The Fear and Joy of Letting Go...Again

Ok do we have everything? Bug spray? Check. Sunscreen? Check. Extra socks and shorts? Check.  Headlamp?  Check.

As I type this I’m mentally running through the contents of my son’s footlocker. On this beautiful, sunny, cool July day, my youngest will head off to his first week of sleep away camp with his Boy Scout troop.

Several months ago, when my son crossed over from Cub Scouts, we talked about how amazing summer camp would be.  n addition to meeting new scouts from troops all over the area, my son will be able to connect with the boys in his new troop, work on activities that will earn him merit badges and enjoy the pleasure of spending a week in the woods without electronics.  It all sounded like heaven at the time.

Now that the day has finally arrived, my son is excited but I’m the one starting to have doubts. As a glass-half-empty kind of gal, images of doom keep popping into my head: My son struggling to keep his head above water while the lifeguard casts his gaze elsewhere; a severe thunderstorm that drops a tree on his tent; a criminal who busts out of MCI Plymouth and manages to take 500 scouts and their leaders hostage.  I keep these silent fears to myself.  Meanwhile, my son’s biggest concerns are how many bugs he’ll have to fend off and how much money he’ll get for the trading post.

I know it’s all about letting go.  I learned that lesson this past spring when my older son traveled 1500 miles to New Orleans for his first service trip with our church.  In comparison, Camp Squanto is a mere 20 miles door to door.  If necessary, I can be there in under an hour.  I need to get a grip and realize that while he might be my “baby”, at 11-years-old he’s a baby no more.

Despite my irrational fears, on a deeper level I know he’ll be fine.  His scout leaders and the parent volunteers are there with two missions: keep the kids safe and make sure the kids have fun.  My son will swim every day, and learn basketry and woodcarving and leatherworking.  More importantly, he’ll have to rely on himself; there’ll be no mom or dad reminding him to take a shower, brush his teeth or check for ticks.

When we arrived at camp, any concern I may have had about him making an emotional scene dissolved the minute he dragged his footlocker over to his troop and began chatting with friends.  Not one look back at his father or me. Within minutes he had found a tent mate.  When it came time to load the luggage onto the truck, he grabbed an end of his friend’s footlocker and helped him load it, then loaded his own.  Though we waited with him through the medical check-in, we opted not to follow him down to his swim test or help him set up his bunk.  It was time to let him fly solo.

There’s a family night on Wednesday so parents can visit their scouts, bring a pizza or a sub for dinner, and watch them participate in relay events.  Though optional, my husband and I assured my son that we would attend, hoping to alleviate any homesickness that might occur after our departure.  As he trotted off for his swim test, turning one last time to send me a smile and a wave, I realized that he could easily make it through the week without us.

I’m the one who’s not quite ready to go an entire week without him. 

Every Family Needs its own Catchphrase

My husband and I have a favorite phrase that’s gotten much use over the twenty-plus years we’ve been together.  It’s a great, all-purpose phrase, adaptable to many different situations:

“We just can’t have nice things.”

I don’t recall my parents using this phrase when I was a child, but I imagine it would have come in handy many times when I inadvertently (or intentionally) damaged or destroyed something of theirs.  When my sisters and I knocked over the climbing tower in our backyard, a strictly verboten act, for the purpose of playing “spider web”, my parents should have clucked their tongues, shook their heads and said, “We just can’t have nice things.”  When I spilled a milkshake in the back of my father’s Audi Fox station wagon, causing a sickly, vomit smell on subsequent hot days, he could have rolled his eyes and said, “We just can’t have nice things.”  But they didn’t.

I’m not sure exactly when we discovered this phrase, but I do remember my husband and I using it early in our marriage.  Even before the birth of our children, when our cats clawed a piece of furniture or barfed on a favorite rug, we’d turn to each other and jokingly say, “Well, we just can’t have nice things, can we?”

After the birth of our two sons, the phrase entered heavy rotation.  When my toddler poked a hole through the fabric in a restored antique radio, out came “We just can’t have nice things”.  When the Honda dealership discovered an inordinate amount of spare change shoved into our car’s CD player, thus causing all CD’s to skip after track 7, I stowed the nickels and dimes in my wallet and muttered, ‘I guess we just can’t have nice things”.  Kids being kids, this catchphrase has been uttered more than a few (hundred) times over the years.

