Shenandoah National Park: Day Trip

I’ve had this fear that my boys will grow up not knowing much about forests and rivers and basic agriculture: things like the fact that corn grows on stalks, not on trees, but more importantly that none of it grows at the grocery store.

Since I grew up in a little house in a big woods, this fear makes sense. I basically had pine needles stuck in my hair for most of my childhood and made more varieties of mud pies on the stone kitchen counter by the creek than anyone ever has or ever will. (boo-ya) Now my boys know roughly how to navigate the bus routes we take and the metro—including the names of many of the metro stops in DC, but last night Clark asked me what a corn tree looked like. So, I’m always conscientious to teach the boys about nature whenever I can. 

The boys know signs for various outdoor activities that they’ve never been a part of, specifically because of the outdoors DVD in the Signing Time series. So when I decided I wanted to go to Shenandoah National Park for a picnic and some hiking on Mother’s Day, the boys piped up excitedly that they wanted to find hiking sticks. Yay! They knew about hiking sticks!

So, on Mother’s Day we took a trip to Shenandoah. It took us a little over an hour, driving from Reston, to get to the northern gate of the park, just outside Front Royal. If you get off Route 66 at Markham and onto Route 55 (John Marshall Highway) you can drive the last few miles on a more scenic road. From Front Royal, follow the signs south and you’re there.

One of the first overlooks

It costs $15 to get in, and your pass is good for a week. The park itself is gigantic, but for a day trip with two three year-olds, we picnicked at the first picnic area and hiked at the first short trail and called it a day. Camping for several days or even a week would be an excellent way to experience the beautiful park. The boys hiked for about a mile on a loop. I was surprised how long they were able to go and how much they liked it. Only as we climbed the hill back toward our parked car, did they ask to be carried. And that was during their normal naptime, too! We saw some deer, birds, lots of butterflies, squirrels, caterpillars, and a giant millipede. The boys found hiking sticks. Cal named his Trail Stick and Clark named his Climbing Stick.

On the way home we stopped at the Apple House, which is right by the entrance to 66 at Markham. They have apple donuts that are somehow always warm, as well as some decent pulled pork and burgers and such. We had dinner and donuts, nestled amongst the many souvenirs, and headed home. The boys slept all the way.

Now my boys know how to hike in the woods, what a millipede looks like, and that grass can whistle. Not so bad for two little suburban chaps whose default answers about where things come from are “Costco” and “Harris Teeter.”

5 Shouts!

Buttercup!

A shark in the meadow!

Always the clown

Please notice the charming mud on Cal's face.

Ahh. Open space.

Frolicking 

On the hike!

Mr. Millipede

Happy Hiker A

Extreme Happy Hiker B

National Walk For Epilepsy

I signed up for the National Walk for Epilepsy again this year. Last year I walked with my brother and ended up with a lot more sponsors than I anticipated, which was cool. It was weird to see so many people in purple shirts (people with epilepsy wore purple at the walk last year) walking around, when I've only ever met a couple other people with epilepsy. So many people have it way worse than my measly average of one or two seizures a year, that I'd like to do a little bit to help fund further research and support for such a baffling condition.

As it turns out, the little bit I can do to help is to walk in a big circle on March 31st. So, if you're around and you want to walk in a two-mile circle around the National Mall with me, join my team or donate online right here.  I think I'll take the boys out on the walk with me this year!

Aaron and me at last year's walk

That Accident Ten Years Ago

Ten years ago this month I was in a car accident that should have killed me. I don't want to get all Nietzsche about it, but the experience and its repercussions have shaped me in a way that nothing else has, and made me stronger. On that January morning, my parents got the call from the hospital that must have really sucked. They packed, made arrangements for my other siblings, and drove without knowing much about my condition, six hours to the hospital. I was still in surgery when they arrived. Seven broken bones, two bone grafts, a couple years of physical therapy, a couple hardware removal surgeries, the diagnosis of epilepsy, twenty or so seizures, some in the middle of streets and at bus stops, and here I am. Still alive. Still grateful.

