Legacy

I can't believe 6 years have passed since I stood there, aware of the baby girl spinning in my belly, a hand on each of my small boys, watching my husband try and speak at his father's memorial service.

6 years.

"Did Grandpa Spike know me?" She asks quizzically, every now and then.

"He knew you were coming," we tell her, "and he was excited to meet you."

Instead she knows him through pictures, stories, tall tales told by friends and family. She knows him through us, each memory carefully crafted to depict the man he was, the man she will never really know like we did.

"He was an outdoorsman," we say, "and he died doing what he loved best - hiking and camping."

We explore the camping gear he has left for us, methodically, purposefully, inspecting each item with care and consideration. His tents. His gear. His photos that he can't tell us about. His music. His books. His life. We continue to toast, to honor, to include him in our daily lives, even though we know he is far from us now. We try to hold on, it is what we do.

Every time one of our children does something we think he would enjoy, we share a knowing glance and wish that he was still here.

Every time their curiosity in the natural world rears itself, whether we're camping or on a hike or just walking down the sidewalk, we understand where this love of the outdoors comes from, and we do everything we can to not let it disappear, as he has.

Every year, my husband and his brother hike to an alpine lake high in the Cascades where some of their father's ashes are laid to rest. They take solace in knowing he is here, someplace beautiful, someplace he loved. They do it for him. Every year.

This time, our oldest will accompany them.

He's been more than ready for this for years now, physically and emotionally. He is the one, out of our 3 children, with the most memories of Grandpa Spike. He is the one who holds on to many of his belongings. Treasures, he calls them. He is fearless, adventurous, intelligent and curious. He is most like his grandpa. Most.

I know a mother should be worried, sending her baby into the wild...

But I'm not.

I've known for a long time, long before my father in law passed away, that he possessed the personality well-suited for a life of adventure. Maybe it was the way he played with his Rescue Heroes, or the way he made forts in the back yard. Maybe it was the fact that he always had a bag packed with emergency items, just in case, you know - a few granola bars, bottles of water, homemade first aid kit, flashlight, batteries, radio...things you would need, things that made sense. Maybe it was his interest in being a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, and his intense like of the movie The Guardian, which is still what he will tell you he wants to be when he "grows up."

I know, I should be terrified.

But he is not at all like me. Not at all. Sure there may be some things which tie us together, little wisps that remind me he is my son (like how he is a fast reader). But for the most part, he is a puzzle to me. His mind far comprehends concepts well beyond those I ever could. His problem solving capabilities impressing me more and more to the point that I've caught myself (much to my delight) asking him the answers to questions that perplex me. He is brilliant, and it could be the combination of having grandfathers on both sides who understand mechanics and how things work, but it is most definitely not something I gave him.

He is his father's son, and his grandfather's grandson.

And he is ready.

An Ode to Unpacking

That small black travel case with the wheels that I never use, unless I'm running (yes running!) through airport security in order to get to my flight (which I am late for, yes late!) like a football player running to the end zone, stands next to my bed still carrying a few items from our recent weekend visiting friends on the other side of the state.

I miss them.

I packed Katie and myself into that case for the 2-night stay, both of our essential items fitting neatly and perfectly (like hands in a glove) into the rectangular space. Hers and mine. Swimsuits, capris, tank tops, sunglasses, flip flops, books and magazines, hair clippies, earrings, everything we needed.

Some of it still in that case.

The thing I hate about unpacking is the part about telling yourself its over.

The trip.

The visit.

The good times.

Over.

I never realized until just now that I've never been an avid unpacker for this very reason. In my purses you'll find ticket stubs, loose change, receipts. All mementos from the time that was had, whatever and whenever it was. In my travel bags you'll find more of the same, including necessities that I picked up along the way, like SPF 15 lip gloss. I'll stash business cards from far away places that I think I'll return to someday...

Someday.

It's a pattern of mine, this state of unpack. And believe me, I'm no world traveler! Imagine if I were...the unpackedness of my various travelling receptacles would overtake the house. I am sure that I would be unable to find an empty bag or suitcase to save my life.

So the case sits, and I avoid it. I've gotten all the important things taken care of (like the dirty laundry and toothpaste that might escape its tube) so what is the harm in leaving the rest? Even if only to open it up and remind myself of the fleeting, wonderful, magical, relaxing, perfect time that was had?

No harm in that.

