Christie Lake Adventures | A Deaf Mom Shares Her World

The Older I Get, The More Adventure I Want

Me, Tracy and Tammy

I’ve got an itch. I don’t know what it is.

Last week, one of my co-workers picked me and another co-worker up from the Tampa airport in a convertible and we zipped along the highway with the wind whipping through. Along the way to headquarters, the two guys talked about their upcoming plans for the afternoon. One of them had a Harley and the other was going to rent one. They were going to ride the hogs around Clearwater and up to St. Petersburg after they dropped me off at headquarters.

And dang it, I wanted to go with them. I wanted to ride a motorcycle on a clear Florida day.

Like I said, I’ve got an itch. Forget the usual mid-life crisis solution of having an affair. I don’t want an affair. I want an adventure. I’ve done 15 years at home raising my kids and now I want more. The problem is, I can’t quite figure out what “more” is. Over the weekend, I met a deaf barefooter down in Florida and I learned about Judy Myers, the 66-year-old gal who took up barefooting in mid-life. I wanna be like her when I grow up. So barefooting again is on the list.

I thought I solved my mid-life crisis by buying a jet ski. But the problem is, there’s snow on the ground outside right now. The jet ski is packed away in a shed.

When I look back at my youth, I have to blame my Dad for this. You see, one day, he came home with a boat. He didn’t even ask my Mom if it was ok. He just drove home with the yellow boat that was nicknamed “The Bumblebee.” We took it out to Fox Lake and I learned to water ski in the polluted lake when I was nine. Then he bought mini-bikes. One of the mini-bikes was missing a cover over the motor. I remember one day, me and my friend Lisa took off in the mini-bikes up at the lake. “Watch your legs!” my Dad hollered before we took off. We were halfway around the lake when I hit a hole and my calf brushed against the spinning motor. I dripped blood for a good two miles before we arrived back to wash up with the garden hose. The mini-bikes disappeared shortly after that. Then Dad came home with two snowmobiles. Somewhere, down in the basement, is a photo of my brother Kenny taking off from a three-foot snow ramp that we built in the middle of the yard. I have memories of a caravan of us snowmobiling up to the restaurant by I-94 and having breakfast there.

Then there were the ATV toys that the Kronewitters brought into the picture. They had two ATVs and a Dune Buggy. The very first day that we unloaded the brand-new ATV off the truck, the youngest Kronewitter rode it into a tree and bent the foot rest. That didn’t stop us. Tammy, Tracy and I would pack a lunch and hit the roads around the lake. We explored abandoned houses and got lost a couple of times. We built a dirt ramp in a field and borrowed Tim Brown’s dirt bike to add to the mix. At one point, I had to go to the bathroom, so I rode the dirt bike home and headed inside. Mom stopped me at the door. “Whose motorcycle is that and why are you riding it?” She was not pleased.

Fun was the operative word of my childhood. Tammy, Tracy and I often came up with crazy ideas to pass the time. We did an all-girl pyramid with me at the top. We did three of us on two pairs of skis, with me riding in the back binder of each. We tied ropes around black truck inner tubes which folded practically in half when pulled, but we hung on. We boat jumped (don’t even ask). We attempted to jump over each other with kneeboards–which ended right after I knocked Tammy in the head. We settled for pulling up on the rope and jumping over the rope instead. And one day, we had a competition with another boat on the lake, to see which boat could pull the most skiers. We won, with eight.

Is it any wonder that I’ve got an itch? And my Dad, he didn’t stop when he got older. In his late seventies, he bought himself an ATV.

I wonder if I can con my Dad into buying a motorcycle this summer?

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Fashionable Hearing Aids

I came across a post this morning, The Shame of Wearing Hearing Aids and it brought back memories. I was one of those kids who hid a hearing aid under long hair. It wasn’t until I was in college that I finally wore my hair up and my hearing aid perched for all to see. Kinda sad, eh? All those years spent trying to hide something that was basically a part of me– except I didn’t want any part of it.

I decided to raise my kids with a different attitude about their hearing aids. From the start, we went with brightly-colored earmolds with swirls and glitter. I even joined my daughter in getting matching glitter earmolds. I’m pretty sure I saw my audiologist hold back a gulp when I asked for the blue with glitter when she squeezed the earmold goop into my ear.

