Classy Chaos

Long before having kids and years before getting married a young couple escaped the hectic tone of graduate school to relax and unwind over Memorial Day weekend 1998. They dreamed about a wild weekend in Miami, or a lazy couple of days in Napa, or a dining extravaganza in NYC but alas the college students with holes in their pockets settled for an overnight trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to go hiking.

Their first official purchase together was a portable green cooler from Pick n' Save. The couple, already in love, walked passed quaint fudge shops and dreamed of what laid ahead of them in their lives. The weekend was spent enjoying the simple things in life and there came a moment in time that the drop dead gorgeous girl stopped to think that perhaps this man would be the one she would marry, the father of her future children. What would they be like? Who would they resemble? How many would they have? She didn't dare to share the thoughts she was having with the man that walked beside her on the sandy banks of Lake Michigan. Would they have all boys? Or all girls? Or maybe a set of twins? The man purchased some fudge for her as a token of his affection. What would she call them? Would this man make a good father? A good husband? The man let her board the ferry first. Would she make a good mother? Even to a dwarf? What if she didn't know how to parent a dwarf? The man, completely unaware of the inner monologue took his jacket off and draped it over her shoulders and held onto the portable green cooler on the ferry ride off of the island. Completely exhausted from the day's relaxing hike the girl quietly fell asleep in her their Howard Johnson room with a view of the parking lot. Would her children appreciate the simple things in life? Would they be happy? Would she be happy? She slept that night and envisioned two children with heads of brown curls, like she once had as a child, a boy and a girl with rhyming names in monogrammed sailor suits. What if they weren't able to have children? Would they, could they adopt? But from where? Poland or Panama or perhaps even Portugal? Portuguese children have heads of brown curls. So do the Panamaese though. She tossed and turned all night long and then remembered that it was just a weekend hike with a portable green cooler and a very great man.

The future was unknown and so incredible as it was filled with questions.

"Why do you like green so much, Mama?" Jay asked as I emptied his green galoshes free from the sand of the Chagrin River.

"It's the color of the cooler Daddy and I bought together for our very first hike."