Advent Day Thirteen: Traveling Pregnant

When I was five months pregnant with Elvis, I thought it would be a really fun idea to travel by plane with Lydia, who was ten months old, by myself, to meet Brandon and his baseball team in Florida over spring break.  As I maneuvered down the center aisle of the jet with Lydia on one hip and her car seat on the other, a diaper bag slung around my shoulder, and my significantly larger belly than my first pregnancy leading the way... this idea, maybe it was not so good, I thought.

A few years later, Elvis, Lydia, Brandon's grandma Garnet, and I traveled by Grand Marquis ("the Mercury," as they called it) from Ohio to Florida to meet Brandon after Christmas.  Brandon was working a bowl game in Florida, and we concocted a plan to get Grandma south for the winter, visit Brandon's brother and sister-in-law, and also only drive one vehicle, buying one-way tickets home. I carried in all five of Grandma's suitcases and our travel bags into the hotel room, and while Grandma did her geriatric exercises ("This is just what I have to do, Bran!") and worried about where her eye drops were, the kids begged to go to the pool (closed for cleaning) and chased each other around the queen beds.  Meanwhile, Henry squirmed in my womb.

Life does not stop for pregnancies.

I love challenges like these: You don't think I can handle this?  Watch me.  Watch me load my car with three of the loudest children ever birthed by a woman and drive to... anywhere!  The grocery store, the department store, a restaurant, the zoo, the movies, you name the challenge, I will jump on board.  At the end of the day, I will sink into the couch cushions, satisfyingly exhausted, and celebrate my triumph over a typical day of motherhood with a glass of merlot. Or Maker's Mark, if I'm feeling especially accomplished.

The reasons people have to stretch themselves this way aren't always rewarded by a personal geriatrics demonstration or the full-on open-faced snoring grandmother in the passenger seat. They don't always result in meeting up with loved ones and settling into a week of relaxing in the sunshine, laughing about makeup cases and eye drops.

Joseph and Mary find themselves near the end of Mary's pregnancy, summoned to return to Bethlehem for a census.  I'm sure that they didn't want to go.  It becomes evident in the next few passages that they didn't have family to stay with in town.  Echoing Jesus' call to "render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's and to God what is God's," Joseph and Mary heed the edict to return to Bethlehem, obeying the government even though it is complicating their lives (there's also the fun tidbit about fulfilling prophecies regarding the location of the Messiah's birth, but that's another day).

Life does not stop for pregnancies.

"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child." - Luke 2:1-5

Advent Activity: Popcorn and pajama movie night
It's Friday, again, which means it's movie night, again!  We recorded Home Alone, and I think that's on the schedule for tonight.  Given their reaction to any kind of bloopers and Looney Tunes, I think they'll love Home Alone.

Well, Hello There

Would ya look at that?  It's been a month.  The MFA summer residency was here and then gone, those two weeks that last two months and then feel like just days once it's over.  I think it might have been the smoothest residency we've run since 2007, which is saying something, since I was also in class this time.  It was an extremely productive and inspiring two weeks, to say the least.  And then, I hopped on a jet plane to North Carolina to meet my lovely family for a week of vacation.

Oh, sweet, sweet vacation.  How I miss you.

While I was on vacation, I devoured The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby and The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard... and also crab cake sandwiches. I've wanted to read Beard's collection of essays since I read "The Fourth State of Matter" in Tell It Slant last semester, and I was not disappointed. The trouble is that now I'm feeling that intimidation that comes from reading really, really good writing--will anything I write measure up? Ever? I'm tempted to write everything in present tense now, though, so watch out.

I also started to read Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. I read a book of hers about her 40-year-long marriage over the summer, and I gathered that probably Madeleine and I would be BFF's. I was right. I struggle to write about faith, mostly out of fear that I will come across too sentimental, too didactic, or too cliche, and that fear is extremely stifling. I tend to stare at my screen and then sigh dramatically before typing "God." In L'Engle, I've found a kindred spirit, willing to speak honestly and frankly about faith and doubt, love and art. I'm really enjoying this book.

