A Long Drive Around a Big Lake

A couple of days ago, the kids and I made what turned out to be a seven-hour drive partially around Lake Michigan (pesky ol' pond) to Kalamazoo, where we are staying at Rose Petal Cottage, the home of my husband's aunt, until tomorrow. We were met there by grandma, who flew in from New York for the occasion. It's been thus far a cozy gathering of three generations in just under 1,000 square feet. Besides some pretty serious bedtime squabbles, everything's gone smoothly, including the trip.

That's not to say, of course, that travel was a picnic. We left just after 8 AM, after my beloved had put air in my tires and cleaned my windows inside and out without being asked. And things went swimmingly for a while...I'd say about 40 minutes. We watched geese massing near Oshkosh to fly south, and I explained how they made a letter 'V' to move more efficiently through the air. We ate raisins and looked for interesting things out the window as we passed the outlet mall 25 minutes from home. And then I was told that I was pointing out too many things and that I should stop.

It was about five minutes after that, before we had even reached Fond du Lac, that I was asked, "How much longer 'til we're in Kalamazoo?"

"A long time," I said. "We're going to stop for lunch, and then we're going to drive all through naptime, and then just before dinner, we'll be there."

"That's a long time!" said big brother. And he was right.

The promised lunch stop at McDonald's was a beacon of hope for the kids, who were asking from 9:15 AM on when we'd eat. I cranked the kid tunes and hoped they'd get lost in the music. They didn't.

Then, just south of Milwaukee and about 20 minutes north of my anticipated pit stop in Kenosha, a cry was issued forth from the back seat: "I have to go potty!" Screeching off the highway at the Seven-Mile Road exit, we found a gas station in time to avert disaster. In a practice I learned from my father, I decided to buy something there in gratitude for the use of their facilities and sent the kids searching for one thing to share.

Happy to be free from their shackles, they flitted about here and there, checking out car trader magazines, stuffed animals, and, of course, the candy. A woman behind the counter training a man on the use of the cash register looked up at them and said, "Well, you're noisy today!"

'Thank you,' I thought. 'That was helpful.'

Our pack of Extra Bubble Gum in hand, we headed back to the car and made the short drive to Kenosha. At 10:30 AM, we walked into the McDonald's dining room. Close enough to lunchtime for me.

After Chicken Nuggets and apples with caramel were gobbled, we went for one more potty stop, where big brother made an unfortunate (and smelly) discovery. Uncertain of federal laws governing the transport of soiled undergarments across state lines, we opted to leave the offending item in the trash can outside the restaurant as we headed into Illinois.

To set an appropriate mood, the sky grew overcast and showers sprinkled down as we entered Chicago. This was the part of the drive about which I had been most concerned. As we passed the Cicero exit off I-94 before reaching the most congested stretch of interstate, with BMWs and Lexus SUVs blazing by us on both sides, big brother began singing Kumbayah in the back. (Really.) That must have been what got us through downtown without our speed ever dropping below 20 mph.

As we crossed the Skyway bridge on I-90 into Gary, Mommy was ready for a break. I turned off the Animal Songs CD and switched to NPR (or as I now call it, Narcoleptic Public Radio) in an environmental manipulation meant to bring on a nap.

It worked, but only for 45 minutes in the case of the elder child most guilty of asking that dreaded question: "When will we be in Kalamazoo NOW, Mama?" I ticked off my responses in four- or five-minute intervals: "Two hours and fifteen minutes, honey." "Two hours and ten minutes, honey."

When we passed a sign that said we only had 20 miles to go, I made a deal. "If no one asks me how much longer we have to drive until we pull in Auntie's driveway, I'll give each of you an M&M," I said. Ahhh...sweet silence. Why hadn't I thought of that 250 miles ago?

Wardrobe Malfunction

As a parent, I set forth rules and guidelines all the time. Most of the time, they're practical and intended to reduce the amount of work I have to do around here. "Shoes off on the rug at the door," for example, or "No indoor sandbox in the living room." Sometimes they're helpful hints, as in the case of "The tag goes in back," as it relates to donning shirts, pants, and underwear.

The problem with that one is that it doesn't always work. Take the cords big brother is wearing to preschool today as an illustration. These, for whatever reason, have a tag sewn into the seam of the front pocket. So when our little man dressed himself this morning (this is a major thrust of ours at the moment), his back pockets became his front pockets.

