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.

Teddy Turns Ten

“Pick me, pick me,” a small voice pleaded from the middle of a toy store aisle filled with stuffed teddy bears of every imaginable size, shape, and color. Navy blue, magenta, polka dot, striped, life-size, battery operated, even ones with giant fairy wings. And then, there he was, almost hidden, deep inside the center on the lowest shelf. Only his small white paw stuck out like he had finally found the one person he was looking for -- the one who would take him to his rightful home.

“Pick me,” the teddy bear said again. This has to be the one. Only, there wasn’t anything really fancy about the bear. No elaborate jewels, no tulle, fluff, ribbons, or lace. Not even an expensive price tag with an important name. It was just a plain white teddy bear. Not tiny, but not big either. It was just something simple that just needed to be loved and taken care of. An innocent thing, much like the newborn baby that would be coming home from the hospital any day. “Pick me,” he whispered, softly this time, knowing the man had seen him.

It has to be the one, the man thought to himself as he stood in line, purchased the bear, and then rushed home. He set the bear in the rocking chair in the nursery and when his daughter was old enough, he placed the teddy in the crib next to her while she slept. The rest, as they say, was history. Like fairy tales and stories of happily-ever-after, the little girl and the teddy bear have been bound together ever since.

That is how the story goes. The one we have told Livi countless times over the past decade of how her Dad found Teddy and brought him home. She’s old enough now not to believe in talking teddy bears, but she still loves the story. Just like Teddy, it has taken on a sort of magic all its own.

For the past ten years, Teddy has always been there for her, even at times when I couldn’t be. He’s been there through the scary stuff: the bad dreams, a broken arm, the first plane ride, long car trips, doctor visits, and the flu. He’s been through all the good stuff too: Christmases, birthdays, bike rides, camp outs, sleepovers, and movie nights.

Yes, you might say he’s been through a lot. And he has, to be loved like that.

He’s been washed, bleached, patched, re-stuffed, stitched up and glued. But he has helped heal her, too. He’s helped fix those hurts that can happen to a child: the tears, the broken heart, the skinned knees, the anxiety and the fears.

It’s true she doesn’t carry him around everywhere like she once did. After all, she’s growing up. She just turned ten, too.

Some people would call Teddy a transitional object. Something she’s held onto to ease her separation from her parents as she grows older and more into herself. Only, I think it means a lot more than that. See, it can’t be that simple. He’s not just an object. I could never imagine him not being a part of her life, something she discards once she is done.

As Teddy is the whole world to Livi, just as my children are to me. They are what I hold dear while trying to make sense of senseless things. They are what I celebrate every day for all the blessings, and lessons, and love they have given me. I will never be able to articulate or put into 900 words or less how much they mean to me. I couldn’t imagine them not being a part of my life. I am just lucky to be able to love them.

Maybe that’s what it’s all about . . . being able to love something, or someone, so much it seems . . . well, magical. And maybe, like Livi and her bear, some things are simply destined, meant to be.

Happy 10^th Birthday to Livi and Teddy, and Happy New Year to all of you. I sincerely hope your year will be full of magic and wonder, held up and filled, like Teddy, with a whole lot of love.