The Golf Cake; You Just Never Know

This blog entry is for my good friends and family: Jill and Jim, Jen and Rob, Karen and Dan, Auntie Catherine and Uncle Al, David and Rosemary, Jennifer and Marc, and everyone who is supporting them through some difficult times.

You Just Never Know ... when one of your kids will do something that you'll never forget even though they might ... how a friend will surprise you by saying or doing just the right thing to help you out during an especially difficult moment ... why a song you never noticed the words to before suddenly captures exactly how you feel ... how good you are at something you didn't even realize no one else could do ... how your life can become unglued with just one phone call ... and ultimately how strong you are just to be able to get through today, and the next day and the next, even if not for yourself.

Life Is Crazy!!!

Last week Ethan and his girlfriend, Amy, went grocery shopping after swim practice and brought home all the ingredients to make a birthday cake for Bill. I was DELIGHTED at not having to do the cake, and even more delighted that they took on the project without my asking.

Well, they took it on, all right. They put together the cake you see above -- okay, maybe not ready for Food Network Cake competitions, but that's just my camera. It was Amazing! Using coconut and food coloring, along with some brown sugar and fruit roll-ups, Ethan and Amy were able to construct an excellent replica of the 18th hole at Augusta Golf Course, complete with Sour Patch kids as the golfing foursome and toothpicks for golf clubs. Believe me, it tasted as good as it looks.

The following day, Bill told me no less than 3 different times how he was still shaking his head over the cake. I'm convinced he/I will never forget it, though I'm pretty sure that Ethan and Amy didn't have that in mind when they concocted the plan to put the cake together. Truly, most of the credit probably goes to Amy, since I still have a hard time believing Ethan would have mounted such an effort on his own. But, not to take anything away from My Dear Son, Amy surely didn't come up with golf idea. But, enough dissecting; The Golf Cake was a huge success and delicious to boot.

No birthday presents could ever have provided the lasting impression and delight that Bill will always have from The Golf Cake.

What I shake my head over is the fact that something like that can so easily happen, that one day your child, or friend or brother, does something that can so easily become a lifelong memory. The Golf Cake was small and easy, compared to the lavish memories we so often try to create. The big ticket items, such as a piece of extravagant jewelry, a new car, or a family trip, just don't compare. And we so often try to up the ante on these create-able memories that we're not even aware we're doing so.

A lot of people asked me about The Lemonade blog I wrote last week. If you didn't understand it, then it wasn't meant for you. The people I wrote it for, to a person, let me know they knew I was talking to them. And I was. And I still am. Even though I know a Golf Cake won't make them feel better right now, maybe it will offer them the possibility of feeling better soon. Of realizing that life takes you by surprise every day, with mostly good surprises. When bad surprises happen, you can't allow yourself to focus on them too much. You have to move, to listen to music, take a walk, surround yourself with children and friends. Listen to Opera! Make a batch of cookies and Eat Them! Sit out in your yard with a good book and Listen to the sounds. I know a bit about bad surprises, so you've got to trust me on this one. It is the little things, the things we take for granted, that will give you the strength to get through the day. See you soon. xo C.

Isn't She Loverly?

It's taken me almost 20 years -- yes, hard to believe that I will have been married for 20 years this coming September, which has to be the subject for a whole other blog post -- but I finally found a plant that I can grow with ease: the Hydrangea. I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize this. Even I should have learned years ago that a huge reason these plants are so popular on islands like Nantucket, where hundreds of varieties of hydrangea literally surround you like fog, is that they are so easy for vacation-minded-wannabe-gardeners to propagate. Did I just classify myself as vacation-minded? Of course I did, and proud of it.

Our annual trek to the northern Outer Banks of North Carolina is a mere three weeks away. I am counting down the days, as I do every year around this time. When we started this trek, some 17 years ago, Ethan was only six months old. None of us realized then the important role this annual vacation would have in our family's life.

That year, we started off in Nags Head, with almost the entire Sullivan clan. The pictures from that vacation are incredible, complete with matching t-shirts and toddlers everywhere you look. We often tell those looking to choose a spot on the Outer Banks about how that year we took the long drive north -- when you're on vacation at the beach, even one hour is far too long to be in the car -- to the towns of Duck and Corolla. Despite the wild horses roaming the coastline, we swore then that those outposts were much too sleepy for us, that we'd never stay on the left side of the bridge. Two years later we moved to that still largely undiscovered left side of the bridge and never looked back. (Well ... for the fact checkers out there, let me clarify: We did take a one-year hiatus from NC, heading instead to Nantucket (where it rained steadily for 2 weeks), because the summer before we had been forced to evacuate our OBX vacation courtesy of Hurricane Felix -- I think Bill has the hurricane charts that we compiled that week on our loooonnnnggg journey away from the storm's epicenter).