"We need to turn your pants around, bud," I said as he approached me. (I thought he was walking backward at first.)

"NO!" he said. "The tag is in the back!"

"He's right," Daddy said over my shoulder. "We've already had this discussion."

Well. When is a rule not a rule, and how does one explain this?

"Honey, some pants have the tag in front," I said matter-of-factly. "This pair is one of them."

"NO!" he said again. "This is how they go."

My next tack was, well, tacky. "I don't want the other kids at preschool to tease you because your pants are on backward." Good one, Mom. Way to teach a four-year-old to be self-conscious about what other four-year-olds think about his clothing.

He either didn't hear me or chose to ignore me, of which I was glad. As soon as the words had passed my lips, I wished I hadn't uttered them.

Then I thought, 'In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter if I let him go to school with his pants on backward? Even if the kids tease him, isn't it better to just let him do what he's convinced is right?'

So that's what I did. We'll see how it turns out.

Hungry and Thirsty

This morning, our pastor preached a sermon related to the mission trip to Gulfport, Mississippi, that he and several church members took three weeks ago. They were there to assist in the relief effort following Hurricane Katrina.

In opening his sermon, he told of being asked by people both within and outside our congregation why he personally went on mission trips like this one. He said he went "because he couldn't NOT go."

When I heard those words, the level on my guiltmeter started to rise. When the trip had been announced to our congregation shortly after Katrina hit, I didn't feel utterly compelled to go. Was there something wrong with me, something defective in my values?

He went on to say that he went to these places because they are where Jesus is. "Where people are hungry, Jesus is there," he said. "Where people are thirsty, Jesus is there."

Again, that pang of guilt troubled me. Did I make any effort to be where people were hungry and thirsty?

It was then that a voice that could only have been God's said, "You're already there. You are with two people who are hungry and thirsty no less than five times a day." It was the first time that it had occurred to me that parenting is a ministry to those in need. And it was a joy--and a relief from my omnipresent guilt!--to think of it that way.

What a Woman Really Wants

A friend of mine forwarded me an email today that she labeled "obnoxious" but which she said carried a useful moral. Always in need of a life lesson, I decided to read it.

It was a fairly lengthy tale of Young King Arthur. He was imprisoned by a neighboring king and, rather than being killed on the spot, was offered an alternative--he could have one year to figure out what it was that women really wanted. If he produced the true answer to this question after 365 days, he would live. Quite a challenge.

As the story goes, he did what most of us procrastinators would do and waited until the very last day of his research period to go to the source he suspected would possess the best information on this topic. She was an ugly witch who swore to give him the facts he needed if Arthur arranged for her a marriage to Sir Lancelot, his fellow knight of the Round Table.

To make a long story short, Lancelot made the sacrifice and married the hag in order that noble Arthur might live. And the witch, in turn, produced this pithy quote: what a woman really wants is to be in charge of her own life. Then, she told Lancelot that, as his wife, he could have her be beautiful half of the time...either in the public eye of the daytime or in the intimacy of the night. What did he choose? He said it was up to her, the magical response that she sought and that prompted her to make herself be beautiful all the time (I guess witches can do that).

Anyway, I read this story and thought, 'Huh. Isn't that nice,' which is what I think after most chain emails of this sort. 'A charming enough tale, but a bit contrived,' I further concluded, and then I went about my afternoon.

That afternoon included our four-year-old beginning work on his checkerboard Halloween costume, for which I bought supplies earlier today. I wasn't actually prepared to start putting it together (I'm an engineer, after all, and need to plan these things), but he was gung-ho and gathered up a red marker, one red and one black crayon, some glue, a stapler, a scissors, and one piece of black construction paper, diving into the task while I folded laundry.

A few minutes later, the construction paper was hacked into random-shaped bits on the coffee table, and he was seeking instruction on the operation of the stapler. Perhaps unwisely, I demonstrated for him how to stack two scraps of paper, place them beneath the teeth of the staples, and push down hard. He quickly got the hang of it and began cobbling together a black checkerboard that he called "strange" and "handsome."

As we each worked on our own little projects, we discussed what we'd be doing over the coming weekend. I told him that if it wasn't raining on Saturday, we'd go to the park but that I wasn't sure that would work out. After a few seconds' contemplation, he responded, "You could turn into a weather reporter, and then you could tell me what the days would be like."

"I could turn into a weather reporter?" I asked him. "How would I do that?"

"You know," he said with a little shrug, "just grow up into one. Like when you're done having me as a kid."

