Six days in the desert: Part 1

Six days in the desert: Part 1

We arrive at night, so I can’t see that we are landing in a completely different location. My mother has mentioned the new airport, but I just assumed it was a new building in the same spot so the drive home is disorienting. “Where are we?” I eventually ask. It takes a while to sort out that we are approaching my childhood home from the south, rather than the north. Driving into Bloomington along Man O’ War Road, I point out the white metal fence to my kids, telling them that this is what I remember from the night when we first arrived here. I was ten years old and we were finishing a journey that had felt like a lifetime to my young self. I remember peering out at the darkness, wanting to see something of my new home. But all I could see was the white lines of that fence, stretching out like a trail through the black night.  More than three decades have passed since that night and now I am returning with my husband and grown children on a long overdue trip to show them this place where I grew up. They have seen it before in passing, of course. We have been here many times over the years for weddings, reunions, and funerals, but never just a vacation for ourselves. Months earlier, when I asked Hannah what she wanted for her twentieth birthday, she said, “I want to go hiking in Utah.” To my chagrin, I had never taken my kids on any real adventures out in the gorgeous wilderness that had been such...
Confessions of an overstimulated parent

Confessions of an overstimulated parent

On a recent Sunday, I was working in my yard, marveling at all the charming little buds and bulbs of early spring. I was listening to This American Life on my iPhone, when I heard a text ding through. It was from my husband, Isaac, inside the house. Here is what it said: “Hannah just called. There is a meningitis outbreak on  her floor. She is under quarantine at the hospital with everyone else.” Our daughter is in her first year at college hundreds of miles away. I’m not sure why my husband of nearly 22 years opted to deliver this news to me in this way. He’s well acquainted with my propensity for worry. I raced into the house hurling concerns at my pathologically unconcerned spouse. “A quarantine? What does that mean?”  “How many kids are sick?” “How long will it last?” “Where are they being kept?” He waved off my barrage of questions with a casual ease. He hadn’t asked any of these questions. DIDN’T EVEN SEEM CURIOUS!  Next, I called Hannah. She told me all she knew. The “outbreak” consisted of only one case so far. The boy was in serious condition — on a ventilator. She was in a room at the hospital with everyone else from her floor and they didn’t know how long they would be there. I could hear the violent chatter of dozens of teenagers in the background. I imagined them all on the phone with their parents dispersing the news like hundreds of airborne seeds blown from a dandelion’s downy head. It may have been helpful if I could have offered comfort to my girl in that moment. If...
The care and feeding of pre-adult humans

The care and feeding of pre-adult humans

I recently arrived home to find my son with a few of his friends in our kitchen eating what Eli referred to as “a snack.” In some ways, I could admire what was happening. I mean, my boy is a capable cook and he had thrown together what looked like a tasty egg dish for his friends. But to be honest, I felt a mild panic. The sheer volume of food being consumed tapped into my deeply rooted insecurity that we might actually run out. A brief inquiry revealed that this snack contained nearly a dozen eggs and several pounds of “leftover chicken” (in actuality, the chicken had been prepared for a dinner planned for the following night). A few terse remarks on my part belied my urge to yell, “We can’t afford to feed any more teenage boys!” The boys, perhaps sensing my alarm, responded by shoveling the food more quickly into their mouths before escaping to the basement. Now that my kids are busy, independent teenagers, it sometimes feels as if I have no children at all. They are often out — at work, band practice, swim team, or hanging with friends. When they are at home, they generally hide in their bedrooms with the doors shut. But when they do show up, they are more of a presence then ever. They have strong opinions and huge appetites. They love to laugh, sometimes at our expense, but more and more, they seem to want to make us laugh too. At 18 and 16, they seem to be phasing out of the tendency to believe that adults are boring...