First Lesson

Well, it happened: All of us were hit with the same stomach bug at more or less the same time. I guess I'm documenting this for posterity, but I really don't wish to hash out all the details. Let's just say that I thought briefly of killing myself when I glimpsed what lay ahead for our family late last Sunday night, but by five o'clock the next morning I just didn't have the energy. Whatever, it was gross, we survived.

And then in a show of really spectacular timing, our washing machine broke. It's not good when it smells like it's on fire during the spin cycle and leaves all these weird scorchy-looking brown spots all over your sheets and towels. Fixing our eight-year-old machine would have cost about twelve cents less than the cost of a shiny new one, so we got to go shopping. (The dryer, thankfully, is fine, although it needed a good cleaning. The guy who came out to service it cheerfully reported that we're lucky we didn't burn down our house.)

In happier news, my little girl had her very first swimming lesson today. We've never had her in "real" lessons before; I didn't really think she was ready last summer. Last summer she was just starting to be okay with sitting on a brightly colored carpet all by herself in her Kindermusik class, and she loved that, but I thought it would be pushing our luck to expect her to jump in a swimming pool all by herself. (In hindsight, she might have done just fine, but live and learn.) She's been excited for swimming lessons. She's been in gymnastics for the past several months, which has been great in terms of getting her used to listening to coaches and interacting with lots of different kids. I'm always nearby, watching, but I'm in the background.

She was shy at first, of course. We lined up by the pool, and I guided her into her little class group. I prodded her to follow her teacher, and then I stepped back and let her go. She didn't look back at me, and the next thing I knew, she was jumping right into the pool. By herself. Within minutes she was blowing bubbles, hanging on to the side of the pool to practice her kicks, and putting her face in the water. She allowed her teacher to pull her around the pool away from the side as she continued to practice her kicking and her back floats. She actually leaned back far enough in the water to get her hair completely wet.

She glanced over at me a few times and we exchanged secret little waves. I tried to control my beaming so I wouldn't completely embarrass her. She's so funnily shy about showing her excitement in public -- she goes so far as to actually reach up and pull her cheeks down when she's really tickled, like she doesn't want the world to see how much she's smiling. (And when her smile is just too big to be contained and it comes bursting through anyway -- well, it's beautiful, and impossible not to feel that smile all the way to your own toes.)

Mostly, though, I just watched, and she was so absorbed in kicking and bouncing in the water that she wasn't looking over at me all that much. The thirty-minute lesson flew by. Afterwards she climbed out of the pool like it was old hat already, shimmied over to me, and said, "I'm getting cold -- can I please have my towel?"

Sometimes I feel like every triumph I have ever experienced in my life culminates in these little moments -- watching my daughter jump into a swimming pool by herself, or watching her glide effortlessly across a balance beam in gymnastics class when four months ago she was so tentative. Or cooking dinner while she colors and hearing her suddenly announce, "Hey, Mommy, look -- I made a letter Q." Or hearing my son say a world for the first time. Watching him as he grins and starts to dance when he hears music. Listening to my children laughing together in the next room, knowing they are sharing something that they initiated without my prompting. Some of these moments are obvious (Suzannah's first swimming lesson is a pretty big one), but so many of them are so ordinary. One of the things I really try to do, though, is stay present enough to notice them -- to notice all the little ways in which my children discover the world and all the things they can do in it. It gives me a little thrill in my stomach and a swell in my heart that feels so much bigger than anything I've ever managed to do myself. I can't take credit for any of this, for what they do, but I can hopefully be in the moment with them and let them know that they matter.

And I know there is so much more to come. I try to remind myself of this whenever I start to miss their babyhoods, although I don't want to look too far into the future, either -- I don't want to miss the beautiful, shining splash when my little children take their first big leaps.

First Lesson
--Phillip Booth

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

A moment

When Suzannah goes to sleep, she wraps her bedspread around her shoulders and rolls herself into a tight little cocoon. Often, like tonight, she flips around and sleeps curled up at the foot of her bed, her feet towards her pillow. Something about this makes my heart swell. Tonight, actually, everything about her has this effect -- she seems so grown-up to me, so far away from babyhood, despite the fact that sometimes I'm still prone to having moments of whoa, we have actual children five years in.

