Cindy on July 5th, 2011
Camping is nature’s way of promoting the motel industry.” ~Dave Barry, The Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need
A sentimental favorite of mine, this essay originally appeared in The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Sunday Magazine in 1996, and was republished last year in Wild with Child: Adventures of Families in the Great Outdoors by Jennifer Bove. Have you been camping yet this summer?
Mother and Son Answer the Call of the Wild
Thanks to my previous career as a travel editor, I know how to rate a mattress and a motel bathroom. I’m right at home in a wicker rocker on the front porch of a country inn, sipping a tall glass of iced tea while watching the sun dip behind a mountain range.
But until my son joined Cub Scouts two years ago, my getaways did not include wilderness adventures. To me, communing with nature meant reading Thoreau or potting begonias. Spending a weekend in the woods of rural Michigan — with a chorus of bull frogs, sundry snakes, ticks, two dozen little boys and their suburban-Detroit mothers — didn’t sound like my idea of a good time.
Like most parents, however, I’ve learned to adapt. And while I am not exactly what you’d call a happy camper, the Scouts have taught me to appreciate the Great Outdoors. In fact, this fall I’ll embark on my third annual “Mom & Me” camping weekend with Nate’s pack.
In addition to strengthening mother-son relationships, Mom & Me weekends were designed to refute the theory that women will not sleep with insects.
I’ve also learned that the travel writer’s motto, “Always pack light,” doesn’t apply to north woods camping. It’s much wiser to cram your suitcase with back-up sets of everything, including socks and underwear, and to expect emergencies. On our first outing, for instance, Nate fell into a bog within fifteen minutes of our arrival at the camp site. He had to borrow my hiking boots until his own dried out the next day. Meanwhile, I had no choice but to tour the swamp in soggy tennis shoes.
“These weekends really are an endurance test for the parents,” one mom confided, half-seriously.
The following year I stuffed half a dozen pairs of boots into the back of our Jeep, but forgot my own raincoat. Of course, that was the weekend it poured and poured …and poured.
I’ll never forget the sight of six devoted moms building a campfire in the evening drizzle. (We were determined to do this thing right: We were going to roast every single hot dog and melt every marshmallow we’d hauled along with our Dura-flame logs.) Our boys, however, were smart enough to hide from the rain. Searching the campground by flashlight, we finally found them in one of the cabins playing Life, the board game of the moment.
“Bring the hot dogs in here,” one nine-year-old demanded as he scooted his car-shaped marker across the board. “I’m getting ready to sell one of my houses and I’m having a midlife crisis!”
If we’re very lucky, the hike to the public restrooms is only 15 minutes (uphill) from our campsite. The trick, I found, is to keep a spare flashlight in your sleeping bag so that you can grab it quickly if nature calls at 2:00 a.m. — which isn’t unusual for middle-aged moms.
Nobody sleeps much on these weekends. The kids are buzzing on caffeine, having consumed several gallons of Pepsi and Mountain Dew. The moms, smelling like a bonfire and desperately wishing for one hot shower, toss fitfully in their sleeping bags while the boys play flashlight games and tell ghost stories.
“Did you hear the one about the one-eyed man who went berserk in the north woods and was NEVER FOUND…?”
After two nights like these, the long drive back on Sunday is tolerable only with a mug of instant coffee and the promise of a warm bath. Completely exhausted, Nate and I typically ride home in silence.
But on the way home from last October’s trip, he mumbled, “Thanks for the weekend, Mom. Great weekend.” Brief but sincere, it was a rare expression of unprompted gratitude.
Catching a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror, I remembered I wasn’t wearing any makeup. My eyes looked older, and in an instant I saw the years racing past me like the cars on the expressway. My boy looked older, too, his lanky body slouched on the seat next to me.
Suddenly, that weekend — my endurance test — seemed awfully short. I was proud of myself for hiking through swamps and building fires in the rain. — Cindy La Ferle, August 1996
– A slightly different version of this essay is included in my own essay collection, Writing Home. Photos by Cindy La Ferle –
Cindy on December 5th, 2009
“The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; the secret anniversaries of the heart.” — Henry W. Longfellow
More than 24 years ago, my ob-gyn predicted I’d have a Christmas baby, give or take a few days. The doctor wasn’t too far off the mark, really, since Nate was born on December 6th, the feast day of St. Nicholas.
Known as the Bishop of Myra (now Turkey) in the 4th century, St. Nicholas earned his reputation for secret gift-giving by putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him. Word of his generosity echoed throughout the centuries. According to one legend, medieval nuns honored the eve of December 6th by anonymously placing baskets of clothing and food on the doorsteps of the needy. And not surprisingly, St. Nicholas was the role model for Victorian England’s merry Father Christmas. Outdoing the three wise men of the Nativity, the original St. Nick can be credited for establishing Christmas as the season of gifting.
Feast days aside, I remember the day my son was born as though it were yesterday, thanks in part to a three-page “birth report” I’d been assigned to write after returning home from the hospital.
Everyone in my final Lamaze class was instructed to write such a report in less than two weeks after giving birth. (Sleepless nights and postpartum depression were no excuse.) We were told to record every detail we remembered, every emotion we felt, as accurately as possible. Keeping us honest, the instructor insisted that we mail her a copy on deadline. At first, the whole thing seemed like a cruel homework assignment; another task to juggle between midnight feedings. Now, I appreciate it as the gift it was meant to be.
