Five Cowboys & The Deaf Dog

It ain’t all kick ass adventuring.

There’s kick ass complaining.  Kick ass pouting.  Some kick ass meltdowns.  Times when Mickie and I hit the kick ass wall and wish for only a kick ass nap because we’re on the receiving end of a kick ass ass kicking.

Taking the whole show on the road while adjusting to a new infant, 6 weeks old when we left 10 weeks now, is revealing and intensifying.  Everything that’s hard anyway is harder, things that should be routine aren’t.

Add a five and two and a half year old, and there have been some frazzled moments, some sleepless nights, some drive down the road to the cacophony in the back seat wondering “What in the name of Heysoos are we doing? What are we doing?!?  Why do we keep shaking it up?  Why do we make it harder?  Was three too many?  How much is too much?  How much attention?  How much neediness?  How long can we keep this up? Is the lump on the dog’s jaw coming back? Shit, it is. There’s another one on her neck.  Are we irresponsible?  How thin can we be stretched?  Can we remain a team or will we be at each other?

Man I wish I could claim we didn’t have those thoughts, those doubts.  That we were immune from the stresses of life together, life with kids, life trying to make a life.

But we’re not, are we?

So here we are, far from home.  And the other day was a day where we just did not have any more to give.  Done.  A day full of challenge and frustration, and aborted opportunity, capped by being up in the mountains, going to a nice little dinner, only to find the restaurant was over priced, not good, and you spent the meal dealing with three different bowel movements, none of which was your own.

Fuck me, you think to yourself.  What am I doing?

So then we had a family meeting where we stressed the importance of staying positive, of looking at the bright side, and being responsible for ourselves and others.  We looked each other in the eye and took turns saying I love you, looked up and counted the stars, wishing upon the falling ones, then hugged and fell asleep together as a united pile.

No we didn’t.

We drove back to the house, put the boys down to bed, then collapsed and not too successfully tried to get some sleep. We woke in the morning to demands to be fed, kept after the boys as best we could, had our plans for a hike frustrated by neediness, and hit the wall by noon.  Hard.

And you pout a bit.

Then you regroup. You don’t always want to but you feel the clock ticking – you’re not here forever.  How you gonna use it?  The morning’s gone, nothing to be done. Yesterday was a wash, nothing to be done.  Right now, how are you going to use it?

So we pulled it together, got back on the same page, and got back in motion.  Because that really seems to be the key, no?  Being in forward motion.  And that’s up to us, no one else.  Don’t get married to the plan, assess what’s going on, and keep the motion forward.

Seems we’re all a work in progress.  Individually.  As a group.  And it’s not always easy is it?  For some of us it’s smiling for the first time.  For others it’s not peeing the bed.  And for others it’s consistently taking in the lessons of how to be good leaders.

It is always my hope that trips like these prove not just entertaining, but revelatory.  I’m reminded that those revelations don’t come easily all the time, and I hope we continue to use them in our efforts to push ever forward.

So I leave you, on this early morning, as I watch the winds blow leaves off the trees in anticipation of gathering rain, wondering where to take everyone for a hike before those rains hit, having been interrupted by two bagel preparations, a pee pee trip, a poo poo trip, and two paper airplane requests (of which I may just assemble the most aerodynamically sound model known to man), with a tale of things that sometimes happen:

Sometimes you go to the grocery store.  Sometimes, when you’ve picked up a few items, you leave the grocery store, load the car and drive home.  Sometimes as you drive home you drive 40 miles per hour.  Sometimes, when you drive 40 miles per hour, you are driving past a 25 mile per hour zone. Sometimes, when driving past some such zone, you drive past a police officer and, sometimes, this police officer pulls up behind you and turns his lights on.  And sometimes you say “shit”.

Now, most times, given the series of sometimes, you pull over and the police officer will walk up and ask for your license and registration, and, most times, he’ll walk back to his car with your information in his hand.  Now, sometimes, as you sit in your car watching the police officer in your sideview mirror, Baby Kai gets mad.  And, sometimes, when he gets mad, he gets really mad.  Sometimes, he gets so mad, as you sit and watch the police officer call your information in, you turn to your wife and say, “Wow, he’s really mad.”  And, sometimes, as you say this, you roll down all the windows because, sometimes, you want the police officer that’s calling in your information to hear what you hear.  And once you do this, you sometimes wait and observe.  And Baby Kai screams in ways that challenge all theories of audible amplification.  And you watch.  And, sometimes, you see the police officer shake his head, put his radio down, and walk back up toward you.  Sometimes, the police officer gets to your window and says “Jesus, I could hear him back there.  Umm, your gonna get a break tonight.”  Then, sometimes, he nearly runs back to his car to get back inside.

And, sometimes, you drive home and say scream it up my son. You have earned it.

And, sometimes, you get to the old dirt road, one son in your lap steering, another on the middle console cheering, a third in the back screaming, your wife on the side laughing, and, sometimes, you think:  Kick. Ass.