Author: Lisa Duchene

The air is perfect. Too warm for October, but not steamy-hot like yesterday. A cool, comfortable breeze.

Refreshing. Like the few sips of ice water I enjoyed before the big dog knocked over the glass. Like slipping tired feet out of heels after a long day and into spongy, flat rubber flip-flops. Even better, the cool earth against my arches, lush green grass under my toes.

Refreshing as returning home after a week away and a long drive through the thick traffic and the drizzly dark. The beagle sat at attention to deliver the first greeting. Then the big, lanky brown dog loped over to rub his broad forehead against my thigh. Hey, you.

In the living room, my dear husband awoke in his easy chair, where he had been dozing and “watching” playoff baseball through his fluttering eyelids.

A few days later, even though the visit to a former life far away was wonderful, I’m still savoring the best part of leaving — coming home. From the cherry red, Adirondack chair in the backyard, feeling the perfect air against my skin, greeting the neighbors, tossing the ball for the dogs, breathing in the sweetness of fresh-cut grass from the church cemetary beyond our invisible property line.

This chair came with the house and property, which came with the love of my life and our family. My husband and stepsons have lived here for more than a decade. Uprooting the boys was out of the question.

So I moved. I’ve bloomed where planted before.

At first, I thought we’d live here until the boys were done with school.

Then, when I noticed my husband’s family name on generations of headstones in the cemetary and on old yellowed maps of our town I’d find while browsing the antique shops, it became clear that it would be wrong to ever uproot him from this place. He is of this valley.

I am home. This simple tan, square and sturdy 1860s house shelters our family. Every morning, there is something beautiful to see just a short walk out the door. In that way, it’s just like the best part of the old life.

We’ll most likely live here until I’m “planted” out back — ideally not taking up too much space and far below something much lovelier than grass that doesn’t need to be chopped every few days in a wet summer. Lawnmowers make me cringe. Not that it will matter.

The Man Cave look has yielded here and there. We have a blue room on the second floor with quilted wall-hangings and taupe curtains that is my studio. In the kitchen and white café curtains with flowered edges replaced the tired fabric hanging on closet dowels. Flower gardens curve along one side of our house — all surrounding the lawn where our grown boys still play whiffle ball. On one or two random, magical summer nights, everything but time stops for a whiffle ball game.

Behind home plate is the immense woodpile my husband, a teacher, builds over the first few weeks after school lets out for the summer. Red blossoms, red metal and red wood pull my eye through our gardens until it comes to rest on the big Adirondack chair beside the wood pile.

The first summer I lived here, I would sit in this red chair with my coffee and imagine all the future gardens. We’ve made many of them. There are a few more to come. More gardens dance in my mind’s eye. Always.

One summer Sunday morning, during my coffee time in the chair, I decided I’d go next door to the church service at 11. It seemed like time. You could say the spirit moved me. My husband never pressured me. My neighbor invited me, and said she thought I’d appreciate the wonderful community. She was right.

I’ve only heard love, acceptance, kindness and wisdom from our pulpit — and so I keep going.

The next summer, the pastor married us in front of an old stone house at the state park five minutes away — a place where we have walked so many miles and held so many family picnics that it feels like an extension of our home.

I cherish our healthy marriage, because I’ve had a bad one. I cherish this peace and contentment because I’ve been through the fire. My flames are no hotter than anyone else’s. Who knows when life will shatter a peaceful time — grab it while you can.

One project at at a time, the walls of our home will yield to open space and windows so we can see out back past the gardens and whiffle-ball field, the woodpile, the carved stone markers and the cornfield to the mountain where the trees reveal the season. In spring, bright green climbs up the ridges. In autumn, they are speckled with orange and rust. Jagged lines of blue-green conifers among the bright white snow in winter. Threads of dusky violet.

The dogs are played out now and lounge in the grass. Dusk has settled. The last pink of the sky fades to gray. The crickets are warmed up and hitting their stride.

Time to head inside for supper.

Our kids were 15 and 13 when I met their Dad. His face lit up when he told me about his sons. Older kids. Be careful, I thought. That’ll go so fast. But I was already in love. In a flash, it was time to let the kids go — and it was, indeed, really hard.

Yellow-orange school buses tunnel through the vast fields of tall cornstalks in our small town. Those sentries stand poker straight, green row upon tidy row. The hot mess of August yields to order.