I paused for a second, taking this in. Then I said, "I guess I could."

Once again with nonchalance, he said, "Or you could just stay a mommy and a daddy." Apparently he was including his father in his line of reasoning as well.

Curious to learn how he would feel about my heeding his advice, I asked, "Which would you like me to do? Stay a mommy or become a weather reporter?" Isn't this the question that every woman who works or considers it wants her kids to answer?

Still focused on his stapling, he responded pleasantly, "Whatever you like, Mama."

Guess he's a (young) man ahead of his time...and WAAAAY ahead of King Arthur.

The Halloween Star

The kids and I made autumn cut-out cookies today. All told, it was a three-hour affair which exhausted me more than did the fitness class I led at the Y this morning.

The first step was to haul the Kitchen-Aid mixer out of the storage closet. I was remembering as I carried its heft up the stairs into our kitchen that this was the first thing we put on our bridal registry. In fact, I think every bridal registry I've ever seen has had one on it. But in carefully selecting its color and size, I don't imagine many brides-to-be envision using it with children as I did eight or so hours ago.

The first step in the process was to get the kids to sort through a sizeable box of cookie cutters (also received as a bridal gift, interestingly enough) and pick out the "autumn" ones. This was a strategic move intended to buy me enough time to get the dough mostly mixed without their "help."

When I turned to review their selections (which had been hotly debated as I creamed the butter and the sugar), I saw in the pile not just the familiar seasonal icons--the pumpkin, the leaves, and the tiny ghost--but also a heart, a candy cane, and a star. Big brother tried to convince me that the candy cane was indeed related to Halloween, but he wasn't sure exactly how. The heart I rejected outright. But when I suggested that the star, too, should go, he protested rabidly.

"It is TOO a Halloween thing, Mommy!" he insisted.

"Tell me how," I said.

"Well, we go out trick-or-treating at night, and we can look up at the stars when we're out there," he responded.

Fair enough. The star got to stay. And I tossed in an apple for good measure.

Every mother who's ever made cut-outs with her children knows how the next step went. I carefully rolled out a ball of dough, and our four-year-old promptly plunked a pumpkin directly in the center of it. Sigh. OK, I knew going in this wasn't going to be an exercise in efficiency, so I decided to just let go.

By the time we were halfway through the dough, I abondoned that carefree approach. I encouraged the kids to watch the last 12 minutes of Mr. Rogers so I could just get this thing over with. You should have seen me go!

Fast forward a couple of hours to when the cookies were completely cooled and ready for decorating. Our assortment of sprinkles and deco-gels was pretty pathetic, but I decided to make the best of it. We mixed yellow and orange icing (with a color-combining lesson tossed in for educational effect) and went for it. Pumpkins were mounded rather than sprinkled with little hills of chocolate jimmies and pastel flowers, then embellished with extremely unappetizing globules of black deco-gel. Mmmm, perhaps the unsightly appearance of the cookies would mean more for me...

The best part was clean-up, which the kids started in earnest even before the last of the icing had been applied. Spying errant frosting droplets and scattered sprinkles all over the protective sheet of waxed paper we'd lain on the butcher block table, they began tidying up in the only way they could conceive of--by smearing their fingers through the mess and licking them off. Over and over they smeared and licked, smeared and licked (I'd moved the cookies by then), establishing a boundary down the middle indicating each child's "territory," until the paper looked as though it had just been torn from its roll.

"There!" said our little guy with satisfaction, lifting the paper from the table. "Now we can use this stuff again!"

Young Sophisticate

With our son in preschool three mornings a week, I have my first-ever time alone with our two-year-old daughter. While the two of us sometimes use our two-hour window to do laundry or complete projects around the house (a recent one was the seasonal "clothes switcheroo" in the kids' closets), at least once a week I spend some time cultivating a precocious taste in my daughter, one that I did not develop until my last year of college--enjoyment of small cafes.

There's a wonderful one in downtown Neenah, just blocks from the preschool. They offer coffee and espresso roasted in Chicago and rushed to our little hamlet while it's still fresh. Oh, and their scones...the special autumn offering, pumpkin pecan, is a perfect way to put on a little extra insulation before winter.

The beverage of choice for the wee one is the strawberry steamer, milk flavored with syrup and frothed into a billowy warm fluff. On really special days, it's topped with whipped cream. And always, always, it is drunk through a straw. This the little diva demands as an essential element of the experience. The straw...and the lid. They're just as important to her as the saucer and the spoon are to me when relishing a really fine cup of coffee.

