"In good writing, WORDS BECOME ONE with things."

It’s not university, but dropping our kids at summer camp on the other side of the country for two weeks felt like the first big release of control we’ve taken.

In anticipation of the twins turning ten this summer, we talked about how we need to practice independence, make some gains in it, long before it’s real. So we did.

Or rather, they did.

And boy did they make it look fun.

Arden went to a camp for girls a mile away from Henry’s camp for boys, so this was their first time apart from each other. We weren’t sure who they’d miss more — us or each other.

The camp is traditional in the sense that you only communicate with your child by writing letters. But they have an app for parents where they post daily pictures of campers, so those who want to obsess are free to do so.

Do they also provide facial recognition technology that sends picture of your kids so you don’t have to scroll through hundreds of others, frantically searching? Yes, yes they do. Did I check it virtually every 30 minutes? Yes, yes I did.

Then one August morning when we were back at home, I walked into the kitchen, saw the front page of the WSJ and gasped.

“What’s wrong?” Mike said from the other room.

“They wrote an article about my psychosis! The paper reported on my actual summer!”

Right then, my dad called.

“Whatever you do, don’t read the front page of the paper today.”

“Too late!” I shrieked.

“Ooooh, baby have they got your number!” he laughed and laughed.

“I should be offended, but instead I’m just annoyed they didn’t call me for a quote. They called Jennifer from Maine.” Mike heard this exchange and walked over to see what the fuss was about and read the headline:

“Obsessed Parents Overanalyze Photos of Their Kids at Camp.”

Being mocked was tempered by the sweet hug of realizing I was very much not alone. Thousands of parents scrutinized every photo to assess their child’s emotional wellbeing. It wasn’t just me.

Their camps are located in the hills of Asheville, NC, so after dropping them off we drove to Charleston, SC for a week of getting to know the place Travel + Leisure calls “America’s Favorite City.”

We hadn’t even made it to our Airbnb when the first pics started coming through. Henry was first — playing some team game with a ball, shirt already off. We were reassured he was already a happy camper.

Then the evening photos:

We peeped him off to the side, shirtless and winding up for his turn at axe-throwing. Holy smokes, he’s off to the races.

Then came Arden’s first photos, a little more reticent, which made me hem and haw over whether she was happy yet.

I needn’t have worried; Color Night was afoot.

And with that, I could breathe. And pray. There was so much praying. The reason we sent them to camp was the same for us as it was for them: to learn how to trust the Lord with their lives. Harder than it looks.

Pray, release…and we were off to explore Charleston.

We took a morning walking tour that involved a lot of gasping. The architecture was so gorgeous we felt overwhelmed. It was fascinating to see such an old city be so well-preserved and residential. No skyscrapers, no big box stores. Just row upon row of charming homes with little plaques crediting their first owners in 1706, or 1719. The effect is quiet and unassuming, even when the homes are spectacular.

I sent one to my friend Lauren.

“Do we live in the wrong place?!” she wrote back.

As we walked through the brick-lined streets, gaping at stunningly beautiful homes, Mike and I discussed how the Pacific Northwest has natural beauty locked up, but its architecture is cold and modern, and its cities are currently experiencing dumpster-fire-level deterioration. Charleston was like a sparkling jewel by comparison. It was wonderfully stimulating to be in such a radically different place.

There was one other glaring difference: the punishing, relentless heat. Usually my boys only perspire when running after a ball or each other. Here, all it took was walking down the street.

Despite his antics in this photo, Hunter stepped into the humidity and with nothing but glee. It was like watching a tree frog encounter the rainforest for the first time. Like all his life we’d been keeping him from his natural habitat.

The heat made me develop a verbal tic; I didn’t mean to, but every ten minutes I compulsively had to say, “It’s so hot,” “I can’t believe how hot it is,” “I’m sweating out of every pore,” etc. All of us were doing this; it was involuntary. Hence the tic.

Except Hunter. “I love humidity!”

Based on the photos we got, the twins were not suffering the same fate. We kept seeing morning pictures of them in sweatshirts. Sweatshirts! In Charleston, you could not wear a sweatshirt if it was 3am.

(Henry clearly felt he had to rep as many West Coast teams as possible. Sand Diego hat, Denver sweatshirt, first day Mariners t-shirt. He had a large territory to cover in front of these East Coast kids.)

