Hold on Loosely. . .

The other day (okay, it was a few weeks ago) when I was out for my once daily but now bi-weekly walk, I saw a mom walking ahead of me with her small son. She was dragging his now discarded scooter as he scurried gleefully ahead of her. I never saw their faces but I watched intently as they repeated the same pattern over and over again. He would run a half a block ahead of her and then come running back to hold her hand for a minute and then take off again. I never heard her say a word; no chastising threats about the looming street ahead; no frantic warning not to run too fast. No, this was a silent dance (except for the recurring giggles) that repeated itself for several blocks. And, as always, it made me think about my own children and about just how little things change.

If we do our jobs as parents, we'll give our kids the skills and confidence it takes to leave us. But, just like that mom with the scooter, we'll have our hands ready to grab onto in case things get too scary. When I watched that little guy take off, I could feel his delight in his independence; when I watched him come back to hold his mom's hand, I could feel his trust directed at the one person he knew would always have his back. He never turned around to make sure she was still there. He didn't have to. He knew she would be there to protect him, to look out for him. He could head for the unknown without fear.

Now that my son is living on his own and my daughter is about to be married, I can't help but think of that mom and her little boy. As much as I miss them being the babies and toddlers I fell in love with, I'm beyond thrilled at the competent, generous, adventurous people they've become. It may not always feel like it to them but I want my kids to take off; I want them to fly without fear.

My hand will always be there to come back to.

Gonna Soak up the Sun

I've written many times about the phenomenal group of friends I've been blessed to have for the last thirty years. We've been through dating, marriagse, kids, job changes, medical procedures and menopause. We've celebrated our kids' graduations and weddings; we've grieved together over the loss of a parent. I know my memory is going but I honestly can't remember a time when we weren't all happily entangled in each other's business. And I don't want to.

This winter, we're about to find out how much we really like each other. While we've done plenty of evenings out and several weekend trips to exotic places like Brown County, Indiana, the eight of us have never done a full-blown, adults only, we-deserve-it kind of vacation. Thanks to pesky distractions like mortgage payments and our children's educations, we haven't had the time and/or financial resources to do what we've always said we wanted to do - get away to some tropical location, park ourselves under a palapa hut and hang out for a week with nothing more pressing to do than call over that cabana boy for another pina colada.

After weeks of pouring over brochures and trading e-mails, we're finally ready. Deposits have been made, insurance has been taken out, and employers have been notified. We had to wait awhile but it's finally time for us to enjoy the fruits (especially papaya and mangos) of all that labor. So what if  I have to put on a bathing suit to do that. I have a couple of months and a bunch of Walk Away the Pounds DVDs to help me get ready.

And you know what they say. What happens in Mexico . . .

Feed the Parents

Now that we have an offspring who is engaged to be married, we're becoming well-acquainted with the list of rituals that goes with the territory. Our daughter is doing things a little differently - small ceremony with immediate family only and a bigger bash to follow later (and no, she's not pregnant) - but there are still many of the usual items that need to be checked off the checklist. The dress has been purchased, the invitations have been ordered (and are about to be re-ordered due to an ever-changing wedding date), and we're checking out venues for a still-to-be-determined follow-up reception for family and friends.  Last night, another part of the wedding ritual took place, having the prospective in-laws over for a meal.

This wasn't the first time we've met. We've bumped into them at church; we've shared a drink at a local bar, but this was the first time that we've had the opportunity to sit down over dinner (and a couple of glasses of wine - a nice Cabernet they were gracious enough to supply). Determined to make summer last as long as possible, I threw a couple of marinated pork tenderloins on the grill, chopped up some tomatoes from the garden for some bruschetta and husked the last of the sweet corn. Not wanting to abandon any weapon in my arsenal, I made both banana and pumpkin breads. When you can't decide, make both, right? And how awkward could dinner be it everyone had their mouths so full of food they didn't have time to talk?

Turns out I didn't have anything to worry about. We talked about ourselves, our kids, the wedding, and the merits of home ownership versus renting. We successfully side-tracked politics and religion (plenty of time for that over the next twenty or thirty years) and shared a lot of laughter. I'd say we made it through our first evening together with flying colors.

It's too soon to know if we'll end up being great friends or just see-you-at-birthdays-and-holidays relatives. What I do know is that we're going to be joined together by at least one thing we do have in common - our desire to do anything we can to make sure that our kids start their life together with as much love and support as we can give.

Welcome to the family.

It's the Little Things We Do Together. . .

After almost thirty years of marriage, I'm not often surprised by my husband's activities. I've gotten to know his patterns pretty well - needs coffee within fifteen minutes of rising, falls asleep on the way to the pillow, hurls insults in Swiss to moronic drivers, etc. - but the other night, he engaged in a behavior I never saw coming.