Tonight, we made an unorthodox evening trip to our favorite haunt. It's right across the street from our church, where big brother had a half-hour choir rehearsal just before dinner. The two of us sat at a small table, sipping our warm drinks and watching the cars go by. "There are a lot of black cars, Mommy," she told me. "Why do lots of people drive black cars?"

In that moment, I hoped that in a decade or two, she'd still be asking me over coffee about all the things in life that stymied her. And I hoped that her life would still be as sweet as her strawberry steamer.

Panic Precedes the Pumpkin Patch

This morning I left the house at 6:15 AM for my usual Wednesday pre-dawn Writers' Support Group. This group consists of me and one friend and fellow freelancer who happens to like drinking coffee as much as I do (what else could get one out of the house so early?!). We get together weekly to talk about editors we have in common, to share struggles we're having with specific assignments, and mostly to feel like we have a colleague. Writing is a solitary business.

When I arrived back home at 7:50 AM, feeling energized by my professional outing, my beloved was dressing our four-year-old for preschool. It was a big day for the little guy...his first field trip, which consisted of a school bus ride (enough of a thrill itself) to a pumpkin patch/hayride outfit in a town 45 minutes away. I was pumping him up, talking excitedly about the day's affairs, when, at 7:51 AM, I was possessed by a sudden, chilling panic. He was to be on the bus in front of the Y at 8:00 AM, 40 minutes ahead of the normal 8:40 AM preschool arrival. Aaaaack!

Following a flurry of sock-donning and potty-using, we flew out the door and into the car about three-and-a-half minutes later. Thank goodness the Y was only one mile and two stoplights away! Even given the currently "heavy" Neenah traffic (one of the two bridges southbound off our little island is out), we were in line for the bus with about 45 seconds to spare.

I stood with him for several minutes while name tags were handed out and child accounting was performed. Then the boarding call came. "Go on," I said. "It's time to go." Funny how when I'm around, I'm still the ultimate authority...his teacher had just said the same thing, but he waited for me to repeat it.

He took a couple of steps toward the open door, then hesitated and turned back toward me, looking mildly uncertain. With a step in his direction and a hand on his shoulder, I gently nudged him forward. He climbed on the bus and found a seat near the back. As I waved at him through the window, mildly verklempt at this longest journey he'd ever taken without me or a grandparent, it struck me how soon the time would come that he wouldn't pause to look back before leaving me...and how much he'd still need me even when he was no longer willing to admit to it.

The Thinker

Our next-door neighbor's sister is visiting from Illinois. She drives a big green SUV, which is what makes her visit notable from our son's perspective. What fun to have an unfamiliar vehicle parked in the shared driveway!

It was even more exciting to have some activity around the vehicle while we were eating lunch. Our little guy, peering through the slats of the dining room mini blinds, informed us that our neighbor was at the wheel of the green SUV. We then heard an exchange through the open windows of the kitchen indicating that the driver was actually her sister and that our neighbor was still heading to the truck. (They resemble each other in a shocking way.)

The spy who had abandoned his peanut butter sandwich to make his observations slid down the wall to sit on the hardwood floor as the SUV drove out of sight. "Do you know why I'm sitting here, Mommy?" he asked.

Did there have to be a why? "No," I said. "Why are you sitting there?"

He responded, "I'm thinking about where they're going and why they both have curly hair." Deep thoughts for a four-year-old.

Additional note: As I made this entry, the kids were (and still are) shouting back and forth between themselves a favorite slogan which they misunderstood from a commerical aired heavily during the U.S. Open featuring Andy Roddick's mojo--"Redemption does not hit the snooze butt!"

Religion in a Secular World

Last night as we were preparing to read our bedtime stories, our little two-year-old and I stood before the bookshelf browsing the selection. She pulled a Berenstain Bears favorite from the stacks and then turned to me to ask, "Have you picked YOUR book yet, Mommy?"

When I told her no, she turned back to the shelf, cocked her head to the side, and looked at the spines. Then she faced me again and asked, "Do you want Maisy...or Jesus?"

Maybe we need to work on elevating him beyond equality with the Teletubbies and Spongebob in her mind...

A Comedy in Three Acts

Act I: A Good Scam

My love and I have had a gift card for a Green Bay Mexican restaurant since Christmas, when my sister and brother-in-law gave it to us. Those of you who know us well will find it hard to believe that we waited so long on a chance to swill margaritas, but, well, time flies.

