Beth Caldwell

It’s been 11 weeks since I’ve seen my husband and I’ve probably got three weeks more to go before he gets home for the holidays.
I daydream about seeing him get off the airplane, though I’m not sure what I’ll think about the dreadlocks he writes home about these days.
I daydream about Peter spotting me in the crowd of two people who’ll be waiting for loved ones inside the airport terminal building here—and wonder if he’ll recognize me up close now that he’s lost his glasses.

It’s Sunday afternoon and in a fit of some kind, I’ve eaten way too many jelly beans.
Awaiting the sore tummy, I shrug off the fact that my teeth are now impacted with gobs of sugar. I shrug because despite the challenge for my toothpick, eating jelly beans always makes me feel good.
And when I feel good, then anything is possible.
I sit staring into my laptop screen—ears on the voice of Enya and the violins of Itzhak Perlman. I toggle between my OneNote chicken-scratch column and e-mail messages from my husband.

“TIMBURRRR!”
And down it came, crashing like the clod of earth thrown into the sea by legendary Irish giant, Finn McCool.
My silent concentration was splayed like a bolt from the blue.
“For the love of Pete!” I spluttered aloud, spewing out eight tiny nails I’d been holding in my mouth. They landed, pointy side up I’m sure, in the long grass at my feet, where they instantly disappeared.
No doubt I’ll find them next summer when I’m running around without my shoes on.

This is not news.
I am methodical, organized, and multi-tasked. And like women everywhere, I, too, can begin by washing the dishes, leave the room to get another dish towel, and while I’m gone for 30 seconds, finish folding the laundry, vacuum the bedroom floors, and clean the bathroom.
I am first born, and I am a list-maker.

Let me begin with a big round of applause to a certain 17-year-old, the possibilities for whom have only just begun.
Proud of you? Nothing this talented writer can come up could convey how my rewarded heart pounds for you.
However, I doubt you will empathize with anything I’m writing about in the next few paragraphs and most likely (if I know anything), you won’t even read this column until 15 years from now, when stuff your mother did back then seems cool to you now.
That’s okay. It’s a mom-thing.
• • •

It’s 8:45 a.m. on Saturday.
Peter and I should be snuggled in bed together, wrapped up from the morning chill and planning our weekend—or doing those fun woodtick checks missed from the night before.
At any rate, we’d look like a comfortable pair of new shoes in a shoe box, undisturbed and quite content just to be.

I am a do-it-by-the-book woman and I wear logic like a body-hugging Playtex girdle.
I plan, I read the instructions, I play it safe, I like to spend time alone, and I almost always know where everything is around here.
A few days ago, when I had nothing better to do, I took to the Internet and “Googled” myself.
According to www.personalitytype.com, I really do know Beth pretty well.
It would appear that I am an introverted, intuitive, thinker, judger—or “INTJ” for short.

Summer is less than a week old and already the pages of the Sears Fall/Winter catalogue are bent and crinkled as society tugs at us to plan what we are going to wear five and six months from now.
And here I am behind the times again, having just found my jean cut-offs and the three tank tops I didn’t give to Goodwill last October.
What’s the sense in rushing things anyway? As it is, I can barely keep up with mowing the grass every three days to stay ahead of the dandelions.

“I have about an hour-and-a-half of patience left.”
My brother, a.k.a. Mr. Smooth, uttered the statement last weekend after spending three-quarters of his two-day visit here from Thunder Bay trying to figure out why his old truck wouldn’t start.
“Wow,” I said to myself. “That’s impressive.”
The Sunday afternoon was teetering on 5 p.m.—one hour past the time he’d decided to head back to the big city.

In the news these days, there’s a lot of talk about kids spending too much time in front of television and computer screens, and not enough on physical activity.
The truth is what it is.
In my youth, physical activity was as regular as rain. If my brother and I weren’t digging huge forts out of the mountains of snow piled along our driveway in the winter, we were bag-lunching it across the field or the creek every day of the summer with our cousins.