Hail and Farewell

This weekend was one long Hail and Farewell as Tim returned from a week of camp, and Kolbe headed out the revolving door for Scout camp.

I was a mix of emotions as Kolbe left, but, to be perfectly frank, the overriding one was Relief! when that heavily laden Boy Scout trailer finally drove out of our neighborhood. Does that make me an awful mom? Let's just say the two hours before liftoff tend to be rather stressful.

Having done this four years running, I have to say both the packing and the sendoff have improved rather dramatically. My friend and I were laughing about our much younger selves shipping our boys off to camp the very first time. You'd have thought we were sending them to Damascus for the summer. Every fear -- the reasonable and the fringe -- comes at you when your oldest does anything for the first time.

Where Boy Scouts are concerned, I've come to realize a few things:

1. The equipment you ship off with your son -- the cot, the pocket knife, the bug spray, the mess kit -- that collection of gear that sets you back approximately $187.37? The vast, vast majority of it really does come home eventually. And you'll actually reuse most of it fairly soon, so the costs (gradually, theoretically) drop. At least I think so. And that's what the fine folks at L.L. Bean hope you believe. Early on, a Scout learns that he is to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc. The Scout's mom learns that she is to label every last t-shirt and pair of boxer shorts with a black Sharpie. 

2. Those horrible scenes you try so hard to keep out of your mind, the scenes from horror movies you might have spent your teenage years watching? Yeah, the ones that tend to be set in a summer camp. They don't really happen. So don't dwell on them.

3. And if you happened to have read of The Shack (which did for national parks what Friday the 13th did for summer camp), well, it's best you put that out of your mind as well.

4. Problems do occur, of course. After weekend trips too numerous to count and many years of summer camp, my focus tends to linger over crises far more likely and, thankfully, far more mundane in nature --  sunburn and stitches, Poison Ivy and blisters.  

5. Fathers do things very differently than mothers, and it's a very, very good thing I don't have a front row seat to see this in living color.

6. The boys come home filthy, happy, and full of great memories.

We have another farewell tomorrow morning as Dave goes back out for the remainder of camp!

Juiced?

So apparently some parents involved in summer swim league have sold energy drinks in the parking lot during meets. I received an email about this yesterday. Sometimes I'm a little slow to grasp an essential point, so I was first thinking that the concern was that these parking lot sales were taking business from the concession stand.

Oh, how naive I can be.

Finally it dawned on me that the email was talking about Energy Drinks and the key word was Energy, not Drinks. Think: Red Bull, Full Throttle, Monster. Perhaps those involved weren't thinking about those tired, tired swimmers, but thinking more like Toddlers and Tiaras' parents who juice their three-year-olds up on Pixie Sticks and Diet Coke before sending them off on stage.

In other words, these were performance-enhancing drugs. Legal ones, put performance enhancing drugs.

Hmmm.

The sarcastic side of me wonders two things:

First, why weren't these energy drinks offered to those tired, tired parents enduring marathon meets without benefit of sprint or relay to pry their eyelids open as the nights grew long?

Second, why didn't some bright soul dispense with the energy drinks entirely and instead offer some adult beverages, preferably of the dry, red variety?

Really, people, let's use the old noggins.

I remember a little league game years ago. We were losing something like 19-2 when our assistant coach approached the umpire because the opposing team was consistently sidelining the one mediocre player on the team and subbing in their star batter in his place.

They were killing us and still felt a need to cheat.

In little league!

(And then I catch faultiness of my logic which seems to ask Why Cheat? if it's just little league or if you're already winning.  Of course, I don't believe this at all.)

I'm sure all sports fans sense the damage done by the Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrongs of the athletic world. We cheer watching the Olympics, but cheaters and dopers have cast a pall that may never go away. And drug testing has unintended casualties. I remember watching Andrea Raducan of Romania win a gold medal in gymnastics only to have it stripped away because her team physician had instructed her to take something like Sudafed for a cold. The drug she innocently took is no longer banned, but her gold medal was never reinstated.