This past Saturday, the perfect opportunity to use it presented itself. We had lunched at my sister's house to celebrate my youngest nephew's second birthday with my family, it was midafternoon, and free babysitters abounded in my parents and my siblings. So we relieved ourselves of the children and headed out for a little gift-card happy hour. Free food! Free drinks! Free child care! Freedom!

We were deep in conversation (and deep into our drinks and cheese dip) when my beloved stopped mid-thought to say, "Do you have the gift card?"

"No, I don't," I replied. "Don't you?" Silly question.

Then I remembered. I had seen it in the diaper bag, which was on the front seat of our other car, in which my dad had chauffeured our kids over to the Happy Fun House known as Grandma and Grandpa's. Oops.

Guess we'll have to indulge again next time we're in town...


Act II: Watch Where You Step When You're Walking In Heaven

A couple of days ago, our little boy asked from the back seat of the car, "Mommy, what kind of day is it?"

I told him it was a busy day and, glancing out the window, elaborated to say that it was also overcast.

"What's overcast?" he asked.

When I explained that it meant that the sky was almost entirely covered with clouds, he looked outside and said, "The people walking around in heaven better watch out, because if they step where there are no clouds, they'll fall right through."


Act III: Lookin' For Rest In All The Wrong Places

It's been at least a couple of weeks now since the Sleep Fairy, that magical creature who leaves jellybeans for little girls and boys who fall asleep in their beds despite their strong urges to do otherwise, has paid our house a visit. Our tiny toddler has once again taken to wandering to the hall when sleepytime arrives, reading a stack of books or singing herself to sleep with an enthusiastic rendition of "I Love You, You Love Me." It's enough to make anyone lose their Barney bias.

On Tuesday afternoon, I went looking for her when things went quiet in her room, figuring she'd miraculously fallen asleep in her bed. I opened the door a crack and peeked in. Didn't see her on the bed; didn't see her on the floor. The only places not in my line of vision were the closet (in which she thinks Big Brother's mythical Night Sleep Waker lives and, for that reason, in which she would never sleep) and the changing table. Could it be?

Indeed it was. I entered the room and looked at the built-in desk-turned-diaper changing station along the wall to my right. There she was, her knees tucked beneath her, her tush in the air, and a wad of baby wipes in each hand. I can only imagine what it was she was doing when exhaustion overcame her...

Food For Thought...And The FedEx Truck

A couple of days ago, we were walking past our neighborhood convenience store, and a FedEx truck was parked in the lot there.

"Look! A FedEx truck!" said our four-year-old boy. He's been able to identify them on sight for well over a year now.

"Yup. There's a FedEx truck," I responded, trying to contain my enthusiasm.

After a short pause, he added, "Do you know what a FedEx truck gets fed, Mommy?"

Now this was interesting. "No, I don't," I said. "What does a FedEx truck get fed?"

"It gets fed boxes. And I think they come from the UPS truck," he explained.

Maybe that's an image that FedEx could use in an ad campaign...

Good Fortune and Great Wealth

The kids and I had an interesting time at lunch today. The fare was light, but the conversation wasn't.

It may have started with our prayer, which isn't an uncommon feature of meals but which occasionally gets our eldest thinking and asking questions.

After his first bite of grilled cheese sandwich, he looked across the table at me and asked, "How can God take care of everyone and patrol heaven all at the same time?"

The only context in which this little guy understands the word 'patrol' is this: He's had for some time a silver Matchbox Beach Patrol truck, and we made reference to that truck when he asked us during our July vacation to Point Pleasant, New Jersey, why that guy was riding around the sand on that ATV. So I figured he was picturing God on a four-wheeler, cruising around heaven with a first-aid kit, a life preserver, and a big jug of water, all the while watching simultaneously over the six billion inhabitants of our planet.

"That's a good question," I told him, using the standard parental time-buyer. "The answer is...I don't know. No one really knows what God is like or how he can do all those things at once."

We went on to discuss how hard it is to do two things at once. My son did give me credit for being able to manage, say, washing the dishes and talking on the phone at the same time, but when I asked him if I could talk on the phone and pay attention to him at the same time, he said flatly, "No."

His next question was even tougher. "How does Jesus get inside our bodies?" he asked.

