Staying Still

"Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true."- W.R. "Dean" Inge; Anglican Priest and Cambridge Professor (1860-1954)

 I am hardly, if ever, bored.

 I don't know if it it's because I love to read (anything), eat (same answer), nap (anywhere), daydream (all the time) or just plain think.

 I am perfectly comfortable doing nothing- as my motto for these past few decades is time wasted is not wasted time.

 I don't worry if the early bird eats the worm, I miss the midnight train, or the world passes me by.

 I am not really in an all out hurry to get anywhere.

 I have always been comfortable with where I'm at in the moment.

 My children.  Not so much.

When I was their age, when I was bored, I would pick up a volume of my grandfather’s collection of burgundy colored hard-covers-Shakespeare’s As You Like It, was one of the first plays I ever read.  I would look for signs in the clouds during the day; the big dipper and fireflies at night.  I ate crabapples from their backyard and flung the skinny cores over the fence so their neighbor’s goat had something to eat.

I never complained.

My girls are evidently not on the same page; the one mapped out of my childhood.  Theirs is a much different narrative.  I often wonder where I went wrong.   

See, they are bored at the drop of the hat, let down by the shake of the empty cereal box, and dejected at the dreaded depleted power button on their wireless palm held players of DVD’s.

There is no doubt I am doing them a disservice.  If anything, I want them to grow up knowing the world owes you not a damn-excuse my language-thing.  It’s up to them to seek out adventure, fill up their proverbial cup, and let the tides of life soak through them.

I want them drenched and wet.  Not scared to go out into the rain.

So, I am going to change a few things up, shut down the whiny, relentless sleepovers, put the ke-bosh on all the complaining, and will- from this day forward- refuse to be privy to their demands to be entertained 24-7.

I survived.

Didn’t you?

So, for me, I implemented …..  The Bored Jar.

It’s simple, really.  Whenever your dependents complain there isn’t a single thing on God’s green earth to do- have them stick their little hand in this:  A mason jar, tin can, or shoe box (really, anything will do) filled up with the following “random” choices written in stubby crayons on torn-off pieces of scrap paper.  Here’s a quick example:

·         Play Lego’s with Mom for hours, after which she will clean the whole mess up, make you cookie’s and care-less about what time you go to bed.

·         Organize, with absolutely no help from anyone over the legal age of 18, the entire house full of Lego’s into color coordinated bins, labeled to size and description, including all classification and lamentation of said instructions.

·         Two hours with any craft-any time-extra glue-moderate glitter with zero complaining of “remember the last time you did that, it took a good 5 inch chunk out of my Oriental rug.”

·         Two hours of peeling two years of super glue off the table, vacuuming a decade’s worth of sparkles from the carpet, and cleaning all the toilets and litter box to boot.

Even the 12 and under set know that’s a crap shoot-it’s 50/50.  It’s the equivalent of thinking you’re going in to construct a fairy princess or a matchbox hot rod out of a few pipe cleaners, a handful of tooth picks and spun sugar, only to be folding the whites, sifting out your winter socks, and wondering what is Mom (since you had to scrub and wash the fridge) cooking for dinner.

Mine, I shake that Bored Jar and they are out playing ball in the cul-de-sac in a New York minute.

Where they should be.

If I can teach them anything, while I still have them, it’s to: be still but still seeking, be contemplative but never complacent, stay reflective in spirit so they may always shine, and lastly, be spontaneous but wise so they will find what they need and be happy with what they have.

Bored is, like everything else, a word…not a state of mind. Beauty and Truth…words, too…but in their natural stripped down essence.  Well, those are for my girls to find. 

Happy Hunting.

Now, go out and look for them.

The Real World

                                  previously published in the Coastal Illustrated- July 25, 2012

   I’m a huge fan of "The Real World."  The MTV reality show, that is. It’s been a safe place for two decades where people (usually cute, single, and self-absorbed twenty somethings) “stop being polite and start being real.”

   I was there in the beginning, in New York, a young 20-year-old myself; a loyal couch side voyeur into the “colliding worlds” of seven strangers living in an ultra-hip SOHO apartment rent free where they talked “smack” and tried to bring about world peace.

   I was sitting right there with Kevin, the angst-ridden poet, and the Jersey City, beeper wearing, rap record seeker named Heather B. I watched sweet, small town, Southern Julie traverse the scary Manhattan landscape in her schrunchie and acid-washed jeans.

