Author Archives: Kathleen Fox

It's a challenge to write something clever and entertaining about a family reunion when you know your words are likely to be read by most of the people who were there. Trust me, it gives a whole new dimension to the idea of writer's block.

This reunion—the fourth or fifth annual one now—was a three-day stay at a campground that included my parents, all four of their children, all their spouses except one who was out of the country (no, he didn't schedule the trip just to get out of spending time with the family—honest), all the grandkids, plus spouses and fiancés, except for two who live at a distance, and, of course, all four of the great-grandchildren. And let's not forget the six aunts and uncles and the handful of cousins.

Some people went fishing (and treated the whole group to a fish fry on Saturday night). Some people went swimming. Some people went for walks. Some people went for ice cream. Some people spent most of their time sitting in the shade and visiting. Everyone ate—fairly often, actually. And, apparently, everyone had a good time.

Several people remarked on the responses they get when they mention spending a three-day weekend with the extended family. These range from, "You really do that—and you enjoy it?" to, "I could never spend that much time with my family!" and, "How many fights were there?"

Sorry, no fights. Maybe that's because most of us have a sense of humor. It probably also helps that, despite some beer to go with the fish, this isn't a family where anyone gets falling-into-the-campfire drunk. (True, there is one uncle who occasionally passes out, but that's a heart problem, not an alcohol problem. Thank goodness the extended family includes a couple of veterinarians.)

But we do get together fairly often, and we do enjoy it. Is that because we're somehow closer or nicer than other families? Probably not. We come complete with the disagreements, personality conflicts, and leftover childhood stuff that all families have. But somehow, the idea of family is more important than any of that minor stuff.

At any rate, we keep showing up—for the summer camping trip, the Christmas party, and the various events in between like house-painting, moving, birthday parties, and weddings.

And maybe that's what makes the difference. The more often you show up, the better you get to know the people who share your blood and your history, and the more fully you understand how important they are to you. Maybe that makes it easier to accept their quirks and oddities in the same way you hope they accept your unique and endearing personality traits. Maybe showing up is simply what it means to be family.

I came across a new and unfamiliar President the other day. He was sitting on the street corner, gazing off into the distance in a pondering and Presidential way. I didn't recognize him. He was stout enough that I thought for a moment he could have been William Howard Taft, until I remembered that Taft was several blocks away, winding up to throw out the first pitch of the World Series.

Even though I didn't recognize this man, I knew he was a United States President, simply because he was on a street corner in downtown Rapid City. Over the past few years, statues of Presidents have been erected throughout downtown, a few each year. We don't have all of them yet, but we're getting close. By now there are enough that, except for the obvious ones like Washington and Eisenhower and the Roosevelts, I'm no longer sure who all of them are.

One of the things I've been meaning to do for the past year or so is take a walk through downtown and check out all the statues. Driving past the newest statue this week reminded me that I haven't gotten around to taking that Presidential stroll.

It even occurred to me that this might be a "bucket list" item. (For anyone not familiar with the 2007 movie, "The Bucket List," the title refers to a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket.) Walking around to look at a few statues, I decided, hardly seemed big enough to qualify for a "bucket list," unless perhaps the statues in question happen to be in Rome or Egypt.

What I need, I realized, is a list for smaller things. Stuff that's not important enough so I would care if I kicked the bucket before I got it done, but still stuff that I would like to do. Small, enjoyable things that aren't life-changing but are still worth doing. Like walking around looking at the Presidents. Or playing the piano more than I currently do. Or planting some rose bushes.

Things on this small of a scale don't really merit a bucket, but they're still important enough to pay attention to. I've decided it's time to start a list for these little wishes that I haven't gotten around to yet. I'll begin it just as soon as I get my desk cleaned off so I can find a fresh piece of paper. I'm going to make a "teacup list."

(One of the things I haven't gotten around to yet is seeing "The Bucket List." Maybe I need to put it on my list.)

A few weeks ago, we noticed a pair of robins exploring home sites along the beam that supports our deck. Mrs. Robin would perch on the beam, then sit, then turn around several times and sit again, as if trying the place on for size. She did this repeatedly, while Mr. Robin sat nearby, waiting for her to make up her mind.

The next day, they began building. Actually, though we assumed this was a joint project, we only saw her at work. She would flutter up to the beam with a beak full of sticks or grass, poke them into the pile of stuff already there, then press down with her breast, circling around and around to create the inner bowl of the nest. It took at least one full day, and countless trips, to accumulate enough material to build the nest about three inches high and shape it to her specifications.

Over the next few days, any trip down the basement steps automatically included a stop to look out the patio door and check on the robin. During one of her brief times away from the nest—presumably for a quick trip to the earthworm aisle of the nearest grocery store—we peeked with a mirror and saw one small blue egg. A couple of weeks later we saw what looked like two little heads above the rim of the nest.

