Yesterday I walked in the door about 6pm after a full morning of me time, tennis and lunch, followed by a full afternoon of "Momaging." I entered the garage with groceries, unloaded them, changed a load of laundry, got the garbage cans to the curb, all with my phone in one hand as I fielded repeated phone calls from four adult children all needing my time, advice, travel arranging skills and more.
It doesn't happen like this very often any more. Most of my "Me Time" mornings are followed by afternoons with leisure time to take care of household duties and life. But yesterday I was reminded of how busy my life used to be an a day to day basis. Now I am just not needed that often. But my girls have always had the ability to spring all their needs and wants on me at the same time. And this has all found me "Momaging" in May. But of course it was May. All chaos and hectic life happens in May. Now, after a couple of years off, May is just mocking me by sneaking in the back door and letting me know...no one escapes May for long.
We are entering the season of next generation weddings and babies. So my phone calls of urgency are all related to showers and weddings and engagements and the list goes on. Grown up celebrations for dear friends that shaped their childhoods. There are dresses to be ordered, alterations to be had, registries to gaze upon, gifts to be pondered and always plane tickets to be purchased.
For a bi-coastal family it is always funny to me that we can all end up eating lunch in Central Park or dinner at our table at home in a completely casual manner because everyone's lives and paths have crossed for a four hour period of time that finds us together briefly as some fly in and others fly out. In reality the casualness of it all is orchestrated by me. By the time we have our four hour Central Park lunch I have spent hundreds of hours aligning everyone's schedule to make it work out.
Our Jeep is headed to college and joining the rest of the family on the East coast. End of an Era, no more third car for children that live at home, because no children live at home. For the first summer in 27 years no children will be home. Add Jeep transport to the "Momaging" list of May items to be tackled.
May always found me attending banquets. Swim banquets. Dance banquets. Drill banquets. Academic award banquets. The May banquet was a killer. This May I attended my first banquet for me, the Tennis Cult (the use of the word cult to be explained in a separate writing) banquet. I was almost late, handling a "Momaging" crises of travel for appropriate sizing of carry on luggage, but I made it. A May banquet for your self is so much more fun then those attended for my children. I was reminded that I am playing tennis with the right group of ladies as I remembered a line of mine from a previous blog about May. It went something like this, "if the banquet award isn't for being funny, we aren't taking anything home." It rang true for the tennis cult banquet. There was no award. It was also a banquet with a glass of wine. The banquet for me was a true reward after years of banquets for others.
In reality, I will post this in March. I Started this two Mays ago and then promptly stopped writing. The approaching May brings a graduation, a child and grandchild making a brief move home with us, a second child relocating, more weddings of childhood friends and a third season tennis cult banquet for me.
The Lenten season finds me reflective. Giving up some things that don't suit me, as well as taking on some things that do. So I find myself called back to writing.
So this will be imperfect. It won't have the flow I want it to have. It won't have a connective beginning and ending. But it will be complete and I will put it out there to get me started.
And May will be here before we know it...