Back then I wasn’t comfortable typing my feelings on paper — especially feelings that were new and raw and deeply personal. Up until then, I’d been writing newspaper stories about art gallery openings and local hamburger joints. Regardless, I took up the challenge. I recorded the hour my water broke (I was watching Bill Bonds on the 11:00 news); the snowy drive to the hospital; the waves of contractions I surfed after my labor was induced. I confessed the irrational fears and worries I’d nursed prior to delivery. I wrote that I was grateful to be fully awake during the birth, and grateful that I was able to witness the miraculous first moment when Doug, Nate, and I became a family:
I recall the medicinal smell, the colors, the faces, and sounds in the delivery room, and even though there had been no time for the nurses to get the mirror up above me for the delivery, I loved being able to turn my head and see Nathan wiggling on the table right next to me, and to have my husband on the other side of me….
While I didn’t realize it at the time, the birth report was my first real attempt at a personal essay. It’s riddled with too many adverbs, and weighted with TOO MANY WORDS IN CAPS for emphasis. Parts of it sound wooden and clinical. Even so, it’s one of the most important pieces of writing I’ve ever done, and today I keep it with a collection of precious letters in my writing office.
Nate hasn’t been home for his birthday in several years. While it took a little time to adjust to his absence during and after his college years, I’m at peace with the fact that our lives are moving ahead just as they should. Nate has his own place in Chicago now, and he travels to other parts of the country for his job. His dad and I are fiercely proud of him for having crafted a remarkably good life for himself.
So we celebrate his birthday a few days early when he returns to Detroit for Thanksgiving. And after he heads back to Chicago, we still honor the ritual of mailing another birthday card and another small gift (maybe something from the cats) that will hopefully arrive in his mailbox on or near December 6th.
St. Nicholas Day is my birthday too. It’s the day I was born into motherhood, the most rewarding work on my resume. Once in a while, when I’m alone at my desk, I’ll open the file where I keep the faded blue envelope scrawled with the words “Birth report.” I unfold the pages and reread favorite parts, still amazed by the gift of a day it describes. – Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on January 18th, 2009
“Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.” — E.B. White
Mothers and sons are as different as mineral water and motor oil, and there are times when the distance between us seems impossible to navigate. The road to a smooth relationship often depends on the vehicle.
Just as the automobile is crucial to Detroit’s economy, cars have always been a key part of our household, not to mention our family mythology.
Before he learned to talk, my son Nate was drawn to anything with wheels â garbage trucks, trains and, especially, sports cars. And during the early years of his adolescence, the sanctity of the sports car was often the only non-combustible topic the two of us could discuss and agree upon. Whether we were driving in my SUV or his dad’s business sedan, a cool sports car never failed to turn our heads and inspire us to dream aloud.
These memories came tumbling back because the 2009 Detroit Auto Show (known officially as the North American International Auto Show) opens this week. It’s the first year I won’t be attending it with Nate, who graduated college last year and moved to Chicago. As I type this, he’s flying around the country on assignment. Since he lives in the city, Nate doesn’t even own (or need) a car now.
Flipping through the Detroit Free Press this morning, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for years past, when touring the auto show was the highlight of our snowy Michigan winters. Our whole family enjoyed every chrome-flashing highlight of each year’s awesome displays, from edgy concept cars to sexy luxury sedans.
In 2007, when I covered the show for our local daily newspaper, for instance, my husband and I drooled over the elegant Lamborghini display while Nate coveted the handcrafted Aston Martin V8 Vantage, which would have earned a thumbs-up from James Bond himself. And we were especially impressed the futuristic concept models, one of which actually promised a gas-free daily commute for Americans whose drive to work is 20 miles or less. (Remembering my dad’s gas-guzzling â60s Chevy Impala, I gave GM an enthusiastic thumbs-up for eco-friendly progress.)
As a mom, I’m forever indebted to my automobiles for safely transporting my son back and forth to school, music lessons, field trips, and family vacations.
But like everyone else who sustains a longtime romance with cars, I also like to think of them as vessels of good memories.The mere flash of a chartreuse Camaro, for example, is enough to conjure a few reveries of my own carefree college days. And every time I spot a Jeep Cherokee on the road or at a car show, I recall the times I traversed the suburbs with a cargo of neighborhood kids and their backpacks. Likewise, my son still waxes nostalgic about the old Honda Prelude — our first family sports car — that was sold to another driver several years ago.
I’m tempted to revisit the Detroit Auto Show with my husband this year. If only for a few hours, maybe the two of us can forget winter’s chill and Michigan’s droopy economy. We could inhale the heady scent of new leather interiors and recharge some old memories. Or we could picture ourselves driving off into the sunset — at 100 miles an hour — in a brand-new, bubble-gum yellow Dodge Circuit EV concept. Oh yes, we can dream.
A sentimental favorite of mine, this essay originally appeared in The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Sunday Magazine in 1996, and was republished last year in Wild with Child: Adventures of Families in the Great Outdoors by Jennifer Bove. Have you been camping yet this summer?
I’ll never forget the sight of six devoted moms building a campfire in the evening drizzle. (We were determined to do this thing right: We were going to roast every single hot dog and melt every marshmallow we’d hauled along with our Dura-flame logs.) Our boys, however, were smart enough to hide from the rain. Searching the campground by flashlight, we finally found them in one of the cabins playing Life, the board game of the moment.
