Nama's Natural Life

Ahem. It’s been a long thirty-six hours.

Grand Rapids did not unfold in a sweet little arc with a tidy lesson. It came in pieces. Ringing ears. Missing socks. A belt I had literally found earlier in the day and then somehow lost again because migraine brain and menopause brain have apparently formed an alliance against me. Wrong tickets. Crutches. Poolside confessions. Wedding text chaos during Lion King intermission. A four-year-old dismantling sushi while the rest of us tried to act like this was a normal family outing.

My actual youngest and my oldest didn’t even come. The youngest had a friend’s 17th birthday party, and by the end of the weekend I had somehow gone from “okay, have fun” to processing the fact that my son was apparently being dressed in drag for a show while the rest of us were unraveling in Grand Rapids. My oldest was enjoying three kid-free days. So everybody, it seems, had plans.

I knew I was in trouble when I couldn’t find my belt.

Not in a cute “oops, where did I set that down?” way. In a standing-in-the-middle-of-the-room, staring at nothing, knowing I had held it earlier and still being completely unable to retrace the thought kind of way. That’s the part of migraines people don’t talk about enough. The fog. The spacing out. The weird little lapses that make you feel like you’re trying to run your life through static.

By the time we left, I had forgotten socks for my granddaughter, socks and underwear for myself, and at least half my dignity. My youngest daughter was on crutches. My granddaughter was talking in that nonstop, deeply committed, four-year-old way where every thought deserves witnesses. Matt was already getting snippy because I wasn’t moving fast enough, ready enough, efficient enough.

Family trips are never quite the brochure.

They’re sold as memory-making and bonding, but they usually begin as logistics, emotional landmines, and one woman quietly trying to keep the whole thing from tipping over while her nervous system files formal complaints.

We stopped for food because finding somewhere to eat in Grand Rapids on a Friday night without reservations is harder than it should be. It took ages. The food came cold. Matt mentioned mac and cheese, I asked if that was wise given his medication and the fact that his digestive system tends to turn meals into consequences, and now we’re lightly bickering in public over pasta he didn’t even order. He says it was because I was right. His pout suggested spite.

We got to the hotel with just enough time to throw ourselves together and hustle across the skywalk to DeVos. My youngest daughter needed help, and Matt carried her piggyback for the first stretch. Then it was my turn.

Let me say this clearly: my youngest daughter may look like a tiny beautiful princess, but she lifts weights like it is her actual job. She is small, yes. She is also solid. Meanwhile, I am small in a much more decorative way. Weight lifting is not my jam. My strengths are yoga, meditation, and handbags. I made it the length of the hall before she was instructed to crutch it, and crutch it fast.

We made it through security with ten minutes to spare.

And then the tickets wouldn’t scan.

Because they were for Saturday.

Not Friday.

I am a travel advisor on the side, because apparently I enjoy finding new ways to test my own competence. I help other people not do this exact thing, and there I was, standing there with a brewing migraine and the wrong tickets for my own family. Incredible. Very on brand for me.

To top it off, we had zoo lantern festival tickets for Saturday too, because when I go, I go big.

So I did what I always do. I fixed it.

The lantern festival was cold and inconvenient and not remotely smooth. My Raynaud’s settled in like a tenant with rent control. My granddaughter was freezing. My youngest daughter ended up in a wheelchair. None of it was graceful, but it was beautiful. The lights were incredible, my granddaughter was enchanted, and my mom was pleasant.

The next day, by the pool before Lion King, things got quiet enough for me to hear what was underneath all the noise. My middle daughter was talking to her boyfriend. She was apologizing.

And I know that tone.

There’s “I messed up.” And then there’s the other kind. The kind where someone has slowly been taught to doubt their own reaction. The kind where they end up carrying discomfort that doesn’t belong entirely to them. I know that sound because I have lived that sound.

