Vacation....

My sister looked around as we ate our picnic lunch, "Lifestyles of the poor and unknown." Well, we certainly weren't the Rich and Famous, and that day as we sat near the ocean at a picnic table, in the drizzle and eating soggy tuna fish, I think we all felt a little poor and unknown or just a bit pathetic.

I still have the same picnic cooler. I still force my family to eat picnic lunches versus fast food when we travel. I like it a whole lot better. When I was little I would have done anything to get to eat at McDonald's; now I do anything to not eat there.

What is stirring these thoughts? We are off! It is our last vacation before the school year takes my husband away again. I love vacations. My parents gave me that, along with the green cooler. But when I vacation, I also like to be removed from the strange blog/facebook matrix world I sometimes exist in. So, until my return.....

Just know, the most encouraging thing you can do for me as a writer/blogger is to chime in every now and then, make a comment, become a follower. When this happens my happy, writing heart sores, and I want to write more.

Of This I Have No Doubt

The thoughts keep spilling out of me. What should my first line be? There are so many directions I could have this blog take. Mainly, I want the world to know how amazing my sister is. She is a mother to a boy, age nine. This boy is not your normal son. He never quite makes eye-contact. His words and phrases are robotic, repeated.

I watched him the other day make his way through my house. He enters the backdoor. He has a certain window he always opens. He heads next to my cracker stash, maybe gets some sour cream for taste. Then he goes upstairs to use the bathroom, his preference, and then he always ends up in the back bedroom where he rolls and frolics in the bed covers. I went to see what he was up to, and there he was, his little 9-year-old frame standing up on my hope chest, with the comforter hanging from his body like a Christmas pageant Shepard. He was smiles and laughter. "OK, come here. Jump! It'll be fun." He thought it was.

The older he gets the more odd he seems. He is autistic to the core. Classic autism. As time progresses it gets harder and harder to be his caregiver, and yet my sister does it with grace and dignity.

She gets frustrated by all the information out there on how to "heal" your child of autism, the therapies, the foods/diets etc. Where are the resources for those who are living with autism? Our pastor was talking about true character, that when hard times come the true character gets squeezed out like a sponge. Her character is squeezed out on a daily, constant basis. There is never a break.



On top of being autistic, he has Pica, so he eats everything and anything. It is like he is sensing his world through taste. The other day he was doing this to a brick in their backyard. Nothing is truly safe. He's tasted her furniture, her piano, dirt, the sandbox, toothbrushes, wood chips, paper clips....

She keeps doing what she does, loving and parenting. She's the first to admit she's not perfect. She has her moments when she cries to God and asks why. When she doesn't want to do it anymore, but she does. (Didn't Christ even do this in the Garden?)

She is a woman of amazing character. I think her reward in heaven should be great, and it will be; she looks forward to the day when her son can relate and be made perfect. She has no doubts that he will be in heaven with her someday, even if he never utters a prayer. I have no doubts either.

I told her that 100 years ago people would have seen him and labeled him the crazy child, the wild child. Most likely he would have been put away somewhere.

She said that at times you feel like inside there is no one, but then you look into his eyes and you can see his soul. This is true.

I've never cried about my nephew. We knew from a very young age that something was not right. He was less than a year old when we all noticed he wasn't hitting major developmental markers. Even as an infant, when you held him, he seemed distant and removed.



I finally cried the other day. I realized that I loved him. He is part of my family. He is my sister's son, and I grieved the loss of not really getting a normal connection with him. I think I have kept my emotional distance as a way of coping.

That is what every parent lives for, connection. That is why we all get so giddy when we see our baby's first smile. When they talk. When they ask us questions. When they tell us their stories.

This never will happen for my sister, although she does say there is a unique bond between the two of them.

I am completely humbled by her. She may be a mere 21 months older than me, but she is an old soul and a mentor to me as a mother. I love her dearly, and so wish I could fix or change her burden, but I can't. I can listen. I can sympathize. I can be encouraged in Christ as I watch her live.

We often hear people say that they feel God calling them to the mission field, teaching, nursing, politics, volunteerism, but you never hear a mother say, "I think God is calling me to give birth to a special needs child." No, instead we pray for a healthy baby.

Yet, I have always heard the heart of my sister say, "Your will Lord." Always.

Of this I have no doubt.

Simply Summer

Some things are just simply summer...summer reading programs at the library, swimming lessons, sprinklers, slip 'n slides, eating raw beans from the garden, crickets at night, shorts and blackberry picking, the rattle of the canner and its steam, sunsets, heatwaves, dripping Popsicles....summer.

We are in the thick of it, the direct middle. Since my family is bound to the school year calendar, this is when I begin to notice the school supplies displayed in stores. I desperately ignore the impending doom. This is when I panic because next month is August, then it all comes quickly to a stop. Instead of living January to December, I visualize the world turning August to September.

It just seem more accurate, more right. Shouldn't the year be put to sleep when you bring in the last harvest? September signifies that for me. It is when I do my last bit of beans, get in one last taste of a fresh peach. It is when my mums bloom while the rest of my flowers begin to fade. The amber hues rejoice. The grass is rough on my toes; we've stopped watering. We are waiting for the rains of October to green it up again.

I always look forward, but I'm getting better at living in the current. There is still a lot of summer living left. There are plenty of evening swims to be had. I'm giddy with anticipation, soon I will be devouring the orchard of its plums and pears. I can't wait to smell the ripe grapes in the warm evening. There are plenty of nights to sleep with the window open and listen to the crickets sing and discuss.

