When I was between the ages of seven and seventeen, I hauled buckets full of sap. Most every spring morning, I would awake and hear the ping-ting of the sap as it hit the metal buckets that hung from a tap drilled into the maple trees in my family’s forest. I would pour the sap into my two large plastic buckets with handles and carry it over to the sap wagon to be emptied. The sap wagon would carry the sweet liquid back to the sugar house where it was poured into the evaporator. The evaporator boiled the maple sap until it became pure maple syrup. It was then transferred to the finishing pan where it was filtered and bottled.
 
My family and I hauled a lot of sap. It took 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. My family was my father, mother, brother Jay, and at least three exchange students (usually from Norway). Sometimes my family also included neighbors and city folk who thought hauling sap was a spiritual and organic experience. I thought it was exhausting and sticky and wished Saturday mornings were about Captain Crunch and cartoons. But that was never to be. My family did not own a television and sugar cereal was absolutely forbidden. Producing maple syrup was part of our business and part of being a family.
 
I was brought up believing that pure maple syrup was the only kind of syrup that should touch pancakes, waffles and French toast. When my best friend from elementary school, Patty Schnathorst, had me over for sleep-overs, I experienced another kind of syrup on the Eggo waffles that were served for breakfast. It was fake syrup. But I experienced real entertainment by watching Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson portray the characters, Frank and Joe, in the Hardy Boys television show. I also remember watching Little House on the Prairie and thinking that “Half-Pint’s” life wasn’t that different from my own. My mother cooked on an old- fashioned wood cook stove, and we lived in the basement of our home because the top two floors were only framed in. We heated our living area with a double barrel stove, which means two metal barrels were welded together and given a little door opening to burn wood. We bathed as a family, very free and au natural, in the sauna we had built near the lake.

Eventually, after about a year, we got a hot water heater and this made doing the dishes a lot easier but it wasn’t until years later, when we finished the house and moved upstairs, that we had a bathtub. I realized not everyone lived this way though because our property was on the tip of the White Earth Indian reservation which was ten miles from the plains that rolled into North Dakota where land was farmed. I went to school with mostly Indian and farmer kids. And they had their own traditional ways of living. Patty Schnathorst lived in town, which was named Callaway, where our elementary school was located, along with a café, the Catholic and Lutheran church, Bo’s Superette, a gas station and the liquor store. Patty’s dad was a plumber and they had a nice home with matching living room furniture from Sears. I liked visiting Patty’s house and sitting on her couch, watching her TV, and snacking on sugar cereal. But I liked the way I lived too because I loved my family and this was how my family worked.

My children, Marco, Peter, Joey, and David, don’t live in a forest but in our small, timber town, International Falls, they are surrounded by forests and are only miles from Voyageurs National Park. They experience real, pure maple syrup every time they have a waffle (mostly a frozen Eggo), pancake or piece of French toast. After having had fake syrup at a restaurant they try to avoid having a repeat experience and will opt for cereal when at a friend’s house. I doubt they can tell the difference between a maple or an elm tree and they probably have no idea where real syrup comes from, but they can certainly taste the difference between the two. And while I have brought them up to embrace and appreciate the purity of pure maple syrup, I think I have failed in the areas of television and sugar cereal. I don’t believe I am a failure because we have TV and sugar cereal, it’s just that my children have too much of these things.
 

 
When I was a little girl I knew better than to exclaim, “I’m bored”, for this was communicated to my parents as, “Please give me some work to do, like hauling brush or stacking wood.” When my children utter, “I’m bored”, they expect I might offer to go fetch them a new video or DVD movie at Top Ten Video, a mile from our home.

It’s true, my oldest son, Marco, now mows the lawn and shares a paper route with his cousin, Scott. But the lawn needs mowing only once a week and the shared paper route takes only an hour every day. Marco and Peter have activities outside the home and friends to play with, as does Joey their younger brother, but still too much free time is spent WATCHING TV! David, the youngest member of the family and first one up each day, has an established morning routine that includes a sippy cup of orange juice accompanied by a graham cracker along with uninterrupted preschool programming, ranging from Sesame Street to Rolie Polie Olie. Of course, I could insist on a different morning plan, if I or husband Dan would be willing to get up with David, but alas, it is not to be, for our motto is and always will be, “It’s hard to raise a family, especially in the morning.”

I admit the TV has become a form of childcare for me. And while I can’t argue that, “too much television will turn my children’s brains to mush” (words of wisdom from my dad), I can argue that, there are certain times when my children watch television... that I am in desperate need of a break from them and, when I get this break, the whole family seems to benefit. Taking this idea a step further, I’d also like to confess that Captain Crunch cereal, for dinner, has been known to bring me, the weary mom, sanity although I do realize, “it will cause my children’s teeth to rot out of their mouths” (more sage advice from dad).

When I was a young girl of five, we moved from a wealthy suburb in Minneapolis to the woods, 200 miles away. The plan was to have an organic garden, tap maple trees and live the good life. For extra money my dad would work his business, which was a job of blasting pot holes using dynamite. My father is a graduate of Dartmouth College with a degree in geology. With his knowledge and expertise, he was able to do this and support his family. I don’t really get it but it worked.
 
