “But it seems like it was just Christmas. I just want time to slow down.”

I don’t think I wanted time to slow down until I was at least 30, but my sensitive, soulful daughter has already encountered something that has taken me years to realize. There is a very delicate balance between enjoying the anticipation of something and dreading its passing.

The day after Thanksgiving, we took Blackberry the Elf down from his hibernation spot in the coat closet. We placed him on a high shelf and waited for the kids to discover him the next morning, signaling the official beginning of the Christmas season. As expected, they awakened with excitement and set out to find him. Pitter patter down the hardwood hallway they echoed.

“There he is!” Poppy shouted. “I found him!” It was only a few minutes later when I heard her sigh at the breakfast table, “Well, only a month until Blackberry has to go back to the North Pole. I sure will miss that ol’ elf.”

“Sweetie,” I encouraged. “He’s only just gotten here. It’s only just begun!”

“I know,” she replied. “But I already feel how much I’ll miss him when he’s gone.”

“Why don’t we focus on the positive here?” I tried. “Aren’t you looking forward to baking cookies, and singing carols, and spending family time in front of the fire?”

“Of course,” she answered sincerely. “But when I’m in the middle of doing all those things, then that means that it will all be over soon and I will miss Christmas when it’s gone. I just want it to be Christmas forever.”

The poor girl is stuck between looking forward and backward at the same time. And this is her character, not just during the holidays.

She expresses with regularity the following:

• “I don’t want to go to college because that means you and Dad will be old.”

• “I don’t want to turn eight because I like being seven just fine.”

• “I don’t like your new iPhone case because you got the last one when I was five, and I’ll never be five again.”

• “Can you still find your favorite curl, Mom? If it’s not there, will you still love me the same?”

• “You remember when Daddy didn’t have a boo-boo leg? I am starting to forget and that makes me sad.”

She strives to make everything special. She is devoted to the wellbeing of her stuffed animals. She apologizes to her towel when she steps on it. She tells us every single night that we are the best parents she could have ever gotten; sometimes while tearing up.

She envelops every moment in time with a sentimental blanket, hoping desperately to preserve its perfection, at that particular instant.

This is a lot of pressure for a little girl. This is a lot of pressure for her mama.

I often encourage my oldest daughter to live in the moment, not to worry so much. To find her happy place. We take deep breaths before bed and talk about what it means to be at peace.

Her brother and sister are the opposite. They seem rarely to do anything but live in the moment. They are like playful puppies, happily distracted by whatever comes their way. They appear fun loving and carefree. They rarely reflect on the context of the moment they are so effortlessly devouring. At times, I think Poppy wishes she was more like that. I am not sure which is the better fate.

Is it truly possible to appreciate the fullness of a moment if you are not also keenly aware of its temporary nature?

My husband has kept a journal for years. Decades, actually. Often he is worried when he has not yet documented the events of the day in the form of a permanent record. Sometimes I suggest, “Maybe you could catch up on the journal another day? Maybe spend more time doing and less time writing about the doing?” He always replies, “But I’m afraid I might forget something.”

Yes, I get that. That speaks to me. I don’t want to forget the good stuff either. But there must be a balance, a neutral place, where the anticipation and the reflection meet in the middle and shake hands. Where joy and perspective agree to play nicely with one another.

I wish I could help sweet Poppy come to peace with her predicament. Loving things (like family, holidays, cars, old socks, and worn out pajamas) so wholly and completely sure does make a little body vulnerable to the passing of time.

I do not have the answers for her. But I will certainly ride on the see saw with her and strive to find that balance between happy and sad, hopeful and wistful, fulfilled and lonely. Maybe, just maybe, we can find that sweet spot together.

Where I’m From

Where I’m From
by Poppy H. (age 7)

I am from a house that has a smooth front porch and scratchy carpet.
I am from a house that has lots of toys and cats.
And a dog.

I am from a noisy radio.
I always hear the news.
I am from Dad telling me stories every night.
We love all the stories.
I am from me playing the piano C to G over and over again.

I am from root beer and saucy pizza.
(It is so cheesy.)
I am from the smell of cat litter and poop.
And also fresh crusty quiche and berries so juicy.

I am from warm hugs and kisses.
I am from Christmas,
Being the first one up and the last one asleep.
I am from cancer check-ups.
I am from laughing all the time.
I am from Slackajack and Butter – my favorite toys.

I am from love.

The Lesson

On the way to school this morning, MH asked to “play” a lesson.

“You got it,” I answered. “What’ll it be today? Rhymes? Counting in Spanish?”

“Hmmm,” she pondered. “Opposites!”

A favorite.