During the 14 years we've vacationed in Sanderling, a quiet community just north of Duck and south of Corolla, we've stayed in only 2 different houses. While we loved our first house, we were forced to part ways as it seemed to get smaller and smaller as the kids got older. The house we have been renting for the past 5 years now is an upgrade on all fronts; for our two families (Bill's sister and her family join us every year) there are 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, 2 refrigerators, countless televisions, and open space galore, meaning plenty of room to move around without getting in each other's way. And, of course, there is central air, which is crucial in mid-August in North Carolina. The beach gets Extremely Hot, and you need to have a cool space to duck into mid-day.

For our family, our home away from home in the Outer Banks acts as an anchor. I'm convinced we didn't know it when we first started vacationing there. But, as our children get older, get married and move away -- Can You Believe IT??? -- they know where to find us, and know they are always welcome, the second two weeks of August. They all know their way around the island, and have no hesitation about biking or driving on their own to their favorite spots to shop, eat, bike and surf. We have even established wonderful friendships with like-minded Sanderling summer residents, as we like to call ourselves from time to time, and we look forward each year to reconnecting, sharing good books and family stories, and drinking our ice cold beers while the sun settles over the ocean. Ah, Bliss.

Of course, we still have a couple of weeks to get through before Bliss. But, that's okay. Just knowing Bliss is around the corner makes everything else easier.

Care Packages for Red Lancers

Good Monday Morning! As many of you know, Ethan's swim team at St. John's Prep in Danvers, MA has "adopted" approximately 100 members of the VP-10 Red Lancers Squadron while they are on deployment (until December) in Djibouti, Qatar and Japan. Each student has 3-4 sailors for whom he is responsible for mailings and care packages over their six months away from home.

With that in mind, and ever mindful of the wise saying (did someone mention Hilary Clinton?) "it takes a village ....," I am calling on my faithful blog readers to assist us in compiling Ethan's care packages for the sailors. He has four packages to put together; so many of you have offered help with this project, that I thought to offer you all a specific opportunity to help.

Ethan and I will be putting packages together for mailing on Monday, July 27. If you'd like to participate, please drop off and/or send items for the packages, to either my home at 7 Woodland Way, Haverhill, MA or to my mother's home at 13 Strathmore Road, Wakefield, MA. We would like to include some or any of the following: athletic socks, men's t-shirts, magazines, books, games, writing materials, small fans, candy (no chocolate or meltables), and anything else you think young single guys in the middle of Africa would like!

Thank you in advance for all your help. We'll keep you updated as this project continues to grow. Remember you can follow our efforts at www.sjp10redlancers.com (just click the title "Care Packages for Red Lancers" to get there).

No Recipe For Lemonade

Sometimes life gives you lemons without the ingredients necessary to make lemonade. That's just the way it is. Not that I expect lemonade all the time. I don't. But sometimes there are just so many lemons I can handle before I want to start crying out for sugar and water to make the bitterness easier to swallow.

Most of the time, life for the Sullivan Jrs. is pretty good, so far as it can be measured by the common indicators of family and personal success. Mostly healthy and happy kids, generally well-behaved (did I say HAIRY?) dogs, decent looking lawn, a house with a mortgage (not upside-down yet) and plenty of bathrooms and closets, and good jobs that pay the bills. Generally, what you see is what you get.

But, here's the rub. It Ain't Easy, Baby!

Lately, life is a Lot of Hard Work. Not that there's anything wrong with that ... and not that I was raised to believe we could ever attain true success in family or profession without hard work. I remember when my father died, and one of his cousins said to me, "Your father had a really hard life." It sounded so strange at the time, because as his daughter, I Truly did not think his life had been a hard one. Looking back, I can see what she meant, since he grew up without a father and with only a high school education. But my father never actually acted like his life was "really hard." He worked as hard as he could, from a very early age; he never was quite happy just sitting around relaxing. I know his working two jobs when we were young was stressful for him and for my mother, but the nights he worked and days he slept are not what I think of when I summon up memories of him. My most poignant memories of him are his laughing and laughing at the simplest things -- Bonnie, his dog, and Julia, then two. Was his life hard? Maybe, but he never really showed that side of his life to his children. We could debate whether in fact that's a good thing, as many children these days seem to take a lot of their privileges for granted. My theory is that children usually have an especially good spidey-sense of such things, and I'm pretty sure my father didn't consider his life one of hardship.

And, did someone say empathy? Dictionary.com defines empathy as "the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another." For the record, I'm glad that Judge Sotomayor is an empathic individual, capable of understanding the motivations and concerns of the parties whose rights are at issue in the cases she decides. Too much empathy, though, will kill you. Every now and then we need to be cold-hearted and indifferent to others, in order to protect ourselves.

