The Big Issues

A friend commented on my last post that I was lucky to have a child who says "Wow" to nature. I agree that I am lucky. However, I must add a slight codicil (I think that's the right word).

This week Bridger and I were debating about whether we should camp on the way home or take the lazier, more expensive way and stay at motels.

"Well, motels are nice because you sleep better in a real bed," Bridger said, using an argument he's heard me spout out before. "And there's not so much packing and unpacking from the van that way, so it's faster." (That's Brian's gripe about camping on road trips.)

"But when you camp, you get to spend more time in nature," I said.

"I hate nature!" Bridger said. "I LOVE plastic!"

He elaborated a bit: "Matchbox Pop-Up Play Sets and Legos are made of plastic, so that's why I love it."

This made me laugh, but it also gave me even more motivation to try to get that boy out into nature a bit more.

A few days ago, the kids and I rode bikes out to the town cemetery. I find the Conrad graveyard wonderfully, festively Day of the Dead-ish, and I thought Bridger and Cass would appreciate it, too. Many of the gravestones are carved with images that represent important things in the dead person's life: a sheaf of wheat, cattle, mountains, tractors, RVs, a blackboard with the ABCs written on it and a desk with an apple, and in one woman's case, a steamin' cup o' joe.

One boy who'd died in high school had a grave that had turned into a sort of ofrenda, with rifle cartridges, an unopened can of Mountain Dew, a "Stay Alive, Don't Drink and Drive" key chain, a pair of aviator sunglasses, and laminated photos of the boy himself posing shirtless and in his football jersey.

Just as I expected, the kids loved speculating about the people buried there and what their stories were. They loved the colorful pinwheels and artificial flowers on almost every grave.

"When I die, will you decorate my grave with lots of flowers?" Cassidy asked me.

The thought of it left me breathless.

"Sweetie," I said, "I hope I'll be gone long before you have a grave."

I explained that most of the time, children outlived their parents, so she'd probably end up decorating my grave, but likely not for a long, long time.

"But if you die, I won't have a mother!" Cassidy declared.

I felt my heart catch--as my husband put it later, she found it easier to conceive of herself being in a grave than she did conceiving of having no mother. Another way of putting it: she found it as hard to conceive of living on this earth without me as I find it to conceive of living on earth without her.

"Yeah, but by the time Mom dies, you'll be an adult so you won't need a mother so much," Bridger explained to her.

I indeed do hope that I live long enough to ferry my kids safely into adulthood, but I don't take that possibility for granted. My father died accidentally and suddenly when he was only 33 and I was twelve years old, so I've seen that parents can die young, and that children can die long before their mothers and fathers die. It is a sobering thought, and one that I try to use as a kind of steadying ballast. No guarantees, right?

A few weeks ago, sitting at the picnic table in our back yard with Cassidy, I looked at her and thought, if my dad hadn't died when he had, I wouldn't have had the life that led me to the family I have now. Gazing at Cass, the thought flashed through my mind--before guilt or propriety could stop it--well, it's a fair trade.

I think my Dad would understand, and be glad, that I am able to feel that way.