Vacation Box of Chocolates: Part II (Sebago Lake Yo-Yoing)*

Going on a vacation is always an exciting experience. I suppose the trip could go smoothly -- no traffic jams, forgotten belongings, bee stings. I'm sure I've even had those kinds of trips. BC. Before Children. But that was in the distant past . . . a decade ago and more. No, my trips -- like my daily life as a full-time single mother of two young boys -- are hopping with drama.

Our first trip of the summer took place this week. School didn't get out until noon on June 27th. By that time (very, very late for the uninformed), I was as fried as a McDonald's onion ring. I desperately needed to get away and just chillax . . . by a lake . . . in the shade . . . with a pretty view. I planned to take my sons camping because nothing makes me happier than sleeping in a tent. (I know. I'm not your typical mom.)

Camping isn't something you can do on a moment's notice, however. Well, it could be, but you would likely find yourself unprepared -- as in, without raingear in a downpour or minus milk for your cereal. You get my drift. We couldn't take off on Friday, the 28th because I hadn't yet made preparations. Christopher, my older son, was planning to attend a friend's birthday party on Saturday. Since my kids' social engagements are a priority, I resolved to leave Sunday. My younger son can be a very good little helper. He came with me as I shopped for food during the birthday party.

I was psyched. Unfortunately, I neglected one thing: to check the weather in Casco, Maine, where we were headed. Lol. Pretty important item on the to-do list, I'd say! Actually, it was my second time this season making this particular sloppy error. The first time we were tenting it in our backyard. I set up my twenty-five-year-old dome-style Northface and tucked the boys into their sleeping bags then sat down to call up weather.com. Rain, thunder, and lightning forecast for the night. Argh. Did I wake the boys to tell them to come in? No. Did I put the fly up over the tent? Nah. Too lazy. I crawled into my own bag and went to sleep. Sure enough rain started dripping on me through the leaky seams just after 3 a.m. I know what time it was because I listened to the tolling of the church bells in my town. Chris woke up because he was also getting wet. We nudged Charlie awake, and I sent the boys inside. Wouldn't you know it? The rain stopped a few minutes later, so I went back in the tent -- this time to Charlie's middle position, which had stayed dry.

So here I was again past the point of no return (not really, but I was in my mind) in my trip preparations -- supermarket, gas station, and ATM stops made and bag packing begun -- before I checked the weather. I'd had a recollection it was supposed to be poor but neglected to watch a recent TV report.

Packing the car took half of Sunday. Our first stop was a KFC/Taco Bell combo in Seabrook, NH, on the Massachusetts border about one hour from our home. We always stop there on trips to eastern New Hampshire or Maine. I'm not sure exactly how the subject of Charlie's iPod Touch came up. But the issue of its whereabouts was likely raised by me after my younger son started pestering his brother to hand over his own. (My older son waited until he was nine before getting the device; Charlie got his at seven because his brother's was a frequent source of power struggles between the two.) "Why don't you play your own, Charlie?" I probably asked. Silence. "Charlie? You do know where it is, don't you?"

"It's somewhere around here. No, Christopher has it." A moment later: "You put it in your purse, Mama."

Uh-oh.

My pulse started to race as the too-familiar thought of ANOTHER LOST ITEM (worse, A VERY EXPENSIVE LOST ITEM) kicked in. A back and forth exchange between the three of us ensued but led nowhere in helping me determine where the iPod Touch had last been seen. It was way too early in the trip to be having our first dramatic situation and not long after five items went missing from four communities in four consecutive days (truth!) -- raincoat at pizza place, backpack at school, baseball mitt at field, and blah blah). My patience level, in other words, was at -50. Pulling off an exit of I-95 North and into a side road, I parked in front of someone's house then launched into a search of the backseat. I was very aggravated, however, so I did only a cursory probe not a thorough going-through like the North Attleboro police in Aaron Hernandez's mansion.

Nothing.

Now in full-on Hunter-Downer Mode (see "Hunter-Downer Mom," 3/21/12), I ordered everyone back into the car. We were going to retrace our steps. We had several more hours of daylight with which to reach our destination and set up camp, and I knew I would be furious with myself if I didn't try to track down Charlie's $199 (not including tax) birthday present. Heading south with intentions of stopping at KFC/Taco Bell and Starbucks (where I'd obtained a much-needed coffee drink), I suddenly heard Charlie call out, "I found it!"

Relief.

We lost half an hour of driving time and $1.50 in tolls, but we had it in our possession. We didn't need to make the two extra stops. The saga was over. (I wasn't foolish enough to believe that it would be our only saga, however.)

The rest of the drive to Sebago Lake was happily uneventful until the final stretch when lightning lit up the sky. It started raining as I drove up to the campground entrance. Are you kidding me? Let me tell you: it's not a great feeling to BEGIN setting up your tent for your young children in the lightning and rain. It was not looking good for the night. The last thing I wanted was to kick off this multi-day trip -- I wasn't sure how many days it was going to be, but I'd brought enough food for a week -- with a wet tent and soggy bedding! So I conferred with the campground staff at the entrance then turned my vehicle all the way around to search for a motel.