Our Charleston house was in a little town called Mt Pleasant, and it was aptly named because it was like Pleasantville. Wide, live oak-lined streets, stunning homes, kids pedaling around without helmets, and adorable teens headed out on dates in golf carts.

The golf carts were a cultural touchstone — every single resident had a golf cart, to the degree that it was the entirety of their 4th of July parade. We were the only people not in possession of a golf cart draped in Americana.

It was endearing and hilarious and surprising — the sheer quantity. Hundreds of Independence Day carts.

Here we are, so very independent from carts. Cartless.

Also twinless, which was far weirder. Every outing felt like a lie — we’re not a family of five. But every outing felt easier, because there were fewer heads to count.

I don’t think the twins were feeling the same emptiness.

They were putting on warrior headbands and heading off to camp-wide competitions.

One of the central elements to camp is skill-building and growth, so kids choose 6-8 skills to participate in during structured time. They also have plenty of time to run amok doing all the open activities, but the boys could choose from 36 skills – everything from archery, outdoor living, blacksmithing (!), woodworking, rock-climbing, to more mainstream sports like basketball, baseball, swimming, etc. Arden’s camp offered 51 skills, many like Henry’s, plus things like ceramics, drama, fire building, gardening, sports – she even took “Puppy Skill” where she trained a chocolate lab puppy. I mean, what on earth?

They offered to let us adopt her. I really should’ve seen that one coming.

Henry would later tell us that his main preoccupation was the food. It was mountains of delicious, kid-pleasing food. “Mom, they gave us beef with Fritos one night!”

Both kids could not recover from the joy of The Canteen (boys) and Store (girls). Every day after rest hour, they heard the bell and ran to these sugar shacks for two free items — any soft drink and a candy of their choice. This, to them, was nirvana.

It was no sugar shack, but we took the younger three to the famous Husk restaurant on Queen St, which might seem ill-advised, but they did fine. We prepped them to try Southern food (or shall I say, we prepped them that there would be no hamburgers and fries, no chicken tenders, no safe harbor on which to cling) and ordered most of the (small) menu so they could sample, and they did not hold back.

Because Southern food makes you close your eyes in reverie.

It’s a tossup for me which captivated me more: the Southern food or the Southern trees.

The live oaks that anchor every street are arresting. I’d be walking along, see a tree like this, and stand stock-still with my mouth open like I’d never seen a tree before. They’re beautiful in their colossal reach, completely still while they buzz from the cicadas filling their limbs.

As we approached Boone Hall Plantation, we had to stop the car and just stare in awe.

These trees may be as old as the hills (1743) and Boone Hall Plantation even older (1681), but this history lover felt shamefully torn on why she really came — it’s Allie’s summer house in The Notebook.

Remember when they broke up in this driveway? Sigh.

Did we take this picture due to the stunning beauty or because it’s where Noah rowed Allie in the rain with the birds? Unclear.

This is also where Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds got married. Mike was like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

This tree is 600 years old. See? I can’t stop talking about trees.

Or the heat. The heat on this day was so intense that my jewelry absorbed it and began to burn my skin. I thought something was stinging me and then realized my ring, necklace, and bracelet were all burning my flesh. Surely this justified continuing to talk about the weather.

The heat is its own teacher. I can try to describe the horrors of slavery to my children all I want, or I can plop them down in South Carolina in July where they can barely tolerate the heat while taking a tractor tour of a plantation (i.e. not even walking), and suddenly the thought of backbreaking 12-hour labor in that same heat takes on new meaning.

The next day, this reality hit them square in the eyes when we toured the cabins of former enslaved people at the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.

Our incredible guide told us that the last occupants of these cabins vacated in 1992. Mike and I looked at each other. Did he say 1992? He said those workers obviously weren’t enslaved but were employed to work on the gardens and grounds, and chose to live there as well. Some of them were members of a family that had worked in the gardens for more than 100 years. Nobody could speak. These were shacks, nothing more, and the thought of anyone occupying them as recently as 1992 was deeply disturbing.

The owners and operators of the plantation are the 11th generation of the Drayton family who originally built the plantation in 1670. A lady timidly raised her hand.

“Doooooo we like the Draytons? What are they like?”

