The promise of a path

I've been here at Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the past three days as a guest of the Festival of Faith and Writing.  It's been a wonderful visit. The staff is welcoming and effortlessly competent, the students are enthusiastic and promising, and the attendees are somehow not only willing, but actually excited to show up at the crack of dawn on a weekend to hear some non-celebrity former TV critic from the boonies talk about theology and stuff.

It's a a beautiful campus, besides, dotted with low, rambling buildings whose unotrusiveness -- none are over a couple of stories high, all are the color of earth or sand -- seems to reflect the stated ethos of the college. I heard a faculty member mention that Calvin is a place where "we compete to be the most humble."

But what I love most about a college campus -- any campus, really, from corporate to clerical -- are the pathways. Curving through trees, skirting green spaces, circling fields, edging buildings.  When I set out on such a path, I always get a jolt of memory at some particular point, perhaps when the path crests a rise or veers away from structures. I remember vacations with my family, the campgrounds where we parked our rented RV, and the paths that my brothers and I immediately set off to explore.  I remember church camps, with the paths that led from cabins to dining halls to campfire pits to circles of benches out in the woods. At the end of the week, treading the now-familiar paths, I felt like a newly-minted expert in the ways of the place, a veteran ceding the ground to the next group like Charlie Brown: "I've done my hitch."

I'm not an adventurer. I don't strike out into the unknown. I like a path because a path says "this goes somewhere." I can never resist finding out where. But the greatest pleasure of a path isn't finding out for the first time where it leads.  It's knowing where it leads, the next time.

What I see is so much more than I can say

Yesterday I posted a lengthy and photo-rich account of some overdyeing experiments. You can read it all at Toxophily, or if you aren't interested in the details, just revel in the eye candy.



But I know that what Noel and other family members are craving isn't pictures of yarn. So to go along with the above photo snapped as we were heading toward the exhibits at EcoFest 2012, here's a short piece of writing that Cady Gray brought home from school.

The Tye-Dye

Once upon a time, I went to Tennessee with my Grandma Libby. We Tye-Dyed one day with a tye-dye kit. We did three swirl patterns and two bullseyes. I did a freehand and one of the swirls. I did a swirl pair of socks and a pair of splatter socks too. We used a neon color kit, but we have a primary one at home. I hope I get to do it again someday.

NWA

In this state, that stands for Northwest Arkansas.  We planned a brief two-night trip up there during spring break week to see the new, highly acclaimed Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and to let the kids have the fun of a hotel stay.  Then flooding rain was forecast for the first part of the week, with several inches possible at our destination, making us wonder if it was going to happen. We ended up having to drive in some uniformly soggy, foggy, ugly weather on the day we traveled, but the kids had an amazing time and we were introduced to a beautiful destination in the state -- so it was all worth it.



We like to stay at the Embassy Suites when we can because (a) suite, hooray, kids have their own room, and (b) the breakfast is a destination in itself. Archer calls it the Em Bass Ee Suites, emphasis on the "bass" like the fish.




Our first swim of the warm season! The kids got right back in the swing of the water, and take a look at my newly svelte husband!




The museum doesn't open until 11 am (which I personally think is a huge missed opportunity -- we got there right when the doors opened and there was such a huge crowd that the upper parking lot was already full), so we visited the Wal-Mart Visitor Center on Bentonville's charming town square beforehand. Here the kids are posing by a coin-operated ride-on toy modeled on Sam Walton's famously unpretentious Ford pickup truck (the original is inside the Visitor Center exhibition space).




Waiting for lunch at the museum's beautiful Eleven cafe. When Archer trails his finger over something like this, these days it's because he is tracing the path of a pretend marble using the real world as a Marble Blast Gold level. "I just like to put a marble on that," he explains.




The museum was glorious. I can't wait to go back and explore it at my leisure. Here Cady Gray is recording her impressions of Adolph Gottlieb's "Trinity" in her museum guidebook.




