The past few years, we’ve vacationed at the ocean.  Some friends have a cabin we can rent.  While the water’s too cold and treacherous for swimming, the shore stretches miles either way and when the clouds part, we’re treated to the sun setting over the horizon.

My daughter has been asking if we’re going anywhere and finally, I mentioned that we’ll be heading to the ocean in a few weeks.

She immediately started packing.

She started with stuffed animals.

Then she packed all her good underpants and most of her summer clothes.

She ran out of room, so she dumped out her school backpack and filled it.  With something.

Then she retrieved her backpack from kindergarten.

Still not satisfied that she had enough stuff, she asked me for a bag.  I gave her a smallish backpack.  She packed it full.

Anticipation is half the fun and she has embraced it with her whole self.

Too bad she can’t find a thing to wear.

Today the temperature reached over 75 degrees for the first time in ten thousand over two hundred days.

Today was the fourth day of Summer NoBreak.

Today the Slip-n-Slide ripped.

Today my teenagers slept until 2 p.m.

Today I couldn’t remember what day it was.

Today I went to the post office.

Questions I am sick of hearing:

“What can I eat?”

“Are we going anywhere today?”

“Why can’t I go with Zach?”

“What can I eat?”

“What can I eat?”

“Can I have a Kit-Kat?”

Poor Grace.  All she wants is someone to herd.  She’s like an Australian shepherd without a job.  She’s a girl without a younger sister to boss around, a  babysitter in search of a baby, a bored, bored, bored 7-year old. Bored.

Today she was outside with her 12-year old brother.  All seemed well.  The sun was shining.  She reported that they were playing a “really fun game.”

And then they weren’t.

I noticed through the kitchen window that she has assumed the pouting posture: arms folded against chest, head down, stomping feet leading her behind the deck.  And her brother looked nonchalant.

I knew it was bad news.  But I had hope that they’d work it out.  (I am foolishly optimistic at the oddest times.)

Eventually, the patio door slid open and she came through, sobbing, rubbing her eyes with a fist and explaining through gasps the grave injustice that her brother had perpetrated against her.

He put a metal thing on the tire swing.

A METAL THING!  On the TIRE SWING!

And?

“And I told him I didn’t want it there and he didn’t take it off.”

Blank stare.  And?

“AND HE ACTED LIKE HE COULDN”T SEE IT . . . even though I did THIS!”  (Insert pointing gesture.)

Huh.

She resumed dramatic sobbing.

Eventually she removed the metal thing (the metal thing?!) but she could not get over the personal slight, the nerve of him to put on the metal thing and NOT REMOVE IT, how DARE HE!?

“He didn’t say he was sorry!”

I sighed, yanked open the patio door and called him over.  “Please, Zach, tell her how sorry you are for not removing the metal thing . . . (and make it sound like you actually mean it!).”

He did.

She sort of accepted the apology but still cried, still rubbed her fist into her grimy face.

I suggested that if she needed to continue crying about it, she could go to her room.

I did offer a hug.

I tried to understand the gravity of the situation, but, alas, I did not.

How many days is Summer NoBreak, anyway?

I don’t wake up every day and notice that my father’s dead.  But on Father’s Day, I can’t help but notice.  I don’t have a dad.

My dad wasn’t the typical dad.  He didn’t have a lot to say.  We didn’t have a lot of heart-to-heart conversations.  We usually had dinner together and I’d try to save something funny to share at dinner-time, but that was often the only time I’d see him during the week.

He worked hard.  He worked the graveyard shift for thirteen years . . . so for most of my life, he was working while I slept.  When he came home, he’d work more, fiddling with computers, fixing televisions and radios.  Soldering irons, Morse code and cold cement floors remind me of him . . . because when he wasn’t at work, you could find him in the cold garage, fixing things.

He barely slept.

He had an unexpected creative side.  Toward the end of his life, he took oil painting classes.  He always loved photography and framed the images he captured.  He acted in local theater productions and sometimes, he’d sit at the piano, play a few chords and croon a song.  I cannot hear “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” without hearing his voice in my head.