   I was there, on Lombard Street (the most crooked street in the world), a junior at Georgia, watching the cast of "Real World: San Francisco" tackle issues such as HIV, post-graduation post-partum, and the trials and tribulations of living with a bicycle messenger, named Puck, with no redeeming social skills whatsoever and the nasty habit of putting the peanut butter knife back in the jar after he licked it clean.

   And here I find myself today, 20 years later, still fascinated as I watch seven strangers live together in a million dollar home, on a private island, in the Virgin Islands, you know, “being real," soaking up the sun and drinking rum punch like bonefide VIPS.

   Everything is the same, year after year after year. Except, I have come to realize: me.

   “Why are you yelling at the TV?” my husband asks from the kitchen where I like to pretend he is loading the dinner dishes into the dishwasher instead of downing Captain Crunch like he is leaving for a seven-month voyage out to sea. “You’ll wake up the kids.”

   “Look! Just look at this,” I plead, pausing the show. “Tell me, for the love of all things wise and wonderful…….…tell me. Tell me what do you see?”

   “A redheaded skinny dude passed out on a weird looking swing and a girl in a bikini putting peanut butter on him.”

   “Ughhhh! A weird looking swing?” I hop up from my yellow chair, wilding pointing at it frozen in the frame. “It’s a custom made porch swing made out of an old refurbished row boat with custom cushions on a custom made settee! That’s probably worth eight grand! What kind of person rubs peanut butter all over an 8,000 dollar swing?!”

   He didn’t know the answer either. It may be time to stop watching the “real world,” or at least that would be the advice I would get from my OB….with my high blood pressure and all that. But seriously y’all, it gets harder and harder to watch two 25 year olds banter back and forth about how unfair life is while drinking vodka-laced Hawaiian Punch on a four hundred count, perfectly white, perfectly pristine, silk duvet and matching European shams encasing the finest of Egyptian cotton.

  Yes, get over it, life is unfair…..and so is a $2,000 dollar comforter set that no matter how many times they tell you is pre-treated, will never come back from the dry cleaners stain free.

 See, the real, “real” world is not what you ever thought it would turn out to be. For me, this is a rather perplexing thought as I prepare my oldest to leave the safety of the candy-colored tiled path of elementary school and straight into the scary scuffed up, smelly sneaker, locker clanging hall of middle school-ville.

 

  What words of wisdom do I give her? How to I make the crushing blows of faltering, not fitting in, fear of failure, not hurt so much? How do you encourage and guide your child to adulthood while preparing them for life’s let downs?

  We were all told the same things: the world’s our oyster….only we never really knew that literally, and figuratively, the price would cost as much as the market could bear.

  We were informed of “Oh, all the places you’ll go” but most of us at the time we’re not thinking a ranch in the suburbs with a mortgage, two car payments and student loans.

  Even those words we all absorbed as adolescents like a rich wine, the ones about being your own individual and “taking the road least traveled by” and that would make all the difference wasn’t even…”sigh”…. the poets intended meaning. 

  If we had read it more closely and with greater perspective, the poem would read as the poet intended; a nostalgic view of a man looking back on his life and contemplating the weight of the choices he made and do they really matter. The path was already chosen; you cannot go back and choose again.

  I have been thinking about that a lot this past week as I write this from a porch overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee and the woods of North Eastern New Hampshire. Especially, as I prepare my daughter for the first days of middle school come August.

  We have hiked these woods together, the same ones our poet Robert Frost walked for most of his adult life, since she was two years old. There is something eerily majestic and wise and dangerous about them. No, no two paths ever look the exact same. But there are tricky similarities that make you pause and wonder what you might miss depending on the path you’ve taken. As Frost tells us, there is not much you can do fretting about it; choice is an inevitability, a sure bed rock of life like the passing of time.

  Sometimes, the path turns rocky and steep in a hurry and we have no choice but to turn back. I hope she realizes that to retrace ones steps does not equate to failure. It stands for being smart and safe about her choices.

  Other times, the path is not particularly challenging and quiet and sparse. I hope she learns to not be disappointed but to keep going, you never know what you will find -a gentle pond, a great river, a regal mountain- if you stay the course.

  But always, no matter what mossy, rocky, footstep trodden path she takes…..the road will always lead home. And I will always be waiting.

