I Have Lost Easter

I have lost Easter. It feels like it happened fast. Easter is Sunday and today, Wednesday, as I was vacuuming the couch (I vacuum our couch a lot now that I don't work full time, which is odd because for 25 years I worked full time and never vacuumed our couch and we survived just fine, but now I vacuum it with an alarming frequency)  it hit me...I have lost Easter.

In reality I guess I've been loosing it since last Easter and also in reality, I guess I knew that I was loosing it, but today it hit me.

Ever since my married life, Easter has always been a chaotic holiday for me. Years of small children, Easter Bunny responsibilities, Easter Day travel, church responsibilities, and full time work the Friday before Easter, as well as the Monday after.

Easter was my first holiday with my husband's family when we were dating. Huge family. Huge get together. Cousins and aunts and uncles and, and, and...huge! My previous Easter holiday celebrations consisted of maybe 6 people, 10 on a big year. I don't know if he warned me or not, in reality there was probably no way to warn me. I maybe spent some time in the back bedroom or bathroom trying to breathe a little. But it quickly and happily became my norm.

Easter was our first married holiday together, falling a week after our wedding and one year we would take a week old baby to Easter. This is a great memory of church with my husband's parents in the morning and then pictures of a great, great aunt holding the baby.

As the girls grew up and we kept adding children to our family there were years of finding and buying coordinating Easter dresses, finding and buying basket goodies, preparing and dying Easter eggs, and the list goes on. Lots of fabulous pictures of it all with the girls in the dresses (in teen years the dresses are replaced by jeans and shorts that I begged not to be too tight or show butt cheeks, often to no avail)  hunting for the eggs. Pictures with their cousins, pictures with aunties, pictures with uncles, pictures with grandma and grandpa and family pictures of the 6 of us where I look a little tired (and by tired I mean exhausted).

College senior, our San Diego girl, didn't come home last year and isn't coming this year. There is a job and a boyfriend now. College freshman, our New York girl, isn't coming home either. Too far and she loves being in New York at all times. The high school Jr. (looking at out of state colleges) is on limited time for sure and the five years I have left with the 8th grader will fly by.

I'm not sad. I raised them this way. I wanted them all to have a big world view away from their small town. And when you raise them that way...you are going to lose some things. This year, I lost Easter.
I am hanging on to Thanksgiving by a thread, but only because we have started rotating traveling to where the college girls live. I still have Christmas.

I know what kind of day Saturday before Easter is for lots of Moms. You are busy putting together everyone's Easter outfits (all but yours, because you didn't have time for you, so about 10 tonight you are going to be in your closet dealing with the fact that you have nothing or that what you do have doesn't fit from last year, or it is black). You are trying to get the baskets finished and yelling at your husband to please run out and get just a couple of things (he will return triumphantly 4 hours later after a "quick" stop at his office with the Hershey bunny and a bag of ice feeling that his contribution is equal to the 52 hours of prep work you have put into getting ready for Sunday). You are boiling eggs and setting out a nice display of egg dye for your children to color the eggs (I have pulled the same egg dye out two years in a row, no one even notices it). They will be grateful, not ask any questions about why you did not buy a different type of dye kit or when will this be over so they can return to Youtube watching. You are taking phones away so that there can be actual focus on Easter play lines that need to be learned for church the next morning. You are cooking at least one side dish, probably your husbands favorite while he says things like, "should that have more salt?" Even though he himself has never made the food item. You are doing all this and a million more things.

You will do all this and then, it will be lost. This year the Easter bunny here got a basket of goodies delivered to the dorms in New York, the bunny will venmo something down to San Diego and he has two baskets almost ready to go for the residents here (maybe new baskets because he was too lazy to go to storage for the ones he kept for years that he may have thrown away in disgust...he just isn't sure). I am making side dishes, in my kitchen, as opposed to buying something and sticking it in our own dishes like, say a a subway salad that we may or may not have stopped to buy on our way to Easter some years.

So we will only be a family of four for the picture I force everyone to take this year. The upside...I won't look tired and our couches are very lent free!

Excerpts From This Mom's Life...: The Pendulum Swings

Excerpts From This Mom's Life...: The Pendulum Swings: We are finishing up  our second week of Spring Break here. The first week was mostly lovely. We were on vacation at a fairly swanky hotel in...