I was standing in the kitchen, trying to assemble a dinner out of the assortment of leftovers hanging out in the fridge, when I heard a couple of decidedly down-home Southern female voices emanating out of the family room TV. I expected to hear them hastily replaced by Bill O'Reilly's caustic comments or, at the very least, those guys from Mythbusters blowing up something, but I did not. I continued to re-purpose and reheat until my curiosity got the better of me.

What the heck was he watching?

Turns out my husband - the elegant, European-raised, reality-show abhorring man I married - was engrossed in a soon-to-be Emmy-nominated, culturally relevant, mind-expanding gem called Mud Loving Rednecks. I honestly could not believe what I was seeing. Yes, he has (reluctantly) watched a couple of Wife Swap episodes with me. Yes, he has deigned to sit through an occasional Wipeout to marvel at the lengths his fellow human beings will go to to make a few bucks. He's even caught a few minutes of Duck Dynasty and a millisecond of Say Yes to the Dress when he couldn't get out of the room fast enough. But this, a show about a family that owns a mud bog (a previously unknown to me venue of entertainment) in Alabama, was a shocker.

I plopped myself next to him on the couch and watched as the owners of the mud bog, a married couple and a few of their Harvard-educated pals, proceeded to host a wedding for a couple named Nikki and Cowboy, constructing, among other things, a camouflage-covered limo on a monster truck bed and a side-by-side tube slide by which the bride and groom would enter the mud once they had said "I do".

Amazingly, it turned out to be a fairly entertaining hour of TV. We laughed at the "unusual" bridal requests (bridesmaids were to be adorned in camouflage dresses courtesy of Aunt Pam) and the attire of the wedding guests (shirts were evidently optional but boots were not). When it was over, we came away impressed with the ingenuity of these hard-working people determined to make their business a success and have a good time while doing it. I also enjoyed seeing my husband let his hair down a little and not take life so seriously. He needs to do that more often, if you ask me. Maybe we all do.

Tomorrow's our thirtieth anniversary. Since we already took that amazing trip to Europe earlier this year in celebration, we're going to keep things pretty low-key. We've talked about going to see Gravity (if I can figure out a way to watch it with my eyes closed) and use a Groupon to treat ourselves to dinner.

If we're really lucky, there'll be an episode of Hillbilly Handfishing on when when we get home.

Saying Yes to the Dress

My only daughter is getting married. It's not going to be one of those big, extravagant, wallet-busting affairs (thank you, sweetie) but there are some things that have to happen whether you get married in the back yard or in St. Paul's Cathedral. Item number one is a dress. Little girls may not all have the same dream but most of them have envisioned how they would look on their wedding day at least once or twice. And it doesn't usually involve jeans and a t-shirt.

Yesterday, was our third shopping trip. The first two outings had been mother-daughter ventures, scoping out viable candidates for future, larger viewing groups. I have to admit, I loved having her all to myself. As I watched her try on that first dress, my mind raced back to the times she had stood in my high heels, rifled through my make-up and pranced around in Belle's yellow gown. It was only right and fair that I had first dibs on seeing her walk that bridal runway for the first time. And when they added that veil . . . It was our moment and I'm glad I didn't have to share it with anyone else.

Having walked away empty-handed the first two times out, I felt confident that we'd have a few more stores to hit before she finally said, "I do" to anything. This is a girl who loves fashion; the search wasn't going to be over until she said it was over. (Sorry, I've been watching a lot of Breaking Bad lately). When she and her fiance recently announced that they were moving their wedding date up a little (like three months from now), that idea went out the window. This was go time. There was no time to order anything. My girl was going to have to go vintage, find a sample off the racks, or scour the E-Bay website for jilted brides' cast-offs if she was going to come down the aisle in something other than her nightgown.

When we sat down yesterday with my daughter's best friend, grandmother, and future mother-in-law in tow, it felt different. This time we were in a small boutique that dealt only in off-the-rack samples and close-outs from other bridal stores. There was a warm, personal feel to this place that the big wedding superstores couldn't touch. And the dresses? Classy, stylish designer gowns without the designer prices. I felt like we had wandered into an episode of I Found the Gown.

And within an hour, she had. After trying on an $1800 number that resembled Princess Kate's and a heavily-embroidered beauty with a ten-foot train that would have been suited to a wedding in St. Peter's, she found it. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what it looked like since that might result in a speedy "uninvite" next to my name on the guest list but I can tell you what she looked like in it.

Beyond beautiful.

Mamma Mia!

