The first week of June meant Huck saying goodbye to elementary school by accepting awards and taking a memory walk through Fayetteville’s oldest school while sweet younger kids chanted “Good luck!” and “Fourth Grade!  Fourth Grade!” and “We will miss you!”  It meant a special visit from Nana and a celebratory dinner with favorite friends at a favorite pizza parlor.  It meant the beginning of summer camp at The New School for all three of us: me as Coordinator, Troy as Preschool Teacher and Huck as Shy New Camper.  It meant discovering a job perk by joining the 4th grade skating rink field trip and doing a few laps with my boy.  (Because if you finally go back to work full-time when your son turns ten you might as well have him at work with you come summertime.)  It meant Troy’s dumb phone finally breaking into two pieces which meant finally getting him a smart phone.  It meant my first snake sighting of the season.  It meant joining our beloved Mount Sequoyah pool and spending every spare moment there.  It meant Huck’s first Fayetteville slumber party with his best friend Ravi, which meant staying up till midnight singing jazz standards in their beds and a morning of sprinkler swinging in flannel pajamas.  It meant almost finishing the Harry Potter series.  And it meant taking many spontaneous hammock naps.

Second week of June?  Let’s drop it down a summer notch or two.

We’ve nicknamed Huck “Horrible Phrase Boy,” or HPB if we’re in a hurry, on account of the horrible phrases he says many times a day.  They include, but are not limited to: “Good for you.”  ”Sure.”  ”Boo Hoo.”  ”Really?”  ”Good for me.”  ”Too bad for you.”  All said in a slightly sarcastic, slightly nonplussed horrible-voice and often followed by even worse smug-laughter.  We spent Memorial Day weekend in Kansas with the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, many of whom are around 5 years old.  At their age, a lot of the day is spent being silly and laughing at toot sounds.  Turns out both a lot and not a lot changes in five years time.

Age 10 bedtime has Huck asking for several things: a kiss/hug/kiss OCD series, an A-Z idea (things you want to do this summer, people we know from NYC, characters from favorite books, etc.) and something to mull over.  At some point in his alphabetical list he usually bores himself to sleep, but some nights he stays awake long enough to mull over something like middle school or the change of seasons or wormholes.  Recently he woke up feeling growing pains and confusion, first yelling for Dad and then settling for me, crying in my arms over who knows what, giving me a sad glimpse into his prepubescence.  The other morning I mistakenly thought I heard him call my name and he said, “You do that a lot. It’s like you just want to spend time with me so you imagine me calling for you.”

Being in my parents’ house where I spent years zero to 18 is inevitably nostalgic. Hanging out with almost 5 year olds giving Huck permission to be a little kid again is its own kind of nostalgia, as is having him crawl up onto our laps like a big Labrador who thinks he’s a puppy, causing his middle aged parents to complain of achy backs and sore legs.  Watching my recent high school graduate niece’s slide show of photographs from the last 18 years seemed impossible.  Hearing about my middle niece’s student teaching work and my oldest niece’s upcoming wedding brought on vivid memories of Troy throwing the two of them up in the air for hours of “Up and Away” when they were toddlers.  Playing grown-up parlor games and having to pause for Huck’s laughter to subside feels like he’s one of us.  That line between babyhood and adulthood changes its depth several times a day, but never more than when we go home for a visit.  And I’m not just talking about Huck.

As he might say in his sassiest tone yet, “Good for us.”

As I said on Facebook, our marriage is now the exact same age as most of the after-school and summer staff I’ve employed at The New School.  To celebrate #23 yesterday, we spent the afternoon at glorious Kings River Falls about 40 miles outside of Fayetteville. Though our various GPS systems failed us more than once, thanks to the kindness of Arkansas strangers we eventually found our way there and enjoyed some of the most beautiful sights yet.  Last night Huck had a slumber party at Russell’s and Cheryl’s so that Troy and I could have a night out on our favorite town sans Pokemon & Minecraft monologues.  Next thing we knew we were lying side by side having a couples massage in a dimly lit room with relaxing music, trying not to look at each other to avoid awkward laughter.

