Owen is breathing softly beside my bed, in the darkness at 4 AM.  Little does he know, I was just awake with the baby…so I was laying there waiting for it…”Mom…can I sleep in your bed?”  Lately I can’t ever find a reason to say no…not initially…not since Max is sleeping thru the night more often.  The swiftness of Max’s maturity has reminded me of how quickly these years go.  It makes me think that maybe Owen got the shaft.

He was the last of a line of four kids.  By the time he came along I had twin 4 year olds and a 2 year old sapping all that I had to give.  My stress-o-meter was reading somewhere around “MAX CAPACITY”.  Looking back…I can’t believe I got thru it.  It was no award winning performance…but I’ve lived to tell of it.  I remember crying on the edge of the bed a lot.  Those days are a little more distant feeling now.  Things are still hard, but its a different kind of hard.  I can handle this hard.  This hard is the consistent position of reasoning with the unreasonable and walking beside them while they try out all their own terrible ideas…and maybe keeping a first aid kit on my person at all times.  This hard doesn’t feel as one sided.  Hard with babies is a helpless kind of hard.  If you can’t make them stop crying then you CANT MAKE THEM STOP CRYING…what can you really do?  I’ve learned to lay that baby down and walk away…feeling helpless but OK.  Low and behold, they went to sleep…they just wanted you to leave them alone.  This knowledge only comes with experience, which is why Max has felt like my favorite baby.  Not because of Max, but because of me.  I know me better.  I know what I can and can’t handle.  Forcing myself to hold the screaming baby while 3 other kids need my help didn’t do any of us any good.  I can read a baby better now than I could 5 years ago.  I’ve gotten a chance to get far enough away from something to have some perspective and then I’ve gotten a chance to try it again.  It’s really a treat.

Naturally there is some remorse for being impatient and snappy with my other children when they were younger, and they know that I’m always looking for new ways to manage the stress that 5 kids can help manifest (yoga, mindfulness exercises, mommy timeouts, taking 10 slow deep breaths, sitting with a blanket over my head, eat.)  It’s important for me to have honest communication with my kids.  I try not to make it that they feel responsible for the way that i’m feeling.  Sometimes I say things like, “All four of you guys are telling me things at the same time and I can’t hear even one of you clearly and it is making my head feel explodey.”  What they do with that information is up to them, but at least i’ve said my part.  So sometimes I feel that Owen got me during the height of my “STRESSD OUT YEARS”.  Poor guy.

SO there is Owen, in the darkness.  I tell him he can hop in.  He moves 1000 times more than is necessary in order to get himself situated.  My eyes are closed.  Silence.  30 seconds of silence.  I am dozing off, after my half hour intermission with Max and the bathroom.

“Mom, can we make gluten free pancakes in the morning and can I help you make them?” His soft whisper shows me that he’s trying to be considerate of his sleeping parents…but not considerate enough to just go to sleep.

Imagining that a speedy answer could bring my slumber back, “Sure.  But only if we get up early enough.”

I’m reminded of how big he is getting when I feel his toes all the way down at my shin.  I turn toward him and put an arm around him.

“Mom, I still gotta do my homework.” He comes home with roughly 2 minutes of homework per evening and we usually get it done right away…yesterday we took Iris to piano lessons and then went to the Farmers market and then back to pick Iris up and then to the grocery store and then to the park and then we had supper and then the neighbor boys came over for treehouse/campfire action and those 2  homework minutes slipped through the cracks.

“It’s ok.  We’ll have time in the morning.” I whisper back.

Silence.  My eyes are heavy.

“Mom, do you know I know how to spell NAIL?”

I turn away from him.  May it discourage any further communication.  “Yes.”

“No mom, ask me how to spell NAIL…” still whispering.  So considerate.

“Hey buddy, if you want me to get up to make pancakes and help you with homework then we need to go to sleep…or you can go back to your bed.”

“Oh. Okay.” It’s official.  We go to sleep.

Lately he has been walking around the house singing “I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNO LIE!”  He only knows that one line of the song, THANK GOD.  I believe he told me he heard it on some cartoon movie.  It’s not a big deal, except that I would rather hear him sing something else.  It’s a catchy tune to I tried to help a modified phrase naturally make its way into that little brain.  On my first try, coming up with something that rhymed with “BUTTS” I went with “PEANUTS”.

