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Tag: swimming

  • I Really Did It This Time

    I Really Did It This Time

    They came and built things.

    I didn’t think it would happen.

    I thought I had it all under control.

    I figured, I’d just pull the cross-country captains aside plus my own two children. It would be a business-like meeting. Just the facts. No feelings.

    Jody and I regularly open our house to Juan Jose’ and Crystel’s friends and their sport teams. Our swimming pool is ideal for an ‘end of a run’ swim.

    What we don’t want is any dunking or kids pushing one another into the pool. When things get reckless, people can get hurt.

    The solution was simple. Bring the captains and my own kids together, and spell out their responsibility.

    However, things didn’t go as planned.

    They came and jumped off the diving board.

    The coach called on me to speak.

    I scanned the crowd. Adults, teen and middle school cross-country runners, younger brothers and sisters. All of us gathered for a barbecue at Augsburg Park in Richfield.

    Crystel told me later that she knew it was going to happen.

    Jody, Juan Jose’ and Crystel have a detector for my overwhelming emotions. Usually it will be Juan that says, “You’re crying, aren’t you?”

    Any matter-of-factness I had ran out of the park when I eyeballed their friends and teammates, and I contemplated just for a moment losing any one of them to a drowning.

    I paused a number of times during my ‘welcome to our home but I don’t want to go to a funeral’ speech. Even so I ended up weeping.

    My tears are a gift from Juan Jose’ and Crystel. They broke me apart with love when they came into my life. I haven’t been able to put myself together since.

    They came and relaxed.

    I really did it this time, I thought. No one will want to go to that lady’s house. She’ll start crying.

    “Don’t worry about my crying,” I said. “Juan Jose’ and Crystel know I cry all the time.”

    The group laughed.

    Thing is, I do cry all the time. What a gift.

    I just don’t intend to share it so openly.

    We will just have to see if the teams come around.

     

     

  • 16 ½ Things I Love About Summer

    1. Early morning walks around the neighborhood (a.k.a. my own tour of gardens).

    2. Strawberries, peaches, and cucumbers with dill in sour cream. Burgers/brats/shish kabobs on the grill. Homegrown tomatoes and sweet corn in August.

    2 1/2.  Picking fresh herbs from my patio pots: basil for caprese salad, fresh mint for mojitos, and cilantro for quesadillas.

    3. Waking up to birdsong at 5:30. Being awake and refreshed when hardly anybody else is up. Adding that extra hour to my day.

    Mears Park, St. Paul

    4. Cutting through Mears Park, along the man-made stream on the way to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market on weekends.

    5. Walking to get an ice cream cone from the Grand Old Creamery.

    6. Feeling bathroom tile that’s pleasantly cool to my bare feet—not frigid—so I don’t have to hop from one throw rug to the next.

    7. Sunning with a book and swimming at Schulze Lake in Lebanon Hills Park.

    8. Grabbing Wednesday night supper from the food trucks at the Nokomis Farmer’s Market.

    9. Fireflies in late June.

    10. L o o o n n g days that stay light past 9:30 p.m.

    11. Heat lightning.

    12. Road trips—leaving early with a sack full of snacks and a cooler packed with cold drinks. Passing rippling fields of impossibly green corn and soybeans. Pink, purple, yellow, and white wildflowers tumbling across ditches.

    13. Drinking wine and reading after dark on the front porch.

    Powderhorn Art Fair, Minneapolis

    14. Art fairs bursting with jewelry to adorn me and artwork to adorn our home.

    15. Outdoor dining at area restaurants—in hidden shady gardens, improvised patios framed by flower pots, or even at tables three feet away from traffic.

    16. Drinking beer (don’t tell the park rangers) around the campfire we don’t really need and seeing a breathtaking number of stars come out overhead.

  • The Dead Cat is Out of the Freezer

    IMG_0493Seasons change, and so it is time.

    We have a small window to perform our ceremony – in between the comings and goings of teenagers.

    A line forms and we sing “Amazing Grace” while walking to the burial place in the corner of the yard. Our daughter and her friend dug the hole earlier. To make sure it was big enough they placed Trouble the dog in the hole but he quickly jumped out.

    Seasons have changed for the children as well. A Cub Scout is now a Boy Scout who will be doing his Eagle project on Saturday. A small girl, who was always the first to jump into the swimming pool, is still the first to try most things in our house.

    Our procession takes us underneath the flowering crabapple. The sweet scent follows. I lay down the paper bag holding our beloved.

    There is a discussion about whether to bury Angel in the shirt that he is wrapped in. I kneel, gently cover his black and white face with the fabric so dirt won’t fall into his eyes. My stomach constricts. I straighten. Jody hands the girl the shovel.

    There was a day when the children were ten months old that I thought they would be that age forever. I could not see past that day to this one. Parenting was hard work. Parenting was demanding. It still is, but in a different way. Now I need to stay attuned to who they are, what they are doing. I can’t be any less present. Because I need to be there if only to say, I see you. I am watching you. Give me your phone.

    After our ceremony, as they are rushing off, I pull down the branches of the apple tree and smell the white flowers that within days will fall off the branches.

    I want to shout to the children’s departing backs that I’ll never give up. No matter how hard parenting may become, I’ll never give up.

    Angel our cat is gone. He had a good life. I have a good life. And, you are worth it.