  As adults, we learn to live with regret. Toss it around, shake it out and then put it back up, in its rightful place, out of reach. For a child, regret is a foreign concept too soon learned… for their own good.

  I only wish she learns the real world is what she makes of it. Hopefully, for her, that will make all the difference.

The Game Called Life

Previously published in the Coastal Illustrated, April 18, 2012

Life is hard. I just found out I am having another girl and no one seems too concerned that I am running out of room in my car.*  And it sure doesn’t help that I still haven’t paid off my student loans yet and now one of my pre-existing kids has decided she wants to go to med school after I paid ten thousand for a wedding reception so she could then elope with a struggling stand up comedienne that comes with an annual salary of five G’s, a double wide, and a flat screen TV.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night.

That’s why, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why my family likes to play Milton Bradley’s Game of Life right before bed.  It’s even getting to my nine year old.  She ended up paying so much money in back taxes she had one heck of a nightmare last night and had to spend the night wedged in our bed. 

But it got me thinking (as well as not sleeping.)  Is the Game called Life really a reasonable interpretation of the honest to goodness, real, breathing in and out, and putting one foot in front of the other thing it’s named after?

In some ways, yes, I think it is.   In life, just as in Life, it does seem more times than not, we close our eyes, spin the “metaphorical” wheel, and hope for the best.  Will we win the lottery, a TV game show, or five grand worth of free furniture?  No, probably not.  But see, there are all of these things out there we can’t control, like a recession, job loss, or medical bills, so we take three, five, ten steps forward-whatever we can get- and pray for the best.  It doesn’t seem fair.  But it’s all we can do.

Will we find a buried treasure or win the Nobel Peace prize?  Our odds are much better in the Game of Life than the real one, but in both, we have choices to prepare us for the “down the road” scenarios that will inevitably pop up.  Education, investments, spending wisely not frivolously, are all options for both that can better prepare us for life’s greater challenges.

But still, unforeseen circumstances happen all the time in the game and reality as well.  We might lose a hefty investment, have to take a pay cut due to no fault of our own, or maybe even be sued by one of your own family members.  All of these things happen in real life, but sometimes the responses seem to be the same as those thrown out around the game board: “It’s not my fault.  I can’t do anything about it.  It’s just life.”

Basically, suck it up….which are tough words to swallow.  So maybe this is where I think the two differ.  Real life is what happens when the rubber meets the road, when it’s no longer play practice, but the real deal.  And real life, unlike the game, should never be left up to chance.

When I was a freshman at UGA way back when, one of my favorite classes was a comparative lit class.  If I took one thing away from my studies that would shape the way I would look at life when I got out in the real world to live it, it would have to be reading Voltaire’s Candide. 

Voltaire was a French philosopher and writer during the seventeen hundreds, the period of Enlightenment, and is considered to one of the great thinkers behind the French and American Revolutions.  It’s true that our Founding Fathers were inspired by the very things we appreciate and practice now that were not available in Voltaire’s time that he advocated: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

In his satire Candide, Voltaire rejects the notion that everything happens for the best in the “best of both possible worlds.”  In the author’s own world at the time, great atrocities were dismissed by saying “it’s God’s will” or “fate” and no one could do anything about it except for smile and be optimistic it will all work out in the end.  What he concludes still sticks with me today, that in the end, like Candide, we must all “cultivate our garden” and not leave our lives up to chance.  In fact, we must all try and control our own destinies through hard work and persistence.  If you plant a seed and tend to it, it will grow.  Look at the seed Voltaire planted in his day and how we are all reaping its reward today over 250 years later.

For me, when life gets hard I think about cultivating my garden and about how impossible things can become possible.  No matter how many times I spin the wheel and how many spaces I more forward, it will always be up to me to figure out a way to get on down the road. 

My girl’s have taught me a lot while playing the Game of Life and our subsequent discussions of it before bed.  Whenever the Life tiled road diverges and you have a choice to take the risky path or the safe one, they tell me to take the risky one every time.  Some people think a safe path might be better they tell me, but it slows you down getting where you want to go every time.

For me, I think I’ll teach my girls something in return.   I am going to pick out a piece of earth in our back yard.  We can plant tomato seeds and fertilize and water them.

And see what grows.

   

*Writer's Note: No.  I am NOT pregnant! No baby on the way but thanks for all the well-wishes after this story came out in paper a few weeks ago!  This momma already has more than she can handle!  

