Unschoolers can really struggle with a calendar. Tuesday is just as good as Saturday for math practice, a day at the skate park, or a gallery tour at a local museum. My boys didn’t know what a “weekend” or “summer break” was for years.
Likewise, I don’t hold much stock in the end of the calendar or placing special meaning on it. However, we were invited to join in on an unexpected road trip to close out the year and couldn’t be more excited to finish this calendar year with another adventure.
We had snuck into a little spot at the edge of the balcony between a massive trumpet vine and the stone railing. It wasn’t quite like being against the barrier at a Rage Against the Machine show, but maneuverability was limited.
The effect was that the sunset was all we had. Even with all these people and their conversations around, we had this small space that directed all our attention at the horizon. We stretched our hands out and could feel the air cool, the wind rise, the light all around us change, and the sounds soften. My sons experienced the end of a day like they had never done before.
The next morning, my mind went to a TEDx talk on Paper Letter Exchange. How much has modernity removed us from fundamental experience? Not long ago, sunset would have been a critical moment of each day. Now we have to use Google to find out when it will happen. How much does the body and brain crave that moment when the sun disappears? How much is it needed for rejuvenation, relaxation, or to take time to start cataloging the day?
There’s more importance in “mindfulness” than I had thought before this journey. For me, prayer and meditation aren’t enough. I’ve got to record whatever is there after I clear my mind.
I struggled with taking pictures after Mary’s passing and I hadn’t taken many before I started caring for my sons. Mary enjoyed sharing our adventures and there were a lot of moments I only snapped for her. Until that day, I couldn’t come up with a good reason to maintain the record keeping. It’s another intangible, but it helps. If it can help me, I pray that I can use it to help others.
It would be scandalous to say how good this year has been. I’ve gotten to unknow and start to find myself again. I’ve spent more time with my sons than I thought possible. I’ve had the chance to reflect on an imperfect love that was stronger than I knew. A love that not only survived death, but continues to pour forth out of me.
My mind is stronger, clearer, more aware of what is necessary and what is accouterment.
It started as a joke, but my sons embraced the idea of using our Norfolk pine as our Christmas tree this year. It was a classically “Mary” plant: impossible to keep alive and rooted in history. It had been her grandma Emily’s. I never met Emily, but we did visit her ancestral home (and the Clan McPherson Museum) during our honeymoon travels.
The Norfolk looks like a proud, if awkward, dancer with its single string of lights, standing tall and bright in the pre-winter dark. I was tempted to keep ornaments off of it to remember that a life doesn’t need trimmings to be beautiful, it only needs light.
Then I was reminded that life doesn’t conform to my sense of symbolism. My younger son made a foam picture frame, a tiny thing for which he wanted a special picture. I found a surplus of last year’s Christmas cards and Isaac was seated next to his mom. He asked me to cut out the two of them, which was unusual as he’s a skilled and independent crafter. He hot glued it in place and asked for it to be the first ornament on the tree.
He’s so much like her, sweetly and genuinely sentimental. I could not think of a better way to have Mary with us this Christmas.
April 1, 2011: World Cafe Live at the Queen opens with a Free at Noon show from Sonny Landreth. Our second son was born a month later and had to wait a few months before he got to see Dengue Fever and Matthew Sweet in Wilmington.
Every Friday World Cafe Live hosts a free lunchtime concert. The next week’s act is announced immediately after each show and all you have to do to get on the list is register here.
These are full-on shows. They’re broadcast live and the artists are often on the rise, so the performances have that high-profile feel. Down on the big WCL stage it’s a lot more like Saturday night than midday Friday. The shows are shorter, they don’t run past 1:00 pm, but performers will often play a couple more songs after the broadcast has ended.
When WXPN was still in Wilmington, Mary would take a long lunch and join us. I think we took advantage of every Free at Noon down at 500 N. Market. A particular highlight was the Queen’s Fifth Anniversary Celebration with Ben Harper. Although I saw him at Woodstock ’99, Mary had a great collection of his music and I got to appreciate the variety and depth of his talent.