The book that had an almost spiritual influence on my father, getting him to move his family to the forest, was not the Bible but was instead, Helen and Scott Nearing’s book entitled, Living the Good Life. It is a book on, “pioneering as a way of life in the twentieth century” and in the early 1970’s, the New York Times Review wrote, “To those who carry through with the Nearing’s ideas, this book will be scripture.” My family decided to “carry through” and so with book in hand, in the summer of 1973, I began my hippie-life childhood.  But after ten years of this sort of life, things began to change.  We stopped tapping the maple trees, the organic garden became home to mostly raspberries and pretty flowers (and I think some tomatoes), and the good life we had been living became a little better or at least...different. 
 
 We now began to run a cross-country ski resort called, Maplelag. A lodge was built along with several bunk houses, another sauna added and old log homes were brought in and restored. The sap wagon trails became ski trails, my dad their groomer, my mom a cook and my brother and I, along with the Norwegians living with us, would work as employees and embark on another adventure. Pure maple syrup would always be served to the guests to use on the Norwegian pancakes served on Saturday mornings and sugar cereal would never be an option. And up until the time I left for college, as a theatre major, I would work and help my family with this new way of living off our land. I can’t say I always liked working in the lodge on Saturday mornings, because as a teenager, I believed Saturday mornings should be about sleeping. But I loved my family and now this is the way it would work.

 
 
The important thing for me as a parent isn’t that my boys experience a childhood environment like the one I came from, but it is important that they learn to value and appreciate the importance of family and working together as one. Living a good life is about respect and love for one another, especially when it comes to family. Where you live doesn’t matter half as much as how you live and get along with others.

My friend, Mary, told me of the time her three children were fighting and picking on each other and instead of separating them and giving them a “time-out,” she brought them over to the kitchen window.

She asked them to look out the window together and said, “See that world out there? There are people out there who will treat you poorly, not liking you for how you look, not liking you for what you believe or for no good reason at all. Outside it can be a mean, cold world. But as a family we need to stick and work together. We need to be able to count on one another for support and affirmation. We need to build each other up, not tear each other down.”

It’s a good lesson and I try and take my children to the window when they need reminding on what it means to be part of a strong family.

Having a loving, supportive relationship and good communication with my children is vital and without one I would not be successful in implementing rules, boundaries and consequences for the rules when they’re broken.

I believe what speaker and author Josh McDowell suggests, “That rules without relationship, lead to rebellion.”

My oldest son, Marco, recently rebelled against the errand running I had to do after I picked up him, Peter and Joey from their “College for Kids” classes that ended at noon. Once I pick up the kids from an activity they are in the van and so errand running after such an event means that Marco stays in the van to watch his three younger brothers while I quick, flit in and out of the stores on International Falls two block main street.

But Marco responded with rapid fire questions, “Can’t you do this later, when Dad comes home? Can’t I watch my brothers at home? How long will it take? How many do you have? Do you have to do this now? It’s so boring. (I must add, that at this statement I suggested I call the community service program in town to see if he could clean out garbage from the area ditches for the afternoon).

Marco was quiet and didn’t say anything until I parked the van in front of Borderland Jewelry to run my watch in for a new battery, “Mom”, he said, “I’m timing you.”

At which point I retorted, “Marco, I am sorry it is such a burden for you to wait and watch your brothers while I do a few errands but I need your help and you are a part of this family and to make this family work, we work together.”

With that said, I shut the door and went to drop my watch off. When I came back (a minute later) Marco had something to tell me, “Mom, I’m sorry for being cranky and asking you all those questions.”

I drove in silence for a block and said, “Thank you for apologizing, Marco. I appreciate you.”

It’s at those times I think I must be doing something right as a parent but then I really don’t want to take credit for that kind of behavior because I really don’t want to take credit for a time when perhaps, some day, Peter may come home after having cashed in his entire savings for all over body tattoos and a tongue piercing.

I loved to read when I was a young child and with the absence of television during my formative years I was able to escape to another place with intriguing and fascinating characters, many of whom I pretended to be myself. I would love for my own children to have this same sort of escape but unfortunately the “come to life” characters in TV land are more entertaining to them than the plain and simple book.

When we hit mid-July, I realized we were over half-way through the summer reading program at the library in which I had registered the boys. Because I had the “Bad Mom” feeling, I decided I would implement my own home program. We would have a reading hour in the home, starting at 8:30 PM and ending at 9:30 PM. If the boys didn’t want to read, be read to, or look at books then their other choice was...to go to bed. For three nights this newly scheduled program of mine went well. And on the third night, Joey, who had just turned six, was looking at a book about astronauts.

After about five minutes he looked up and inquired, “Mom, when were you born?”

“I was born in 1967,” I replied.

“Oh, then you were born before the astronauts first went to the moon because they went there in 1969,” he stated.

First, I admit, I had to ask my husband to see if he was right and then I responded, “That’s right, Joey, how did you know that?”

“I remember it from TV,” he shared.

“That’s great Joey,” I said and praised him for being so clever.

By the fourth night it was too hot to be upstairs where reading hour took place and so sadly, my program fell apart when we changed locations. After leaving my reading group to go upstairs to get them a snack, I returned ten minutes later and found the lights off and the TV on. The boys were quiet and happy and I guess I decided... I would be too.

“Oh well”, I thought, “tomorrow night we’ll read. I’ve always said, “It’s all about balance.”

I know that too much of anything is not a good thing. I suppose, most days the TV gets turned on... but not every day and there have been weeks where I refused to buy Frosted Flakes or Fruit Loops. I really believe if I can be consistent in my parenting by showing love and support along with having good communication and disciplining appropriately, my sons will turn out pretty “sweet.”

My goal is to raise them to have a real “sweetness,” not one that is sugar-coated but one that has the same purity as genuine maple syrup.