The guide replied, “Well, of course their ancestors were evil, but they’re okay today. They let me share all I want about the slave history here. But they only started making the slave cabins part of the tour in 2010. So….” he trailed off. “You may wonder why a black man would want to work here giving these tours. But this is my work, traveling the country and drawing attention to former slave quarters. I actually have been to dozens of states and asked permission to sleep in standing slave cabins.”

Mike raised his hand. “Did you write a book about that?”

“Did I plant you here?” he joked. “Yes, I did. It’s called Sleeping with the Ancestors.” Several of us took out our phones to order it.

The gardens were spectacular, if you could overlook the terrifying presence of alligators. One popped up as we circled a pond and I could not cope. The kids teased me, “it’s just a baby one!” and I was like killers are killers, don’t get it twisted.

There’s one place alligators can’t drag you beneath the surface and drown you, and that’s on a boat. So across the harbor we went for an escape from the heat and a view of that perfect Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge.

When we landed in downtown Charleston, we walked down the Battery to White Point Garden park, and the heat was so intense we couldn’t really go on. We found an ice cream truck and the kids inhaled cones while I stared at the trees.

It would be fair to say this looks staged, but he didn’t even know I’d gotten out my phone. This was a genuine moment of fathering hard; foot parking stroller, holding cone, cup and spoon to mitigate who gets the next bite.

The next day we left Charleston and headed for the beach.

We spent our second week on Kiawah Island for a change of pace and scenery. Kiawah is so interesting because apart from some private homes, the entire ten-mile-long island is a resort. This means that the unit we rented was a little less than a mile from the pool, restaurants, snack shacks, and other amenities. This might sound irritating but instead it sets you up for a beachy lifestyle that’s just groovy.

Mike rented bikes (Claire in a trailer behind him) and we got ready for the day and then biked a mile on a broad paved path through the resort to the fun. We could take a number of paths to the beach, and choose between a couple of pools. If you’re a parent with any experience of putting kids in the car to go everywhere on vacation, you feel my vibes on this. This was infinitely preferable.

“Kids! Get in! Buckle up! It doesn’t matter which seat! No, you don’t need a snack.” Versus “Hop on your bike and do some laps while I snap Claire in.” Zero pushback.

It was lush and warm, like biking through a jungle. The alligator warning signs added to the effect.

The major excitement of this week was Nana and Papa Reph joined us, and we were giddy to explore this new place together.

A few things happened when we got to the beach for the first time.

1. The kids took off their shoes when we reached the sand. Hunter took one step, paused, and looked back at me — “Why is the sand so soft, Mom?” My dear, sweet PNW child. These are not the coarse shores of your homeland.
2. Mike waded into the ocean, paused, and turned back to me — “How is this water 80 degrees?! This is warmer than Maui!” I had completely forgotten he’d never been on the Eastern Seaboard. He’s a San Diego/Seattle/Hawaii/Cabo man.
3. We all marveled that the waves were so calm, the ocean floor didn’t drop off into an abyss, and the distance from the beach grasses to the water was a football field as flat as a pancake.

I have to admit, however, that my favorite part was the pool situation. Whoever designed this knew how miserable it can be to parent near a pool. They brilliantly made half of the pool a foot deep with two dozen apparatus to entertain the children so we could actually sit on a chaise lounge for longer than 30 seconds.

Those huge water slides in the background kept the older kids and adults entertained. Happiness, we have arrived. Who wants to order lunch?

But don’t get comfortable everybody because Mama is hauling you all to Savannah tomorrow!

As promised, at 6:30am we pulled up in front of Nana and Papa’s condo and took off for the glories of Georgia.

Where I was told there’d be trees.

We rode a hop-on-hop-off trolley so we could cover as much of the city as possible in our day trip.

The heat (see?! There it is again!) was in the high nineties with humidity like the surface of the sun. Walking all over? What? Are we dropping weight before a wrestling match? Forget it. Trolley forever.

Savannah is so romantic and beautiful; the architecture, the Spanish moss (which, it turns out, is neither Spanish nor moss), the food, the incredible town squares (one of which is the location of Forrest Gump’s famous bench scenes), and… it’s just quiet. Much like Charleston, it’s been protected and preserved and avoided overdevelopment, at least in the historic district, so you can walk (trolley…) square to square and feel such peace even in the middle of town.

Iced lattes add to the peace.

Every time the kids ordered decaf lattes, the waitresses would look up at me, and I would just shrug. We’re from Seattle.