The first place we checked out had stuffy rooms. Despite being called an "inn," the second wound up being a residential care facility (assisted living). The boys got a huge kick out of the euphemism. It became a running joke every time we passed by the place. The third felt Goldilocks just right. It was pretty late by this time, and I was wiped out from packing, driving, and the heat. We made a dinner of strawberries and yogurt then hit the sack.

The next day was cloudy but no precipitation. Trying to be optimistic, I drove to the campground and obtained a site for one night. (I have learned the hard way that reserving ahead of time for multiple nights can come back to bite you in the arse. Exactly one year after an awful experience in the Berkshires, I still need to try to get money back from the state park system. See "Gut Instinct," 7/9/12.) I returned to the Casco motel and showered, and we checked out. Wouldn't you know it? It started raining ever-so-lightly just as we exited the parking lot.

When you are burned out, hanging around a campground doing practically nothing can be just the ticket. That was my plan for the day. I erected the tent and made the boys grilled sandwiches (turkey and tomato for them and cheddar cheese and tomato for me) in our pie iron. S'mores all around after that. It rained as I sat on the beach. Didn't care. It rained as I swam in the lake. Didn't care. It rained as the boys played tetherball. Didn't care. Dinner was simple: hot dogs, raw veggies with salad dressing, lemonade, and more s'mores. (In case you're wondering, we are crazy about s'mores.) The rain stopped barely long enough for dinner but started right up again as we said our "goodnights."

Was this some kind of joke?

I woke up with a stronger version of the headache I took to bed. Regrettably, the tent and everything in it got wet during the night. Water came in from the ground as well as overhead. If I happened to roll off my Therm-a-Rest pad, my sleeping bag suddenly felt damp and cold from landing in a small puddle. The sky, meanwhile, was solid clouds. Looking up and seeing no hope of meteorological improvement anytime soon, I decided to check out of the campground and back into the motel. So that's exactly what we did after eating cereal in the rain.

I tried to nap in our room but couldn't because the boys were too noisy. We headed down to Naples for a late lunch at Rick's Cafe where I spent way too much money. Back at the motel, I sat under the roof overhang tapping away on my iPad. Rain was still pouring from the sky -- yes, all day! -- and I was still pouring bottles of water down my throat in an effort to rid myself of my brain pain. My strategy appeared to finally be working. After enjoying about thirty minutes of a comfortable noggin, I noticed a dozen Canada geese coming toward me across the lawn. I told the boys, and Charlie came out to have a look. However, instead of very carefully approaching them to get a better glimpse or simply standing still, my energetic seven year old jumped in the air at the very moment I bent down behind him to kiss the top of his head. His head knocked hard into my mouth, giving me yet a new head pain!

Reading this, you might think to yourself: "Oh, just a freak accident." Well, not exactly. This is the second time in three years Charlie has bonked me in the mouth with his exuberance. The first time he leapt in the air to greet me at preschool pickup. A fat lip followed a bloody lip. This time the skin under my lower lip turned purple, and I had no ready access to an ice pack like before. Our room had no refrigerator, and the ice in my cooler in the car had melted. I could have searched for the motel owner or gotten in the car to find a store. I did neither. Too much trouble. Pretty lousy day all around, but my steak dinner at Applebee's was quite good.


By morning, the weather had improved, so I spread the wet tent and fly out in the motel parking lot to dry. (There had been a few other visitors the first night, but we were alone the second.) I was the first of the day to claim a nonreservable site (our old one, in fact) when the campground office opened for that purpose at 8 a.m. Before setting up camp, we induged in a delicious breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, and bacon we couldn't resist at a nearby cafe.

As I stood at my SUV unloading our stuff, a campground hostess drove by in her cart, and we struck up a conversation about tarps. I'd noticed that most tents in the park had large ones suspended overhead to protect them from rain. I had a fly -- like a second tent you put over your first tent -- but in certain curcumstances it had not been enough. Definitely not enough several years ago when we got drenched in Camden, Maine, and not enough here in Casco. As a rule, I generally don't take the boys camping if rain is predicted, though we have also been caught off guard. (Killington, Vermont, last summer comes to mind.) When you consider that we've been camping in state parks as a family since my seven year old was four, I would say we've had very good luck overall. However, I've now experienced getting wet too many times to not do something about it. The hostess suggested buying a tarp. Reluctant to shell out more money after unexpectedly having to get a motel room, I decided instead to try making the ground cloth an air cloth.

While the boys resumed their tetherball competition, I spent an hour or more attaching our kelly green plastic sheet to trees and a picnic table. I extended thin ropes affixed to the corners of the cloth to both others previously attached to the fly and ropes the hostess recovered for me at abandoned campsites. My end result was not great or pretty, but I was willing to give it a try. It looked saggy, if you must ask. Still, it would divert rainfall from most of the tent unless we experienced a heavy downpour, in which case it would probably fail.

I didn't make it to the beach until after lunch. By then the Fourth of July visitors were pouring in in droves. My sons played in the water and on the sand and grass with toys and sports equipment I'd brought. Typical brothers-style, they argued over being hit by a ball or tagging the wrong base. Then they'd have to change activities or take a break from one another. That evening, tired from the motel-campground yo-yoing and the boys' squabbles, I suggested we go to a brand new dine-in movie theater in a nearby community. Seeing Despicable Me 2 proved to be a great idea.


