Johnathan at 22

My second son happens to be living at home right now, so we had the opportunity today to celebrate his birthday with him. We pulled out all the stops for dinner and had grilled porterhouse steaks, corn on the cob, grilled zucchini, bread and my pal's outstanding homemade pesto. What a meal. I'm nearly asleep as I try to digest. While we take a break and get ready for cake and candles, Johnathan is allowing me to interview him.

Me: How was your day?
J: It was busy.
Me: In a good way?
J: Yeah, I never regret being busy. I was getting ready for Jorge to come from Spain. It was also fun to be able to give people gifts on my birthday as I delivered my presents from Spain.
Me: What do you see happening for you in the next year?
J: I see myself living on my own, preparing to move on to the next phase of my life.  Sometime I want to get married a start a family, so I need to prepare for that to happen with work and education.
Me: What was something good that happened in the past year:
J: Returning home after serving an honorable full-time mission. When I say that, I'm also glad that I got home ready to keep going, knowing it was another beginning, not an end, and that I had put in my best efforts and worked my hardest.
Me: How do you most enjoy spending your free time right now:
J: In the company of friends with whom I have a lot in common.
Me: What's something you want the world to know about you right now?
J: That I'm secretly black. Just kidding. My real answer is that life is very good and that I'm enjoying it a lot.
Me: Anything else?
J: Nope.
Me: Happy Birthday!

Johnathan has always been a great person. I homeschooled him for 3 years and when he went back to school I genuinely missed having him around. He has a pleasant, kind personality, and he is one of the hardest working people I've ever met. He has a wicked sense of humor and likes to look for the positive aspects of every situation.

I'm thrilled at what a great person he's grown into and can't wait to see what life brings for him.

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A Dead Cell Phone, an Unlucky Banana and Some Vegetables

I'm sure you are intrigued.
Here's the scoop:

Friday, Evan and I took the metro down to the city to meet up with a couple of his friends. It was, overall, a great day...for a boy. For a mom, it was a great learning experience. Here is the summary:

• Tip #1: Don't take a non-disposable water bottle to the Capitol. You can't take it in, even if it is empty (this is an actual travel tip so remember it-never have I seen so many disgruntled tourists). 
• Tip #2: If you do take a non-disposable water bottle to the Capitol, throw it away before you let your kid walk into the capitol to meet friends without you, even if you think he will only be in there for 30 minutes and then be right back out.  Water bottles are cheap. Therapy is expensive.  
• Tip #3: Make sure your phone is charged. All the time. Just do it. Go charge it right now. 
• Tip #4: When the security guard at the Capitol tells you that EVERYONE will come out the same door they came in, don't believe her. There are TUNNELS to leave the Capitol. It is possible that, while you wait and assume your kid will just come back to the last place you were together, your kid is walking to the Library of Congress invisibly, right under your feet and then taking a train to the Lincoln Memorial without any knowledge on your part. See #3 above. 
• Tip #5: Remember that in Washington D.C, the most heavily guarded and paranoid city on earth, it is not a good idea to look desperate, crazy and unbalanced. Get a grip on yourself and try not to look like a terrorist BEFORE you walk up to a police officer to ask to use his phone to try and get in touch with your 15-year old son who is now on the other side of the National Mall, which looks rather small on google maps but is actually about an hour walk from end to end. 
• Tip #6: Remember that even if you made that previously-mentioned water-bottle mistake, you are still a smart person and can figure it out (10 minutes of walking, a 15-minute taxi ride and a 20-minute pedi-cab adventure later we were back together,  on the train and on our way home) and that if the kid is smiling and thinks it was all a big adventure, it's not so bad. But go charge your cell phone anyway. 

It looks so beautiful from this vantage point. 

The Mighty Statue of Freedom

Pavement in the rain while I waited for Evan

People Watching Heaven

More People Watching as the rain started. 

The Library of Congress. He was probably in there when I
turned around and took this photo. 

So that was Friday. 

And really, can anything be more gripping than accidentally losing your kid in the Capital of the Free World? Take a deep breath and prepare for the tale of the Unlucky Banana. 