Glow Bowl and Lazer Tag at Fast Lane, a giant arcade complex, rounded out the day perfectly.




And after all the weather drama, the drive home was a spectacular riot of spring sunshine, wildflowers, and burgeoning green. We'll definitely go back soon!

What we did on our summer vacation

Relaxed.




Strolled.




Expressed ourselves.




Shuffled.




Called it.




Took in the view.




Soared.

The scrapbook of memories

One way Noel gets me out of my homebody ways, up off the couch, and out into the world doing things I ordinarily judge to be too much hassle is to remind me that we need to make memories for the kids.

That resonates with me. My childhood is full of such memories, from vacations to family gatherings to all sorts of special events, and I realize now that my parents were going out of their way to make sure we had experiences to tuck away in our memory banks.

We don't have the resources to give our kids some of the trips I took as a kid. But thankfully, our kids are of the disposition to take our word for it that some little trip or experience is special. They open all their senses as wide as they will go and drink in those hours and days. Then they regale us with their memories for years to come. I know we have been successful in making memories when I see their eyes light up as they fall over themselves telling us what they saw, felt, heard, tasted, and did.

Because we're the only branch of the family west of the Mississippi, it's hard on everyone else to find a reunion location far enough our way to make travel reasonable. We're always going to have the longest drive or be the ones who have to take a couple of flights, and I'm grateful that my brothers and parents appreciate and understand that. For my part, I promise to remember how important those memories are, especially when they involve family, and cooperate as best as our schedule will allow in setting aside time and taking some trouble to make sure they happen.

Sea dreams

We're staying with Noel's folks tonight before heading on to our vacation destination tomorrow. They are big cruisers -- a lifestyle I desperately want to adopt one of these days. Our only cruise experience (with Disney several years ago) was magnificent, and I'd love to make that kind of experience a regular part of my leisure time.

I know it's a terrible practice that doesn't deserve the name "travel," but I love having everything provided for me, with no bigger decision to be made than when to eat and which pool to sunbathe beside and when to nap. Travel is one thing -- I enjoy going new places and having new experiences -- but vacation for me means relaxation. And nothing is more relaxing for me than no schedule, nowhere to be, and no one to answer to.

I owe Noel a trip for his 40th birthday, and while we want to go to New York one of these days and see some shows, I feel pretty certain I could talk him into a cruise ... or a series of cruises. Maybe that's something we can work toward next year. My older brother is heading toward an empty nest -- he'd be thrilled to host our kids for a week, surely. Or so I imagine in my cruise-starved craze.

Conspiracy

The universe is conspiring to make me comfortable with our five-day vacation this upcoming week.  Consider these factors:

1. It rained today, briefly but hard, making me think that the next several days of triple-digit temperatures might not kill all the vegetation around the house while I'm not here to water it.  (Still watering as thoroughly as I can this evening before leaving.)
2. We don't have to fly.  That means we're in control of our destiny and we can take as much stuff as we want.  Hooray for thinking "should we bring this?" and answering "why not?"
3. I haven't seen my brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews in 18 months.  I'm realizing that's messed up.
4. The open road calls.  As much as I hate traffic and get antsy with tractor-trailers blowing past me, I'm feeling the romance of being on the move.  So many days, hours, and weeks on the road with my folks when I was a kid turned out to be treasured memories -- even though they were never the point of the vacation, just the necessary evil of getting there.  Yet they have contributed to my enduring sense that the journey is the destination.  Normally I breathe a huge sign of relief when I've gotten past all the driving and can put my feet up.  Tomorrow and the next day, if the tractor-trailers will leave me alone, I might actually enjoy myself.

I hope the universe continues to organize itself toward a perfect vacation for me and my family.  But even if everything goes wrong, my happy anticipation in these days leading up to our travel has been a vacation in and of itself.

Off the grid

We're heading to the Tennessee mountains on Tuesday (by way of an overnight stopover at the in-laws' on Monday) to meet up with my extended family.  My parents will be there ... my older brother and his wife will be there with their college-bound son and teenage daughter ... and my younger brother and his wife will be there with their three children who are close to our kids' ages.

I am on record as an unreconstructed homebody.  Normally, it's fair to say, I resent being uprooted from my comfortable recliner and routine in order to vacate and recreate.  Sometimes I even dread it.

But I'm actually looking forward to the upcoming week's trip.  I'm actually thinking that I can let Noel drive a leg or two while I read or knit.  (I'm a nervous car rider and usually insist on driving the whole way, but 9 hours is ... a lot.)  Here's what would make this vacation enjoyable for me:

• Time with my kids.  They've been on the go and away from the house in various camps for the last several weeks.  I find that I've missed their company more than I expected.  They love having fun, and I'm looking forward to having fun with them.
• Time with my siblings and parents.  We have a great time when we're together.  My brothers are a barrel of laughs.  When we get together to play games and share memories, it's always a blast.
• Time to read.  I've got a couple of good books going at the moment -- Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, which is our freshman summer reader this year and a favorite of mine from my own teenage years, and Anthony Trollope's The Warden.  A half hour of uninterrupted reading time at lakeside, or on the patio, or while the kids play on the playground, sounds like heaven, especially if I get to rinse and repeat.
• Time to knit.  Of course.  Two projects going, one that's completely mindless and one that's semimindless.  What a joy it would be to see measurable progress on them for each day we're away.
• Time to gain perspective.  There's been a lot of anxiety in my life this summer, from the treasured colleague interviewing for another job to the political crisis in Washington.  I need to get away from the relentless grind of those stressors.

I think I've reached a new point in my relationship with both my families -- the one I was born into and the one I've made.  On the one hand, the kids are at the age when they find it exciting to travel and are willing to see the disruption of their routines as an adventure.  So I worry less about the problem we're getting ourselves into by uprooting them and making all that effort.  On the other hand, I sense the increased urgency in spending time with my parents and siblings while we can all be together, in continuing to stock the storehouse of memories with those experiences.  

I don't mean it to sound morbid. I'm happy that these two movements have coincided at this point in my life.  Only if it had happened too late, or if I hadn't recognized it in time, would it be cause for regret.  Take it all together, and I'm hoping for a vacation that's more renewal than endurance test this time around, and for many years to come.

Down time

We're heading to Tennessee for a family reunion in about a week -- meeting up in the mountains with the Bowman clan, under what I hope will be cooler conditions than the prevailing trends here.

There will be many preparations over the coming days.  Clothes will be packed, meals will be planned, amusements for 18 total hours of automotive travel assembled.  My favorite preparation, though, is choosing my vacation knitting.

Right now I have two projects in active development.  One is a Doctor Who scarf requested by two former students for conventioneering and general dress-up fun.  I had reached nearly five feet (out of twelve) before having to rip out four stripes because I got them out of sequence.  It's mindless garter stitch and it goes very quickly even in sport-weight yarn.

The other (to which I returned today because the garter stitch was starting not to feel like knitting anymore, so little effort is needed) is a pair of socks whose cabling is the most complex I've ever done.  That's the opposite of mindless knitting.  Every stitch needs to be considered with care, and it's slow as molasses (but you really know you've done something when you finish a round).

I think I need to split the difference for my vacation knitting.  I'll take the Doctor Who scarf because it will be knittable anywhere, anytime.  But I'd also like to have something a bit more challenging on hand, a bit more beautiful, a bit more engaging.  A lace scarf (without a chart), probably; that's my standard portable, easy but not completely braindead project.  I've already got a long-neglected one of those going, though -- almost done, in fact -- so I'd be loath either to start a new one or take this one (with only a few hours' worth of knitting left on it).

I'll probably spend way too much time looking for the right project and matching it with the right yarn.  But anticipation is half the fun.

When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?

We're headed to Hot Springs at the end of next week for our annual theme park trip (family motto: Creating Memories!).  Last year, in addition to the water park and amusement park, we went to the big observation tower and saw some of the sights downtown.

This year I've got a dream.

We sometimes watch the Science Channel shows "How Do They Do It?" and "How It's Made."  It's one of my absolute favorite types of television -- factory porn, you might call it.  Specialized machines doing specialized jobs.  Cutters, crimpers, computers, conveyer belts, spinning and whirling gears that mix and shape and press and package things.

Today the topic was rubber bands.  And lo and behold, the factory making the rubber bands was Alliance Rubber in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Turns out Alliance Rubber has been churning out rubber bands and other specialty rubber products since 1923.  The shots of the factory floor inspired my dream.  What if we could tour the rubber band factory on our trip?

I know that nine-year-old me would have loved that, and I'll bet my kids would love it, too.  There's no information about visiting the factory on their website, but there's a phone number, and by golly, I'm going to be calling it.  In fact, this idea has opened up a whole new world of Creating-Memories opportunities for me -- beyond the tourist destinations and standard attractions.  If there's a factory around making something, I think we should be wearing hard hats and watching those big machines at work.

What I missed most

We were only gone on vacation for five days. When we got back, it felt like we'd been gone longer -- we had packed a lot of relaxation into those days (and the last one was very long, what with seven total hours of driving and a birthday party in the middle of it). But waking up the next morning, it felt like we'd never left.

Here's what I missed most about home life during our trip:

• TiVo. We had to watch some TV during the trip -- I was writing up So You Think You Can Dance for the TV Club -- and it made me strangely anxious not being able to pause or fast-forward. Or have anything on tap to watch during idle moments.
• Knitting choices. I took two projects with me: a long-suffering pair of socks (finally restarted, on the home stretch) and a new lace scarf. What I didn't have was a choice of large gauge project, like my worsted-weight brioche stitch scarf or my hoodie vest. And I didn't have my yarn to inspire me with dreams of projects to come.
• Wii. Our kids were fantastic on the trip, enjoying the simple pleasures of comic books, card and board games, swimming, sports, and wandering around outdoors inventing amusements. But I missed Archer's enthusiastic explanations of the intricacies of pinball machines in his Gottlieb Hall of Fame game (the current favorite), and Cady Gray's excitement over a new species in Endless Ocean.
• Internet. It's hard to overestimate how much internet access means to me. It's connections with friends and colleagues, planning on Ravelry for what to knit next, doing research, having information at my fingertips, writing every day.

I like my connected lifestyle, with its choices and conveniences. Even though I couldn't have asked for a more comfortable or restful vacation, some of the little things I love about home are even better given the chance to experience life without them.

Holiday

Today's the Fourth, but tomorrow's the Monday after the Fourth. Which means that I don't have to go to work.

But I haven't had to go to work in a week, because we've been on vacation. So how best to use a day when nobody's expecting me anywhere?

I'd feel bad taking a day -- or half a day, at least -- to hang out at the coffeeshop. But tomorrow's kind of a special case. First, everybody needs a vacation from vacation, as you well know. For me that means some concentrated time with my own work, which is not necessarily the work I do at the office.

Second, that work involves deadlines. Tomorrow I have two of them, and I need time not only for the research I'd normally dive into during a coffeeshop day, but also for writing those two pieces. And third, if I bail on the home front, Noel's not left supervising two kids and trying to get his workload covered at the same time, because Archer's going to a day camp on my university's campus next week.

So all things considered, it's the perfect day for me to put my nose to the grindstone. And that's my version of a perfect holiday.

At last

After a very long day of celebration and travel, we're back home and thrilled to have access to wi-fi and TiVo again. I'll have plenty of pictures of our wonderful trip in the days to come, but for now, here's an image that would have gone well with yesterday's blog if I had had access to Flickr at the time:

How to up your rating

From the point of view of our children, the two big attractions of our vacation were our morning whiffle-ball games and our afternoon swims. The villas here at the state park are nestled at the treeline in a semi-circle around the crown of a hill, which is completely covered by a large grassy field. Every morning we took our plastic ball and bat and our rubber bases out to the middle of that field and played three innings of baseball. The teams were ever-shifting, but Archer as the leader dubbed them the Archer Geniuses and the Noel Papers (later renamed the Noel Reds by Cady Gray). After the three-inning mini-games were up, Cady Gray knit one row for each inning on her latest project, and Archer recorded the box scores.

Every afternoon we made our way to the park's inn and conference center for a swim in its outdoor pool. Nothing special -- a small and shallow pool with water not much cooler than the (quite warm) air temperature -- but the kids loved it. They invented games and commandeered us to participate; they played along with our efforts to help them progress with their swimming and water-safety comfort level; and they chattered absolutely non-stop about the fun they were having. From day one to day three, they became bolder in the water, venturing on their tiptoes into water that lapped above their chins, and ceasing to cling to us desperately as they practice their strokes. We spent an hour there each afternoon, and naturally the kids would have stayed much longer if we'd allowed it.

This morning I asked Archer and Cady Gray to rate the vacation from 1 to 5 (a common Archer scale). Cady Gray gave it a "5 plus," but Archer, always cautious about keeping his options open, scored it a 4. I asked him how the trip could rise to a 5 rating by the end of the day, and he suggested another swim. Not a problem, big man.

Familiar ways

There are a lot of ingredients to a good marriage. One that is frequently overlooked (except in wedding movies) is in-law compatibility. I was raised in a family that didn't take kindly to roughing it. I've never spent a night in a tent. And if I had married into a family of rugged outdoorspeople, shared vacations would be considerably more difficult than they are.

Instead, fortuitously, Noel's family likes a little good life with their nature. Their idea of relaxation is an afternoon with a complicated board game or a jigsaw puzzle rather than outdoor exertion. Not that they are averse to a stroll through the woods or a campfire; just that it's not their raison d'etre.

So vacations like the one I'm on now are low-stress for me. I don't have to gear myself up for unfamiliar adventures. "Familiar" is, in fact, the key word in my ability to relax and enjoy myself. Doing what I did with my family: playing games, reading books, going to the pool, locating and utilizing all available park amenities. I enjoy challenges and doing new things -- but if doing them is being pressed upon me rather than emerging from my choice and sense of adventure, it's stressful. This week is not about any more stress than "when's dinner." And key to that sense of calm is a family atmosphere that wraps me in the familiar.

Relaxation, Southern style

Live in a family for a while, and I guess they get to know your tastes. The vacation that Noel's mom has designed for me this week could hardly be further up my alley. A beautiful and capacious villa, home-cooked meals twice a day, plenty of games and puzzles, the occasional light stroll and dip in the pool, and a local yarn store just up the road.

Seriously, I think I could get used to this. The brand-spankin' new green villas at Montgomery Bell State Park are flat-out gorgeous. Built less than a year ago, they are tucked into the side of a hill and have eco-friendly energy-saving features designed in collaboration with the Tennessee Valley Authority. But that doesn't make them spartan, not by a long shot -- the kids have their own room with two queen beds and their own bathroom on the other side of the great room (with full kitchen and dining area) from the master bedroom and bath.

The kids are looking forward to getting in the pool tomorrow, and although it's cooler up here in the hills, it's still the kind of weather that makes you crave chlorine in your hair. I hope that the grandparents will go golfing sometime in the next couple of days, because Archer would love tagging along and keeping score. And there's a whole park to explore besides, with some expeditions outside its boundaries for yarn or wifi or the like.

I think I'm set for the next few days, folks. My posting may be late because I'll have to make special trips to town to get an internet connection. But I'm still writing. And I'm on vacation.

Happiness is ...

... being back home after a trip.

... the half-knitted sleeve of a sweater that's all for you.

... my daughter's megawatt smile.

.... my son's secret smile.

... a video of those smiles on a beach.

... boxes of presents that it's finally time to enjoy.

... New Year's Eve the way I like it: quiet with a glass of bubbly and my husband.

How to relax: a photo-essay

Here are some pictorial highlights of our long-awaited (and since much yearned-for) trips to Eureka Springs and Hot Springs.



The view from our Basin Park Hotel window.




I tried and tried to capture the steam rising from my $5 margarita in the warm late afternoon, but failed.




One of the pieces of art at the controversial Gallery Wall exhibit of modern religious icons: St. Caffeina.




You couldn't get Noel to pay $100 for shoes anytime but on vacation.





But you can get me to pay $10 for hand-dyed yarn any old time.




The kids rode in a piece of fruit or something.




The carousel is almost always the best ride in the park. Certainly better than the down-for-repairs coaster in the background.




You can also count on the utensil dispenser (in this case, "multi-purpose spoon") to delight kids even more than the ice cream whose consumption it is intended to facilitate.




It was really, really hot.




And this tower would be really, really tall even if it weren't built on top of a mountain.




Of course, the kids wished it could be even taller. Somewhere right up there would be nice.




Stubby's Bar-B-Que. Motto: "Resurfacing Lot Tues-Wed We Are Open."




It took an unrelated dad and mom to built this catenary arch at the Mid America Science Museum. It took three girls from two families to take credit for it.




The kids practice their flying buttress skills, essential to employment in the new economy.




Archer would still be at this build-a-boat-then-time-the-race station if we hadn't forcibly removed him.

Vacation success defined

1. The lifeguards at the water park didn't blow their whistles at any of us.
2. Cady Gray's first roller coaster ride -- and she whooped in glee all the way through then wanted to get right back on. Just like her mother.
3. Kids slept on sofabed without fighting and allowed their parents to sleep until designated wake-up time.
4. Frequent swimming occasioned not only much delight but actual swimming/floating progress.
5. Barbecue for lunch.
6. Ice cream for desert.
7. No one threw up.
8. Many paper airplanes made and tested at the Mid America Science Museum.
9. More than eight people got on the elevator at the Hot Springs Mountain Observatory, yet we did not plummet to our deaths. (Four of them were children, luckily.)
10. GPS intoned "Arriving at home" about two hours ago.
    

In the sun

We brought the kids down to Hot Springs, one of the many playgrounds that draw visitors from all over the state. It was hot. And while I love playing in the sun, the coloring of our family doesn't make it easy.

I'm kind of a sunscreen nut. If the kids are going to be outside for more than 10 minutes, I'm slatering them with cream. Actually, since I discovered spray-on sunscreen, I'm just spritzing them, which annoys all of us much less. I buy the bottle with the highest number I can find -- bonus points for waterproof, sweatproof, and ultra-anything.

During our four hours in the midday heat at the water park, I managed to keep the UV rays completely off of the kids. I wasn't so successful with own skin. When I examined my back later, I found red streaks around my swimsuit straps and on my back. Seems that spraying my own back didn't really do the trick -- I should have asked Noel to do it, and he should have asked me to do him (burned on shoulders and back.

Things were different when I was a kid, as some of you may remember. You didn't buy sunscreen -- you bought suntan lotion. My very fair skin burned any number of times, and more Solarcaine got put on me afterwards than SPF ahead of time. My preferred avatar on a number of sites is a snapshot of me at about two or three years old, pudgy belly pooching out of a plaid two-piece, red as a beet all the way down the arm. When I was in high school, a deep tan was highly coveted; seniors spent free periods on "Senior Beech" with reflectors under their faces; and despite my complexion, I succumbed to the conventional wisdom that you had to get burned early in the season so you could get a tan later. (I never got a tan that anyone could see from a speeding horse, but I delighted myself with the slightly darker "dots" I got on the backs of my hands through the holes in my cycling gloves.

It's been a long time since I had to feel the heat of sunburn for days after each summer excursion. I'm hoping my kids never -- or rarely -- do.