Getting that jambalaya at Reading Terminal Market after Lissie, 2016 Warming up for Valerie June in 2017Valerie June
#Protips for Families:
Ear Protection! In-ear or over-ear, these are shows are full volume. Also, folks will hassle you about taking care of your children’s ears. It gets on my nerves, but I try to take it as helpful.
Secret Spot! Doors open at 11:30 and the line often begins forming before that. Get there early and you can take advantage of our favorite “seats.” Head straight in along the bar, just past the last support column and before the stairs to the dance floor. There you’ll find the perfect spot to camp out and have a great view with natural boundaries.
And if the kiddos want to get on the dance floor, you’ve got a bird’s eye view of the whole place.
That is the look of a boy who did not look before he leapt.
Tentatively, “Uh…Dad?” My heart was in the process of slowing as I had turned away from my mountain goat of a son jumping over crevices as if hundreds of feet of rocky death were not waiting below. Now that heart stopped. If he was being cautious I imagined he was now hanging from an outcropping, not sure how to recover. Fortunately, he was just trying to get back the way he came and his change in perspective showed him just how high we were.
I counted it as a free-range-parenting win (child alive, unscathed!, learning his limits) and helped him back across to our snacky lunch and our other impending disaster.
See the boot on my older’s right foot? Yeah, no lace. See the sole between the raisins and graham crackers? Yeah, not on the boot.
We weren’t halfway through a 2.5-mile hike when the sole began to separate from the boot. Turn back to possibly never see Coopers Rock State Forest‘s Raven Rock? Carry him when the boot inevitably failed? Or go pirate MacGyver and carry on?
Not the first attempt, one of my laces and a backpack drawstring.
They don’t come tougher or more determined than my sons. As each rig failed he stopped and followed my directions as I asked him to sit, stand, hold onto me, let go, etc., etc…
Fourth or fifth configuration.
They both inspired me as they took the slow pace in stride and we discovered a lot along the way.
Red eft stage (terrestrial) of the Red-spotted Newt. Identification care of Delaware Nature Society’s Jim White.A snake, self-identified (by me, not the snake).Mountain magnolias often brightened our path.Lots of sole support, looking like we have a winner.
We’re moving along, rain is coming down, and he tests each rig by dancing, walking backwards, and spinning at every opportunity.
And then…
Yep, the other sole gets loose and I trade another lace. I figure I’ll be carrying him pretty soon as our extended time on the trail put us closer to a forecasted storm. Nope, we all trudged on and finished an estimated 90-minute hike in just under four hours. It was remarkable and we all knew it. The patience and determination they showed on that trail gave them a confidence that no pep talk could.
“Dad, did we leave North America?”
It was a hearty lunch of baked beans, mac and cheese, and hot dogs for all of us. But the day was not done, there were hours of sunlight left and a world to explore. What to do next?
That’s right, an hour of Brazilian jiu-jitsu at Team Junqueira Cheat Lake, West Virginia, with some great competitors to wind down.
Super Fight
It’s insane. There’s no other word. We hit a museum, arboretum, and new campground the next day. I look forward to telling all the stories.
On the morning of Saturday, February 10th, my sons trained at their Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio, then were summoned by their father to Wilmington Hospital. Mom had been there for a week. Dad had been a rare sight. They were in their gis, cuter and stronger than any children I know. I sat them down on a bench outside their mother’s room. I confirmed that they understood how sick Mom was. I told them that she would probably not survive this. Hugs and crying. We were then in the currents of things we could not control. Their mother, Mary, would pass into the hands of God two days later.
We can’t control this moment, but we can plan the next. In that hallway I cooked up a road trip. “This will be a beginning,” I said to myself. Nothing radical. We were campers and festival goers already. The Delfest lineup was perfect. As littles, the boys had seen Rhiannon Giddens as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Appel Farm Arts and Music Festival in 2012.
Front row. Zerbey style.