Summer swim league is a long way from the Olympics, and energy drinks are certainly not banned. I scratch my head at all this, but then I'm the mom who took her kids to McDonald's before the last meet.

But do you know what else I did? I arranged a private swim lesson for one of the kids who was struggling with his strokes. Performance enhancing? Yep. And I plan to do that for a different child this week.

Just Add Water

Everyone warned me about swim team: daily practices, marathon meets. The practices, folks seemed to take in stride. But the meets, oh the meets!, the meets garnered descriptors like epic and  gruesome.

Our first meet was rough long before the first swimmer took his mark. We had a doctor's appointment in the mid-afternoon. The bad news is that it involved three of us. The good news was that it was the sort of appointment that starts on time and ends on time. But being the day of the swim meet, naturally it didn't end on time. Which means I didn't gas up the van, and I was late picking up Kolbe from computer camp, and we were all late for the meet before we managed to pull out of the driveway.

And then the sky opened up.

For perspective, during the first ten days of June, seven inches of rain came to our previously parched area. I'm fairly sure a solid inch or so fell as I dashed from the van into the community center. As I returned to the van, the rain was coming sideways, and I was drenched to the skin.

The meet was about forty minutes away. It took us a good eighty minutes to get there -- bad rain, a missed turn or two or six, a necessary stop at the gas station, avoiding debris in the road. Given the weather, I called my friend Rachel to see if -- maybe, possibly, dare I say hopefully? -- the meet had been called.

No such luck.

As we pulled into the parking lot an hour late, I noticed some of our swim team families heading for their cars.

"Is it cancelled?" I asked another friend, trying hard to disguise the glee in my voice.

No, turns out they were just opting to wait it out in a dry vehicle.

To see the gear we dis-engorged from the van, you might have thought we intended to spend a few days rather than a few hours at this pool that I'm sure was very nice except that it was hard to get a clear view through the deluge.

I'll say this for swim people: They're nothing if not tenacious. There we sat huddled under umbrellas and towels for thirty minutes, sixty minutes. We'd hear a rumble of thunder, and every rumble brought another twenty minute delay.

Rachel's husband Paul kept joking, "I just can't have my kids swimming under these conditions" in vain hopes that we'd bag the meet and take our soggy selves home.

And then -- surprisingly, amazingly -- they started the races.

And how fun was that!

There is nothing cuter than a bunch of five-year-olds doing "big arms" across a pool. One pint-sized girl has mastered a unique maneuver that's sort of like stroke, stroke, wrap your arm around the rope. She does this with near flawless grace, and I hope her mom gets it on tape.

Too, too cute.

All the veteran moms kept patting me on the back and saying, "This is as bad as it gets." An out-of-town meet, horrible weather, long delays. Around nine o'clock, with the weather still looking ominous, enough races were complete to declare the meet done. We packed up thirty-seven pounds of sodden gear and home we went.


Yesterday was our second meet. I was determined not to repeat the error of our ways.

Three of the kids had afternoon dental appointments. Somehow we have doctor's appointments before every swim meet in June. The good news was that the dentist's office was almost directly across the street from the pool. We got out of the dentist on time (and with no cavities!).  We ate an early dinner and killed some time at the McDonald's Playland.

(Don't get me started on the irony of eating McDonald's just before an athletic event designed to promote fitness. We were on a schedule, people!)

And let the record reflect that we were early. We arrived as the coach was pulling in. The only snafu was that John's buddy who rode with us couldn't get his Speedo on. Thankfully, five-year-old boys don't sweat little things like being naked in front of a friend's mother. A tug and a pull and all was well.

And now for the bad news. Here's the deal with swim meets that don't get called for bad weather: They last forever. For-ever!

John had two races early on, and Kolbe had one. We had another obligation last night, so Dave left after Kolbe's 100 meter freestyle. That was at 7:15. Looking at the heat sheet, I figured Kolbe would swim again around 9:30.

Just call me an optimist.