The good news: the rain had finally stopped. The bad? A heat wave had begun. Luckily, we could cool off in a lake. I was very grateful to be stationed near the water. That is, until Charlie got hit in the eye by a paddle the next day! This is why KAYAKS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THE SWIMMING AREA, people! Meanwhile, I was kicking back with my light beach reading. Not! I was taking notes on a book called Setting Limits With Your Strong-Willed Child. A friend gave it to me to help me deal with the common parenting issue of a child who constantly tests boundaries. My boys are complete opposites temperamentally, and that can create a lot of conflict on a daily basis.

We were excited to watch the fireworks over beautiful Long Lake that night. The lake is close to my heart as I went to a sleepaway Christian Science camp on its shores for six summers many years ago, following the lead of my mother who also attended as a camper and served as a counselor for a record eighteen consecutive summers! (She grew up in Manhattan so really needed a cool respite in the hot months.) To head off as many problems as possible, I decided to make a dry run to the Naples causeway to check out where we could park that evening. The temperature being above 90 degrees, we needed ice cream as well.

We had an early dinner at the campsite before returning to the causeway for the display. Well, wouldn't you know it? By some weird coincidence, we wound up standing right between the friendly Canadian couple in an adjacent site and two boys who had played with Charlie at the campground. Well, wouldn't you know it? Part II. The Strong-Willed One complained about being sleepy as soon as we arrived on the causeway. He's young and very physically active throughout the day every day. But Christopher and I were not about to miss the once-a-year event in another state. So Charlie, enterprising little fellow that he is, lay down on a nearby patch of grass and proceeded to fall sound asleep. Yes, that's right. He was completely conked out through the entire fireworks show, booms, hisses, squeaks, oohs, ahhs, and cheers notwithstanding.


The next morning we slept in as much as you can at a full campground the day after the Fourth, had a nice hot breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, and drove to the Naples Library to charge devices. I know what you're thinking: charge devices on a camping trip? Good question. Well, I would like to say that I absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent ban the usage of devices on such nature trips. Unfortunately, I can't. I allow them when we are driving -- and/or if a child is not cooperating to the point at which focusing on a screen is the only thing that helps. As a full-time single mother almost ten years running, I'm not going to apologize if I whip out an iSomething to appease a situation. My iPhone needs to be kept charged at all times for emergencies, and I like to stay up on the news even when I'm sleeping outdoors. Most importantly, however, the library was AIR CONDITIONED!

We had not spent a lot of time just hanging out at the campground, but I was already getting antsy. I am not someone who can just relax on a beach for two weeks straight. I am also not someone who likes to go, go, go! Vacation time should be a mix, in my opinion. I was ready to climb a mountain. The excessive heat was continuing, so it would have to be a small one. My younger son will tell you he doesn't like to hike -- on a flat trail, that is. Yet he likes to climb mountains, bag peaks.

The following day I wanted to rent canoes or kayaks to take advantage of the spectacular Maine waterways or, to be accurate, one spectacular Maine waterway. Regrettably, it was too hot for the former activity by the time we emerged from the library, and we needed to obtain a boat for the latter. So we settled for lunch and, natch, ice cream. (I was happy to return to the Lakeside Dairy Bar as a cute young server the day before had called me "sweetheart." I do not lie. Listen, when you are fifty-one and unattached -- and pretty much also unavailable due to your 24/7 solo-parenting duties -- being called "sweetheart" by an attractive male half your age is the highlight of your day. The HIGHLIGHT. Unfortunately, I was brought right back down to Earth that very same night when one of Charlie's friends, age 8, told me at the fireworks display that he thought I was Charlie's grandmother. Oh, geez. Sweetheart vs. grandmother in the same day! Hmm.) The 90-degree temperature precluded us from doing anything physical, so we returned to the campground to crash on the beach and cool off in Sebago Lake. It was not a bad choice, frankly.

Who would want to do anything else?

We got up and out fairly early on Saturday to climb Douglas Mountain before the heat set in. The one-hour circuitous route in the Town of Sebago was perfect for the day, albeit buggy. Charlie found two frogs along the trail, and we climbed the stone tower at the top. On the way back, we investigated canoe and kayak rentals in Bridgton. I wasn't thrilled with that option as it was not close by, and we would have to pull the canoe ourselves up the street (and even slightly uphill!) to Highland Lake because the shop only had one delivery person who couldn't be tied up with us. I swung through Naples next. Unfortunately, the outfitter was out on the road making deliveries and had locked up his office. Rats! The following day, Sunday, would be our last as we needed to return to Massachusetts. I wanted an arrangement that was easy and not taxing on me since I would be driving more than two and a half hours the fifth day of a heat wave.

Often in life trying to force something to happen creates the opposite effect. But when you let go, the very thing you want to happen may just come to you. That's how it transpired for us.

Disappointed but resigned to the fact that we probably would not be able to pull off canoeing or kayaking the next morning, I stood at our campsite contemplating repacking the car when a truck rattling its way up the road drew my attention. I looked up and, in probably the most serendipitous moment of the trip, could not believe my eyes. It was a pickup with "Sebago Kayak Company" emblazoned on the driver's door and hauling a trailer loaded with the colorful boats! So that's where the kayak outfitter had gone to deliver boats! Our campground! My next challenge was to stop the moving vehicle as it rounded the bend in the road. I couldn't very easily flag the driver down on foot because he was driving too fast, and I would have to cut through someone else's site to get to him. I had one shot at alerting him, basically. So I just went for it. "We want a kayak!" I yelled. Since it was blisteringly hot, the driver's side window was open, and he heard me. "We just went to your office!" I added.

