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I’ve had impulses, from time to time, to take on certain polarizing issues related to children and families. But I generally don’t. Friends and acquaintances occasionally quip, “Sounds like there’s a column here!” when such issues arise, and still, I don’t. 

I imagine they’re disappointed when, as I’m blessed with such a platform, I don’t use it to stir up more dust. 

I’ve got plenty of fire in my belly, but I just don’t feel called to add fuel to most debates. There will always be others who will, and who will do so quite capably. What I do feel called to do, however, is to offer a brief respite from the turbulence that often surrounds us – by noticing and shedding a little light upon, the magic, wonder and sweetness possible and already present in an ordinary life. 

But when that sweetness feels threatened, as I felt it was Tuesday morning when I pedaled past what remains of the formerly picturesque pond at Lippold Park in Batavia, the fire in my belly roars. 

What once was an enchanting scene, complete with sheltering trees, an old wooden footbridge and a sleepy pond, home to several shy turtles who sunned on each other’s backs on the old log that poked up out of the water – who always dove underwater whenever anyone got too close – is now a noisy construction site. 

Bulldozers rip up the landscape. Wood-chippers chew up the trees (several perfectly healthy-looking trees were felled as I watched Thursday morning). A chain-link fence keeps the curious out, while, nearby, signs warn of the hazards. 

Too bad turtles can’t read. 

I cried. I had to get off my bike to blow my nose, actually, to keep from crashing into the bridge around the next bend. My favorite Dr. Seuss story, “The Lorax,” immediately came to mind, wherein Seuss, speaking through the character of the Lorax, warns against mindless progress and the danger it poses to the earth and its inhabitants.

But is the development at Lippold mindless? 

When I inquired about it Thursday morning at the Red Oak Nature Center in Aurora, which is just south on the bike path (on the east side of the Fox River), a young woman explained that the Fox Valley Park District is “reconstructing” the pond “to make it more accessible.” 

“For whom?” I asked.

“Our visitors,” she replied. But what about the family of turtles, who appeared quite at home there? She then explained that the relative “health” of the pond has declined in recent years due to a build-up of silt, a natural effect of rain run-off. Jeff Long, public relations manager for the park district, tells me that this has caused a decline in the turtles’ – and frogs’ – numbers, which their visitors like to study. 

According to the master plan for Lippold Park published by the Fox Valley Park District in 2008, restoration of the natural lands that comprise the 41-acre riverfront property includes the construction of a pedestrian-friendly boardwalk around a new pond, and “a new building that will be built to showcase green technology and sustainability and serve as an indoor/outdoor staging area for education and user groups.” 

The mission statement for the project includes a vision of Lippold as a place “where visitors can actively engage in a caring and responsible connection with the natural world so that they better understand how the local ecosystem and individual actions relate to the global environment.” To what end? So they can learn how not to unwittingly disturb – let alone, destroy – other creatures’ habitats? Am I alone in seeing the irony here? 

When I asked if anyone made sure the turtles were safe before the bulldozers showed up, I was told that, “We couldn’t do that.” 

“You couldn’t?” I asked.

“They [the turtles] have plenty of wetlands they can move to,” said the woman at the park district. But why should they have to? What was wrong with letting nature take its own course, and allowing the turtles to make a migration when they were ready, if they felt the pond wasn’t actually “healthy?” Do we really need a fancy boardwalk, another building, and whatever other ‘stuff’ will no doubt come with them?

“I want to reassure you that everything is going to be for the better,” said Long. A self-professed, lifelong green guy, he insists that “Our intentions are good…It’s going to be beautiful.” Maybe. But tell that to the turtles, whose eggs are perhaps being crushed by those dozers. As for being beautiful, I can’t imagine the nerve it takes to rival Mother Nature’s own idyllic design. Who do we think we are? 

I’m not the only one who wonders. As I sat on the grass and watched as another tree fell, someone out for a stroll on the bike path approached.

“Do you know what they’re doing?” he asked. We practically had to shout to hear each other over the wood-chipper, but Rick Walker, a resident of Aurora who was also very familiar with the old pond, admits that he’s “on the side of Mother Nature.” 