Kolbe's final race was at 10:00.  As in 10:00 p.m., as in five hours after we arrived at the pool.

I looked at my friend Stephanie and said, "Wow. This is going long, huh?"

"No," she said in her gentle way, "This is moving along kind of quickly."

I briefly contemplated running the little people home and arranging a ride for Kolbe. I am not a mother who kills the entire family for the sake of every last sporting event every child has. But here's the thing: The older boys are latecomers to this sport. We knew this going in, and we discussed this with them. Tim and Kolbe are fifteen and eleven and swimming with and against guys who started at John's age.

We knew this, but that doesn't mean it's been easy. It isn't easy to do things you don't necessarily do well. It isn't easy to do them in front of a crowd. It isn't easy in a sport that is so individualized. It's your heat, your lane, your time.

As I spied John running around with glow sticks, playing in mud l-o-n-g past his bedtime, as I watched Ainsley looking precious in her flowered nightdress, curled up under a towel on a lounge chair, I knew that the best place for them would be home. But the best place for me was pool-side, cheering loudly as Kolbe swam the 74th of 77 races.

We stayed.

And we were back at the pool at 9:30 this morning eating donuts and playing water polo -- standard morning-after-the-meet fare. One of the moms sorted through last night's results and assembled the ribbons. John came in sixth in his sprint and first in his relay. And I am one proud mom. And Kolbe, who battled a nervous stomach all evening and would have preferred to skip that late night race entirely, well, his relay team came in third.

(Kolbe attempted to explain to me that there in an A Relay and a B Relay and he was on the B Relay and there were only three teams on the B Relay, soooo getting third place meant his team came in dead last).

He may be entirely correct in his assessment.

But this I know: Kolbe pushed himself well out of his comfort zone last night. And I, for one, am declaring victory. And victories like this one, successes that are hard fought and borne of prayer and perseverance and grit, mean far more than the cheap, white ribbon you stuff in a drawer.

A few years back, I watched my niece Hannah, a swim team veteran, swimming in Lake Erie. I have no idea if she's fast or slow, but I do know she's a graceful, competent, beautiful swimmer. When the marathon meets are behind us and the practices are done, this is what I hope my boys will take away. Despite this long, rambling whine, swim team is one of the best things we've taken on in a long time.

Dad

It's Theme Thursday over at Clan Donaldson. This week's theme is Dad. Here's one of my favorite pictures of my Dad:

Two years ago I wrote the following post about Dad. I don't think I could say it today any better than I said it then. He still rocks!

My father's birthday came and went, and the post I had written in my mind never made it to the screen. My message is brief, and I lift it from the Gymboree t-shirt John wore last Father's Day:

My Dad Rocks!

My Dad rocks in a thousand ways -- some significant, some trivial.

Years ago, when my sister was considering an important decision, Dad offered some blunt advice.

"When you have kids," he shared, "your dreams die."

On the face of it, you would think those words stemmed from a life of disappointment and bitterness, from a person disillusioned and disenchanted. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When my parents first married, Dad owned his own business. It was a T.V. and radio shop. Dad is a mechanical wizard and has a passion for all things electronic. I'm sure he loved setting his own hours and being his own boss.

When children began arriving in regular succession, Dad closed his business and ultimately invested decades in a career with the Bell System. He was not his own boss and did not set his own hours. It was no dream job, I'm sure, but he was able to support us nicely, to pay tuition at Catholic schools,  to provide health insurance.

In short, he let a dream die.

In truth, though, Dad is a man of many, many dreams. The T.V. shop closed, but he went on to pursue a hundred other joys -- fishing and ham radios, model airplanes and chess. He loved the water and always dreamed of living on a lake.

He had a passion for boats. We always had boats. Yes, that's plural. Dad's record was owning four boats at one time. Dad would typically buy a clunker held together by a thin veneer of varnish and spend years refurbishing it. When I was a baby, he ordered a sailboat kit and built an entire boat in our basement. He then ripped out half the kitchen to get it out of the house. True story. The entire neighborhood and the local media turned out for the occasion. 