"I'll swing around," he replied.

We made the deal right then and there. I chose my boats, and he lowered them from the rack. I was way too zonked to take the boys out for a paddle that afternoon, but Ted agreed to leave one two-person kayak for Charlie and me and one single for Christopher on my site overnight. He was in a hurry to return to his shop, so I didn't write him a check that day. My swim in the lake that afternoon felt especially refreshing knowing we would get our boating in after all! It had been a very good day, indeed.

The heat had still not let up by morning, which made being on Sebago Lake in kayaks the perfect final activity before leaving Maine. And, boy, did we need to cool off! It took us nine-and-a-half hours to get home -- a perfect storm of heavy holiday traffic, bathroom breaks, snack and meal stops, a gasoline fill-up, frequent cold water-bottle replenishment, backtracking through South Portland after missing a key turnoff, slower driving than usual to study license plates (tying last year's record, we counted thirty-two states to and from Maine), and even losing a tooth while biting into an apple at the Kennebunk Service Plaza!

Needless to say, the trip home -- just like the vacation itself -- was pretty grueling. But we were together coping with extreme weather, getting exercise, and reveling in summer. Fortunately, we like adventures, so our week away was a success. It was not a comfortable trip by any means; it was a challenging one.

It was our kind of trip.

*See "Vacation Box of Chocolates: Part I (Franconia Fiasco Edition)," 1/6/13

Summer 2013: "Thou Shalt Have No Wasted Days!"

Summer vacation starts for us in two days. At noon, to be precise. And not a moment too soon, let me tell you!

Indeed, it's a very late dismissal this year because of a very snowy winter, especially the second half of it. All five allotted snow days were used, pushing classes much too close to the Fourth of July weekend for my liking.

What that means on the other end, of course, is that our break from school will be that much shorter. Only two months long, to be exact. And when I say "exact," I really mean it. Not one day extra, not one day less. Honestly, I think there might have been an uprising if summer vacation had been reduced any more.

Still, two months. TWO MONTHS! Ugh. I shudder to think about resuming the school-day routine on August 28 when the days are blisteringly hot and steamy.

Speaking of BLISTERINGLY HOT AND STEAMY, our weather of late has only compounded the agony of this extra week of classes (and Field Days and a field trip to Boston). Northeastern Massachusetts has felt more like Texas than one hour south of the northernmost state in New Engand. Today is the third day of a heat wave, generally defined in the region as three days in a row of 90-degree temperatures or higher. In fact, yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far with the mercury climbing to 95 degrees, tying the record for that day set in 1976.


With such an abbreviated vacation, parents may feel added pressure to make the most of it. I know I do. "Thou shalt have no wasted days." The Eleventh Commandment.

Like many -- dare I say, most? -- parents of school-age kids, I am DONE with the school year. Caught-on-fire-marshmallow-over-a-campfire done. I'm weary of getting up at a certain early time, preparing breakfast for the troops, making lunches or putting $2.75 in labeled envelopes for lunch money, choosing clothes for my boys to wear, reviewing their homework, and packing their backpacks. I've had enough hurrying off to school -- either walking or driving (when we're tardy). And I'm tired of having to race over to the school at 2:55 p.m. for pickup, followed later in the day by a sports practice or game, the making of dinner, and the overseeing of homework. Everything gets pushed back too far into the evening, cutting into my alone time.

As a full-time single mother coming up on a decade, I require "me time" to decompress -- and, at the risk of sounding too New Agey, get centered from my daily stress. Doing what I need to do to nourish my brain and/or senses -- whether that be Facebooking; reading a book, magazine, or news article; e-mailing; or watching TV (I've really taken to nighttime dramas with catchy one-word names such as Revenge, Nashville, Scandal, the now-canceled Deception, and Motive, my latest -- I stay up too late then predictably feel and look like the wreck of the Hesperus the next day.

Isn't what I really need sleep? Well, yes, yet I crave my quiet time after the boys have gone to bed. Anyway, I vow to do better the next night, but invariably it happens again and again and again. It's a vicious cycle.


Getting through the rigid school year requires discipline, adherence to a schedule, and tolerance of repetition. SO MUCH REPETITION! God Almighty. Personally, I prefer things to be loosey goosey. Get up whenever. Cobble together some random food. Roll down the driveway as the spirit moves me. Do I sound like a slacker bachelor? You have the right idea. I am the female equivalent. I just happen to have two children.

But not even the summer can be truly loosey goosey when said children are young, as mine are. They wake you with their noise. They need you to get them to their morning day camp at their school, of all places, making it feel awfully like a school-year dropoff. They need to be wearing clean clothes that they didn't wear the day before. They need to have money in their pockets for a drink and/or snack. They need you to pick them up at noon (or whenever, and from wherever). And they need you to deliver them to and from their next activity wearing the proper attire and carrying the proper equipment, if necessary. They still need to eat meals. They still need to be prompted to brush their teeth and bathe. And they still need to be coaxed into bed.