“Hey Owen, how about ‘I LIKE PEA-NUTS AND I CANNOT LIE!”  He seemed cool with it…until it fully backfired on me.  It didn’t feel natural to leave out the word “BIG” so now it just sounds like he’s singing “I LIKE BIG PENIS AND I CANNOT LIE!”

Well, that worked out.  Im realizing that a lot of times, my over involvement tends to make things worse.

Last Saturday we were entertaining four good friends, and the boys had a friend sleeping over while Iris was away for the weekend.  I could tell that Owen was fading as 10 o clock approached.  I intercepted his sleepy gaze and asked if he’d like to go read a book and get in bed (when older kids are hanging out I find I have to treat it like a cool, fun thing to go to bed when NOONE else is going yet…a book and a brief cuddle help ease the transition.)  We went to the bathroom so that he could brush his teeth.  Fully adorned in his Spider-Man underwear, he marches over to sink and steps up on the stool…leans as close as he can to the mirror.  Adjusting head in the light, looking closely from different angles.

“Whatcha doin?

“I’m just checkin to see if I have any hair on my face.  There is a boy in my class who has a mustache…I wanted to see if I have one.”

I couldn’t contain the smile on my face.  I took the mental picture of all mental pictures.  My five year old, straining to locate a hope, a shred, a glimmer of peach fuzz on his upper lip.  He nodded off before we were half way thru the first book, because…thankfully…he isn’t as big as he thinks he is.

A few years ago I wrote “a children’s book” using Owen as the star.  I wanted Chris to illustrate it, because while I’m great at folk arty-vintagey-70’s inspired furniture art, Chris is an amazing fine artist.  I pictured it being done in water color.  He loved the idea and that morning before he left for work he said “Sure, you write it and I’ll illustrate.”  I called him at 11 o’ clock and told him I had written it.  He didn’t like that.  He attempted to begin illustrations that evening and quickly lost patience.  I would have also.  Especially when you are used to being paid for your time and when you aren’t, you’re surrounded by little kids who mostly want to get physical with you.  But I would love to share this little tribute i wrote to The O Man.

Quit Growin’ Owen!

I know a little boy named Owen.  He is just small, but everyday he is growin.

He used to stand wide eyed and watch his brothers ride bike, but you could sense there was something about this that he just didn’t like.

As soon as he learned about training wheels, all you could hear were his tires squeal.

His hair was once short but soon it grew and it curled. As he sped through the streets his mane whipped and it whirled.

Every day theres a tune he would carry.  While it always sounded the same, the lyrics would vary.

Somedays he would sing about grandmas and flowers, other days about brothers with super powers.

At dinner each night, between his “Nom-Nom”, he would turn and politely say “Thanks for making this yummy food, Mom.”

When he began to grow tired and the world seemed less grand, he had a favorite treat…the middle two fingers on his left hand.

No matter the day or the house or the town…one thing was for certain…this boy wasn’t slowing down.

So at night before bed, his mama would beg..

As she squished him and squashed him to slow down the pace, of his wild growth that felt like a race.

What more could she do to get this thing slowin?! Nothing but beg, “QUIT GROWIN OWEN!”

He is like no one I’ve ever met.  I feel so blessed to have been a partial vehicle in his creation.  You are loved and adored Owen.  Thanks for being mine.

