Category: My life

This coming weekend is my 20th class reunion.  At the moment I am torn whether I am going to make an appearance because my boys have football games that weekend as well, and the reunion and the games are not even in the same state.  Attending for at least one event can be done, but it would make the weekend rather chaotic; this is why I’m on the fence.

I was lucky enough to have a smallish class to graduate in with 56 kids.  Most of us got along on a consistent basis and we appreciated each other uniqueness.  No, that’s not to say that every day was sweetness and light, for we had our moments of high school bickering and immaturity, but doesn’t every class?  Overall, I have good memories of my school and my class.  And yes, I realize that not everyone has the same experience.

Milestones such as reunions tend to give us pause as we reflect back on the past several years.  I try to reclaim my 18-year old train of thought and wonder if I had any idea that I’d end up where I am today.  The answer is an emphatic NO.  It’s not a bad “no” — just an emphatic one.

When I graduated from high school in 1992, I had planned on attending college for journalism.  I really wanted to be a photojournalist, but could not get any guidance as to how to make that happen.  No one seemed to know how one became a photojournalist, so I figured that plain ol’ journalism was the place to start.  By the end of my first semester, I had changed my major to education, so there went that goal.

I knew that i wanted to be married and have kids.  Now, twenty years later and licking the wounds from my divorce, I knew that this was not part of what I had envisioned.

However, I have always been a firm believer in the idea that things happen for a reason.  We are the product of our choices and our circumstances.  Could I have made different choices?  Yes.  Would I be just as happy?  Well, how will I ever know?  At some point we have to make peace with the decisions we have made and keep our eye on the ultimate goal for our life.

There’s a comfort in being able to gather with people who have known you since you were a poofy-haired, acne-ridden teenager.  I know that if I go to my reunion, my thoughts about the past will not be unique ones.  Life has been a bumpy road for many others as well.

Twenty years can do a lot to shape a person, and I can only hope that the “me” that exists today is a better one than I had envisioned in 1992.  I may not have traveled the paths that I imagined I would, and I may not have the “story” I thought I’d be telling by now, but I have two wonderful children and a host of memories and experiences that have made me the person I am today.

I think my 18-year old mind would approve.

 

 

 

 

 

Now that my boys are old enough to start enjoying sports, I have “won” the privilege of driving to towns an hour or so away to watch the boys play football for a league team.  Yesterday was their first game, and I had a great time watching them play rather clumsy football and enjoy the experience of playing on a real football field for the first time.

I’ve read stories about helicopter parents who just refuse to let Johnny make any mistakes out on the football field, but it was rather shocking and saddening to see it in person, and I know the examples I saw were mild ones.

Third and fourth graders played the first game, and there was one dad who decided that the refs were just WAY out of line, so he yelled his opinion out to them.  Luckily one of the coaches politely reminded him that parents were not allowed to harass the refs, but I was still amazed that this parent took this game SO SERIOUSLY. These are 3rd and 4th grades, for pete’s sake!  Adults are supposed to be the role models, not the ones doing embarrassing behavior.

Later on a mom did the ultimate helicopter thing when she went over the fence, across the track, and pulled her kid aside to COACH HIM in the middle of the game.  When the real coach saw this kid not with the others and not paying attention to the game, he told him to get back over there, but the mom actually followed him, continuing to bend down, point at the field, and give her pointers as the kid walked back to the sidelines.  Seriously, people?  Perhaps next year you’d like to devote your nights and Saturdays to coaching little kids’ football.  Until then, let the real coaches do their job.

Although I’m glad that parents are not allowed to voice their opinions to the referees, I heard a lot of the chatter while I was standing along the fence with the other parents.  So many times I wanted to remind them that this was supposed to be a friendly game of football for kids who are enjoying the game.  There will be mistakes.  In fact, there SHOULD be mistakes.  How else will they learn?

As a teacher, I watch these games and hope that the parents show as much enthusiasm about their kid’s academic progress as they do about their football skills.

Wishful thinking, I’m sure.

 

Fall is my favorite season, for various reasons.  There’s the excitement and bustle of returning to school, the beginning of football season, the changing of the leaves, and the return of milder weather.  (After a scorching summer like the one we’ve had here in Iowa, I am ready for mild temperatures!)  Normally I’d say that I’m excited to pick apples in my parents’ apple orchard in South Dakota, but I’m pretty sure the drought is going to guarantee zero apples for picking.  Oh well.  Maybe next year.

As I sit in front of my laptop and gaze out at the smattering of earlybird leaves that are beginning to fall (again, thank a lot, drought!), I notice a small Coleman tent sitting unobtrusively under a huge maple tree.