Loosey Goosey? Hardly.

Unless they go to sleepaway camp or spend a good part of July and August living elsewhere with a divorced parent or other relative, kids are generally home a lot more during the summer than the school year. And while that can certainly be wonderful, it can also be very challenging. Most parents need to work during the day, and they also need a break from child care. Siblings get on each others' nerves, especially in the very hot or rainy weather and when they are around each other too much because they don't have enough to do or enough to do separate from one another. Days can be long and arduous for parents when the squabbles and physical fights begin.

So while a school year is predictable, summer is more of an unknown quantity. It is also very individual. My family's summer will not look like your family's summer, and your family's summer will not look like your neighbors' family summer. But if you live in my community and send your kids to the public school like I do, then our summers will have one thing in common this year: they will be very short.

Make your summer a good one!

When You Live Near Glostah

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

Your house is biggah;
Your daughter, prettiah.
Your marriage is strongah,
And you spend money freeah.

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

You are most likely blondah
as well as slendah,
certainly not dumbah.
You don't drive a Hummah.

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

You drink wine to numb yah,
Love to gossip -- or is it slandah?
But you call it the formah
Because that is so much safah.

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

You rarely make a blundah,
you around-town runnah,
hanging near the beach and harbah
in Tory Burch. How up-and-comah!

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

Parental Pride

I often write about the challenges of single parenting. The hiccups, ordeals, frustrations, and downright aggravations. They occupy a lot of my time. They can consume my thinking, and they often provide me with constant fires to put out.

But it is the moments of triumph that come amidst the problems and the plain-old mundane that make parenting so very worthwhile. They can be simple and small snippets of time such as watching my sons harmoniously practice making soccer goals together in the backyard or sending my older son off to school after a full night of sleep and confident he will do well on the MCAS exams required in Massachusetts. But sometimes they are much bigger accomplishments that take my breath away and give me a high the next day that rivals the ones gleaned from a fantastic date, an awesome concert, or arrival in a tropical paradise.

This week I experienced such a parenting high. And as is so often the case when a child achieves something spectacular, the road to the success was bumpy -- making the end result that much sweeter.

My older son hit a grand slam in a Little League game. With one out, two strikes, and bases loaded in his team's last up at bat, Christopher smacked a ball into left field behind third base. From my vantage point near first base, it looked like it would veer into foul-ball territory. It did not. Christopher rounded first and headed toward second. The ball hadn't been fielded yet from the outfield, so he kept running as his teammates and their parents cheered him on. He made it home just in time, outrunning the throw. His teammates poured out of the dugout to greet him, and I whooped and hollered out of pride and gratitude.

Having just returned from the town next door where my younger son was playing in his own Little League game, I only just barely saw Christopher's infield home run. I had parked, stepped out of the car, and immediately heard my son's name announced. ("Christopher Siems," mispronounced as "Seems," of course.) Chris was next at bat.

Wanting him to know I'd arrived, I called out: "Go, Chris! Watch the ball!" He listened. Boy, did he listen.

Chris came through in the biggest way possible. His hit raised the score from 7-2 to 7-6. Unfortunately, his team -- the A's or Athletics -- didn't bring in any more runs that final inning, so the A's lost the game against the Blue Jays. It didn't matter. In my book, my son had won BIG TIME.

As we ate celebratory sundaes at our favorite ice cream stand that afternoon, Christopher explained how he was able to hit the ball so well: a classmate's father had helped him with his grip prior to a game the day before that he had been invited to play in. That game was a AAA game, one level up from Chris's AA games.

The third-grade class at his school is so big that there were too many players who went out for the AAA. As a result, Little League officials drawing up the teams decided to place eighteen third graders on AA teams, which are made up of second graders. (Fourth graders fill out the AAA roster.) Parents were not notified of the split ahead of time. Instead, I learned about it when getting my son's team assignment.

Both Chris and I were disappointed the third graders had been separated, and that Chris had been put in the lower of the two levels. Before the season began, all the kids had tried out at an indoor facility and were ranked on ability based on their performance that afternoon. However, a kid can have a bad day or just be rusty from not having played baseball in nearly nine months. So it's an imperfect system.

Happily, though, Chris was called up by a AAA team to fill in for an absent player the very first weekend of play. Ranked at the top of the eighteen third graders in AA, he was among the first to be tapped for a call-up. It proved to be a great experience. The AAA coach is terrific, and several of my sons' friends are on the team. Meanwhile, Chris held his own and then some, hitting a stand-up double and RBI and later scoring the tying run before the next player came across home plate for the win. He did so well, in fact, that I asked the coach in all seriousness: "Can this be a permanent call-up?" Unfortunately, the answer was no. The system just doesn't work that way.

He didn't play as well the second time the same team called him up. But that game took place the day before he hit the grand slam in his AA game, so it proved to be a terrific warm-up.

In discussing the split of third graders with other parents at the beginning of the season, phrases like "big fish in a small pond" and "chance to shine" were bandied about in an attempt to put a positive spin on the fact that some children were assigned to a lesser team. But as the season draws to a close in less than two weeks, I'm finding these tritisms have some merit. A friend's son in AAA still feels intimidated by the power of some of the fourth graders and the speed at which they can pitch. Yet my son feels good as he strides up to bat. When he watches the ball and connects with it, his confidence soars. He is proving himself as a hitter and, as a parent, I couldn't be prouder.