It’s 8:43PM.  The kids are catching onto the well lit world around them that lasts well into the 7th and even the 8th hour of the evening.  Its getting harder to get an 8 o clock bedtime to happen as the summer months quickly approach.  Once we finally get all 5 locked and loaded, Chris sets up a study station at the kitchen table.  I come down for my nightly (NOT EVERY NIGHT!!) bowl of ice cream and I see him there.  WOMP WOMP WOMP.  No House Of Cards for us.  It’s nearing the end of the semester and he is busting his hump to keep his 4.0 to place favorably for clinicals as his nursing school endeavor continues.  Sometimes I just wonder at him.  He forces me to ask myself if I could ever do it.  Could I go back to school to make a better life for us…could I do years and years of hard work to change our life forever?  If you are lucky enough to be with a partner who prompts you to ask yourself hard questions…just because of who they are…then you know what a bitch it can be.  Lets say you just want to curl up in bed and be your usual lazy slob self with your bowl of ice cream, but they say to you…”Hey, I gotta do at least two hours here…you wanna sit here with me?  Maybe you could write while I do this?”  Awe F@#$.  I guess I’ll pound his bowl of ice cream and harness the energy from the sugar while The Strokes blast in my ear buds and I’ll write about absolutely nothing…nothing that is our life…nothing that is our sacred essence…nothing that is the complete perfect beauty of what we have been creating together since we were 15 years old.  I won’t mention that we listed our house for sale last week and then this week after realizing how stressful it would be to be parenting 5 kids and doing college and running a drywall business and potentially selling a house…we immediately unlisted it.  I won’t mention that we are both as fickle as the weather and the only thing that we have ever been truly sure of is our love for one another.  I won’t mention that at least once a week for the past 3 weeks he has called me in the middle of his work day and asked me to tell him that everything will be “OK”.  I won’t let on that it was hard for me to tell him that everything WILL be “OK”.  We both know it will be fine, good, great, OK.  It doesn’t always feel that way.  It doesn’t feel like we’ll ever get out of this city, where our kids are growing up in a parking lot and occasionally scratching cars with their bike handles.  It doesn’t feel like we’ll ever get the break we are wishing would come.  It feels like we’ll be in our starter home forever…but I’m here to tell ME something.  And that something is SHUT UP.  SHUT UP YOU SELFISH, SMALL MINDED DUMBY.  You have more than most people and your tiny home is regularly filled with not only the 6 people you love most, but lots of others too!  Aside from an obvious gluten allergy and maybe a lazy eye, we are all healthy and prospering.  WE ARE THE AMERICAN DREAM!  We have a future and a hope and lots to look forward to, and we are doing the hard work to ensure that eventually it will happen.  Here I sit, keeping the company of the man who has more energy and drive and ambition and heart than I do…and it is a privilege.  Aside from filling a crock pot and doing the laundry and lactating when its needed, I don’t feel I bring a lot to the table, but thankfully Chris doesn’t seem to be keeping track.  But if he needs me to, I’ll eat another bowl of ice cream and use that energy to write another long winded paragraph, documenting the mishmash of our everyday.  Mr. Krouse, you are my king.

I found this draft buried a few pages deep under other drafts and I loved it enough to share it…Enjoy.

December 2014

Sunday morning.  Chris at the kitchen sink, washing the pots and pans, loading the dishwasher.  I’m preparing frozen hash browns to go  in the preheated oven.  The stone pan I need is beneath the stove, a kitchen accessory location I’ve had to reconsider since the third trimester and the return of that old familiar “I’m an orbiting planet” feeling.  There isn’t much space between the stove and the kitchen table…especially with four kids having their way around the place. Now add me hovering in a struggling (that stoneware is some heavy sh*#) bent forward position.  I’m asking for it every time I invert the upper portion of my top heavy body at this point.  And once I end up on the floor, I might stay down a while…scrub a cupboard stain or collect some stray cheerios.  Needless to say, once I’m bent over, I’m going to stay that way until I’ve accomplished whatever it is I’ve set out to do, down there, below my waist.  So basically it can be a real set back…the stoneware location. While bent forward, wrestling pans and maneuvering around my drastically pronounced front bump, I hardly budge as I feel Chris urgently trying to squeeze between 3 and half feet of pregnant, contorted road block and the big old harvest table.  I’m naturally knocked forward a bit as he makes a way for himself to get to the trashcan directly on the other side of me.  It was gentle enough.  If I had to choose a way to be knocked headfirst into my kitchen oven, it would be that way.  Urgently and abrupt while still seeming like it could have been a lot worse.  I get the baking pan loose and he reaches the garbage can and the world is upright again and the thick, bacon scented air of the kitchen fills with the sound of Chris’ voice, apologizing for nearly knocking his bent over, pregnant wife down in her own kitchen.  “Sorry about that.  I had a handful of crap from the sink drain in my hand and it was dripping and I was trying to get to the garbage can.”  He didn’t need to explain.  Anyone like us, who is primitive enough to NOT have a garbage disposal in their kitchen sink knows well what that handful of wet noodles and oats and meat bits and ricecrispies and diced tomatoes and bag twisties feels like.  Perhaps you understand the feeling of a soggy cheerio attempting escape through your thumb and index finger.  There is a sense of urgency to complete this specific kitchen chore with finesse and efficiancy and accuracy.  I tell him not to worry about it.  I know what that’s about. You don’t want that handful longer than you have to have it.  You won’t answer the door holding that stuff, or even take one more breath while holding it.  Its an urgent matter.  He receives my complete understanding.  I get back to the hashbrown task.  Precise placement…one hash brown after another.  And then comes one of those moments of contemplative silence that has come to be one of the defining qualities of our marriage.  It is the moment right before someone is about to be honest.  They have thought about what the outcome of their candid confession may be, they have calculated any cost and have made their decision.  He is facing out the window, still diligently scouring pots.  “It actually dripped all over your back.”  A moment…  “Oh.” I say.  “Good.”  Another moment…  And then the refreshing wind of laughter that has surprised us more times than we can count.  After ten years, I’m proud to say that this too is another defining characteristic of our marriage.  Through my two shirts and my cardigan I never felt the grotesque moisture and I never asked if it looked like I needed to change my sweater.  We fed the masses and hurried off to church and there we sat, his arm around me…resting in the runoff from the bottom of our kitchen drain.  And I’d never loved him more.  Together we have created a life that results in a drain full of food slime and hair and garbage…and sometimes, one of us is going to wear some of it on our back.  True love.  Sigh.