The tent.

Its color is faded on that one side facing the sun, and that’s because that tent has been there since June. I put it up as a favor to my two boys, ages 10 and 8. They have always enjoyed “camping” in the backyard every now and then and they’d always beg me to put it up.

This year, however, I thought it would be neat if we left the tent up all summer.

Why not?  It’s not a brand new tent, nor was it a very expensive one.  It has a rainfly to protect it, it’s a snap to set up, and I am not so attached to the grass in my yard that I’m going to cry if I have a little square patch of grass that dies.  That’s the nice thing about grass — it can regrow.

I remember the thrill of having a tent to crawl into — my own personal space where I could hide out from the world and pretend that I was on my own in the middle of the woods.  My house is not the palatial palace that I’d like it to be; therefore, I wanted a place for my boys to be able to call their own.

They wasted no time in making their own, either.  I slapped an eggcrate mattress down so they didn’t have to lie on the hard ground, and they chose the blankets and pillows that they’d keep out there.  Oodles of books, toys, booklights, and DVDs followed, and I gave them free use of a portable DVD player that was just sitting in my closet, collecting dust.  It was a modernized version of “roughing it,” of course, but my boys were more excited about having their own space.  They spent the first two weeks in there nearly every night aside from the nights that they stayed at their dad’s house.  Bedtime became something to look forward to, for a change.  They’d go into the tent about 8:30 and spend a couple hours reading books, giggling, playing with flashlights, or watching DVDs.  They’d usually konk out about 10:30, and I wouldn’t hassle them to get to bed, because it was summer and I knew they’d tire eventually.

When the sun hit the tent in the morning, they’d straggle in, a little groggy from lack of sleep but excited to do it all over again that night.  When friends came over, they’d show of their “house,” reminding kids to make sure their feet were clean before entering the tent, since they would be walking on their beds.  They took responsibility for the contents of the tent and cared about keeping it nice.  Perhaps in a way it made them understand why sometimes Mom gets so persnickety about the way her house looks.

Soon the earlybird falling leaves will become a steady rain as the maple tree sheds its summer coat, and the tent will have to be cleaned out, cleaned up, and put away until next summer.

And in June, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be getting out that tent and putting it back up for yet another summer of memories.  In twenty years, I hope my sons remember these summers, and I hope the memories make them smile.

As I mentioned in my last post, I chose to take a bit of a photography-related trip through the backroads of Nebraska.  I love traveling by car and getting off the interstate.  I don’t want to stop at Walmart  — I want to stop at the local variety store.  I don’t want to stay in Holiday Inn — I want to stay at the mom & pop motel down the road that doesn’t have a pool  and hasn’t redecorated in a couple decades but still has clean and comfortable rooms.  Even if the room is horribly outdated, like the Pioneer Motel in Minden, Nebraska, was, I would still want to stay there.  Case in point: Continue reading “Off the beaten path”

I am totally stoked for this December’s release of The Great Gatsby.  Baz Luhrmann’s creative mind has always intrigued me, and I fell in love with his circus-like sets and preposterous characters in both Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet.  The man’s got a gift, so I was both pleasantly surprised and a little nervous when I heard that he was undertaking the making of this classic novel. Continue reading “Gatsby made truly great?”

Although I’ve always been an animal lover, I have never really wanted to have a dog, mainly because I saw some of the dog hassles that friends and family had to deal with: house training, poop scooping, bad habit obliteration, kenneling, yard fencing, etc.

About three weeks ago, I suddenly began to have an urge for a dog.  I have no idea where this desire came from, but I think it stemmed from a desire for my boys to have a “best friend” to grow up with.  My youngest is very much an animal lover, and I enjoyed watching him interact with other people’s dogs.  I wanted my sons to have a dog to call their own, and that’s where the wishing began, I believe. Continue reading “Instant Dog”

As I described in my last post, I recently purchased a 1941 (or thereabouts) radio and phonograph.  The cord’s been cut off (probably from safety concerns) but it is in terrific shape overall.  I know boo about radios or their repair, but I am hoping that once the cord is replaced, the radio will work.  Think it’ll be that easy?  Stay tuned.

There’s something about the old wooden radios that gives me a nostalgic rush of emotion, which is interesting considering that when I was growing up, wooden radios had long been replaced by plastic and my teen years in the 80’s gave us radios that were lovely pastel colors.  My father did, however, own some of those old wooden radios, and I used to get a thrill out of hearing the decisive click of the knob as the radio glowed and hummed to life. Even the static was endearing, and I used to marvel at the fact of how many years of history had been narrated through those speakers. Continue reading “For the love of old radios”