How It's Going ~ Backstory Part 3

 If you’ve stuck with me all the way from “How it Started” (found here)

and through the “Mazagines” years (found here)

then you’re probably wondering what comes next; How it’s Going?  I am too, actually.  

Some days I feel like we’re doing great (by God’s grace my record of keeping the children alive though each day is still 100%, and that’s no small task), and other days I strongly suspect that I’m slowly and systematically ruining one - or all - of them, and just haven’t realized it yet.  

What does come next?  This, for one, I guess; writing. 

It’s something I didn’t really have much time to do before, and one day - when the remaining two marbles rolling around upstairs get cracked and dull - I want to have these memories recorded in a way that I can enjoy them over and over, every time I forget how much I’ve been blessed.  Also, writing stays put.  It doesn’t get messed up whenever I turn around (like everything else I do…) 

Several years ago my kids introduced me to Minecraft.  I don’t play a lot of computer/video games, but I will join them from time to time.  (Somebody has to be the epic loser that we can all laugh at, right?)  

My oldest got a 4th generation iPod touch (I told you it was several years ago) and she wanted the game on her device.  I decided to pre-screen it; to check it out first.  I downloaded the app and “generated” a world.  I dropped in, took two steps, and fell into a lake.  Ten minutes later I still couldn’t get out of the water, had nearly drowned, and could hear a creepy noise coming closer.  I left the world and decided to just start over fresh.  

This time I set the game to “creative” mode to eliminate the dangerous aspects of whatever made the creepy sound.  I dropped in and looked around - avoided all sources of water - and found a place to build.  I opened up my inventory, chose a pretty red and white block, and started creating a whole big house.  About the time I was finishing the last wall - a solid half hour later - I noticed that there seemed to be little words on the blocks I had used to build it with.  I have terrible eye-sight, but I squinted at the tiny screen and could just make out the letters: TNT.  I panicked, and left that world too, and never went back.  

Turns out Minecraft is a terribly dangerous game, even in creative mode.  JUST KIDDING.  (It’s a great game, we still all love Minecraft.)

Fast forward a few years, to a time when everyone in my household was fully Minecraft crazy, and we had installed it on the family laptop.  The kids - spouse included - were having a blast building all kinds of things.  One sleepless night, when my husband was away on business and the kids were all tucked in bed, I decided to try my hand at the game again, this time on a bigger screen.  I sat up practically all night creating a glorious Minecraft world on the laptop.  I mean it was amazing.  I was hooked.

I made it in creative mode, so I could just focus on building without worrying about defending myself from the critters.  I constructed - and decorated - a sprawling, multi-floor mansion, surrounded by flourishing gardens and a farm, and an arched bridge over the river to a little village I found there.  I was so pleased with it.  It was arranged and orderly and beautiful.  And, unlike my actual house, that never stayed the way I put it for more than a few minutes, this one would REMAIN clean and neat!  It could be my tidy virtual retreat of perfection.  I had discovered digital paradise.  I admired it, inside and out, and then closed the front door, and the game, perfectly satisfied and confident that it would be just as I left it when I returned…

When my husband got home the next day I was so proud that I wanted to show him this masterpiece of an estate that I had created.  I raved about it while the computer woke up and I opened the game.  My Steve was standing right where I left him, in front of my mansion, ready to take us on the grand tour.  

“Look!  It’s so great,” I said, walking across the porch to the door.  “I decorated the whole thing and even made furniture, and everything stays just where I-”

The door opened and there, in my immaculate digital living room, was a creature I’d never come across.  He was tall, thin and black, and holding a  BLOCK OF MY WALL in his hands!  That thing looked me dead in the eye with his faux-innocent purple ones, turned and RAN OFF WITH MY WALL!   I chased it through the house and out the back door.  As it bounded off with my wall-block in its devious hands the sun dawned on my newly rocked world, and some passer-by wandering through my orchard caught fire and burned down basically the whole estate.

I came unglued.  I was irrationally furious.  There was real anger and dismay over my virtual world.  My husband thought it was hysterical.  My kids didn’t even try not to laugh.  One of them started explaining to me that “enderman” will carry off blocks, and that “witches” burn up when the sun hits them.  I was ready to delete the whole game and maybe write a strongly worded letter to the creators detailing its negative impact on the already delicate psyche of mothers everywhere.  

So now I think I’ll try writing.  Because it does stay just the way I left it until I come back.  However good or awful, all of my nonsensical ramblings and artful masterpieces retain their exact form until I return to stress over them some more.

Actually, I have written a lot over the years, but I haven’t DONE anything with it.  So I should say “now I think I’ll try blogging (or “Substack-ing?”).”  

Even that isn’t entirely true.  I did try blogging - about food and crafts - once before, many years ago, and abandoned it for lack of time (like the magazines)... but here goes.  We’ll try again; sharing my (hopefully) vaguely interesting life with a small and sympathetic reader base.  (Thanks for reading!  If you’re here at this point you’re one very important member of a small - but mighty - fan base!)

I can say with confidence that I have come a long way from the Oregon Trail-ing, freedom of my teen life in rural mid-Michigan, through the foggy-brained mom-of-babies-and-toddlers (and no time for magazines) years that were my 20s and 30s, to reach this spot.  So… how is it going?

Well, my oldest is 17 now, and only three months from becoming a high-school senior.  She’s driving herself to work and back, saving money far better than I ever did, has never turned up with a box of (uncooked) chickens, and is looking into colleges.  My second is going to be learning to drive this year, and my third is finishing up junior high.  My youngest is headed to junior high next year and moving up to the big school campus.  

Even though it’s one that will take another six years to pass, I know that this summer we start a new era as a family.  An era of “lasts” that will blanket all of those remaining school years in a different feel; a consciousness that is tinged with finality and being pushed along by the tides of change.  Up until this year each one ahead of us looked very much like those behind, just with taller children.  Now we have to recognize that our numbers will start dwindling.  Already there are often empty seats at the dinner table, whose usual occupants are working an evening shift.  It’s a victory; they’re successful young ladies with bright futures, who I hope will embrace life and enjoy it as much as I have, or more.  But it is very bittersweet, and I want to remember it in detail.

This will be the last time we have a summer family vacation with all of our “kids” (next summer my oldest, even if she comes, will be an adult and that already rings differently.)  This August will be the last “First Day of School” that they all share.  This December will be the last Christmas with four “kids” all certainly home (Lord willing).  This March will be the last time Spring Break weeks will automatically match up. We might get lucky after that, but I can’t plan on it.  And at some point, even if my oldest stays home for the first year or two of college, she will eventually leave the nest.

And then they’ll follow, one at a time, every couple of years…

In the precious meantime I reside in a house with four girls between the ages of eleven and seventeen, and if you are having any trouble imagining that then let me try to paint the mental picture for you.  

First off, it mostly resembles a Picasso.  One eye is a bit squinty from too much caffeine and the other one is definitely crying over something.  Mascara is running down the cheek.  The mouth is WIDE open and noisy.  There are ears, but they are disconnected (kids never listen and I’ve grown deaf).  The hair-  Is.  Everywhere.  The nose is definitely in someone else’s business.  The shirt belongs to a body other than who is wearing it, and there is a shoe.  Just one.  That might explain the crying.  If you could smell this image it would be a combination of vanilla and all the berries in the world.  

There is always somewhere to be, usually drama, rarely the right number of socks, and never any snacks.  

Sooo… that’s how it’s going.  And going, and going…

And, really, I wouldn’t change a thing.