I decided at some point today that there were quite a few things that I would like to remember about this Easter.  The first being the look on our children’s faces when they found their Easter baskets…just kidding…we didn’t do Easter baskets this year.  It just didn’t happen.  This was one of those holidays that ended up being time slotted right down to the last seconds of each day.  We enjoyed two egg hunts and the kids are rarely experiencing a candy shortage and aside from being exhausted and spread really thin, the kids are hip to the jive and they all know that there’s no Santa or Easter Bunny or tooth fairy or any of that.  And for the record, kids don’t like liars.  No one does. So at the end of this whole parenting adventure, if someone decides to tell me that I did a bad job fibbing to my kids about make believe crap…I’ll still be able to sleep at night.

What will be memorable is the feeling of waking up and not really wanting to go to church.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me at this stage of my “Christian Game”, but my social anxiety tends to really flare up at church and I’m pretty sure that we’re going thru the motions for the kids…because while we are both feeling a little stale in our “relationships with God”…church is a nice place to meet people with decent values and its a good place for kids to make friends and hopefully stay out of trouble.  I had no such upbringing…so these are all just assumptions.  Chris and I are big on doing what we think is right to do…wether we feel warm and fuzzy or not.  Unfortunately, the kids are all pissed about going to church, mostly because they are supposed to sing in front of everyone and if I’m honest, I can’t blame them.  Iris usually has a great attitude, but the boys are another story.  The more they revolted about going to church the more Chris asserted that they were helping to solidify his decision that we were going.  At one point he referred to the boys as “Bullies”…trying to bend Chris’ will to match their own.

One thing no one really mentions when you are pregnant is what it will potentially be like when 1 or 2 or 5 of the humans you make start having ideas and preferences and voices of their own.  Like when you realize that your five year olds favorite pants don’t become any less “favorite” just because there is a hole in each knee.  Or when your 7 year old likes to circle and label the scars on his legs…leaving him looking like someone’s abandoned science project…and a grodey kid.  Maybe 3 kids want eggs and grits and 2 want pancakes and you ultimately have to come to terms with the fact that you can never please 100% of the people 100% of the time.  And most likely, if 100% of the people are pleased, than mom is probably holding back some of her own grievances.

Of late I have been challenging myself to stop micro-managing the masses.  I decided to take on this challenge after I started noticing my oldest, the twins, beginning to do it to their younger siblings.  I found myself saying “Geez guys! Let people live!”  Upon completing a little self reflection, LOW AND BEHOLD, I too had been over managing the group.  It mostly looked like a flustered woman trying to wipe faces and scrub pen off body parts and keep play dough colors from mixing.  Its a battle that is being lost all over the planet by every mother thats ever had breath in her lungs.  And so, while I would not be allowing the children to stay home from church, I wasn’t going to micro manage their Easter attire.