So far, no one has had the guts to tell me that I look foolish sporting glitter at my age.

Despite my years of preaching about being proud of those two pieces of technology on their ears, my kids had minds of their own– each of them have made decisions about color vs. minimal color. My 12-year-old recently decided that he had enough of the wild colors and chose clear earmolds at the last fitting. After years of wearing boring beige hearing aids, the oldest went for a slick black pair with clear earmolds. It was now my daughter’s turn for new hearing aids and we sat down to go over the colors for a new pair of hearing aids. Staring at the hearing aid website, I was floored at the color choices. When I was growing up, it was pretty much beige and black as the choices.

I was pretty sure she was going to pick out something cool.

“Look, there’s zebra and giraffe patterns!” I exclaimed. “And look at this cool blue and whoa– that purple! Oh and look–they have this cool see-through hearing aid!”

She picked beige.

Yes, boring, typical, oh-so-ordinary… beige.

“Mom, I’m going to be wearing these hearing aids for a couple of years, maybe even into adulthood,” she said. “Do you really think I want to go to prom with a giraffe pattern or purple– what if it doesn’t match my dress? Besides, I can change my earmold colors anytime I want.”

Yeah, she’s got a point there. Earmolds are $125 a pop. Hearing aids are nearly five grand.

“The beige looks nice,” I said.

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What I Learned from Laughter: Laughing at the Small Stuff

Every now and then, I like to participate in Robert Hruzek’s group writing projects–they’re always a fun read! This month’s subject focuses on:

What I Learned from Laughter.

At first, I thought I would just share the blog post I wrote over at Chicago Moms Blog:

When Your Only Option is a Thong.

When I wrote that one, several friends emailed me and told me they couldn’t stop laughing. I wasn’t laughing too much when I wrote it, because I was overwhelmed at the laundry piles around my house. But hey, I learned a valuable lesson from that episode: do your laundry on a regular basis and you won’t have to resort to thongs. Or worse, commando, as Vicky once teased on Twitter.

When I think about what I’ve learned from laughter, there’s one episode in my life that stands out. When the three kids were younger, I often had days when I counted the minutes until the hubby would arrive home and provide an extra pair of eyes and hands in my quest to keep three kids in one place.

My oldest kiddo, David, was often on hurricane cycle. He would bounce from one activity to the next (like his Mom??) and leave a path of destruction in his wake. I once put the baby down for a nap and left David and Lauren parked in front of the TV so I could quickly go to the bathroom. I walked into the kitchen to find the two of them drawing wavy lines on the kitchen wall. In a matter of seconds, David had grabbed some crayons off the counter and coerced his sister into drawing artwork on the flat white builder’s paint. The artwork stayed on the wall for over a year– because neither the hubby nor I could muster up enough energy to paint over the crayon.

One evening, David was a category five and my patience was long gone. I was just trying to survive long enough until the hubby arrived home so I could hand off the kid duties to him. The hubby arrived home and surveyed the toys strewn about, the lunch dishes on the table and me with the harried look on my face. He could tell it was “one of those days.”

After a hurried dinner, I filled the bathtub up and went to grab towels from the other bathroom. As I walked back in, my eyes caught something floating in the bathtub.

I screamed.

It was a brand new book: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

I fished it out of the water, wiped as much of the wet stuff off as I could and started to cry. I sat on the toilet and the tears kept coming. Mothering three kids just two years apart had taken its toll and came crashing down on me at that moment. Just then, David came over, climbed in my lap and started hugging me.

“I love you Mommy.” He hugged me again.

My eyes went back to the book and I saw the title more clearly. “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”

I started to laugh.

Alternating between tears and laughter, I smiled at the irony of the whole thing.

It is now years later– the little boy has grown into a young man– but I still have the book with the warped pages stuck together. It’s a reminder of that hectic time of three kids under the age of four–when I thought the day would never end and I’d never have a minute to myself. Today, the kids amuse themselves and there’s a little more time for me. How quickly the time flies, how valuable that lesson of laughter is.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. And remember to laugh in the process.

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Saying Goodbye to Summer

I hate Labor Day Weekend. It’s the “official” end of summer at Christie Lake and it always makes me sad. We try and grab as much as we can out of the weekend and always have to make the decision of whether or not we’ll take the boats out or stretch out a couple more weekends into the fall.