Six years later (essentially their whole lives), they’d get to see her again in all her iconoclastic-americana-irish-opera-fusion glory. I didn’t cry, but got pretty damn close to what might be called “crying.” My sons loved it and we had our first night together in a tent as the Zerbey Three.
On Independence Day we took an uncharacteristic turn as full-on “tourons” in Washington, D.C. Mary introduced me to this term and we never used it as strongly as the Urban Dictionary describes. For us, it was just that unimaginative sightseeing and photo taking one does on holiday from time to time.
I plotted our walking route from the Metro station to the White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and finally a spot along the Potomac River to view the fireworks. I hardly expected my seven- and nine-year-old sons to make the journey with heat, crowds, and detours in our way.
Our saving grace came early in the day at Renwick Gallery, across from the White House. We love museums and an escape from the sun was already in order.
We found much more than an escape. No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man is an exhibit that recreates the other-worldly California desert spectacle. Within this world there was the Temple. A place of remembrance and introspection about those things that have been lost. It is simply composed of cut and sanded plywood, but the intricacies are unending.
Visitors are encouraged to take a 4″ by 4″ block of wood and write about something or someone they have lost. This could have been one of those “ambushes” you learn about as you grieve, but it wasn’t. I invited my sons to participate and was surprised at their reactions. Westen, the older and more vocal about his mom, declined and chose to quietly walk the space. Isaac has been much more reserved about losing his mom, but wanted me to transcribe something for him.
As he mentally created his message, a phrase came to me: We will gain more than we have lost. I can’t take credit for it. It was purely divine and seems all but impossible. When God asks you to do the impossible it’s because He knows it can be done. I hope my faith is strong enough to keep believing that.
For Isaac’s part, his message was all sweetness and love and compassion. It was also arms-outstretched broad for so few words. It speaks for itself.
During Mary’s final days, I was inspired to take my sons on a real adventure. Mary took every opportunity to spend time with her family. Not one vacation hour was ever held over year to year. She was present as often as possible and we are (literally) eternally grateful for the time we all had together. She would amass her paid time off and start rigging the calendar in January to prepare for her favorite two weeks of the year, and by December we would have her all to ourselves to close out each year. But we never took time for a proper road trip adventure.
It took me three months after Mary’s passing to pull out of the driveway in a borrowed 19-foot RoadTrek 190 with little idea of how long we would be gone or how far we would go. After nearly seven weeks and 3,000 miles of visiting with friends and family, wandering, and exploring, we rolled back into that driveway and we had gone far.
But I messed up.
In the three months between Mary’s death and the trip I had started to develop our new life. Laundry, dishes, meals, bedtime, church, play, rest, blogging, personal business sorting, soccer, jiu-jitsu, Facebook engagement…everything was different in small and large ways. I was watching the changes, analyzing them, and through trial-and-error and important prioritizing, I was internalizing and owning those changes.
I thought the road trip would be an extension of that process. A way to prove to myself that the Zerbey Three could love each other, adventure, and still get the basic practicals done. It felt that way for six weeks and three days. Then I got sick with a nasty stomach bug and was blessed to be staying with Mary’s parents. I know I’m not going to do this alone, but I was almost incapable of providing for my sons and lying in bed thinking about what was next. Going home. It was one of those changes I hadn’t faced. Mary wasn’t there to build the ready-for-the-car pile in the hall. Mary wasn’t there to negotiate our departure time. Mary wasn’t there to wrangle with her mom about how much food we’d take with us. All of a sudden, she was gone again. Driving home, I had that empty passenger seat and no one to figure out what “had to” come in the house tonight and what could wait. I lost all the rhythms I composed in those first three months. I didn’t have enough food in the fridge and the washing machine wouldn’t accept any quarters.
I’ve got to look at this reset as an opportunity to do things better. I made a ton of mistakes in those first months. I hadn’t elaborated a perfect system that’s now lost. I had a survival system that would not last and now needs a full rebuild. So, I’ve got my first pot of coffee and blog post going. I think that’s something.