We visited the art museum and toured the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters. You could be in Savannah for weeks and not cover all the historic homes; picking just one felt unfair. But considering we’d also toured the Nathaniel Russell House in Charleston, I didn’t want to push my luck with the kids.

One of the sweetest parts of the day was savoring it with Nana and Papa. Mike and I are more and more aware of the preciousness of time away with our parents and our kids at the same time.

I sent the photo below from one of the town squares to my friend Siri and said, “Bury me in Savannah” having no idea there was an actual song called Bury Me in Georgia.

While we’re in tranquility touring towns, photos popped up of our son freshly decked in tribal paint.

When the picture below appeared, we exclaimed, WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING!?

The camp has 100-year-old traditions like this one, called Council Ring, of teaching young boys about leadership, growth in being young men of Christ, responsibility, valor, etc. They receive recognition for challenges and victories accomplished that week and are spurred on to the week ahead.

Or, as my friend Heather said when I sent this to her, “It’s Lord of the Flies.”

Arden had a similar tradition, but much sweeter – a little candle in a chapel, rather than a 15-foot bonfire.

In a first for us, we decided to give our younger three a taste of camp at the resort. A taste of camp, a break for us, whatever you want to call it.

At 8am we left the condo and biked the mile to the camp check-in spot. The camp counselor asked, “Did you want to add lunch and pick them up an hour later?”

“What’s that cost?”

“Ten dollars.”

“Is this even a question? Kids, we’ll see you at 1:15.”

So for three glorious mornings we dropped the kids off, worked out in the gym, biked to the Sanctuary for coffee, read the paper, and spent the morning by the pool. Mike had big dreams of things we could do during those precious hours, but as soon as the counselor said the kids would be swimming, I couldn’t budge. The counselors were maybe 18 and all laid-back Southern with matching casual attitudes.

It’s probably less vigilance than stalking if the ones being watched aren’t aware they’re being watched. I didn’t let that stop me.

Age is everything. I’m pushing myself by letting my ten-year-old be poolside completely apart from me:

…while I stalk my 3.5-year-old as she “attends camp.”

I thought the snappy clothes would primarily be for Charleston, but we had to keep up the game on Kiawah, at least at dinner. After showering off the day at the pool, Jameson would always roll his eyes when I’d reach for the madras shorts and polo, but Hunter just shrugged.

“We’re dressing like golfers. I get it.”

They’re like tiny, hungry Scottie Schefflers headed to the clubhouse.

I got some pushback on the boat shoes, but no matter where you eat on the island it pretty much looks like this. You’re either on a golf course or near one, so the Crocs just weren’t gonna fly.

While we were following The Official Preppy Handbook, Henry was packing his sleeping bag to head into the wooded hills to build a (little) fire and sleep under the stars.

For the boys back at Kiawah, Mike made special father-son memories by taking them to see the sunrise each day. They invited me, but – shocker! – I passed until the final day.

Sweet sleepy morning faces.

At last, we hit the road to Asheville to pick up the twins. We were itching to see them, to ask them every question their letters (letter, in Henry’s case) didn’t answer. I couldn’t wait to squeeze them until they begged me to stop. In Arden’s case, she actually did, because I started to cry from joy since we picked her up first.

Mainly, they wanted to hug each other.

And they both just wanted Claire. Who wanted them just as much.

Did we head back to a hotel to rest and nap and let the twins recover? Of course not! I come from the hearty Berger/McMurtry line of pushers! We do!

So off to the Biltmore we went! It’s in Asheville, afterall!

My parents brought me to Biltmore when I was 12, and for me 90% of the weight was that it was Richie Rich’s house. What can I say? It was his Home Alone era. He was kind of a big deal.

But I didn’t want the kids having only Macaulay Culkin in their heads. So before we left Seattle, like the schoolmarm I am, I made the twins write essays on George Washington Vanderbilt and the country estate he built, still the largest house in America at 179,000 square feet of Gilded Age majesty.

I didn’t excuse myself from the work either and read a book about how – how on earth – the house is still privately owned and run by the fourth generation of descendants of the Vanderbilts, rather than a foundation, government or preservation society. And it’s immensely popular and profitable, not a crumbling mess. It’s a pretty remarkable achievement.

Not impressive to all, however. As our little trolley rounded the corner from the parking lot to the grand esplanade (shown above), giving all of us the first breathtaking view of the estate, the teenage girls sitting opposite me said, “Honestly, I thought it’d be bigger.” “Yeah, me too.”