On days like this I have lots of home movies playing in my head.  There was that time we packed up all of our humble belongings into a U-Haul truck and headed to Chicago with about 100 bucks.  There was the day I was stranded in a blizzard at the Chicago Aldi with a bunch of cheap groceries when Troy came around the corner with our old rickety grocery cart Mr. Bunker to take us home. I remember Sunday nights in Austin gathering with favorite friends for “X-Files” and highly competitive card games in which I always won and Troy always lost.  I remember New York City summer black-outs and having no electricity or water for over 24 hours, Troy carrying most of our stuff across the GW Bridge where we were picked up by Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Dottie for a few days of luxury.  I remember finishing a book on the A train that made me cry so hard I had to call Troy from the 145th Street station pay phone for comfort.  I remember taking turns acting in Virginia and driving nine hours with two dogs to see each other’s shows.  I remember assisting Troy dressed as a farmer with a guitar in a church yard many, many times.  I have a pretty strong memory of noticing something terrifying on a pregnancy test and having to crawl across the apartment to avoid passing out.  This is when the home movies get overwhelmingly precious and long, full of the world’s cutest baby, toddler and child.  Then I remember packing everything up for the tenth time and heading south to Arkansas to start all over again.  Twenty-three years with Troy by my side has been a mix of hilarity, sweetness, absurdity, frustration, laughter, love, exhaustion, forgiveness, prayers, smoothies, plays, U2 concerts, hairstyles, photographs, homes, jobs, dogs, and a boy.  Might we have 23 more please?

(Years.  Not dogs and boys.)

It didn’t take us long to realize that if you’re raising a child in Fayetteville, Arkansas you really should have an Andrew Kilgore Portrait hanging in your home. Troy and I are those Rare Parents who have never taken our son to have his pictures done, other than the Church Directory last fall.  Olan Mills jokes are lost on him.  But he’s certainly no stranger to posing for cameras, so a few months ago we finally grabbed Andrew at our Meditation Class at St. Paul’s and set a date to forever capture Huck’s ten year old self in the beautiful style of Andrew Kilgore.  And wouldn’t you know it, Andrew invited Troy and me to join Huck for a family photo session, which means we can forever say we were photographed by the same man who photographed Bill Clinton back in the day! Call me Starstruck.

You can call the rest of my family Nerdstruck, for Troy finally has the Nerd Son he’s always wanted. After rejecting Superheroes and Star Wars for years and years, Huck has embraced Pokemon wholeheartedly. Troy being the Nerd Dad he was born to be immediately jumped on this Nerd Bandwagon and purchased his own deck of cards. Trips to Target now mean long waits at the Pokemon Nerd Aisle while those two Nerd Out.  Right this minute they are up in Huck’s room talking Nerd Trash to each other with all their cards spread out on the floor.  I am so far from a Nerd that I only understand about eight percent of what they talk about now, which means more time for me to read my book.  Win-Win.

A couple months ago we were a little Dumbstruck when we learned we couldn’t live in our Rebecca Street house forever, even though a part of us understood when we signed the rental lease nearly two years ago that this was a Temporary Gift. And since this Mid-Life Crisis has been a series of a Good Thing followed by a Bad Thing followed by a Good Thing followed by a couple Bad Things followed by several Good Things, it didn’t take long for us to find another house to borrow.  Here’s the Story: we 3 have 3 friends who are going to live in Cambridge for the year and it just so happens that those 3 need us 3 to take care of their beautiful Historic District House.  If the Good/Bad Pattern works out the way we hope, we will be buying our own home right around this time next year where we will hang our Andrew Kilgore Portraits and play our Pokemon Cards and say goodbye to the Renters’ Life that we know so well once and for all.

Awestruck Potential.

Click to see Andrew Kilgore Photographs

Last week Troy performed in an art museum and the next day I performed in a women’s prison. Not the most theatrically convenient spaces we’ve ever acted in, but his included a talk-back afterwards in front of a beautiful Rothko painting and mine meant reading the words of prisoners who sat directly in front of me.  Both experiences perfectly capture our strange and wonderful Arkansas lives.  Both also included the coming together of many special friends, which meant much fun and sleep deprivation.  You know you’re laughing hard when you fear your recovering eardrum may burst its surgically repaired cartilage graft.