You probably already know this, but I did not. Bananas are the worst kind of bad luck on a fishing boat. It's true, but I, being unlearned in the ways of the sea, unwisely packed a single, deadly Musa acuminata polyploid in Evan's lunch for his Chesapeake Bay fishing trip on Saturday. It went unnoticed in his little cooler for the first part of the day but to the brave fisherman plying the waves for edible prizes, its effects were painfully obvious. Nothing but toadfish and a couple of spotfish for the first hour and a half of the trip. For anyone. When the banana was discovered, Evan was almost thrown overboard along with it for bringing such a deadly curse upon their fair vessel, but instead, they just jettisoned the evil yellow. True to its sinister nature, it followed them, floating ominously back to the boat. The owner gunned it for a full five minutes and they finally got far enough away for the power of the fruit-that-shall-not-be-named to wane. The other passengers avoided Ev for another couple of hours until he finally caught a fish, then gradually things turned around and the expedition was a success. The bottom line:  With the cursed, thick-skinned thing on the boat, 2 keepers. After nature's not-so-perfect-food was properly exorcized, 62 keepers. SIXTY-TWO!!! 

I tell you, I'm convinced and you should be too. Beware the banana friends. Seriously. 

As if that wasn't enough to think about, on Saturday night my garden got some special visitors. It was so fun to watch these kids I adore climbing around the veggies, squealing with delight when they found something to pick. I loved it. My own kids' interest in the garden has waned over the years, so it is fun to have some younger ones nearby for whom it is still a novelty. It is really satisfying to see this tiny little patch of land be alive in so many different ways. 

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Evan's Day

Yesterday (without my camera, sadly), Evan and I celebrated his birthday. I'll try to paint some pictures with words.

The day started out by me making him go to swim practice. His back has been sore again (I can't remember if I reported here that he's recovering from a stress fracture) so I didn't make him go earlier in the week, but thought he ought to go yesterday. I dropped him off at the pool about 5 minutes early, then I went home, grabbed a shower, printed out agendas for my meeting at 10:15 and ran back to get him.

I thought immediately that something was weird because usually he is outside waiting for me, chomping at the bit to go home. Not so. I waited a few minutes and didn't see him, then I suddenly noticed him at the back of the pool on a lounge chair, like he'd apparated there or something, because I had NOT seen him walk across the pool deck. I called out and he came to the car. Something still seemed strange. Then I noticed that he wasn't wet.

Turns out, and this just cracks me up, that because he was a couple minutes early for practice, he went and laid down on the lounge for a minute. He then proceeded to SLEEP THROUGH THE PRACTICE!! No one noticed him laying there. He woke up about a minute before I saw him, which is why he seemed to just appear out of nowhere. Too funny. What a start to the day. It's so surreal to watch him become so typically teenagery--sleeping on a dime and all that.

While I was at my meeting, he stayed awake and organized a party day with two of his best pals. It gives me such a happy heart to tell this story because he's known these guys since he was 3 or 4. We did a little home playgroup/preschool together many moons ago and they've just always been friends. The fact that he wanted to celebrate his 15th birthday with these two, his fellow Musketeers, helps me know that our decision to settle in this neighborhood, this little house, this ward and all that, was truly the right thing. Lifelong friends are rare and precious.

Lunch at Famous Dave's was punctuated by one of the boys sampling the hottest sauce on the table and living through it and lots of other laughs.  There was much of shooting the wrappers of drinking straws at foreheads and quoting from The Emperor's New Groove (perhaps the greatest quoting movie EVER) and playing of the quiz game I keep on my phone. I raised my coolness factor by blasting my classic rock-out playlist in the car and giving them 10 bucks for the arcade at the movie theater.

The movie was X-Men: First Class which had plenty of action, a pretty good plot that significantly improved my understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis (I always did suspect that Mutants were behind it) and the fun of watching Michael Fassbender (the new Mr. Rochester) and James McAvoy (Jane Austen's Crush in Becoming Jane) be all super-heroic. Nice.

The boys came to our house for a bit before heading off to church youth activities, then Ev ended the day by spending the evening at J's house.

It was a good time-I loved being in their company and seeing the world through their eyes.

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Girl's Camp

Every spring I wait hopefully for the phone call from a leader from church asking me to help out at the annual camp for teenaged girls. Oh, happy thought! I would go just to sweep the floors if they needed it. This year I went as an assistant to the head cook and it was big fun. The three of us who were the Kitchen Help got on extremely well and pretty much laughed our way through every course.  We called ourselves the Three Foodstuffs. It won't take you long to guess that I was Stuff-n-Nonsense. There was raucous, doubled-up guffawing, goofy aprons and, at one point, tiaras and rhinestones in the mix as well. Hopefully you get the picture.  I know my pal Lancer got some photos, so hopefully soon you can get a more visceral idea of the mood.

