Hard Choices

When you need more than a Magic 8 Ball

MEA Weekend is the stuff of dreams come true for Minnesota students — and their educators. It is, essentially, fall break — the Minnesota Educator Academy offers a conference (in-person but also, now, virtually) to provide professional development and continuing education for teachers. For students and their families it’s a long weekend, often used for a short trip or some activities in the beautiful fall weather. For teachers and other school employees, it is a milestone. It is our first chance to breathe after the craziness of the first 6 weeks of school. With years like this one, I feel like we reached MEA crawling toward the finish line, clawing the dirt with our fingernails. It has been QUITE a year thus far.

For the past 5 years, our little family of 4 has spent MEA Weekend up near the North Shore of Minnesota, at a little place called Crooked Lake Resort. It is quite a rustic spot, with no running water in the cabins — though it does have a lovely, centrally located bathhouse with toilets and showers and even a sauna! We spend the days walking the hundreds of trails in the area, hunting for grouse and enjoying the woods. The evenings are spent making chili and playing cards. As the kids have gotten older, they’ve added friends to our number, which makes this an even more fun and raucous weekend. There is no cell service to speak of up there, so it is indeed a true getaway from everyday life.

Plans were made and being put in motion for this year’s trip. I had created the Walmart pickup order full of fixings for cold cut sandwiches, the aforementioned chili, and snacks. So. Many. Snacks. (Apples, Little Debbies, and candy bars are some of the required items.) Dan made the cabin reservation long ago, we were just trying to figure out if we wanted to leave from the football game in Mountain Iron/Buhl on Wednesday night, or whether we wanted to drive home, sleep for a few hours, then head up north.

But on Monday, Billy informed us that he has football practice over MEA weekend. Mandatory football practice. About which he has known since August.

This news froze us. Our first instinct was to agree with Billy that he should skip it — after all, family takes precedence over everything, not to mention that Billy’s favorite thing in the world is this trip. But wait, his coach said that anyone who doesn’t show up at practice won’t suit up for the rest of the year. Harsh, right? But hey, sections are next weekend. And the boys were told in August, which means we should have had plenty of time to discuss and debate this. As it was, we had overnight to decide.

At church last Sunday, Pastor Jason described the Holy Spirit being along the lines of our conscience: a small — too quiet, often — voice in the back of our minds that tells us the Right Thing To Do. I had not thought of the Holy Spirit in this way, but liked it, as the H.S. has always seemed a little… woo woo. I leaned over to comment as such to my mother — no, they shouldn’t let us sit together in the choir but they do — and she came back with, “So it’s like the good angel on one shoulder and the bad angel on the other.” Then she corrected herself that it was a devil, not a bad angel, and I replied that technically the devil was supposed to be a fallen angel, and basically we lost the plot. I also mentioned that my only knowledge of this concept is from cartoons, so that wasn’t necessarily reliable.

Back to the point at hand, Dan and I both felt that we knew what the Right Thing To Do was, and we decided to cancel the trip. Talk about pleasing nobody! Billy was furious at us. Em and Breyden — her longtime boyfriend who was able to join us for the first time — were disappointed. Billy’s pal, Jack, had taken off work to come with us. We, of course, lost our deposit on the cabin, though I was able to cancel the Walmart order. Dan began to talk like it was the end of something significant… an era of our kids still being kids, I guess, when their time was ours and didn’t belong to outside entities.

Our consciences were telling us that we made a commitment — because a kid’s commitment is never just theirs — to football. Never mind that Billy, as a junior, has been standing on the sidelines for 99% of the Varsity games. He is a member of the team, and the expectations were set for him on the first day of practice (unbeknownst to us).

Our consciences were also screaming at us that this decision was bogus, that our priorities were messed up, that we had all been looking forward to this since last year.

Oh wait, maybe that was Billy. (Kidding, but also not.)

Here’s the thing about that son of ours, though. He was on the sidelines for a tough loss last night, the team’s last of the regular season. He went out hunting with a friend this morning, locally, and has asked his dad to go with him tomorrow before Billy has to be at practice. He did all his raging, and then accepted the situation far faster than most adults I know would have. I have a feeling that this ability to quickly process reality and disappointment is going to serve him well in impending adulthood.

I can smell Dan’s chili wafting up from the kitchen as I write this. I promised Emily that I would play cards with her tomorrow. MEA break is still happening, even if not as planned. Which is, you know, how life goes.

I also don’t hate not having to walk outside to go to the bathroom.

Thanks for reading.

Love, Susie