Speaking of my recovering eardrum, yesterday I drove back to Little Rock for what was supposed to be my final follow-up appointment where I would receive a clean bill of health and permission to finally swim underwater, which is what I was most excited to tell Huck. Instead, Dr. Gardner discovered a teeny tiny new hole in my new eardrum, not caused by heavy laughter.  It could very likely heal itself or it could very likely take over the eardrum.  He did a small procedure right then and there in hopes of helping the healing process, and we made a date for July 10th.  I showed him pictures of his childhood friend (and my grown up friend) Jason & his family (including Huck’s childhood friend Lydia) on my phone, and we sadly took a smiley selfie.

On my way to Little Rock that morning an old Patty Griffin song came on the ipod that ends with the words, “Heavenly day … all the trouble’s gone away … Oh, for a while anyway …”  I heard it again on my way home and frowned.  Troy and I had made plans to sit on the back patio that night and relive all the excitement of the past busy week, and I thought we’d be clinking wine glasses to healed ears and successful surgeries.  Maybe this summer, maybe never.  It didn’t feel so much like a heavenly day and trouble does not seem to be gone away, but Troy did get to play Mark Rothko and I did get to read the stories of prisoners and there’s always room for friends in our back yard.  And regardless of the final surgery outcome, I did get some hearing and hope back.  For a while anyway.

Positive thoughts and healing prayers sent in the general direction of my left ear are most welcome.

I took this picture last Saturday on a perfectly cool spring morning that would turn into a beautiful sunny day.  I surprised Troy with this chiminea for his birthday a few days before, inspired by the fact that we will lose our fire pit when we move this summer.  I posted the picture on Instagram and Facebook even though I knew how much was missing.  It tells part of the story, the part I just described, but it leaves out the section where Troy and I sat there having a stressful conversation about where we’re going to live next. We’d just begun the horrible, awful, wish-we-never-had-to-do-this-again process of house-hunting, realizing how spoiled we’ve been in this fairytale-like cottage for nearly two years. Following on the heels of a year that included job searches and ear surgery, I’m catching myself muttering “it’s always something” under my breath in a bitter tone like one of those homeless ladies we used to see everyday.

In a way it reminds me of a day at work last week.  Every Friday I cover the front desk during the lunch hour, and always something melodramatic happens during my shift.  This time a little girl came running down the hall with blood pouring out of her pinky finger.  To say I nearly blacked out and practically died is no exaggeration, but somehow I made an elaborate tourniquette with a paper towel and told her how brave she was while practicing deep breathing myself. When the school nurse arrived, I donned rubber gloves to clean the blood spots off the floor leading from kindergarten recess to the front desk.  Once my job was done saving a child’s life and cleaning the school, I went to the back patio to sit in the sunshine for lunch.  And a few short feet away from me sat two horrible lizards, my true arch-nemesi, literally watching me eat.  I can’t work in these conditions!  I shouted as I ate some delicious freshly made kale chips and drank the best iced tea that has ever been made.

Back to the beautiful picture with the secret back story.  On Saturday I felt a medley of stress and worry and other feelings that come with being a human being some days, or at least a Hottman daughter, unable to shake the fact that we would definitely be living in our car soon.  But that evening Troy put on his rust colored corduroy suit that he bought at the Salvation Army for a play back in the early oughts, and we made our way to a neighborhood driveway dance party. While talking with favorite people under the stars on a perfect night, the phrase “it’s always something” took on a wonderful new meaning.  It’s always another gathering of friends, another encouraging text, another picture opportunity, another inside joke, another reminder that dancing outside, no matter what your age and no matter what kind of day you’ve had, will cheer you up.  And best of all, another house found.

Because it’s always something.

