Handy Packs

The night we returned home from the beach our home felt like a palace.  As well as the six of us did in one double room for two nights and three days, we appreciated space to enjoy space.  I was interested to observe the children like lemmings migrate to their comfort zones.  The Boy checked his email, The Baby sprawled out onto the middle of the playroom floor and The Oldest and Middle Girl just wanted to shower.  Alone.

I expect it will take some time for me to shift through the family experience.  I remain amazed how quickly we morphed into a cohesive team that stormed the waves together.  I tear to remember how much The Boy, who usually has little to do with his sisters, played with the girls. Like a magical algebraic reduction, being away simplified who were his options, and that his sisters actually had game.

The Oldest Girl was so giddy and breathless the first time we hit the beach that I reached for a lunch sack and all but hyperventilated with her.  She experienced the encounter with a throttle so open you could hear her laughter roar like a plane as it takes off in flight.  Like a delighted porpoise, she rolled and frolicked in the waves, as enchanted to remain upright as she was to be thrown against the shore.  She laughed with such abandon we had to remind her to close her mouth as the waves crested because she gargled more sea water than adults use Listerine during flu season.

The Middle Girl and The Baby both journeyed to find their legs.  Initially timid, The Middle Girl spent the first twenty minutes in the water screaming, “Don’t let go!,” and the rest of the weekend testifying, “I got this!”  It took her less time to cycle from uncertain to confident than it takes our washing machine to shift from wash to rinse.  Really, I can’t add fabric softener that fast.

The Baby maintained a healthy respect for the ocean.  Mesmerized by its scope and the crash of the tide, she maintained touch contact with a parent at all times while in the water.  It was clear we were her lighthouses that guided her safely out through the waves and back home again.  I can only imagine how big it looked and what sense she made of its vastness.  I watched her face and tried to see the images as her eyes captured the moment, her sincere, “Wow!” a succinct prayer of wonder and wholly sufficient, thanksgiving Hallelujah.

The nautical blues of the choppy ocean provided a crows nest for The Husband and I to view our children.  So much of our usual rhythm directs the traffic of our schedules and obligations, that we can lose sight of our children amid their activities.  Too often the lens considers how they do something like the dishes, or homework, or a soccer game, that we lose focus on who they are.  These new and updated images of them, snapshots of adolescent postures, porpoise joy, confidence cycled, and touch contact clarified their sensibilities to us more than any family meeting or orchard hike.  We were Away together, and we came back Here more knitted in our family fabric.

All of that this, of course, records the esoteric hot fudge of decadent, relational sundaes, and not the nitty-gritty of funds or tips on how to make it feasible logistically.

We were crazy 11^th hour in our adventure.  The most obvious thing we learned is to plan ahead.  For a “beach” of any mention, and if you want a house or a condo, that might actually mean to plan a year ahead.

There are innumerable tips on how to travel cheaply and practical tips about what to pack on the Web.  These are my novice contributions for a quick (even unexpected) trip to the beach:

