The first time I met you, you sat there a little frustrated trying to get the doors open. They wouldn’t work. You asked my son if he would open the door for you. And then you gently asked me if I would push your wheelchair outside to the curb. I asked where you were going. To pick up your watch, you said. Then, you told me all about your watch. How the battery finally died after sixty-five years. They had to find a part for it in Europe. You bought it as a college graduation present from the bookstore at Georgetown University. I was impressed with both your ability to keep a watch for sixty-five years and the watch’s ability to keep working. My four-year old anxiously waited for me as I listened to you tell me a few more stories. You told me about watching Joe DiMaggio play baseball. How you and your wealthy friend chose to sit out in the outfield just to be near Joe. Then, your ride pulled up to the curb. You looked up at me and said, “thanks for talking with me.” And I could have cried because I felt the sincerity and appreciation in your voice. I also felt the loneliness. I could tell that you have a lot of pent-up stories. Really great stories. Waiting to be told. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I wanted to buy you a Royals shirt. And visit with you again next time I came to see my grandma.

Yesterday, as I walked up with my three boys dressed in their Halloween costumes, I recognized you. You sat there in your wheelchair, again, waiting at the curb for your ride. I remembered and looked down at your wrist. You were wearing your Georgetown University watch. How could a sixty-five year old watch still look so good? I reached down. You touched my hand. And I felt the loneliness again. You took your watch off for me to hold. I admired it as my three boys bounced around in their costumes. I handed it back to you and touched your hands again. On purpose. You were going out for Italian food. You asked me if I knew you were Italian. Nope, I said. I told you that I liked Italian food too. You told me your favorite pasta to order. I needed to get my busy boys inside to go see their great Grandma. Your ride pulled up. Perfect timing. You told me I should come have a drink with you guys sometime. I said that sounded good. I should probably let my husband know.

I hope if I live long enough to need help getting out to the curb in my wheelchair or need someone to talk to that somebody will be there. And stop. And listen. And touch my hand. I began overthinking and feeling so spoiled by all of the touch I receive. On a daily basis. From my three little dependents. One four-year old boy constantly wanting to be held. Bear hugging me. Climbing on me. Grabbing my hair, my face, everything. And two nearly seven-year old boys who will ask regularly to sit next to me or will reach up and say, “Mommy, could you hold my hand?” I got to thinking that I have enough touch that I could probably share some of it. Or at the very least, try to cherish and appreciate this fleeting over-touching phase of motherhood. I have felt the enormous power in gentle, loving, and meaningful touch. I feel it every time I hug my grandma before I leave. I see it as my grandma and other residents reach out to touch my boys’ hair or hands. It’s hard to imagine a day where I won’t reach down a hundred times and touch my sons’ hair or hands or where they won’t climb on my lap or jump onto my back. Over and over again. The reality is that it’s a short stage in my life and theirs comparitively speaking. And as hard as it may be on some long and exhausting days, I’m going to try harder to appreciate and remember the feeling of a full lap, a held hand, and the abundance of touch in this phase of my life. I was reminded of the gift as I placed a sixty five year old watch on a new friend’s wrist.

There was a time last September when the cold lake water combined with my junked up lungs proved to be a near deadly combination. My three year old son wore a life jacket in the water, holding onto me. In hindsight, I realize I should have worn a life jacket too that day. As we waited in the water and the boat circled around, I began having an increasingly more difficult time treading water. And breathing got so hard. I felt like all of the air was gone every time I desperately tried to suck some of it in. It was a horribly scary feeling. Suffocating somehow yet out in the middle of a lake. I knew I could not go under water. For fear of not coming back up. In a short amount of time, I began feeling desperate. My three year old knew I was scared. I started pushing him off of me. I could not take the added weight of him holding onto me. Onto my lungs. My oldest sister, Anna, watched nervously from the boat. She knew my capabilities, my strength, and my ability to persevere. But she saw me struggling. She knew the kind of mother I am. She knew I would never push my child away from me. Unless I had to.