We often joked that my father had nine lives. He was forever slicing this or breaking that while sailing or carving or chiseling.

Around the office Dad was known as "Rapid Regan";  in our family he was "Gotta Go." He attended school years before anyone had heard of ADHD. Had he been born fifty years later, no doubt he would have had a lengthy string of letters after his name. I am sure he was a challenge in the classroom and at home. My boys love to hear the story of their Great Grandmother sending Grandpa to his room and then finding him inexplicably flying a kite out his bedroom window. No doubt there is a bevy of nuns who bypassed Purgatory entirely for having attempted to divert one Keith Regan from his chess manuals and radio magazines and in the direction of grammar and algebra.

Dad is something of a character. One of his most endearing qualities is his ability to laugh at his own foibles. We laugh right along with him. Last week I sat engrossed in a game of Scrabble and listened to my sister attempt to teach Dad how to check his email. Her tone alternated between patient and patronizing as he interjected "What the hell's that for?' and "Ah, forget it! Just forget it!"

After about sixty seconds of this,  my shoulders were shaking and tears coursed down my face I was laughing so hard.

Why? Because I've hear this identical exchange every! time! I! visit! I mean, every time. Don't you know these software engineers have formed a vast conspiracy to frustrate Keith Regan and Keith Regan alone?

Dad is still best friends with Lerew, a childhood pal. I will never forget the weekend they spent driving around trying to scam free Wi-Fi access. They finally succeeded by creeping in great stealth up the driveway of an exclusive club. They came home thrilled with their success and chuckling over their antics, two men in their seventies with multiple open heart surgeries between them. I wondered if they had thrown TP through the trees and scammed a beer or two.

I remember having coffee with my sister on my parents' deck as Dad fished offshore. We looked up to see Dad gesturing wildly, arms flailing madly. Kate and I immediately burst out laughing. No need to hear the dialogue. Make no mistake about it -- someone had just lost a Walleye.

Walleye fishing is a part of everyday life because Dad is living out his dream of living on the water. My parents live on an island in Lake Erie.

To me, that is a key part of their story. There is a time to do the right thing, to let a dream die. But, in Dad's case, he was really embracing another dream. He took hold of that new dream and didn't get mired in self-pity. He didn't count the cost over and over again. He found a life of purpose, of commitment, of excitement, of unexpected joy. In the end many of his dreams did come to pass.

That's a lesson I hope I have learned from my father.

Now in their 52nd year of marriage,  my parents are now, without question, walking through the "for worse " part of their wedding vows. My mother lives with chronic pain and rapidly diminishing mobility. Obviously, my dad lives with this as well. Pressing medical needs make life on an island in Lake Erie a tad problematic.

On a recent visit, Dad casually mentioned, "We need to think about selling the house."

The house. The house he built. The house on the lake.

Dad shared this with all the gravity of discussing new tires or having a tree removed. We need to think about selling the house.

Why? Because he is a courageous man, a man willing to let one dream die so that a more important one might live, a man who knows he will not succumb to bitterness and self-pity if things -- even really important things -- don't go his way.

I pray that he doesn't have to sell the house, but the fact that he can utter those words, can face that possibility, simply reinforces my longstanding view:

My Dad Rocks!

More of My Girl

On her way to a princess party that included tiaras, tutus, make-up, and manicures. 

Can I just state for the record how un-me all this is? Can I also add how fun it all is?

And those shoes on the wrong feet? They really complete the ensemble. 

At Least It Wasn't a Snake

Tropical Storm Andrea brought an abrupt end to our drought-like conditions and dumped something like four inches of rain on our parched land.This made for a long and uneventful first swim meet and a few afternoons of movies and board games.

When we get weather like this, I love to run out to the swamp near us to see what's changed.

I share my Dad's love of water -- rivers, lakes, oceans, and, yes, even the swamp makes the list. My older boys so far do not share my love for walking the beach. What's the point, they wonder. What are we going to do, they ask.

