Deep-breathing into summer

These days I seem to have no Great Thoughts, just big worries. I'm worried sick about money – Michael is still unemployed and we're starting to give up hope; in this economy, even places like Home Depot aren't hiring sales staff. Should he start collecting Social Security (at a greatly reduced rate)? Will we lose this house? Will Melinda have to drop out of Syracuse? Michael is irritable; I'm fretful. We snipe and argue, then cling to one another like drowning people in an angry sea.

I'm worried to death about Kevin, whose dismissal from La Salle we are appealing to the principal tomorrow. Even if they take him back, can he (literally) make the grade? What will his neuropsych evaluation next month tell us: that he's chronically depressed? Has ADD? Or that he's just lazy and bored? Kevin took an online IQ test and scored 150. That's probably high, but maybe not by a lot. Yet he flunked two courses for the year and nearly flunked a third one. He's funny and nice, but so inert and affectless I feel like shaking him into life. Is this just a really bad case of teenaged-boy doldrums? What is wrong? Is it our fault? What will become of him? He has two more years of high school (somewhere!); then what? Is college too much to hope for? And even if he gets in, will he do the work at all? Will he ever be able to work at any job?

Now I am (to quote a psychiatrist friend) awfulizing. Step back. Take some deep breaths. Focus only on this moment. Smell the roses – and we finally have some roses to smell! (More on that later.)

In the midst of this gloom, we have celebrated, as well. Melinda graduated from La Salle on June 5, and we couldn't be prouder of her. Her dark maroon academic robe set off the bright-gold ribbon and medal around her neck, symbols of her membership in the National Honor Society.

Kevin, Melinda, and Andrés just before the La Salle graduation ceremony, June 5.

A week later, her report card arrived at home: the best grades she's ever gotten, and first honors. As she posed, smiling, with her many friends outside the cathedral, I thought back to a darkened bedroom in a Bogotá apartment where I lay next to a sleeping, dark-haired baby, six weeks old, watching her breathe. It was the moment when I fell in love with our new daughter so hard, I actually feared being hurt by so much emotion. Ever since, I've believed that God must truly love me; how else could I merit having this particular daughter in my life, and in my heart?

Another joy to me is the closeness among our three children. They genuinely like being together. They laugh, tease, talk, and just hang out. Their childhood rivalries long outgrown, these three gravitate toward one another. May it always be so.

Then there is Caroline, who talks in complex sentences, can't get enough of roving the beach in search of rocks and flowers, and makes us all smile, especially her Uncle Andrés.

Andrés and Caroline crack each other up.

Michael was sick with thyroiditis for several months and has been seeing an endocrinologist. Several weeks of Prednisone therapy have wrought near-miracles, and last week he was able to finish putting railings on the front porch and help me landscape the front yard. We spent Father's Day finishing the shrub and perennial plantings.

The front border gardens in progress.

Ta-dahhhh! (If you click on these photos, they will get bigger.)




Oh yes: about the roses I am to stop and smell. We planted two of these yellow rose bushes yesterday. They have that heavenly tea-rose fragrance that I adore.

Now all we need are front stairs and handrails on the porch, and a nicer lawn. The front porch is our favorite summer room, and at the end of a hot day's work outdoors we sip cold Miller "Chill" beer (hint of lime; yum) and watch the sailboats and listen to the summer birds from our Adirondack chairs.

Amid fear and discontent, there is also the peace of this beautiful place and the sunshine of our children's love. I have to keep reminding myself that all else is mere noise.