The summer of Moose

And the kid in all of us

My dearest 2.5 year old, Lu, has wanted to see herself as a baby lately. Pictures, videos, memories.

But you’re still my baby! I think to myself, and even said aloud once to her in the middle of another presentation of Lucy Baby. “I’m a big girl,” she announces to me, all her animals, and HER newest baby, named soap. I’ll give you one guess who baby soap is. You got it! Her nighttime bath soap/shampoo bottle has recently been cradled, fed, dried after bath, covered up for bedtime, but surprisingly, not read to yet.

Soap is loved and so are you.

My precious Lu’s baby memories are a pure joy to me. I love remembering how despite everything we’ve been through in the last couple years, we have a beautiful girl who started it all. The glimmer in her eyes there since birth.

“Hi, I’m cute.”

Real talk: Why choose one color when you can choose them all?

As she watches herself on the camera roll as a tiny little nugget and then a bigger nugget, she laughs. Of course, she’s the one with the laughs. “Yes,” I tell her, “you were that small. Yes, there’s Moosey with you.”

“Yes, he was your first friend, before Sammy.”

There was a little chunk of her life without her brother in it, but not much, and she doesn’t remember it. In her mind, there’s always been Sammy.

Me with my lovey love love, Sammy boy.

It’s June. I like the name June, but I also like the name May, and August, and well, July, because it’s very close to my name.

Julie July has a nice 50’s song ring to it.

June has historically been my third favorite month, after July and August. I am a true summer baby myself, and by baby, I mean I refuse to grow up and undo my supreme love for summer being completely tied around my childhood freedom from school and other obligations. My soul craves sun and warmth and anything outside with a side of popsicle. Of course, I should also tell you my dream of putting anything but fun on hold for three straight months.

Sounds glorious, right?

I don’t remember last June. We were home, but just home from the NICU after 13 days.

Sweet Sammy was born, as you know from my birthday essays, in late May. So last June? I have temporarily forgotten, but it must have been a reunion of seeing Lu after being away from her during our first of four hospital visits. Surely it was a bonding time with my beloved Sammy, who busted out of the NICU with us with vigor. We didn’t look back, not even once, not even at the kind medical workers, or the loud monitors (we brought those home with us), or the insides of a hospital so unmarked by the hot weather outside it, a place so unaware of a summer popping up right at the time Sammy was making his way into the world.

The aftermath of the beginning of a year of hospital life seems so distant. Where are all the memories?

I always said I could never work at a hospital for the following reasons: I need fresh air and sun like a baby needs cuddles. And I don’t like hospitals.

I had never actually been in a hospital before having Lu, so I’m not sure how I made such a claim. But there you have it.

Ironically, I was employed by a hospital for several years when I counselor at a health clinic connected with one of Phoenix’s leading hospitals. We got to eat in the main hospital cafeteria. It was a short walk outside. Which was okay for most of us in the winter.

During the summer, my long-time friend, who I met on my first day of work, refused (sounds dramatic but it’s more fun to say) to walk to the cafeteria. I didn’t blame her; summers are brutal in Phoenix. If you’ve lived in Phoenix for a long time (which wasn’t my story, mid-western girl here), then summer is not your season.

I loved to chuckle with her about the heat. Probably on principle, I forged through the scorching weather to walk to lunch nearly every day. Afterwards, I would get a cookie and stick it in my purse, promptly forget it was there, and at the end of the day, enjoy car keys mixed with melted chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate, I hope you all enjoy lots of it this summer. Cones, hot fudge Sundays, chocolate bars. Go nuts. Except if you’re a reader who is also a dog.

Today, I looked at Moose, my favorite dog in the world, and told him this could be his summer.

Moose, who has taken it upon himself to make it his one and only job to protect us and especially the babies and especially Sammy.

Perhaps this could be the summer of yummy things, for Moose and all of us. Not the summer of chocolate for dogs, though, please remember this Moose, if you’re reading.

I vote for a nice, calm summer without the emergency vet and without hospital visits.

I told Moose plans often go awry, but I here’s what I want to do with him: play in the woods and give him lots of cold water and extra pets and time off and we can have a ball. Or chase one.

Moose has patiently waited through two summers of very tiny babies, when we had to ooh and ahh and feed and hold and try and keep them alive, and now, by the grace of God, we have a two-year-old who has her own soap babies, and a 12-month-old, who is off of all medical devices and tubes and oxygen and is finally cordless!

Any of our picture walks back in time reveal that Moose has always been a good boy, since the start of his life with babies.

Any of our picture walks back in time reveal that all of the devices we had for so long were hard on us all, and Moose knew it.

He may not have known what he was in for, but he made the journey of the last year better. He helped us know it would all be okay. He sat next to the babies on the couch. He slept under bassinets. He gave them all his love. For an introverted dog who had the reputation when I got him for being “very lazy with children,” I can say he perfectly lives up to his description. Although he really is the glue that holds the chaos somewhat together.

Have you noticed a pattern with the tongue out? Is he saying “this is fun?” or, “I am sticking it to the man?”

One more thought about Moose: He is a dreamer. I don’t know what he dreams about, but I’m hoping all his summer dreams come true. When he dreams, he barks in his sleep, and it’s the cutest thing ever. It could be a sign he is dreaming about saving us from the Amazon delivery man, or if could be a squirrel, that darn squirrel he’s always chasing.

Now back to my cordless boy and nurturing girl:

They are not self-sufficient by a long shot, but by now, I can put them down to go to the bathroom, I can sometimes get a nap, we can go to a park without bringing a portable oxygen unit (oh, last summer, now you’re coming back to me). Every change means things can change in our lives. We don’t have to be attached to cords forever.

It feels like a beautiful time right now and like it is supposed to  be. And I want to document here that the days of newborns and lack of sleep and monitors were also beautiful and as it was supposed to be? There, I said it. Except for lack of sleep. I am always going to protest that aspect of baby-hood. My youthful spirit thinks ten hours of sleep for the rest of my life is doable. I’m a dreamer if nothing else.

But the lack of sleep, too, in all the havoc it creates, points me toward remembering it is all a glimpse in time.

A season. The newborn season doesn’t last forever, and unless every baby has four hospital visits in a year like Sammy did, there is a small window of misery and then somehow, you feel like a human again, slowly, like the slow, kind roll of summer.

I talk about four hospital visits in a year not to alarm anyone going through a medical roller coaster, but because it is like a marker of time, and a strange one. Oh, October, I remember you. First surgery plus Halloween in the hospital plus maybe pumpkins? I’ll be right back, looking at my camera roll with Lucy baby, who surely will remind me that there were in fact pumpkins.

Seriously, enough with the tongue, Moose Tracks.

I spy a pumpkin next to a monitor.

I love how babies and toddlers remind you, as all my writing tries to remind me (and hopefully you, too!), that life and months and days are not merely one-sided. You can’t have summer without summer. Even in a stuffy hospital room with your brave newborn, even in a health clinic when you’re the only one walking to lunch in the melting sun.

You can’t out run summer, you can’t hide from it, the sun will still get in your eyes, the morning will still greet you, no matter where you are. The sun will still set over your chicken coop, regardless of whether you currently have chickens in it or not (Right now we do, and one chicken is named after a nurse we loved).

I get that everyone does not take their eggs sunny side up. It’s the gift I’ve been given to sing along even to the most bitter notes I’m given. However, on the flip side, when life is un-fun for awhile, straight up hard (as life will be), or if a summer or other season threatens to not bring the joy it once delivered, I sometimes want my money back. Or to exchange my flip-flops for a pair of boots, because where have all the swimming pools gone?

In other words, if my play list of summer metaphors is not your jam, I’ll sum it up for you: When I forget a summer, I start to wonder if all the subsequent summers will be forgetful too.

I know we had a grand time last summer and have even more pictures than I thought to prove it, but I’ve found that the long game, the ins and outs of keeping up with babies and especially babies with medical needs, can easily become one day to the next of a list of to-dos. And I hate to-dos.

I can start to feel really good when I get Sammy to practice all his PT moves get enough juice in the day to help his constipation, or horray — I am able to reach all of his doctors and specialists on the first try!

Every moment is not like this, but if I’m not careful, I could turn my days into medication dosages and Sammy wearing his new glasses for 10 whole minutes at a time because we don’t want him to have eye surgery. I could choose to skip summer when summer is right in front of me. Then my unreadable lists on dry erase board will become my norm, not experiencing wonder, which is how Summer Julie July always rolled.

To be fair, I still play games all the time with my kids (hi baby soap!), but am I playing games within my own soul? Is the kid in me finding some time to skip rocks and make silly pictures on the driveway, and oh, what about hopscotch? I have kids now, so it doesn’t look strange to do these things. Am I doing them?

Every single moment doesn’t have to be filled to the brim, but boy, does the cup overflow more with joy and laughter and love when I remember to make some of them bigger than life.

Bigger than life moments in small things is kind of my M.O. and why I love to turn the slightest thing into a story. It is why improv will always be on my favorite things list. It’s why life is so magical in my head. God has shown me how to enjoy the gift of life and I’m going to enjoy it, darn it.

A note to myself this summer:

Perhaps it will be the summer of Moose, but let it also be the summer of Julie July. Let it also be the summer of soap babies and lightening bugs. Too many popsicles. Cordless babies and parks and looking up at the stars, giving thanks for this moment, and this moment, and this moment. Time away from the dry erase board.

Finally, here are some blessings for all of us humans:

May our summers be filled to the brim and also and simply filled. May we have all we need. Then be surprised by a little more. And finally, get by with a little less. May these contradictions find a home in our messy, beautiful lives.

May we scroll through our pictures and as always, remember there are no perfect days to document, but may we know that in some form, some way, to document is good. As they say in counseling, if you don’t document it, it didn’t happen. To document is to remember. This doesn’t always mean an iPhone or a computer. But sometimes it does.

This Substack was formed as my documentation. As a way to mark time, to remember. To look back. It all happened, and it was a mixture of everything. And it was still good. May we find a way to look back, to go forward.

And for the dogs:

May your summers be filled with treats and short walks if it’s hot where you are, but  walks none-the-less. May you have enough people to keep you company, but maybe less tail pulling if there are little ones nearby.

Don’t lose yourselves in the 9-5 of protecting your people. May you take some time off and may your daydreams and night-time dreams be bright, and may you catch that squirrel.

Update since I wrote this piece: Moose almost got hit by a car tonight. Terribly awful to imagine and thankful my mom stepped in to retrieve him in time. This kind of adventure is not what I meant by summer of Moose. We love you so much, buddy, stay out of the road.

My favorite picture of last June.

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