Trophy Not Included [#41]

(This one’s for my mom.)

I was raised in the era of jelly bracelets and stirrup pants, Cabbage Patch Kids and Care Bears. The teenagers I idolized as a grade schooler rocked spiral perms and mall bangs with hairband confidence — a fitting complement to their head-to-toe acid-washed denim ensembles and fingerless fishnet gloves.

When school ended each June, long summer days in the Pacific Northwest melted into short summer nights and,

like hot fudge on soft serve, offered up nine weeks of the most magnificent syrupy-sweet adolescent soul food a kid could be so lucky to indulge in.

Ear-piercing mom-whistles echoed throughout most of Budd Bay around dinnertime each evening, and all who intended to be fed knew immediately to cease and desist present activities and redirect any remaining energy into an all-out sprint home.

There would not be a second whistle.

For all that I can remember, I loved my childhood — and I especially loved summers. I loved the power of make-believe that effortlessly transformed “behind the neighbor’s garage” simultaneously into both a Rare-Gemstone Mine and Josh’s Prison Cell. (Liza and I are super sorry about that, Josh.) I loved the guaranteed comedic blunders of our annual multi-family Dads’ Hikes. I loved that, while neither a skilled singer nor dancer, I had a role in nearly every community theater production with kids in the cast from fourth grade until high school. And, despite an entirely non-existent collection of trophies or ribbons to show for it, I loved playing sports.

Then one day, without warning — at least none I noticed at the time — nothing remained of the chocolatey soft serve soup of my youth, save a few sticky drips dribbled down my chin.

Apparently, like the pro that I am, I’d spent 18 solid years licking that ice cream bowl clean like my awesome life depended on it.

Years later, drunk on a potent cocktail of ignorance and ego, I blindly stumbled into the ranks of parenthood, confident that John and I would inherently raise creative, self-reliant, active children whose upbringing would largely mirror the wild-child freedom of our own.

What a fool.

If the fact that I never managed to ace the neighborhood mom-whistle was the first clue I recklessly ignored as to the inevitable failures on my parenting horizon, the proliferation of participation ribbons throughout all aspects of Wyatt and Hudson’s early childhood was likely the second.

Should we just take a moment here to acknowledge how every one of us who remembers Life Before PlayStation abhors the very concept of participation ribbons? Because we do, don't we? 

Their mere existence represents a counter strike against the essence of our parents’ parenting strategy — which, as far as I can tell, seemed wholly centered around only two directives:

1) Play outside regardless of the weather

2) Ignore all injuries shy of visibly broken bones or actively gushing blood

Our parents were free-range parenting long before Free-Range Parenting had a name (or a Facebook group or discussion boards or multi-page conversation threads on Google).

So how then, did a BandAid-free generation of outdoorsy misfits with questionable fashion sense become parents to a cohort of participation-ribbon-toting, outside-averse, videogame-addicted teenagers?

(There are exceptions, of course, and I know and adore several of these humans -- both parents and kids alike -- who have escaped this plight either by sheer will or luck.) 

But I am not one of them. And neither are my kids, dammit!

When we sold everything to move aboard Ruby Vi, we had to make some tough choices about what to toss and what to keep. At the time, for as much literal clutter as 17 years of married life had created, the curated collection of 15 years’ worth of kids’ projects (and drawings and report cards and dough ornaments and homework assignments and and and) was second to none. And you know what tipped that already-heaping pile of clutter right on its side? A trashy treasure trove of approximately 300 ribbons, plastic trophies, and fake gold medals.

Lest you think the vastness of this collection was a testament to our children’s athletic prowess, let me assure you, it was not. (Sorry, kids.)

Nope nope nope — these were prizes just for showing up.

In a move I’m not necessarily proud of, I tossed 99% of the finger-painted relics of the boys’ early-childhood and literally every single generic plastic trophy with “Way to Go!” crookedly fake-etched across the bottom.

It’s now been a handful of years since any of us has stood within shouting distance of a participation ribbon — our longest absence to date since those hideous strips of glorified craft ribbon first paraded past our children’s eager eyes. And you know what? Lately, an unexpected bout of personal reflection has led me to reconsider the harshness of my criticism. (More on that in a sec.)

But first a confession…

I’ve struggled with how to best share the second half of this post.

(Which perhaps explains why I've spent so many words meandering between memories of soft serve summers in the '80s and the inexcusable rise of Everyone's a Winner parenting in the '00s. Though, per usual, I have every intention of eventually tying it all together for you.)

So, with that, I guess I’ll just pick up where our last post left off in June…

For (another) summer spent tied to a dock, we sure had a wild one — visits and visitors and good times with new friends among the most notable highlights.

We even had a hurricane roll through in late-August (which, as we understand it, was the first to come this far into the bay in over 20 years — go figure). So that alone upped the excitement level around here for a hot minute.

But we’ve also had an awful lot of time to plan, and to consider where and how we go from here.

When we left Park City in May of 2019, we gave ourselves three-point-five years to attempt to hustle-sail our way around the globe. We knew we’d likely need an extra year and we also knew that even at four-and-a-half years, our timeline was a tight squeeze at best. But, if we wanted the kids to be a part of the whole journey — which we did — this was the time we had to work with before they outgrew us and took off in search of new (and presumably cooler) roommates with less gray hair and, according to Wyatt, better taste in music.

From COVID’s onset, a mess of related border closures garbled our route. But it wasn’t until late-2020, that it finally crapped all over our timeline.

There are absolutely alternative routes to sail across the Pacific Ocean without going through French Polynesia, but each involves back-to-back multi-thousand-mile passages and none provides the magic and allure that is the South Pacific.

This summer, we’ve taken continual readings on next year’s border forecasts along our itinerant rhumb line. It’s bleak and getting bleaker. If we were committed to living the rest of our years on a boat, or to the kind of slow-burn circumnav that simply ends when it ends, we could shake off this holdup with Taylor Swift spunk. But we’re not, so we can’t.

(And also, Taylor is deceivingly talented so we might've actually been screwed either way.)

The same hourglass that once held more perfect beach sand than we knew what to do with, is suddenly running dry.

Father Time is a bandit disguised as Forever.

There’s no denying the generosity of the many gifts Time has handed us over the past two-and-a-half years: Be Together, Slow Down, and Stay a While Longer to name a few. But, despite the wrapping paper and pretty bows with which they were presented, each came with a price tag — an IOU being stealthily recorded on a running tab Father Time took the liberty of keeping open for us. Deep down, we knew at some point he’d holler, “Last Call!” and we’d have no choice but to repay him for all those magic moments when we asked him to stand unflinchingly still for us, and he did.

We’re trying hard to channel our teenagers’ super power and blatantly ignore his pestering, but he’s irritatingly persistent.

Our repayment plan is a near spitting image of the charges Boat Life ran up on our tab — a mixed bag of utterly terrifying and ridiculously spectacular.

Wyatt is four months away from turning 18 and, to say he is eager to meet those new good-music-loving roommates, would be an understatement;

John fell into work for an incredible new company on the cutting edge of its industry's global technology;

and Hudson, while still entirely circumnavigation-goal-focused, is less than thrilled about the idea of spending another year in limbo, waiting on the South Pacific to open. 

Boat Life and Boat Time are often an inseparable pair.

Not unlike other famous duos, they frequently cover for each other’s missteps, revealing silver linings when and where we least expect it. This summer’s unplanned pause here in Puerto Vallarta was no exception. When Boat Life first ripped the Sea of Cortez out from under our hulls, we were devastated. But Boat Time soon stepped up to offer us the sweetest consolation prize in the form of family, friends, fajitas, and fiberoptic WiFi.

But now, as the remnants of proverbial chocolate sauce fade from the corners of our kids’ mouths, it’s devastatingly clear that another summer has drawn to a close — an annual tragedy I may never come to fully accept.

Lamenting this loss, we sat in Ruby Vi’s salon and, as the warm Nayarit rain poured down with unnecessary commitment, we wondered…

If Boat Life and Boat Time can turn a sail drive stall-out into a steak taco, maybe we can muster the creativity and courage to turn another year of COVID closures into a pint case of Ben & Jerry’s.

So we did what we do these days — we I ate guacamole and we stared at a map of the world. After a weekend of non-stop brainstorming — and an undisclosed number of avocados — we fell a little bit in love with an idea…

What if we preemptively choose to pause before COVID forces us to? What if we write new rules and new timelines and new itineraries with the sort of audacious abandon that got us here in the first place?

What if we move to Marrakesh? or Prague? What about a year in Copenhagen? Oslo? Florence? Zagreb?

Our list of possibilities suddenly seemed endless and we realized it seemed that way, because it actually was. For the first time in the history of our Ever, we could literally go anywhere.

So that’s what we’re doing — we’re going Anywhere.

Our next Yes isn’t actually too far off from most of our other recent yeses: a yes to travel and exploration; a yes to the unknown, the unpredictable; a yes to New and also to A Little Bit Scary. Even the sting of its requisite Farewells is familiar — knowing we’ll again be leaving people and places and a home we adore.

But this time, thanks to Ruby, we feel a little more prepared to handle it.

Despite our efforts, John and I couldn’t entirely recreate the unadulterated independence of our ’80s adolescence for our own children — such perhaps might be the price of raising kids in a modern and ever-digitalized world.

(It's also maybe because the Xbox rabbit hole is way deeper than we first assumed.) 

But we did get something right when we handed our boys a surrogate hippie mom in Ruby Vi. A parent who, not unlike our own, afforded us the time and space to create, to enjoy, to experience, to imagine, to explore, to choose.

Throughout several decades of adulthood, I’ve taken great pride in knowing that my childhood didn’t come with prizes for attendance.

But now, as I attempt to embrace the age that simple math (and a generous interpretation of current life-expectancy data) informs me is unequivocally Middle Age, I’m taking a closer look at this particular line item on my Self-Righteousness Checklist.

Truth be told, I’m wondering if a participation ribbon now and again isn’t such a bad thing after all. In fairness, nothing actually happens until first we’re willing to show up. That’s certainly when our Boat Dream dream became our Boat Dream reality, and as far as I can tell, it’s also the starting line for just about every life lesson we’ve asked our boys to embrace.

This fall, we’re choosing to pause in order to keep showing up.

We’re choosing to create the time and space for Wyatt to forge his own path into adulthood (on solid ground, as he’s kindly requested). We’re choosing to imagine a year of travel abroad on land rather than mourn the sea ports where COVID has deemed Ruby Vi unwelcome.

We’re choosing to shimmy our way through a break in the fence out back rather than knock indefinitely on the closed door in front of us.

In 2022, we’ll cast ourselves in a new show, on a new set, though with an undeniably recognizable script. After a year or so, we’ll reevaluate the world cruising stage. If we’re lucky enough to rejoin those players, we’ll tour with them once again like the salty stars I think we might be.

But we won’t do it aboard Ruby Vi.

By then, without Wyatt and with only a year or two left with Hudson in our clutches, Ruby will be more boat than we need or care to handle.

So, we’re closing out our current boat tab with Father Time and scarfing down every last taste of Ruby Vi’s would-be endless summer sundae.

Like finishing the last bite of most giant desserts, this one is simultaneously both satisfying and painful — perhaps a bit more of each than we expected.

But, as the newly-feathered fledgings Ruby Vi has helped us become, we’re eager to test our wings.

In true mom-form, she’s raised stronger and more resilient crew than she likely gives herself credit for. And, loathe as all mothers are to admit it, she’s ready to watch us fly.

During our years spent under her wings — living under her sails, traveling aboard her worldly classroom — Ruby Vi shared more life lessons with us than we paid for.

She taught us to keep our eyes and imaginations open wide enough to see far away horizons, 

our egos light enough that they won't shatter when drop-kicked onto a new stage or a new ball field, 

and our voices strong enough to say Yes when it'd be so much easier to say No. 

She’s continually reminded us that it’s both our individual and collective responsibility not only to recognize opportunities, but to search for them — always — especially in the dark spaces, the still moments.

Even in the pouring rain.

Later this fall, we expect to bid our final farewells to The Rubes. Proud though she may be of this family she helped raise, our send off surely won’t include cheap shiny ribbons or a plastic toy trophy to mark the occasion.

But I’ll be damned if I don’t finally appreciate the importance of celebrating the accomplishment that — at least once in a while — is simply the act of showing up.