Sigh.

Once inside, they handed us audio guides, and even had ones for the kids narrated by “Cedric the St. Bernard,” since the Vanderbilts always owned that breed.

And it worked — the kids glued them to their ears and gaped at every room.

Cedric even kept Claire focused.

Nobody could get over the indoor pool.

After all that learning, Henry treated everyone to the Biltmore Creamery in the courtyard.

The kids are already talking about next year at camp, and registration opens next week, so I better get my ducks in a row. This time, Hunter wants in. Who can blame him? Look at all those brothers.

Arden and her nine cabinmates text each other every single day on their mothers’ phones, jumping on multi-person Facetimes, which I didn’t even know was possible. They Marco Polo regularly. They wish more methods of communication would be invented so they could use them, too.

On the other hand, when we picked Henry up the final morning of camp, he threw up deuces and was out of there, and only in the last month has said, “Hey Mom, can you email my friends’ moms so I can write to them?” During camp, Arden mailed letters to every person she could possibly think of, including seven or eight letters to her dear old mom and dad. Henry sent two letters his entire time at camp — one to us, one to a friend back home. Boys and girls, man. We’ve been laughing over their inherent differences since they were infants, and it’s so amusing to watch it continue.

Several people have given us a worried side-eye after we returned, wondering if this vacation was really just a scouting trip for a permanent move. I’ll close with an anecdote to answer that question.

Around 9:30 one night in Charleston, I was on the couch watching a show while Mike did some work on his laptop in the kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him rise slowly from his chair, stand stock still, and grab a magazine. He lifted it high in the air and then WHAP, slammed it down on the kitchen counter.

“This is the largest insect I have ever seen. Do not come over here.” Easiest request ever heeded.

Right then I flashed back to the day before, when I was telling my parents over the phone that Charleston was paradise. Having been there themselves, they replied, “Mmm-hmm. Seen a Palmetto bug yet?”

“What’s a Palmetto bug?” I asked naively.

“You’ll see,” they said.

Mike yelled, “It’s not dead! Its head is still moving independent of its body!”

I thought I’d been spared, but the next morning at the Sanctuary, I saw one crawling across the lobby floor. Thinking myself a hero, I alerted the lady at the front desk.

“Oh, you mean our state bird?” she smiled. Tough gal thinks she’s funny. She left it there, in a five-star hotel.

It’s funny how hard it is to fall asleep when you know a cockroach the size of a housecat could crawl across your bed at any moment.

So…no, thank you, we will be staying put in what I told another guest in that lobby was “my bugless home.”

“Where, may I ask, is that?” he said.

Seattle, I smiled. Seattle is home.

While riding in the car the other day, Hunter broke the quiet with a question from left field.

“Mom, next time we go on a trip, can you not tell us about it until we go?” I looked at him in the rear-view mirror.

“Why, buddy?” I asked, as I realized the answer.

“Because it’s too hard to wait. I just can’t wait.”

I explained that there are lots of parents who only tell their kids the day before a trip, mainly to dodge the weeks and weeks of “How many more days?” But I take a different approach.

“I’ll tell you why I don’t wait until the last day, Hunter. I don’t want to rob you of a bite of your Joy Apple.” My friend Heather coined this term.

“When you take a trip, you get three glorious bites of the Joy Apple: anticipation is the first bite. The experience is the second bite, and the third bite -“

Arden got it. “The memories,” she smiled.

I’m in the sweet spot of bites one and three. I’m practically shaking with anticipation of this year’s trip, while remembering and savoring last summer’s.

Last summer, my mama-in-love had a milestone birthday and invited us to her hometown of Bloomfield, Iowa to celebrate, and show the kids what the Midwest is all about.

We were the happiest little crew of eight.

We packed in farm visits, the county fair, Amish country stores, a lake resort day, and learning about farm life in the early settlement days.

The kids even entered the Tractor Pull competition, with all the unconscious hubris city kids carry about their athleticism. They eagerly awaited their turns to push the pedals and drag a massive weight behind their tractors.

This doesn’t look so bad, thought they!

I looked over at the 200 pound eleven year olds approaching the tractors and said, “Children, you are about to be owned.”