The tractors have yet to sir the earth and dust the world with their discs. I can remember crossing the fields right after the first plow. I was a child and needed to play with my neighbors. They lived two fields away. My ankles would twist with delight over the large clods of dirt. It was the subsequent plowing that made the dirt smooth and soft, no shoes needed.

As a child, summer seemed endless. It felt like a whole year past in those three month. It felt like I grew up and became a whole new person for all my friends to see once school came around again.

Even as I type this now, I can smell summer breeze through my office windows, breeze in and sit next to me as I ponder it all.

Books That Barf and Davy Crocket

OK, our two favorites from our last trip to the library are:

My Little Sister Ate One Hare. Reasons: it is the only book where a child is eating ants with underpants, along with other nasty things, and then barfing it all up at the end. What child wouldn't think that was the greatest thing ever! Barf!



And Davy Crockett Saves the World...this guy is the bomb. He has muscles pouncing out of his buckskin, hair the gets fried by a comet, shaves with an ax, and a bear named Death Hug. I guess my boys are suckers for hyperbole! They laugh and think he is quite amazing.




Happy Reading!

The Bookseller of Kabul

I realize I'm a little late in my discovery of The Bookseller of Kabul, but it is a must read!

I don't want to only learn about the times I lived through by watching historical movies or reading history books. I think it is important to know what is currently happening that is making history. When my grandchildren need to interview someone who lived during the US involvement Afghanistan, I want to be able to be an informed narrator. I also want to know, so I can be an informed participant in this country and our democratic system.

We may be the United States of America, but Afghanistan is making its mark, and has for generations.

This book gives us a glimpse into the family structure of this culture so opposite of our own.

The author, Asne Seirstad, is a journalist. She has reported from Chechnya, the Balkans, and Iraq. This book is an international bestseller.

Why? Well, I know why I liked it:

1. It is nonfiction, but reads like a novel. She weaves the members of this particular family, Sultan's, like a good fiction read--with twists and turns. You want to know what is going to happen next. You want to know how one member of the family will effect another. You find yourself cheering for certain characters.

2. It makes me so grateful to be born in a country that gives women choice and equal opportunity. Growing up I could to whatever I wanted. I could express my wants and my desires, process my thoughts with my father and my mother. My husband also views me as an equal in our marriage. We are in this life together. What a contrast my experience as a woman has been in comparison to the women of Afghanistan. I almost felt like I couldn't breathe when I read of their experiences. It went beyond the description of the burka. They have no choices, no opportunities. No choice in who they marry, if they get to go to school, what jobs they do around the house, where they shop, when they shop, where they go, what they see, if their husbands take another wife etc. At times I wanted to scream for them.

3. I learned things I never knew about the US involvement in Afghanistan. Things I was frustrated by. As much as I wanted and want to see this country become democratic and these women liberated, it does seem a bit hopeless. What a waring country, waring for hundreds of years. What a mess. The United States comes in and tries to solve it all, and we the American people want it solved quickly. Is this realistic? But can we do nothing?

4. Seierstad's ability to describe moments and singular places is phenomenal. I will forever have etched on my mind the women's bathhouse, the trip through the long tunnel, shopping in a burka, Bibi Gul and her fatness, Aimal's concession stand, and the utter ache of Leila.

I hope that I've persuaded you to pick up this excellent read. Your eyes will further be opened.

Camping....Is It Worth It?

It takes at least two days. Our washroom slowly fills up with all manner of packing....suitcases, boxes, sleeping bags, tents, water jugs.... My husband and I make a perfect team. I make the lists. (Although during this last camping trip the famous line was, "We need to put that on the list for next year.) I pack all our essentials to the backdoor. He makes the essentials fit in the van. I think he has the hard part; since I am spatially challenged I leave that to him. This year we removed two seats from the van to make it all fit. I thought we packed a lot when we introduced an infant to our traveling lives, but I'm thinking two growing boys demand even more: bike, tricycle, dump truck, tractor, soccer balls, goals....these last items don't fit nicely in a box.

Then we drive. We arrive. We play. We get dirty. We don't just get dirty, we are dirt. We become one with the dust and grime. We pretend that our daily swims in the lake are baths, but they really aren't. Why do I even pack a cosmetic bag? I never use it. I barely get a brush through my hair or toothpaste in my mouth. I did pack shoes for the boys, but they never wore them. They rambled through the woods with bare toes. My oldest asked, "Why does the blood come out of the skin?" I need to bring two boxes of bandages for next year's event.

We sleep, a bit. The air mattress helps; one has a slow leak. I end up with two boys in one tent and my husband with one in the other. We miss each other. He tried to send a text message to me in the middle of the night. I hear the beep, but can't locate it in the folds and layers of sleeping bags and blankets. It was deep down in the diaper bag. It was a sweet text. I read it the next day; I would have liked getting it in the night as we both lay awake, being perfectly still to keep our kids asleep.

Bedtime? It is dictated by the sun. Morning? Dictated by the crows. Sugar limit? S'mores have no limit, neither to red vines and gummy bears. Trail mix? They pick out the M&M's.

The camp cleanup takes even longer than the set up, but it is all part of the experience. We arrive at home, totally tired yet strangely refreshed. Even the baby is dirty and needing a bath. We soak and scrub. My feet will never be the same.

My washroom is again crowded with stuff, stuff to be washed and sorted. Stuff to be stashed and put away until next summer.




Yet we all love it. It is about family and being in the moment. I asked my oldest what his favorite part was. "Everything, I just liked everything. That's all."

Me too.
But it is worth it. We love it. We plan on doing it again and again.

More posts to come.....had a great vacation at the beach....many thoughts....