Missing You over MEA

Hello and welcome to an MEA-weekend Saturday here at the Wannaskan Alamanc and all over Minnesota. Today is October 19th.

This weekend we're out having adventures on our 6th annual family camping trip. The Fourth Grader is sad that College Kid 3.0 isn't with us. We're all adjusting to being a day-to-day family of four. "When your sister has a real job next year, she'll have an income and vacation days," I told him. "She'll be able to join us next year."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, not comforted or convinced.

This sense of loss in the youngest of the siblings has been building. Ever since College Kid 3.0 left, there's been a tear here and there, a sprinkle of small comments: "I miss him." I thought it might have more to do with our ban on playing Borderlands, which the older son had introduced to the younger one, much to my chagrin.

But on the eve of the annual camping trip, he finally popped like an emotional pimple.

My mama heart hurt for this 9-year-old's pain. Our house has always been so full of people; for myself, I've been enjoying a little break from all of the bodies. But for him, it feels like everyone he loves is leaving him. Abandonment. I keep quiet and rub his back, knowing that no, his parents aren't chopped liver; he's just missing his siblings.

The older kids complain that the youngest truly is the baby of the family. "He gets whatever he wants!" they complain, lament, and whine.

I was the baby of my family. And what I see in my youngest is a feeling I remember: It can also be lonely.

So, while on the trail, I'll be giving him extra hugs and hope that my promises for the 7th Annual Family Camping Trip with at least one of his adult siblings won't be empty.

Family Vacation
by Judith Slater

Four weeks in, quarreling and far
from home, we came to the loneliest place.
A western railroad town. Remember?
I left you at the campsite with greasy pans
and told our children not to follow me.
The dying light had made me desperate.
I broke into a hobbled run, across tracks,
past warehouses with sun-blanked windows
to where a playground shone in a wooded clearing.
Then I was swinging, out over treetops.
I saw myself never going back, yet
whatever breathed in the mute woods
was not another life. The sun sank.
I let the swing die, my toes scuffed earth,
and I was rocked into remembrance
of the girl who had dreamed the life I had.
Through night, dark at the root, I returned to it.