To be fair, my children aren’t the only ones to prompt the use of this line.  If my husband accidentally drops a plate or a glass, we’ll trot out “We just can’t have nice things.”  When I backed into a tree delivering meals on wheels, denting an already scratched bumper, rather than chewing me out my husband shook his head sadly and said, “We just can’t have nice things”.

Another great aspect of this line is that it can be customized for each unique situation. “We just can’t have nice things,” emphasizes that you can have crappy or mediocre things, but not nice ones.  “We just can’t have nice things” implies that everyone else can have nice things, but not us.  Personally, I prefer the emphasis on “just”.  “We just can’t have nice things” places the emphasis on the guilty party involved while mixing in a hint of passive aggressiveness towards the cosmic force in the universe that conspires to destroy carpets and car bumpers.

Truth be told, it’s probably best to put the emphasis on that last word, “things”.  Because when you stop and think for a moment, that’s all they really are: things.  These objects, these possessions are just material items that will eventually wear out or fall apart or grow obsolete, whether it be at our hands, our children’s or just due to the passing of time.  My bumper is cracked because I was delivering meals to the elderly, an act I enjoy.  My antique radio may not be worth as much with a hole in the fabric, but that hole is evidence of my toddler’s curiosity in the world around him.  There may be a few less dishes in the cabinet, but at least my husband is willing to help with the housework.  Finding silly putty stuck to the arm of the couch yesterday…ok, sorry, there’s no justification for that.

Life is messy and things get broken.  My house is a home, not a museum.  My car is a vehicle that transports us from one experience to another, not a status symbol. My husband and I joke about not being able to have nice things, but we both know that dishes and furniture and cars aren’t important.  It’s our kids and our lives and each other. 

And knowing that…turns out to be the nicest thing of all.

Bucolic, but just a Tiny Bit Batty

Last week my family and I spent some time at my in-law’s home in Central New York. My husband always enjoys returning to “the country”, and indeed it is a bucolic setting. My in-laws live on a hundred acres, complete with pond, cornfield, and eight horses in the barn. The rolling hills that surround their property are populated by dairy and goat farms.

In addition to the horses, there are many other forms of wildlife, or critters, to provide hours of entertainment. My sons love to pet the barn cats, and this year my younger son was treated to an anatomy lesson when one of the cats eviscerated a chipmunk in front of him. My husband and I enjoy sitting on the back porch, listening to the frogs croak and watching an impressive assortment of birds swoop back and forth from their perches in the trees to the feeders my in-laws keep stocked. Each day at dusk, a family of raccoons creeps out from their den to glean what the birds have left behind, with a few skunks elbowing their way into the feast as well.

On the second night of our visit, my family was enjoying a leisurely dessert of berry shortcake. Something must have caught my husband’s eye because suddenly he shoved me to the floor and shouted, “Get down, there’s a bat in the house!”  Sure enough, like a scene from “The Munsters”, a small brown bat started circling through the living room, dining room, kitchen and family room. I leapt under the table (taking my shortcake with me), followed quickly by my mother-in-law.  She’s pretty spry to begin with, but she flew under that table in a flash. “Think I’ll join you down here,” she said, while the bat swooped through the room.  A few minutes later, my younger son crawled under the table, muttering, “This is just like back in the cold war when they made you hide under your desk.” Clearly my kids watch too much of the History Channel.

My older son was oblivious, playing with his iPad on the second floor, so my husband shouted for him to shut his bedroom door and not to open it until he gave the all clear. The bat was making loops through every room, as my husband yelled, “Did someone activate the bat signal?” and ducking each time the thing flew near his head. My father-in-law was the most calm, strolling from room to room, assessing the situation. With a burst of inspiration, he grabbed several large pieces of cardboard, flattened Lego boxes left over from Christmas, and instructed my husband to try to herd the bat towards the outside slider. In between bites of shortcake, I peeked out from underneath the table, giggling as my husband frantically waved his Lego boxes as if he were parking a Boeing jet at Logan airport. 

“Where is it?” I shouted from my hiding spot, to which my husband replied, “It’s doing laps in the family room!”  “Can I come down yet?” my older son called from upstairs, while my younger son, hugged his knees and grinned with excitement.  Although he has an aversion to butterflies, he didn’t seem phased by a squeaking, flying rodent.

The bat, after missing several opportunities to exit through the slider, finally zoomed into the laundry room.  “What do we do?” my husband shouted.  “Do you need to do any laundry tonight?” my father-in-law asked.  “No,” replied my husband. “Then shut the door!”  And so the bat spent the night with the Tide and the Downy while the rest of us climbed out from our hiding places.