A Mother's Mind is Mush

         previouly written July, 2010 for blog only

Mush has never been one of my favorite words.  Especially now, since it reminds me of all the things I have tried real hard to forget since my husband and I decided to procreate some ten years ago.  Things like strained peas, regurgitated peas, dirty diapers and the “stuff” under the car seats that can only be identified with a culture and a bio-hazard lab at the CDC.  I could go on, but I won’t, seeing as it could trigger something in my brain and make the memories of the mush come flooding back in. 

I don’t know what it is they do to you at the Maternity Ward, but the ID bracelets they tether you and your newborn to must have some sort of electromagnetic mind zapping device in them or something.   What else could single handedly erase (along with your privacy and the hope of ever fitting back into your size 26 jeans) every last one of your remaining brain cells?

Gone, like that.  Just when you need them the most, you’re no longer able to remember dates, times, appointments, ages, passwords, street addresses, birthdays, or names. 

“Is David feeling any better,” I ask my friend after I literally bump into her at the grocery store with my shopping cart.

“Oh, he’s fine,” she tells me as she waves a hand with what looks like one of those Henna tattoos all over it, but on closer inspection, seems to be her grocery list and a reminder to pay the power bill and get the oil changed.  “His fever broke the night it rained.”

See, events are no longer referred to by date, but by catastrophic events and changes in the weather.  For example, the summer of 2008 might be replaced by the summer it was so hot the air conditioning blew up and Junior broke his arm falling out of his bedroom window.

But let’s get back to the grocery.

Earlier in the frozen food section, I witnessed an exchange between a sweet, unsuspecting elderly lady and an overtired Mom with crazy hair pushing one of those stock car grocery cart thingamajigs with a bunch of tiny arms and legs sticking out of it.  It went down like this:

“What a cute little boy! What’s his name?” the elderly lady coos over the toddlers head. 

“I’m not really sure seeing as he’s number three, I think.  It’s Jimmy, Sonny, or Spot,” overtired mom tells her has she pushes s few stray hairs out of her face.  “ All I know is that he likes Lego's but I can’t give him the small ones ‘cause he’ll stick them up his nose, he throws up on long car rides, and he’s allergic to penicillin.  Basically lady, your guess is as good as mine.  Anymore questions?’

The elderly lady, as you can imagine, walked off in a huff.  But the one I truly felt sorry for was overtired Mom.  See, I feel her pain.  As a mom, we don’t have a lot of time for idle chit chat and reminiscing about things we can’t even remember anyway.  We have better things to do, you know, like keeping them fed, clean, and out of the ER.

I can’t remember my own phone number, but I know the number for Poison Control by heart, the genus and toxicity of all wild, liver-killing mushrooms, and how much laundry detergent one 50 pound child can drink before he’s gotta get his stomach pumped.

There does seem to be one exception to this mom’s mind is mush rule and that would be Martha Stewart.  Now don’t quote me on this, but if you open up her brain….I’m pretty sure you’d find a tea strainer or two, a rolodex, and one of those all purpose labeling gadgets.  Oh and let’s not forget Hilary Clinton, seeing as she’s got a whole village or something up there helping her plug away through life while trying to achieve world peace.  I just want to know where you get one of these villages, seriously y’all.  Can you download one from the internet or Pinterest or something?   Or better yet, make a bid for one on EBay?

Now in the case of my husband’s brain, you’ll definitively find some mush that’s accumulated on account of all the video gaming, beer drinking, and ESPN watching, but it’s quite cleverly concealed under a rather larger button, that when activated, makes it look like he’s paying attention to everything I’m saying when he’s really not.  He also has one of those selective hearing buttons, not to mention the ability to keep a whole strain of code intact, that when broken, reveals twenty years of stats for the SEC.

I can’t help it that I’m jealous of all the cool gadgets he has going on up in the big noggin of his, but what really burns me up is my kids (who haven’t hit the double digits by the way) are now smarter than I am.

“Where are my sunglasses,” I ask no one in particular, as I dump the entire content of my purse and the three kitchen junk drawers directly onto the floor. 

“Mom, really,” my youngest rolls her eyes without taking them off the Disney Channel and True Jackson VP.  “They’re where you always lose them….on top of your head.”

Here’s another example of my inferior intellect:

I find myself wandering around the house with a knot in the pit of my stomach, wondering aloud what it is I should actually be doing instead of burning holes into my Orientals.