These days can be soggy, teary ones. We must let go of summer, and let go of our children. Their new chapter has arrived.

But knowing this, and actually doing it is hard.

Last summer, as I struggled to let go, author Anne Lamott’s wise words struck a chord.

“You cannot follow your children around forever with sunscreen and lip balm,” she said. “It’s disrespectful.”

Wisdom Over Coffee ~ How did She Know?

The Wegmans Café in the college town over the mountain had become my mobile office. I’d gotten into a bit of trouble with my younger stepson, hovering over him at breakfast-time.

He would soon be 19, a freshman in college and wanted to make his own breakfast, thank-you-very-much. The morning smoothie and scrambled eggs had been one of those few things I could do for him, and I felt good about providing a healthy and nutritious start to his day.

So I signed-up for a month of daily, 8 a.m. “yoga boot camp” classes to force myself out the door by 7, before he was up, then I’d hunker down to work at a place with good coffee and wi-fi.

During Anne Lamott’s TED Talk about the 12 things she knew to be true as she turned 61 a few months prior, she looked straight at her audience — straight at me — and said:

“You cannot follow your children around forever with sunscreen and lip balm. It’s disrespectful.”

I gasped.

How did she know that at that very late-summer moment, the sunscreen and lip balm I’d bought for our kids at the start of summer was still sitting unopened in its pristine packaging on their dressers?

Our Kids Were Teenagers when I Met Them

When I met my husband at a Halloween party, his face lit up when he mentioned his boys, 15 and 13. His bright smile. His deep brown eyes. His stature.

My insides turned to butter and I thought: This man is gorgeous!

Then the kids’ ages, 15 and 13, registered. My intuition whispered: Oh gheesh. Older kids. Be careful. That’ll go so fast. That will be hard.

So true — and a moment too late.

Their family of three only fueled my attraction, and turned my life upside down.

I’d arrived in my 40s, recently divorced, with no children and an unfulfilled dream of having a family of my own.

In my 20s, my priority was to establish a writing life and home of my own, before being swallowed up by motherhood and the family that would most certainly happen later when the right guy came along.

A guy appeared. He turned out to be the wrong guy and there went my 30s. But I’d moved with him to a good place. So when he moved on, I stayed.

Later had come and gone. I’d returned to single life. That would be that. At 41, I realized my window to be a mom would soon slam shut. Was I really OK with that? I debated whether to have a child on my own.

(My friend Cristina would soon face similar questions and decided to have a baby on her own. Totally by choice. Totally badass.)

Beautiful & Perfect Trio

Just after Thanksgiving that year, I saw the boys for the first time when Superman sent a snapshot of the three of them from that summer.

They are all beaming in celebration after the younger boy’s team won a baseball championship game. In the post-game snapshot, he is between his Dad and older, taller brother. He wears a medal around his neck and smiles ear-to-ear, his black eye-paint smeared across the top of his cheekbones, his baseball uniform shirt unbuttoned and rumpled from playing.

They stood close enough for their shoulders to touch. Superman had his hand on the shoulder of his younger son, who was patting his older brother’s stomach.

My heart leaped over the moon.

The boys and I met before Christmas. They were just as sweet as in the picture.

My focus shifted to treading carefully in their “Man Cave,” doing what I could for them. That first winter, that meant cheering from the stands at wrestling matches and basketball games. Then came baseball and football games. Surely, I was embarrassingly loud.

I dove into cooking for them.

It wasn’t always easy for them, me or their Dad.

But we figured it out and became family.

A blink later and the boys stood as their grandmother pinned boutonnieres with white roses to their blue button-down shirts minutes before their dad and I got married.

By then, we were all clear that all this was true at once: I was not their mother. Their mom loves them very much.

And yet, they both are my kids, our sons, my stepsons.

Another blink and they were as tall and handsome as their dad, wearing tuxes before prom, each with a rose pinned to his lapel that matched his date’s dress.

In a flash, our younger son had graduated high school and was preparing to go to college — and making his own smoothie. Was there nothing left that I could do for him?

Now my job was to let go. It was hard.

How Will They Know?

Over in that college town, I had coffee with a college student who complained about her over-protective parents.

I told her I was struggling to let go.

I told her what Anne Lamott said about how the hovering was disrespectful.

Exactly! She said. Yes.

She’s insulted when her parents tell her she can’t drive after dark. Like she’s not capable of it.