It’s a painful moment to remember and write about. I can still see his face. And feel him desperately grabbing for me and crying in the freezing September water. Scared. Cold. Sensing my fear. My older sister’s instinct kicked in, as it has so many times before. She jumped from the boat and swam out to me. She’s strong. Fierce. A protector. A mother to her own five children. And she also mothers the world. And that day, she mothered me and my son. I will never know for sure, but she may have saved my life.

Anna quickly swam out to my son and I. She took my son which helped me focus on getting to the boat that pulled up along side of us. I swam, rather doggy paddled to the boat. I held on to the side and did not, would not let go. I vividly remember stretching both arms towards the boat. Holding onto it. So relieved, breathing the hardest and best I could, yet I just could not catch my breath. I felt like I had never been so exhausted. And scared for my life. In my life.

Fast forward to today. I anxiously sat across from a community blood drive employee and pleaded with him to let me give blood. My lungs are doing great or else I wouldn’t be here attempting to give blood, I told him. They’re not flared up. I’m not having to do treatments. He called his supervisor. He has never met someone with “bronchiectasis.” My four year old son sat on my lap. The same son who was in the water with me that day. I wanted him to witness me being strong, healthy and humbly giving blood that may help save somebody’s life. Like the blood that somebody gave years ago that helped save my life when I was dying as an eighteen year old. I knew the employee was going to say I couldn’t give blood. And he did. It hurt. I carried my son as we walked to the car.

When you want so badly to do something and you can’t, that hurts. When you have a reason, a really meaningful reason why you want to do something, but you can’t because of a disease you have, it’s really difficult to accept. I will anxiously wait to hear back from New York to learn if I ever will be able to give blood. If you can give blood, even if you don’t want to, would you consider doing it for me? Or more importantly, would you do it for all the kids and adults who are too sick to ask you to give blood for them? Because you can. Because you won’t be denied. Because you’re healthy enough. Because you possess an abundance of life pumping through your beating heart, healthy lungs and body. Somebody else just needs a little. And like I tell kids every weekend when we do a blood draw, “the awesome and cool thing about your body is that it will make more blood.” Please donate.❤️

Silence is not golden. It’s boring. Yeah. Yeah. I said it. I like it every once in a while. For about three minutes or so during the day. And it’s alright at night when I’m trying to go to sleep. But the rest of the time, I like noise. Hustle. Bustle. Voices. Laughter. Even the screams, when everybody is not hurt. Just not the quiet. Especially when it’s too quiet. How am I supposed to get anything accomplished without noise? I should turn on some music. Or go eat lunch at a pizza joint. That should help.

Sometimes I guess I’m a bit of an avoider. Avoiding the laundry. Avoiding confrontation. Avoiding long lines. Anywhere. And today, I’m avoiding a quiet house. It’s weird because there are many times when all I want is a little peace and quiet. Wrapped in a giant, pretty easy-to-open box. I guess I don’t like to keep that gift for too long. Or else I feel alone. Just me and my thoughts. I would rather bounce my thoughts off of people, all over the place, outside of my head. I would like to return the quiet, and have the noise back. Maybe I’m a bit of a noise hoarder. I like to pile it up in the forms of conversations, lots of kids running around, loud music playing and my favorite, laughing.

I’m starting to recognize that I may occasionally suffer from the made-up symptoms associated with noise withdrawal. An extrovert’s nightmare. I love the sounds of people, especially the little people running around my house. So, strategically, I often avoid my house when there will be no little people there to distract me. Tug on me. Or ask me to be the “Robot Mother” or the infamous “Dog Monster.” I love the chaos and noise, especially when it’s absent. Gone. Silence is boring.

To delay my noise withdrawal symptoms, I do my best to find noise in other places. Coffee shops. Restaurants. Or sometimes, I do the opposite. I try to find quiet in places where quiet should hang out. The library. Shhhhhh! Be. Quiet. Even the quietness of biking or walking outside on a calm fall afternoon. Those places can be quiet all day long. My house should not be so quiet. So, I will do my best to avoid it for a few hours. Leave that strange, unfamiliar quiet place alone. Until the noise returns. With boys. Constant. Present. Alive. How odd that I can be so fickle. How strange that I love the loudness the most when it’s so silent. Too quiet.

