Janelle Evans

Did you miss my post last week? Nope, it didn’t magically disappear. I did something I’ve never done before. I took my family on an unplanned vacation—and it was awesome!

My oldest son came home and told us he didn’t have to work on Labor Day. That unexpected surprise sparked something in me. I didn’t want to stay home for what might be the last three-day weekend we would have as a family before my oldest son left home.

We ended up bumming at my brother’s house. He lives in Idaho, close to Lava Hot Springs. We played in rivers, floated across flumes, swung from bridges and dropped into water. It was spontaneous and super fun the entire time.

There is something to be said about living in the moment. You don’t have to worry about a plan going awry—you have no plan to begin with. Boy, does it lower the stress level of vacationing. If you’ve never tried it, you might find out, just like I did, that flying by the seat-of-your-pants isn’t a bad way to vacation.

As a mother sitting on the sidelines of a football game, I’m often surprised by how my perception of how the game went can be so different than my son’s—who actually played in the game.

This week’s game left me with lots of negative feelings. I didn’t like how the coaches were playing my son. He didn’t play a consistent position, but was sent all over the place. I thought the team, as a whole, looked sluggish and confused most of the time. Yes, we only lost by one touchdown, but I’m tired of celebrating kids who look like they gave up.

My son comes over after the coach’s chat they get after every game with a big smile on his face. He wasn’t upset by being moved around at all. He stood there, taking his gear off, talking about the things that he felt his team had accomplished. His enthusiasm made me pause, and I’m glad it did.

I didn’t share any of the problems I saw, because I remembered this isn’t about me. If he’s happy with the results, that’s all that matters. This is his team, not mine. It was a good reminder about not overstepping in my role as a mother of an athlete. I’m supposed to be there to support him, and that’s it!

In my younger years my temper never bothered me—I was a hothead about pretty much everything. I really can’t say when I decided it was time to change this behavior, because it happened so slowly, over a huge amount of time, but now I hate it when I lose control.

This week my daughter made a foolish choice and climbed over the fence we share with a neighbor to grab a football that had fallen into their yard. She rang the doorbell but nobody came, so she thought it best to take care of the problem by retrieving the football herself.

To say this older couple is anxious about their fence would be an understatement. I put up with the husband coming into our yard to check his precious fence several times after we first moved in years ago. Every little thing we did while putting in our yard was watched, like the “eyes of a hawk,” from their back porch. The constant reminders that if we broke their fence we would have to pay for it wasn’t fun either, but I figured with a little patience and time they would come to realize we weren’t the terrible neighbors they feared. I even had my kids help me shovel their driveway the entire winter last year so the older woman wouldn’t have to do it. We didn’t ask for pay, we didn’t even ask for thanks, we were just trying to show them we were good neighbors.

Well…that came crashing down the moment my daughter jumped that stupid fence to get the football. Unbeknownst to us, the older couple had been in their backyard, sitting in the dark, observing the end of summer bonfire my teenage kids were having with their friends. The moment my daughter jumped the fence, they freaked.

I get a not so gentle knock on my front door and find my daughter in the clutches of the older woman. The older woman shoves the now recovered football into my face and proceeds to tell me what my daughter had done. I do my best to squash my sigh and take the ball from her hand. The woman pulls it back only to shove it back into my face and reminds me that if we break the fence we would have to pay for it.

That was it—the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ve never physically shoved someone older than me in my entire life, but I pushed that woman until she no longer stood on my property. All the while, my now full blown temper yelled so loud I’m sure everyone in our neighborhood heard me. “You would think by now you would have figured out that we’re not the kind of people who wouldn’t fix something if we broke it! Yes, my daughter made a mistake, but she’s a good kid, and she’s been good to you! They are children! And they have a right to be children and have fun! Maybe if you’d take a second and remember what that felt like you’d stop being such a lunatic!”

My performance didn’t leave me happy once the red haze faded—even if the old-biddy deserved it. I showed my children, and all their friends that came, my very worst trait. Parenting 101 fail!

My oldest son, since he was about ten, has a habit of planting seeds in plastic cups and placing them on his bedroom’s window seal. He sometimes doesn’t even know what he’s growing—he just likes to observe the growing process of seeds.

There have been mishaps throughout the years. I’ve cleaned muddy soil out of carpet more than any mother should, yet I understand the fascination. I like to grow things too. I just do mine outside.

Around April, he put a new cup up on the ledge of his window. At first, it produced the saddest looking twigs I’d ever seen.

“What did you plant?” I asked my son.

He shrugged his shoulders, indicating, once again, his didn’t know. “Maybe it’ll look better if I plant it outside.”

I had serious doubts it would survive, but now I shrugged my shoulders. One ugly plant wouldn’t ruin the look of the many random plants I have growing in the front yard. Our yard is still only a couple of years old and I’m still trying out ideas.

Not only did those twigs survive, they thrived, turning into a large bush—but I still think it’s ugly.

We figured out this week the plant is called a Garden Cosmos. The best part—it’s an annual so it won’t grow back once the cold comes.

My son said, “Maybe we could bring it back inside in the fall.”

“Oh no,” I said patting him on the back. “We’ve set it free now. It won’t be happy coming back inside.” I’m feeling pretty good with this lie, averting my pain of having to keep the ugly thing alive.

He took the news like a champ, brightening right up. “It’s okay. I’ll gather some of its seeds and plant them again when I get back in two years.”

Dang it! Hopefully, a two year mission will help him forget.

We will have the pleasure of a foreign exchange student living in our home for the coming school year. The building excitement has turned me back into an expectant mother—my husband says I’ve been nesting like crazy. Of course, after twenty years of marriage, he has a pretty good bead on my habits, so I can’t deny his claim.

Throughout the summer months I bought a bed, then a dresser to go in the empty bedroom she will be using. I found the cutest bedspread, but once I got it on the bed, I decided I didn’t like the color of the room.

My husband rolled his eyes, but never said a word as I brought home color swatches from the local home improvement store. After several weeks of deliberation he even helped me paint the room a soft teal color. The finished product looked so good with the bed I knew I’d made the right decision.

In the process of putting the room back together, I went into the coat closet and pulled out the plastic hangers I had purchased at the beginning of the summer so she could hang up any clothes. My husband and I looked at each other and laughed.

“Well…,” he said, “they definitely go with the room.”

Just by chance, I’d purchased hangers the same shade of teal we painted the room with. Quite the uncanny coincidence—or maybe I’d been living with a “teal brain” all along. Man, I hope she likes things to be matchy, matchy.