She’s deflated when she calls home with an exciting opportunity and her parents bring up some negative worry. Why can’t they just be happy for her? Why can’t they be happy when she’s home instead of harping on when she’s not home?

And when she leaves, her mom lingers at the window, watching her go. It drives her crazy.

I cringed, then confessed. I stand at the kitchen window and watch them drive away, saying a little prayer, asking God to please watch over my husband and boys and bring them back home safely.

It’s annoying! said my student.

Ok, OK! I get it! I said. (And I remembered my mom standing at the window or waiting up until I got home and yeah, it drove me crazy, too.)

The Greatest Fear

But, I appealed to my student:

Try to understand — even though it’s probably impossible to really get this until it happens in your life.

When you become a parent — in whatever way you become a parent — you feel this unbelievable, tremendous, heart-bursting, love for these children.

It is bigger and more powerful than you can believe, than your body can even hold. You would do anything to protect this child from hurt.

You read the news. You know things happen. Car accidents. Freak accidents. Thunderstorms and floods.

Plus the crazy, unkind people you know are out there. People who could hurt them. Badly.

On any given day, something awful can happen. You know this.

Your greatest fear is that someone or something awful will harm your child, lead him to suffer pain, derail the potential of his life — or even end it.

You can’t imagine surviving that.

How Will They Know?

And, I told her, if I’m not concerned about their well-being — and protecting them from the sun’s harmful rays — how will they know I love them?

We know, she said. We know from all the times before when we were little.

But I wasn’t there when they were little!

Well, there is that, she said.