In addition to the much-anticipated chance to work with my cooking compatriots, and of course the unforgettable experience of hanging out with a wonderful group of very bright young ladies,  I think the reason I love going so much is that camp to me, more than anything, is a straightforward demonstration of how heartfelt service makes unimaginable things happen in literally miraculous ways. It's exactly how I imagine heaven. Well, sort of. Without cots and sleeping bags. And with better showers. But you know what I mean.

Anyway, this camp is run every year entirely on volunteer power. Under logistically and statistically impossible circumstances other than those that can be handled by volunteers. That means that you couldn't actually pay us enough to do what we did. Love was the only possible motivator.  The fabulous woman who organized everything does not have a degree in recreational management or anything like it.  The women who handled the ups and downs of getting the girls through the week are not professional counselors. The fabulous guys who came as our heavy lifters and fearless protectors are mighty men of business who usually wield smartphones rather than wrenches and pipesnakes.  The only qualification to do this is willingness to help out. And the love. Seriously.

In spite of the fact that no adult in the place got a night's sleep of longer than 3.2 hours for the whole week, the whole staff was joyful and united. I'm not kidding. After hours of doing other things for the girls, just about every adult that passed through our kitchen offered to help us do something.  It's astonishing when you think about it. They could have and probably should have gone and put their feet up, but instead they took up rolling pins and knives and sponges and made cinnamon rolls and green salads and washed industrial-sized sinkfuls of dirty dishes.  It makes me sigh thinking back on it, because these are high-quality people.

Community is so important. I hope you have one. Church, School, Neighborhood. Whatever. I hope you have people for whom you can occasionally get out of your comfort zone and just serve. Who would do the same for you.  Like so many in this modern world, I have no family within many hundreds of miles, and it weighs heavy on me sometimes-who would I call if something really serious happened? This week I remembered that there are people I could call. And they'd come running. At 3 in the morning. With a rolling pin or a pipesnake if necessary. Just like I'd go running to them.  That's a good feeling.

Here are a few shots I was able to get on the way and on brief, unaccompanied forays out of the kitchen:

The idyllic Pennsylvania countryside

In the middle is a goldfinch perched on the weeds. 

Driving these roads to the park is a favorite experience.
I slow down, open the windows and breathe.

This is a pretty covered bridge along the route to the park. 

The hillside at our campground. 

The girls around the campfire. 

The view down the hill. 

Sunset through the trees.

Clouds at Sunset

My pal, the brilliant cook-in-charge.

Blue skies over PA. 

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Evan at 15

A birthday interview between me and my youngest on the occasion of his 15th birthday.

Me: How was your birthday this year? (It was this past week)
Evan: Awesome. Probably my favorite birthday ever. (He was at EFY, a church camp for teens.)
Me: What's the best thing about your life at 15?
Evan: I'm halfway through being a Teacher.
Me: Why?
E: Because that means I'm almost a Priest. I can't wait for that.  (He's not planning on becoming a Catholic priest, he's referring to his path through the offices of the Priesthood as administered by my church, which is held by all worthy males over the age of 12.)
Me: What was something good about the last year?
E: (while texting on his phone) A lot of stuff.
Me: Such as?
E: Um, another year of EFY.
Me: Anything else?
E: Um, Jeff getting married? I don't know.
Me: How was your freshman year of high school?
E: Awesome.
Me: Anything specific?
E: No.
Me: What's your favorite way to spend your spare time right now?
E: No answer.
Me: Ev?
E: (annoyed) Whhhaaatttt?
Me: Repeats the question.
E: (sleepily) Nothing.
Me: Are you too tired for an interview right now?
E: Yes.
Me: Okay.

So there you have it. A typical conversation between me and my boy. I missed his birthday in person this year, but he had a great day. The text I got from him after I sent him the birthday song, one line at a time, all throughout the day, was absolutely effervescent with happiness. Really. So, I'm glad for that. He and I have a week alone together coming up while Sara and Johnathan are in Spain, so we'll see some movies and have some lunches out and properly celebrate as much as we can.

Right now Evan is a fun, full-featured young man. He is smart, witty, free-spirited and extremely enjoyable to be around, yet he is also incredibly organized and focused in school, having just completed a rigorous freshman year with a gorgeous GPA. He's athletic and friendly and enjoys being around his family. He makes me smile. I can't imagine life without him and honestly can't believe he's growing up so quickly. I remember him as a calm, happy baby who smiled constantly and basked in the attention of his older sibs, and now he's almost as tall as me and on the cusp of manhood. Time does not fly, it actually just disappears.

He's fallen asleep over on the couch next to me and I can honestly say that even at 15, my kid is still adorable when he sleeps.

Happy Birthday Ev! I love you!

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