The last four months of his life were tough.  My husband and I lived with him while he died from malignant melanoma.  On Father’s Day, 1989, he asked if I’d mind if he went to visit a friend of his . . . his friend, Jim, a funny little man who hid his bad teeth with a close-mouthed grin.  He couldn’t always keep his teeth out of sight, though, because my dad would make him laugh so hard his mouth flew open.

My dad was funny.  He would occasionally prance through the house singing, “I feel pretty, oh so pretty. . . ”  He loved to laugh.  His dark side overshadowed his humor far too often, but he was a funny guy.

I miss him.  I was thinking today that when I’m his age I will have lived without a father for half my life.  He died when I was only 24, before I became a mother, before I had any idea what it meant to be a parent.  I’m not sure he had any idea, either, but he was starting to get the hang of it when he died on September 21, 1989.

I know he loved me, though, and that’s all that really matters.

Today was my youngest child’s school Beach Day.

I’m starting to notice the things I’ll never do again.  For instance, I’ll never again give birth, attend kindergarten orientation, or sign up my child to play T-ball.  These things have rolled past me just like that soccer ball rolled past the British goalie.  (You might know what I mean.  Let’s just say that guy couldn’t hold on.)

I can’t hold on.  Some things dissipate just after you’ve decided to inspect them.  You’re left grasping air in your fists.

Today I went to Beach Day.

My last first grade Beach Day.

I tried to be sad about it, but I went to my first first grade Beach Day ten years ago.  I have mixed feelings or maybe I’m in denial.  I am aware, though, that this day was the end of a chapter.  Or maybe just the end of a paragraph.

But, let’s not fret.

Here are a few things I have yet to do:

1)  Post bail.
2)  Attend a high school graduation featuring my kids.
3)  Teach my children to drive a car.
4)  Drive my kid to college and leave him/her there.
5) Cry over my empty nest.

Here are things I cannot quit doing:

1)  Laundry.  Countless loads of balled up socks and clothes that collapsed right next to the hamper.
2)  Cooking dinner.  One of my teens informed me that placing chicken in the Crock-Pot and turning it on is not “technically” cooking.  I suggested that perhaps he would like to cook dinner?
3)  Staying up too late.
4)  Worrying.
5)  Leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight.

The end.

Today, we offer you a conversation with some guy I met online, which isn’t really the best way to meet someone. However, his daughters are both adults and they still talk to him, so it’s probably safe for us to hear what he has to say about life, fatherhood and the things young adults wish they’d known before they graduated into the real world.

Michael Rosenbaum is author of Your Name Here: Guide to Life, a snappy little volume of life lessons that every graduate could use on the way to adulthood. So, Michael, what’s the story behind the stories?

When my dad died a number of years ago, I was thinking about the legacy he’d left me and the one I would leave to my children. I realized that the best lesson he ever taught me was how to teach without lecturing. When I was screwing up or looking for answers, he never told me what to do, but he would tell me a story that contained the answers.

So what’s the difference?

When someone tells you what to do, your defenses go up. When someone tells you a story about themselves or some friend of a friend, you can absorb it and learn without as much resistance.

You never lectured your daughters?

Well, never is a long time, but mostly we’d have long dinner-table conversations about what was going on in their lives and I almost always resisted the use of those deadly words: This is what YOU SHOULD do.

Did you get all the stories and lessons from your dad?

No, luckily I made enough bad decisions in my life to have plenty of cautionary tales of my own that I could share with my girls. In addition, I was a newspaper reporter for many years and I had a habit of taking notes when people said something particularly smart—or dumb. I incorporated those lessons into the dinner table conversation…and into the book.

Okay, share a story that’s based on your own stupidity.

Can we focus on delusion instead of stupidity? I was talking with some people about my goals and my frustration with not reaching them. I told them I wanted to be recognized as the leader, the visionary, the person other people would follow anywhere. And a friend asked me, “Mike, have you EVER been that guy?” Suddenly, I realized that I never had been and I never would be THAT GUY. I changed the direction of my life after that and actually became more successful.