Compartmentalization: An Effective Coping Mechanism

I am perpetually behind. It's just a fact of my existence as a full-time single mother with no built-in support network. A given. A fait accompli . . . or, as it were, a fait inaccompli.

Playing catchup in so many areas of my life both large and small could make me crazy. Indeed, it has felt like it would countless times in the near-decade that I've been a full-time single mother. The pressure from too many responsibilities and the frustration from things not going right build, and I sense that I'm going to explode.


But something has happened to me recently to alter that. I hesitate to call it a permanent change or one I can successfully bring about in every circumstance when it would be useful. But it is a change I am very happy with, and it seems to have rewired my brain. Gasp. Did I just say that? First, a disclaimer. I did not grow up a medically- or psychologically-oriented person. Quite the opposite: I was raised in Christian Science. However, I have always been highly observant and self-aware, even more so since seeking psychotherapy following my mother's passing. Not to mention that figuring out how to deal with my complex present life without going out of my mind has been Job No. 1 for a very long time. So while my brain "rewiring" may not be exactly medical, it sure feels that way to me because it represents such a welcome departure from the way I have handled responsibility overload in the past.

What change am I talking about? Compartmentalization. I've learned how to compartmentalize.

I can now separate issues in my mind without the sum total of them steamrolling me. I've learned how to address one issue at a time, put it down (or back in its "compartment"), then pick up another. I am making progress on many of them, though it is slow and perhaps not even noticeable. But I reassure myself that the progress is there, and I am taking the right course of action.

Growing up, I took the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was a worrier. A serious worrier. I worried about my parents arguing. I worried about taking tests, writing papers, winning tennis matches, getting through swim-team practice, and remembering my lines in plays. I worried about talking to boys and friends liking me. As if that wasn't enough, I also worried about many things a child shouldn't have to worry about such as the financial condition of my family after my father would hit the roof over mundane expenses or a piddling motel bill. (They were piddling in the '70s.) I worried about a plethora of issues. And, of course, I worried about my father's hair-trigger temper as well.

Not surprisingly, I was a horrible sleeper, an insomniac. I felt rested one day in about every nine. I kid you not. Hard to believe, but my father was an even worse sleeper than me. He had undiagnosed sleep apnea, I'm convinced. I came to this conclusion after researching and writing a story on the condition for a daily newspaper I worked for many years ago. Unfortunately, my father died not long before my assignment, so my findings came too late to help him.

Thankfully, I am no longer the same kind of worrier or sleeper. My transition began after my mother died in early '95. It was an issue of learning to relax -- transforming my whole being by silencing her "do's" and "don'ts" and "why aren't you this's?" and "when are you that's?" When someone with a dominant personality has been in your daily life for a very long time, his or her absence through death doesn't automatically remove that person's words or tone of voice from your head. But they do fade over time and so does the power they long held over you. When that eventually happened for me, I was finally able to sleep better than ever before and help myself in countless other ways that opened a door to a much-improved me.

My psychotherapist in Seattle -- I moved there after my mother's death -- referred to my then-new adult-orphan state as "a second chance at life." In all honesty, I couldn't disagree.

Taken to the extreme, compartmentalization can be highly detrimental. It could be employed as a tactic to deny, avoid, or erase one's feelings to the point at which they one day explode out of their "compartments." But, if used judiciously as a coping mechanism, compartmentalization can be very effective in helping one manage simultaneous tasks, emotions, and even crises without going off the rails.

Personally, I think it has to be one of the greatest skills a mother can have. It's right up there in my book with multitasking. Mothers learn to become adept at doing many things at once, and compartmentalization helps them prioritize their duties along with set aside the emotions associated with each that would otherwise detract from their ability to carry out said duties. In other words, it's how you can get the kids off to school, do the laundry, shop for groceries, clean the house, perform your job, and host a party with your marriage in crisis and your elderly parent in the hospital with a stroke. You must multitask to maintain your daily routine for your family. Yet you must also keep your inner self together. The two go hand in hand.

Recently, someone on a single-mothers Facebook page I'm on asked the group: "What characteristic do you have that has surprised you most since being a mom?" As one of the women with the oldest children, I wanted to give a very specific answer. I wrote, "The ability to bounce back from extreme sleep deprivation and years of chronic fatigue syndrome." Not fully satisfied with my reply, I then added: "Also the ability to compartmentalize."

If you are a full-time single mother like me, learning to compartmentalize is essential because your job of 24/7 caregiving is/can be (depending on your level of free help and/or finances) overwhelming. So many balls are in the air at once all the time. It is difficult to keep everything on track and when you can't -- hate to break it to you, but it's inevitable -- you need to be able to (for the most part) keep your cool and carry on. You can't fall apart, and you can't quit. There is a time and mental place for everything in your mind. The challenge is to keep the various aspects of your life, duties that you juggle, and emotions that surface separate in your thinking. Approach them one at a time, and try not to stress out over the big picture. It can be very daunting, so look at it in parts.

Easier said than done, I know. Oh, boy, don't I know! 

