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It’s counterintuitive for me to send my 13-year-old on an 18-hour-long day trip to a ski area four hours away.

In another state.

Without me.

The moderator of Noah’s ski club said that the kids would each pair up with a buddy and would wear pinneys identifying them as Rotolo Middle School students. She also assured me that she and another teacher – and their spouses – would chaperone and that the students would be required to check in with them. There were to be no parent-chaperones, and none were needed, thank you very much.

But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t make the drive to Granite Peak myself, right? Um, no, not unless I wanted my son – who would be among the oldest kids in the group – to be “the only loser with a parent there,” as he so eloquently put it. But I wasn’t thrilled, and not just because I knew I’d miss out on some good skiing (well, maybe that was part of it). The fact is, I wanted to be there. I’ve skied my whole life and have a healthy respect for the inherent dangers, not to mention a pretty good idea about the mischief a bunch of adolescents can make when faced with that kind of freedom.

“You just have to trust that you’ve done a good job,” my mother reassured me when I mentioned my concerns. OK, but what if something happened and Noah got hurt? I ended up deciding that the chances of him suffering grave humiliation at my presence were far greater than any physical injury he might sustain, whether I was there or not. Half an hour after the bus departed from the middle school, however, I got an email news alert from a local media outlet saying a school bus crash sent 11 to a hospital with minor injuries. It wasn’t until after the adrenaline and regret made their mad dashes through my veins that I learned that the accident in question had happened the day before (en route to Krejci Academy in Naperville). Two days after the trip I happened upon another scary story, about the tragic death of a teenager who died falling off a chairlift at a ski resort in Utah.

Stories like these give a mother pause, but timing, as they say, is everything. So I didn’t tag along.

But I made sure he was ready.

The morning of the trip, as Noah gathered his gear, I pulled his food out of the fridge. It was to be a long day. He would need a lot. I might not be there, but I could still feed him, right?

“I put everything in lunch bags, with your breakfast for the bus on top,” I whispered, as Holly was still asleep. I got nothing but a blank stare in response, so I unzipped the insulated bag and showed him. “See?”

“I know, Mom, you marked them.” Along with breakfast I’d packed, lunch, snacks and money for dinner. “It’s like you gave me rations,” he added wryly.

• • •

“Don’t forget to call a couple of times,” I said as I hugged him goodbye a few minutes later. It was 5 a.m.

“Does this count as one?” he asked, when I called 60 seconds after he and his father pulled out of the driveway.

“Ha ha! Nice try,” I replied. “Make sure you wear your helmet, because if you don’t, I’ll know. And if you ever do hit your head, and feel even the slightest bit dizzy or off, tell an adult and let the ski patrol look you over. ’cause you know,” I added, “that’s how Natasha Richardson died. She didn’t do anything about it for a while, and by then it was too late.”

“Yes, I know, remember, Buddy?” he said, adopting that talking-to-a-child lilt he uses on the rare occasion that we’re shopping and I’m so overtired that I get distracted and become momentarily mesmerized by the shiny objects near the register. I was being pathetic and Noah knew it. “Remember? We watched it together? Sad story,” he continued, in that voice.

“And have fun!” I added.

“I will, if you don’t keep doing this,” he replied, before I told him that I loved him. I know, I know, there’s a spot waiting for me in the kill-joy hall of fame.

I sipped a glass of water in the dark as I glanced out the kitchen window at the freshly fallen snow. Would the bus ride be slippery, I wondered? Would the kids be OK? But then it occurred to me that once they got to where they were going the new snow would make for some great skiing. And soft landings, I decided, as I tiptoed back to bed.  

• • •

Noah did call. Twice.

“Do you think that if I brought home all of the food you made, it would be OK?” he asked, the second time. “I’m eating none of it,” he confessed. “I’m eating cheese curds.” Nice. But hey, he was in Wisconsin, right? And to think I was worried.

It’s registration time for high school freshman-to-be, apparently. Really? But didn’t we just take down our tree? And isn’t August, when Noah begins his high school career, a long, long way off?

Apparently not.

If I wasn’t already excited about my son’s imminent entrance into high school, hearing the Batavia High School drum line perform at orientation Tuesday night did a lot to get me in the mood. In fact, its dynamic drumming gave me chills and made me wish I was the one registering for the class of 2016. Geez Louise, since when did high school become so cool?

Cool, maybe, but high school – and the somewhat overwhelming process of planning and preparing for four years of a life – are not mere walks in the park. While scanning course offerings in the registration handbook and pondering prerequisites, honors courses and future advanced placement possibilities, Noah conjured a class he’d most like to take.
“Is there AP lunch?” he quipped. Then he spotted “Rock and Roll Methods” in the handbook.

“Wow, that’s an elective?” He was impressed. High school was looking better already. Cool, indeed.

When Dave Andrews, the assistant principal and athletic director, took his turn at the mic and mentioned that the four years of high school would pass quickly, my eyes welled up with surprised tears. It seems like just yesterday when my little Noah proudly read “Ten Apples up on Top” by Dr. Suess to me for the first time. Where has the time gone? Since then he has graduated from board books and yo-yo’s to 600-page tomes and text messages, so perhaps he is ready for all that high school has to offer.

As he ran to catch the bus Thursday morning I got on the school’s website to register him for classes. I found “PowerSchool,” the portal for school registration, but couldn’t find the dang “course request pop-up window” that was supposed to, well, pop-up. After searching in vain for 20 minutes – and then letting the cat bat around at the keyboard for a while (perhaps he would have better luck?), I finally caved and called the school.

“The window doesn’t open ’til tomorrow,” the nice lady informed me.

Duh. Really, I’m in no hurry for high school to begin.

Before we headed over to orientation Tuesday evening, Noah and I made a mad dash to the outlets. Seems he grew two inches overnight and suddenly needed new jeans. I’m still taller, by a mere inch, but that inch that keeps my son near isn’t long for this world. We also discovered that his hands, which he no longer allows me to hold, are now larger than mine. And his feet? They’re now a whole size larger (new sneakers were on the list, too). He no longer fits into my shoes, and nor can I walk in his. But something tells me he’ll be walking tall, whether or not I’m ready for him to hear – and be moved by – a new drum beat this fall.

• Jennifer DuBose is a contributor for the Kane County Chronicle. She lives in Batavia with her husband, Todd, and their two children, Noah and Holly. She can be reached at jenniferdubose@msn.com.

The foundation of the boys’ fort across the street is barely visible behind the girls, Holly DuBose (left) and Rachel Kauchak. (Jennifer DuBose – jenniferdubose@msn.com)

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On Sunday morning, after they’d had their fill of bacon and French toast, the conversation among my children and their friends turned to fort building. Noah and his buddy Christopher have built a snow fort at the corner of Christopher’s yard every winter since we moved to Batavia four years ago. But this year, their little sisters are entertaining their own fort fantasies. In fact, Holly and Rachel have decided to build theirs at the edge of our yard, diagonally across the street from the boys’.

Let the games begin. Can’t you just see the snowballs being hurled from one side of the street to the other and back again? First, though, the ramparts must be raised.

As for the girls’ efforts, the boys weren’t impressed.

“They keep saying we only build walls,” Holly complained when I peeked outside to check on the girls’ progress. They’d only been at it a little while but already had a firm foundation in place. But there wasn’t much snow to be had so it was slow going. And experience was in the boys’ favor.

“Hey,” I called, “you guys can use the sled to pile up snow from other parts of the yard and drag it to where you need it, you know?” Holly shrugged and continued packing snow into blocks. I wasn’t sure if Rachel heard me, but it was too cold to wait for a response so I shut the back door.

“We build tunnels that you can go in,” Christopher volunteered when I returned to the dining room. Maybe so, but they hadn’t built them yet; they’d only spent a few minutes the day before staking out their territory. And Sunday morning, they did little more than hunker down and stay warm indoors playing video games on their computers while their little sisters got to work in the 11 degree weather. It seemed the boys were waiting for more snow to fall before they invested more time in the project.

Meanwhile, the girls worried the boys would destroy their fort.

“If anyone destroys anyone else’s fort, I’ll knock theirs down,” I announced, immediately regretting how dumb that sounded. Even Noah, whose raised eyebrow was visible above his computer screen, knew it was a lame threat – and lame parenting. Indeed. I’m not sure what I’ll actually do if someone messes with someone else’s fort. Maybe the offender will be required to help rebuild. Or make snowballs to fill his opponents’ armory. Or take out the trash.

I’m sure I’ll think of something.

The thing is, in our little neck of the woods, fort building is serious business. In fact, it has snowed at least twice since the snow fort smack-down began and not one of these kids has built a single snowman.

What’s up with that?

A few minutes later, as I finished washing the breakfast dishes and wiped up the last of the stray syrup, I spotted Holly in the yard dragging a sled behind her, piled high with snow. So she’d taken my advice. I was thrilled. After all, we girls need to stick together.

• Jennifer DuBose is a contributor for the Kane County Chronicle. She lives in Batavia with her husband, Todd, and their two children, Noah and Holly. She can be reached at jenniferdubose@msn.com.

Holy smokes. I was in the process of changing my furnace filter Monday morning when the plastic wrap from the new filter was sucked right out of my hands and into the furnace. Who does that?

“That could only happen to you,” my Aunt Kathy commented later. No kidding.

What ensued was a scary rattling sound and the smell of melting plastic, and worries about the cost of a new furnace – and, of course, the cost of a new house. Because, naturally, I was sure the furnace would blow.

I’ve since learned that that was unlikely, but how did I know? I write stories. I’m lucky I even know where the furnace filter thingy is.

I raced upstairs and switched the thermostat to “off,” but the furnace didn’t go off immediately so I called the number on the little sticker on the thermostat cover (good idea, those stickers) and the nice lady at the heating and cooling company suggested I flip the switch on the furnace. What a novel idea, I thought, wishing it had occurred to me to do that in the first place. She may as well have told me to go play in the volcano in the basement, though, scared as I was to go back down there, but I did as I was told. It took me a minute to locate the switch but I managed to turn it off and the awful rattling subsided. What to do next? The nice lady said someone would call me back. Right.

So I ran back upstairs and herded my pets – well, the ones I cuddle with, anyhow (the dog and the cat) – onto the enclosed back porch, where I figured they’d be slightly safer in the event of a furnace explosion. (It might be “off,” I reasoned, but what did I know?) I felt relieved that my children weren’t home to get blown up – or to see me diss our pet rat and our three Hermit crabs, and then I wondered, what sort of person prioritizes their pets based on the gratification they provide? In my defense, our littlest pets were in their respective habitats in opposite corners of the house. But still. It’s amazing the concerns one manages to conjure during a perceived crisis.  

I made Mike, the poor guy who called me back, stay with me on speaker phone while he coached me through how to remove the metal panels on the furnace so I could retrieve the plastic. He said he figured it was just sitting inside the “drum” – which I could see but couldn’t see into – and hadn’t been in there long enough to do any damage.  

“You want me to stick my hand in that thing?” I asked.

“You turned it off. It’s OK,” he reassured me. Sure thing, I thought, unconvinced, and decided I’d prefer to see what it was I would be sticking my hand into. I needed a flashlight, so I left the phone in the basement while I sprinted back upstairs to rummage around in my one of my kitchen’s ‘junk’ drawers. The first flashlight I found was dead, of course, but I finally found one that worked and headed for the basement stairs. But I couldn’t open the door! The old glass knob was missing. I’d forgotten that on one of my earlier sprints down the stairs it had come off in my hand (one of the charms of living in a 133-year-old house) and been accidentally flung into a pile of dirty laundry. Beautiful.

By the time I finagled the door open and got back downstairs, Mike was chatting with a co-worker. I’d apparently left the speaker on, so I could hear bits of his side of the conversation. Something about “this lady … plastic … helping her … she’s got us on speaker, so ... .” Yeah. You get the idea. It was hilarious. At least I gave them something to laugh about over lunch!  

It’s a good thing my children weren’t also witnesses their mother’s silliness. And they wonder what I do all day.

• Jennifer DuBose is a contributor for the Kane County Chronicle. She lives in Batavia with her husband, Todd, and their two children, Noah and Holly. She can be reached at jenniferdubose@msn.com.