Hugging my son, I felt him shake a little as thunder clapped and the lights cut out. A booming voice declared, “Oh, I didn’t mean to frighten you prematurely. The real chills come later.”
“That’s the worst part, honey,” I swore to him, squeezing him close. As we walked into the Haunted Mansion’s “doom” buggies at Disney World, I kept glancing at him, taking his emotional temperature. As we rode the ride, I pointed out little jokes and kept up a jovial attitude to help him enjoy himself.
“I don’t know what to do.”
As a mom, I’ve said those words more times than I can count. When my kid’s fever has spiked – again. When I was so delirious with sleep deprivation that I thought I might be hallucinating. When my kid got out of bed for the tenth time that night. When I was nursing our younger son and our older son was desperate to sit in my lap.
“I don’t know what to do.” Six words that mean so much.
My younger son points urgently at the manatee stamp on his arm and then at the real creature in the water. “That’s right, a manatee!” I exclaim and smile. I watch it float, just letting the water hold its massive bulk like magic. “Geeze, they really aren’t very bright, are they?” I think. Then I shrug and think, “Eh, whatever.”
We’re at Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park, a state park in Florida that’s home to five resident manatees and a variety of other Florida animals. It’s also where I had a life-changing experience when I was 10.
As a nature-loving third grader, I fell hard for the manatees. They were so cute and so innocent! I found out they were endangered, convinced my class to adopt one, and became a lifelong environmental activist.
Except when I returned as an adult, Homosassa was not the same as I had remembered it. Disappointing is an understatement. I left with a bad taste in my mouth, my heart just a little broken.
“Tell me I’m a good mom,” I say to my husband, Chris. Most of the time when I say that, I’m half-joking. This time, I’m not.
We’re sitting on our couch side by side. I’m usually writing or reading blogs while he watches people play video games on YouTube. Today, I’m staring blankly at the turned-off TV. He looks up.
“You’re a good mom,” he replies. He’s not smiling. His seriousness just reinforces my worry.
“We’ve done what we can, right? I mean, I think it would have been worse if we had done other things.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault.”
My parents didn’t have a clue what the impact of bringing me to Homosassa Springs State Park in Florida at the tender age of nine was going to be. It ended up not only shaping my elementary school passions, but determining my life’s work.
I first wrote this essay about the strange ways childhood experiences shape us for the wonderful live show (and podcast), The Story Collider. I performed it live at Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C. on January 26, 2017 and you can check out the video on Facebook. As I’ll be returning to Homosassa Springs tomorrow with my kids, I thought now was an appropriate time to share it!
A twig of a tree stands in our yard, a few buds starting to form. In the future, those buds could become branches. But now, they’re nothing but green and brown nubs off of a slim trunk.
It’s hard to believe that one day we’ll be eating pears from that tree. In fact, we may not. Deer may nibble the buds or disease may fell it.
And yet we planted it anyway.
Just as we plant tiny seeds in fine, fluffy soil each year. Then we tend them under the soft glow of lights in our basement. After exposing them to the sun and wind, we transplant them into our garden in the hopes that they’ll grow hearty and bear us vegetables. The groundhog may chomp on the leaves or the squash bugs may suck them dry. There are never any guarantees of what we’ll get.
And yet we plant them anyway.
Just like we chose to have children, despite the constant uncertainty of this world.
A flutter of wings in the dark glided through the sky, just barely within my sight.
“I think that was a bat!” I exclaimed to my four-year-old son as we walked from the car to the house.
Another dark shadow flitted by. Then another.
“The bats are waking up!” he yelled.
Although it was bedtime, I lingered outside with him. As he danced around like a springtime sprite, I sat down on the grass. I stared up at the moon, glowing behind the fog of a cloud. The shadows of deer moved among the gravestones in the cemetery behind our house. My son regaled me with tales of the bats coming out of hibernation and the geese flying back to their homes. The signs of spring. All may not have been right with the world, but there was a little peace in that space, at that time.
TW: Miscarriage/pregnancy loss; general kid medical problems
Two trips to urgent care and three trips to the emergency room for two different medical issues. All in one week.
As I drove to the ER for the second time, going 25 miles an hour in the freezing rain, REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” came on. Despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but laugh. What could be more appropriate?
TW: Racism
Reading the text from my husband, Chris, I frowned. “We left the park because [our older son] said something very racist to the girls there.” Furrowing my eyebrows, I typed back, “What did he say??” “That black people look like poop.”
My first thought was, “What the hell was he thinking?” My second was, “How the hell did this happen?”
“I can’t ask questions?” I asked my husband, my voice squeaking at the end of the sentence. “What am I supposed to say?”
When we decided to pursue speech therapy for my older son, we didn’t know what to expect. But whatever I was imagining, reducing the number of questions I asked my child wasn’t one of them. At the time, I felt like the speech therapist took away a core tool in my parenting and communications toolbox.
But since then, I’ve realized that no matter what parenting strategy I use, there’s one piece of parenting advice that has never failed me.