Stuck at Denver International Airport

My flight to Albuerque has been diverted . . . back to Albuquerque. Our daily 2:00pm thunderstorm sent my flight in circles above DIA until it nearly ran out of gas, and had to go back to its place of origin (must have had SOME gas left). Now delayed three hours, I pound angrily at the keyboard as one of my children nervously warms up in an Albuqerque pool and two prepare for their last swim meet at home.  I am a mom without a pool, not fulfilling my roles as coach and cheerleader at either location.

The delay compounds a misery that began in security.  Confronted with the dreaded 360 – degree x-ray scanner, I heard the security staff telling folks to empty their pockets “until they contain nothing but air.”  I paid little attention, since I didn’t have any change in my pocket, just a tampon and a driver’s license. So I went into the x-ray machine with only a faint shred of doubt that I was “airy” enough. Sure enough, the security worker called me over as I exited the machine and told me she had to pat me down in the “lower back area” (location of my pocket in workout skorts). I explained in a whisper that it was only a tampon, but she said without a flicker of expression that I had to remove it so that it could “go through the x-ray machine.”  It didn’t seem like the first time this had happened to her, and that was my only consolation as I watched her place my bright pink tampon wrapper in a bowl (with another bowl on top of it for modesty), and then roll through the machine, no doubt to the amusement or confusion of the man watching the video feed. When my suitcase inevitably got called for further inspection, I had to tell the man to wait for me as I reclaimed my tampon. A double security threat, I suppose.

So then I read O Magazine and hung on every word of Martha Beck’s article, “Reversal of Bad Fortune: Accidents are never pleasant. But if you choose to see meaning in them, they can be useful.” It’s not the first time Oprah and Martha have guided me through a bad day, people. I commend them to you, folks stuck in airports and ladies condemned to a pat-down because of Aunt Flo. At least I wasn’t one of the hapless passengers stuck flying from Albuquerque to Denver . . . and back . . . and back again. That will be Sunday’s misadventure….

Anniversary Travels

Rob and I had a twenty-hour anniversary getaway this past weekend courtesy of a dear friend and our oldest child. Aden and Heidi held down the fort while we prowled the streets of Golden, only thirty minutes away . . . but far enough. We peacefully shopped for my folks' 45th anniversary present (three times our 15 years!) in an art store where the boys would have instilled terror in the heart of the saleswoman, and then went to dinner at a Venezuelan restaurant with plenty of gluten-free options. We stayed in a nice hotel, nodded off in front of a recent movie, and then hiked five and a half miles up Lookout Mountain on a lovely Sunday morning. We had plenty to talk about and be grateful for, recharging our batteries until our thoughts returned to our task lists and timelines on the way home. It looks like Rob and I will hardly cross paths for the coming week, so I'm glad we had uninterrupted face time to tide us over.

We watched the US soccer team snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yesterday afternoon with the kids, and then I turned on some swimming after dinner. All sports, all the time - feels like the theme of our summer thus far. We truly enjoy the swim meets, but hope to get a weekly family hike started after swim season and water polo season come to a close. Hopefully we will get Daniel up his first fourteener later this summer, and we have to get him out on his bike, as well. These long days and balmy weather (minus the severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes) present us with the perfect opportunity to indulge our inner athletes. Rob and I have always enjoyed doing that together - from running to single-track mountain biking, triathlons and hiking - and it's a great gift to share similar activities with the whole family.

What a Girl Wants, continued

How about not being judged for how she looks in a bathing suit? This is not a trivial question, though it may seem so, coming after Malala's travails in Pakistan. When I was ill several years ago, I lost so much weight that I thought I would disappear, and I was terrified. Equally horrifying were the comments from people who thought I looked good in that unhealthy, faded-away state. It really led me to question the sanity of our culture, and also the motives of those who drive the popular images: do they want us to disappear? lose strength and presence? be brainwashed into engineering our own destruction?

Now that I've gained back all my weight and strength, I feel so good - - until sometimes when I put on a swimsuit in a bad light and start judging my body in all of its realness. When I catch those negative thoughts now, I know how to face them down. I say: "Do you want me to disappear again? Well, tough! I have the right to take up some space in this world. I will not be marginalized or ignored or judged for my fullness and strength. You're going to have to deal with me as I am." I want young girls to know that they should not risk their health or strength for a cultural theme that is poisonous to all of us.

It's also essential to realize and to emphasize with our children that though are bodies are one facet of us and we should take care of them, they are only one part of who we are. They are not the mirror of our soul, they are not the end-all, be-all of our existence on the planet. Our bodies (especially children's bodies) are under the sway of many factors out of our control - - thyroid, pre-natal illnesses, medications, metabolism, food-buying habits of our parents, access to safe places to exercise, etc. They are not our fault nor our fortune, and I should prefer mine to be a safehouse and not a temple full of false gods.

Moth Season

The moth population in Colorado is three times that of last year (per Aden). They flutter around the windows trying desperately to get back outside, leading me to wonder why on earth they came into the house in the first place. At night the sound of their fluttering wings surrounds each light and keeps the kids and the guinea pig on edge. It's interesting to watch the different reactions of my children to the influx of fluttery grey insects; Aden carefully catches them with stiff paper and a cup and then releases them outside while Daniel recoils in fear and demands that they be summarily executed. Sometimes I free them and sometimes I dispense with them - it depends on my mood.

This morning, Aden spent an hour trying to revive a beautiful black and yellow butterfly which is either injured, undernourished or truly confused. I love her caregiving tendencies and feel grateful for her compassion toward living creatures, even if it does not always extend to her brothers (that's only a reassuring symptom of her being a normal child). I enjoy watching all of the children grow and change as time goes by, a process which I (the swim geek) sometimes mark by swimming results. Aden just dropped eleven seconds in her hundred breaststroke, an event which she swam last year. That's incredible! William and Daniel are also swimming best times and looking so different year over year. It's a dizzying privilege to see them change on both the inside and outside.

We only have two weeks and two swim meets left in the regular portion of the season - a short time even on the short scale of our usual seasons. Then, like the moth population, our swim season will come to a close. Just another part of the cycle of things - neither moth nor butterfly nor childhood swimming can last forever.

What a Girl Wants

I just finished reading I Am Malala by Malala Youfaszai (Malala Fund). You'll  probably remember, as I did, that Malala was a Pakistani schoolgirl of fifteen when she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman on a makeshift bus on its way home from school. What I didn't know was that Malala and her father, the founder of her school, had campaigned for years in Pakistan on behalf of children's right to an education. They spoke out on radio, blogs and a NY Times documentary even though the limelight made both of them prime targets for the right-wing Taliban insurgency. I Am Malala is required reading for my daughter this summer before she enters eighth grade, and I am so glad that she will read it and see how schoolgirls across the world struggle and risk to gain the opportunities provided by education.

The book motivated me to write to our sponsored students in Kenya and Guatemala - one boy and three girls. They walk a long way each day to get to school and struggle to fit homework in with their many chores. One has eight brothers and sisters, another has twelve. They make bracelets or help with crops to earn money to pay for school.  Though my children work hard at their studies here, their access to education is unprecedented when compared with the situation of many around the world, and their lives are comparatively easy.

So I'm also motivated to continue arm-wrestling my kids into math, reading and some writing each day. (OK, not every day, but four out of seven.) Each summer we start out strong and then lose focus as the long, hot days sap our strength and concentration and fade the memory of homework and placement tests. There is a place for relaxation and de-stressing, but no place for forgetting what we've learned when girls like Malala are prepared to give their lives to obtain an education.