The other day I picked up some preschool children for an art class, and as we walked down the hall I noticed a little boy trying hard not to cry.  Since I can’t resist a child trying not to cry, I bent down and asked what was wrong. He held up the tiniest piece of construction paper that he was holding in both hands like a diamond and said that he was about to put it into a box for his mommy, but now he couldn’t. We turned right around and went back to his classroom to find the paper box maker himself, and without hesitation Mr. Troy gently placed that important bit of scrap paper inside one of his beautiful creations.  As the kid turned around to join me, he gave an enormous sigh of relief as if he’d just narrowly escaped a car crash.  Or watched someone he loved narrowly escape a car crash.

I think this may be what we look like to God when we freak out over something and then someone helps us.  It must just break his heart.

Speaking of heartbreaking boys, Huck has decided he wants to make more money and open up a bank account, so we’ve been adding chores to his very easy life so he can earn 25 cents here and there in addition to his $2 weekly allowance that I usually forget to give him. Huck loves algebra and fractions and the Fibonacci Sequence and will one day be an astrophysicist/mathematician/inventor, but we get to say we knew him back when he was excited for $2.75.  And like the four year old with the paper box, my homemade birthday card contains his newly designed logo (see above) made with a protractor, compass, Sharpie maker and highlighter, to be forever cherished with his other creations.

I turned 45 years old today.  Anne Lamott turned 61 a few days ago and says she thought she was still 47.  So I am two years away from being the age Anne Lamott thinks she is and that’s a comfort.  Still, I thought at the very most I was 32. Possibly 27.  So I kept it simple today.  Basking in the backyard sunshine, visiting waterfalls and making cairns, reading my book, strawberry cheesecake made by Troy and Huck, wine with friends, gratitude out the wa-zoo, and hoping for exactly 45 more such years.

Back when Huck was a drunk toddler, Troy and I were his educators.  I hung on his every word because I could understand everything he said.  I still knew more than he did back in those days.  As we’ve watched him morph into this long haired skinny person with ideas and interests far from our own, I quickly learned how to go to my happy place when his Minecraft Monologues began.  Sometimes I’ve missed important information along the way.

On Easter Sunday our friend asked Huck how school was going, and for whatever reason he didn’t dismiss the oft asked question with a quick “fine” but instead gave a detailed and articulate description of a presentation he was working on for his GT class.  I learned a lot in those seven minutes, and it struck me that I need to ask more questions and really listen to his answers.  Not the parental multi-tasking “uh-huh, uh-huh, neat!” kind of listening that I’ve mastered since he turned into a non-stop talker of things I don’t so much understand, but that deep kind of listening we all love from other people.  So I started last week with a secret promise to really listen-listen to all of his many words.  Since he’s the product of two very verbal parents, this is sometimes painful and never quick.  Plus he discovered Pokemon at the exact same time as I made my promise, so a lot of what I must listen to now involves Japanese words I can’t remember and complicated theories that make me drowsy.  That said, I almost always crush him when we play Pokemon.

When Huck and I discover something we both have an affinity for, it takes us back to those early years and reminds us we’re related.  He may go on a little too long about Pi for my taste, and I may talk too much about God, gay rights and the importance of voting for Hilary Clinton, but together we have Harry Potter, time travel, optical illusions, Rebecca Stead books, bubble gum, and variations on Solitaire.  When he was a baby Troy and I worried he might grow up to be an athlete, Republican or atheist.  No offense to our athletic Republican atheist friends and family, but what would we do with a child so different from us?  Instead he is clearly becoming an agnostic mathematician who hates theatre and is about a year away from hosting Dungeons and Dragons meetings in our creepy basement.  We’re like the parents on “Family Ties,” nervously smiling as he launches into a speech far from anything we would ever say, frantically Googling words when he’s not looking.

Our baby’s ten years old and starts middle school in four months.  I think it’s safe to say he’s becoming his own person with his own hair do.  Here’s hoping I keep listening to what he has to say.

Spring break for us was seven sunny days in Texas, down where the trees are full of leaves and the grass is already green again!  I think I speak for the rest of the country when I say I almost threw myself down to the warm ground in a frenzy of happiness.  Since moving to Arkansas, we three haven’t had a true family vacation, but now that Troy and I are both employed full time we decided to treat ourselves to some good old Texas hospitality. Huck began the trip with the unorthodox decision to wear a different color of the rainbow in Roy G. Biv order (minus the indigo) each day of the week.  I’ll be honest: we had to cheat a little bit on yellow’s day.