Being Game

When you are a single mother by choice, you do the work of both a mother and father. You wear two hats, and you are keenly aware of it every single day. If you weren't already familiar with your strengths and weaknesses, full-time single motherhood will rapidly make them very apparent to you. I guarantee it!

I have many failings when it comes to performing this gargantuan two-headed job: I am woefully not domestic, and I am also not mechanical. And that's just for starters. So please don't ask me to bake an apple pie or put together Ikea furniture. (For the record, I have done the latter, but that was during a period in my life when I had a great deal of time, patience, and no distractions from children.)

However, one characteristic I do have as a parent and that I am quite proud of is "being game." I think of it as being adventurous, fun, or a little crazy or quirky in a good way. It's a quality that doesn't get discussed much in SMC circles, but I think it should be. Much more attention is paid to such practical subjects as financial stability, nurturing issues, the daddy question, support-network relationships, etc. and rightfully so.

But I feel that if a woman is going to choose to have a child or children on her own, she also ought to make an attempt to provide a happy experience for them beyond the "routine." Routine, in this case, I mean as the status quo of childhood leisure time -- sports clinics, teams, lessons; Disney vacations; beach visits; and the like. All of these non-school activities are fantastic for the child. Don't get me wrong. My boys have partaken in them for years -- with the exception of Disneyworld, which we still haven't visited.

In a traditional family, often one parent is more game than the other, and that is okay. The pressure is off the less game parent because the more game parent can pick up the slack. As a result, the child or children of this couple benefit because they do have a game parent. However, when there is just one parent in the family, the onus is on that one parent to be game because she or he doesn't have a partner who can provide that quality to the offspring.

I try to be game, but I find it fairly easy to be game because I already am game. Granted, not all the time and not in every circumstance. For example, I am not game to voluntarily drive a long distance through a snowstorm -- even to go skiing, which I love. I am not game to allow one son to take sailing lessons before I feel comfortable with his swimming ability. And I am not game (at least for now) to give my other son live chickens for Christmas. In these instances, issues of safety, responsibility overload, and/or cost take precedence.

Exactly what do I mean by being game? Being game can take many forms. As an example, this week I entered my first-ever eating contest. Yes, you read that right. Eating contest! What on earth possessed me to do such an odd thing? You must wonder. Did I think I was Takeru Kobayashi downing hot dogs on Coney Island? Hardly! This just seemed like a wild thing to do. It's called "Walk the Plank," aka The Captain Hook's Pizza Challenge. A pizza place we love in a neighboring community would award a tee shirt and free large pizza with three toppings to anyone who could eat said pizza in thirty minutes flat.

Game on!

Did I believe I could accomplish it? No, but I was game to try. I don't binge eat, and I don't pick at my food either. I have a healthy appetite. Still, I could only stomach one quarter of the pie. Lettuce and extra tomato sauce were good choices for toppings, but extra cheese most certainly was not, I quickly discovered. Too heavy and too filling!

My boys were amused to watch and content to be eating their own small pepperoni pizza at another table (because there wasn't room at mine). At one point, I had an audience of about eight people including two ladies who delayed their return trip home to Ossipee, NH, to see if I could succeed.

My timekeeper -- a cheerful, bespectacled restaurant employee named Al -- called my attempt "valiant." I'll take it! Only two other people (teenage boys) had entered the contest, and they both quit after consuming half a pizza. I was glad I gave it a shot, even after learning the next day that I'd put on almost two and a half pounds for the week. (For the record, I don't believe all of it was pizza weight, but some of it definitely was!)

But the point is: I was willing to go outside my comfort zone and possibly (or probably) look foolish just to have a good time. My sons got a kick out of it -- my large, football-playing third grader wants to make his own attempt -- and we made a goofy memory together that we will recall years in the future. I can just hear my sons now: "Mom, do you remember the time you tried to eat a giant lettuce-covered pizza all by yourself? That was so funny!"

Being game can also mean agreeing to camp with the kids in the backyard, allowing a group of teenage boys to partially bury a willing younger son in the sand under a mom's watchful eye, taking an older son down an expert ski slope when he is ready and the snow is just right, etc.

It's about being up for the unexpected, being spontaneous, being in the moment, and being open to new and offbeat experiences. As a parent, I personally think it's the only way to be because it models for the child an approach to life that is fun, positive, and adaptable to the circumstances. The alternative is, well, being an old fuddy-duddy.

And who wants to be that?

Hitting the Deer

You've heard of "hitting the wall," the point of complete exhaustion. Unfortunately, I've used that cliche far too often the past nearly ten years of full-time single motherhood. As of today, however, I have a new stock phrase to call upon to describe the same condition though, if possible, a more severe version because it suggests a fatigue so incapacitating that one cannot even avoid striking a living creature while driving down the road! When you hear someone say "I hit the wall," you think to yourself I hear you, I know what you mean, I've been there. But when you hear someone say "I hit the deer," you really pay attention. "You WHAT? You hit a deer? You actually hit a real deer? Oh, my God! Are you okay? Is the deer okay? Is your car okay? That's really scary!"

