Category Archives: Family

float down the river

Yesterday was one of those really beautiful, crystal-clear Up North days and it wasn’t too hot, and wasn’t too cold. It was a big sky, pine-scented day colored green and gold and sparkles-on-the-water kind of day.

My folks are lucky enough to live close to Riverside Canoe Trips, a great trading-post kind of establishment on the Lower Platte river on the edge of the Sleeping Bear. They have a general store full of Up North trinkets – t-shirts, postcards, Petoskey stone jewelry, moccasins and beads – and the property swarms with adolescents working their summer jobs running vans full of canoes, tubes, kayaks and tourists. They are a group of the most amiable, cheerful kids you’ll ever meet, all tanned golden brown with toothpaste-model smiles. Our van kid was earnest and helpful and made sure Miss L was in her booster seat and chatted about his upcoming college career at Michigan State and I could just imagine Miss L as a big grown up girl working there someday over a summer and just loving it.

I had been dreaming of giving Miss L a treat on our vacation and spending a few hours on the river. Kayak and canoe trips were out, as their routes cross Loon Lake, which is deep and cold, and I felt unsafe for an almost-six year old. Tubes seemed like a perfect option – you put in below the weir, and float to the beach at Lake Michigan. The river is warm and not too deep, and cuts through pine woods and wetlands, sandy banks full of Sleeping Bear nature. Turtles and sleek brown fish in the shallows, places to portage and sit in the warm sand under tall pines with dragonflies darting. Easy peasy. I imagined us floating in the sunshine and laughing gaily and pretending we were hobbits or old-time explorers. Bouyed by my excitement, Miss L was thrilled and ebullient as we walked down the winding gravel road to the weir on the Lower Platte. I tied our tubes together and we dropped in and that was about the last happy moment she had for the two-hour trip down the river to Lake Michigan.

“Mommy, we’re not going very fast.”

“Mommy, those people are going faster than we are. They’re going to beat us. Oh, they’re in kayaks? We should get a kayak next time.”

“What is that crinkling noise? Snacks? It sounds like a bag…oh, just your phone in that plastic bag? There aren’t any snacks? Why didn’t we bring snacks?”

“I’m cold / hot” (insert proper temperature here every 5-7 minutes)

“MOMMY why are we stuck on this riverbank twirling in circles?? You’re going to have to get off and push.”

“I don’t mean to argue, and I know it sounds like I am arguing, but this life jacket is really ruining my experience.”

“Can I get off now?”

“I have to go to the bathroom… What do you MEAN I have to go in the RIVER?!?”

“Are we there yet?”

For a grownup, the thought of idly floating down an isolated river on a sunny morning with nothing particular to do is pure paradise, but for a five-year old, it was not entertaining. And tubing sounds easy, but it’s not in certain places. The wind is stiff along Lake Michigan. The Lower Platte is mostly very shallow, knee deep, with a warm brown current over clean sand and river stone, but in spots, it meanders without a swift current, and it is very easy to get pushed onto a bank or into a curve and just not be able to get out. Tubes are not maneuverable, they tend to helplessly spin, and I had a couple of bad moments. At one point, I saw no other alternative except to hop off the tube to push us out. I promptly sunk up to my thighs in muck, and in desperation pulled a thick birch branch out of the bank to lean on. As I was struggling for purchase, flailing in the muck, I bruised my foot on something, and as I hopped in the mud trying not to swear or cry, Miss L’s little face appeared over the edge of the tube. “We’re still not moving, Mommy. Did I say that we should get a kayak? I really thought we shouldn’t go tubing….HEY!! CAN I GET A STICK TOO?”

Those moments do not bring out best-in-class parenting.

That stick became my only friend on that river adventure. There were many moments when I cursed myself for not renting a paddle or for even thinking in any part of my stupid brain that this would be a fun thing to do. The stick was my paddle and a push-pole, and I clutched it and thanked the poor beaver from whose den I had yanked it. Thank you, beaver, I thought as I pushed desperately through another wind gust, thank you for sacrificing your weight-bearing structural element to save myself and my child on this river. (These moments also bring out extreme melodrama.) And for some reason, it only seemed to be us struggling. As I spun and pushed and heaved and prayed, flotillas of laughing drunk people passed on, seemingly without effort. Teenagers lolled on half-inflated tubes and called cheery greetings. They always seemed to be in the current and putting in no effort whatsoever.

There were some nice moments on the river, which I think is the most beautiful place in the world. I thought I had mostly convinced Miss L that it was an overall very nice experience, but by the last bend in the river, when the golden sand dunes of the Lake Michigan beach appeared, I was actually walking in the river pulling the tubes along while Miss L muttered discontentedly in her perch. My parents had been in the beach lot for an hour waiting for us, and they stood on the bank waving as I soggily flailed upriver. My mom cheered and swathed Miss L in a towel and walked her back to the car and I heard Miss L say,

“That was NOT A GOOD TIME. Did you know that all we did was FLOAT DOWN THE RIVER!?”

happy places

I’m enjoying my Sunday morning lie-in in my favorite way, propped up in bed with my computer, a cup of coffee, and the windows wide open to sunshine and birdsong. Also the Weather Channel, but that didn’t sound quite so lyrical. I’m sort of addicted to the Weather Channel. For some reason, I find the constant flow of information about weather in other parts of the country very soothing. It seems to remind me that I am not alone in my own little weather bubble. Emmett and Sarge are out playing dress-up with Miss L in her room and eyeballing Gaston – the fish – with evil intent. They are, I think, still recovering from the trauma of July 4. They spent most of the booming fireworks either hanging from the screens or hiding under the bed.

