I had a goal not to ignore the kids while they were here over Christmas Break, which overall, I think I did pretty well. The older I get the more I realize how brief the time is that we have with them so part of me just wants to soak up every minute I do get with these kids. Really, it is wonderful (and hard and painful and frustrating {I will share a story about that later on in this blog}) to be a parent. I wouldn't trade anything in the world for it.
Kenzie and Jordan left after Thanksgiving Break and then returned two weeks later! How wonderful was that? And while, yes, at the beginning we were still working, we had most of Christmas Break off with them.
While we worked they went skiing with each other.
Lucky them, it snowed the weekend before so they did get some good days in.
When we were off we went dirtbiking, read books, did puzzles
and as always, celebrated Christmas together.
I made treats and well, we all probably cheated a little on our diets which we all worry about...
Especially my wrestlers:
Just in case you can't read the bottom of that it says: "We ask for your help in controlling our weight these next few days. We also thank you for the weight allowance in January." Really, to a wrestler that's funny. And yes, Riley and Ben are getting to wrestle...a little. They had one wrestling tournament the week of New Years and one wrestling tournament today and a short high school season (5 weeks) starts this Monday. I am so grateful that they get to wrestle that you won't find me complaining at all that it is only 5 weeks long.
The New Year's Weekend Ben and Riley wrestled, Brad decided to take McKenzie and I to do a backcountry skiing tour. It was supposed to be really easy. And, for the most part, it was. The uphill climb was actually pleasant.
Here we are at the highest point he took us to (which I know isn't high at all but I felt good about it.
Now the whole experience was great for these three. Well, easy peasy for Brad and Jordan, pretty easy for Jake and perfect for Kenzie. The downhill part for me....terrifying. Why you ask? Well, Brad gave me new skis (which are excellent by the way so I'm not complaining about that) that I didn't know how to control well and sent us through some trees. I do not ski through trees because I am a HORRIBLE skier. After 5 minutes of me fighting the trees he saw I wasn't going to be getting down so easily. Literally, at one point I was going so slow down hill that when I came to a hump (and I mean hump or bump whatever you call it) in the snow and couldn't get up it, I thought I was could be risking and endangering everyone's lives. I could not get over the hump. I looked like the cartoons where they are trying to run on ice and just stay in one place. That was me. Lucky for me, I had Jordan by my side and he talked me through that little episode. While I do not have a picture of me looking like that cartoon, I do have a funny picture of Kenzie as she fell on one of our small descents.
It looks like a ton of fun, right? Trust me, I looked much more pitiful than Kenz does in this picture.
Since Brad could see I was struggling through the trees he took us to an open field. The only problem with that was that I had to climb over a cliff to get to the open field. Which I did...and Brad walked me through every step making sure I was safe. You cannot imagine my terror though when he said okay, take off your skis and crawl on your belly with the skis on your hands to get to the place where you can put back on your skis and ski down. Also, while the big open field was probably so enjoyable for everyone else, I am a control freak and had to turn every two seconds so by the time I got to the bottom of the small hill, my thighs were burning and my body was exhausted. Man, I really wish I was a better skier. It is hard to be the worst at things. I'm so grateful that Brad was willing to take me along though and I'm glad I got to enjoy the beauty of nature. Oh, and the coolest thing of it all is I got to hear the snow whomp...which is a really scary sound because it is a sign of avalanche danger, but lucky for us, we weren't high enough up to have avalanche danger.
As for the rest of the month...I was reminded of the true nature of my daughter when she sent me this meme about herself:
Yes, she really thinks that is her dream. Don't worry, I've got books and examples to demonstrate why that is not really what she wants forever. I've read a ton of books lately...like a ton. My favorite, The Color of Water. It is truly an excellent book with such depth. I recommend that everyone reads it. I also went to Washington to celebrate my Mom's and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary. What an accomplishment, right? It was cool because due to covid stuff, my brothers and sisters and I decided it would probably be better if it was just us that went to visit them to limit the amount of exposure we would have. My mom and dad were not expecting us at all and so we got to surprise them and spend time together...time that we haven't spent together like that since my oldest sister, Melissa, was married 29 years ago. So ya, it was totally cool.