“Mom, it’s Sunday,” my oldest tells me, as she holds out a list free hand.  It does, however, have a smudge of chocolate and the equivalent of a five pound bottle of glitter all over it.  “You’d better call your own mom or she’s going to get mad at you.  For that daily piece of advice, please dispense.”

Well, I guess I better get going so I can call my Mom and scrounge under the seat cushions for a dollar in change to pay off one of the precious little lamb chops that helped create the mush in the first place .  The problem is I just gotta remember where I left the phone.

Talk with you soon, if remember my blogger password, that is. 

What Would Nancy Drew Do?

I loved Nancy Drew growing up. Adored her, actually. Why? Who wouldn’t look up to a blue convertible-driving sixteen year old, recent high school grad and amateur sleuth who could single-handedly solve the greater mysteries of the universe with only a flashlight, intense studies in psychological behaviors, and a magnifying glass to guide her? Simply put, she was my hero. To me, heroes seemed hard to find in abundance in the early eighties. As little girls, we were subjected on a regular basis to the tummy-baring unitards of Cher and the model singing the lyrics of the Enjoli perfume commercial that told us we could, in fact, bring home the bacon and then fry it up in a pan while never letting our husband forget he’s a man. And I know, Cyndi, I know; “Girls just wanna have fun,” but we were left wondering if there was more waiting for us out there in this big, wide world of opportunity than shoulder pads, Dallas reruns, and nightcaps on the Love Boat’s promenade deck? Luckily, a “plucky,” intelligent, independent, capable, and, yes, stylish, heroine to look up to had already been created by a man named Edward Stratemeyer in 1930. Stratemeyer was acting on a hunch following the success of his characters The Hardy Boys, when he created Nancy Drew, a character who remains timeless to this day. For me, it was love at first sight when my mom brought home the whole set of the Mystery Stories with their smart covers and canary yellow bindings in 1981. Not only did I quickly devour the books as a nine year-old female reader, I actually wanted to be Nancy Drew. It seemed to me, if you put your mind and talents to the task at hand, like Nancy did, you could figure out pretty much anything. I imagined an exciting and glamorous life filled with phantom horses, hidden treasures, stolen diamonds, secret staircases, old attics, and coded messages arriving via homing pigeons. Who wouldn’t find this fast-paced life tackling tough questions and dangerous enemies intoxicating? Alas, an amateur sleuth I did not turn out to be. But in my own hectic, crazy life, I still look to Nancy for inspiration and help in unraveling the vast mysteries that surround me every day. Here are a few examples: The Mystery of the Odd Odor in the Pantry Where is that smell coming from? How did it get there and why can’t I find its source after taking everything out and putting it all back in again? Was it the missing Yukon Gold potato that I haven’t seen since it was on the conveyor belt at Harris Teeter? Did it not make it home, or if it did, simply rot somewhere in the pantry, sprout legs and then run away?
The Secret of the Broken Step on the Front Porch Why, when my husband says he has put a nail in it, do I still trip on the step, stubbing my pinkie toe and spilling my grocery bag and mail every other day? Does someone sneak up to the porch every night and pry it out? Do I need 24-hour surveillance or eight hours of sleep? Could the nail be a “phantom” nail that my husband has substituted for a real one so I will stop nagging him and he can blow up stuff on his Play Station 3? The Clue in the Bag of Mini Snickers How do these mini candy bars keep disappearing even though I alternate hiding spots two or three times a day and seal the bag back up with Elmer’s glue, invisible double-sided Scotch tape, and modeling clay? Am I being followed? Has someone planted a GPS tracking device somewhere in the bag? And why do they leave all the little empty wrappers inside the bag instead of throwing them away in the trash can like civilized human beings do? The Case of the Missing Hair Brush Where does it go every night after I place it right by the sink? Does it have a hot date with my husband’s comb or perhaps the blender where I sometimes find it? Do I sleepwalk every night for the sole purpose of hiding it from my girls, making us all late, and then ruining my morning? Why do my children promise me that they use it and then put it back in its rightful place when their hair looks like birds could nest in it.