These Iowan farm boys were wearing jeans that had seen actual work, boots distressed by real labor, and gigantic belt buckles worn entirely unironically. When my kids pulled their tractors, they made it about six feet, stunned from the difficulty. When the Iowa boys pulled the tractors, they rode so hard, with such ease, the judge yelled “That’s a FULL PULL!” meaning the tractor had crossed the finish line, a feat no city child had even come close to.

We laughed and laughed. Culture shock is healthy and refreshing and deeply funny.

It was like earlier that day when I assessed the menu at the county fair and, thinking I was wrestling something healthy from the offerings, ordered the taco salad.

“But what’s this all over it?” I asked Mike’s cousin, Jessie.

“Doritos,” she said. “You’re lucky you didn’t get the trashy version, when they serve the salad IN the Dorito bag.”

Henry was undeterred.

It didn’t help that the “taco seasoning” was served in an udder.

The magical part about the trip was how much of it was exactly like we’d hoped and described to the children. It really was like a postcard from the heartland.

This is their Uncle Richard’s land. We cruised around checking on the horses and hay balers. They were enchanted by the openness of the land.

Speaking of land, this is just a portion of Aunt Ro’s backyard.

The kids couldn’t believe this much open grass could belong to one family. They took off out the door and ran hollering down the hill.

They also dropped and rolled with glee until Aunt Ro yelled, “Kids! Don’t roll in the grass! The chiggers!”

The WHAT? Aunt Ro provided a quick lesson on the local insects and their tendency to bite. That was the end of the rolling with glee.

When Uncle Alan said, “Want to play golf?” he meant swing with all your might. Get out the driver! Because you actually have the space.

I will never forget walking into an Amish market and seeing the kids’ faces as two things occurred:

1. Nana announced the ice cream at this store is free. Excuse me? What did she just say?
   
2. An Amish couple walked out with their purchases, unhooked their horse, got into their buggy, and rode down the highway. The kids stared, struck dumb, like they’d fallen through a time travel portal and landed in the world of their beloved Laura, Mary and Carrie Ingalls. It was priceless.

Soaking in that Ingalls’ spirit, we visited the Nelson Pioneer Farm and Museum, which is a preserved homestead from the 1800s. So much of it felt familiar to them because of the Little House books we’ve read (even though it obviously wasn’t tied to the Ingalls family).

Authentic schoolhouse? Check. We’re practically a full class.

I believe it increased their appreciation for modern day playground equipment.

I loved seeing the kids bond with their relatives, especially Uncle Richard and Aunt Ro. Uncle Richard reached mythical status for being an actual farmer.

While visiting his farm one day, Nana jumped on the back of the truck like she must have as a kid and the kids couldn’t get enough. You can take the girl out of Iowa, but you can’t take Iowa out of that girl!

Henry idolized Uncle Richard, and this was cemented when Richard invited Henry around in his truck to do chores, up front. Before I could get all hysterical about back seats, seat belts and booster seats, Mike told me to chill and let the boy be a farmer.

Henry reported back that Uncle Richard had cloth seats. What and why and how, he wanted to know. These are the unexpected cultural gems you can’t anticipate. I got to explain about the extreme Midwest summers and winters and why leather is frozen solid or hot enough to scald your thighs. Not that Uncle Richard would ever in his life wear shorts, of course.

Since we’d come all the way to Iowa, we decided to loop in several days with our friends from Wisconsin. They have four boys similar ages to our kids, and we’d visited them last summer on a lark, and had a fabulous time.

But knowing there was a road trip from Iowa to Wisconsin, I did a little digging for somewhere interesting to stop. And boy did I hit paydirt.

As great luck would have it, I discovered that the baseball field from Field of Dreams lay exactly between our two destinations.

I have loved this movie since I was a little girl. I remember so clearly my astonishment that the ending of a movie had the power to make my dad cry. At the time I thought, my dad! He doesn’t cry! And it laid a profound weight over the film that’s remained ever since. I’ve seen it countless times, and it made me sentimental about baseball long before any actual games would.

The kids had no such emotional backstory. So before we left Seattle, Mike and I did our due diligence, sat the kids down and showed them the movie. We were all verklempt and excited and they were like, what is this? Is God talking to him in the corn? It was 400 questions. We didn’t care. They were sucked in and watched it two times before our trip. It helped that it scandalized them with the occasional minor league swear word.