I wanted to fix it immediately. That’s my instinct. Explain it. Translate it. Save her from having to learn the long way. But you cannot force clarity onto someone. You can love them. You can recognize the pattern from a mile away. You can sit there silently vibrating with insight. But you cannot hand somebody the truth before they are ready to hold it.

Dinner came next, because life apparently has no respect for anyone’s processing needs. We ended up at Nagoya for all-you-can-eat sushi with a four-year-old, which sounds like a terrible idea until somehow it isn’t. My granddaughter ate edamame like it was her job, mostly ignored the kids’ food, and dismantled a sushi roll one grain of rice at a time while we all sat there visiting like this was normal.

And weirdly, maybe it was.

That might be the truest thing about family life. So much of it is objectively absurd, and still you sit there and eat your dinner and answer the texts and carry on like this is just Tuesday with better lighting.

We made it to Lion King, which was incredible, by the way. Well worth it. And then, during intermission, because the universe is deeply committed to layering chaos, my phone lit up with wedding text drama from my sister. Insults. Manipulation. Threats about my attendance at a wedding I was very clearly and publicly uninvited to.

And that, weirdly, felt like my white flag moment.

Not the biggest thing that happened all weekend. Not the worst. Just the one that tipped me into surrender.

Because by then I was too tired to keep wrestling people into versions of themselves they never promised to be.

My mom is who she is. My sister is who she is. I am who I am too, for that matter. Tired. Loving. Overstimulated. Trying. Still somehow under the delusion that if I say the right thing in the right way at the right moment, everything might suddenly line up and people might finally become easier, less volatile, less threatening.

They won’t.

That isn’t failure. That’s life.

Life is not a clean little lesson. It is people disappointing you and surprising you and annoying you and delighting you, often in the same hour. It is your daughter telling you something that makes your whole chest tighten, and then five minutes later your granddaughter is dropping sushi rice into a water glass like a tiny wonderfully beautiful lunatic. It is your phone lighting up with family nonsense in the middle of musical theater while you’re just trying to enjoy a small intermission.

By the time we got back to the room, Matt wanted to hit the hotel bar.

I could not.

Not emotionally. Not physically. Not in any way available to the human experience.

So I stripped off my clothes in the middle of the hotel room, threw on my favorite ratty T-shirt and sweatpants, and crawled into bed. Matt and my middle daughter went to the bar. My granddaughter climbed into the nightstand drawer with a pillow and an iPad, which felt so perfectly her that none of us even questioned it. My youngest daughter climbed into the other bed. And we all happily ignored each other in peace.

Honestly? A dream.

I’m writing this from that exact spot, already thinking about tomorrow. We have to go to Margaux for brunch as a test run for my middle daughter’s college graduation celebration, because apparently no matter what kind of emotional whiplash your family has handed you, there is always still brunch.

Some days I really do want to give up.

Not in some dramatic, beautiful, cinematic way. In the tired way. The real way. The way where I think I do not know if I can do another migraine, another fibro flare, another day where my brain is foggy and everyone still needs something from me.

And still, I already know what will happen.

I will wake up tomorrow.

I will pick my head up.

I will do one more day.

We’ll go to brunch. We’ll order. We’ll talk. Someone will laugh. Someone will need something. Life will keep moving whether I feel ready or not.

And then, because life refuses to let me sit in my own reflection for too long, my youngest daughter will probably announce something horrifying and absurd—like the fact that she just shit her pants—and I will laugh harder than I should.

And honestly, maybe that’s part of why I don’t give up.

Not because I’m especially noble. Not because I have some grand lesson tied up with a bow. But because life, for all of its exhaustion and noise and badly timed chaos, is still alive. Still interrupting itself. Still ridiculous. Still mine.

Sometimes the very thing that pushes me to the edge is the same thing that pulls me back.

The absurdity.

The people.

The noise.

The need.

The laughter at exactly the wrong moment.

That’s the part that saves me.

Messy, loud, sideways, exhausting life.

And still, somehow, mine.