The next morning, my father-in-law crept into the laundry room and quietly captured the bat in a clear plastic container. After letting my sons have a good look, he released the frightened creature back into the wild. Although I have no great love for bats, I was impressed by my father-in-law’s determination to capture and release the bat without harm. A lesser man would have just grabbed a tennis racquet or umbrella and start swinging.

So while some may argue that Christian Bale is the quintessential Dark Knight, as far as I’m concerned, my father-in-law truly is…the batman.

Paying Heed to One's Inner Mullet

The other night I took a trip back in time.  Two friends and I set the wayback machine (remember Mr. Peabody and Sherman?) to 1987 and relived all the big hair, shoulder pads and rock n’ roll that the 80’s had to offer.  We were able to achieve this quite simply: we bought a ticket to the new movie “Rock of Ages”.

If you’re not familiar with the film, it’s based on the hit Broadway show of the same name.  The film’s plot is classic:  Boy meets girl.  Boy and girl fall in love.  Boy loses girl.  Boy and girl reunite.  It may all sound pretty tame, but when you mix it with the costumes, scenery and music from the 80’s, it makes for an entertaining two hours. And when you match it up against that other recent 80’s-themed film, the dismal “Hot Tub Time Machine”, it’s a masterpiece.

I was thankful that my friends wanted to see the film because my husband had no interest at all.  During the 80’s, he was listening to The Grateful Dead and Eric Clapton while I was enjoying tracks from Foreigner, Journey, REO Speedwagon and the other nine albums I received for a penny from Columbia Music House.  My husband cringed when he saw the “Rock of Ages” trailer, wincing at Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’’, Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and the one song he considers the most offensive and heinous of all:  Starships’ “We Built This City (on Rock and Roll).  As a longtime fan of Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane, he can’t stand to listen to what he considers the worst sell-out of all time.  “It’s not just that the song is so terrible, “he explains, “It’s when you look at where the band began and what they evolved into...it’s unbearable.”

So I happily went to the theater with two friends instead.  I’m a fan of musicals, both in the theater and on film, and I had seen the trailer many times, so I knew what to expect when the lights dimmed and the opening scene began.  My friends, on the other hand, were not as in tune.  When the main character began singing “Sister Christian” and her fellow bus passengers joined in, both friends leaned over to me and whispered loudly, ‘Oh my gosh, is this a MUSICAL?”  One groaned while the other whispered, “Oh no, this is awful.”  I reassured them that yes, this was a musical but that there would also be dialogue.

Fortunately, they were able to overcome their aversion to people bursting into song.  We laughed loud and often over the fashions, hairstyles and props that are no longer part of our culture: Cell phones the size of bricks. A wall of hair constructed with Aqua Net hairspray. Bedazzled fanny packs and jean jacket vests. In one early scene, the boy and girl visit Tower Records, strolling through aisles of vinyl albums. Some things brought back painful memories, like bad spiral perms and t-shirts with shoulder pads, prairie dresses, animal print leggings and Farrah Fawcett wings.  I remember attempting the latter, which was a complete disaster since my hair was short and curly and I had yet to discover the benefits of hair product.  Imagine James Caan with the edges of his ‘fro curled back and you get the idea of what my efforts yielded.

“Rock of Ages” seems to ignore most of the other music from that era.  Androgynous-looking bands like Boy George and Culture Club, Adam Ant and Kajagoogoo are nowhere to be seen.  No one sports a Flock of Seagulls asymmetrical hairdo. It’s all leather pants, bare chests and flashing devil horns.  Then again, the film is titled “Rock of Ages”, not “New Wave of Ages”, which would be awkward.

The biggest kick was watching Tom Cruise nail his performance as Stacee Jaxx, the boozy, burned out, rock god whose years of fame and adulation have left him numb. My biggest complaint with Tom Cruise is that I always feel as if I’m watching Tom Cruise and not the character he’s supposed to be playing.  Stacee Jaxx is a role that winks at Cruise’s own stratospheric fame and Cruise runs with it.  His scenes are some of the most entertaining.

While there are many things I’d like to forget about the 80’s, there are many more I’d like to remember and “Rock of Ages” provides them in abundance.  I don’t know what younger audience members will make of it.  Perhaps they’ll see it as a more retro version of Disney’s “High School Musical” or “Prom”.  But for those of us who survived the 80’s, “Rock of Ages” is, in the immortal words of Poison, “…nothin’ but a good time, and it don’t get better than this”.