What are the most important lessons your daughters picked up from you?

The one that we talk about most is time. It’s the greatest gift you can give someone, because it’s the gift of your life. We also talk a ton about choices. Many people decide they can’t do something because another person is preventing it. Sometimes, it’s a person who is dead or living in another city, a person they never see. And yet, they put their lives on hold because of something this other person did or said. They can make that choice, but they can also choose to move on. We can’t control what happens to us, but we can almost always choose how to respond.

These sound like lessons we should all know by the time we get out of school.

We have heard about many of these lessons, but we need reminders of why we should follow them. And kids getting out of school and becoming adults respond better when they hear the lessons from someone other than their parents.

What if their parents have told them all these things already?

No difference. The parental lessons have been spread out over 18 or 20 years. If they haven’t been internalized yet, it’s unlikely they’ll be absorbed now. If only there was some book of life lessons that could deliver those lessons in a friendly, non-threatening, entertaining way.

Like your book?

Well, now that you mention it, I think “Your Name Here: Guide to Life” fits the bill nicely. I would never tell you that YOU SHOULD buy it, but you might decide to do that on your own after checking out my blog site or reading the reviews on Amazon.

Thanks for your thoughts and for giving me some material to fill my blog today.

[True confession:  I know Michael through 5 Minutes for Parenting, where I occasionally blog.  I wanted to post something to help him get the word out about his book and he came to my aid with this handy-dandy interview.  He wrote the whole thing but if I had more time and brain cells, I would have composed the questions myself!]

Summer vacation approaches.  And by “vacation” I don’t really mean “vacation.”  It’s more like summer break only it’s not really a break for me.  In fact, I’d like to rename it Summer NoBreak, because it’s that time of year that we are all here in this house together all the time.  All.  The.  Time.

I work from home, remember?  So, working at home while all the kids are frolicking and getting on each other’s nerves is like working in the midst of a mosh pit.  I should get hazard pay.  I should get a set of those Bose earphones that claim to block noise . . . and a nifty set of blinders, the kind that horses wear so I can focus on my job without losing my mind.

It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with my precious children, these adorable creatures that God entrusted to me.  It’s just that I can only take so much.  My oldest children are 17 and ever since they arrived, I’ve been a stay-at-home mother.  I’ve been here, present in body, if not in mind and spirit. Seventeen years is a long time.

Of course, I totally regret my inattentiveness throughout the years.  Why can’t I just pay more attention?  Why can’t I soak in the moments around me?  Why is my mind constantly straining to get away from wherever I am?

I’ll tell you.  Because hanging out with kids twenty-four hours a day is boring.  I was bored with it even when I was a kid!  Why do you think I read so much?  Also?  Kids are loud, at least my kids are.  My kids are not sequential, they do not care one whit about order or neatness and none of them has learned to bake cookies or iron pants.  (I blame myself.)

I miss school, my own personal school days.  When you’re in school, you know exactly where you stand.  Each test gets a grade.  You find out mid-semester if you’re passing.  If you’re me, you get gold stars and 100% scores and you know that you are doing a mighty fine job.  You get feedback.

But if you’re a mom, all you know is that your kids still don’t carry their dishes to the sink.  They drop their dirty clothes right next to the hamper.  They bicker and make each other cry.  The feedback you get comes in the form of slamming doors and snotty remarks.

With that echoing in your ears, you hope you’re doing all right, but how can you really know?  You cross your fingers and compare yourself to really bad parents on the news just to make yourself feel better.

So, while I wait for time to pass and for my final grade to come, I am going to focus on the positives.

In this case, that means this summer I’m finally going to get enough sleep . . . for the first time in seventeen years, all my kids are old enough to either sleep in (yes, Teenagers, I’m talking about you) or let me sleep in without waking me every ten minutes just to see when I plan to wake up.

All the same, Summer NoBreak is coming and I have mixed feelings about that.

What’s the most unexpected thing that ever happened to you?

