Fourteen Points about My Fourteen Year Old

We celebrated a birthday the other day and here are a few thoughts about the birthday boy:


Kolbe is funny. As we were finishing some back-breaking yard work, Kolbe adopted a faux southern accent and uttered what is, perhaps, his best line ever: I haven't worked this hard since I pushed out the twins. Call me odd, but there's something about a teenage boy  -- one you're not wholly convinced even understands rudimentary facts about childbirth -- delivering these lines. I laughed until I cried.

Kolbe is compassionate. He is near to the broken hearted, always.

Kolbe has initiative. That boy of mine hounded me to get an announcement in our community newsletter offering lawn mowing and pet watching services. Kolbe worked hard and flat raked in the loot this summer.

Kolbe is a builder. He always has a project in the works. Grandpa should be proud.

Kolbe can turn a phrase. When he asked me to proof-read his seventh grade research paper, I circled a number of expressions I thought he might have inadvertently failed to cite. Nope. His words. Good words. His Great Grandmother would be proud.

Kolbe is quick to reconcile. A wonderful trait I hope he holds onto.

Kolbe is diligent. Thank you, good and gracious God! He dots his i's and crosses his t's and generally comes home with no homework because he is highly motivated to get it done at school.

Kolbe is grateful. Kolbe regularly expresses how grateful he is for our neighborhood, his school, the old house, the new house.

Kolbe is dependable. Best babysitter ever.

Kolbe remembers the underdog. A mom called me the day of Kolbe's birthday shindig. Her older son was invited to the party, but she was trying to find a place for her younger son. Would Kolbe mind if he crashed the gate? Kolbe didn't. He never does.

Kolbe is prayerful. Quietly, faithfully, without fanfare.

Kolbe is affectionate. Openly, faithfully,
with fanfare. And I am so grateful.

Kolbe enjoys simple pleasures. The plan for Kolbe's party? A Nerf gun war, milkshakes, and a movie.

Kolbe is fourteen!

Best Picture

A boy and his big brother . . .

. . .

We Love the Eighties!

Really Quick Takes

1. I woke up Sunday morning and glanced at the weather section of the paper. Actually, I squinted at it as my readers were sitting on the nightstand. I quickly called for Dave to confirm what I thought my blurry eyes were taking in -- highs in the eighties for the entire week!

The eighties!

Blessed, merciful cooler weather!

I know my friends from parts north and Christine in Scotland are now shaking their heads, but think of that first warm breeze you feel each spring. That's what we're experiencing now. While I suspect Augusta will let fly one last blast of hot air across the bow, for now we are opening windows and embracing yard work and enjoying, just enjoying.


2. So I've gone back to teaching, and I would like to type My students are precious! but they're also not seven, so I'll just say that I find them interesting and charming all at once.



3. One of the added perks of going back to work is being with colleagues both old and new. I couldn't ask for better co-workers.  Another perk: I enjoy using my brain in a different manner. I will be the first to assert that motherhood demands all the wisdom and twice the fortitude of any other job. But I am a nerd at heart, and I enjoy academic life. I really do.


4. For the last several years, our school has upped the level of summer work. I was a big proponent of this. Real life has since hit, and hit hard, and, though in theory I remain a big advocate, the harsh, nay brutal, realities of making a house full of kids do things most of them really, really are not at all inclined to do at! all! leave me wavering on the whole issue. Certainly I have repented of any previous judgement leveled at mothers who were less than enthusiastic about all this, and I now totally get why some moms were willing to support "pay as you go" summer study halls supervised by something wholly unrelated to the student, cost be darned!

I perpetually -- stubbornly -- have visions of idyllic afternoons spent gently learning together and then run against eye-rolling and muttered comments about "all the other parents". Yes, all in all a steady dose of  wailing and gnashing of teeth with all the charm of a dripping faucet equipped with a microphone.

Did I mention that motherhood demands fortitude?