It's been a rainy spring, and from time to time we wondered how Mrs. Robin was coping with all the wet weather. True, the nest was underneath the deck, but plenty of water must have been coming through the half-inch gaps between the floor boards. One afternoon, during a cold, heavy downpour, it occurred to me that I could have given her a little more shelter by simply moving a big flower pot so it covered the nest.

It may have been a good idea, but it came a little late. The next day we saw Mrs. Robin on the power line that comes into the house. She had half a worm in her beak, but she wasn't eating it. She was simply sitting. We decided she must have been taking a break from the kids, enjoying a few minutes of solitude. This made us wonder how many kids she had and how big they were by now, so we took our mirror downstairs for a quick look.

The nest was empty.

We were sure the baby robins weren't old enough to have left home. Besides, we hadn't seen any fledglings out on the grass. We looked beneath the nest for little bodies, but all we found was the broken shell of one tiny blue egg.

What happened to the baby robins? The rainstorm? The cold? A neighborhood cat? Or did they even hatch? Who knows?

Had this particular pair of robins found a different site for their nest, we would never have noticed or cared when the babies came or when they disappeared. But, because we had a window into their lives, we did notice. We came to think of them as our robins—not our property, exactly, but as neighbors whose comings and goings we cared about.

We still see Mr. and Mrs. Robin around the yard. So far, though, the nest has remained empty. Either they've decided not to start over with another clutch of eggs, or they've built another nest in a better location. It probably doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. Still, we would like to know.

Random thoughts on spending a few days looking after the grandchildren while their parents are on a well-deserved vacation:

A brisk 45-minute walk while pushing a 25-pound toddler in a stroller is more exercise than one might think.

Little kids have short attention spans? Don’t believe it. The attention span of a one-year-old is far greater than the attention span of an adult who really doesn’t want to play peek-a-boo, watch Barney, or fold the same piece of laundry for the fifty-eleventh time.

Kids aged eight through eleven are quite capable and competent people who can get themselves ready for school, navigate their grandmother to the library and the park, and find the Internet password and the power cord for the electric skillet.

It is possible to fit one adult, four kids, one toddler in a car seat, and two bicycles into a mini-van and still have everyone in seat belts.

Once your own kids are grown, you mercifully tend to forget that an inevitable fact of life with babies and small children is the slime factor.

A shopping cart containing a toddler, two pairs of shorts, and several shirts will fit into a small dressing room in a discount store, along with one medium-sized adult. It is even possible to shut the door and try on the clothes, then to maneuver the cart back out of the dressing room.

I knew, of course, that my grandchildren were brilliant, but one of them is even more of a genius than I had realized. In fourth grade, he has already figured out the answer to one of the enduring puzzles of Western civilization: why is the Mona Lisa smiling? His conclusion, as set out in a school assignment, was this: “Leonardo bribed her with 300 pounds of the world’s finest chocolate.” Like many inspired discoveries, this one is obvious after a great thinker has realized it. Why did no one come up with this before?

A sixteen-month-old, suspicious on the first day of this strange person in his orbit in the place of Mom and Dad, can by the second day come running up with his arms out and a grin of delight on his face. This causes a strange melting sensation in the vicinity of the heart.

If you plan to rob a bank or a store, take along a cute toddler. Everyone will smile and coo and say hi to the kid, and none of them will ever be able to identify you.

To adults, two of the most beautiful words in the English language are “bedtime” and “nap.”

And finally, one of the many pleasures of spending time with grandchildren is realizing what good parents their parents are.

Imagine being at a ski area, watching the skiers. They’re swooping down the mountainside in elegant sweeping curves, having a wonderful time.

But then add something else to the picture: off to one side, there is a person sitting on a stump, not having a wonderful time at all. That was me, on my first attempt at downhill skiing.

My husband, the only one in the family who could ski, was busy helping five kids get their boots and skis on and get started. So I headed off to the beginner’s slope by myself. I managed to get onto the tow rope, get to the top, and get off without falling. I worked my way over to the top of the run.

From the bottom it had looked like a gentle little slope. From the top, it looked like a precipice.

I froze. I didn’t know how to start down. I didn’t have a clue how to stop. I was afraid I would fall, and if I fell I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to get up. We talk about being “petrified with fear” or "paralyzed with fear." That's exactly what I was.

Eventually, I got over to one side and sat down on a tree stump. I sat there for at least an hour, watching other people skiing. Some of them did it easily, some of them fell down a lot. But they all seemed to be having fun.

Not me. All I wanted to do was quit—but I couldn’t even do that, because in order to quit I had to get down the hill, and I was too scared to get down the hill so I could quit.