The Waxing and the Waning

Because I'm stuck on hold trying to make camping reservations...being forced to listen to Billy Joel songs sung by people OTHER than Billy Joel. Because a full year later, I've come to realize that for every hair I remove from my body, 10 more show up in it's place.

Oh yes, good times.

"I love you just the way you are...." streaming into my ear, seems ironic, doesn't it? "...the way that I believe in you."

And, here comes the Celine Dion Titanic song...oh no. I may not survive. Good grief, how long must one stay on hold? And who chooses the music? And what is wrong with these people? I know they are sitting there, playing office basketball, painting their fingernails, telling stories of their weekends to their co-workers forcing customers to listen to this god-awful (and I mean AWFUL) music that despite it's god-awfulness, is making me cry.

"I believe that my heart will go on..."

Oh, the hormones.

And now it's time to butcher "Heard it Through the Grapevine," with no words whatsoever.

It's okay, if you need me, I'll be on hold.

Enjoy (*originally shared with the entire world, summer, 2008):

For my 34th birthday I received 2 gift certificates to a local spa. One was for a massage (which I cashed in 6 months later . . . aaaaah, can we all say eucalyptus aromatherapy together now?) and the other (given to me by my loving spouse) was for a massage and a little something else . . . a little $50 something else which was cleverly coded as "other spa services" on the beautiful gold gift certificate.

Need I mention that I turned 35 this year and still, that one gift certificate remained in a special place in my underwear drawer, just waiting for the proper time to be used?

Yeah, well there it lay in wait amongst the veritable underwearfest that is known as my panty drawer as well as the place where the tooth fairy stashes all of her collected teeth (I think I may have to talk with her about leaving her goods in places they don't belong).

Since summer is here and since I am a full-fledged grown-up (shhhhh, don't tell anyone), I thought it was high time I use those "other spa services" available for $50. It probably is not much of a surprise to anyone that the only services listed for exactly $50 are those services having to do with the waxing of my bikini line and more.

God, if I can't even type it, than how can I actually do it?

Okay, Brazilian. Brazilian. Brazilian. Brazilian.

Me? Not such a big fan of a total Brazilian, but I figured there was probably some way of negotiating with my waxer, hair ripper, torturer, what do you call them anyway? I thought if I had been seen by my OB/GYN about a thousand times, not counting the team of people present for the births of my three children, than surely I could be brave enough to tell the lady (oh, it had better be a lady and not a man) exactly what I want and how I want it. And that little morsel of information is not for sharing.

Turns out you can negotiate anything you want while lying on a table with your feet pulled up to your ears. Although I am not sure I want to relive the experience anytime soon. I have been assured that "it will not ever hurt as much as the first time" by everyone I know who has had it done, including the 12-year-old Russian hair ripper who laughed when I asked her if she had seen the episode of The Real Housewives of the OC where they take Vicki's assistant to get waxed and you can hear her screaming through the door, "Will I ever be able to go to the bathroom again?"

She hadn't seen that episode but she assured me that she'd try to catch it in reruns when she wasn't busy staring at vaginas on the waxing table.

Gone yet Dad? Okay then.

I wasn't blessed with a hairy mother, so I had no formal schooling (until now) on body hair removal. My mom is one of those people who can shave her legs once a week and still have smooth legs. Her eyebrows are neat little arcs over here eyes with nary a stray hair, all on their own.

Me? I am a gorilla. Thanks Dad, if you are still here. I began waxing my eyebrows when I was 21 and before that I would attack them with tweezers like a fat girl in a cake store. The minute one would get out of line, there I would be plucking it away like it never existed. I have to shave my legs every live long day and don't even get me started on the weird hair that decided to appear on my chin.

Yes, I've had my hormones tested. No, I am not a man.

So there I was, breathing like I was in labor (probably sounding a lot like Free Willy eh?), trying not to scream or be embarrassed. Which, as I learned, is nearly impossible to do. Trying to not be embarrassed on a waxing table is like trying not to be embarrassed if you are that really weird girl who got kicked out of the American Idol auditions before she even sang a note. "The world will never know just how wonderful I really am!" Sob.

Finally the job was done. And by finally, I mean 45 minutes later. I think I only pushed for 33 minutes to get Wyatt born, but who's counting? My little Russian hair ripper worked on my eyebrows after that, which was surprisingly zen-like after the ordeal I'd just been through and I became so relaxed that I nearly fell asleep.