While I was on vacation last week, I had a lot more time to write and read than I usually do, and it was great to take a more focused look at the work. I finished a first draft of an essay about camping that I'm excited about, and I played around with some revisions to other essays.  But most of the time, I did this:

Which is exactly how I hope to spend heaven-- on a beach, looking for shark's teeth, chasing children through the incoming tide.

Book Seven 2012: Townie by Andre Dubus III

Townie by Andre Dubus III is the kind of book you can't help thinking about when you aren't reading it.  You live in its scenes while you are eating dinner with your kids or riding in the car, thinking about the narrator, wondering what is going to happen next, considering the plot development and the foreshadowing and how successfully the author ends chapters.  You find yourself missing what your husband said because you are still lost in the mill town bar fights, the father/son storyline, and the coming-of-age hunt for identity.

I was hooked from beginning to end, couldn't fall asleep last night until I finished it off.  What a book.

On top of the thrill of a great read, Dubus is going to be here for the Ashland University summer residency at the end of July.  And, a piece by him about writing memoir will be included in the next issue of River Teeth. I am one lucky gal.

I'm not sure what I'm reading next off of my 30th year book list.  After reading such a great book, it is hard to jump into another memoir, so I think I'm going to read some poetry for a bit.  I'm also reading a manuscript for a friend and want to dedicate some time to it this week while I am off of work. 

In the back of my mind is the hope that I'll also find time to write this week, maybe in the evenings after the kids are in bed, but I'm also aware of the kids laughing in the backyard pool, painting projects here and elsewhere, and the need to clean - laundry, dusting, bathrooms and all of the other chores that fall to the wayside for too long.  At the end of the week, BW and I are going out of town for a weekend, alone, by ourselves, without children.  Maybe then?  Probably not.  I have plenty of other things in mind for a weekend alone with my husband.

I might not be able to get the words on the page this week, but I am promising myself to at least think about the next essay, and maybe jump in next week, when we're back to the normal schedule.

For now, I'm going outside in my bathing suit with the kids to enjoy the non-writing hours.

Family Vacations, Then and Now

This weekend marked the first family vacation with my side of the family since the Great Myrtle Beach Thanksgiving Vacation Disaster of 2007. None of us said anything to reference it, but as we set up our campers at the state park on Friday night, cold wind whipping across the lake and blowing in heavy bursts of rain, I'm sure we were all thinking of it.

Back in 2007, my husband and my mom set out around 8 p.m. on the weekend before Thanksgiving with the hopes that our potty training 18-month-old daughter and 3-month-old son would drift off to sleep shortly after leaving, and they could drive through the night, arriving in the sunny Carolinas around breakfast, a bright November sun burning off the fog in the foothills, and two well-rested children slowly stirring in the back seat.

Instead, the two kids took turns keeping the other one awake, Lydia crying every time they drove under a row of streetlights or caught the headlights of oncoming drivers heading back the way they came.  Brandon and my mom took turns trying to pin clothes to the window to block the lights, played music, didn't play music, sung, gave bottles over the back seat, anything, anything to get them to sleep.

Meanwhile, I was at home, sleeping soundly in my empty house and bed after spending most of the night painting the living room red.  I stayed behind because I had just started my job at the University that fall and for some reason I decided that my five vacation days that year would be best used some other time.  I would work the first two days of the week and then just fly down on Wednesday.  No big deal.

The family van rolled into Myrtle Beach on Sunday, alive.  I flew down to Wilmington from Columbus and arrived at the airport, ready to see my happy family at the beach for a long weekend.  Utopian dreams of previous vacations drifted in my brain, full weeks spent wandering the beach and strolling about with both my side of the family and his, smiling, sunset gazing, sandcastle building, everyone jolly and hugging and wishing it would never end. 

My phone rang as I got off the plane.  It was Brandon.  A deer ran out in front of the van on his way to the airport and the van was undriveable.  A tow truck was on its way.  You'll have to rent a van, he said, we'll get this one repaired and pick it up on our way back out of town. 

Only no mechanics work the week of Thanksgiving.  We'd have to come back for it.

The two of us rolled in to the condo and slipped as quiet as possible into the bedroom, under the blankets, the bed creaking just enough to wake up Lydia.  Mommy?  And then four hours of children awake.