Handy Packs

• Pack a couple of rolls of paper towels.  Your family can’t live without them at home and they shouldn’t be expected to operate without them Away.  They will greatly aid the towel shortage in the hotel bathroom too.
• Line trunk or storage space of vehicle with an old sheet to collect sand.  Sand invades more pervasively than fleas, and you don’t want to bring it into your home.
• Cooler tip:  The cooler will fill up quickly no matter how big it is.  Pack extra beverages to be chilled as you use them during your stay, and give Igloo priority to food that must stay refrigerated.
• Boiled eggs are a perfect food. They offer a ready breakfast, quick protein with yogurt for a filling lunch, or an easy snack that satisfies.  Peel before you leave home.  Pack 2-3 per day for each person who eats them.  Oh, sliced over cream cheese on a whole wheat bagel, they make a great and healthy sandwich for the kids too.
• Pick a hotel that serves a free Continental breakfast. If they serve fruit (and many don’t to control costs), bring an extra piece back to the room to eat later with lunch or for a snack.
• Make a family compact that one meal a day will be from the cooler. We agreed that all lunch, snacks and drinks would come from the cooler during the day.  We packed things easy to prepare and able to be eaten quickly without utensils like Gogurt, PB&Js, bagels with cream cheese, boiled eggs, nuts, fruit, cheese sticks and, I confess, cheeseballs.
• Take the time to prepare sandwiches before you leave for the beach in the morning. There’s nothing more annoyingly magnetic than sand and the thing you least wish is to have it on your cheese stick or Oreo.
• Pack bags with your bags. You will need them. Pack gallon size freezer bags to portion beach snacks like cheeseballs, kitchen garbage bags for dirty laundry and sandy towels, and beach bags to ferry your towels and sunscreen to the waterside.
• Bring a good hair detangler. Salt water and sand do a number to the most manageable of tresses, and snarls make tired children as cranky as Medusa.
• No screens!   The tide will eat your cell phone, iPad and laptop as hungrily as it gobbles sandcastles.  If you must check in with the world, make a pledge to only do so only once a day, AFTER the kids are in bed.

I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Priceless Secret

I can’t tell you what I most want to write about because it would invade someone else’s privacy, and that would be unfair and self-indulgent.  That the one robbed of secrets would be one of my children makes it even more taboo.  I imagine the children feel plenty plundered simply having me as their mamma, let alone were I to blab about their business in a blog.

So, I won’t break decorum and narc on my own, but I will tell you about where we stayed at the beach and how I got the skinny on the scoop in the first place.

Our beach trip was an ill conceived and ever dwindling effort.  Last August in the triage of back to school, we observed that once again we had not made the family vacation happen.  Swim team, camps, week at grandma’s, local venues, check, check, check and check.  Getting us all together Away was something we hadn’t managed.  Again.

The Husband and I promised each other and the kids that this would be the summer that we went somewhere together.  Just us.  Not us visiting someone, not us showing up to celebrate something, but just us as a family going somewhere together for no other purpose than to be Away together.

Fast-forward to this August as the school year looms more heavily than morning breath after tacos.  The Husband and I did a quick pull up to compare status reports and mission statements.  Once again, swim team, check.  Various and sundry camps for the kids, check.  A week at grandma’s, check.  Local venues, check.  The family vacation box remained as empty as a Halloween bag in June.  Getting us all together Away was as unlikely as ever before, and money as tight or tighter.

The Husband and I talked about it and decided we needed to follow through.  I admit that the girls taking to their room for a spontaneous time of Worship & Prayer when they learned that the beach was probably off did compel.

I’m not kidding.  That really happened.  Even more odd, is that it was done without manipulation or intent to sway.  The Oldest Girl simply said, “You know how you say you’re gonna pray about something, and then you don’t, but you should?  We wanted to make sure we prayed this time.”  It still gives me something of an icy headache to think about, such elegant innocence like binging on vanilla ice cream on a stormy day.

As the girls clutched together in all but Pentecostal revival, The Husband and I ran some numbers in the office.  We went for the cheapest ocean front room we could book for a night.  In peak season this ended up being a ground floor room at Econo Lounge with two double beds.

That Middle Girl gushed; “This is a really nice hotel!” offers all the testimony that will ever be needed to prove how little we have traveled as a family.

It’s a dive.  The bathroom door is peeling and splintered.  The worn carpet is sandy, but it doesn’t really matter, because two of the kids have to bunk on an air mattress on the floor, so it’s not like we can walk on it anyway.  Last night, someone stole our beach towels from the rail outside the sliding door.

None of that matters though.  Not to me, and certainly not to the children.  The ocean is 50 feet from the door, and last night we feel asleep listening to the waves crash as a resident cricket serenaded our happy, sunburned troupe.

It is also the place that I learned the secret.  All of us jammed into this experience-worm space sharing one bathroom have taught me a thing or two about the six of us.

The details of the discovery are less important than their impact.  I am so grateful we made the decision to come.  Our children are growing up and changing more quickly than the rolling tide.