Southeast Michigan has been blessed with an amazing weather weekend, sunny and clear and warm without being uncomfortable. Miss L and I spent the day of the 4th in our happy place with a bag of birdseed and binoculars.

In addition to feeding the birds, we had a little chipmunk following us closely to pick up the dropped birdseed. He even came right up and took seed out of my hand, leaving a generous smear of chipmunk drool. Miss L knows better than to try to feed a rodent with her bare hand so she kept a safe distance and rolled her eyes at me.

We were so busy having fun that I didn’t get out to run until midday yesterday, and pulled out a pretty pathetic 4 miles with a lot of wheezing even though honestly, I had no reason for the hystrionics. There was a nice breeze and it wasn’t too hot. Yet still, I came home a bedraggled red-faced mess wondering why I call myself a runner. I sacked out in the backyard chaise for awhile while I finished ‘Attachments’ by Rainbow Rowell, which was a decent if somewhat fluffy romantic novel. I have little stomach these days for fluffy romantic novels but it was engaging and breezy and the right kind of read for a chaise, although there were constant interruptions by the wildlife in the yard. The hummingbirds are crazy pigfaces this year and can’t stay away from our feeder – their tiny motor noise is constant and they aren’t deterred by Emmett’s wild fishtail jumps at the screen window to get them, or our presence in the yard. And we even have a tiny brave baby bunny who came out from the shrubbery to sit a foot away from my sweat-reeking prone figure and nibble on clover.

The tomato plants that I bought from Michigan Heirlooms are booming and I have many little green tomatoes starting. The horrible Mr Stripeys that I detested last year appear to have reseeded themselves in one of the other beds and I’m waiting to see what they are going to do – if they seem like they are going to develop flowers, I’ll thin them and stake them and see if I can coax something out of them worth eating.

In front yard news, I worried that the pink Annabelle hydrangeas might have been irretrievably damaged by our harsh winter, but they are back and in better shape than ever. The day lilies need to be thinned and the knockout rose bush, which had grown to epic proportions, reminding me of the gnarled thorn hedges around castles in fairy tales, has bounced back as well even after my vicious pruning of it. I am full of plans for the backyard and feel like every plant and every tiny garden space that I invest in weaves a bit more protective magic around the house.

I’m hoping that this week is short and relatively painless, as Miss L and I leave for a nice weeklong northern Michigan vacation on Thursday afternoon, and I think we both really need the downtime. I, for one, am looking forward to long sleeps, no makeup, and some time spent outdoors and with my folks.

spring malaise

“Perhaps what we call depression isn’t really a disorder at all but, like physical pain, an alarm of sorts, alerting us that something is undoubtedly wrong; that perhaps it is time to stop, take a time-out, take as long as it takes, and attend to the unaddressed business of filling our souls.” – Lee Stringer

I have a spring cold, and all of the suddenly nice days have made me perhaps a little depressed too. I know, I’m contrary. Worst winter of the decade, I’m fairly chipper, give me some sunshine and pollen and it brings me to my knees. I think it’s partially the uneasy feeling that I should be doing something that I’m not or enjoying the sunshine or riding a dappled pony through a field of daffodils or doing a triathlon instead of what I’m actually doing, which is usually sitting on the couch.

Some days there’s nothing for it except rest, and fresh food, and maybe flowers. I’ve also spent a fair bit of time on the couch with Season 6 of ‘Mad Men’ (and coincidentally, recently found January Jones has an Instagram feed, and if you can get past the endless parade of absolutely spectacular selfies, her hashtagging and commentary is pretty funny and clever).

I don’t get sick very often but when I do, I am a miserable human being to be around, disheveled and bleary and endlessly contaminating shared surfaces. So it’s nice to have one little soul in the world who can tolerate me at my worst. (As much as I love it, my neti pot does not have a soul, so it doesn’t count.)

It used to be Grey Cat, and I have been blessed by whatever benevolent wind blows around this universe to have found another.

Emmett, of course, in his softer moments when he is not trying to escape from Alcatraz or knock pictures off the walls or swing on my Japanese lantern or tear his litterbox apart or find some birds to chew on.

#thisiswhywecanthavenicethings

(suck it, January).

bucket filling

I really limped into the homestretch of the weekend – it was a long week of hard work. There was a “three states in one day and back” kind of day, and a “going away party for a Japanese friend” kind of day, and a “kindergarten Valentine’s day party” kind of day. And this weekend I find myself alone, which is a bit anxiety-producing but more than likely a much-needed respite and an excuse to be as ridiculously lazy as I can possibly be. In kindergarten they teach the concept of bucket-filling – filling other’s buckets with kindness, and filling your own with things that make you happy. It’s a kind of private magic to have a good stretch of time to just be quiet, to drift around the house cleaning and thinking and not talking, watering plants and doing little projects and refilling birdfeeders and falling asleep whenever I want and trying new recipes. It leaves me feeling a little stronger, my light shining a little more brightly.

I have a stack of new books from the library – I love it and hate it when everything on my reserve list comes in at once, such pressure – and there are some awesomely bad old movies on the movie channel to look forward to, including the piece de resistance, The Gorgon, a masterpiece of schlock. I just read this which I wanted to share. I have a raggedy old chair and some milk paint in case I feel motivated enough for a project, and I have two boyfriends with stripes, whiskers, and paws to keep me company. Posing beautifully with books is just one of the things they’re good at.