I was weaseling around in my old cards and photos the other day, looking for pictures the boys could cut up for a craft we were doing, when I found the stash of cards I kept from ten years ago. I decided as I was reading through them that I need to write something about all those nice people who were so wonderful during that time in my life. I know I ended up throwing some of the stuff out-- certainly the majority of the large stuffed animals had to eventually find new loving homes, and the cards from eighty-something students I had just finished student teaching, while sweet, I found no reason to keep. Space is all-important here in our cozy little hive. But most of the notes I kept-- I'm a sucker for the written word, after all. I found myself tearing up as I read through them, standing there in my slippers, holding the notes with my dry-from-too-much-washing mom-hands, stupid Jimmy Buffet singing in the background as the boys played their guitars with that cringe-y, out of tune twang. I tried not to let the boys see that I was crying, which wasn’t hard because they quickly switched from a cheeseburger paradise to fighting over drumsticks and space shuttles, as I allowed myself to remember that time.

While I make no claims whatsoever to having It All figured out in life, I think it will be good for me to write a reflection on what I’ve learned from my accident and my ten years of unusual challenges due to having epilepsy. Hopefully it will serve as some semblance of a tribute to so many of you who were selflessly thoughtful and endlessly kind to me specifically during that rough first year of recovery. I know my inner teacher is showing with this, but here are the main things I’ve learned:

Control: I don’t have it and that’s okay. I never thought I was a control-y person before, but my accident and subsequent surgeries and seizures took away much of the control I had over my life, and it has not been easy to part with. When all is said and done, what I have control over is simply my attitude when dealing with my lack of control. I spent months not even being able to shower or get dressed by myself and I couldn’t stand on two feet and walk for six months after my accident. I watched as what should have been the last semester of my college experience passed without me. I watched a replacement roommate take over my bed in the house I lived in with my best friends. I watched those friends graduate. I watched the club softball team I’d helped start go on to play their first season of NCAA Division 2 softball without me. All this happened while I lay on my hospital bed at my parents’ house a couple hundred miles away, the muscles in my legs atrophying away. All I could do about it was get angry, which I definitely did from time to time, or do my best to let it go. It was a struggle then, and it still can be now. I have to rely on everyone around me because driving with my epilepsy doesn’t work. Two times since being diagnosed I’ve gotten my driver’s license back because my doctor and I have thought we’d figured out the formula for my seizures—how much medicine I need, why I have them, how to feel them coming on, but both times we’ve been wrong and the car keys have been taken from me after a year and a half one time, and after just a few months the next time. I have to depend on the buses coming somewhere near on-time and hope that people won’t get sick of me asking them for rides. I used to prize my independence so much that losing control of much of it has taken me ten years to do, and I still struggle with it.

Perspective: A lot of crap doesn’t matter. This goes hand-in-hand with the control thing. So much isn’t worth getting worked up over, all things considered. After I started walking again, everything else seemed insignificant. The car broke down? I failed a quiz? I spilled ketchup on my white shirt? I locked myself out? So what? I can walk. I can move around and do things by myself. It sounds cheesy, but I thought that way a lot the first few months after I started walking again. I swore to myself I would always remember how lucky I am to simply be walking. This ten year crashaversary is a good reminder.

Humor: It makes the world a better place. I like to think I knew this before my accident, but my experience reinforced the fact. Learning to see the funny in situations also helps with the perspective of it all. How else am I supposed to deal with being carried down the aisle in a two giant casts as a bridesmaid and a month later crutching down the aisle as yet another bridesmaid? And depending on my roommates to walk to the back of the grocery store to buy my milk and laundry soap for me because my weak legs couldn’t handle so much walking? The accident and my epilepsy journey have refined my stellar, completely awesome sense of humor that you wish you had.

People: Nice people make life richer. I have been blessed with so many amazing people in my life that it’s almost ridiculous, many of whom shined that first year following the accident. First and foremost were my parents and my little brother and sister, who were still at home. My sister and mom did most of the difficult work—showering me and dressing me, rubbing my feet to cheer me up, holding me when I cried in pain after the surgeries and therapy and general frustration, feeding me, entertaining me, taking me to physical therapy three days a week. And other people came out of the woodwork to help me. People I had fallen out of touch with for years sent cards and people I wasn’t sure even knew I existed came to visit me in the hospital. They prayed for me. The English department, my fellow English Ed majors, and my friends helped me deal with being out of school and rejoiced in my small steps of recovery, usually through email. One professor aided in getting me to meet and talk to the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, about whom I was doing my senior project. What did we talk about? Mostly the fact that I had two casts on my legs and was pushing a walker at age 21, because he was in a similar situation after being hit by a car years before. Friends took me bowling in my wheelchair. Friends of my parents brought me a little television for my room and drove me places. My accident helped heal one friendship in my past that I am so thankful to have back.