Like a lot of women, I spent a good deal of time trying to distance myself from my mother. As a child of The Fifties and a woman of The Seventies I wanted very little to do with the stereotypical housewife and mother role presented to me by my mom and her friends. They had no life outside of their homes, they never earned a salary above minimum wage, and their main source of validation was their ability to pop out a new human being every few years. I arrogantly believed I could do so much more. And I wasn't shy in sharing that opinion.

Now that I'm looking back with some kind of clarity, I can see that my disdain for most of my mother's choices (the one to bring me or my terrific sister into this world not being among them) never seemed to take into consideration the limited options she might have had. In my youthful ignorance, all I could see was the fact that she depended on the male in her life for money, transportation, and just about everything else and I wanted no part of that.

I should probably mention here that I look quite a bit like my mom. I'm about the same height (before she shrunk an inch or so) and weight. We have the same wet sand-colored hair and fair complexion. The only physical trait I seemed to miss out on were those gorgeous green eyes. What I would have given for those! Anyway, I mention this because when I was younger, I used to be compared to my mom quite a bit. Friends and relatives would repeatedly tell me how much I reminded them of her. They would go on and on about our similarities thinking I would take it as a great compliment. I did not.

Couldn't they see I wasn't anything like her? Couldn't they see that I was a completely different kind of woman? What was wrong with them?

My mom is now eighty-three. In the last few years she has had a litany of ailments, injuries and medical "procedures". To say that she has faced each with grace and fortitude would be like saying Michael Jordan was a pretty good basketball player. Her latest ordeal yesterday, which left her with a few stitches in her eyelid and an eye that looks like she just went a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson, was met with her typical Germanic stoicism and resolve. Her anxieties always seem to give way to strength; her fears do not paralyze her. She grabs that cane, puts on her size 5 Keds and faces whatever comes her way with grit and determination. She doesn't complain. She just takes care of business.

So, I think I'm finally ready now. It may have taken me longer than it should have but I'm going to be ready with a response the next time a friend or family member tells me I'm the spitting image of my mom.

"I should only be so lucky," I'll say. And I'll mean every word.

Lost and Found

I think I may have mentioned once or twice (or a hundred times) that I am not the greatest housekeeper in the world. I have no illusions about the dust bunnies that have made their home under my furniture or the spider webs that occasionally turn into magnificent mansions to which the residents regularly invite their friends and relatives. I know I won't be invaded by the Hoarders crew (at least not yet) but I will cop to a certain amount of frantic cleaning any time we host an event that would include anyone blessed with the gift of sight.

My husband, a much neater, more organized soul who has long given up on his vision of an orderly, uncluttered home similar to the one he grew up in, looks forward to any excuse to host a party. "Hey, it's Groundhog Day/Shark Week/J. Edgar Hoover's Birthday", he'll announce when he can't take it any longer, "let's invite the gang over". That's when I go into high gear, scurrying around trying to get the house to resemble something close to the one he would like to live in every day.

During this last mad frenzy I decided to go where I don't usually go; where no one around here goes - under the couch - the last resting place for many lost or forgotten objects.  In my defense, we have a family room that doesn't lend itself to moving furniture around so that heavy piece of upholstered refuge has occupied the same spot for a very long time. I might also mention that my husband, in his daily, non-party mode frustration, is often prone to slipping/shoving/kicking unwanted items in, into, or under whatever will hide them the quickest. I recently discovered one of the kid's baby toys on top of a non-visible shelf in our bathroom. Our youngest will be twenty-five in November.

Determined to re-arrange the furniture, I planted my feet and shoved the couch away from its long-standing residence against the wall. On my hands and knees, with a quick time-out for a prayer to bless me with better housekeeping skills and/or a lifetime contract with Merry Maids, I started gathering the once wanted, now forgotten bounty, That's when I realized that this treasure trove deserved a list. The Guinness people might someday be interested.

Under my sofa I found: eleven pens, 1 plastic (real would have been scary) knife, 1 cloth napkin (used to wipe one's hands before throwing it under the couch?), 1 half roll of toilet paper (I don't even want to know), 2 hair clips, 1 sock (so that's where that was hiding), 4 magazines, 3 tennis balls, 4 free weights, 1 slipper (who needs slippers until November), 1 Bears hat (probably thrown in disgust at the end of last season), 1 Happy Birthday balloon on a stick, 1 exercise band, and a half-finished crossword puzzle.

After finishing the puzzle, I put away/trashed all the other items and vacuumed. By the time our guests arrived, we had a new seating arrangement and a carpet free of dust bunnies and other unwanted visitors. Weeks later, I'm happy to say, there is still nothing residing under our couch.

Our bed? Maybe it's time for a slumber party.