“Sure thing,” I agreed. “OK, I’ll start.”

“Up?”

“Down.”

“Big?”

“Little.”

“Day?”

“Night.”

“Pretty?”

(Long pause from the back seat.)

“Pretty?” I repeated. I glanced in the rear view mirror to see Bug casting her eyes up to the ceiling with her pointer finger resting on her chin.

“I don’t know,” she finally confessed.

I laughed and offered, “Ugly is the opposite of pretty.”

She thought on this for a minute and then asked, “Is Poppy pretty?”

“I think your sister is beautiful,” I answered.

(Long pause from the back seat.)

“Am I pretty?” she asked.

“Without a doubt,” I replied.

“But I don’t look like Poppy at all,” she said. “She has brown hair and I have yellow. She has curls, and I don’t.”

“Right…” I was really hoping to stay one step ahead of my three year old here.

“So we’re opposites, right?”

“Yes, well…”

“But we’re both pretty?”

“Of course…”

“So no ugly then? Just different pretties?”

Oh my gosh. I’ve been schooled.

(Long pause from the front seat.)

“That would be correct.”

What About Bob?

Case 1

Since I did not get the chance to take the kids camping this summer, we decided to pitch our “two-person-and-a-dog-sized tent” in our living room for a week instead. There was ample room for all the kids. And sometimes, me, when I fell asleep in the middle of the pile while reading “one more book”. (On two occasions, I awakened to find a sleeping baby splayed out on my back like an enormous starfish.)

We left each child equipped with a flashlight, a water bottle, and a snuggle buddy to address all obvious middle-of-the-night emergencies. When I crawled into my own bed that first night, I was pleasantly surprised that everyone had settled down so nicely. In the wee hours of the morning, however, I was startled awake by MH standing on my side of the bed holding her Hello Kitty lantern right at eyeball level.

“What’s wrong, Baby?” I whispered.

“It’s Bob,” she stated plainly. “He’s missing.”

“Bob?” I asked, checking the time.

“Yes, Bob,” she confirmed. “I’ve looked everywhere. He’s missing. I can’t sleep without him.”

“Oh,” I said, rather sleepily.

I stumbled out of bed and walked to the hallway with the tiny, determined search party.

“Where have you looked?” I whispered.

“Everywhere,” she answered.

“Oh,” I said, rather disappointed.

We took a lap around the house, avoiding snoozing cats and misplaced shoes. Luckily for me, Bob was spotted just before we started the second lap.

“There he is!” MH pointed out, shaking her head as if Bob had been so naughty.

“Where?” I asked, rather relieved.

“Right there, on your shoulders, Mom. He is so sneeeeeeaky.”

“Yes,” I said. “He certainly is.”

MH (and Bob) stomped down the hall, as only three year olds can, back to their sleeping quarters. I heard the jingly whoosh of the tent zipper zipping and a soft thud as they landed in the middle of the soft pile.

And then, “Good Night, Bob.”

Good Night.

Case 2

MH: “Mom, have you seen Bob?”

Me: “Nope. When’s the last time you saw him?”

MH: “Well, I’m not sure. (Pause.) He’s invisible, you know.”

Case 3

MH: “Did you know that Bob has chickies now?”

Me: “Chickies? And what do they do?

MH: “They follow Bob around all day, of course. One is pink and one is blue. Well…that’s what he tells me.”

Case 4

MH in her crib at 3:00 a.m.: “Daaaaaaaaady! Daaaad?!”

Dad: “What is it? Why are you awake?”

MH: “Bob woke me up because Green Monkey (who is not invisible) was making scary noises like the Big Bad Robot and Bob was scared.”

Dad: “Sorry. Is he OK now?”

MH: “Yes. Also, I have to tinkle.”

MH putting her arm around Bob on the first day of 3K

Traditions

If you ask my kids what today is, they will probably tell you it is New Year’s Day. They might also be just as likely to answer that it is the eighth day of Christmas, or even four nights before our much-anticipated Twelfth Night celebration. Of course, they know it’s already been several weeks since we observed Krampus Night, when we prepared, with some trepidation, the peanut butter marshmallow toast offering for the mysterious creature from Alpine folklore. (My husband reported later that evening that it was actually quite delicious.) Suffice it to say, we have some pretty interesting traditions in our house. Many of these can be attributed to Russell. For someone who calls himself the ultimate curmudgeon, he is often the most sentimental of us all.