As I look back over all the cards people sent and remember the nice things people did for me, I am astounded and I aspire to be someone as nice as those family and friends who did and still do so much for me. After I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder I narrowed down my search for jobs to places with good public transportation and that is how I ended up in the DC area. Here I met and married Brian, who drives me everywhere and does all our shopping, as well as provides love, care, and support for our growing family. I have twin boys, a condo in a perfect place for walking, and more amazing friends. I honestly don’t know what more I could ask for, except maybe a smidge more space. I even got those Russian nesting doll plates from World Market that I was drooling over because another amazing friend read my blog entry about shopping!

And that is my ten years ago story and reflection on all it has meant to me—on how it has shaped my character and my life. I hope most people who touched my life in those first months have a chance to read this and know that I have not forgotten their kindness.  

The day after the accident...for some reason I can't rotate this.

Visiting part of my softball team

Watching my best friends graduate

Being carried down the aisle as a bridesmaid

Popcorn Pond

I love Reston. Maybe it’s a silly fake town, but it’s a good silly fake town. The boys and I took time a couple weeks ago to visit a pond we always see part of as we walk past. It turns out there are a several ponds back there in the trees, and they’re more of a planned and maintained veritable wetland biome than just a couple ponds. The first time we were there the boys loved the white pebbles on the paths around the ponds and so over and over they brought me handfuls of the pebbles that they called popcorn and I pretended to gobble them up and let them spill down my front. Since then we’ve been back a couple times and the boys have dubbed the whole area Popcorn Pond.

Last weekend we took stale bread out in search of ducks at Popcorn Pond. It took us awhile, but when we found the third pond, which includes an island and a bridge to the island, we found several pairs of wood ducks. They ate our bread after a little coaxing. It was a beautiful day and I kept wishing I knew more science-y things to teach the boys as we walked around. They loved the cattails and loved letting the wind carry the seeds in their fuzzy airplanes all around the blue sky. There were stones with Walt Whitman and William Cullen Bryant verses on them. And this is all, as they say, a stone’s throw from our house. What a fun surprise!

The boys said they wanted to feed ducks like a boy in their book feeds ducks.

One of the Popcorn Pond ponds

Checking out a cattail

Fly, seeds, fly!

Introducing cattails to the popcorn pebbles

We found pond #3!

Don't eat the berries...

Good one, Walt

In the middle of the third pond is an island with a bridge!

And ducks to eat our bread!

William Cullen Bryant

leaving the island

Many discoveries among the leaves

Big weird, Reston-y gazebo

looks a little like a temple...

leaving the ponds

heading home after a great morning exploration

Wild Rocky Red: Attack of the Wooden Horse

Last week we had another medical adventure at our house. (My seizure being the first one, two weeks ago.) As Clark was rocking out on Rocky Red, the faithful, much-loved rocking horse, and listening to Jimmy Buffet, as they both do daily, he pulled back too hard and fell over backward into the side of the recliner. Rocky Red came down hard on him, somehow right below his left eye and the cut was immediately bleeding all over the place. Cal was upset, yelling, “Clarky, Clarky, Mommy. Clarky!” and sticking his face into Clark's face to look at his cut. Now, this is urgent, brotherly sympathy is something I have seen a few times, mostly in Calvin, that just makes me want to cry, it is so sweet. I hope they always feel that way about each other. I spent more words assuring Cal that Clark would be okay than I did comforting Clark—I mostly just held him. 

I grabbed what was around—a little white sock—and put pressure on the cut and wiped up the blood, wondering how in the world I could get Clark to the emergency room if that’s what he needed. I had Baby Alex that day too, which meant the double stroller would not be enough to transport us all. Meanwhile Cal kept saying to Clark, “Clarky, wait here, I will get strawberry medicine. Be right back,” and going into the bathroom, calling me to help him, melting my heart all over again with his concern. I called my friend Aimee who happened to be already out and in line at a grocery store nearby. She rushed over with her little boy and watched Alex and Cal while I pushed Clark in the stroller to the ER. Sidenote on the awesomeness of where we live: How many people do you know who could walk to the ER faster than it takes to drive to the ER and park? Maybe only me. And also, how many people do you know who have been to the ER as many times as me? That's what I thought. Since I can’t drive, we are so blessed to live here. The day before it had poured rain, but that day it was sunny so the walk was simple. Clark was incredibly brave, in part due to the book he loves, Maisy Goes to the Hospital, but also because he visited the ER in June and got stitches in his chin. He remembered that they had turned baseball on the TV for him, and you know how much the kid loves baseball.