Maybe we're just entering a very common and well-recognized cycle in our lives, replete with challenges concerning children, parents, friends, jobs, and whatever other category exists to compartmentalize our lives. Maybe our mid-life crises arise not from disillusionment and aging, but from the sudden development of life-challenging issues in several of the aforementioned categories. If we follow this line of reasoning a bit further, one could conclude that "mid-life crisis" is merely a euphemism for what no one wants to publicly acknowledge, namely that, "the kids' issues are taking an ever increasing emotional toll on me AND everyone around me seems to be either suffering from a tragic disease or losing his/her job." "Mid-Life Crisis" just sounds better.

Not that I'm dashing to the store yet in search of water and sugar. The rains that had settled over New England for weeks on end seem to have largely dissipated, and the kids are settling into workable summer routines after a few weeks of craziness. Bill finds intellectual renewal -- don't ask me how this happens, I will never understand it fully -- on the golf course, and I find some physical and mental satisfaction in my running and writing. It's comforting to know we're in our own life adventure together.

Which is to say, we're all in this life together. This may come as a shock, but I don't have so many blog followers yet that I cannot say to each one of my readers that are confronting their own challenges, you must know I am with you. You are not alone (even though you may want to be after reading this ...!). Call me and I'll be right along, with plenty of sugar, water, lemons AND vodka. It may not be easy, but we can make it a hell of a ride!

Laugh Out Loud

What Is That Stuff?

Cottage Cheese, with Chopped Blueberries and Pineapple. Ugly, but yummy, and good for you. I had never tried the pre-made cottage cheese mixed with pineapple, until I started buying it for the puppy's food several months ago. Ridiculous, I know. I was very surprised by how tasty it was, though I simultaneously realized it was almost cloying in its sweetness. If you have fresh pineapple, and some spare blueberries lying around, throw them into the food processor and mix them in with some cottage cheese. The combination is not overly sweet, and is abundantly good for you. 1/4 cup of low fat cottage cheese has 14 grams of protein, which is well on your way to your RDA, or recommended daily allowance. If you are a female over 25 years, the RDA of protein is 50 grams. Chocolate milk, which seems to be all the current rage for pre- and post-workout nutrition, has 16 grams of protein per 2-cup serving. So, if you have 1/2 cup of cottage cheese and a double dose of chocolate milk, you are all set for protein for the day. With one cup of pineapple, you get 131% of your RDA of calcium; 1 cup of blueberries provide dozens of vitamins, plus an abundance of omega-3 fatty acids. Like I said, ugly and good for you.

Now, aren't you glad I didn't start off by talking about Sarah Palin? Is it just me, or is the Republican Party going all-too-quickly down the tubes? It's almost not that much fun any more. Even I'm starting to feel a bit sorry for them. Poor John McCain; he's a paragon of virtue compared to the clowns around him. It would have been impossible to predict the level of immaturity, irresponsibility, and downright thoughtlessness of the various Republicans whose faces have filled the airwaves the past several weeks. At this point, Gov. Mark Sanford is just too ridiculous to even pay attention to. At least Eliot Spitzer had the good sense to make his apologies and then skulk off into the sunset, albeit temporarily. Sanford just goes on, and on, and on. When grown men, elected officials no less, are using words like "soulmate" and "fall in love with my wife again" at press conferences, you just have to shake your head and wonder what his parents were thinking when they taught him that honesty is the best policy.

Sarah Palin's latest maneuvers Scare The Heck Out Of Me! Her doubletalk is so effective for such a large part of the population that it leaves me scared for the country, for my children, and for myself. Each time she appears in front of a microphone, I'm afraid she'll say something to further undermine female politicians, daughters, Alaskans, and President Obama, just to name a few. After seeing Rick Sanchez's comments on CNN, I was cheered to realize I wasn't the only one thinking she might be resigning because she is (huge gasp!) pregnant.

Of course, I do have to thank Sarah for one thing. Even I am getting pretty tired of the Michael Jackson coverage. I didn't sign up for the Memorial Service lottery (darn it), but I certainly will tape the memorial service when it airs tomorrow on all 700 stations. Do we seriously need to see Jesse Jackson and Uri Geller (spoon-bending freakie guy who broke up with MJ years ago) on every morning news station? Don't the station producers realize that remotes were designed to enhance our options, enabling us to find diverse stories, and alternatives to the flipped out pop culture that is invading every corner of our lives? Luckily, everyone moved rather quickly to get the funeral and memorial service accomplished. Hopefully by later this week we will be on to the next big story -- about another Republican who can no longer run for president.

Here's a story, though, that does restore your faith in humanity. And lawyers. And homeless people. A book club started as a result of a conversation between a lawyer and a homeless man in Boston. Who would have believed it possible? It is the perfect antidote to MJ mania. Click on the title "What Is That Stuff?" above to get to the Boston Globe article. If only the Globe had more articles like this one, maybe its disgruntled subscribers (yours truly) would start heading back.