But I digress . . . at the end of the summer, I always double check the list of summer work,
because we inevitably overlook something. This year it was The Eighteen Family. John was assigned to master "addition and subtraction through the 18 family."

Now, John my boy did plenty of math this summer, but we didn't focus on The Eighteen Family. Dave quickly remedied the situation by getting on Excel and creating a random number generator that spit out appropriate math problems -- 18 + 6, 18+ 17, 16+15. Engineers love little jobs like this.

Imagine my shock when I learned The Eighteen Family didn't mean problems such as "18+18". No, no. The Eighteen Family means that the largest sum adds up to 18, i.e. 10+8, 11+7, etc.

We're pretty sure we got John ready for fifth grade math. He rose to the occasion.


5. I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to my boy Kolbe who is just a conscientious kid. I took him out to lunch the other day as a thank you for his persistence and good cheer. He makes me realize how much a good attitude can bless those around us. He calls me on.



6. All the beautiful weather, the joy in my new job -- these have helped us survive the ups and downs of the past two weeks which, truthfully, have seen more downs than ups. Namely:

•    An unidentified child woke up with a wicked stomach bug.
•    An unidentified child came home from school with lice.
•    An unidentified child battled debilitating constipation.
•    An unidentified sibling wandered throughout the house helpfully singing, "Let It Go! Let It Go!"

Nothing is off limits, it would seem.


7. I now have a senior, and here he is:

My Boy Tim

My life in a nutshell.

Head over to Kelly's to ad your Quick Takes.

Seven Quick Takes

I hope and intend to get back into a more regular writing routine sometime really, really soon, but until then, here is what's happening in our  neck of the woods:

1. Working Nine to Five . . . Or Something Like That

I’ve gone back to work for the first time in fourteen years. I am a high school English teacher once again. A very part-time English teacher, but a teacher all the same. I hope at least this paragraph is error free.

2. More Frum Ainsey


John found the following note thoughtfully stuck to the computer screen:

Sore. You kate pla on the kinpyotr.

Translation at the end of this post.

3. So Long, Farewell to the Pool 

I nearly wept the last day we spent at the pool, so fun has it all been this summer. Among the other high points, here's Ainsley in June:

Coach Kennedy, ever patient.

Here's Ainsley in August:

So happy:

4. Take This, Pinterest!

I don’t tend to make grandiose household plans during the summer. With lots of comings and goings, lots of travel, lots of togetherness, my plans are typically: Stay cool. Go to the pool. Don’t annihilate each other. Read. Go back to the pool.

I don’t generally paint, sew, rearrange. This summer, however, I fully intended to transform this:

Into this:

And we’re nearly there!

5. Leftovers


Here's John and Grandpa checking out my boy's first Walleye.

 6. A Room with a View


Here's what I took in while washing dishes:

And a closeup:

John - part tree frog, all boy.

7. Head over to Kelly's to add your quick takes and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Oh, here's the translation: Sorry! You can't play on the computer. I found out later that she left the note for Daddy, not John.

My girl.

He Lost His Shoes . . . His Shoes

So the ever-faithful Kris asked about Sleeping Bear Dunes, another must-see site in Northern Michigan.

Yes, we visited Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Now, Sleeping Bear Dunes are sand dunes in the sense that Lake Superior is a lake. Sleeping Bear is more like a sand mountain or, more accurately still, a mountain range. I had visited the Dunes about thirty years ago with my Girl Scout troop. My memory goes something like this: We canoed the Platte River, dashed into Lake Michigan, sprinted out of Lake Michigan nearly leaving frozen toes behind, and then ran up and down Sleeping Bear Dunes.  We rolled around, threw some sand, snapped some pics. Awesome and amazing and fairly uneventful.

Fast forward thirty years.

We arrived at the Dunes and noticed the warning signs: Bring Water! Wear Sunscreen! Don't lose Your Children.

