It is March. I realize that may not be a newsflash for most of you, seeing as how it’s been March for a while now. But I have to stop and think about things like what month it is. I was just wondering this morning why they don’t put a little digital calendar on vehicle dashboards. I mean, my rearview mirror tells me the temperature, which is not only useless—I mean, once I’m in my car, it’s a little late to say “oh, 34 degrees, guess I’ll be needing long sleeves and warm shoes.”—but a little mean-spirited, don’t you think? I’m already stuck in traffic and the only radio station that’s not on commercials is playing Gordon Lightfoot and I can’t reach my Santana CD because it slid down on the passenger floorboard and the baby is screaming because he wants me to hand him Curious George which wouldn’t be a problem if I was all stretchy like Mrs. Incredible and if he wanted Curious George then why the heck did he throw him in the way-back, AND you have to remind me that when I get wherever it is I’m going I’m going to be walking across the parking lot with 4 kids in 34 degrees?

But the date, now that would be helpful. Having “March 8″ displayed on my dashboard all day might allow it to sink into my subconscious—or maybe even into my conscious, although I highly doubt that—so that later on when I need to know what day it is I might just possibly be able to at least get the month right.

But I digress….

The reason that March is so significant is that The Hubby and I first met and began dating in March. At least, I think it was March. I’m fairly certain it was. It could have been February, but it would have had to be late February, because we weren’t together on Valentine’s Day. I’m almost positive it was March.

And this March marks the 24th anniversary of the date we met. Twenty-four years. Wow. That’s considerably more than half my life. Well, not considerably more. Somewhat more. A little bit more.  A smidge, really.

There’s a kind of interesting story behind how we met. And I fully intend to share it with you. Eventually. I’ve been trying to share it for days. A couple of weeks, if we’re going for accuracy here. But every time I try to sit down to the keyboard, someone throws up, or walks in with an eye full of goop that needs to be cleaned, or I go to get Mason up from his nap and realize that he’s nowhere near over his stomach virus. My absolute first priority has been working on the adoption fundraising, but I really haven’t gotten much accomplished, because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time wheedling and cajoling a certain 10 year-old moppy-headed boy to take his medicine. And once everyone settles down, there’s the growing pile of  laundry that inevitably follows any plague outbreak.

So I still hope to share the story of how The Hubby and I met before our anniversary month is over. Seriously. Eventually….

I had planned to do it yesterday. Actually, that’s not true. I had planned on spending the day with my manuscript, seeing as how last night was my writers’ guild meeting and I hadn’t picked out a scene to bring for critique. In fact, according to my word-processing program, I haven’t touched the electronic version since January 10. Whew—good thing I’d have an entire day to work on it. Then I realized that we were going to the zoo, and “going to the zoo” and “sitting at my kitchen table reviewing my manuscript” are pretty much mutually exclusive.

So, the zoo it was. Now, it is worth mentioning that not only is it Spring Break—and we home schoolers know to avoid public places during spring break—-but yesterday was 1/2 price day at the Zoo. Unfortunately, sometimes having two in public school and two in home school means that you have the worst of both worlds—especially when it comes to taking weekday field trips during the school year. And with the adoption costs looming over our heads, I am loathe to let go of any money on non-essentials, so there is no way I can justify spending $52 to go to the zoo on a full-price day. The only way I let myself talk me into going on 1/2 price day was by reminding myself that we have asked the kids to sacrifice our yearly vacation to visit grandparents and cousins and hang out on the beach—the highlight of any non-Disney year—-so that we can put that money towards saving this little child.

So I decided that if we left early enough, the crowds wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, I figured “early enough” meant “in time to arrive about the time the zoo opens.” In reality, “early enough” was probably about an hour before opening. But I didn’t know that at the time, so we’ll discuss it later, when it fits into the whole storyline.

I already had our food prepared, clothes picked out—hey, for me, that’s some monumental preparedness. Like, Boy Scout caliber preparedness. I got the kids up—–now, in retrospect, this is where things started to go wrong. The child who takes twice as long to do anything—no, three times as long—-didn’t get out of bed when we told him to. This is coincidentally the child that invariably causes some sort of chaos and discord just as everyone else is walking out the door. There is always a grimace, or a moan, or some sort of melodramatic outburst intended to elicit “Oh, gee—whatever is the matter” from the other residents of MoTopia. Either his only pair of clean jeans isn’t comfortable (since-forever-I-have-always-hated-these-jeans-I’ve-told-you-a-thousand-times-I-hate-them), or he can’t find his shoes and yes he put them back on the shoe shelf someone else must have moved them and it doesn’t matter that nobody else has a motive for moving them—–I mean which one of us would want to move his shoes KNOWING what trauma it would inflict on the entire family?—- or oops he forgot to go to the bathroom when he woke up so now we’re all going to end up sitting down and waiting for 15 minutes because for some reason this kid can’t take care of business in less than 15 minutes….you get the picture. And for the record, all of those things happened yesterday morning, plus a few more.

So, finally we got in the car—only 10 minutes behind schedule—and headed to the zoo. Now, I knew the zoo would be crowded. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Spring Break + 1/2 price admission = catastrophe.  But hey—we’d be there around the time the zoo opened. It would be all those losers that showed up an hour AFTER opening who would suffer.

Five miles from our exit, the electronic TxDOT sign over the highway declared, “Expect delays at University exit.”

Guess what exit goes to the zoo….

No, not AT the exit, by the way, but three miles BEFORE the exit, traffic slowed to a crawl, and the two right lanes froze.  And the traffic remained sloth-slow all…the…way…to…the…zoo.

I think we parked in a neighboring city. We hiked 20 minutes to the zoo entrance behind an elderly couple who were all lovey-dovey and wanted to walk side-by-side. I hope The Hubby and I are still all lovey-dovey at that age. I also hope we are cognizent enough of our surroundings to walk single file on narrow pathways. The first chance we had to veer off, we did, beating the crowd to the entrance plaza where we joined about 25,000 other people waiting to get tickets. Funny thing about 1/2 price day during spring break—-families with one or two kids, they figure the savings isn’t worth the headache and go another day. No, only families with four, five, six children—-or extended families who take bring all their aunts and uncles and cousins and grandma and grandpa—those are the families that say hey, we’re all about 1/2 price day. I know this because they were all in front of me in line.

At some point during our visit, the zoo reached capacity. Evidently, “capacity” is Latin for “good luck getting through here with a stroller, Loser.”  

But we really did have a fabulous day. The weather was perfect, and I had girded myself with major prayer on the way there. Chicken Little had a few anxiety moments when the other chickens failed to recognize the difference between situations requiring side-by-side-handholding and single-file-hand-on-the-shoulder-of-the-person-in-front-of-you. But in the end, she rose to the occasion, and I couldn’t have done it without her help. I reminded them all that today was about making family memories—-the good kind, not the kind that come from unplanned trips to the ER (are there planned trips to the ER?).  And we did a great job. We kept our cool, enjoyed each other’s company, and braved the crowds.

By 4oclock, we had seen everything we wanted to see. We’d even splurged an extra $8 to ride the train to save our tired feet from the 10 minute walk across the zoo. Of course, we had to stand in line on those tired feet for 45 minutes waiting to board the train. But Mason loves trains, and was completely blissfully happy for the entire 3 minute ride.

The 20 minute walk back to the car was infinitely more tortuous now that our feet hurt and our bodies were done with walking.  When you have four children, it is inevitable that you are going to hear the words, ”I can’t walk any further! I’m going to sit down RIGHT HERE. I MEAN it!  I (sniff) can’t (snuff) go on (sob).”

And for the record, Riley reminded me that since I’m the only one with a driver’s license, that really wasn’t an option….

Tags: anniversary, Chicken Little, Ft. Worth Zoo, March, Spring Break, The Hubby

I was little, maybe 4 or 5. It was a black bat—the old fashioned plastic kind, with the vinyl adhesive eyes that you peeled off & stuck on yourself.

It was the coolest kite in the world.

And technically, it was mine. I mean, if you’re talking ownership, as in, ‘Daddy, will you buy me a kite?’ ‘Sure sweetie. Which one do you want?” So maybe in a court of law  I would have been declared legal custodian of said kite. But from a practical standpoint, if you define ownership by who’s holding the string, notsomuch….

“Is it my turn yet, Daddy?”

“Just let me get it a little higher for you.”

“Now?”

“Not yet.”

He emptied the first spool of cotton kite string, then tied on another.

“Now?”

“Just a little higher.”

It was just a black speck in the blue expanse. I worried that it would hit a plane. I worried that it would get too close to the sun and melt like the wax on Icharus’ wings, or worse—-that it would burst into flames, the fire traveling down all 600 feet of string, instantly incinerating my father (what—you thought my overactive imagination was a recent phenomenon?). He told me to not to worry. But I did. Sure enough, the string began to slacken and fall lifelessly to the ground, and I watched in despair as the coolest kite in the world disappeared. And I never even got a turn.

I cried.

He drove me around the neighborhood for a little while. Every crumpled black trash bag crouched by a chain-link fence elicited a cry of “There it is!” But it wasn’t. I know now that he knew then that we weren’t going to find it. It was one of those parental exercises intended to placate childhood grief and assuage parental guilt.

I bought Ramie a kite yesterday. It was a reward for letting me administer eye-drops. Actually, she lobbied for Great Wolf Lodge, but I’m saving that particular bargaining chip in case I ever need to bribe her into getting an enema. No, I told her, the appropriate incentive for eye drops is a small toy, $5 max.

Ramie has unfortunately inherited my inability to make a quick decision. She is ruled by a drive to make the perfect decision instead of settling for a perfectly good decision, which often leads to no decision, which is usually even worse than a mediocre decision. She agonized over the array of choices: bubbles, a giant magnifying glass, toy spice jars for her play kitchen. After much tortured deliberation, she chose a pink and purple kite, emblazoned with that ambassadress of unrealistic body-image expectations, Barbie herself. 

“Can I hold the string, Mommy?”

“Not yet, sweetie. Let me get it up in the air first.”

“Now?”

“Not yet, honey. Let’s get it up in the air, and then you can hold it.”

“But Mom, you’re having all the fun.”

“Ramie, I’m doing the hard part so that you can hold it once it’s up.”

“But I want to do that part.”

As parents, we have all kinds of opportunities to live vicariously through our children, many of them destructive. But this—–well, this was the best and most blessed of opportunities. Here before me lay the opportunity to get this right, to see in my daughter’s eyes the unbridled joy and victory that I had wanted a share in that day at the park with my father.

I handed her the spool, explained lift and slack, explained that if she got it high enough, it would catch a current that would keep it flying even when we didn’t feel any more wind on the ground. I showed her how to pull on the string if it started to dive. “And,” I told her, “if it crashes, we’ll just try again.”

But it didn’t crash. Turns out my little Mei-mei has some mad kite-flying skills. She’s got the instincts, that one does. Launched it on her first try, and flew it for a solid hour. I watched her run from the back yard around to the front of the house, the quintessential picture of childhood ecstasy.

“It’s pretty high, isn’t it Mom?”

“Yes, baby. It’s really high.”

“I’m actually kind of good at this.”

“Yes, baby. You’re really good at this.”

At her request, I ran into the house to fetch big brother & big sister to come see. Truth be told, I had to fight the urge to run up and down the street knocking on doors, calling “Come look what Ramie did—ALL BY HERSELF!!!”  If we lived in the suburbs and it weren’t so far between houses, I might have done it.

My dad and I had lots of fun when I was a kid. But I think there were probably many times when he used my childhood as an opportunity to relive the childhood he didn’t have. When my father was only 4 years old, his mother was hospitalized. He never saw her again. The fragile string that tethered her frail body to this world broke, and she flew away.

His older sister was shipped off to live with the maternal grandparents, and my dad’s paternal grandmother and aunt moved in to help care for him and his twin sister. His father worked two jobs. He didn’t have the luxury of hanging out and flying a kite with his son.

“Mom, my arm’s tired. And I’m hot. And thirsty. How do we get it down?”

“Would you like me to get it down for you?”

As I wound the kite string, bringing Barbie’s ginormous head back down to earth, I didn’t mourn for the 4year old girl who never got to fly her own kite. Instead, I mourned for the father who never got to watch his 4 year old daughter fly her own kite.

We can spend our time and energy lamenting the mistakes our parents made. We can analyze our various neuroses and shortcomings and trace them back to the dysfunctions of our upbringing. Or we can embrace them, learn from them. We can choose to shrug our shoulders and say, “It was what it was,” and move on.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t go get a kite of my own….