Finally, after he had gotten the kids started, my husband came to my rescue. With his help, I managed to make it down the hill. With his encouragement, I even went back up and tried it again, and then again.

The next time we went skiing, I did something radical—I took a lesson. The instructor didn’t laugh at me for being scared or tell me I shouldn’t be scared. He acknowledged my fear, but he didn’t treat it as a reason for me not to learn to ski. What he said, by his actions more than his words, was, “Yep, you’re scared. Now watch me and do this.”

I was paying for the lesson, after all—so I watched him and did that. And by the end of the lesson, I was learning to ski. I knew how to stop, I could more or less make my skis go where I wanted them to go, and I knew how to get up when I fell down. I was still scared, but I was no longer petrified with fear.

By the end of the season, I was one of those people swooping down the slopes in—mostly—graceful curves. Once I overcame my fear. I had gotten up off my stump and become a skier, and I was having a wonderful time.

As I look back on that experience now, I can see there were three factors that helped me conquer the fear.

One was the fact that I could see something I wanted at the other side of the fear. As I sat there on my stump, watching other people having fun, I wanted what they had. I wanted to learn to ski so I could enjoy myself with my family.

Second, I asked for help and support. I got encouragement from my husband, and I invested in myself by taking a lesson from someone who knew what I wanted to learn.

Third, I learned to separate the fear from the goal. Instead of thinking, “I want to learn to ski, but I’m afraid,” I learned to think, “I want to learn to ski, and I’m afraid.” Simply changing one word—from “but” to “and” makes those two separate facts. Yes, I want to learn something new. Yes, I’m afraid. One doesn’t cancel out the other. I can be afraid, and I can still move forward, one small step at a time.

Those same three factors can help us conquer fear of anything that’s new and frightening—such as public speaking. Toastmasters, for example, uses all of them with great effectiveness. When we listen to more experienced members, we can see what’s on the other side of the fear of speaking in public. We get support from other members at every meeting, with encouraging evaluations, warm applause, and useful suggestions for improvement.

And finally, Toastmasters can help us separate the fear of public speaking from the goal of wanting to learn how to do it. Older members will say, “Of course you’re scared. I was, too. Almost everyone is.” Then they’ll put you on the schedule for next week, or call on you for Table Topics. Because what we’ve all learned is that speaking, like skiing and many other things, can only be learned by doing it—one small step at a time.

If you’re facing something that threatens to leave you paralyzed with fear, try using these three steps: Focus on your goal so you can clearly see what’s waiting for you on the other side of the fear. Ask for help and support. And recognize that your fear is real, but that it isn’t a reason not to take action toward your goal.

Before you know it, you’ll be swooping gracefully down your particular mountain. You may even discover it isn’t nearly as steep as it looked in the beginning. And you’ll probably be having a wonderful time.

(With this speech for the spring 2009 Toastmasters competition, I placed first in the area contest and second at the division level.)

I had tea with my grandkids this morning. Yesterday morning, I had tea with a couple of Siamese cats. The morning before that, my tea went along with a Smith family 100-mile walk. (It took three cups.)

Even though the grandchildren live some 500 miles away, they can be here for breakfast any time, thanks to this year's Mother's Day gift. It's a cup that has all their names on it under little cartoon pictures, with the heading "My Grandma Rocks." The geologist who shares my breakfast table initially read it as "My Grandma's Rocks." This was a perfectly natural mistake; in his world, everybody's grandma would have her own collection of rocks as a matter of course.

The Siamese cats, blue eyes wide open with a curiosity that matches the question-mark curves of their tails, sit on one side of a cup that was a Christmas gift from my daughter. The paw prints on the other side suggest that their sophisticated poise might give way to mischief at any moment.

The 100-mile walk cup commemorates a family challenge a few years ago to walk every day until we had each accumulated that many miles. Those of us who made the full distance or more have the cups to prove it. A guest who used that cup one day was very impressed that we had walked so far. It took me a few minutes to realize he assumed we did it all at once. I would have explained, but correcting a guest who was just starting on his first cup of coffee hardly seemed polite.

Every now and then, I think I would like to have a matched set of attractive cups instead of the eclectic collection of mugs in our cupboard. ("Eclectic" sounds so much better than "stuff that doesn't match.")

But then which cups would I get rid of? Certainly not the grandchildren. Not the cats. Not the 100-mile award. Not the cup reading, "Thank you for loving me just the way I am" that my son gave me when he was 12. Not the cartoon-decorated cup my late husband used to use in his office.

They aren't elegant. They don't match. But each one means something special to me. They are reminders of the family members they came from, small touchstones that brighten my mornings. Tea just seems to taste better out of a cup that warms the heart as well as the stomach.