So now you can see how indispensible Nancy’s skills are even today, almost 75 years later. Though, I might even venture to say, in today’s world, the mysteries seem more complex and are that much harder to crack. I doubt even our French-speaking, hot rod- driving, pearl choker and pencil skirt-wearing heroine can figure out who keeps locking my keys in the car when I’m not looking and why I do laundry twice a day and no one ever has anything to wear. I’m sure that I am not the only one who owes my mom a lot for introducing me to Nancy Drew and all that she embodies. She saved all the books for my girls and I find immense joy in watching them curled up on the couch with Nancy unraveling all of her baffling cases right along with her. I hope they learn that yes, sometimes problems seem pretty impossible to work out, but to never give up. Like my favorite amateur sleuth, you just have to use your wits and keep on looking for clues. Blonde bob and college boyfriend four years their senior not required, however.

Diary of a Sleepover

“Happy Friday!”

I can’t stand those two words, especially when strung together and intoned in a really annoying sing songy voice. Obviously, the person who relishes this phrase doesn’t claim any dependents on their tax returns.
For the rest of us, weekends are a whirlwind of activity that takes place at a feverish pace and requires more car laps around Glynn County than a week’s worth of races at the Daytona 500. There are birthday parties, soccer practices, riding lessons, basketball games, cheerleading tryouts, and piano recitals. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Not only does your weekend revolve around the little people with runny noses and untied shoelaces that you chose to bring into this world (possibly after a few too many margaritas), but it also involves a few others that you didn’t.
Which brings me to the two other words that when put together make me want to go back to bed and call my mommy: “sleep” and “over.” Here’s what occurs during a typical weekend sleepover at the Packard house:
5:00 PM- Four girls arrive with enough luggage for a two week European tour, not to mention enough cell phones, iPads, iPods, and other electronic gaming devices to power through a nuclear winter.
5:05 PM- Two iPods and one cell phone are now missing. One of the cats is AWOL and the dog has pink curlers in his hair and moustache drawn in with my black Laura Mercier coal eyeliner pencil.
5:15 PM- I try to sit down but all of the cushions and accent pillows and bed sheets in the entire house are stacked like the leaning tower of Pisa in the sunroom. There’s a note attached that reads: “Whoever knocks down this fort will either die a slow and painful death or have to sleep on the floor.” I back away carefully.
5:36 PM- Girls have melted all the chocolate in the house to make mud masks and two of them have glued their eyes shut with purple glitter nail polish from Claire’s. Good news: the cat has shown up. Bad news: she won’t stop shaking and refuses to eat.
5:57 PM- In survival mode, I decide to make a cocktail with some watered down Fanta orange soda and a rim of crushed Nerds found all over the kitchen counter top.
5:59 PM- I take my cocktail outside to the driveway to check on the girls, where one of them points out, with pride, a sidewalk chalk portrait of me that could only be described as a cross between Barbara Bush and Smurfette. I ponder throwing my drink on it to make it go away, but it comes down to sanity vs. vanity. For me, sanity wins every time. I down the rest of my drink and pray for rain.
6:33 PM- The pizza delivery guy shows up. Unfortunately, the girls descend on him like a band of over-sugared, over-accessorized princess-look-alikes at Disney who finally spotted Minnie after standing in line for half a day in extreme heat. He throws the pizza at the porch and makes a hasty retreat, no doubt to call for a restraining order and to block our number from their phone database worldwide, including Canada.
7:03PM- After lugging down four extra-large Hefties to the trash and unclogging the sink, it’s time to pick out a movie.
8:00 PM- Following three total melt downs, two fits of hiccups, and a call for mutiny, we still haven’t picked out a movie. I double check the dead bolts and set the alarm just in case someone really does try and walk home.

8:15 PM- After some more careful, but healthy debate, three gigantic tubs of popcorn, and a few iTunes gift cards left over from Christmas for the obstructionists, we finally come to a decision and press play.

10:15 PM- Finally. I was able to read my book in peace. I did have to make a run to the garage for more toilet paper, fix an overflowing toilet, remove a splinter, clean up an exploding Coke, find a stuffed bunny and a bear, recharge a cell phone then turn it off, wriggle two blankets from the leaning tower of Pisa without it falling down, but I did manage to read six pages. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?
10:30 PM- Time for bed. I can still hear them like little rats scurrying back and forth across the hardwoods upstairs, but I am just too tired to care anymore. The alarm is on, the smoke detectors are hardwired to the fire station, and if something goes off, the good news is they will all have reliable and fast transportation back to where they came from.
8:00 AM- The kids are already up. Actually, they have been since 6:00 AM after admitting they went to bed at 1:00 AM. I run around the kitchen taking down breakfast requests like a short order cook, only to end up with maple syrup in my hair, burnt toast, and two stacks of uneaten pancakes.
9:01 AM- We have packed up what we can find, which isn’t much, and six girls stare at me with red rimmed eyes like a horde of college freshmen who just pulled an all-nighter for finals while inhaling twelve pots of coffee under fluorescent lighting. The only thing left for me to do is inhale twelve cups of coffee and stare at the driveway, hoping their parents will show up soon.

