September 20, 2011

Dear JackRabbit–

When you were in kindergarten I could not fathom how you, too, would one day be a gangly little second grader. Those kids seemed huge compared to your little round-faced smallness. And now here you are– one of them.

You are so independent lately. The other night I was too tired to wake you up so that you’d go to the bathroom. Daddy usually does that when he and I come upstairs to bed… and I’ve done a good job of it while Daddy’s been in Japan– but that night I was too tired. I went into my room and laid down and dozed off– only to wake up when I heard your feet hit your floor and pad down the hall to the bathroom all by yourself! I was so proud of you and (bonus!) was very happy to have you snuggle up with me in my bed for the rest of the night.

You’re helping me take care of your school things and the dogs. You’re making great choices about your lunches and clothes. When it’s homework time you don’t complain — you just work to get it done. In the car you buckle yourself in. You’re trying new foods. And new words.

You love space. Anything space related captures you. There’s StarWars, of course– but also astronauts and planets and dwarf planets and the temperature and distance of the sun. You read these things and store them up for the car rides to school when they come out in the form of, “MOMmy! Did you know that….” or as a question (some of which requires me to do some googling…)

This past Sunday afternoon I offered to ride bikes with you. You were very excited and we walked toward the garage– only to be intercepted by your pal Colin. (“Backyard Colin, Mommy, not Colin H-.”) I saw the hesitation in your eyes and sent you off to play with Colin– he wanted to show you his friend and the deer stand his Dad had put together in their backyard. “Mom– I’ll be back in a few minutes and then we can go riding, okay?” I weeded while you walked around the corner with Colin and listened for your chatter. I don’t get you all to myself anymore– you have friends and plans. I realize how lucky I am that you are still excited about coming back to go for a bike ride with me.

It’s really neat to see you growing up. I still don’t know how we got from the hospital– just yesterday or last week– to this point– but I have loved every day of it.

This has been a great year– you had such a good time with Ms. Hughes in first grade; went to that fun rental cabin for Thanksgiving with Momma & Eric (and us, too); became a Tiger Scout; came up with being a “Capital One Viking” for Halloween; visited Disney World with AunT & Maddie & Keegan– and had a week’s worth of fun adventures there and the way to Florida and back; worked out with the big kids at soccer camp; “oh!’ed at the explosions at Science Camp; went up to The Lake for a week; went to waterparks; read all sorts of new books; discovered Phineas & Ferb and Lego StarWars; got baptized; spent a week at Family Camp… really, an awful lot of adventures for a seven year old.

Seven. It’s just so hard to believe.

I love you, sweet baby. I love being your Mommy. I love watching you discover things and figure things out. I love hearing you sound out words (“dis-entry” and “Chor-lee” came out a few weeks ago while you were playing Oregon Trail on my iPhone). I love that you are beginning to think about things in a true inquirer fashion. “MOMmy! Daddy! Is that a good learner question?” I love watching you sort out where the wiggle room is on negotiations with us (that 7:30 bedtime is still a sore spot. “Daddy! Damon goes to bed at 9 o’clock!”)

And I love that I can still convince you that baked egg cups are exactly what young jedis eat.

I wouldn’t change a single hair on your head– except to somehow make time go a little slower. Still– as you say you are “to be continued” and I’m excited to see how what happens next.

I hope tomorrow is a happy 7th birthday. It’s strange to plan this without your Daddy here to help me. I’ll do the things he would do if he were here and not on his business trip to Japan– I’ll cover your floor with balloons and give you lots of kisses at 4:01 p.m. when you are officially 7. And AunT & Keegan will be on hand to sing with your church family and buddies after choir practice. (Miss Claudia’s even making spaghetti especially for you!)

I love you so very, very much,

Mommy

Baptism by (camp) fire

Jack was baptized last week.

While Jack was gestating Robby and I had a lot of conversations about baptism. Robby had grown up Episcopalian. He was baptized dutifully as an infant by way of a little water on his head while his parents and godparents looked on. I grew up Baptist. I went through “instruction” with my pastor when I felt ready and was fully immersed in a tank of water in front of our church when I was 12. We didn’t know what to do about Jack. Robby liked that I had chosen to be baptized– that I remembered it. (What I remember most was the series of little stick men that sweet Pastor Johnson drew to explain it to me.) I liked the idea of the promises Robby and I would make if we baptized a tiny Jack. We found a loophole– in the Book of Common Prayer there is a service for “Thanksgiving for the Birth Of an Infant.” It felt like semantics and a lot like the “Infant Dedications” I’d grown up with. In the end we decided that Jack would be baptized when he decided to be. (Much to the chagrin of one of the parishoners at the old church. He was horrified and somewhat convinced that our baby boy was going to hell.)

Jack’s been talking about baptism for about a year. Questions and little conversations. We pulled in one of our pastors a few months ago. Pastor Sue came over to the house for a night of tacos and Wii– she knew well enough not to sit down with Jack for a formal talk. She and Jack played several rounds of various Wii games while she asked him about what he knew about baptism.

For Jack it boiled down to “Jesus loves me. I love Jesus. When I am  baptized everyone will know Jesus lives in my heart.” He gets that baptism isn’t the key. The key is believing. The key is faith. Baptism comes out of that. Baptism wouldn’t make him suddenly always good or better.

Pastor Sue told him that baptism would make him an official part of God’s family. Jack liked that– especially when he asked each of us, in turn, “You’re part of God’s family, right?” and nodded soberly when we said “yes.”

Our church has a great baptism ritual. The entire family goes up with the person to be baptized. There’s a lovely baptism font that is pulled out for the occasion. The pastors read (and we respond to) the baptism service in the hymnal. The grandparents take it in turns to the pour out the water from a pitcher into the font. There’s a prayer for the baptized with the family all with a hand on him/her while they pray. The baby (or sometimes child or adult– but mostly it’s babies) is baptized and then held up for the rest of the congregation to cheer and welcome. One service really stood out for us– the family had brought back water from the River Jordan and used that.

The idea of it all was nice but hard for us to imagine. Jack loves to be at the center of things– but only when he is in control. His worst nightmare would probably involve having to stand in front of the entire congregation and horrors! endure their applause.

Pastor Sue gave him the option of being baptized at church. Jack thought it over. He’s seen a fair share of babies being baptized so he had questions. “Is the water cold? Do people have to clap? Who will be there?”

And then she offered up another option, “or, Jack, you could be baptized at Family Camp.”

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner…

While we ate black raspberry clafouti we talked about the different ways Jack could be baptized at camp. Jack liked the idea of being baptized at the beach in Lake Michigan. So did we. Pastor Sue stood up and showed him how she could gently lay him back in the water and bring him back up again. Or we could bring a little bowl down. Jack looked at us. We told him it was up to him– Daddy had been sprinkled. Mommy had been dunked. Neither was right or wrong.

Over the weeks before camp– while we were packing the trunks and checking to see if the flashlights had batteries– Pastor Sue emailed and suggested we shoot for Wednesday at camp. I made a note of it on the side of one of our camp lists. Two days later I realized that Wednesday at camp would be August 10– my Dad’s birthday which made it even more perfect.

On Wednesday the waves were crashing into shore from an alarming height. The state parks and public beaches were closed. Pastor Sue kept the adults and teenagers behind at the morning firebowl to announce, somberly, that there had been a death a few miles up the beach. We were forbidden to swim that day. But, by lunchtime, we noticed that the roaring from across the dune had stopped. We strained to hear the water from our campsite. By late afternoon we were allowed to swim again– the waves were still higher than normal but nothing like they had been in the night and earlier hours of the day. Robby’s parents drove down from the cottage for the day. Maddie and Keegan were with us. We waited for Trish/AunT and Maddie’s boyfriend to arrive from across the state. When they appeared on the dune stairs Pastor Sue gathered up the people on the beach. She and Jack had figured out the best way to baptize him when they’d ruled out wading out into the churning waters… Jack brought her his little green bucket. They stood in the water, calf deep, while the rest of us formed a semi-circle on the beach. Pastor Sue filled the bucket with water, turned it over on his head and baptized him while we cheered. Jack beamed. After Sue blessed him he came running out of the water and leapt into my arms like a little monkey.

We didn’t have everyone there that we wanted– my Mom and Eric are across the ocean in France, my grandmother isn’t able to come to the lake. We had a list of friends that we would have liked to stand in the sand with us. But we were touched by the friends we had with us– the Doerrs and the Fitzgeralds who made the long walk over the dune (without their swimsuits) just to be with us and Jack. My Dad’s birthday makes it a date that we won’t forget or confuse in time.

It wasn’t the baptism that his grandparents had envisioned when he was born. Or one that we could have dreamed up ourselves. It was certainly unorthodox– we were all in swimsuits and followed up the solemn moment with a waterfight between the three of us. It really was, however, the perfect way for Jack to be baptized– the bucket, the beach, our camp/church family there. The blue, blue sky.

There’s a short list of perfect days in my life. August 10, 2011 was one of them.

Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink

This was my first year of camping with internet access. It wasn’t reliable—but it was still a treat to occasionally check in on the outside world while sitting around the campsite.

On Thursday I peeked at Twitter. My AP feed popped up with a headline about parents in Somalia having to decide whether or not to “waste” water on their dying children.

Just over the dune from me was Lake Michigan. All that fresh—and hypothetically drinkable water.

I took in more water accidentally in my second kayaking attempt then most of those poor, wretched people have had pass their lips in weeks.

We’d been working with the teenagers all week to think about “needs vs. wants” which I thought I got.

Maybe not.

Kayak-ity yak. Don’t talk back.

I’ve always wanted to kayak. There’s something about the keen little boats and thin oars that seemed possible.

Our family camp offered the opportunity. A row of bright green kayaks lined up along the shoreline of our private beach on Lake Michigan. Each boat had a red lifejacket and orange tipped oar with it. Robby and I watched our friends, Dawn & Steve, take a pair of boats out and effortlessly glide through the water.

“They’re so sporty,” I sighed.

We decided to try it. We joked with the people closest to the waterline that they might want their video cameras handy… that we’d probably have a pretty decent entry for America’s Funniest Home Videos…

We surprised ourselves with our kayaking prowess. We slipped through the water—wobbling only at the start while we found the best hand hold on the oar. We dipped through the low waves coming in to shore and made quick headway towards the second sandbar where our friends were circling.

I liked it. I liked the quiet. I liked the lapping of the water against the boat. The little splash from the oars. I liked the way my shoulders felt, rolling into a steady rhythm—left oar, dip, right oar, dip. I was better at it than Robby. I liked that, too.

We paddled about for a while until we felt guilty for taking up the kayaks when others might want a turn. We headed back to the beach and tried to look nonchalant as though we kayaked all the time.

The next day the waves came crashing in from the deeper water. I was disappointed. On Monday the waves were at 1-2 feet. On Tuesday they were 4-6 feet. Thundering in with deep rolls across the three sandbars. A handful of people took the kayaks out—but people who were better kayakers than we. People who were strong swimmers.

On Wednesday the waves were, in the morning, at 5-8 feet. I didn’t know that Lake Michigan could produce such waves along our gentle beach. The state parks beaches were shut down. We kept the little ones on the sand and away from the dangerous pull of the undertow. By afternoon the waves were receding somewhat—enough for the water to be filled with the older kids and adults from our camp.  Even at calf-deep you could feel the pull of the current tugging at the sand under your feet.

A handful of people went out in the bright green kayaks. My friend, Pammy, and I watched them. She was eager to try it. It was a good day. I felt strong in the sun. Happy at our camp. I agreed to go out with her.

We were doomed from the start. The waves at the shore line were strong and sharp ridged. The little boats tipped up against the waves and then came down hard on the other side. We pushed the kayaks out and got in unsteadily. Pammy gave up before she made it to the first sandbar. I soldiered on thinking that maybe, if I could get out passed the breakpoint of the waves, I’d be able to manage. The roll of the waves sent the front of the boat up impossibly high and then slammed it down while the water gushed over my legs and lap and chest.

I made it past three or four waves—laughing at the ridiculous impassibility of the churning water—only to be rolled in the fifth wave. It came at me with a cheeky curl at the top. I had a quick thought of Greg Brady wiping out with the Tiki idol before it slammed into me and I was under the boat holding the oar. Our Pastor Sue was nearby when I came up sputtering and laughing. She laughed with me and righted the boat so I could crawl back into it. I tried again. A wave rolled me. Again. I crawled back in. Gripped the oar with chattering teeth. I still laughed—because I could see what it must looked like—me being thrown about with each wave—but I was starting to get a little frightened.  The waves were bearing down with more force than I was used to and they had created unpredictably deep pockets on the lake floor. One minute standing next to the boat it was at my chest—the next step it was at my waist—the next over my head—and then a step later it might be at knee height. It scared me.

I was rolled again.  I was out of Pastor Sue’s reach but when I came up, spitting out lake water with my braids pushing past the hairpins knotting them up—I saw two of “my” teenagers hurrying towards me. Jacob and Trey helped me get back in and handed me the oar that had slipped away. I wasn’t sure anymore. The lake had turned menacing. I hesitated.

“You can do it!” they encouraged. They cheered. They laughed with me. But I saw the wave coming that was going to take me out. It was high and thick and it’s top curled in a snarl. The tip of the boat caught and shot up towards the blue sky. The oar shot out of my hands. The wave smacked me across the shoulders and pulled me in so that the boat, the oar, the me were knocked about. The boys righted the boat but I shook my head and coughed out some water. “Nope. I’m good. I’m done. Thank you, boys.” I hugged each and ignored their protests and headed back to the beach pulling the kayak behind me. I was glad to see Robby heading my way to meet me.

I’m not ready for the rapids yet—for now I’d better stick to gentle streams and calmer lake days. Or the beach.