It’s been a rather cool summer this year and the summer was one of the speediest summers I can ever remember. It was gone in a flash. Joe’s Mom keeps trying to tell me that the older you get, the faster time spins. She told me this when David was a baby and I laughed. She said the high school years were a blur. I couldn’t fathom that, because I was holding a little kiddo in my hands and just trying to make it through the next hour with some semblance of sanity and intact thought.

Damn. She wasn’t kidding. Time is indeed spiraling by and I swear, it seems like someone keeps turning the clocks on fast-forward. You know that little baby I was talking about? This is him:

He’s an offensive lineman for Hinsdale South now. In two short years, we’ll be sending him off to college. I don’t understand how he went from being a baby just yesterday to this strapping hulk of a boy/man. I kind of envy the Duggars. If I was smart, I could have cheated Father Time by just having baby after baby. Yeah, that would have been a good plan– you know how time crawls when you try to get through hour by hour with little ones. And then it would take forever before the last kiddo goes off to Grown-up-hood.

But getting back to the weekend, another reason I don’t like Labor Day weekend: each summer that goes by is a summer that I know I can’t get back, another summer ticking by.

So here it is, the big weekend of summer. So rather than thinking about endings, I’m going to celebrate the weekend instead. Join me–not in saying goodbye to summer, but just merely, “So long, see ya next year!”

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Lessons from a Sea Doo

It was one of those idyllic summer weekends– good food on the grill, time with the family and fun on the water. David and I took turns pulling each other on the jet ski, attempting to skim along the water on our bare feet. I hadn’t gone barefooting in years, but I surprised myself by getting up on the board and planting my feet in the water. I lasted all of two seconds before sinking in the water. David tried a couple of times, both on the board and on the ski. He was pretty determined to try over and over. I liked the fire that I saw in his eyes as he attempted the new skill.

The kids wakeboarded behind the Sea Doo and then we did some tubing the next day with another deaf family.

Yesterday, the sky was grey and a storm had passed through. The sun lightened up the clouds and David decided to pull Steven on the wakeboard behind the Sea Doo. Steven did a dock start on the wakeboard and went halfway around the lake before he fell and the two of them headed back for another round. As David tossed out the rope, the Sea Doo was still circling.

Whoooosh.

The rope went right up the intake. With the intake piston revolving over 1,000 RPMs, it wasn’t long before the rope got stuck.

I was in the house when I heard the news. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t win any Mommy-of-the-Year awards with my response. I’m sure the neighbor’s eyes popped watching my animated signing. “What-were-you-thinking-this-was-totally-avoidable-how-could-you-not-watch-the-freaking-rope…”

I’ll spare you the rest.

David and Joe went under the lift to assess the damage. “It’s wound up so tight, totally impossible to get this off,” Joe said. “I think we need to bring it to the marine place and have them take it apart.”

“Try to get it off,” I growled at them.

After a half an hour of hacking at it and cutting loose some of the rope, the guys weren’t getting very far. I finally jumped in the water to take a look.

It wasn’t pretty.

The rope was wound so tight and it had been shoved deep into the shaft. My first instinct was to agree with Joe– this was a job for someone else to do. I took another look.

Hmmm, if I could just loosen one end, we might be able to get it out.

“Can you get me a long screwdriver and a needle-nose pliers?”

Little by little, we each took turns under the lift and loosening the rope bit by bit. David had a big grin on his face when he pulled out the last of the rope from the shaft. He had relieved grin on his face when I started up the Sea Doo and took off with it. It worked fine.

So what did we learn from this? For starters, David learned how powerful the intake was on a jet ski– I’m betting that he’ll never make this mistake again. I also was reminded of the time that I ran over a ski rope myself around the same age–my Dad had to take the prop off the boat to get all of the rope out. I do remember him hollering at me to be more careful after that.

But the biggest lesson of all was this: Something that at first looks impossible can be accomplished by working at it little by little and not giving up.

More lessons from a Sea Doo–What I Learned About Stress.

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Come On, Let’s Tip the Girls Over! Wordless Wednesday

The boys succeeded in tipping the girls off the tube.

Wordless Wednesday!

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Uncovering Written Memories

I was going through a pile of papers and the hand-written essay caught my eye. It was an essay written during my freshmen year at a local community college. I sat down to read it and was instantly transported back in time. I received an “A” on this essay, probably not so much for how it was written (because I see many mistakes and ways it could be written differently) but more for the story it shared:

Even now, seven years later, I can still remember the first time I met Mike. I was eleven years old when we drove up to our newly bought cottage. As we settled down, a slightly balding man walked over and introduced himself as Mike. That was the beginning of a special friendship that was rather slow in forming [at first].

I cannot remember much of the first four years. I was a very shy girl then, but Mike’s friendliness won me me over. I was like a turtle, coming out of my shell when Mike was around.

The shell really broke when I began to show a serious interest in [water]skiing. Mike’s son used to waterski competitevely and Mike used his knowledge to encourage me. He gave me the encouragement that I wanted so much from my own parents.

He taught me a card game called “Casino” and we spent many a time together winning and losing to each other. He was dubbed “The Champ,” and whenever I would win a game, I would [strut around and] call myself, “The Champ.” But never for long, because he would win back the title in the next game.

Mike had a great sense of humor. I always remember summers full of laughter around him. He would put on airs of a big-time gambler, strutting around wearing his favorite hat from Las Vegas. The expressions he used, his movements, never failed to bring out a laugh.

There was a serious side to him. Family bickerings always clouded his face. He never let anyone know what he was thinking or how he really felt during those days.

This summer, Mike got sick. I hardly saw him during the summer. No one knew it was serious until his son-in-law told us that Mike had cancer. I was stunned.

A few weeks after I found out, I went to see Mike in his office. I was shocked, for he had grown thin and pale. It was the first time that I realized he was not going to get better. It was the last time I saw him.

Mike died last week and I lost a very special friend. As I sat in the church at his funeral, I thought of the good times and the bad times. I replayed his smile, his laugh, and all the scenes of summer that came to my mind. One particular scene stands out:

I remember him standing under the maple tree and telling me that I was going to be the first girl to barefoot (waterski on my bare feet) on Christie Lake. I laughed at him then. Early this summer, I did it–but Mike was not around to share the glory [that first time]. When he finally came to the lake for a short visit, he sat in the boat and saw me barefoot. I’ll never forget the proud look on his face. That was the best memory Mike could have given me.

Karen and Mike

Karen barefooting

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The Power of Visualization and the Power of a Number

People are always asking me why the number “22″ is so special to me. Before I explain why, let me ask you this: have you ever had a goal that was so burning bright that you just HAD to accomplish it?

I started waterskiing when I was nine years old. My father came home with an old, yellow boat. Just like that. Out of the blue. He didn’t even discuss boat ownership with my mom. Included with the boat were a pair of wooden water skis and a ski belt. A belt, mind you. None of those fancy molded water ski jackets. Just a floatation belt.

My father took my mom, sis and me out to a local lake in Indiana one evening. None of us knew anything about waterskiing. I don’t think my father even knew much about running a boat, much less pulling a skier. I strapped on the skis and I was hooked. I liked waterskiing.

I was eleven when my parents bought the place on Christie Lake. Dad got rid of the yellow boat and bought a cute little red boat. After a few years of waterskiing and learning to slalom, I had a burning desire to learn to barefoot. I kept watching the guys (including my brother) zip around the lake on their bare feet. There weren’t any other girls barefooting on the lake. I picked up an issue of Waterskiingand discovered that there was a book by John Gillette called Barefooting. I used my allowance and sent away for the book.

I read the book from cover to cover. I also set a goal: that I was going to barefoot by the end of that summer. I had just turned sixteen that August.

The first time I tried it, I planted my foot in the water and kicked off the ski. Wham! I tried again and again over several days. I kept slamming into the water. I decided to try a different method with a kneeboard. I dragged my Mom to the local boat shop and begged her to buy a kneeboard. It was $109– a lot of money back then. I came home and tried out the kneeboard. The first several tries didn’t work. I was really frustrated. I went home and felt really discouraged.

That night, I lay awake trying to figure out why I couldn’t do it. I closed my eyes and suddenly visualized myself completing each step in the book. I imagined how great it would feel to have the board drop away and the water beneath my feet.

The next day was August 22. The day that I finally learned to barefoot.

So the number 22 has stayed with me since then. Not so much because of the accomplishment, but because of the lesson behind it–the power of visualization. If you can see yourself accomplishing something, you can do it. I use the number 22 to remind me to stay on track, to visualize what I want to accomplish.

