Janelle Evans

In my basement, for the last five years, has lurked a cedar chest that I’m grateful I was given but wished I didn’t have. It belong to my mother, and the fact that I had it meant she was no longer here. The last time I saw my mother alive, she asked that I take the cedar chest she was given as a young girl and give it to my daughter when she came of age.

“You’ll have to refinish it,” she said with the sweet smile she always wore. “You kids were hard on all my things.”

It wasn’t a lie. After the abuse of more than forty years and six kids, the cedar chest was in need of some tender lovin’ care. I walked past it often and smile at the broken, bronze feature on the front, reminiscing about my mom and this cedar chest that always occupied a space in her bedroom. I had a lot of fond and funny memories of hanging out with my mom in her room, and refurbishing the cedar chest felt like wiping those memories away, so it sat for another five years.

This week, my daughter’s upcoming sixteenth birthday forced me to finally honor my mom’s wishes. Power sander in hand, I scrubbed the marred finish away. I’m sure my husband kept wondering why I took so many breaks. But when I couldn’t keep the tears at bay, I walked away. I didn’t want my blurry sight to cause an accident, like nicking the wood.

The original finish is all gone now and I have many coats of new stain to apply, but I know my mother is grateful that her cedar chest is going to another young girl full of hope and dreams–another reminder that although she is gone her influence never will be.

My careful and under control personality doesn’t do fly by the seat of my pants very well. Though I like to write that way, in life, not having a plan makes me uncomfortable. This week I met the ultimate just-winging-it kid.

I’m standing between starting blocks at the swimming pool as a stroke/turn judge for a swim competition. A young man, decked in a speedo, taps me on the shoulder. I’m in the middle of judging a race so I only slightly turn toward him to let him know I’m listening.

“What’s the stroke order for this race?”

I stood there blinking. “Well…it’s the IM.” Nobody had every asked me what they needed to swim right before a race before. The race finished and I turned to him and listed the order slowly. “Butterfly, back, breast, free.”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” The whistle from the referee had called the next race. He hopped up on the block next to me and bent down for his start. In a matter of seconds, he was flinging himself off the block and into the water.

I honestly didn’t think it would end well for him, but he did just fine. I saw no infractions on his part to disqualify him, and his time wasn’t too shabby, ta boot. But man was I stressed out the whole time watching him, and he wasn’t even from my high school.

In all my years of watching wrestling I’ve seen some pretty painful moves put on kids. The sport is incredibly hard and brutal on the body. And even though I know this, I did something I’ve never done before this week. I stopped a match.

My youngest son was doing his thing, out on a mat fighting it out with another kid his age. He was up, he was down, back and forth they went striving for dominance. Then the kid caught my son in a weird hold. He didn’t have a cradle with a leg, but he locked onto his other wrist and squeezed. The arm he left under my son prevented him from being able to pin my son, but he just kept squeezing my son’s shoulders together. My son screamed out in pain, and I mean screamed, but the teenager playing referee still didn’t stop the match.

To say I made a scene is probably an understatement, but no way was I going to let this match continue. The boy couldn’t pin my son from the painful hold he had, and he showed no signs of trying to change his hold to one that would pin. To allow him to keep crushing my son’s chest until the third period ran out seemed beyond assinine to me–we had more than thirty seconds still go. So no, you’re not gonna stall there, torturing my son. I’ve never been more fine with a forfeit in my entire life.

I have to give my son kudos though. After taking some time to rub out his aching sternum, he went back out on the mat to face the last competitor he had for the day. I don’t know if I could have been so mentally tough at that age.