Ever since I left the nest of my youth, I have endeavored to keep the traditions of my childhood holidays alive and well. For years after college, I continued to return home to spend the night in my own bed on Christmas Eve just so I could wake up early, quietly wait on the landing, and wait for my parents to verify Santa had come before being allowed to peek around the corner. After I married, we continued the pilgrimage because waking up anywhere else on Christmas morning seemed akin to treason to me. There must be grapefruit, lovingly sprinkled with sugar by my mother, served on Spode Christmas china for breakfast. There must also be a roaring fire lit by my father late in the evening where I would fall fast asleep in front of its warmth until being summoned to bed. The year the twins were born, I spent energy I didn’t even have packing up presents as well as two sets of, well, everything for this journey south. If memory serves, it was actually pouring down rain as I finally loaded our beloved greyhound into the van (because we had to take two cars in order to haul everything to and fro). It was tradition, after all. And it was totally worth it to wait on the landing with my new family. To wait to for my dad to stall, “I just have to take a shower and shave, and then I’ll check to see if Santa came.” (Daaaaad!) When I look at the picture of the four of us waiting on the landing that year, I remember the day was very special to me. I also remember how tired I was. That was the moment I realized that the old traditions might have to wiggle over just a little bit to make room for a few new ones.

I struggled for several years to figure out what those new traditions would be. How can you just decide one day to start new traditions? What in the world would they be? I worried that whatever I planned would not be special enough, not worthy of being considered a tradition. I wanted my children to remember the holidays with as much nostalgia and sentimentality as I did. The first couple of years, I remember feeling as though I flailed about, trying way too hard. Would we or wouldn’t we attend a Christmas Eve church service? Would we or wouldn’t we have friends over on Christmas Eve? Would we or wouldn’t we wait in line at the mall to sit on Santa’s lap, no matter who was crying? When our third child arrived, I was forced to give myself a little grace. I simply could not worry about details beyond making sure everyone was fed (usually), bathed (occasionally), and clothed (mostly). Once I loosened the reins on the runaway sleigh, I found that I actually had one of the most enjoyable holidays since I became the mommy. I felt like a tourist who remembered to enjoy the view in real time instead of worrying about Instagram filters for my virtual scrapbook. I realized that our traditions were quietly and joyfully being made in the wrinkles of time. When we repeatedly read the rather unusual stories from the Tall Book of Christmas by the fire. When we attended a neighborhood Christmas Eve party for the third year in a row. When my children requested cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning “like you usually make, Mommy.” Ah, what sweet little traditions they are becoming. Add to the mix a husband who is obsessed with interested in European history, lesser-known fairy tales, and etymology and I got some traditions I never saw coming! One of my favorite memories from this year was made during our morning walk to school. Poppy was asking Charlie if he was ready for Krampus night when a neighbor overheard us talking of our evening preparations. She was perplexed by this odd observance and asked, “What in the world is Krampus night?!” Charlie and Poppy just stared, blinked, and replied, “Doesn’t everyone know about Krampus?” Ah, we may be the only family on the block who prepares peanut butter marshmallow toast on December 5, but it is our tradition.

This year may have been my favorite Christmas yet. As I shared with my father earlier this week, I felt there was balance this holiday that had escaped me in recent years past. Balance between giving and receiving, between travelling and staying put, between being festive and being still, and between celebrating old traditions while embracing the new.

In Tents Camping

I took the kids camping. All three of them. I knew I was outnumbered, but I’ve been wanting to try it for a while.

I camped a lot when I was young. I think this was partly because my parents are adventurous souls and partly because we were poor. Well, I thought we were. Turns out it wasn’t so much that we were poor as much as my parents were saving all their pennies so they could retire twenty years earlier than most and go on more adventures. We don’t have camping stories in our family; we have camping legends. The kind that are brought up at the rowdier family get-togethers. The kind that are a little embarrassing to some or all of the parties involved. The kind that make my childhood seem pretty awesome. One of my personal favorites is when it was so cold, my dad stuffed newspapers into our sleeping bags, turned on a kerosene heater, and then closed us up tight as sardines in our tent. Luckily, before he drifted off to a very heavy and long slumber, he realized that this particular chemical reaction was not in his family’s best interest. Fresh air does wonders for cognitive function. There was the trip where my folks loaded up a toddler, a preschooler, and a brand-new puppy into the first of several of our Volkswagen campers and headed north. We camped and hiked across Canada. Not the whole country, just most of it. Or at least that’s how I remembered it. If time could be measured by the number of times I sang “Where, oh where, has my little dog gone?” while riding on my dad’s shoulders, it was an epic journey. I believe that was the same outing when my father may or may not have gotten into some trouble with the border patrol over a partially concealed weapon. It was the wilderness, people. There are bears out there. At least that’s how the story legend goes.