When I was seventeen, I worked at Taco Time.  I drove my dad’s hatchback to work sometimes.  (Usually I drove this small yellow pickup truck which one time died on the freeway, many years before the days of cell phones.  I ran off the freeway, across several roads to the mall where I pounded on a window of a closed department store until someone let me to use the phone.)

On this particular sunny day, I drove the hatchback with my window rolled down.  I pulled up to a stoplight at the intersection close to the freeway when I felt a sort of slap on the side of my head.

I thought perhaps a piece of trash flew through my open window and hit me in the head.  As as the light turned green, I swiveled around and saw a bird in the backseat.

That bird had inexplicably flown through my open window, colliding with my left ear before landing in the back of my car. The little bird jerked as small birds do and looked at me with beady eyes and threatened to peck me to death.  At least that’s the message I got.

Because we all know that birds of any size are terrifying.

I wanted to fling open my car door and run screaming but instead, I drove to my stepmom’s office where I raced to her desk to beg for help.  She walked calmly outside, opened the hatchback and the bird flew away.

Why didn’t I think of that?  Oh yeah, because I was seventeen.

I’m not a fan of birds in close proximity.

A few years ago, I bravely took the kids into a Lorakeet exhibit at the zoo.  Once inside the enclosure, a Lorakeet dived into my naturally curly hair and became entangled as I stiffly asked a nearby woman, “Uh, can you please help me remove this bird from my hair?”

And then I got out of that exhibit.

So, let’s recap.

Birds belong in trees, in nests, in nature.

Birds do not belong in my car or in my hair.

So, tell me something weird that’s happened to you.

I ended up working an hour late tonight, so it’s 2 a.m. and my shoulder hurts.  Not that those two things are related, but they are both true.

I spent the afternoon helping my boys figure out their algebra, though some of the time I spent shrieking, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS!  HOW CAN I GRAPH WITH A COMPUTER!?  And then I ate donuts.

Before that, I took a nap.

Before that, I went to church with my family.  We attend a church an hour from our house and can I just ask why my kids must be so loud while traveling up I-5?

That is all.

The end.

I’m going to sleep.

Before I ever became a mother, I imagined motherhood as a showcase for my lovely qualities and impressive skills.

I’d sew my children outfits and teach them to bake bread from scratch and never, ever, ever lose my temper.  My children would smile at me in admiration and dream about growing up to be exactly like me because I would be a paragon of virtue.

I’d wear a white apron with eyelet edges and sing hymns while I paid bills and scrubbed toilets.  My children would raise their voices in harmony and do chores without being asked.  We’d dress in matching clothes and spend our evenings reading Bible stories and piecing together 10,000 piece puzzles depicting vegetable gardens almost as luscious as the organic one we’d grow in our own back yard.

As it turns out, children are less like accessories and more like chainsaws.

They cut away the facade I’d created and imagined.  How rude.

Children have  a way of provoking you in a way other people wouldn’t dream of doing.  (Perhaps it’s only my own particular children.)  When I am terse with them, they feel free to reciprocate.  When I am exasperated, they see an opportunity to push harder.  When my head is exploding from the noise, they accelerate, crescendo and slam a drawer and then wonder why I am screaming.

If I were childless, I like to think I’d maintain a calm, unruffled existence.  I’d never be shrill with strangers or co-workers or the lady that rings up my groceries at the store.  I wouldn’t be so aware of my shortcomings, the areas my children have brought into clear focus, the ones that they emphasize and judge.  I’d think I was pretty awesome.

As I become more aware of my failings, I alternate between despair and resolving to be better, to do better, to improve.  I am the reluctant host to humility.  I might never have welcomed humility into my heart, but I have no choice when I come face to face with the reality of who I am.

The children ripped down the curtain hiding the real me and what can I do but acknowledge that this frail me is the real me?  I am flawed, no matter how politely I can behave in public.

Newsflash:  I’m not that great.

I can only hope that as my children get older, they will see a more complete picture of me as a person.  They will grant me grace and forgiveness and understanding.  I hope I will remember to extend that same courtesy to everyone I meet.  No matter how annoying they are.