My friend, Alicia, asked me what the appropriate age is for her 5 year-old to have a sleep over. My answer is always the same. “When she is thirty,” I tell her, “and she has to have a ring on her finger and have already negotiated the best side of the garage to park her car in.”
Actually, it really is worth it in the end. I get to watch my girls cultivate friendships, laugh till their sides split, and figure out what it means for someone to have your back and vice versa.
In the words of the late Erma Bombeck, the world’s wisest woman: “friends are –‘annuals’ that need nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a ‘perennial’ that comes up year after year, enduring droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.”
So, bring ‘em on…over, that is. I’ll always have Monday.

Saint Simons Island 101

I've learned a lot since I moved here to the island, my husband's hometown, more than eight years ago.

· I've learned you can fry an egg on the hood of a white car in 105 degree heat just as easily as you can on the hood of a black one.
· I've learned you have to break for families of deer, slow wandering egrets, and shy turtles when pulling in and out of your driveway.
· I’ve learned fiddler crabs can and will slip through the tiniest crack in your garage door, then sit, stink, and stay awhile before you can find them.
· I've learned never to trust the Doppler Radar when going out on the boat. Even if it says there’s a scant 10% chain of precipitation, take a rain slicker, a few flairs, a grounding device, and be prepared to have your clothes hang off your frame fifteen pounds heavier than when you hopped on, and you’ll also feel fifteen degrees chillier.
· I’ve learned that even though most people consider John Freda Anti-Frizz Serum to be God’s gift to both man and woman, He and John obviously didn't think we would care a thing about it down here in little ole Southeast Georgia.
· I’ve learned that having a bathing suit season that lasts nine months out the year is not always a good thing.
· I’ve learned that loving a Gator may be a sin, but being a Bulldog is a way of life.
· I’ve learned that Brunswick stew is in itself a major food group, and though it may take you ten minutes to get a table at a restaurant, it's only because you know the ten people you've stopped and hugged hello along the way.

This may seem like a lot, but it's nothing compared to what my children have learned growing up here.

· They’ve learned that you can find live starfish in the tidal pools on East Beach after low tide, sand dollars if you dive deep enough past the break of the waves, and bio-luminescents in the brackish rivers after a good, heavy rain.
· They've learned that tubing the Altamaha is a lot of fun once you realize you're not really gator bait. And no, even though you share their space and even peacefully coexist, it's still not a good idea to dangle your feet over the dock while one of them is staring at you.
· They've learned that riding a bike means having the freedom to explore even though they might have gone through five boxes of Sponge Bob Band Aids to get there and that it's all worth it in the end because of the miles and miles of bike paths that allow them access to nature at its most pristine, kind of like a modern day Christopher Columbus.
· They’ve learned that there is no sense in hurrying to get somewhere. It’s what you see and do along the way that makes up who you are.

How lucky they are, to grow up here.

Unlike my girls, I didn't grow up on a beach. I dipped my toe in this existence, the salty, warm seductiveness of it all, from time to time and it would feel like coming home. It wasn’t until I moved here that I could see it for what it is. It’s a pliable, changing, cyclical place that moves as naturally and as reliably as the tides; not a place born of concrete and rigidity where a way of life is set in stone only to be abandoned and forgotten when something new or better comes along.

It’s a place that calls for our footprints to make a mark on its surface before disappearing as if we were never there, but we don’t care. We know we will get to come back and re-create our experiences again and again and again as if it was for the very first time.

It’s a place that encircles us with a warm caressing breeze. Not like a blanket that protects us from harm, but quite the opposite. No, it’s more like a whisper of warmth against your skin which stirs something in you, pushes you out of your shell, teasing you to be free of the everyday worries that confine you.

It’s a place where our beaches lay out like a giant welcome mat to seek out all that is wild and wonderful about our world while its rivers and marshes spin out around us and bind us all together at its core.In the end, I’ve learned how lucky we all are to live here, in this place.

 And, most importantly, to have the privilege to call it home.