That said, he and I agree that there’s a lot to like about the Fox Valley Park District, much of which I have yet to explore. He’s a huge fan of disc golf, for example, and my son and I participate in their canoe and kayak race down the Fox River every June. And, boy, I sure do enjoy my rides on the bike path – which, I admit, while relatively low-impact (on the environment), came about because of progress. 

• • •

By the time my daughter and I stopped at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Geneva Wednesday evening, when I passed a sherriff’s vehicle in the parking lot – parked and running, no deputy in sight – I decided it was time to speak up. 

I’d watched yet another neighbor’s lawn being sprayed with poison just that morning, and this was the last straw. (I confess, I paid one of those companies, 16 years ago, to do the same thing. But then I had a miscarriage. And I wondered. And I never hired them again. 

The doctor called it a “blighted ovum.” Blighted, indeed, but by what? No one can truly ever isolate the potential variables involved. I imagine it’s more a cumulative effect of various factors, perhaps unrelated to the chemicals sprayed on my lawn, but perhaps not. But I digress.)

“Don’t get arrested, Mom,” Holly whispered, as we spotted the young deputy at the check-out counter.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but did you leave your car running?” I asked. 

“Yes, I did,” he replied.

“Why?”

“My system just rebooted. Oh, did you think I left the keys in the ignition?” He asked, smiling.

“No, I wasn’t concerned about that,” I replied. “I was concerned about the gas and the environment.” Oh, that.

My concern extends way beyond the issue of our tax dollars at work. I worry about the little ones, kids and critters alike, and the simple things we all can do to make the world a better place for all of them. It’s really not so hard, is it? To strike a balance between what we want and what’s actually good for them? Do we build another “Disney-esque” destinations, when less will do? And do we really need to cut down all of those trees? 

Even if you assuage your guilt by planting 6,000 more, as Long points out the FVPD has done over the years, is it possible to take a closer look before eliminating them? 

I am hopeful that, going forward, every decision about every improvement will include even more thoughtful debate about whether each one is really absolutely necessary. And if it is, is there a lesser-impactful way to accomplish it? 

“I see what you mean,” Long finally conceded, after I asked if the trees felled at Lippold were diseased. (He’d said that 80 percent of ash trees are diseased, these days.) When I asked if these were, too, he admitted that he didn’t know. In any case, they weren’t part of the master plan, so down they came.

I wouldn’t dream of presuming I could ever adequately “speak for the trees,” as the Lorax hopes we will, or for the quiet turtles, the grass, or even the plucky dandelions (whom I regret I unwittingly dissed in my recent “May basket” column), but I will say this: Mother Nature knows what she’s doing. 

Just because we don’t understand her plan doesn’t mean she requires our “help.” 

More pavement? Another sign? Another bench? Do yourself a favor and lay on your backs on the grass – if you can find any that hasn’t been subdued with cancer-causing poison, that is – and stare up at the clouds. 

Then, roll over and watch the dear turtle families and their neighbors quietly go about the business of making a life. But you, and the turtles, may want to steer clear of Lippold Park, for a while. 

I just hope they made it.

• Jennifer DuBose lives in Batavia with her husband, Todd, and their two children, Noah and Holly. Contact her at jenniferdubose@msn.com.

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I finally put myself on the list. My “to do” list. You see, it finally dawned on me that in order for me to take care of everyone and everything on my list, I have to be on the list, too. And not just on it. First.

Yes, this has dawned on me before. But I forgot. If you’re a parent, you know how this works: He needs this. She needs that. And they all need that other thing, right now, you know, because they’ll die without it.

Even the cat piles on, giving you dirty looks for one reason or another. Oh, and if you’re especially blessed, like I am, you also have a big doggie who actually “sighs” his disappointment, like a grumpy old man. Or Eeyore. Yes, if Eeyore could sigh, this is how he would sound.

Anyhow, before you know it, you’ve quieted all of the other hungry beasts and, too tired to care anymore, “bam,” just like that, you fall off the list. And get lost.

Take it from me, losing yourself is worse than digging through that smelly lost and found box at your kid’s school. It’s not pretty. Driving your kids to school in your PJs just because you can is one thing (I do it often), but being so preoccupied with wrangling everyone out the door that you realize, when you glance into the rear-view mirror before backing out of the driveway, that you didn’t even stop to brush your own hair, is pitiful. I once resorted to using the one in the car. You know, the one that came with my daughter’s old American Girl doll. It did the job, and I pulled it off with a dramatic flair that made my kids laugh, but let’s face it, ladies, that’s hitting bottom.

No wonder I’ve felt the urge, lately, to live in a Yurt. Alone.  Ha ha, where I can “find myself” again. It’s so text-book, for Pete’s sake, but that’s because I’m not the only one who feels this way. I often hear the same thing from other moms. We can’t blame anyone else when we fall off our own lists, though – if we were ever on them to begin with.

I know this is tougher when little kids are in the mix, but things won’t change unless we make them.

As for me, that means making appointments with me. I began my opening up a new document on my computer – to trick myself into taking myself as seriously as my other work, I suppose, and brainstormed a list of things that make me feel good and happy. Take my weekly yoga class, for example. If someone asks if I’m free at that time (to work, to bake cookies, to volunteer, etc.) the answer, now, is “no.”
As a matter of fact, I even have “yoga” written on my calendar. It’s absurd, the number of times I’ve needed to schedule something, not seen anything in that spot and filled it, realizing later that I’ve essentially put myself last. What? Time for myself is negotiable? Um, no. Not anymore. I’m on the list.

I’ve also learned that I feel better, calmer and more grounded when I make an appointment with myself to meditate every day, right after I get out of bed in the morning and before any other pressing concerns commence with their pressing. It’s simple, really, so simple that I had a hard time believing it would really make any difference, until tried it for a week. I just sit still, close my eyes, and breathe. Five, 10 minutes. Longer, if I feel like it. Sounds and thoughts are noticed and drift by as I gently and mindfully return my focus to my breath (when I often discover I’ve been holding it).

After breakfast, while the kids get ready for school, I sit and play the piano, just because I enjoy it. If I don’t do it then, other things on the list seem to crowd it out. Plus, there’s the added benefit of Holly being drawn to the piano bench, too, which keeps her practiced – and besides, since she often notices when I’ve missed a note, we get to begin our days not only with music, but a little silliness, too. I know, inherent here is something I’m also doing for her, but, if I’m honest, this particular kind of overlap makes me happy, too. (That doesn’t work for every mom, and that’s OK.)

Once I’ve taken care of me, I turn my attention to whatever else is on that “other” list – including work. This means I now resist the temptation to check email and Facebook first thing in the morning before I even get out of bed – or after I head to bed, when I’m already tired, thus even more susceptible to getting sucked into a rabbit hole of nonsense on the Internet. Better that I read a book until I can’t keep my eyes open, instead. (By the way, by “book”’ I mean a real one – not one that lives in a device that beeps or coos or vibrates with urgency whenever someone else wants my attention. No means no! Where have I heard that before?)

The point is, others won’t take our limits seriously unless we do. Sure, we may lose something when we decide we cannot be all things to all people at all times – and establish a few boundaries.  But what we gain, ourselves, cannot be replaced.

• Jennifer DuBose lives in Batavia with her husband, Todd, and their two children, Noah and Holly. Contact her at jenniferdubose@msn.com.

Holly DuBose creates May baskets to distribute around the neighborhood with her brother, Noah. (Photo provided)

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I’m surprised my kids’ names didn’t end up in the police blotter.

“What are you doing?” one neighbor asked Wednesday afternoon as they snuck through her backyard from behind another’s garage, in hopes of making it to her front door undetected.

“Um, giving you a May basket?” Noah replied, wincing, I’m sure.

And I’m sure he wasn’t the only one who winced. He’s nearly 15. He shaves. He’s gotten huge. I’m lucky he wasn’t shot.

Another neighbor, a few doors down, also received quite a fright as she rounded the corner of her house and spotted Noah perched, frozen, atop her fence, a pink construction-paper basket filled with flowers and treats dangling from one hand.

A simple “ding-dong-ditch” would have done. 

When I floated the May basket idea past him two hours before, he shrugged noncommittally, until I reminded him that anonymous deliveries would be involved. (I later learned that, according to tradition, if the basket recipient “catches” the fleeing giver, a kiss is exchanged. I think I’ll keep that little detail to myself.)

Little did I know how seriously Noah would take it. He and Holly put their heads together, expressions like “Here’s our plan of attack,” and “We’re moving in,” were uttered, and off they went.

I watched from my dining-room window as he made his first delivery to our next-door-neighbor. He hung the basket on her front door (while Holly stood watch a few feet away), rang the bell and leapt over her porch railing into the bushes. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Who left this?” she asked, gamely, when she and her little boy discovered the basket as my kids sprinted back to our house.

When we realized that the mom across the street and her two young children had seen the whole thing, we quickly made their basket, tossing in a few dog biscuits for Steve, their black lab. But before my kids could make the “drop,” hers left beautiful white flowers from their garden at our back door! And they smell lovely. The flowers we stuck in our baskets, however pretty, do not. (Wax flowers and Caspian, I’m told they’re called.)

“Why’d you get them if they smelled so bad, Mommy?” Holly asked, as we assembled more baskets.
Why, indeed?

I remembered only Wednesday morning, after the kids left for school, that it was already May Day (May 1), and that she and I had considered doing May baskets. Nothing was blooming in my yard except dandelions, so I made a quick stop at a flower shop before the kids returned. Everything smells good when you’re in a flower shop.

“How do you make them?” Noah asked, when Holly and I first sat down at the dining room table to consider the heap of construction paper, ribbon, candy and flowers we’d amassed.

“I’m not exactly sure. It’s been a while,” I replied, as Holly and I began experimenting with the paper.
Noah contributed by testing the candy and by Googling “how to” on his phone while I recalled the first time we ever made May baskets.
 
The kids were just 3 and 5, and all I could find to make them with, in a pinch, was a spare roll of pretty wallpaper left behind by our home’s previous owner. It was easily formed into sturdy cone shapes, which we filled with treats and flowers and finished with ribbon handles.

They were a hit with our friends and neighbors but the novelty expired for us the following year when, faced with the prospect of selling our 80-year-old house and needing to patch a fresh tear in the foyer wallpaper, I realized that I should have hung onto that roll of paper. The pattern had apparently been discontinued, so stripping, wall patching, and a funky, time-consuming painting project ensued. It wasn’t pretty.

But those baskets sure were!

The ones Holly and I managed to make this year didn’t turn out so badly, either.

When she missed the bus to school Thursday morning because we decided to make one more basket (it’s hard to stop once you think of someone else who might enjoy one – so what if it was already May 2), we drove past another neighbor’s house and spotted her basket still dangling near the door.
I suggested we stop so she could move it.

 “No, you do it,” Holly replied.

“Nah, it’s more of a kid-thing,” I tried.

That didn’t fly.

“You always say you’re a 12-year-old in a mother’s body, so yes, you can do it,” Holly quipped, but I never did.

It rained. I felt guilty but it was thundering, so I emailed the neighbor in question, instead. It seems that Mary-Janes, the old-timey candy we’d stuck in her basket, is “one of my childhood favorites,” she reported. “I haven’t had one in many a year!”

It turns out, too, that she’d never before received a May basket. So glad we righted that wrong.

• Jennifer DuBose lives in Batavia with her husband, Todd, and their two children, Noah and Holly. Contact her at jenniferdubose@msn.com.

The DuBose family bottle feeds kittens at the local Humane Society. (Provided video still)

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After a week that included bad news and a flooded basement, a box of kittens was just what we needed. Holly agreed.

So, Sunday morning, when her brother asked, “Any news on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (the young man, who, with his now-deceased older brother, allegedly committed acts of terrorism at the Boston Marathon and was apprehended last Friday night after being holed-up on a boat in someone’s backyard)?”
 I replied that I’d heard none.

I wasn’t at all surprised when Holly, curled up beside me, cupped her hands and whispered, “They’re this big, Noah,” as she crooned over and cradled a tiny, imaginary kitten. 

I get it: killing, no matter who perpetrates it, is hard to digest. Kittens, not so hard. As the old saying goes, “My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”

So, yes, the way my daughter copes works for me.

In fact, needing a respite from news of terrorism, manhunts and torrential rains, Holly and I headed to the Humane Society the afternoon before (dodging road-closures along the way) to volunteer.

We learned that a box of five kittens was on its way in, so we readied a clean cage in the kitten room. Maybe 4 weeks old, they’d weathered the storm, too, but outside, in a woodpile. Their mother was nowhere to be found and they were hungry. So, we fed them.

We’d never bottle-fed kittens before. I’d never even bottle-fed my own offspring, so this was new territory for me. But Holly? She got the hang of it immediately, even managed to swing feeding two at a time, a bottle in each hand. I called her the “kitten-whisperer.”

I sat nearby, at first, one tiny, orange tabby in my lap, who required a bit more coaxing to take a bottle. “Jim,” a curious, fun-loving, all-black 1-year-old cat, who’d been at the shelter a month already, reached through the bars of his cage a mere foot away. He slowly stretched out his paw, in an apparent effort to connect with the younger kitten. Not at all flustered that he couldn’t actually reach him, he simply arranged himself against the cage door with his paw outstretched, while we fed his new roommates.

This simple gesture made my heart swell.

Before long, the kittens (who, we discovered, seem more relaxed and feed better when in close proximity to each other, as they naturally would if they were still nursing) curled up together in a pile of pure sweetness and dropped off to sleep.

When we returned to feed them again Sunday morning, this time with Noah, we learned that a foster family had been found and was on its way to pick them up (we couldn’t take them in ourselves, as we have an older, medically challenged cat whose condition worsens when his environment changes).
We fed them; they left; and we spent another hour walking the dogs and playing with the puppies before we headed home.

Unbeknownst to us, however, we weren’t done, yet. A block from our house we spotted an old collie out for a romp, no leash and no person attached, so we followed him. A lanky boy soon followed, breathless and running.

“He’s been running for three miles!” he said through my open window, when I slowed down to inquire. The dog showed no signs of stopping, but the boy looked wiped-out, so we offered to help.

Twice, we pulled up alongside the dog and my kids jumped out to try and catch him, but he eluded them. The boy eventually caught up with us on a bike. Eventually, a good mile later, the dog’s luck finally ran out when the kids all managed to corner him against a fence where Noah was able to grab his collar. Shaking, a tired and muddy “Tucker,” as he’s apparently called, got a ride home in my car.

What fun Sunday was! My children were so filled with energy and laughter as they recounted their stories, and I am grateful for that. We may not be able to do anything about, let alone understand, what transpired in Boston – or anywhere else, for that matter – but there is always something we can do to make something, somewhere, better for someone.

That’s what I want them to know. There’s always something they can do.

We discussed why I wouldn’t normally recommend that they attempt to round-up a strange dog; however, this one obviously had a collar and people, one in hot pursuit. My instinct was that he was probably well-cared for and had simply gotten out, not that he was sick or rabid. He simply had spring fever, managed to sneek past someone, and had a good romp. I almost hated to end it.

So yes, a box of kittens – and an old collie with a few wild oats left to sow, are just the thing, the perfect antidote, to a mad, mad world.

We already miss the kittens.

“Any news on the kittens being fostered?” I asked, when I called the shelter on Thursday.

There wasn’t any, and the worker who answered the phone and I agreed that “no news is good news.”
Ain’t that the truth? There will be more bad news, more misguided people making bad choices, but no worries. There will also be more babies to let us know that life must go on.

Spring is here, and Mother Nature’s just getting started.

• Jennifer DuBose lives in Batavia with her husband, Todd, and their two children, Noah and Holly. Contact her at jenniferdubose@msn.com.