Family Weekend

So it is May, again. May is full of so much, so many feelings. Beginnings and endings. Anniversaries. Rememberings. May is the month in which I fell in love with my husband sixteen years ago. May is the month in which he slipped a ring on my finger. May is the month in which I became someone's mother.

May is a tough month in which to teach, but I have decided to teach with abandon, like a crazy person. Forget the symbolism of the yellow car in The Great Gatsby; find me spectacular sentences instead. My sophomores are not complaining. One of them tiptoed to my desk last week and said, "Ms. Winslow, I actually really like this book." Oh, child. If only you knew how far those whispered words carry my soul.

I am tired, bone-tired, as all teachers are. But at the same time, there is a sweetness to this time of year that I deeply love. It's the anticipation of summer before the feeling of summer going too fast, of fading, flowing between my fingers in the sunshine. Everything is before us, the whole wide expanse of languid shimmering afternoons. What I want this summer is not to be able to say we did this and this and this, although there are things I am looking forward to: a trip home, and a trip to Toronto for the IB of Americas conference. Some of my colleagues are planning exciting trips, and I wonder if someday, I will also want to plan exciting trips during my summer breaks. Right now, summer vacations spent visiting our families are enough, more than enough. And right now, what I deeply love about summer is its slowness. Swimming lessons. Spending the afternoons in the backyard, watching my children run through the sprinkler while I sip iced tea and read. The splash park -- are my children outgrowing it? I hope not, because I love the smell of the water, the sound of their shrieks carrying across the playground. My children are both still young enough to play, just play, and I recognize that this is an incredibly sweet time in our lives.

Next Saturday, my daughter turns ten. Ten years ago, I waddled uncomfortably through the month of May, believing I would still be pregnant into the month of June. What a surprise my girl is. How she continues to surprise us.

We spent the weekend at Great Wolf Lodge as an early birthday celebration, instead of having a birthday party this year. We've never been there, and I didn't know what to expect. On the one hand: our family loves the water. On the other hand: I am deeply introverted, and that's a lot of chaos. In the end, we had a fantastic time, and it gave me the opportunity to watch my children just be exactly who they are. One child is fearless in the water, loves throwing himself under the waves in the wave pool to be tossed around like a little stone, and is a naturally stronger swimmer than his sibling. But he doesn't like rides. Not at the water park, not at the fair, not anywhere. My firstborn never liked to put her face in the water as a little one, and still resisted real swimming until we put her in private lessons with someone who worked with her and said, "You will swim across this pool." But she loves the thrill of the drop on the scariest waterslide. She'll go down facing backwards. She is not afraid of heights. Standing in line for the Howling Tornado, high up on the steps above the water park, she gripped my hand--not because she was scared, but because I was.

"Just look at me, Mom. Look at me. Then you won't be thinking about how high up you are, okay? It's going to be okay."

I have a memory of my parents taking us to an indoor water park when I was about the age my kids are now. There was a wave pool, and a waterslide. I don't remember how big it was, but I remember going down a waterslide again and again by myself for maybe the first time. I remember how I loved the feeling of being tossed around in the water. Decades later, the memory of just having so much fun remains. I hope that's what my children remember from this weekend: how much fun they had, how they loved wearing their little souvenir wolf ears when they weren't in the pool, how excited they were for bunk beds and their own little space in their "wolf den." How they went screaming joyfully down the slides, how they threw themselves ecstatically into the waves, emerging from the water with peals of laughter.

Isaac says he wants to do this for his birthday. Since our kids are born in opposite seasons, this might not be a bad idea; twice a year, six months a part? Maybe. Maybe this will become our family tradition for a year or two: stopping at the Spar in Olympia to eat both on the way down and on the way back (we love it and rarely go, since we're not often in Olympia). Glancing at our kids in the rear-view mirror, smiling at their jumpy anticipation on the way to Grand Mound and their sleeping faces on the way back home. It's a beautiful snapshot, in any season.