And I'm all water, yeah, sun screen, yeah . . . don't lose your children? Don't lose your children?
How, exactly, does one manage to lose one's offspring in a sand dune?

I suppose I can dispense with the over-used spoiler alert because we already know where this is going, don't we?

Yeah.

And how ridiculous is it that I, of all people, should wonder how family members get separated as it seems to happen to us all the blinking time?

Scenario #1: We're biking to the bakery on Pelee Island. Inevitably, invariably, we spread out and then completely separate. An hour later we're perusing the wheat fields of Pelee in search of a missing child. We're on an island, for the love of Pete. How do you get lost on an Island? How do you get lost on a route as flat as Kansas, on a trip that requires two turns and a gentle glide left at the North Dock, a trip we've taken hundreds of times?  I ponder these questions and then quickly cut to a recent travel commercial wherein a wearied father exits a plane, stares into a camera, and says, "He lost his shoes . . . his shoes."

Scenario #2: We're tubing a river so shallow the only risk is a bruised tailbone. Ainsley and John are in life jackets and tethered to me and Tim respectively. For reasons wholly unclear to me, Tim untethers John.

Cue ominous music.

We paddle over to the edge of the river to play on a water slide. John keeps floating. I run after him. He turns a corner. I yell to Dave to go after him. Forty-five minutes later -- forty-five minutes later, a.k.a. e-t-e-r-n-i-t-y -- we are reunited. Meanwhile I have envisioned a) John cascading over a class five rapids  b) John being abducted  c) Add your own gruesome scenario.

In the middle of the forty-five minute wait, Ainsley had the ickiest bloody nose ever, and the water slide attendants couldn't understand why I wasn't the least bit upset, but, hello!, John in a class five rapids! John kidnapped by a roving band of circus performers! And that trumps Ainsley with a bloody nose any day of the week.

Scenario #3 - We're on a family hike, but no two people in our family move at the same pace so it's never a family anything. Two nameless someones race ahead of the stragglers, and I begin to wonder if the trail ends at the bottom of the waterfall (that would be okay) or the top (that could spell disaster). With colorful visions of twisted bones and daring helicopter rescues and John in a coma, I go flying up the path wondering yet again why we didn't make an agreement to stick together and why does this happen every time we exit the front door and maybe we need to give up this illusion of being outdoorsy and take up bowling or Sudoku or Bridge, and by the time I reach the pathfinders, I am in quite a state.

He lost his shoes . . . his shoes.

So, yeah, we have some history as to lost children and yet still I read the sign and thought How does one lose one's children in a sand dune?

Up the sand dunes we trudged. I keep meaning to write to the fine folks at Sleeping Bear Dunes to say they should add one suggestion to their list of warnings: Wear close-toed shoes. I had on sturdy hiking sandals. Great for traction; no protection against the sand that was blistering hot.

It was all bigger and steeper and more strenuous than I remembered, but then not much seemed strenuous when I was twelve. We plodded along over the first ridge and were surprised that Lake Michigan didn't stretch out before us. We moved on to the second ridge. At that point we chatted with some other hikers who informed us we were about a tenth of the way to the lake. It truly is more of a range than a mountain. Ainsley was done in, and I, being a generous, self-sacrificing mother, offered to take her back down while Dave caught up with Kolbe who was still within eyesight and then went after Lewis and Clark who, I believe, were headed for the Pacific Ocean.

Down I went with Ainsley. And by that time the burning hot sand was scorching. I'd hike about ten feet and then flop on my rear end to get the sand off my feet.

Dignified, truly dignified.

Ainsley and I found shade and water and waited with the camera to capture the crew as they crested the dunes. And we waited. And waited. And waited.

Kolbe in a red shirt somewhere on this hill that looks much larger in real life.

An hour later an exhausted Kolbe appeared.

Dad, he told me, hadn't quite located Lewis and Clark, and it was really hot, and maybe we should get help, and he was worried, and we really should get help, and I am fairly certain my tendency to Worst Case Scenario every predicament has successfully been passed down to the next generation.