I was going to be so productive today, but I spent my morning washing sheets and peeling clothes off of both Isaac and me. He seemed out of sorts this morning, and then at nine o'clock he started throwing up. After he'd done that twice I put him in a warm bath, where he played quite cheerfully for a long time. He seemed fine after that -- and hungry, so, hoping it was a fluke (coughing from postnasal drip? he also has a tendency towards allergies, we suspect) I let him have a piece of a banana and some crackers. He devoured them, played happily for awhile, and threw it all back up. His mood shifted then, and he became clingy and unhappy. He threw up a few more times, including once all over his bed when I tried to put him down. By the time I changed into my fourth shirt of the day, he was mostly just heaving up pitiful spoonfuls of nothing and he seemed completely worn out.

It was the kind of morning that could drive a mama crazy.

I've been really lucky with both of my children when it comes to the puking department. Suzannah has never really had a bad bout of vomiting -- not until last year, shortly before she turned four. She threw up all night then, and I wound up doing load after load of laundry; by eight o'clock in the morning, she was wearing an old pair of sweats that barely even fit anymore and sleeping on the one clean blanket we had left in the house. She remembered that, today, when she asked "Why isn't Isaac feeling so good?" I asked her if she remembered how she felt when she was sick like that, and she said -- almost proudly -- "I threw up right over there on the wood floor."

One of the worst parts of such an illness, I think, is the fear. Will my other child get it? Will I get it? Will our entire family be knocked flat by this? Because I still remember a horrible day from my own childhood, one in which my brother and I and both of our parents had the stomach flu at the same time. I still remember the awful sounds of people throwing up in two bathrooms at the same time and the way I curled miserably on the couch, by myself, knowing my parents were both too sick to really take care of me the way they would have otherwise. Thankfully, knock on wood, this hasn't yet happened to us. When Suzannah got so sick last year, the rest of us were spared. When I spent an entire day throwing up last October, no one else in my family felt anything out of the ordinary. When Matt got sick on New Year's Eve Day, the rest of us were fine. And so, I hope, is the case this time.

I put Isaac to bed shortly after lunch and he went right to sleep. Suzannah and I curled up together on the living room couch and read a couple of her books, and then she scampered into her room and crawled right up into bed for "quiet time." She actually fell asleep. She doesn't really nap anymore, but she's had several late nights recently and really not enough sleep, so I wasn't entirely surprised. In that moment, I decided to forget about the vacuuming and the rest of the laundry and I collapsed in the recliner to read Faithful Place, by Tana French (which is everything I could possibly want from a summer read). I hadn't read more than a page before Isaac cried pitifully for me.

I sighed. I put my book down.

I braced myself, waiting to hear the tell-tale sounds of gagging. They never came; he merely whimpered. I peeked in his room. He was still lying down, though he wasn't asleep. He probably would have fallen back asleep if I'd left him alone, but the sight of his wan face broke my heart a bit. I lifted him up and he sagged against my shoulder. He wasn't too limp to wrap his arms around my neck.

I settled back into the recliner with him, and he rested his cheek against my chest. He felt warm, but not alarmingly so. He sighed and grew heavier as he relaxed against me, and we leaned back together. I kissed his wispy hair, kissed his ear, rocked with him. His breathing became steady, sleepy, slow. He lapsed into snoring after a few moments.

I actually picked up my novel and read a few pages -- it is not one I want to put down, at all, until it's finished -- but after a few moments, I set it down again. Because really, I just wanted to hold my son. And I hated that he felt sick, I hated how confused he seemed every time he threw up, hated that he wasn't his usual happy-go-lucky little self, but I cherished that moment all the same -- the absolute gift of that moment that allowed me to just hold him while he relaxed against me and slept. His warm little back rose and fell against the palm of my hand. The fluff of his hair brushed against my lips.

I didn't get anything done, but I'll hold this moment long after my son has outgrown rocking in my arms.

Upsilamba!

I'm sore today. The good kind of sore -- the kind that comes after a long summer hike in the mountains, the mark of a summer day well-lived. Of course, I hadn't actually planned on feeling sore this weekend; I'd only intended to go for a nice run with a friend before lunch. Three miles, maybe four. Tops. We accidentally went about ten miles, though, before we were "rescued" along the highway, far away from where we started. I'm pretty sure I've never had anyone out looking for me before.

I left the house early yesterday morning, headed into the mountains for the annual retreat for the Children, Youth, and Family Team at my church. (Everyone else went on Friday night, but after joining them for dinner I came back home; I'm not quite ready to leave my nursling babe overnight.) It was at Buck Creek this year; I drove it in an hour, sipping coffee and listening to a biography of Thomas Hardy on CD, enjoying the quiet, the morning sunlight, the time to myself. I love these retreats -- I come away feeling refreshed, renewed, maybe a little more clear-headed, and definitely grateful to have the support and friendship of this church family. It's a recharge this mama needs every now and then.