Suppressing a laugh, I said, "Now there's ANOTHER good one!" I've told him that we can't see Jesus or God, but that we can feel each of them inside us, in our hearts. That explanation is obviously not practical for a literal four-year-old. I fumbled to clarify that while we can feel Jesus and God in us, they're not actually IN us.

His next question suggested that I still hadn't quite illuminated things for him. "Do Jesus and God live in different parts of our bodies?"

I pictured Jesus in the fetal position in one of the chambers of the heart, with God crouching in the nearest lung. "No, they don't actually live in any part of our bodies. See, when we talk about the heart, we mean for it to represent...it's symbolic of...we say that it's where our love comes from. And that's why Jesus and God are there."

Phew. He was sort of satisfied by that. But then little sis chimed in.

"Will you go down my slide when I grow up?" she asked. We'd been down this road with big brother (I think all parents travel it)--addressing the belief kids have that someday, they're going to be big and Mommy and Daddy are going to be little.

"No, sweetie. When you're big, I'll still be big," I said. And then I left the table to get some fortune cookies for dessert. I was mentally exhausted.

Child #1 opened his cookie first. "Friends long absent are coming back to you," I read aloud from his fortune.

"What day are they coming?!" he asked excitedly. "We haven't seen any friends in a LONG time!" ('long time' = 36 hours)

Then came Child #2's fortune. "Your wish to reach the top will be granted," it said. Appropriate for a monkey of a two-year-old who will climb on anything.

Finally, it was my turn. I cracked open my cookie and read to the kids, "You are very wealthy, but you don't know it." Oh, after the rich conversation I'd just had with my children, I think I did.

Drinks On The Drombey

A minor mystery of our household was solved tonight. For some time now, when I forget to give the kids drinks with their meal, whether it be breakfast, lunch, or dinner, one of them exclaims, "The kids don't have drinks!" And that's the signal to the other to break out the chorus:

"Drinks on the drombey!!!"

Or was it "IN the drombey?" We've never been quite sure. So tonight we asked.

Our son responded, "It's 'on,' not 'in.'"

"Why?" I asked.

"It just is," he said.

Guess I might have been better served asking what a drombey is.

Career Ambitions

We have this Dr. Seuss-style book--perhaps you know it--called "Maybe You Should Fly a Jet! Maybe You Should Be a Vet!" It features many different vocational possibilities boiled down to single-drawing concepts. Some are silly for the sake of a rhyme. ("Noodle noodler," for example.) Others are chauvinistic. (Who knew "bride" was an occupation??) All are considered possible by my four-year-old boy, on whose short list of favorites this book currently resides.

It's been an on-again/off-again bestseller in our house, and it's been interesting over time to see which career he indicates as the one he'll pursue. The first few times through, he pointed to the florist when asked what job he liked. I attribute this to the time we had recently spent together planting our "shady garden" in a tiny space between our house and the neighbors' and will comment no further than that.

Between that time and now, he has alternated between wanting to be, in his words, an "artist-doctor" and a "rock climber." Not sure what the inspiration for the first aspiration was (too many episodes of "Extreme Makeover"?), but the second arose after a stop at a tiny lakeside park three blocks from our house. There, he clambered on the large rocks that line the shore and developed a taste for adventure.

In the last two days or so, we've been reading the book again. His pick (pardon the pun) now is "sculptor." I have no idea where this is coming from, but he has to some degree internalized it. When I saw him rubbing the metal latch and associated screws that had fallen off our neighbors' gate against the gate's wooden slats, I asked him what he was doing. "Sculptoring," he said plainly.

There's another occupation in the book about which our little sculptor asked yesterday. He pointed to a picture of a man on a horse following a steer and holding a lasso in his hand and asked, "What's that, Mommy?"

"That's a cowboy," I said.

"Why does he have that rope?" he pressed.

I explained to the best of my Midwestern ability that he was trying to catch the steer (which was a special kind of cow) and tie it up because...that's what cowboys do. He accepted this.

I thought more about that cowboy in the 36 hours since then as I faced a little animal who often snorts at me and bucks my attempts at authority. It occurred to me that I'm sort of a cowgirl, trying to "break" the will of this wild creature in my care who really just wants to be free and to be his own boss.

I like the image. The idea of wearing alligator-skin boots and spurs is especially sexy. But the challenge of squelching his free spirit just enough to "keep him in line" while leaving him sufficient independence to think for and be himself is enough to bring any ol' cowgirl to her knees.