Yep.

I put on closed toe shoes, loaded up a backpack full of water, and trudged up the hill yet again.

Before I left, I peppered Kolbe with instructions: Take the cell phone. Here are the car keys. Keep a close eye on Ainsley. Don't go near the van if you don't have to. Don't let anyone see that you have car keys and no mother or father with you. Stay in the shade. Don't text and drive. Wear clean underwear. Don't talk to strangers.

Already chiding myself for not preventing this debacle, I decided to cover my bases.

If the mountain seemed steep the first go around, it was all the more challenging this time. I made the first summit and rested and re-hydrated. I started a rosary and plodded to the next ridge where a tiny copse of trees sheltered a sweating mass of humanity including, I was so happy to see, Dave and John. They were overjoyed to see me or, more to the point, my backpack full of water. Tim eventually found us. All was well. A little sunburn offset by a welcome swim in Lake Michigan.

"Well," Ainsley said to me, "at least we're not dead."

A good point, that.

Reunited.

I highly recommend Sleeping Bear Dunes. Bring water. Wear sunscreen and closed toe shoes. Don't lose your kids.
.

2,350 Miles

You see those mileage stickers everywhere -- 5K, 13.1, and the coveted 26.2. I want a sticker that reads 2,350. That's the number of miles we clocked on the ever faithful Grand Caravan between July 2nd and August 1st.

I want a sticker. And a tranquilizer. Maybe throw in a medal? Or maybe the kids should get a medal. At least some of them earned one, I'm pretty sure.

Now we're home at last, home at last, thank God, we're home at last, but those lazy, languid days of August when we sit around and read and lounge at the pool? They have yet to turn up. While we've had pockets of rest and relaxation, we've also had lots of doctor's appointments, household projects, and various and sundry other commitments that have kept me on my feet literally and figuratively.

We had a good trip.

Over the years I've learned to look at the term"good trip" in a different light than I did before I traveled with four kids and seventy-something bags. We made lots of good memories. Like the pockets of rest and relaxation, we had pockets of fun.

Tim, my boy, is about to begin his senior year. I don't know about other mothers, but I've found myself compiling a Bucket List for Tim, a list of things I hope we do before he leaves the nest. One of those Bucket List items was to tour around Northern Michigan and visit some of the spots I visited as a young child. Tim attended a music camp near Lake Michigan. While this is on the western side of the state, picking him up and heading on a tour seemed like a great start to a family adventure.

And an adventure it turned out to be.

We'll start with the high points.

Mackinac Island.

Visiting Mackinac Island was at the top of my Bucket List. Have you seen Somewhere in Time? Christopher Reeves and time travel, romantic and whimsical, if a bit cheesy. It was filmed at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Note that Christopher Reeves zooms into the hotel driveway in a snazzy sports car. This is a sight you'll never see on Mackinac where transportation is limited to walking, biking, and horse-drawn carriages.

I visited Mackinac Island when I was about Ainsley's age. It was memorable, it was magical, and it didn't disappoint this go around either.

Now it was crowded, and it was pricey. But beautiful. So beautiful.

Arch Rock, Mackinac Island

The kids loved the carriage tour. Well, John complained about the smell. When the tour ended, I handed the guide ten dollars and thanked him for a memorable ride. As I walked away, I spotted Kolbe handing him another dollar. "Your mom already took care of me, dude," the driver said. And then John handed him twenty-seven cents and got a "thanks, dude" for his widow's mite.

Twenty-seven cents. Cutest gesture ever.

I have more shots, but Blogger's acting up and won't handle my pictures or switch from centered to left-justified.

I have no fight in me this morning.

If you're ever in the vicinity, don't overlook Mackinac Island. Truly it looks more like Bermuda or Hawaii than the Midwest, and it's probably cooler than either of those spots.

Alive and Well and No Time to Write

So here's a picture of a typical summer day: