Seeing Love and Prima Donna

Before she had four kids, my neighbor trained to be an opera singer. Lisa is a soprano. Her kids range in age from late elementary school to one in diapers. Her husband regularly travels internationally for work. Lisa's mom lives nearby and helps her out a lot.

Unlike her first three children, the youngest babe doesn't sleep. Lisa is a loving and attentive mother, but not nearly a helicopter mom. Mothers of four can't be helicopters -- they don't have that many eyes in their heads. Pictures posted on Facebook of her youngest kid the past three weeks showed Lily digging up carrots, spilling flour and coffee in the kitchen. I could see Lisa was about to lose it.

Then we heard the singing. Last week, my family eating dinner on our back porch when we heard Lisa sing. She would sing until 9:00 or 10:00. Each night, she'd sing again. At one point, a tenor joined her with a piano and some strings. It was lovely to have a little concert in our neighborhood each night. This "racket" was the opposite of a teenage rock band practicing in a garage. This was a professionally training musician honing her craft.

"Lisa must be losing it," Jack said.

"I hope she is okay," I said, wondering if she was singing because she was going berserk. "Maybe she is getting ready for a concert or a recording."

My aunt came to town, so I didn't have time to stop by and ask Lisa herself. This Sunday I was working in the yard, and Lisa's oldest daughter stopped by to invite us to a concert at 7:30. "Please come!" her daughter said. I told Betsy that we would be happy to be there.

"I bet Lisa planned this to get Paul to clean up the yard!" Jack said. "He is out there arranging the patio and a setting up outdoor lights."

We arrive at Lisa's a few minutes early. A tray with flutes of pink champagne greeted us at the door. Her piano was moved to a different corner of her living room. The furniture was in the backyard, and there were two dozen wooden folding chairs in the living room. If the chairs were white, I'd feel like I was going to a wedding. Lisa was wearing a green formal dress and bare feet. Lisa's mom had catered the event with a dozen cheeses and desserts. Several large flower arrangements were in each room.

Lisa's second youngest daughter came up and gave her a hug. The dress had a little schmutz on it afterward, but that was okay. While Lisa knows how to throw an elegant party, she is one of the least fussy people I know. She isn't the type to not let her kids not touch her.

"Can you believe this?" Lisa said with a look of sincere wonder. "I told Paul I wanted to sing again and I thought we could have something small with a few neighbors and friends."

"What do you mean?" Jack asked.

"Paul planned the whole thing," Lisa said. "He ordered the chairs, the flowers, the food. He brought in people this week to work on the garden." So much for this being Lisa's plan to get her husband to clean up the yard.

The concert was lovely. I had heard Lisa sing lullabies to her kids now and then. Any mom can sing a lullaby, but not every woman can belt out O Mio Babbino Caro. Her friends and neighbors--half of whom had never heard her sing before--got to see the full range of her vocal capabilities. It was impressive. Lisa got a standing ovation from this appreciative audience. Unlike a real opera singer, Lisa thanked each of us for coming to her concert.

"You were beautiful!" I said. "Betsy was beaming when you sang. She was so proud of you." Lisa went off to be the prima donna, the first lady of the evening.

At the end of the night, Jack and I said good night to Paul. For most of the night, he was in the background, making sure things were running smoothly for his wife's day on the stage.

"It must be nice for Lisa to celebrate who she was before she had kids," I said.

"That was the point of this evening," Paul said. "That was the point." The woman he married loved to sing, and she didn't to sing very often. Here he was, giving her a forum to be the prima donna, the first lady, to be seen by her family, friends, and neighbors as something more than a mother and wife. In the concert, the tenor sang a song about the ideal, how in our lives we capture for a bit and then it is gone. Lisa had her week and evening of ideal, and now she is back to taking care of her unsleeping daughter. Still, I am sure all of Lisa's life--and her family's and neighbors' lives--will be richer after the concert.

Paul's gift to his wife was the most beautiful I have ever seen. I saw love.

Background and Foreground

The Boy is off to a Summer Ski Camp on Mt. Hood this week. He is not a racer, but a Freestyle skier which means he likes to jump off and on to things. We watched an old, old video on the website of the camp and kids come from all over the country and the world to ski on this Oregon glacier in the summer. We figured this was better than the Boy sitting on his bed for the entire summer looking at his phone. Neither Jack or I can ski off or on to things, so someone else needs to teach him. Better for the Boy to get some professional coaching on how to switch (ski backwards), do a 540 (spin around one and a half times off a jump), or do rails (ski on a rail). Why do they ski on rails? I have no clue. Maybe it's a skateboarding thing that became a ski thing.

I told Evan, my physical therapist, the Boy is going to Mt. Hood this week.

"I wanted to do that when I was a kid," he said.

"Does that make me the coolest mom in the world?"

"Yes," he said laughing. "That makes you the coolest mom in the world."

With other camps, Jack and I could guess what kinds of kids would be there, mainly because most of them were local. We know that Orkila kids tend to be outdoorsy. Kids at the Seattle Public Schools Summer Music camp tend to be musical, and he knows at least a handful of kids from band there. This camp, we have no idea who will be there. The Boy, coming from Seattle to Oregon, will almost be a local compared to kids from Vermont, Colorado or Belgium. Or, most of the kids at the camp could be from suburban Portland and he might be the only one who doesn't know someone already. Some of the parents might make large sacrifices to send their kids there. Some kids might be idle rich kids whose parents are looking for offload their offspring while they are in Provence for the summer.

Here are samples of two conversations Jack and I had with the Boy.

Mom: I bet there will be lots of nice kids there who are like-minded and love to ski. Kids would want to want to go there, versus parents forcing their kids to go there.

Dad: There might be some arrogant douchebags at this camp who are way better than you and have skied all over the world. Don't let them get you down.

I started thinking more about his camp. I have been stalking my son's Instagram account and the camp's Facebook page for pictures, but so far I've got nothing. I saw pictures from last week at camp, and the racers look like they have good form. I don't know from my own experience, but they look like skiers I've seen on television. I wonder how many of these kids might make the Olympics. While the odds are low that any one person makes the Olympics, the odds are in your favor if you ski in the offseason. 

I am feeling old this week. Jack and I did a five-mile hike with 1,100 feet of elevation at Rattlesnake Ledge. This is the first major uphill hike I've done since my surgery last year. My knee was fine, but it took a lot of concentration to make it to the top of the hill on the rocky trail. Yesterday, I met a woman for coffee who is considering applying to the Apprenti program that I am in. She is about my age, and we talked about our experience. She has worked in several fields like someone my age likely has.

To compare, I am talking to friends about our backgrounds and complaining about my knee, and my son is meeting people whose story isn't yet told. Will one of these kids he meets this week be standing on a podium in Beijing in 2022? Someplace TBD in 2026? These kids lives are all yet to be determined, all future and foreground. At my age, you wonder where people have been. At his age, you wonder where they'll go.