So with a suitcase full of very colorful t-shirts, we made our way to Austin where we spent a few days with our beloved Shannon followed by a few days down at the beautiful Texas coast with our dolphin friends. Austin was full of skips down Memory Lane and happy exclamations about its beauty, sunshine and hipness. (We even took Huck by the apartment where he was conceived, because kids LOVE that!)  Our time at the beach was full of happy sighs of contentment as we played in the water again and began working on our early suntans.  Although our beautiful Lighthouse Inn at Aransas Bay was lacking vending machines, Huck’s favorite hotel accessory, it did have incredible quality white bathrobes that were worn frequently by our short little friend. Knowing that Huck hoards money (and candy), we gave him ten dollars that he had to spend on our vacation or else return to us upon arriving home.  Thus, he is now the proud owner of 13 Mardi Gras bead necklaces, a touristy seashell, and more bubble gum than anyone could ever imagine.  I hope the image of his filthy face caked with bubble remnants never, ever leaves my memory, especially when he’s an astrophysicist.  We ended our trip with a quick night near Dallas where we played with some dear old friends and met Shannon’s famous nephews and took pictures that made a certain aunt very happy.

We arrived home on Friday after picking Sunny up from the delightful Dog Party USA where she clearly enjoyed a week long dog party in the USA.  As the evening turned into nighttime and Troy and I began daydreaming of taking a parenthood vacation while watching a violent Netflix show just the two of us, Huck sweetly asked if we could do something just the three of us.  I have a feeling we may be on the last few years of that sentiment following a week of non-stop family time.  Next thing we knew, it was three person spades with our brand new dolphin playing cards.  Home sweet home.

The last time we were in Austin was five years ago when we played the Beidermans with the wonderful Greg and Rachel in “An Ordinary Family.”  Since then, two of us have gotten a lot taller.

Huck and Rachel played brother and sister Jack and Annie and we still think they look related.  And adorable!

Our time at Shannon’s centered around Telestrations, Heads Up, Virtual Reality and her amazing swimming pool.              Huck would like to live with Shannon.

Where it all began!  (Or where all Huck began.)

CHALK reunion!

An Austin rainbow to go with Huck’s shirts.

Dolphin watching right outside our hotel room patio!

Cole, Huck and Caden Finally Meet!  Vacation complete.

Apparently I think when you have a real job you can no longer go to the doctor, because I scheduled appointments to check all my teeth, both my eyes and one of my ears three days in a row in anticipation of next week’s exciting adventure into full-time employment.  Huck, who loves going to the dentist, shared this bit of wisdom after my first appointment on Wednesday: “To enjoy the dentist, you shouldn’t be in the mood for something savory and wonderful.  You have to be in the mood for something clean and hard.”

During Huck’s birthday party at the skating rink last Saturday my sister Jeni leaned down to tell me something in my left ear.  For 16 years I’ve always offered my right ear during these moments, but this time I didn’t.  It took me a few seconds to realize that I could actually hear what she said, even with the loud music and children.  The next day I noticed how strangely loud my own whistle was inside my head.  That night I heard Troy’s top secret fart next to me in bed.  It turns out my partial deafness was sometimes a blessing.

Today I trekked across the state during an all day Friday the 13th torrential downpour to see Dr. Gardner for my four week follow-up appointment, all the while praying my parents weren’t watching The Weather Channel.  I learned that I am a slow healer because of my problematic eustachian tube, which was the reason my first two surgeries didn’t work. Even so, the graft did its job and I no longer have a hole in my ear drum!  I return in two months to make sure it’s 100 percent healed and have another hearing test. In the meantime, I can hear in ways I haven’t been able to since January of 1999, which is pretty savory and wonderful.

To give you an idea of just how long ago that was, look at this fresh-faced, gigantic-mouthed couple taken a few months before the fateful ear infection.  Oh, time.  You are a dickens.