Thus began our Thanksgiving vacation at the beach.  Dad and the boys arrived about the same time as I did on Wednesday and we ate our Thanksgiving dinner together in the condo.  We wrapped up the weekend with a family blow-out and a one-way rental back to Ohio. 

And now.  We huddled around the campfire started with lighter fluid between the two campers, hoods up over our ears to block the wind gusts, and grumbled about the weather with my brother and his wife and my parents while the kids slept in the camper.  Lydia is now six, Elvis almost five and Henry just over a year old. 

In the morning, we cooked eggs and bacon over the fire, still battling the chilly wind.  This figures! I muttered.  Can't plan anything.  We took the kids to the playground, wobbled over the limestone boulders down to the lake side so the kids could throw in sticks, and at lunch we moved the campers to another less windy part of the park.  And then, then it was like the old days - the really old days - of fishing and cooking and roasting marshmallows and cooking hobo pie and riding bikes and making fast friends from the campsite across the way (hello, Lisa).

Only this time, it was me and my family giving it to the kids, my brother teaching them to fish, my husband playing catch with the older two and chasing Henry across the grass, all of us cooking and singing and drinking and eating, and me, grinning like I just caught my first bluegill by the water.

Happy New Year!

I just ventured into Google to find out where I'm popping up these days (as my maiden name - the married version pulls up too many hits), and was sorely disappointed not to see Sarebear's Sentral Spot appearing anymore. So, I dug up the old account and password, which, embarrassingly enough, is the same password I use today with some variation, and I updated the index page. So all you crazy stalkers out there who have been looking for me all these years via Googling, HERE I AM! You found me! I'm much less brilliant than I was a decade ago.

The proof of this brilliantlessness is the fact that I have two children who will be awake in seven hours and I am not sleeping, but instead blinking rapidly in order to find moisture for my dehydrated contact lenses while typing about my pathetic website created during high school. This is the best I can do on a Friday night with the husband in Florida. What can I say?

In other news, we went to the rainforest exhibit at the zoo this afternoon, which was great. I hesitate to add the following point because it almost negates the previous sentence and certainly adds a flair of sarcasm to it, but I think it is a valid comment. So, they pay a woman to sell me tickets to get into the rainforest/zoo approximately 200 feet from the rainforest entrance, AND they pay a nice young lady to sit at the door of the rainforest and collect said tickets into 80-degree rainforest building, but they do NOT pay a nice young lady to tell me that there are coat racks for my fourteen-layered children who will sweat and strip their layers to be handed to me to carry for the duration of the trip. No, they most certainly left out that item on the job description list.

So I lugged three large winter coats around an humid building which also broadcasts fake squawking noises apparently like what you'd hear in a crowded rainforest in December. It was hot. And loud. BUT we really did have a great time, especially at the orangutan exhibit. And Elvis said "fsh fsh fsh fsh fsh fsh" about ten thousand times at the two glass aquariums, which was So. Cute.

We (meaning me and the kids) are staying at my parents' house for the remainder of the weekend while Brandon drives his 85 year old grandmother to Florida, the poor soul. All that warm weather. God save him. And us up here bathing in the anemic rays of the January '09 sun. It's really a pity he isn't here.

Note: Yes, it is now past 11, and my kids will still wake up in less than seven hours, and I am indeed continuing to type ridiculous, unimportant yet mildly entertaining blather.

Christmas and New Years have been delightful, though - so much good times to be had and old friends to see and funny junk to trade in white elephant parties. We have spent every day since December 20 with family, and that is a good thing. I do miss being so close (though an hour and a half really isn't that far, in the grand scheme of global relocation), especially now that my brother is engaged to a very, very nice girl who I am thrilled to have as a soon-to-be sister-in-law. Family becomes increasingly important to me. I don't think I would be so opposed to a Great Depression-esque situation that would force extended families to move in under the same roof and start farming again. Yes, I am a sick, sick 21st century female. I'd even opt in for making many babies and canning tomatoes. Though I'd need to learn how. To can tomatoes.

Happy new year, 2009! I hope all of your recession dreams come true!