As we entered Dyerson, Iowa, I actually became nervous. It felt like the anticipation of meeting a beloved celebrity — it’s going to elate you or crush you with disappointment.

When we were sure we were on the road of the famous line of headlights at the end of the movie, I suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of those guitar notes from the soundtrack. I gasped and looked over at Mike who had turned the song on over Bluetooth, and already had misty eyes under his sunglasses. We laughed at ourselves and drank in the nostalgia and teared up as the farm came into view.

It was perfect.

We walked up to the field, and realizing we could enter it, broke into a run. The kids started racing the bases while people played catch in the outfield. Henry slid into home and got a dirt burn, but we told him his scrape was worth the pain because it came from the Field of Dreams.

Pretty much immediately I made Jameson play Karen just before she chokes on the hot dog.

Claire and I couldn’t tear ourselves off the field. Also, we wore matching gingham.

It wasn’t long before the irresistible disappearing into the corn. Except kids just keep running and we had to holler to get them to return from heaven.

Incredibly, the MLB was hosting a game a month later at the Field of Dreams. Except instead of using the movie field, they built a much larger one behind the corn. You can see the lights from that field in the photo above. The actual movie baseball field is about the size of a little league field, which surprised us. We were excited to learn, however, that Kevin Costner would walk through the corn and into the big field, leading the Yankees and White Sox to play.

Back home, the kids would screech and exclaim throughout the game every time the camera panned over to the movie house and field. Or maybe I was screeching. It was hard to tell.

We toured the house, which is largely unchanged, and I found it hard to leave. Just standing in Ray and Annie’s kitchen, or standing on the porch, it was too much. I wished and wished my dad could be there next to me. So I called him, bursting. He also received dozens of photos and responded with all the enthusiasm I was feeling. Talking to him while standing on that field was the next best thing to being there together.

I nearly made this our Christmas card.

See the floodlight switch where Annie turns them on for Ray and his dad? Of course I opened it, and there’s nothing inside. Love the little leftover props.

They have a very modest hot dog stand on the third base line, which took care of lunch before we got back on the road. But not before the jealousy-inducer of the day: we all stared as little seven year olds in uniforms lined up to play ball. Mike and I couldn’t believe the local teams get to compete at such a legendary place. And to top it off, before the game, the soundtrack plays over the speakers, and the parents get sort of still, and everyone pauses to listen and gaze at this epic baseball field.

Many months later I would be sitting at my kitchen table reading the most recent Peggy Noonan piece and she would share a story from her nephew about the magic, the charm, the Americana of baseball. “See?” He’d asked her after a particularly emotional ballgame. “How can you not love baseball?”

Exactly.

Onward to the next kid dreamland! The combined nine kiddos ran wild with tubing, kayaking, fishing, hammocks, firepits, and exploring the woods and wetlands in this genius mobile:

Jameson is relaxed.

It was lovely and we were grateful.

This summer we’re off to the Carolinas, for two weeks of overnight camp for the twins, and two weeks of Charleston, Kiawah Island, (and a day trip to Savannah!) for the three younger kids and us.

I’ve packed eyelet for me, seersucker sundresses for Claire, and enough plaid, madras and polos for the boys to pass for little southern gents. Boat shoes included.

Wish us luck, y’all.

If I could give one gift to all of my friends and family, as well as complete strangers on the internet, it would be a perfect soundtrack to carry them through the dark, hopeful nights of the advent season.

I have been devoted to Christmas music since I was a teen, adding one new Christmas CD to my collection every winter. Remember those days? They are all still socked away in a CD accordion, and instead the songs make their annual appearance via my snappy demands to Alexa, resident music robot.

I have pretty much everything, all the classics from Bing Crosby to Tchaikovsky, to best-of mixes, operatic one-offs like Josh Groban and even Sting’s subdued winter meditation.

But one Christmas album rises above the rest like that first star of Bethlehem:

James Taylor at Christmas. It is absolutely perfect.

That presesnt he’s holding out to you? ACCEPT IT.

It isn’t just his gorgeous, familiar voice that serves as the ideal Christmas comfort. It’s much more than that.

He curated the song choices better than a sommelier selecting wine for one of the Queen’s state dinners. It’s obvious that his final choices were deliberate and thoughtful, full of intention, restraint and excellent taste.

And the collaborations!

