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"Oh,
she'll like camping at first," I told my oldest son, as we pondered
his now unknown future wife and the possibility of their fun-filled
camping trips together. "Because she'll just be so happy to be with
you- under any circumstances. But then," I continued, casting a
knowing direction in my hubby's direction, "it'll dawn on her one
day that she can still be WITH you; all the time, in fact, and that
there is no reason on earth that time together has to be spent in the
god-forsaken wilderness, sleeping on rocks and smelling like smoke and
dirt!" I nearly screamed out the last part of the story. "I
told you I was sorry for pulling your hair." My husband said in my
direction. Being
the only female in my family; I am always outnumbered when it comes to
how we spend our free time. I tend to think towards activities like
shopping, or decorating, or going out to eat at a nice restaurant. The
men in my family, however, think differently. They like to be outside.
WAY outside. And so it was that I found myself pondering my oldest son's
camping fate while still nursing a tender scalp from the early a.m. hair
pulling. Whenever
I complain; I meet major resistance. "But MOM!" My youngest
son told me when I was whining about sleeping in the wild with just a
tent between myself and the elements, "You are a MANLY woman." "A
MANLY woman?!" I was horrified. You mean to tell me that I had
spent my whole entire life collecting matching socks, shoes, earrings,
necklaces and bracelets for virtually ever outfit I own, and I was a
MANLY woman? This news went against every single thought I had had in my
life; I never aspired to be a woman's libber- I LIKE having men hold
doors for me and I definitely don't mind if they give me preferential
treatment just because I happen to be a woman. "What do you mean, I
am a MANLY woman?" I asked him. "Oh
mom." He sighed. "It's a GOOD thing to be MANLY, don't you
know? You are not one of those moms who scream at every single bug, or
need someone to help you mow the lawn or move furniture; you know, you
are MANLY that way. You just do it yourself." I didn't
tell him that my "manliness" was mostly the result of a being
a military wife for so many years with a husband gone more than 50% of
the time- it was either kill the bugs, mow the lawn, and move the
furniture or be over-run with bugs, live in a jungle and never change
the position of anything in the house. I just managed to say,
"Thank you." still wondering if it was indeed a "good
thing" to be a manly woman. But even
a manly woman such as myself has her limits, and this camping trip last
weekend pushed the envelope. First of all, the moment we set up our
tent, I realized it was cold. DANG cold, as my dad would have said, and
I don't care if my sleeping bag was guaranteed to handle temperatures
down to -50 degrees; it didn't do a thing to keep me warm during the
forty degree night. I pulled that sucker way up over my head, and
quickly realized I could not breathe. I finally settled on a plan where
I would dive down into my bag with a big breath, come up for more air
every few minutes and then repeat the process. The fatal flaw in this
method of sleeping was, however, that I could not sleep. The breath/dive
process was continuous and very sleep depriving. Not that I could have
slept anyway; our air mattress sprung a leak and I was just two inches
of fiberfill away from the hard, cold, rocky ground. I finally managed
to fall asleep at about five a.m. when my husband got up for the day and
threw his sleeping bag on top of me for extra warmth. I pulled that
sucker up over my face and curled up on a less rocky patch....... only
to be jarred brutally awake a few hours later by the hair-pulling
beginning to my day in the wild. And
yet..... on the way home I heard myself agreeing to what we'd do on the
"next camping trip", because, I realized, sometimes you have
to endure very harsh conditions to spend time with the people you love
most in the world.
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