Chris and I stood on the balcony at church holding Max and watching below while Owen refused to participate in the kindergartener’s little song.  Whatever.  No big deal.  He stayed in the back, stood quietly.  Then we got to enjoy watching Iris sing her little heart out next to Flynn, who half heartedly participated (with his baseball cap in place) next to Micah who was basically there to ruin other peoples video footage of their lovely singing child on Easter Sunday.  No joke.  Micah not only DID NOT sing, but he sat on the edge of the stage with his back to the congregation like they did not even exist.  Occasionally he would glance up at us and we tried with every facial expression possible to convey how perturbed we were that he couldn’t show some respect at least to the kids who actually were singing…just stand there Micah!  He was pretty non responsive.  Thankfully we had a whole hour before we would see Micah, to breath it out and basically re accept the strong willed, obnoxious, disinterested young man that is our son.  He is sneaky.  He is selfish.  He is rammy. He is loud and inconsiderate.  And he is all ours.  Most days it seems like Micahs strengths barely outweigh his weaknesses, but I have to believe it is only because he is still growing and maturing and developing.  An hour later, I could really care less how he acted on that stage.  He didn’t want to perform in front of a bunch of people he didn’t know and for that I can not blame him.  Micah just doesn’t have that thing that the rest of us develop along the way that makes us pretend we like doing stuff that we actually hate so that we will be viewed a certain way.  “No nonsense Mike”.  That’s my new nickname for him.  Even though his name is Micah we always shorten it to Mike for nicknames.  We’ve called him “White Hot Mike”, “Iron Mike”, “Rebel Mike”, “100% Mike” (when he brings home a 100% on a spelling test)…just to name a few.  I wish I could say “what you see is what you get”, but that is not the case…he has proven to be one of our most intuitive and thoughtful (as in always thinking, but not necessarily in the caring for others kind of way) children.  There was some part of me that watched that child, refusing to perform for church ladies and gentlemen that reminded me of the verse in Galatians that says that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Micah was acting out his freedom and doing a fine job at that.  May we all remember that our freedom of choice is precisely the gift God wished to give us in sending His Son.

As we loaded into the van after church I simply mentioned how much I enjoyed hearing all their little voices singing.  No-one seemed to care either way.  We headed off to our favorite Indian food restaurant in Lancaster…we get a hankering about once a month.  We had some late afternoon plans with friends but were pleased to have enough time to set off for some chicken tikka masala!  We kept it a secret till we arrived and the kids erupted with gladness upon turning into the parking lot.  After a 20 minute wait we were seated in the middle of the dining room.  Chris remained at the table with sleeping Max in his carseat while I accompanied the other children to the buffet.  Owen, fully jumping the gun, proceeds to dump one spoonful of rice right onto the floor.  I was right there, and so I took over for him immediately.  While finishing serving him I over heard a woman telling her husband that she watched Owen let the handle from a set of tongs fall into a pan of food.  I pretended not to hear…just be aware people, sometimes you could very well be eating the germs from every persons hands in the entire restaurant.  Frankly, I think its comical that any of us think that we aren’t.  Hand sanitize all you want…it counts for nothing when a group of reckless kids finds their way to an open buffet of food.  Lets all build our immunities together!!

Once seated and eating, everyone is happy and quiet and considerably well behaved…aside from rice EVERYWHERE…but short of bringing along my own travel vacuum and tipping really well, there isn’t much I can do about that.  Max is now awake and is enjoying nibbling Naan.  At one point Flynn mentions to me that he keeps slipping his Crocs off his feet.  I don’t think anything of this.  It’s not that uncommon for a kid (or a grown person) to slip their shoes off under the table.  “Huh.” I believe was my unenthusiastic response.  I stand up in the crowded dining room to go get a plate of food for Max.  Out of the corner of my eye I see on the floor a set of bare, hobbit-esque feet…standing on the plastic runner beside me.  I am astonished.  My head jolts directly to my left.  It is Flynn.  My oldest, (10 years old) most mature and responsible child is standing barefoot beside me in an extremely crowded restaurant dining room.  In partial disbelief I yell whisper to him, “Is this a joke Flynn!?”  He looks confused.  “You CANNOT walk around barefoot in a restaurant dude!”  He immediately scurries back to the table and slips his Crocs on.  In Flynn’s defense, Crocs are basically a more acceptable version of bare footedness…and considering that we had already contaminated this buffet…whats the difference…but like I said, the micromanager in me dies hard!  Apparently Flynn was not present the day we went over all the things that are absolutely forbidden in American eating establishments.  Come to think of it, he definitely missed it…because it never happened…because for some reason I assumed that we are all born with a common understanding that in restaurants, especially buffet style restaurants where perhaps several trips around the dining room are necessary…you shall remain SHOED! Its hard not to imagine the things people say about a family like ours once we finally get up and leave.  You leave hoping that everyone seated around you at least only got one angle.  No-one could have seen the hurricane of rice around Micah’s chair AND the tong handle submersion AND the bare feet…most people were only catching one or two…but hopefully not all three angles.  Meanwhile Iris has chosen this as a good time to ask,

“Mom, how does a woman know that she is going to have a baby?”

Knowing that I could clearly hear conversations taking place at tables all around us, I believed that they too could hear ours…I lean towards her…

“I could tell you another time Iris…it isn’t really a lunch conversation.”

“Well, is it because she goes to the doctor?”

“Yea.  The doctor tells her.” (Just trying to end the probing.)

“So, does she go to the doctor every year?” her head is tilted, puzzled look on her face.

“Yep.  Yearly visits.”  (Its over…right!?)

Her food steals back her attention.

Naturally, when the meal is over Chris is the first to get up and leave…acting as if the baby NEEDS him to exit the restaurant immediately.  I’m left with a few stragglers, slowly chewing and a destroyed table and surrounding area.  In an effort to seem like an OK human being, I begin scooting rice around with a napkin…as if cleaning up this rice were even a possibility.  Its all about appearances…right?  Once we are all in agreement that no more damage could be done, we stand up and head for the door.  I mouth an apology to the host as we leave the place…to whisper whatever it is that people whisper when a side show like ours pulls out.

With a little bit of time to kill before meeting our friends, we attempt to go play some ski-ball at the mall.  Apparently malls are closed on Easter.  Thats no fun.  What is fun though, is sending your four older kids up to “check the door” and then speeding away.  Chris would have left them there for a much longer amount of time, but I reminded him of the damage that our children (mostly the boys) can do when left to their own devices too long.  Someone would have quickly assumed the winterized fountain as base camp and we would not have been able to coax them back into the van for any amount of anything…it becomes a principal thing with these guys.  Just the fact that we playfully pretended to abandon them would have ignited a rebellious fire that wouldn’t be easily quenched.  We load up and head north to our friend’s piece of camp land for an egg hunt.

Our friends have this funny habit of inviting us out to camp for a “campfire” and when we arrive there are 10 other cars there and 50 other people.  We assumed this would be more of the same.  However, when we arrived we saw only their van and their five children running about frantically, hiding eggs.  Our friend Kevin approached our vehicle.  The window goes down.  I have to ask.

“Are your kids hiding eggs for our kids?”

“Yeh.  They already found like 250 at my moms…they didn’t need to hunt for anymore.”

What a special, exclusive event.  The best part is that when our kids got out and started hunting for eggs, their kids helped them find every single one…cause they knew exactly where they were!  It was really a fun time.  We ended the night back at our friends house for dinner and a movie.  On our drive home that evening, Chris and I agreed that the holidays can be quite exhausting with all these kids.  From Thursday afternoon when the kids got home from school right up to Sunday night it felt like we didn’t stop going and doing.  Someday these days will be far behind us and Chris and I will finally live in a little camper that we park wherever we feel like seeing the sun rise the next day and hopefully our children will be begging us to come to Easter at their house.  Until then, may they know how very difficult it is for their father and I to respect their free wills (but we’re desperately trying here!) and may they go easy on us…so we live to see the previously mentioned camper.