Winter Wonderland – with Chris Botti (!)
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Jingle Bells
Baby It’s Cold Outside – with Natalie Cole (!)
River
Here Comes the Sun – with Yo Yo Ma (!)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Some Children See Him
Mon Beau Sapin
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
Who Comes This Night
In the Bleak Midwinter
Auld Lang Syne

The only ones I ever occasionally skip are Santa Claus and Jingle Bells, because they’re the frivolous two. The rest I listen to dozens of times between the day after Thanksgiving and January third.

Over time I’ve come to believe that most Christmas songs have one artist whose version is so spectacular that they essentially own it, and efforts by other artists are but earnest imitations.

For instance, Bing Crosby created the greatest selling single of all time – of any song, this is an unbelievable, but true, fact – White Christmas. Sinatra might as well be renamed Santa with his jauntiest version of Jingle Bells. It’s 1960’s nostalgia for days when Nat King Cole begins The Christmas Song. All hail the Boss when Springsteen rocks Santa Claus is Coming to Town. You may actually fall on your knees at Celine Dion’s O Holy Night, and Luther Vandross leaves everybody in his wake in his triumphant rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful.

That’s why his efforts on these songs are so mesmerizing — he (and his team) created fresh arrangements for well-known songs, keeping them familiar but elevating each one so you find yourself marveling that it was ever sung any other way. Here Comes the Sun is not a Christmas song, but in his arrangement, you find yourself believing it was always intended as a Swedish hymn to carry us through the winter solstice.

I usually find Go Tell It on the Mountain to be a bit of a grating Sunday school-type melody, eliciting feelings of a teacher admonishing students to evangelize. In James’ hands, it nearly brings me to tears. He altered the lyrics to convey seeking after the Lord and being saved, and it transforms the song from universal to deeply personal.

When he sings River, it’s so gorgeous and sad, Joni Mitchell herself probably hears it and has to pause in her Christmas hustle to marvel and then pull it together.

One might think it’s Kate Winslet’s weeping in her cozy English cottage that breaks your heart in The Holiday, but no, it’s that she’s listening to Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by James Taylor. Nancy Meyers was aware of this album’s brilliance long before I was — the album came out the same year the movie did: 2006.

The reason this album is so transcendent is that it can suit any situation. Driving in the car? Beautiful. Cooking or baking? Suddenly enjoyable. Gathering of friends? Soundtrack to your memories. I use it in all these scenarios, including mailing Christmas cards and wrapping gifts. It never ages.

Of course, I listen to all manner of other Christmas music through December, but JT is my bedrock. Every year an artist tries to enter the cannon to be established as a classic, but most fall short. We don’t want to be screamed at (I’m looking at you, Kelly Clarkson). We can tell when it’s overdone (ahem, Carrie Underwood). We know when it’s empty drivel (Katy Perry, obviously). We can also begrudgingly love a song we fully intended to hate (Taylor Swift and her blasted Tree Farm).

(I admitted that last one to Amy while we were in Nashville and she told me her friend bought Taylor’s actual uncle’s Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, and that connection gave me permission to love it without reserve.)

I asked my sister if it was crazy to write about my passion for James Taylor’s Christmas album, and she said, “No! When ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ comes on, I can barely keep it together.” I felt so seen. That song brings me to my knees.

The reverence is what keeps me coming back. He could have chosen a dozen Christmas standards, recorded them as written, completely phoned it in, and still sold/streamed millions of records. Instead, he made unexpected, thoughtful song selections with lyrics that catch your ear, rather than fly by unnoticed like so many Christmas songs. A huge part of the joy of Christmas music is that the One Great True Story of God’s love for us is being told over airwaves for an entire month. But often we know them so well, we barely hear the words.

In Who Comes This Night, which was written by Dave Grusin specifically for this album, he sings, “Who sends this song upon the air, to ease the soul that’s aching? To still the cry of deep despair and heal the heart that’s breaking.” It’s the tenderest song about approaching this newborn stranger, “for those who would the stranger greet, must lay their heart before him, and raise their song in voices sweet, to worship and adore him.”

All that when he could have just sung Joy to the World in two takes and been done with it. This is why he’s our homegrown American legend.

For now, today, listen to his spellbinding timbre as he holds the last note in the line, “In a year our troubles will be miles away.” You’ll find that it’s so beautiful you believe it, but his voice is so heart-rending, you know he knows it isn’t true. Which somehow makes his attempt to comfort us all the more endearing.