Sixteen {16}

 This week my little girl turned 16. Sixteen! Such an age filled with possibilities. I love this picture below, same spot 11 years apart. She makes my heart leap with joy now, just like she did then. She is more than I ever could have imagined all those years ago when I so desperately wanted a little girl.





Her day was filled with friends and family and good food. And presents, of course. One of her best friends shares her birthday, so we had to get our annual photos of these two precious girls, who have been inseparable since they were 4 and 5. (Bess is one year older.)

My brother and my adorable nephew were in town and had birthday dinner with us and my parents.

No, we did not get her a car—but we have started looking on Craig's List for possibilities!

Because the day after her birthday, she got her driver's license!

Sigh. I love her so much. She amazes me constantly with her kindness, compassion, creativity, sheer beauty, and hilarious sense of humor. We get each other. I think about how distant I was from my mother when I was 16, and I am so very thankful that my daughter is not the girl that I was, in so many ways. I wish I could have been more like her.

See how kind and compassionate she is?

Sweet 16, when the world is fresh and you are filled with expectation, when anything might happen at any time. When song lyrics cut to your heart and the smell of summer rests on your skin, when the thought of autumn makes your heart flutter and you want to weep—and you have no idea why or what or who or when, only that you are always on the cusp of something.

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Saturday Snapshot: Afternoon Drive on the Foothills Parkway

"Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

~Henry James

 
Some days, I make really good decisions.

Grabbing a bucket of chicken, my kids, my parents, and five chairs and heading to the mountains: that was a good decision.

Just a few years ago my parents would have been game for a short hike in the mountains, but not anymore.

Fortunately, the Foothills Parkway has some of the best views of the Smokies, and Mom and Dad, who are in their late-80s, were so happy just to be able to sit and soak in the mountains—a change of scenery for them—and their grandkids.

Dad and Duncan went on a really short hike. Dad mows his lawn, tends a big garden, and spends a huge amount of his day doing yard work, but he gets winded while hiking.

We ate our chicken, watched the mountains, talked with some bikers who stopped for the view, and then headed down the parkway for another view. We sat there for nearly an hour, just watching the mountains and the clouds, listening to the sounds of summer.

You can't help but feel refreshed and revitalized when you've breathed in all of this, all this green and blue, this wide expanse of creation, this marvelous, wild, incomprehensible beauty.

I savor these days with Mom and Dad and with my children. I know that right now I am in a special, precious place, when I still have my parents and my children are still at home. I choke back that panic of a life without my parents, of the emptiness that I know comes when each child leaves home. You have to quiet the fear, you must in order to embrace perfect days like this.

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time."  ~John Lubbock

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Last Day, First Day

 Yesterday was our last official day of school—although we have lots of reading left to do and movies to watch on rainy days, and Laurel has one paper to finish and the ACT to study for. For Duncan, it's the end of seventh grade, and Laurel has finished her sophomore year of high school. His very last assignment was to write an essay about, well, of course, our trip to France.

And today we can officially declare as the first day of summer! Randy and I kicked off summer with the Skeeter Run, a 5K to raise money for mosquito nets in Africa. The race began at 8 a.m., and it was really, really hot. It might be our only 5K of the summer, although Randy is going to be training all summer for a triathlon in August.

I'm ready for summer. I'm looking forward to afternoons in the mountains, sitting by the river while the kids swim; hiking and camping; spending lots of time with friends and family; and getting a few projects done around the house. And that's about all I hope to do!

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Saturday Snapshot: Office Take-over

My pretty little office. I put such love and thought into changing it from a little boy's bedroom to a spacious room filled with things I love—a place I can go when I need utter quiet. A writing room.

This, though, is the reality of my pretty little office.

Guitars and model rockets. Thankfully, my family doesn't do guns and deer heads because I imagine they'd end up here as well.

I'm trying to figure out a way to reclaim my office.  In the meantime, I sure like having boys who play guitar and a husband who builds model rockets with his son.

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Spring Has Sprung and Other Ramblings

* The first day of spring began just as it should, with sunshine and daffodils.

My mother always said it, and my father. I suppose everyone's parents did: spring has sprung. Why don't I say things like that? Why don't I have a vocabulary full of colorful sayings? Why don't  colloquialisms roll of my tongue like jewels, enriching an otherwise bland comment?
"Lord willin' and the creek don't rise," says my husband in anticipation.
"It don't take long to look at a horseshoe," he replies to any, "That didn't take long!"
"Looks like they opened up a new box of worms!" he comments when traffic is heavy.

I am a metaphor mixer. I get all those kettles and frying pans and boxes of worms mixed up. I don't understand "I've slept since then" and "herding cats." And if I do understand them upon the umpteenth explanation, I still would never be able to repeat them in casual conversation. I have considered cultivating the gift of colloquialism, but somehow it seems phony to have to learn to use them. Things like that should come naturally.


 
* My mother laughs at me for taking photos like this. It's just laundry on the line. But to me, this is beautiful. This is my mother. She'll be 86 in just two weeks, and still she hangs laundry out every sunny day—and even some not-so-sunny days. She'd sooner hang laundry on a drying rack in front of the fireplace than use the dryer. Is it her Depression-era save-a-penny ethic, or is it the joy of fresh-smelling clothes? I don't know. I just know that these things that once drove me crazy—the economizing and the stiff jeans—now make my heart swell with love.

* And this makes my heart swell with love, too. That's my mother surrounded by little ones: two great-grandchildren and two grandchildren. There were three more of her grandchildren and one more great-grandchild there that day as we celebrated grandchild #10's first birthday (that's the little one in blue at her knees). It was madly chaotic and lovely.

* Waffles this morning, and fresh strawberries and a fire in the fireplace. Spring was short-lived. We are back to gray skies and a threat of snow. The animals are curled into balls of fur and the fleece blankets are back scattered on the sofas. Tomorrow, Randy and I go away to celebrate our 24th anniversary. Twenty-four years! Next year, we'll head to Italy for #25. I know—sooo exciting!

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Saturday Snapshot: Birthday Boy

Christmas Day is Duncan's birthday. We've always done a party in early December, but this year we were all ready for the end of parties. We took him and his two best buds to Ripley's Haunted Adventure in Gatlinburg.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Please, please, please: remind me to never go there during the holidays again! It was absolutely jam packed with tourists. I should have known. We knew that Sevierville and Pigeon Forge would be a mess of outlet shoppers, but we didn't even think about the crowds in Gatlinburg. We waited in traffic about 45 minutes to go 3 blocks, but we did finally get there.

The boys seemed to love the Haunted Adventure. In the picture above they are listening to instructions from a zombie-looking actor—and that was the point at which I was told to put my camera away. It only took us about 15 minutes to get through because the boys were practically running. My advice: if you go, walk slowly, or you'll feel fairly ripped off for spending so much money for 15 minutes. Then again, we all know these things are way overpriced, right?

After eating at Mellow Mushroom, we headed back home but went over the mountains rather than trying to navigate Gatlinburg traffic again.

We were rewarded with lots of nice snow! OK, "lots" might be a bit of an exaggeration, but if you look closely in the photo, you can see a few flakes. We were excited, anyway.

We stopped at The Sinks, a popular waterfall, on our way back. The river was positively terrifying in its strength. The boys, who usually climb all over rocks, were even quite respectful of the intensity of the falls. They only tried to climb once or twice.

It was a good day for our youngest birthday boy. I'm so glad to be done with the elaborate parties! I'm sure in a few years I'll be lamenting the passing of the seasons, but right now, I'm happy for the ease of a couple friends and a trip to a cheesy tourist attraction. And the mountains: always, the mountains.

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