On a more bleak note, a lot of people (and let's admit our nation) are going through some tough times. I just had a friend's dad die of covid which really shook me. I'm not sure why it hit me so deeply because I didn't know her father. It could possibly be that I have been thinking deeply about loss and rebirth lately and trying to come to terms with losses in my own life and then this occurs. Losing a beloved family member is the biggest loss of all.
Also, my sister's husband, Jeremy, is going to have to go through chemotherapy. We knew he would eventually have to go through this. Seven years ago we knew this. However, here it is facing us directly and quite frankly it is scary. It makes us all reevaluate our own lives and what truly matters to us and how we take advantage of every moment, good and bad, just to remind ourselves that we are living. Here are some quotes about life and hard times that I've read in books that I love.
The first comes from a book by Katrina Kenison entitled Magical Journey that I am currently in the middle of.
"Sooner or later, we are handed the brute, necessary curriculum of surrender. We have no choice, then, but to bow our heads and learn...We learn humility and how to ask for help. We learn to let go even when every fiber of our being yearns to hold on tighter. We learn that love is necessary, but that love doesn't always save people. We learn that we can't change someone else; we can only change ourselves. We can go down fighting, or we can begin to practice acceptance. Grace comes as we loosen, at last, our white-knuckled grip on what ought to be-but even grace is not always gentle or chosen. Sometimes it arrives disguised as a burden-as loss or hurt or unwanted upheaval."
Here she was specifically referring to lessons learned in parenting children, but I think it can be applied well to life. There are many things we can't control and we just have to let go of that and practice acceptance and grace...and yes, sometimes grace comes with pain.
The second quote I like comes from Louise Erdich's The Painted Drum.
"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
This quote tells me that yes, life is pain but also life is wonderful and beautiful and there for the taking. Did you taste that sweetness? That is the question the author is posing to us.
Have I tasted the sweetness? Have I let go and embraced the pain so I can experience the joy? Embracing pain is hard but necessary.
In another book I have been reading and pondering, End of the World Plan B, by Charles Inouye he teaches, "Motoori Norinaga theorized that the essence of life is mono no aware, or the sadness of things. We appreciate the beauty of cherry blossoms when we feel the sadness of life's fragility and brevity. At the height of their beauty, the pale pink petals scatter in the wind. That sadness - the truth of our fragility, the truth that there is much beyond our control-becomes a gateway to enlightenment because it brings on the humility that frees us from judgement and pride. Since the sadness of things is the sadness of all things, it connects everything and everyone together. We all fall short of the mark. Therefore, we are no longer burdened with an impulse to judge one another or to be judged. This awareness yields a kind of nothingness that can help us open up both to suffering and to what we can do about suffering."
So yes, there is some suffering going on now and I am trying to understand and embrace it. I have made a resolution to embrace every moment of life.
On a lighter note, or maybe not, let me share a real life story with you.
I am in bed yesterday morning enjoying the fact that I have nothing that I must do for the day. Pretty soon I hear shouts and fighting down below. It is Riley and Ben and they are having an argument about something. I don't really know what at this point. However, the voices and fighting escalate and my husband says to me, you might want to go down and stop that. I run downstairs to see what is happening. Ben tells me he woke up 15 minutes late for his AP chem final and that he has to take it on a chrome book which Riley is on and he doesn't have time to argue with Riley about it but he needs the chrome book because it has some sort of anti-cheating software on it that is needed for this test. Riley informs me that he needs the chrome book because he is also having a final and he can't access the instructions for the final anywhere else but on this chrome book. "What is going on with the other chrome book we have?" I ask. They then proceed to tell me that the other chrome book has an operating system error and won't turn on. I quickly tell Ben he is a dummy for waking up 15 minutes late, tell Riley to let Ben have the chrome book and get Riley situated on the family computer where he doesn't have access to the instructions but where he can email his teacher to send him the instructions for the final and access the document he has. And yes, when I came down they were close to fisticuffs over this situation. It made me want to cry because nothing is really worth fisticuffs. It made me want to cry because what are the students doing that don't have all the resources my children do right now? How is their education going? It made me want to laugh because it almost came to fisticuffs, how ridiculous, is any grade worth a relationship strained? Most of all, it made me grateful I was home.
Enjoy each day, every moment. Now is the time to eat of the fruit tree and to share that sweetness with others just like the tree does...because tomorrow it just might not be there.
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