How about you? Have you ever used visualization and had it lead to success? Do you have a special number that reminds you to accomplish something?

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Summer is Flying By

Ah, it felt good to unplug this week.

I took the kids back up to Christie Lake on Sunday to grab the last full week up here. My cousins came up from Missouri again and my husband’s friend and his kids joined us on Wednesday. Mike and his kids only planned to stay two days, but it’s Sunday morning and they’re still here. We are sitting in the kitchen having omelettes and getting ready for a final boat ride before we head home. That’s the lure of lakeside living–good food, good friends and lots of fun. It’s hard to leave.

Yesterday, for the fun of it, we drove around the lake to see the few homes that are up for sale. Housing prices on the lake have soared in the last five years. We stopped at a house that was priced at $900,000 last year and is being offered at $649,000 this summer. It’s a beautiful piece of property but the house looks like it will require some work to update it. Also up for sale is a pair of houses that my friend Tammy rented for several years. The two tiny houses perched on a very tiny lot are going for $349,000. There’s also another small ranch home up for sale for nearly 300 grand.

There’s even a beautiful lot for sale for…are you ready for this….$345,000. This lot is on the same part of the lake that my two brothers owned land many years ago. They bought the lot for ten grand back then and sold it a few years later for a very small profit. It’s hard to believe that land has soared that much in price but Christie Lake is a private lake, one of the few private lakes in Michigan with no public access.

For the last couple of years, I have been talking about buying a jet ski. I started looking at used ones earlier in the summer. I came close to purchasing a few of them, but someone else always beat me to the offer. “Why don’t you look at a new one?” the hubby suggested. I stopped at Leader’s Marine in Kalamazoo on the way home from dropping off a Redbox movie and looked at the new ones. Sea Doo was running a special with low cost financing and a $800 gas card.

I went to talk to Dick, a 74-year-old neighbor who owned pretty much every toy there is. He had some ski lifts sitting in the water and I wanted to see if I could buy one. They’ve gone through three used jet skis. The most recent one was purchased by his son earlier in the summer and it was already out of commission just a few weeks later. I was apprehensive about buying used vs. new. I was leaning toward the new Sea Doo, mostly because it had a key that wouldn’t let a user go over 35 mph. I could use that for the kids to keep them from going full speed at 50-60 mph.

“Life is short, go buy it!” Dick said.

Life is short. How many times have I said that to other people?

And that’s how I ended up buying a Sea Doo for my birthday.

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Are You Enjoying Your Summer?

It was like old times. We invited two families to join us at Christie Lake over the weekend. Dennis, Laura, Steve and Joanne. Plus their kids. It was the first time we all kicked back together up at the lake. The weather forecast called for rain the entire weekend but none of us cared. We just wanted to connect with one another and catch up on life.

Visiting St. Julian's Winery

It definitely rained. We decided to go to the St. Julian Winery in the morning. We left Dennis behind with the kids, and they took off in the rain to go swimming. I hadn’t been to the winery since I was a kid, sipping grape juice at the bar. It was fun to sample the wine and try unusual ones. We ended up buying a blackberry wine and the Niagara.

After the sampling, we took a tour of the winery. The tour guide slowed down his speech and faced us while he spoke, so the tour was pretty accessible for us. Unfortunately, the short movie in the beginning wasn’t captioned.

When we arrived back, the rain slowed down. We grabbed lunch and then decided to go tubing with just the adults first. The kids were taking a break from all the swimming they did.

As I whipped Dennis and Steve around, I tried to make sure that Steve didn’t fall off too hard or crash his head into Dennis. I didn’t want to jar his cochlear implant internally and be responsible for sending him back into the hospital for a re-implant. When Steve climbed into the boat, he thanked me for the wild ride. “That was me being cautious!” I laughed.

Steve brought up his kayaks so we all took turns kayaking around the lake. On Sunday, the sun came out in the afternoon so we took the pontoon out and swam in the middle. We took the kids tubing and kneeboarding the rest of the time.

This was a rare weekend for all of us together but I was really thankful for it. There’s nothing like spending some time with friends and family, sharing good food and good times.

So how’s your summer going? Are you finding enjoyable moments to kick back and enjoy? Share them in the comment section!