Janelle Evans

I drove home from another vacation this week and realized I hadn’t snapped a single picture. Ugh, I’m hopeless when it comes to cameras. No, I’m not technically impaired. I know how to use the dang things. I’m not a stand-on-the-sidelines kind of gal. I’m right in there getting crazy with my kids. Snapping a picture is the last thing I’m thinking about. If only there was a way for me to convert my memories to print.

The laugh my daughter and I had when we fell off our tubes in the river.

The look of amazement when my youngest son’s missing sandal was found in the reeds of the river bank.

The rain soaked expression of my oldest lying in the natural hot springs.

…Good times I’ll cherish forever. I hope when my children flip back through the scant photos I do have of them they don’t see it as a deliberate indication of their importance in my life. Nobody matters more to me than my family.

This has been the summer of get my bottom back in shape. I’ve swam enough miles I should be sprouting gills, pushed my running ability to the limit, and pedaled my bike around the town more times than I care to count. Now I don’t want you thinking I’m stick thin, I never have been, but when my husband asked me to go on a bike ride with him I figured it would be a piece of cake. Oh…I was so wrong.

I expected a nice road trip. He decided to go up a mountain, and I mean up, up, up a steep mountain on a rough dirt trail. He flew up the mountain with ease, and had to wait for me at the top while I huffed and puffed at an inching crawl to reach him.

Once I reached the top, I discovered that going down was an exercise in dodging rocks and ruts at break-neck speed. Yes, my bike has breaks, but my tires didn’t care. They kept on sliding on the loose gravel even when locked up.

At one point, I went through a ravine going way too fast. The result—I found myself airborne, but with my bike tipping sideways. This was not going to end well, but I managed to dismount from my bike mid-air and land on my feet. I’ve never done anything so amazing, but my husband was way ahead of me and didn’t see it happen. Great! My moment of extreme cool wasn’t witness by anyone. And you can be for darn sure I won’t be trying to replicate it. I’m not a thrill junky. I don’t like the sensation of my heart lodging itself inside my throat at all.

“Never give up. Never surrender,” is a quotable line from Galaxy Quest—one of my husband’s favorite movies. Maybe the line is a bit cheesy, and yes the movie is a spoof on Star Trek, but I see real value in what it says just the same. To live a life tenaciously moving forward despite the obstacles can only help a person grow into something special. So of course, as a mommy, I never want my kids to quit, which brought a few tears to my youngest son this past week.

We were swimming at a pool in a different town than where we live. The place had several pools, and one of them had a cool inflated jungle gym floating in the deep-end. Of course my children and I made a bee-line for it.

The lifeguard stopped us. “They have to show me they can swim all the way across the pool,” he said.

All of my kids are capable swimmers, so I shrugged my shoulders and told them to have at it.

My oldest two breezed across, showing off their breast stroke skills. My youngest also took off, doing his much improved front crawl with side-breathing. With his face in the water, he got a little disoriented and brushed the lane-line with his arm, but other than that he looked like a competent swimmer. When the lifeguard said he would have to retest to go on the floating jungle gym I was shocked, especially after the very next kid he passed did nothing but a slow, pitiful doggy paddle.

My youngest jumped out of the pool in tears. I chased him to the shallow lazy river.

“Go back and retest,” I said.

Bobbing through the current, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “He said I’m not good enough.”

“He’s wrong, and you’re going to prove it.”

I wish I could say those words alone inspired him, but it took way more cajoling to get him to go back over there. His confidence in his abilities had been shattered by the lifeguard.

This time, I gave him my goggles to ensure he wouldn’t touch the stupid lane lines at all. I was so proud when my son zoomed across. If he hadn’t tried again, he might never have gotten his confidence back. And he loved playing with his older siblings on the floating jungle gym. Mommy’s “Never give up. Never surrender,” isn’t such a mean thing after all.

I still can’t believe what I witnessed this week. It was such an amazing event I have to share.

I’m in the bank, standing in front of the commercial teller waiting for her to finish the deposit for my part-time job, when the young woman standing in front of the next teller over becomes upset. The poor woman pleads with the teller for a cashier’s check.

“Please, I have two small children, and we haven’t had power in our home for over a week.”

“Ma’am, I can’t. There isn’t enough in your account,” the teller says, which only makes the woman even more desperate.

“Can’t you just float me the difference? There should be enough in there by next week. Please, we really can’t go without power another day, and the power company will not turn the power back on without the check.”

This isn’t the place where I personally bank, so I don’t have an account, but I’m wondering if maybe I have enough cash in my purse out in my vehicle to make up the difference. Before I can even open my mouth, an elderly woman standing in the next teller line beyond the frantic woman leans over.

“Use my account,” she says to the teller. “I’ll cover the cashier’s check.”

As if that wasn’t cool enough, while the teller made out the cashier’s check, the old woman had the teller she’d originally been dealing with to withdraw cash from her account as well. I have no idea how much money she gave that young woman in need, but I could clearly see a stack of hundreds as she pressed them into woman’s hands.

“We’ve all struggled at one time or another,” the old woman said patting her shoulder. “I hope this will help ease yours for a time.”

The young woman was so emotional she couldn’t speak, but the way she clutched that old woman before leaving it was a good thing she wasn’t frail.

With wonderful people like that running around it’s clear to me the goodness of pure charity has not been completely lost from humanity.

After three years, I finally have flowers in my yard. Every brick I laid, every wheelbarrow load of dirt I dumped has been for this moment. I’m so excited for the challenge of keeping these beauties alive. I know it will take a lot of effort and weeding, as my unsuspecting children are about to find out, but the results make it so worth it.