So, I took the kids camping. At a music festival.

Though I had help setting up my camp (two tents because, it turns out, the four of us no longer fit into one), it was a bit exhausting. There were two tarps, two tents, four sleeping bags, two blankets, three pillow pets, four flashlights, a backpack (with emergency diapers to spare), and non-perishable groceries to last us through the winter. I ended up hauling all this gear from my car, through what can best be described as a swamp, up a ridge to my campsite. Felt like twenty trips. I think it was really five.

My oldest daughter, who enjoys my attention like most people enjoy air, was by my side the whole way. I think she may have carried her own pillow pet, but she mostly wanted to chat about all the things she wanted us to do together. “Can we go the festival now? Can you come with me? I want to buy one of those wiggly snakes I bought last year. You know, the one I lost the next day? Are the rope swings still there? Are my friends here yet? Did you bring any food that I like? How long until our tent is ready? I want to put my pillow pet in there…are you listening to me?” As they say in the south, bless it. I love my sweet, smart, sensitive six-year-old girl, but she does wear a body out.

Her twin brother is quite the opposite. He is going through a phase right now where he does not want to want me. He has discovered and embraced all things boy. He bare-knuckle fights with his friends while laughing hysterically. He is a little, shall we say obsessed, with video games. All video games. He can somehow locate a video game where I previously did not know one existed. He avoids me right after school these days because he already knows he’s going to get my disappointed look when he realizes that he has lost his brand-new blue sweatshirt, his lunchbox, his library book, and even his shoes once. We are definitely trying to figure out how to communicate in new ways that don’t frustrate us both. When we arrived at the camp site, I saw the back of his head as he ran down the trail with his tow-headed friend toward the tree fort. He left his shoes behind. I didn’t see him again for six hours. This made me sad. But, he was having fun and, hey, that’s what this whole trip was supposed to be about.

Meanwhile, my agreeable two year old sat closeby on a stump reciting her ABC’s and twirling her pigtails.

Throughout the day, these trends continued. Poppy wanted (more) money to buy a glowing festival ball; Charlie managed to cover the contents of (my) tent in mud when he went foraging for a granola bar. Poppy frequently asked how many hours, exactly, we had left before we had to go home the next day; Charlie made weapons out of sticks.

At the end of an exhausting day, I was surprised that everyone was so agreeable about diving into their sleeping bags at regular bed time. Tired is tired. The twins shared one of the tents and the baby and I made our nest in the other one two feet away. After the usual festival noise died down after midnight, I finally drifted off to sleep. I awakened with the first crack of lightning that temporarily blinded me. Then the roll of thunder.  A storm. Oh…good. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Nope, not supposed to. But it was happening. And boy did it happen. After the third of fourth split of lightning, I heard the first cry. It was Charlie.

“Mommy? Mommy! Where are you!? I can’t find you. Are you there?” I quietly assured him that I was right next door and that everything was going to be OK.  He was not convinced.

“Can I…come over there? Can I sleep with you?” I could hear the desperation in his voice.

After several frantic minutes of trying to unzip the tent, the fly, the other fly, and the other tent, I fetched the boy, carried him through the downpour, and brought him into my nest. The baby awakened only briefly to comment, “It’s loud in my ears.” Once we were situated in our damp pile, Charlie burrowed his head in the crook of my arm. He whispered, “Thanks, Mom. I love you.” I treasured it. It was my sweet boy again, stripped from his bravado, needing his mama.

I worried about Poppy in the lonely tent. I called to her, but she was soundly sleeping. I could even hear her rhythmic breathing in between the thunder claps. (She has a bit of a cold.) I asked her in the morning how in the world she could have slept through that storm. She said, “I woke up but I wasn’t scared. I knew you were right on the other side of my tent.” She sounded confident and self assured. She didn’t, in fact, need me to weather the storm. Though I missed snuggling with her, I was happy that she was able to breathe without me.

When the rain finally stopped, we emerged from our tents to find a soggy mess. Charlie plopped into the mud up to his ankles and slogged down the trail until he found his friend. They raced to the tree fort. Poppy, who was already dressed and even had on her shoes, daintily and cheerfully padded over to my tent. “Good morning, Mommy. What are we having for breakfast? Can you walk with me to the bathroom? Do you want to put on your baseball cap now? I think you could really use it. Have you seen my wooden snake and glowing festival ball?” The baby yawned. Back to normal.

As I broke down and hauled the two tents, the two tarps, the two blankets, the four sleeping bags, the pillow pets, the backpack, and the mostly uneaten groceries through the frosting-like mud back to the car, I realized the trip was worth it. I think we all got exactly what we needed.