I’m trying, I told her.

~~~~~~

That night, I talked with my older stepson about all this. He was sunburnt and leaving the next day on a big trip to Montana.

He sighed in solidarity. He agreed with my student.

OK, I said. But if I don’t buy you sunscreen and lip balm and hover at the window when you pull out of the driveway: How will you know how much I love you?

He said: Just tell us.

So I hugged him, carefully because his skin burned, and said goodnight and wished him a good trip and told him I loved him with all my heart.

Enjoying Today’s Big Steps — and the Next

A few weeks later, a friend who was about to drop her youngest daughter at college said these wise words: We just have to sit back and enjoy watching them take these big steps.

Yes.

I can focus on all their big steps that I missed — like when our oldest was a little 5-year-old kid on his way to kindergarten who waved goodbye and disappeared into the school bus, leaving his dad teary-eyed on the curb.

Oh, what I would give to have been to see the three of them then.

But that’s not our story.

Or I can be grateful I’ve been here to stand beside their Dad and see them learn to drive, fall in love with their girlfriends, graduate from high school, leave for college where they have exceled and matured.

Learning to be Fireproof

Last summer, that time of loss was about them — and some of it surely was about me never experiencing “traditional” motherhood and all I imagine about it: Rocking my child, reading stories at bedtime, holding a small hand in mine while we cross the street or climb the ladder of a slide.

None of that was their problem. It was all my stuff to resolve.

To cling to them because of decisions I made in my 20s and 30s would have done them a disservice. It would have been unkind and unfair.

Disrespectful, and most definitely not my job in their lives.

Last week, this bit of wisdom, thanks to author Glennon Doyle: Our job is not to protect them from their pain, but to let them walk through the fire because that’s how they will learn they are fireproof.

That aligns with my husband’s philosophy — and to parent with him is an honor, responsibility and privilege.

Still… There Will Be Tears

So I let go. We dropped our youngest son at college. I cried the second I was back in the car. I re-focused on my work. I still missed him terribly.

I tell our sons how much I love them every time we say goodbye — and sometimes just out of the blue.

Loss sucks. Period. We need to grieve our losses, and cry our tears.

But, gratefully, as my husband reminds me, these changes are about life, not death. New chapters of their lives. New chapters of our lives and relationships with them.

Our youngest had a stellar college freshman baseball season. Our oldest is engaged.

We have so much to look forward to.

So I focus on all that’s good about the world. The joy of learning new things. Love. Knowledge. Manhood. Their reach toward their full, amazing potential as human beings, fathers and men.

Shining their light. Achieving their brilliance. Because the world needs people like this. The world needs men like this.

I am re-balancing my life, too, and that’s OK. My time is better spent writing than chasing people around with lip balm, sunscreen and Neosporin.

I let go. I talk to the dogs a lot. (OK, I fuss over the dogs, A LOT.)

This summer, when our youngest was home from college, I made sure there was cereal in the cupboard. Even the sugary kind. I stayed in my home office in the mornings.

This all still gets messy, and sometimes I’m in trouble for hovering.

Step back, my intuition whispers. Be grateful for what we have become to each other, how they let me onto their team and experience parenthood. I shed a few tears. I go on with my day.

And we all know I’ve got sunscreen and lip balm right here — just in case.

Three horse-drawn buggies. Two pickup trucks. Three cars. I eyed the gathering of those already waiting for peaches in the gravel lot in front of the big white weathered barn at the Amish orchard on Back Mountain Road, and I parked carefully.

In the cool August morning, we all quietly looked each other over, wondering how long we may have to wait for fresh-picked peaches — or if we would get any at all.

I’d hardly expected to be first at just after 7 a.m. Even a transplant like me knows when they say “early” in Big Valley that means about 4 a.m., maybe sooner. By then, our farm town is wide awake. Traffic zips along the main road, slicing through the cornfields that blanket the valley bottom and stretch to the base of the mountain ridges.

Crazy for Peaches

Yesterday, the woman at our butcher shop in town had directed me to another orchard and said she’d heard from a woman who’d arrived before 5 a.m. and was sixth in line.

People are crazy for peaches here in the valley this time of year. Rightly so. Summer’s sweet essence lives in the juicy, delicate flesh of a ripe peach.

So eighth wasn’t so bad. We all knew who among us was already there when we arrived and who had come later. We knew our place.

A chestnut horse pulling an open black wagon emerged from the trees and trotted into view, stopping in front of the barn. Two Amish boys held the reins and stood on the buckboard. Not quite teenagers, one wore a bachelor’s button blue shirt and the other a pale blue one — the familiar, vibrant hues of Big Valley.

Reddish-orange peaches filled 18, wheat-colored half-bushel baskets in the wagon bed.

A beautiful abundance. I would be heading home with peaches soon.

Or so I thought.

Then the next person in line asked for five bushels, 10 baskets. Six more people ahead of me.

The boys unloaded baskets, gently placing them on the gravel drive near the buyer’s buggy or truck, then moved on to the next person — often asking to determine who was next, as we’d parked in a formation more like tossed seeds than a line.

Country life will change you, if you let it

When the boys had finished, and the horse had rested a bit, one boy nudged the horse backward then toward the trees. Each boy placed a foot in a broken-in, familiar spot and climbed back to his driving position.

The horse’s metal shoes and the wagon’s wheels clattered on the pounded dirt lane as the wagon climbed slightly and disappeared again into the orchard.

More peaches would come to those content to wait.

As they picked the next wagon-load, a few of us helped the woman with her five bushels transfer her treasures from the baskets to boxes. Peaches cannot be dumped. Each one must be gently moved by hand to avoid bruising.

We waited and chatted about our peachy plans. One woman could already taste her the first cobbler she would make. Mine would be grilled at our annual summer party on Saturday. Our local family and friends, plus a few carloads of out-of-town guests gather at a state park pavilion to celebrate the best of summertime: Roasted corn, fresh tomatoes, grilled peaches, a swim in the lake, catching up.

As the sun rose higher and the morning warmed, the peach ladies and I chatted with each other and with the mother of the Amish family who owns the orchard. She explained that the drought had cut the peach harvest in half, and made them sweeter. The apples would be down, too, she said, but they were thankful for the harvest, whatever the amount.

The wagon came and went two more times. Five more, then 10 more cars snaked down the lane. People milled and watched. Some napped in their cars.

Country life will change you, if you let it.

We waited. So did the dirty breakfast dishes in my sink, the e-mails, the preparations for the party and the soon-to-arrive guests.

No matter. By then I was invested and enjoying the community, cool air and gorgeous scenery.

A little patience pays off

Finally, I left with two half-bushel baskets — one of Redhaven and another of John Boy.

That first bite was a delicious rush of nectar on my tongue. It belongs to all that is wonderful about summertime. A splash of cold water on a hot, humid afternoon. Floating on a river. Mountain pies over the campfire. Fireflies dancing above the cornfields. Cool, soft sheets on tired feet at the end of the day. The crack of a homerun off a wooden bat.

We must make time to savor these summertime pleasures — for they are both fleeting and the salve to all of our worries, aches and ordeals, the swift passage of time, the kids growing up too fast. All of it held at bay for awhile.