Owen is five. He is a strong, husky, generous five. He has been riding 2 wheels since around age 2. (Thank you to the adjustable handle on the Razor scooter..) So I believe it was a little after Max was born (about a year ago) that we ventured on our first family bike ride, meaning everyone but the baby had their own set of wheels. Before this, Owen used to ride in a child carrier mounted in the back of Chris’ bike. Micah (now 7, soon to be 8) was our craziest, swerviest, most unpredictable cyclist. No one ever wanted to ride anywhere near him. He just has this really noncommittal, easy going, carefree approach to directing his operation. It’s as though he is the only person in the world on a bike and the out stretched road before him is a canvas that he wishes to FILL with tire marks. Chris and I usually determine who of us will lead and who will bring up the rear. I’m usually in the rear. Once, on our local rail road bed turned bike trail I watched Micah really casually drift over in front of Chris and run him right off the edge and into a field of high grass. I was probably 20 yards behind when I watched Chris and Owen (3 years old at the time) bite it into the sunny little meadow. I let out one of those uncontrolled “where did that sound come from” kind of screams…and being far enough away that I still had to pedal quite a bit before I could be of any help, it was definitely one of my more awkward biking moments. Thankfully everyone was ok, just a little shaken up. And Micah got to see first hand what exactly it was that we were talking about when we mentioned his wreck less driving and why it is important to try to hold your handle bars steady. All that being said…it is 2 years later and not much has changed…except that Owen now has his own two wheels to navigate.

We recently returned from a trip to Florida to visit my mother and father in law. Riding bike in Florida, when you haven’t been able to ride bike in the north east all winter can be quite heavenly. By way of my husbands occupational skills, he was able to do a small job and trade my father in law some drywall work for his old recumbent bike that I fell in love with the moment I began pedaling. It remedied my least favorite factor of bike riding for me…the strain on my lower back…which sends tension into my neck which builds up and accumulates along with all the other tesion and stress that I like to wear like an all encompassing body armor and then basically paralyzes me for a few days out of the year (and that is where my kind, gentle, soft spoken chiropractor comes in). The recumbent puts me in this really relaxed, more aware of my surroundings state of mind. So when my father in law said he wanted to sell it and that he doesn’t ride it I wispered to Chris “I want that.” Plus, I feel kinda gansta when I ride it. There is some kind of irony about feeling gansta while riding a bicycle in Birkenstocks and a skirt that I believe I need more of in my life. I asked Chris what he would do if we got this bike home and suddenly there was no grocery money because I started sinking all the funds into trickin out my new wheels. Flashy rims, gold handle bars with studs, leather seat, little side mirrors, an air freshener. It wouldn’t be my first intervention.

Our return to Pennsylvania certainly didn’t present us with bike riding weather, especially not after being spoiled with Florida sunshine. Florida really has a way of ruining Pennsylvania for me. When we got home to Lebanon, it felt like someone had suddenly thrown garbage everywhere and turned off the lights. So much litter. So overcast. 😔

Thursday evening, it had been in the 60’s all day. The kids were already on their bikes out front, begging Chris to go on a bike ride. He hesitantly agrees. It’s 6:50, and thanks to daylight savings…people with five kids get to live under the illusion that they can still do stuff with their kids who are all actually as tired as they would be at 7:50…their freakin bedtime! I’m holding Max, who keeps crawling over to the glass window on the front door to see what’s going on. I mention maybe going along (that recumbent is just calling my gansta name “Autumn! ️️Autumn Louise Krouse! Let’s roll!”) if it’s not too much trouble to hook up the bike carriage for Max. He obliges.

All of our bike rides start the same. Chris gets out the air pump and his tools and tweaks every one of our children’s second hand bikes. It is 7:10 by the time we start scooting thru parking lots, headed to the south-er side of town…wide open streets…no traffic. I hang back to enjoy a little breather from the dinner madness with five kids and to keep an eye on the rear. We aren’t thru the second parking lot when kids lose formation and one emerges on one side of some parked cars while another is zipping from the other side and we almost lose Iris and Micah…right outta the gates.

“COME ON GUYS! YOU HAVE TO WATCH OUT FOR EACHOTHER!”, shouts their gangsta motha.