I was also looking forward to a run. My friend Peggy asked if I'd like to go with her, and I wouldn't dream of turning down the opportunity to breathe mountain air, clear my head, and get in a good workout. So Peggy and I planned to go on a nice run before lunch; there are trails around the lodge where we were holding our retreat, and when we asked about good places to go we were given reasonable instructions for a loop that sounded like it would be right around two miles. We decided we'd do that twice and call it good.

What actually happened was that we took a wrong turn and couldn't really figure out where we were supposed to go, but by the time we realized we weren't on a two-mile loop, we'd run pretty far. We encountered more hikers and bikers who gave us well-meaning but inaccurate advice, and -- well, we got a little lost. All told, we went eight miles on the trail and another two along the highway before we were "rescued." At least, according to the people we managed to flag down for directions when we finally emerged from the trail onto a dirt road. At the time, I wasn't convinced we'd really gone that far, although today I feel appropriately sore for having run and hiked several miles of up and down mountain trails.

We saw the most beautiful waterfall on the mountain, through an opening in a canopy of trees, an opening filled with sunlight. We stopped there for a bit, just to look, to breathe, and to deeply appreciate the gift of that view. That moment made our little misadventure more than worth our sore muscles and parched throats. It was more than a beautiful view; it was somehow an unexpected gift of perfect peace, unexpected and undeserved. It reminded me a little of the weekend my college roommate came home with me for midsemester break during October of our senior year. I wrote this not long afterward:

I remember so clearly one golden afternoon of that long weekend; we climbed through the barbed wire fence at the edge of my parents' property and made our way down to the creek. We found a bridge consisting of wooden planks placed across two logs that stretch across the water and sprawled on our backs, our legs dangling over the side. I tipped my head back until I was upside down, gazing at the sky and water and inverted trees. A gust of wind shook the remaining golden leaves clinging to the branches, and they swirled above our heads in colorful flurries before drifting down to land gently on the water, the ground, in our hair. It was a moment of such still perfection it was hard to believe it was real. I watched one perfect leaf dip and twirl until it landed and the current carried it downstream. The beauty of it almost hurt with its simple intensity.

This was a bit like that. In fact, it might be my definition of upsilamba. I haven't put it into words as lovely as "the impossible joy of a suspended leap," but maybe it's something like "a moment of unutterable perfection."

The day was lovely and the weather was perfect -- sunny and warm, but not hot. We felt badly because we knew our group would be worrying about us, but we also knew that there was nothing we could do about that, and we knew we were perfectly fine. All we could do was keep moving, appreciate the adventure, be grateful it was a relatively safe adventure, and enjoy each other's company.

We came across a campground with a spigot for drinking water, and we stuck our heads underneath that for awhile. That was around mile 8, when we finally reached the highway. It was the best water I have ever tasted.

Maybe upsilamba is the sudden clear gush of cold water on a hot day.

Anyway, we had a really, really great time. The only downsides were a.) the fact that we hadn't brought any water (we were, after all, just going out for a quick run!) and b.) the fact that we knew our group would be massively freaking out. Which they were. Thankfully, the people who run the lodge had a pretty good idea where we'd gone, because this has happened to people before, and they picked us up. By then I was glad, because when we hit the highway and saw where we were we realized we were exactly four miles from the turnout to the lodge, at which point we'd have another mile of hiking in before we got there. I actually didn't expect to be found out on the highway at all. It was nowhere near where we'd started -- so I was pleasantly surprised to hear a honk behind us. We turned to see a truck from the camp pulling up alongside us. The driver waved cheerfully.

"Would you ladies like a lift?" he asked, smiling. He wasn't frantic, anyway. When we finally crept in the door of our cabin, Julia looked at us as though we were ghosts before grabbing me in a furious hug.

I ate about twelve brownies when we finally made it back to the lodge. I started fantasizing about those brownies by the time we reached the highway; our friend Bonnie brought a huge pan of them. That's all I wanted -- brownies and water. Neither have ever tasted so good.

Matt spent the day with the kids, and it sounds like they had an equally fabulous day. He was incredibly ambitious, taking them to the tot lot and the zoo and Owen Beach and to a coffee shop for treats. All of these things are fairly close together, but still, it's a lot to do in a single day. I came home to two very dirty, very tired, very happy children. It was well past ten by the time everyone in our house had managed to have a shower or a bath, but I feel like this is such a deliciously summer way to end a day: worn out, scrubbed clean, maybe a little sore, and satisfied.