Clark the next day, sporting not only his cut, but one of the new surprised faces he likes to practice. Notice Rocky Red sulking dejectedly in the background.

We got in and saw a doctor right away. Clark hardly cried and all the nurses were smitten by him and all his talking. He called a lot of things cool and pretty and cute and the nurses nice. You can tell who he hears talk a lot, though I’m not sure I would have chosen those words for the sterile insides of the ER. Fortunately he didn’t need stitches, just some skin glue. A couple sizable superhero stickers later, and we were out the door and on the way home. It is amazing to have Aimee so close and so helpful and super with the kids. All things considered, this was another case of best case scenario coming from a scary situation…and both in the last two weeks. Hopefully this week will end without any disasters. 

Walk It Off!

My parents are flying in from Idaho today! I spent the morning trying to clean around the boys and then took a break from that nearly-pointless task to walk to the grocery store and let the boys run around and do boy things like throw pine needles in the air while calling it hair, and pine cones dangerously near parked cars, and acorns at each other. Maybe they would take a good nap after all the fresh air. 

I was pushing the double stroller as we neared the store. A woman was walking toward me in a pink tank top and black, three-quarter length spandex. She smiled nicely to me and said, as I lumbered past since we were going downhill, “Lookin’ good. Walk it off.” And she was gone.

Hm. I was glad she wasn’t standing in front of me and expecting a response, because I didn’t know how to take that. Those two little sentences do seem to contradict each other a little, right? “Looking good. You’re not as fat as you were when you were pregnant with twins, but girl, you’ve got to keep losing that poundage.” That’s what it felt like. Now, it’s true that I gained 65 pounds while I was pregnant with the boys. It’s also true that I lost roughly 60 of them until, when I was still nursing when the boys were 15 months I frantically stopped because I suddenly thought I might be one of those moms. You know, the type whose son walks over, recites the alphabet, performs an algebraic equation, and then hops on his mom’s lap to nurse. Or something like that. So I quit nursing and gained some of the weight back…probably about 8-10 pounds. Not ideal. Not awesome. Oh well. 

Let’s revisit Pink Spandex Woman. She was herself a bit of uh, a portly woman, some would say. Or maybe some would say she is substantial. Hearty. Big-boned. Nice personality. You get it. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the woman wasn’t insulting me, but it was still a curious thing to say and hear, so I thought I'd share it with you.

And now I need to go clean more because I think Mom and Dad's plane landed a minute ago and my kitchen floor is still atrocious. I’ll move fast while I sweep and mop so I can walk it off.

The way I finally got the bathroom cleaned-- convinced the boys to sweep the carpet.

White Person!

The boys have created some moments of racial awkwardness of late. Since I can’t drive, we do a lot of walking, which naturally involves a lot of crosswalk action on the part of us and our stroller. Of course I taught the boys to look for the walk sign, which is, as you know, a white stick figure. When they see the orange hand change to the walk sign they yell, “White person! White person!” in recklessly loud and repetitive shrieks, alerting me to the fact that I need to kick the stroller into gear. In some cases, however, it alerts me to the fact that I have two very white boys pointing and yelling, “white person!” when there are people who are not white people walking toward us or behind us or with us. This is when I say loudly, “YEP. GOOD JOB! THAT’S THE WHITE LIGHT. THE WHITE PERSON LIGHT THAT MEANS WALK," as I avoid eye contact with our fellow pedestrians.

on Capitol Hill in search of white person lights

 A good example is from our trip into DC the other day. We were on Capitol Hill and making our way to the metro stop. We were nearing an intersection, but it was actually still not very close to us, and they starting yelling about the light. "White person!" I saw that we were almost to pass a couple black girls eating on a bench. What was I supposed to do? I just grimaced inside and kept trucking, trying to flash a wry smile that says, “Please, please look at what they’re talking about so you don’t think these boys are trying to put a spell on you.” Fortunately they didn’t even really look at us as we passed.

Cal and Ava

Then there are the less-embarrassing moments when the subjects don't know they’re being racially profiled by the boys, but they actually are. Cal has a girlfriend, yes that’s right he does. Her name is Ava and she is a twin with Ethan. They live close and come over often. They are half Vietnamese and half Filipino and here is a picture of them kissing. Anytime they see a girl with a dark complexion they point and start chanting, “Ava! Ava!”at the same time. Also, it doesn’t have to be little girl. The other day on the train they were calling an Indian 20-somethings girl Ava. My first mommy friend I met when I started staying home with the boys is Korean. Anytime we see a woman or girl who looks Asian they start yelling, “Angela!”