No kidding. It IS really scary. I know because it happened to me today. (FYI, I am okay. The deer appeared to be okay as it continued bounding toward the woods with its companion. And my car also seems to be okay.) First off, the accident was completely unavoidable, and it ended in the best result possible given the circumstances. Here's what happened: I was driving the speed limit from my town to the neighboring town when two deer leapt into my path at a bend in the road. I had a split second to brake, if that. Swerving would have been extremely dangerous and surely would have resulted in striking the first and larger animal broadside or going off the narrow road. I did not consider turning the wheel in that brief moment. Thank God no one was coming in the opposite direction or we would have wound up in a two-car/two-deer pileup! I could have been killed. As it was, I just clipped the backside of the second deer. If I'd had more distance between my vehicle and the animals, both deer would have cleared my front end. Unfortunately, they were just too close to me.

Though not at fault, I feel that hitting the deer was truly the culmination of a spate of unpleasant events that have plagued me for a while now. In other words, it is an apt metaphor for where things have been heading. They have been escalating, and not in a good way. I'm referring to a child's behavior, the condition of our home, and my financial situation among other aspects of my unpaid job singlehandedly managing this household of three. But many other unusual and undesirable events have also been happening since the beginning of the year. In no particular order, they include incurring nearly $3,000 worth of automotive repairs and car-rental fees, running out of gas on the highway, losing heat in my home during Nemo, forgetting my wallet at Staples (resulting in an hour-long anxiety attack and missed Easter egg hunt), losing two different earrings two days in a row, being put on Facebook probation for sending too many friend requests, and dropping my iPad on the pavement before stepping back onto it. Plenty more oddball occurrences have befallen me recently. These are just the ones I remember off the top of my head!

Why does this keep happening? For one, I am a person who seems to be a magnet for drama. It has pretty much always been this way. However, it has intensified considerably since becoming a full-time single mother and has grown even more pronounced of late to the point at which if someone had asked me if I thought I might hit a deer today, I would have laughed wryly and answered "YES!" -- as unlikely as that scenario would have been and considering the fact that I had never hit a deer before in my entire life.

Yeah. It has gotten that bad.

Motherhood can be grueling, and if you don't have a spouse or partner assisting you (and providing a second income!) or a support network of family or friends -- even just a few or one reliable person -- willing and able to give you free help when you need it, then 24/7 single motherhood IS grueling. Period. (Of course, if you have loads of money to hire substantial at-home help, then all bets are off. You are the apple to everyone else's orange. Lucky you!)

The single-mother experience ebbs and flows, though for me personally I am still waiting for the flow. For most of the past nearly ten years of it, I have fallen into the former category. Since I have lived in my present community twice as long as my previous two, I have had an easier time finding people to pitch in the past few years. I have made better friends here. Still, I really don't like to ask for help (who does?), and I try not to do it if at all possible.

Single motherhood is very intense for me just about every single day. My boys are in elementary school -- third and first grades -- so my reality is homework, school projects, field trips, evening programs, sports teams, martial arts, playdates, sleepovers (for the uninformed, seven year olds do have sleepovers), birthday parties, and more. As if that's not enough, throw in acting opportunities separate from school and many miles away (even out of state) and multi-day camping trips all over New England, and you have a pretty good idea what we are up to year-round. The schedule is full. Scratch that, overloaded. And it is nearly always about my sons. (Note to self: see if you can tweak that a bit.)

But while I am the facilitator of all of the activities -- the person who finds them, registers for them, pays for them, buys the uniforms for them, keeps track of the schedules for them, drives my sons to them, watches them, sometimes helps at them, and prepares my boys for them (playing catch, choreographing a piece, reviewing spelling, correcting homework, etc.) -- I also have to fit in my own life: teaching, getting ready for class, critiquing student work, blogging every ten days, accepting an occasional extra job or focus-group opportunity for spare cash, and submitting query letters and manuscripts and more to agents and editors in an ongoing effort to get my book-length memoir published. Yowza! Of course, there's also washing laundry, putting it away, buying groceries, making meals, packing lunches or lunch money, picking up the house, teaching right from wrong, comforting and disciplining, taking my children to dentist and other appointments, and on and on.

It is an endless list and the reason why being a mother is the hardest job in the world. Given this backdrop, it is crucial for mothers of all stripes and especially single mothers to apply the brakes once in a while so as not to "hit the deer."

Go out to a matinee. Have lunch with a friend. Walk on a beach. Have a massage. Take yoga. Wolf down a decadent dessert. Leave on a girls' weekend away and do karaoke in the local bar. If it feels good, makes you happy, relaxes you, or provides a brief escape from your daily pressures, then by all means indulge yourself. Do it as much as you can.

If you don't practice self-care at least once in a while, you will go "crazy." Maybe not in the clinical sense (though maybe you will) but surely in the teetering-on-the-edge sense. The mother, particularly the one without a partner or other free help, will feel like she is living inside a pressure cooker or vise with pressure bearing down on her from all sides. It makes her depleted, irritable, and unable to tolerate anything else thrown her way such as a flat tire, missing car keys, or petulant child. Her sense of calm and equilibrium will be replaced by excessive anxiety, imbalance, and a disordered mind. Regretfully, I know this state intimately. Take my word for it: it is horrible to experience.

Don't let yourself get to the point of hitting the deer. Carve out break times to give you pleasure and find moments of peace so you can manage to keep the crazy away . . . or at least at bay.