Our ground floor dive of a room and eating out of the cooler feels like a 5 Star retreat to me.  There is something suspended about the bliss bubble of this modest room.  Its minimal niceties maximize our thirst to be here with each other.  The memories we archive mean more to me than soft down duvets or meals that require forks.

My children are growing up, and these days Away together at the beach have been priceless.

I’ll stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Packing P.S.

P.S. Oh, and it’s raining. Really.

No Thing Left Behind

Veracity demands I update you on the packing plan.

The husband abhors mendacity, and was also the one who had to load the truck…

As such, it is incumbent upon me to add the following.

Miscellaneous:

2 blankets
4 pillows
Portable DVD players
Basket of beach towels
3 pair of water shoes
1 large Teddy bear
1 large stuffed penguin
1 Boo
1 Sharkie
1 box of beach toys
3 umbrellas
2 iPhones
1 iPad
1 laptop
1 cell phone
3 sets of headphones
3 pairs of ear buds
6 beach chairs
17 books

Our SUV looks like it should be roasted over a pit with a great, big apple in its mouth.

The husband’s new fantasy is tortoise shell storage for the roof.  He also wants you to know that I not only did the dishes, but that just before we left the house, I was on my hands and knees wiping dirt off the floor.

I’ll stand before the Lord of song (good thing because there’s no leg room in here) with nothing on my tongue but Hallejuah!

No Carb Left Behind

Today the kids and I prepared for a quick beach weekend.

Grocery Boxes

Bagels
S’Mores Poptarts
Utz Cheese Balls
Oreos
Paper towels
Bleach wipes
Vitamins
Sunscreen

Cooler

Gogurt
Cheese sticks
Peanut butter and jelly
Gator-aide
Propel
Diet Coke
S.Pelligrino
Sam Adams

We’re leaving no carb behind and not doing the dishes.

We all packed 4 pair of underwear, two swimming suits and a pair of flip flops.

The camera’s in my purse and the iPods are charged for the road.

We’re going to dance on the sand, hold hands and sing!

We’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on our tongues but Hallelujah and cheeto dust!

The Meanest Hog

“I didn’t come to fool you,” throws down quite the gauntlet.  Especially as, “I did my best, it wasn’t much,” is more my daily bread.

Moments like today with my daughter, Ester, for example burn my cornea with enough light to blind.

I had asked my daughters, Ester, Harriet, and Sophie to take the remnants of toenail polish off their toes. I offered them the “big girl,” privilege of going in my bathroom to reduce their resistance to saying goodbye to this last vestige of their summer swim team, lip-sync contest costumes.

I knew the three of them wouldn’t finish before I put their lunch of microwaved, leftovers on the table, so I thought nothing of it when they asked to return to my bathroom after eating to complete the job.

I heard Eli, our son, grow restless upstairs.  He stomps with the subtlety of an elephant.  A whole day incarcerated in the house with just me and his sisters for company had made him anxious for escape to the pool, or truth be told, anywhere.  His cue was desperate enough to signal me that 30 girly-girl toe-toes notwithstanding, his sisters were a long time in the bathroom.

I went to check on them.

Ester, our oldest girl, visibly shrank to see me. Curious, I asked the girls if they needed any help. Clean-toed Harriet blithely reported that they had run out of nail polish remover. Sophie tangoed atop a polish free pedicure as she reported that Ester did not want to tell me that the bottle was empty.  Harriet reported in her helper voice that Ester had done both of her sisters’ feet first, and by the time she got to her own toes, the bottle had run out. When Harriet asked Ester why she didn’t just come and get me, Ester replied that she could finish the job herself and that they should just let it be.

Her sisters resolutely sat on the bathroom floor as Ester tried to scrub finger nail polish off her own toes with water. Ester was determined to do what I had asked.  It wasn’t until I sat down on the floor with them, Harriet’s foot in my lap so I could file her nails, that I understood that more than Midwestern work ethic had motivated Ester.