Anyway, you get the idea.

The boys are also ageists. Anyone, male or female, who looks older than me is “Mamama!” their great grandmother. When that person overhears what the boys are calling him or her, I just pretend that “Mamama” is the boys’ grandmother rather than their very, very old great grandmother.

In a similar but much, much more delightful manner, the boys are making creative comparisons that are warming my poetic heart. I will always remember Cal’s first metaphor. It was on an airplane on the way back from Idaho this spring. He looked out at the clouds below us and said, “Clouds are pillows!” I melted. The other day, while eating chicken nuggets and French fries (Operation Beef Up Cal, fast food edition), Clark said that his French fry was a “horsey!” Cal, not to be outdone in the creative food interpretations department, held his nugget up to the light and said, “like a bear!”

This is all part of the way the boys are learning about their world, and even though it’s awkward and sometimes makes me blush, it’s interesting and entertaining. I’m guessing the uncomfortable “white person” habit won’t end anytime soon, and I’m sure for a long time they will also group people of different ages and races into categories and call them names of people they know. Maybe it won’t be too long before they stop yelling it aloud and start only thinking it. I definitely hope that seeing the world in figurative ways never ends! 

Reveling in Art, Nature, and Lollipops

This past week we’ve been able enjoy the neighborhood and the weather here. We strolled over to the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival last weekend. It’s a big festival with a lot of high end art and some middle-of-the-road art. I think my favorite was the “found object robots” (here is an article about them), which are made of all kinds of old things like bottles and tins and baseballs. Not because I want them decorating my house but because I think they would be fun to make. I suppose that’s the gingerbread architect in me speaking.

Clark and a lot of nut-juice taking in some festival music

For the boys the highlight was the roasted and candied pecans that they ate with abandon while letting the juices dribble down their chins, in their ears, up their noses, under their fingernails, etc. They liked watching the lady roast and coat the nuts because she did it in a big bowl that went “‘round and ‘round like a ceiling fan and a mixer.” Fortunately for me a woman was handing out free hand sanitizer with little bungee clips that hook onto my stroller, so that made the whole nut-juice thing much easier to deal with and I’m pretty excited to have that nifty bottle.


A couple days ago we went to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens with Aimee and Nick and another mom and 2 year-old son. What a beautiful place! In the main building there are four ceiling fans whose blades look like giant leaves, so it took awhile to pull the boys out of the building and into the gorgeous gardens. There is a lot of room for wily youngsters to run and beautiful plants and flowers, lazy butterflies, unnaturally large goldfish, tiny tadpoles, moderately-sized turtles…you get the idea. It’s a place we’ll return to, even though Cal did a face plant in the mud and had to go change mid-visit. 

giant ceramic ants in the gardens!

watching tadpoles and a baby turtle

the Fearsome Threesome with their fearless (and sightless) leader

walking to Lake Anne

We made it over to the Lake Anne farm market yesterday morning. The weather was beautiful, without that thick Virginia sweat that characterizes most of the summer here. (Today, on the other hand, the humidity is 82 %) The four of us got to enjoy the walk through the trees, ran into both an old friend and the executive director of Reston Community Center who we happen to know through her nephew, bought some plump sweet peas and a basil plant, and donated to the Herndon Braves Little League team, which, in turn awarded Cal and Clark with their first lollipop experience. It was a very long experience, I might add, whose end I brought early because they had:

1. stained their white shirts with purple splotches
2. started eating the paper sticks
3. transferred sticky grapeness to their hands and stroller parts

Cal in a grape lollipop haze

I’m loving life in our neighborhood these days! So much constant green and bright flowers. I have only one beef with nature: I’ve been attacked by an overly protective momma bird on the way to the library TWICE. I swing my computer bag at her and run. It’s terrifying! So now I walk to the library another way, which incidentally takes me past the coffee shop where it is hard to deny myself an iced cup of joe on the way to tutor.

Pools opened this weekend so we’ll get the boys out soon, and there’s a live bug display at the Natural History Museum so we plan to get downtown soon too. Last night Brian and I got to dress up and go on a date to the Kennedy Center while Uncle A watched the boys. Fun stuff!