I guess I’m a lover of loud. A little crazy. Or a lot. A little messy and chaotic. I suppose a noiseless house scares me a little. Makes me feel like something’s wrong. Like a lot of people are missing. I should stop sitting in the driveway. And go inside. Enjoy the quiet. For a few minutes or so. I probably should do some laundry. But I get bored just thinking about it. Afterall, being a self-diagnosed person affected by noise withdrawal symptoms, I know certain things. Like that the number one symptom of noise withdrawal is boredom. I will turn on some music. Ugh and fold some laundry. And I will look forward to the return of the little, yet loud voices that will soon fill this boring house with excitement again. And noise. Glorious noises.

As I was drowning in a sea of paperwork in my kitchen, I looked up to see my favorite tiniest friend outside of my kitchen window. My eyes immediately filled up with tears, the overwhelmed kind of tears. Not the super sad ones. The relieved but tired and shy ones. I felt overwhelmed because of the perfect timing of the sweetest bright green feathered hummingbird there to remind me not to fret. Not to feel trapped beneath the rough apathetic waters of bills, insurance, Jury duty notices and expired tags. Yes. And NO!!!!! I learned today that I failed to renew our car tags in September. They don’t renew on their own. Worthless tags. I make a horrible responsible adult. I should dress up as one for Halloween. That would be funny. Not to make excuses, but it was a bit of an unknown as to whether or not we “owned” one of our cars since it had been stolen. For a week. Apparently, you don’t get a “freebie” when it comes to renewing tags if your car was temporarily in someone else’s possession. Who wants to take a trip to the DMV….again? Not. Me.

Some days, I feel like I’ve done a cannonball into some pretty unpredictable territory. Like out in the middle of papers never going away land. You can’t begin to fathom as a child the tsunami of paperwork that you will encounter as an adult. I really want to do a public service announcement for kids. Listen up. Maybe I could have some cheesy irresistible toy in the background to get their attention. No, Snackeez. No.

“Slow down. Don’t grow up so fast. You’ve got it good. Really good. Be the age you are right now. Really soak it up. As it turns out, you may not want to grow up after all.”

Yeah. Yeah. Losing teeth is a pretty awesome feeling. And meeting the height requirement to ride a “big kid” roller coaster feels like a million bucks….but doing taxes and repeatedly getting summoned to jury duty? Shut the front door.

I think that’s part of the reason I love hanging out and working with kids. They don’t even know about “delinquent” notices. I’m not gonna talk to them about all my late bills. That would be so lame. I get to play Barbies or tea party or argue about if Marvel is superior to DC. I can’t make up my mind on that one. It really depends on which male actor is playing the super hero. Kids don’t worry about renewing their car tags on time. They’re caught up in the now. The present. They excitedly and happily live to experience the world happening right in front of their eyes. They jump off walls. Roll down hills. Splash in that gigantic puddle. Poop in the woods. And run a lot of places because they’re stoked. And that’s a pretty awesome trait to possess. Passion for life.

I strategically create stacks of papers in my house. It makes me feel organized. For a moment. I arrange the medical bills, utility bills, and random others. Then, something crazy happens. Those stacks of crap don’t ever talk or grab me when I’m walking by. So I forget about them. Sort of. I guess it’s a pretty inefficient system considering every company has sent us a neon notice at some point or another. I guess I’m a better kid than grown up a lot of times. It’s unfortunate I wanted to grow up so badly…that I did. I lost all my teeth. I can ride any roller coaster I want. I can drink beer legally. And I get to pay bills. Lots of bills.

One of the best things about having kids is that you can use them to help you escape from the deep waters of boredom. They’re like the perfect life boat that pops up out of the blue. Right before a shark attack. In the sweetest voices, they say,

“Hello there. Would you like a ride? Maybe a Popsicle? We’re playing Pirates lost at sea.”

That’s all it takes. And there’s no such thing as expired tags on a pirate ship. So, the arrangement works out wonderfully. I can always be a grown up tomorrow.