I probably had post-traumatic stress disorder.

Anyway, would I get it done again? Yes, in about 6 weeks. But next time, I'm packing a designated driver because personally, I think it would hurt a lot less if they would just give me an epidural.

15 Seconds of Something

I can't write about it, I'm too chicken.

But Jenny did. Read it HERE!

The Hummus Among Us

It was most definitely a rare treat, being at the grocery store stocking up for the week with only one child. And I was relishing every live long moment of the experience. Pausing while selecting cantaloupe, having enough time and attention span to pick out just the right one. Actually reading the price label on the tomatoes. Finding the best deal on bagged salad, and that elusive block of muenster cheese that I needed to go with the wine I'd be drinking later on that night with my best girlfriend in the world.

All without the distractions of, shall we say, a certain little dictator named Katie.

Not that I don't love spending time with my children, because as much as I kid about their ways and never having enough time to myself, they are pretty awesome. But when you remove one child from the equation (and more so when you remove two) the parenting experience changes...drastically.

Shopping with my 12-year-old is almost like having no children at all - plus he likes to push the cart and doesn't run into senior citizens.

Which leads me to the section of the grocery store known as the "refrigerated and prepared foods" department.

In other words, hummusville.

While I know that making hummus from scratch requires little or no skill - just a reliable food processor or a lot of pent up anger and a very fine tool with which to smash chickpeas into a smooth paste - I prefer to buy mine ready-made.

Have you been in hummusville lately?

Like most delicious and necessary items in the grocery store, hummus is available in an endless amount of varieties and sizes.

Who knew?

As tempting as it was to buy the largest tub with the sundried tomatoes layered on top, all I was really after was a healthy alternative to ranch dressing for my kids to dip their carrot sticks in, and sundried tomato anything is really not their thing...or my husbands. In fact, sundried tomato anything is so far from being his thing and so much a part of things I find irresistible that he will tease that if it has lemon, vanilla, cinnamon or sundried tomatoes in the ingredients, I will eat it...no matter what it is. The it in question could be a steaming heap of cow dung, but if sprinkled with a little sundried tomatoes, I'd have a hard time keeping my fork off it.

So now that you understand how much I really love sundried tomatoes and I'd have bought a whole GALLON of the sundried tomato hummus had I had the opportunity, you can understand my displeasure upon finding only a tag with the words sundried tomato hummus on it, below an empty spot on the shelf where the goodness should have been. I hung my head in disappointment, held back the tears.

There was garlic hummus, traditional hummus, hummus with ingredients I'd never heard of. There was hummus in large containers and small containers and containers in between. Hummus. Hummus. Hummus.

How on earth would I choose?

Garlic? Maybe, but what if the kids run around with garlic breath all week thinking they can scare away the entire cast of the Twilight movies?

Big, super-sized container? Maybe, but what if we don't eat it all and then it goes to waste? Or, what if they leave it out on the picnic table accidentally and the dog gets ahold of it and then has accidents all over the house (on the carpet) and I have to clean it up in the middle of the night like that one time he ate the raw egg?

As I stood there, pondering the effects of each variety of hummus available, it suddenly dawned on me, like a neon light flashing "OPEN" in the middle of nowhere or that funny lady in the commercials standing outside the department store the morning of a huge sale opening and closing her hands rapidly saying, "OPEN OPEN OPEN," I'd just get the traditional, in a size I knew would make sense.

Problem solved.

But do you know how long I stood there, trapped in some kind of alternate hummus universe actually thinking?

A long time.

Thing is, I love - rather, appreciate - that we live where there are so many choices available to us. No better place is this more evident than down a supermarket's aisles, with rows upon rows of everything under the sun available in fat free! light! jumbo! reduced! low carb! high fiber! single serve! economy pack!

But sometimes, all I want is a little hummus. Enough for my kids to dip their carrot sticks in all week without an added flavor that nobody but me would love (although guessing from it's lack of being on the shelf, that stuff is pretty tasty).

I realized that having my kids in the grocery store with me - tagging along begging for candy and squirt guns - keeps me from standing in one place, pondering pondering pondering, why it is there are so many kinds of hummus.

Because don't I have better things to do with my time?

Tenderness

I let my kids stay up way too late again.

Sigh, this is the life we lead when the husband works extended hours at the firestation and I'm left to my own devices. Don't get me wrong, it isn't as if I let them eat peanut butter straight from the jar and run around in their underwear (only 1 of those things is true *wink*), but I do admit to being a bit more...relaxed, especially since it's summer break.

