Silly Putty & Equal Packets

Lewis Lake; Alex, Russ, Spencer (notice the white backs of his shoes...on the actual photo
I colored them with a black sharpie, you can't even see it) and Logan. October 2011

 

 

There are certain unarguable facts in life; like for example if someone (Russ) puts silly putty in your (my) hair, you will need to get a haircut (pixie style from someone named Denisha) and it actually won’t be romantic (“I just wanted to make an impression of your hair to remember you by”) at all. And PS Russ: The makers of silly putty never considered that along with the “do not ingest” warning, they should also put, “Do not make impressions of your wife’s hair, no matter how romantic you think it might be.” Another unarguable fact is that if you make a promise to an autistic child, you better keep your promise or suffer (and suffer and suffer and suffer) the consequences. I am not a fan of suffering; I learned my lesson during the tedious hair removal process in what has now been classified as, “The Putty Crisis of 1997.”

So since I avoid suffering like I avoid tofu, we naturally ended up going to Yellowstone during the last twenty four hours the park was opened during the fall of 2011. Our forced death-march “vacation” was taken entirely out of obligation to Alex; whom we’d promised we’d take (as per our tradition) during the summer (October in Wyoming may be stretching the definition of summer).  Sheer duty rather than any innate desire we had to spend 14 hours in the car with our three fascinating, brilliant and psychotic children dictated our course; in no time at all we were stuck behind five billion retired couples who were “savoring the moment” driving at a snail’s pace on a winding canyon road, while Logan cried from the back seat, “I need one of those barf bags like they have on the airplanes as soon as it’s humanly possible to locate one, otherwise I will settle for unzipping Spencer’s backpack and relieving the contents of my stomach in there!”  

Lewis Lake at Sunset, 2011
 

Now, as a disclaimer, we loved living in Jackson Hole. We loved the mountains and wildlife, we felt blessed to live in a place that utterly fed our souls. We knew that people from all over the world traveled great lengths to visit Yellowstone, but we had been up until 2 am the night before retrieving Russ from the airport (he had flown in from Texas; where he’d been teaching all summer) and were thoroughly thrashed. Bright and wretchedly early the next morning, we’d set out for our mandatory trip.  I confess, from behind the dog slobbered windows of our mini-van, the beauty was lost on me. I was exhausted, the boys were fighting, Spencer kept telling us he didn’t want to visit stupid Yellowstone, and doesn’t anybody care about what he wants to do? Logan was too engrossed in a DVD to notice the elk by the side of the road and I was too busy being happy that he’d stop fighting with everyone to make him turn off the DVD and look at the elk on the side of the road.  I was impatient with the other travelers who were leisurely driving about soaking up the scenery. Hello!!! Didn’t they know we still had Fishing Bridge and Yellowstone Lake to cross off before we could go home???

The restaurants in the park had closed early so we had to scrounge for something to eat at the gas station. We fought off the other tourists for our dinner of ice-cream sandwiches, a bag of cheetos and some packets of ketchup and Equal. Finally depleted, we finished the Grand Loop and were making our way home, when somehow, something shifted. The tired sun had finally surrendered to the night. Our boys were sitting peacefully in the backseat in a ketchup packet/Equal induced coma. Outside the long, empty charred trees from the Yellowstone fire were sticking up like chopsticks among the lush new growth. Great throngs of buffalo stood grazing against a spectacular backdrop. Elk bugled all around. I breathed out. I took it all in. I reached for Russ’s hand, looked over my shoulder at my little boys who were getting so big and loved them with a fierceness so intense it surprised me. We stopped at Lewis Lake to stretch out legs, and as Russ and the boys walked towards the shore, I raced back to the van to grab my camera so I could snap a shot of the sunset. As I shut the car door and turned around, the moment became magical, like something from a Disney movie…Russ called (in the voice of Muffassa) “Joanie! Come on! You’re missing it!”  I turned to see my boys standing at the edge of the water, stood taking in the lake, the trees, the way the sky seemed to melt into the mountains. They had grabbed hands simply because they wanted to be close to each other, I imagine they had succumb to the guttural need to remember they were not alone. They stood, unflinching; reverent, as I snapped this shot from behind them, snapped it while I absorbed the scene catatonic, completely undone by the raw beauty of the earth.

I LOVE this picture of my four boys, because every time I look at it, I feel this deep sense of satisfaction that we bucked up and made the journey, in fact I feel a little panicked when I think we could have missed this magnificent moment if we’d stayed home. This picture reminds me how life seems to sometimes be drudgery and all about racing around like mad checking things off our endless list, telling our kids to stop choking each other and finish licking their Equal...wishing we were anywhere but where we are, and then suddenly we are gifted with these moments of genuine wonder, of sighable peace, of something so beautiful it makes your throat ache.

I call this one "Peace" I can't tell if that's a rock, a piece of wood or an animal I have captured on the shore. 2011

This picture has become a symbol of hope and peace to me. I keep it in my room and taped to my fridge. It reminds me while I reach for the milk of the times I have been stuck in self imposed drudgery without enough faith to anticipate the glorious sunset, it has come to represent a pinnacle moment of knowing why I do what I do…of remembering this journey is worth taking, and despite the chaos… chaos… chaos… that is my life, that there are still moments to wait hopefully for, beautiful sparks in the dark, interspersed pin points of peace that shine like stars in the night. These breath snatching instances of shattering beauty have fundamentally changed the way I approach my life.

As mothers and fathers; as human beings, I’ve come to believe we must all have pinnacle moments of knowing why we do what we do, a center of peace (the tootsie roll middle?) anchored into our souls (I picture it like the eye of the storm…all around us flying cars and whipping branches, but closing our eyes we can breathe out and know all is well). We must find moments of solitude to cling to when the storms of life threaten to send us crashing into the depths of despair…we must keep ourselves tethered to something tangible so we don’t get lost at sea.  For me, my moment of calm is a picture on the fridge; something to stare at when someone has just thrown their bowl of lucky charms at their brother and the glass is lying in shattered fragments at my feet. I look at the picture. Close my eyes. Remember this is a journey worth taking…and that there are many more beautiful moments to come. This anchor of hope allows me to open my eyes, refocus, and while I pick up the jagged pieces of my life off the floor…tell my son, “It’s too bad you threw your breakfast at your brother…we are all out of Lucky Charms, but if you're still hungry, there are some left over packets of ketchup and Equal in the cupboard...so eat up!”      

When I was a kid and the lake looked like this my dad would always say, "The water was like glass." October 2011