Preteens are a trip

Madison and I are in the Rocky Mountains together, in Jackson Hole, WY for the Jackson Hole Writers Conference.

It has been a fascinating trip, for the most part an absolute joy. We love this area. Madison especially loves the area, and has said repeatedly how much she wishes she could live here.

First, we flew to Bozeman, Montana on Monday. The traveling was perfect, an easy connection in Minneapolis. We got to Bozeman within 6 hours of leaving home. We stayed with my colleague Patrick and his family, which consists of 13- and just-10-year-old girls, and 8-year-old and 3-year-old boys. They live at the base of a mountain. They have a birch tree you (that is, the kids) can climb and get up on the roof.

My colleague and his wife have a more laid-back approach than I do to parenting, but they're in a rural area where they can afford to let the kids run wild and explore. Also, both of them work from home, so it's been necessary to train the kids not to bother them while they're working. When they're working, it's close to benevolent neglect, but when they are engaged with the kids, they're really engaged. So it has resulted in a lovely independent family of rugged outdoors-ish kids who are extremely outgoing, polite, and very happily well-behaved. The parents are people who assume that the kids will entertain themselves and be common-sensical about things like putting on sunscreen and eating enough and looking out for one another, and they generally do. Madison is much shyer than they are, but they soon kind of enveloped her in their camaraderie. She spent two days on their roof and up the mountain, getting a bit sunburned, not eating quite enough because they're healthfoodies and we are not, and not sleeping near enough because it stayed light until 10pm Mountain time. I got to work with Patrick...good work, solid work, planning-for-KOA-expansion kind of work (Albany's next! Get ready, Albany!) that solidified our plans for the immediate future.

One thing that David and I noticed independently -- by Monday night or Tuesday morning -- is that when Madison and Ella are apart from each other and getting solid one-on-one time with us, life is radically different. More relaxed. More cheerful. More independent. In fact, they seem much more mature, more... well... themselves.

This phenomenon was so palpable it was startling, and David and I both commented on it on the phone. It continued for me all the way through Wednesday morning. Madison and I left Montana and drove down through Yellowstone (which is about 2 hours from Bozeman, a beautiful drive through Gallatin National Forest).

Almost just as soon as we'd left my colleague's house, Madison CRASHED. It was so weird... she collapsed back into her regular, cranky-ish preteen self. I knew what it was, mostly... it was a sleep issue, and an excitement issue, and the fact that she'd been attentively on best behavior for several days. She was low on sleep -- still is, in fact. It's hard to sleep in unfamiliar beds, in exciting surroundings. But boy, did she crash, so much so that I had to fight to keep the disappointment from manifesting itself in me.

After a beautiful day in Yellowstone (that was punctuated a bit by her deciding that the thermals unnerved her) that involved lots of water, wildlife, gorgeous views, and even a grizzly bear as seen from afar, we wound up south of Yellowstone in the Grand Teton mountains. We stayed in a "resort" on Wednesday night that is really a motel masquerading as a resort. That's a story unto itself, actually. The room looked pretty nice and new, but I found the mouse glue trap in the room disconcerting, to say the least. I woke up at 5am seriously convinced that there was a mouse in our room, but the scratching and snuffling may have been something else, maybe the air conditioning system or pipes. The "resort" didn't really take me seriously about a mouse, as nothing was in the trap. I was kind of hoping for a refund. They won't get a good review when I write them up.

But Thursday morning, we went for a horseback trail ride, just the two of us, a lovely young guide named Sammi, and an eager dog named Tuff. Even though on the way there, she was apprehensive and filled to the brim with negativity (deliberately talking herself into anxiety), Madison loved the ride. Her horse was named Sweetheart and mine was Shilo. We splashed through creeks in Grand Teton National Forest, we saw wonderful views of snow-covered 13-ers, we smelled majestic pine forests, and we were mostly reverently silent.

And then...we rolled into Jackson Hole, got ourselves signed in to the conference, and started chatting with the organizer. I had told Madison that people would take her seriously here; they'd ask her what she liked to write. We talked about what she would say. And sure enough, that's the first thing that the lovely young lady organizer did. And Madison, who was admittedly low on sleep and in need of a solid lunch, got totally tongue-tied. She didn't look Nicole in the eye, she mumbled, she said "like" in the one paragraph she did say more times than I cared to count, and basically came off like an awkward little disengaged kid. She even argued somewhat scowlingly with me in front of Nicole when I said that she'd been writing some great essays ("only one, Mom, and it wasn't great").

Yikeroo.

Anyway, some food cheered her up, and she has generally enjoyed the day-and-a-half we've had in the conference so far. She's glad we're here, she understands the talks for the most part, she thoroughly enjoyed the panel that had some literary agents discussing what they did and the publishing process, and she was FANTASTIC in a small group workshop about finding voice in writing for young adults. (Seriously, her insights were valuable, totally in the same class as the rest of the participants. I was really proud.) But she definitely feels like a fish out of water, and though her disposition has improved, she's just not able to relax in front of other people. And she's oddly silent, even at meals, which are just with me.

Madison has never been great at physical coordination, but it's gone out the window. She wants to hold my hand while she walks along or stands next to me, but it's not simply a friendly thing, it's a draggy thing, as though she can't quite use her own body to keep upright or move along. It's a bit weird, I tell you, and I am hard-pressed not to be annoyed. I know it's because there is so much going on in her head that she's not paying attention to her body. But the fact is, she's got to pay attention to her body, because that's part of being an autonomous human. And also because when she doesn't, she's got almost an autistic-like affect going...and she's definitely not autistic.

Sorry, you're seeing my struggle here. It's unfair for me to be impatient with my lovely child, of whom I'm expecting perhaps more than is in her power to give under the circumstances, and I guess I'm working it through on the page.

Anyway, the writing conference is definitely the right thing to have done. It has stretched her in ways nothing else could, and for the most part she has met the challenge happily. It's the first of what I'm sure will be many conferences, and I'm sure she'll get much more relaxed as she practices and as time takes its natural course.

"Oh, yeah, I've been doing this a long time," she'll say, casually, when she's a famous author in 15 years or so. "My mom started taking me to writing conferences when I was just 10, so it's kind of bred in me. That Jackson Hole trip, that was just the start. Once she won Newbery Medal in 2011, then we really started traveling together. That mother of mine, she showed me the world."

Taking time out from working for the important task of old-age injury

Who blogs when there's work to be done? Oh, right, that would be me. On the other hand, I've been over-the-top busy the last four weeks with the launch of the new KOA site.

But tonight, I blog. Why? I can do nothing else but muse over the following absurd facts:

1) I am 41, and someone ought to have informed me of this important fact because

2) I was utterly unprepared for it this evening when

3) I attempted to play competitive softball on the radio station's team.

I played 2nd base. I love 2nd base. I am good at 2nd base. So there we were, at the TOP of the FREAKING FIRST INNING of the first game of the season, and WARM 101.3 was out in the field. Grounder between first and second. Naturally, I launched myself to the left toward the ball, like any normal person who hasn't played on a baseball team in 18 years. I did not trip. I did not fall. I did not slide. No, I simply went for the ball, and got the ball. Quickly. Calmly. All business-like. The way softball amongst 30- 40- and 50-year-olds is meant to be played.

Now, I told everyone that I had pulled my left quad muscle. This is true, but not the whole truth. The truth is that this normal, everyday launch to the left had sent my left quad, my left gluteal, AND my right quad all simultaneously into spasm. The left quad was the worst, so that's the only one I reported. I literally didn't know where to limp. So I kind of limped left. Now, they needed 5 girls to play on the team for the game to count, and I was the 5th girl. There was no wimping out. So I spent the rest of the 7 innings alternately trying to stretch and pound my various extremities back from the brink, keeping a cheerful face while they (the extremities, not the DJs) screamed at me. But hey, I walked three times and hit a single my last time up, so I didn't do a bad job after all.

There is no crying in baseball, so I saved it for when I got home. David walked in on me. "My god, what's the matter?" he asked, really worried. "I'm F-f-f-forty-one years old," I said, between sobs. He gave me a lot more sympathy than I deserved, considering he's 52.

Four ibuprofens and a hot bath later, I'm feeling better. I crave a single-malt scotch but don't dare try to leave the bed to make its acquaintance personally. I'm not asleep yet because I've convinced myself that if I stay awake, it puts off what tomorrow will feel like. Ya think?