The Pendulum Swings

We are finishing up  our second week of Spring Break here. The first week was mostly lovely. We were on vacation at a fairly swanky hotel in Southern California. I was with my youngest teen and her friend. The friend and she were very self entertaining and quite honestly seemed to want very little to do with me outside of being fed and delivered to a mall on occasion. 

In contrast we were near my newly minted 21 year old daughter and she and her boyfriend came over every night to hang out. The boyfriend cooked dinner one night, my daughter planned things for she and I to do. My husband flew down on day three and and we all did things together.  It was basically a really lovely vacation.

I took this vacation four years ago when said 21 year old was 17 and a freshman in college. Missing my first born as she had been gone for two months, I drug the whole family down to visit her even though I knew she was knee deep in college life. I knew she would be busy and not have much time for us, but still I missed her and made the trip. She basically wanted nothing to do with us. I forced her to commit to one dinner and night with us. She was miserable and put up with it, but it wasn't my best parenting moment.

A reminder that the pendulum swings.

A few years ago in my teaching I had this great family. One of those really amazing families that make a teaching career worth it.  The oldest just graduated from high school and she was special to me. The siblings that followed were equally as special, all for different reasons, but I adore the whole family. They were a large family with several branches of siblings and cousins. One year the dynamics shifted and a branch of the family went from having a quiet household of one child to basically a household of five children. The parents came in to parent teacher conference exhausted (and humorous, which I love) and possibly a little defeated.  But I remember saying these words to them and they have stuck with me ever since, because the words were really about me.

"Of course you are exhausted and defeated. You no longer have the luxury of basking in the glory (I may have said enjoy, but am sprucing it up for blog rewrite) of one child's success. With multiple children you only have time to briefly acknowledge any one successes before you are hit with another child's screw up. You are jumping to put out fires at every turn"

And that is my reality. I  quickly acknowledge and enjoy one success, but as the smile is forming at one child's award assembly, my phone is lighting up with an emergency text from another child, and while trying to read the text a face time call from yet another.

The pendulum swings.

This last December, standing in Downtown Disney, I was smiling at my high schooler as she walked off to spend the day with a fellow dance  friend. What a dream, I thought! I am here for the Disney parade with my family to watch two of my daughters and my neice perform. My older daughter would be here soon with her boyfriend and we would share our Disney love with him. As my high schooler walked off and I was, yes basking in the glow of success, it happened. With smile barely formed it happened as if in slow motion (all bad Disney moments for me happen as if in slow motion and I am an outsider watching it all as if it were a movie). 

With one eye on the happy daughter, second daughter threw her head on the table, grabbing her stomach and making an awful horrid face of disgust before storming off to the bathroom. As she stormed off, I got a phone call from hysterical San Diego college girl with incredibly bad news about her boyfriend's family, and as I spoke to her text after text from New York girl lit up my phone about a class and teacher she was struggling with. 

There I was, pacing Downtown Disney trying to find a place to hear my phone without the theme from Pinocchio blaring in my ears, ignoring the rapid fire texts from New York, while Naomi tried to flag me down to let me know the stalking off had been because the long awaited for "time of the month" had arrived on the very day we were wearing costumes with no underwear allowed (let me explain at a later time the difficulties of finding thong underwear at the last minute at the Happiest Place on earth. It's a pricey Uber ride to Target). 

By five that night most panic had subsided and things were back to normal (with the exception of the grumpy "time of the month " teen who was holed up in the hotel room googling, "How to Start Early Menopause" so that she could put a stop to the nearly lifelong commitment  quickly and swiftly).

The pendulum swings.

New York college girl just face-timed me from Central Park as the high school Jr. walked out the door to head to the State Capital. Both are marching today. There is a certain thrill for me to be having two teenagers marching on opposite coasts. My New York girl up early and out the door for a moment of importance that she believes in. The same girl a year ago I struggled to get up early for school, a moment of importance I believed in.

The pendulum swings.

As spring break ends we head back to the grind of every day life. Last quarter and lots of studying for AP tests here. Stressful. Mostly for me, I hate the pressure of it all for her. She doesn't seem to mind that much. AP tests and starting to think about college. College, round three. A blog for another day...

The pendulum swings.

A New York State of Mind...

Reagan, our second college girl. moved to New York this year to go to college. It was a process. A journey. An emotional dump truck of crap for two tumultuous years that finally righted itself and turns out to have been a good choice. Maybe that's why it has taken me so long to write about it.  I wanted to feel good about the move before I could get it all down in print.