What do they know? I love exploring water. The shore is never the same twice.

We log lots of time on the Great Lakes. After a ferocious storm one night, my sister Karen and I walked waaaay down the beach to search for a lost toy or two. We came upon the mother lode of items swept out and then back in by the waves of Lake Erie -- towels, floats, buckets, shovels. We could have held a yard sale with the loot we hauled away.

On Saturday morning the rest of the gang was busy sleeping late, attending a birthday party, and doing jobs around the house, so John and I took a brief hike across the swamp. The snakes were out in force. I can type this calmly only because they were at a distance. John was dying to catch something -- a lizard, a frog, a dragon fly. As we walked back to the car, I spotted a small turtle crossing the road.

"Catch it, John," I called.

John caught it, named it Batman, and then renamed it Mr. Turtle. We brought Mr. Turtle home.

Tim saw it and said, "Duuuuude, Mr. Turtle is my father. The name's Crush." He has a perfect Aussie meets Surfer accent and can still remember nearly every line of Finding Nemo. 

(Maybe I should strike that line. Tim's now fifteen and probably in denial about the number of times he watched that flick when he was little).

I told John we'd check with Mr. Swenson, science teacher extraordinaire, to see what kind of turtle we'd bagged. Mr. Swenson's the go to guy with
any form of wildlife. Bring a photo, a carcass, or a live specimen, and Steve will ID it. I texted Mr. Swenson and went about the rest of the day picking up Ainsley and getting Tim ready for camp. As Tim was making his list and checking it twice, I heard John yell, "Mr. Turtle is gone!"

Gone?

Sure enough, Mr. Turtle was nowhere to be seen. I began to move a few items around gingerly, trying hard not to be surprised to find a living creature in Ainsley's comforter or behind John's fire engine. Gingerly soon turned to hurriedly as Mr. Turtle proved elusive. Soon I was pulling ever last item out of John and Ainsley's room. I dusted and vacuumed, pulled out all the furniture and unearthed the entire closet. I moved on to my room and then to Tim and Kolbe's. There were six people at home, and I found it hard to believe a turtle could march straight down the hall with no one spotting it.

Mr. Swenson texted me: Stop by. I'm in my backyard.

I texted back: Mr. Turtle has gone missing. I'm cleaning and beseeching Saints Francis and Anthony to come to our aid pronto!

He responded: Though not of theological correctness . . . a prayer to good ol' Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter, might be good, too.

Mr. Turtle was M.I.A., and I was worried. Worried that we would find Mr. Turtle when an unbearable stench began emanating from, I don't know, underneath the piano. Worried that John had overheard his parents discussing whether or not we could keep Mr. Turtle and had found a really good hiding place to render our catch and release efforts null and void. Worried because to this day I remember being about eight years old and pulling back a bookshelf to discover our long dead gerbil who had lost a fight with our cat. Worried that I also remember the fate of the turtle that spent a few hours in the cozy comfort of my sister's pocket.

Dave sat down with John and gently but firmly explained that without water, Mr. Turtle would die.
Meanwhile, I took a last look through the now spotless bedroom and, lo and behold, there sat Mr. Turtle wedged between a container of light sabers and the Lego table.

Mr. Swenson identified Mr. Turtle with a long Latin name and a simple English one: He was a mud turtle, and Mud Turtles bite.

By that point I was relieved. Three hours of  being a pet owner had not gone swimmingly. I need no extra drama in my life. Back to the swamp we went. We released Mr. Turtle into the wilderness, and he marched off, not surprisingly, at a rather brisk pace.

To keep everything in perspective, I watched this story of a dad and dog who teamed up to rescue a four-year-old Ainsley look-a-like who was cornered by a Cottonmouth.

Mr. Turtle seems nothing short of cuddly by comparison.

Girls

It's Theme Thursday over at Clan Donaldson. This week's theme is Girls.

An old one:

A new one:

 My favorite one:

The runner-up: