Adventure Travel

Tour du Mont Blanc photo credit https://monkeysandmountains.com/tour-du-mont-blanc-trek/

Challenging, uncertain conditions, erratic weather, steep ascents, and descents.

Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB), one of the most popular long-distance walks in Europe, also described my internal climate. The TMB is a 112- mile hiking trail that circles Mont Blanc in France, Italy, and Switzerland.

“Let’s go,” I told Jody. “This is something for US.”

In April, Jody and I volunteered for 25 sporting and entertainment events at 5 different venues to raise grant funds for Juan and Crystel’s schooling. In May we are scheduled for 18 events.

Kosher stand at Twins stadium

Jody and I often manage the kosher stand at the Twins stadium. It was there, while grilling kosher hot dogs and vegan sriracha brats with the smell of onions permeating every piece of my clothing that bad weather started coming in. Overlooking third base, I had the distinct feeling, I don’t want to do this anymore.

The TMB is a classic long-distance hike. Jody and I did a classic parenting move and overextended ourselves. I wanted to bust out of myself. Explode.

I started researching international challenging hikes. The uphills of the TMB are consistently steep and over a long distance. Most days hikers are hiking through at least one mountain pass, though sometimes two or three. Often hikers are not able to see the pass from the trailhead for that day, and if you look too far ahead, it could feel like an endless amount of hiking.

Perfect.

We were hiking that terrain now.

Taking time at the dog park

I don’t want a day to go by without me being in it. Sitting on my patio, journaling, listening to the birds, feeling the sun’s warmth, pausing to see the trees sway and clouds flowing – that is my heaven. Closing my eyes, hearing it all.

Jody and I have shifted our paradigm to us. Less volunteering. More patio time. International hikes on the horizon. Already, I’m feeling more settled.

Though the TMB resembled my internal climate the Alpe Adria Trail (AAT) is more to my abilities. It is a long-distance trail that runs through three countries: from Austria, through Slovenia to Italy. It is often described as a pleasure hiker’s delight. Jody and I have signed up with a group to hike among mountain peaks, green valleys and along clear Alpine rivers and lakes. The trail connects the three countries from the Alpine glaciers to the Adriatic coast.

It’s not always, how are the children?  It’s also, how am I?

The Life You Live

My great-grandmother Octavia had a difficult childhood that probably ended the day her father killed himself in front of his wife and children. The event was chronicled in the Green Bay newspaper because it took place on a public street as his former wife planted fence posts at the edge of their property.  Octavia would marry a decent man who took her on a train trip to Chicago, provided generously, and shared decades of marriage. They lost their youngest daughter, who died after giving birth to my father, then helped raise him.

My father’s life had plenty of ups and downs which meant he grew up in the homes of his grandparents and a few uncles as well as his father. As he waited to die, my father said he was most looking forward to meeting his mother on the other side.

As today’s wars rip apart families and their homes, thousands of children find themselves without the support of biological adult relatives. Many of the displaced children of Ukraine and Gaza haven’t lived this life in their past. But this is the life they now know.

Some of us had wonderful families with great parents. Some of us grew up carefully avoiding an angry parent, a parent with mental health challenges, maybe in families always on the brink of some sort of disaster. Regardless the life we lived, we are now role models and sentinels for the future of today’s children. 

Decades ago, my husband and I cherished the good wishes and Mother’s Day cards that were shared during the early stages of a first pregnancy. The next year we stumbled through Mother’s Day following a premature still birth of twins. The following year we had a five-month-old. We know folks who were not able to become parents, folks who chose to not become parents, babies who were amazing surprises and a few not exactly celebrated surprises. Regardless of how early years play out, all kids grow into adults. Their 

As we celebrate the 2024 parenting holidays, the challenge is to embrace our adult responsibility of helping children and young adults walk confidently toward their futures. A helpful hand, a few kind words, the demonstration of how bumpy steps can be traveled, should be extended by anyone regardless of physical parenting status. For those who have a mother, hopefully the years were good and you’re paying it forward. May your children celebrate the family you’ve created. May others remember your support so the lives they live are more smooth than bumpy.

What I Know For Sure

Older Like many women, I subscribed to O, The Oprah Magazine from its inaugural issue in 2000 to its last two decades later. Along the way, I tore out and saved a four-inch-high stack of articles and ads that has been sitting on an upstairs bookshelf ever since.

That stack included the ad pictured here. It was part of Chico’s 2018 “Growing Bolder Not Older” campaign designed to celebrate women and their desire for style at every age.”

I saved the ad because its headline proclaimed exactly what I expected to be doing as I aged…growing bolder, not older. 

One reason for my optimism was my grandmother, Valeria Szczech. Born in 1902, she lived most of her life on a Benton County farm and died in her sleep at age 92.

In between, she had no choice but to grow bolder. Life circumstances required it. Valeria’s mother had died of a heart attack on Valeria’s wedding day, leaving her partially responsible for several members of her extended family, including a brother who was unable to work due to a heart condition.

Then, in 1952, her husband, my grandfather, died a few weeks after the tractor he was working on exploded, leaving him severely burned on 90% of his body.

Despite his death, Valeria continued to live on the farm, milking cows, feeding chickens, canning vegetables and doing whatever else was needed, thankfully with the help of their son who lived only a farm-field away.

After her son’s too-early death, she sold the farm and moved to the small town of Foley, where she attended mass, made new friends, grew a large garden and provided full-time care for a brother made infirm by a stroke. 

I was in awe of her and her independence and assumed my grandmother’s get-up-and-go—and the get-up-and-go that I thrived on in my 40s and 50s—would continue through my 70s, 80s and even my 90s.

Unfortunately, at 66, I’m already finding that much of that get-up-and-go has gotten up and gone. At least temporarily. And although I do not think of myself as old, and some days not even as older, I am definitely not bolder. Nor do I strive to be.

Yes, I still enjoy meeting friends for coffee or a walk, but I’m no longer willing to drive in rush hour traffic to make it happen. Yes, I still travel, but not as often or as vigorously as I once did. And yes, I still walk, but more often solo in my own neighborhood rather than around the lakes with a friend.

At first, I blamed Covid. After all, where was there to go when nowhere was safe? But while fears of the virus have eased, my desire to go, go, go has not returned. Instead, I’m content being at home, purging files, clearing clutter, organizing cupboards and completing projects.

Does that make me less bold? Perhaps, but in keeping with one of Oprah’s signature phrases, “what I know for sure” is that I am growing older…and for that I am truly grateful.

Seeing Forward and Back

I’ve cared for enough older women in my family to see the frailties I may have in the coming years. I’ve learned to be patient with their slower pace. I accept the extra steps they take to stay in charge of their lives—switching glasses and putting them away carefully and doublechecking locks. I already do that. I’m accustomed to the effort invested in maintaining dignity—looking where I’m walking, dressing comfortably, but well. So far, I’ve managed to avoid the flat bedhead spot so many older women seem unaware of!

Some days I feel exactly how old I am. My hip twinges a little. Or I can’t think of a word and it comes back five minutes later. I have a wealth of experiences and insights but the wisdom to know I should refrain from giving too much unasked-for advice. At this stage of life, my outlook is measured. Realistic.

Other days I feel like I’m fifty. Nothing aches. I’m energetic, ready to tackle big projects, and confident they’ll turn out well. The future is off in the distance and looks bright. I’m optimistic.

My thirties are also vivid—relived through the lives of my daughters-in-law. Revived by their pregnancies and new motherhood. I remember how fascinating my changing body was and how much it mattered to have a few maternity clothes I really liked. 

1989

I haven’t forgotten the fog and overwhelm of life with a newborn. How every little thing worries you. I also know you can grow bored by the long repetitive days, no matter how much you love your child. How ready you can be to use your brain for something besides calculating the hours since the last feeding. But the sweetness of cuddling a sleeping baby tempers that restlessness.

When my son hands me his baby, our past, present, and future converge.

Gotcha Day

Ani, Rosa, Juan, Aryanna (Juan’s girlfriend)

“We missed Juan’s Coming Home Day,” Jody said. Jody and I were doing our usual morning routine with her sitting on the dog bed, her back to the furnace. Buddy and Sadie next to her. Jody and the dogs love the furnace heat in the early morning hours. I reclined with a blanket on the couch. Her memory was jogged by reading a Facebook post about a family celebrating their child’s Gotcha day.   

“I don’t mind,” I said. “I’m not sure that it’s important to them. Maybe it just brings up trauma.”

Jody nodded. An unspoken agreement that we weren’t going to raise the issue.

Coming Home Day, as we have termed it, was the day that Juan and Crystel came home to us from Guatemala. Born six weeks apart, they came home within weeks of each other.

When they were young, we celebrated as if it were another birthday. Cakes, presents, MOA visits, concerts, and waterparks.

It was a day to recognize us coming together as a family and to acknowledge their birth moms.

“Oh, your kids are so lucky,” people often say to us. Even Jody will say, “When I come back, I want to come back as your child.” The last time she said it, which wasn’t that long ago, I said, “You do realize that you’re not saying that you want to come back as my partner.” She laughed and laughed at the truth of it.

It would be so easy to not complicate Juan and Crystel’s adoption and rest with the belief that they are so fortunate.

Recently, I had a dream where I was at a large extended family gathering. Aunts and uncles. Cousins. I was in my twenties. I chatted with relatives, played with the youngsters. I kept an eye out for my birth family. They were late. Delayed. Then, I realized they weren’t coming. There was always so much going on in my home that plans often got waylaid. Or it just wasn’t important for them to come even though the celebration was for me.

I felt this void. This loss. This emptiness. A hole where blood family should be.

I woke up wondering about this empty space for Juan and Crystel. Do they have a dream where their birth family doesn’t make it to their celebration?

Crystel’s birth family

There is trauma in being abandoned. Given up. Relinquished.

Jody and I have done what we could to make them whole with travels to Guatemala, birth family meetings, and name changes.

At five-years-old, they asked, “Whose belly did I come from, yours or Mama Jody’s?” Jody and I explained that there was a third mama in Guatemala. The kids persisted, “No! Mama Bef or Mama Jody!?!”

A hole where blood family should be.