I have been gathering thoughts in my head for her departure. Collecting them since last summer. They have been stuck there in my head, tumbling over each other. Often when I write this is my process. Lots of gathered thoughts tumbling around in my head until they quiet themselves and fall into place. These thoughts, these New York thoughts, have just been tumbling and tumbling, for months.

They refused to quiet. But, to be fair to them, they haven't had the peace or space to fall into place. They were crowded in  with thoughts of San Diego college girl turning 21 and graduating, middle school girl off to week long science camp and finishing her last year at middle school, high school girl's week long journalism program in New York followed by drill season and a crazy year of AP class hell, my self chosen unemployment and the list goes on and on. 

We struggled, my New York girl and I. We struggled heavily. We struggled through one year of middle school and four years of high school, with Junior and Senior year just a battle ground with little to no relief at any moment. It was a clash of personalities. I recently saw the movie Lady Bird. I don't really need to recount our struggles because the author of Lady Bird has already done this in a beautifully written screen play. Every mother and daughter should see the movie. It is the story of Reagan and I, and I am sure many more.

And when it was all said and done, when I thought we could take no more, when I was sure there was no hope for either of us..she moved across country uprooting from our small wine country farm town in Northern California to New York City. It should have been a disaster at every turn, but it wasn't.


It was a huge leap of faith for her father and I to commit to schooling across country. I waffled endlessly in my mind (and sometimes screaming it loudly at her in a slightly crazy. maniacal manor two inches from her face). Did she deserve to go? Should we trust someone who couldn't keep a room clean or follow household rules at home to survive in New York City? In the end we decided to go for it. 

The turn around was immediate. It started when we flew back to move her and get her situated in the dorms. Selfishly I am going to tell you right now, flying to college and then just buying all the stuff at the college was a WAY better experience then loading my car full of all the stuff and driving 8 hours to move it in. I was braced for arguments, tension, irritation, the overall yuckiness in mood we had experienced the last 5 years. It never came. We moved her in, she was enjoyable, I enjoyed her, we made decisions together easily about what she needed and didn't need. It was like I was in a dream. It was obvious she was in the right place. 

Definitely one of the top ten best decisions I have ever made. We talk a lot. Text every day. She asks for advice or calls just to check in with me. She got a job. She got good grades her first semester. She will randomly call and thank us for letting her live her dream. It all just really fell into place for her and us. 

It isn't always perfect. There are moments of heavy deep sighs from me and strong irritation from her. We had a total break down of communication for a week after she had been there for a month over some things. And we both mutually decided that six weeks was at least one week too long for her to be trapped in our small town and home when she was home on winter break

So she is staying this summer. After some back and forth it was decided that this was the right choice. I will go back in May and move her to wherever one moves when they are living in New York on a college budget. For Thanksgiving we will go to her.We rented a house in New Jersey and I will enjoy a bucket list item of cooking dinner for my family as we enjoy a New York kind of Holiday. 

What I am reminded of daily is how proud I am of her. How proud I am of us. The odds were stacked against us in those high school years. It is the hardest parenting I have ever done. People ask about her all the time...she is a bit of a novelty in traveling so far to school. It is a thrill to respond. I light up and share that she is doing great. She is thriving. She is happy. I go all out in explaining how great she is doing. I over compensate for years of being asked, and responding with a pained look on my face while I mumbled "fine" while chewing a whole through the side of my mouth. 

I will never feel like I parented her well during those rough years. I still will wake up at 4 am and remember the battlefield years and feel a little sick. I can still spend a random hour regretting the way I handled things. I will always have regrets.But, at the moment I needed to, at just the right moment, I am grateful that I made the right choice.

New York is a special and complicated place for our little family. On a day of great despair for many it gave of us a day of hope,  a day to be grateful for survival against the odds. It seems fitting to see our little Lady Bird there, now, surviving...and thriving.  

I am finishing this writing up in the audience at a dance competition. My third competitive dancer, possibly my 20th dance convention/competition and probably the 4.000th slow and emotional lyrical song I have listened to in my life as a dance mom. So I am tearing up, crying a little as finish this and look for an ending. The tears are out of unbelievable love for my New York girl and little bit because of my background music as I write our story.  

For a full experience in reading this I encourage you to find a slowed down version of I Need A Hero (Footloose circa 1984) or Breathe by Faith Hill.