We make it to some wide open streets and the kids are mostly staying in line. I begin to think its a little cold. We are all bundled up, but when the sun, who clearly doesn’t care what we do to our clocks…starts fully dissapearing and the mid day 60 degrees that was an evening 50 degrees is quickly becoming a night time 40 degrees…and the wind is ripping past our faces…I’m basically done riding before we even started. But we all got ourselves out here, so I don’t mention how cold I am and that Max might be cold too.

We approach the first hill on our journey. I’m pedaling as much as I have to to not fully stop on the hill, and in doing so, I pass Owen. As I approach Chris he turns to me and says “Uh oh. Our little robot is out of steam.” I look behind. Owen is standing mid hill, straddling his bike. He does this when he tires out. Doesn’t mention it, just stops. I rode back to accompany.

“How ya doin?”

“My legs are tired. I hate this hill.”

“Yea. Me too. You wanna go home?”

“My legs aren’t tired anymore.”

He’s right back at it. Owen stands on his pedals almost all the time. I think it’s because his bike is so heavy that he needs the extra leverage just to keep the thing moving. As we’re approaching the stop sign where the other four bikers are, I see Flynn has laid his bike down to go tuck Max’s blanket in around his face. My sweet thoughtful Flynn. We’re off again.

I now mention to Chris that it’s pretty cold and I can’t imagine Owen having too much more energy. We agree that our return journey is under way. Flynn is pedaling beside me, and he keeps doing this swerving move, that makes it look as though only the tread on the very sides of his balding tires is keeping him from laying it over. I ask him to PLEASE stop doing that. I told him it really looks like an accident waiting to…

Up ahead there is a scream, I look in time to watch Iris rag doll it across the pavement in the middle of the road. Chris stops as quickly as he can and I am hustling to attend. From a distance I’m trying to see blood…I like to pre know about the presence of blood. It changes my state of mind considerably. She is sobbing and kind of holding her hip bone and wrist. Just scuffs and scrapes. As we are brushing Iris off, there is another scream. This scream I am much more familiar with. I hear this scream when a shoe comes untied. I hear this scream when the tip on a pencil breaks. This is the scream I hear from the bathroom when the wet wipes are all gone. Owen has no intermediate sound that he makes. He’s either cool as a cucumber or he has lost his mind with rage. No in between. He is laying in a small ditch on a little macadam hill/parking lot to a garage, a few yards behind the rest of us. I jog to the scene…as I am now housing a steady flow of adrenaline, allowing me to perform under such conditions with little or no emotion. Flynn gets to Owen before me “Hurry up mom! His ankle!” I run faster. His ankle is wedged between the rotating pedal and the frame of the bike. He’s howling. I get it unstuck and make sure it isn’t broken. Flynn and I calm him down and I apologize that I didn’t get there sooner. I told him that sometimes it’s hard to know when he is really hurt because he kind of screams like that a lot. He picked up his bike and we continued our return journey.

We are approaching the local park. Micah speeds ahead, there are a few kids in the park and Micah has assumed we are going. I holler to Chris that we are not going…

“People need baths!”

He passes on the message as kids begin u turning and swerving to reroute their course. Chris looks at me through the chaos…

“There’s just too many of us on bikes. Every bike ride is like the worse wreck in the Tour de France.”

I burst out laughing. I recall a brief conversation at the farmers market earlier that day when an acquaintance saw Max and asked

“When’d ya have that one!?”

“Well, he’s about a year.”

She looks shocked.

I said “Yea, I’ve been busy.”

She responded, “Well, get less busy, cause this world doesn’t need anymore people!”

No no. What this world doesn’t need is anymore people on bikes. That’s what we don’t need.

I will only briefly mention that this woman remains perched in one specific location inside the market and maybe once a week I run to market for a latte and some produce. She never moves. If standing in the farmers market, assessing other people’s birth control needs is anywhere in my future…I believe I would rather keep making people. To each their own.

For the rest of our brief ride home, I hung close to Owen. At one point he turned to me and said,

“Well, I’m glad we aren’t in Florida, since Florida conrete is harder. It’s all white and hard.”

I chuckled to myself and agreed with him. He rides a moment longer and turns to me again,

“At least my ankle works, Mom!”

I couldn’t be happier to agree with him again.

I would like to end with this deeply profound Sloan Wilson quote.

“The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.”