When 10:15 rolls around and I'm finally tucking them all in, I head into Katie's room for one last kiss and goodnight hug. She, of course, has invited every single stuffed animal, car, baby, whathaveyou, onto her bed and I have a difficult enough time just locating her small frame.

I mistake her for a Lightning McQueen car, which makes her giggle, and then we settle into our little routine.

I smooth my hand over her forehead and plant a big mama kiss on it.

I tell her what I always tell her, that she is the best girl in the world.

I tell her that she can do anything she sets her mind to.

And what does she say in return?

"I'm going to be the EASTER BUNNY! The first girl EASTER BUNNY!"

And I don't burst her bubble, because that just wouldn't be right.

Burying the Hatchet, So to Speak

Damned if ever since it's apparently genius marketing takeover of all pre-teen/tweenager/full-fledged teen hygiene products, Axe and all things Axe have been requested by the oldest non-adult member of our household on nearly a daily basis: my 12-year-old son.

(Oh! My aching head!)

"Mom, can I get that Axe deodorant?"

"Mom, I need some Axe spray so I don't smell."

"Mom, mom, hey mom - did you see that new Axe body wash? I need some, like, really bad!"

Because the world of advanced personal hygiene is relatively new to us, I had been avoiding the Axe conundrum like the plague. Instead, placating him first with the newest Suave for Kids product that promised he would smell like a ripe Florida orange with regular use.

Yeah, that didn't last very long.

Then, I moved onto the Old Spice Body Wash, hoping that he would relish in the thought of using a product from the same family as his grandpa's favorite after shave. Hence, getting that much closer to actual adulthood.

Yeah, not so much.

So there we were, in the personal hygiene section at the local supermarket, staring down bottle upon bottle of body wash available to young males. (Thank you summer, for providing some quality grocery shopping time for me and my children, it is always so much fun to take the boys down the tampon aisle)

"Let's look for what is on sale," I said in my best mom voice, hoping to peak my kids interest in bargain shopping and awareness of what everyday items really cost because darn it, if they are going to be at my side all summer long, they will learn something along the way, right?

So yes, there we were and the yellow "SALE" tags were meticulously placed under all the sale items...

Including the Axe body wash.

The gleam in his eye was probably visible from the moon.

"Alright, just this once, since it is on sale." I told him. Tossing the oddly shaped black bottle in the cart.

I felt defeated. Like I'd failed at my most basic job: mothering. For some time I knew that I had an issue with the Axe product line, but I could not articulate why. And so, because of my loss for words, I caved. Because it was "on sale," I caved. Because I had an adorably cute pair of brown eyes pleading with me, I caved. Because I had not yet had my triple grande caramel machiatto from Starbucks, I caved.

It was, most definitely, a full-blown mom fail.

Later on that night, after the groceries were all in their rightful place in the refrigerator and pantry, and the 5-year-old was distracted with her Lincoln Logs, we had a little talk. I explained that it wasn't that I didn't want him to have some cool body wash that smelled like I remember Drakkar Noir smelling when I was in the 7th grade (ick), but that I had a real problem with the way the company markets their products.

"Go grab the bottle from your bathroom and I'll show you what I mean."

When he came back I pointed out the image on the back of the guy with his arms around 2 girls - who were obviously digging his scent, as they had their faces buried in his armpits so that all that was visible of them were there insanely exaggerated breasts.

We talked about the commercials on TV, the ones where a young man will use the product and then have a trail of girls following him like a pack of dogs in heat. We talked about the message that sends to young kids, and how we live in a society that sexualizes EVERYTHING, from toothpaste to cars. We talked about marketing and what target audiences were (thank you college Marketing 101 - who knew that knowledge would be useful so many years later?). We talked about how he would feel if his little sister acted like that, or thought that she should because someone told her to.

And he listened.

He listened and he didn't roll his eyes at me. He didn't sigh, or look away or act like he had a million different and better things to do other than talk to his mom.

I didn't take the body wash away, or threaten to squeeze every last drop of it down the drain. I didn't have to because he understood. Our plan is to use it up and when it's gone, we'll replace it with a bottle of whatever is on sale, as long as it isn't Axe.

And suddenly, that mom fail from earlier, felt more like a 1st place finish in a very important race.

Until next time...