I didn’t come to fool you.

Ester is an abundantly kind hearted, old soul.  She wanted me to think that it was exclusively her desire to please me that kept her from asking me for help, when, in fact, it was fear.

Ester was afraid that I would get mad if she came to tell me that we were out of polish remover.

Ester was afraid of my anger. 
Sadly, this means I’ve gotten angry about petty, unimportant things often enough that Ester anticipated that I would get mad about this too. It made more sense to her to scrub her toes with water and the sheer grit of her will rather than to risk my wrath.

I wish that I could tell you that her conclusion was wholly illogical.  Sadly, she has cause to wonder what might set me off next. My face purples and the tendons of my neck bulge when I pitch a noisy, Mamma storm as unwelcome to my children as sudden squalls to sailors.  The transformation mutates me into the incredible hulking eggplant, a crimson beast that must certainly frighten the children like a-plant-so-vile-even-vegetarians-loathe-it ate their mamma’s head!

Help!

Good thing the toilet was close; it made me sick enough to want to puke.  It was like the bathroom had become a court and I had been found guilty of the worst of imaginable maternal war crimes.  I broke my daughter’s trust.

Ester taught me that my anger breaks Hallelujah.

Worse… so much worse… my anger could break her Hallelujah too.

Anger is a maintenance struggle for me.  It digs a default hole into which I un/consciously bury more vulnerable emotion.

My anger blazes hot and fast and familiar.

It devours my resources like a hungry forest fire.

And, oh, the triage…

the energy…

the sheer aerobic activity of it!

Such distraction!

Such projection!

Such folly!

Anger keeps me busy, it mimics movement; it camouflages my true work.

Even unarticulated, it festers and simmers like rancid stew inside of me when I feel most afraid, vulnerable or alone.

Anger is a beast I befriended foolishly. I thought its use secured my safety and control.

Instead, it robs me of both in jaundiced disgrace.  Anger’s thick, yellow, pancake make-up masks Grace.

Ester humbles me.  White, pure and bathed in light, I relish her Hallelujah!

Ester, Baby Girl, Mamma’s sorry.

Mamma’s wrong.

I need to become accountable to my Defender and surrender anger so that it doesn’t become a family Hallelujah breaker.

It has already been a long journey- and I am nowhere near complete- and my pace and course has been uneven.

I have learned some things about my trigger(s) and myself. I was raised with anger.  It was well modeled and practiced in my home of origin like mutant manners.  Anger feels familiar; I know how to do it.  Anger covers more vulnerable and powerless emotion:  fear, anxiety, helplessness, and self-loathing.

I’ve come to realize when I was/am angry that I was/am rarely mad.  Usually I was/am hurt or afraid or embarrassed or ashamed underneath the anger drama.  I use anger to reposition myself from a perceived position of fear or vulnerability to a pretense of protection or power.

Anger is a thief that robs hope and divides resources.

Anger cannot bear the legacy God promises my children.

I am the adolescent when I misplace my anger on the children.  Anger, like dating a bad man, offers lots of thrills and a slick ride on the back of the meanest Hog.  The furious wind blows my hair here, there, everywhere.  Its sightless heat consumes perspective and melts traffic signs.

God’s a better partner on a finer road.

I pray the abundance of quiet strength God so generously shares will allow me to show Ester peace and more truly vulnerable ways to journey together without anger detours.

Hallelujahs don’t get broken or fixed by one long stint on a cold, bathroom floor.

It was time to get my butt and heart off the bathroom floor and Rise. I drove to Food Lion and got two new bottles of nail polish remover for the girls.

I pledge to turn away from anger every time I can.  I offer Him my hand and will walk ahead with God.  He will deliver Ester and Harriet and Sophie and Eli, and even me, like Moses.

And when the oceans rage, I don’t have to be afraid because I know that He lives and loves.  His bottle of finger nail polish remover is never empty; His well never runs dry.

I did my best,
it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel,
so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth,
I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!