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.  

Vegas Baby!

Nicole is a Senior at SDSU. In what can only be defined as "shocking" she will graduate on time, in four years, this May. Not shocking because of who she is, but rather shocking because of who I am. She did not tell us or consult with us about the endeavor to complete college in four years, but rather ponied up and took three summer school classes last summer and then 20 units each semester this year. Had I been asked, I would have advised against this. I would have said, "Jesus. No! Don't do that." At the very least I would have said, "OK, do that, BUT work very limited hours." Guess who still worked about 30 hours a week? You can read blog posts of mine from about 10 years ago and know that Nicole hasn't changed. She is still over achieving and I am still, at my core, trying to force her to underachieve. We rarely find a middle ground. 

I am in San Diego helping her move. With one semester left, she has traded her college house filled with 5 roommates and headed to the beach to share an apartment with her boyfriend. You can pause to do your thinking and judging there, but it turns out her father and I just aren't conservative in this area. It also turns out she found a darling apartment a block up from the bay and in a neighborhood a lot safer than the one she left.

It is a luxury to be here helping her move. When our children were little I worked. And quite honestly I worked hard. For twenty years I worked full time and raised children. Now I don't work and I am adjusting to parenting young adults. This meant with the boyfriend out of town with a family emergency, I came to help with the move. And by help I mean we did it all ourselves, just she and I.  

There was the eight hour drive down with my car stuffed with beach cruisers and patio chairs, the renting and driving of the Uhaul in San Diego (not my most relaxing experience), the hoisting and lifting of beds and dressers, and then the making of lists. We visited Target, Marshalls, the grocery store and the Good Will several times. In between all of this, she worked.

Her working hours left me with some down time. It has been a weird year for me in terms of down time. Earlier this year I took our High school Jr. to New York to participate in a program for a week. I dropped her off and she stayed in the dorms while I had a week to myself in New York. I haven't had time to myself in 20+ years, and then within the course of a year two separate events and the retirement have left me with this grand luxury of time. 

This luxury of time has given me a chance to focus a little on myself. Time to focus on myself in the past has been limited to the half hour a week where all four children were at overlapping after school activities and I would park the car in a random parking lot (because it wasn't worth the time or effort to drive the car all the way home) where I may or may not have cried from exhaustion for the entire half hour. 

Focusing meant addressing some middle age weight that had been sneaking up on me. Something I like to address as middle aged fuckery. The 20 (or 30) pounds that appeared because it turns out you can't eat a big bowl of  popcorn with a peanut butter M and M chaser, sometimes accompanied by a glass of red wine, every night and still wear your jeans. It turns out I was smart to address the issue as I now have a Vegas situation looming ahead of me.

Not only is Nicole graduating, she is also turning 21 next month. I had always promised a Vegas trip. Nicole is young. Last man standing here. All of her high school and college friends have been 21 for at least a year, many for two. When the trip wasn't going to pan out with friends right at her birthday, I asked her if she and the boyfriend would want to go with her dad and I. I'm not going to lie, I was thrilled when she said yes. So, we started planning Vegas. And we are both very excited! 

My excitement includes finding a hotel with some spa amenities and gathering restaurant recommendations. Her excitement includes looking for "Sexy Vegas" dresses online. They are fabulous these  dresses. They are also very short, very tight, and very low cut. I am concerned about our Vegas selfies. I feel certain  the capri and tank top outfit I find "sexy" is going to look like Nicole went to Vegas with an Amish woman. So now, focusing on myself includes finding a "Sexy Vegas" dress that falls somewhere between Amish and Girls gone wild. Humor me when the pictures are posted and insist I kept the Amish portion to a minimum.

Better than my recent great luxury of time in my life, is the relationship I have with Nicole. I will not sugar coat what is the mother/daughter relationship during the teen years. It is complicated and difficult and energy sucking and defeating and tough, with brief (very brief, extremely brief) moments of joy thrown in to keep you hanging on to the belief that you can survive it all. I will have had the great pleasure of having done the whole dance five times. Once with my own mother and four times with my daughters. 

I came out the other side with Nicole. We talk every day. She asks for advice, she doesn't always take it, but she asks. We watch some TV shows together, some I choose and some she chooses. She over achieves, I listen and feel bad about my under achieving. I'm grateful. 

January 2018

I promised myself I would write. So I am. Here, at my desk...good, bad or indifferent... writing. January 2018.

I am coming off of a good year. I wasn't anxious or eager for it to end. Some years you just cannot wait for that new year to roll in. Too much bad, or too much negative, or maybe just too much of something. This wasn't one of those years for me. Lots of change in my family and it was all good change. That doesn't always happen.

It seemed like the country had a lot of bad. Nature seemed angry at us, or at the very least angry at California. I won't get into the political bad. Everyone has their opinion. I will say I am disinterested and numb to it all and this cannot be good. But, when I try, when I try to wake up and force myself to look at what is going on in politics...it just seems so surreal and possibly stupid, that I close back up again. 

The big AHA moment for me as I enter 2018 is that I really don't have "children" or "kids" anymore. They are two teens and two adults. Which is both joyful and challenging. The two teens are completely uninterested in the advice that I am still legally required by law to force upon them (this would be called "parenting" a concept that is lost in this household) and the two adults now ask for advice, which would be lovely if they followed any of the advice that was asked for, but they really do not.

There is a come uppance to it all because as I complain here, I realize I do the exact same thing to Naomi. I will frequently engage her in some type of conversation about my home and the decoration or up keep of it, ask a question and then immediately do something entirely different then the advice that she offered up. So there is a ridiculous never ending cycle to it all. I am lack luster in my attempt to break the cycle. 

I spend a lot of time texting my college friends. We live in all different parts of the United States. OK, we live in all different parts of California with one lone, sad situation of a dear friend stuck in Ohio (here after referred to snarkily as "the tundra"). This is not to offend the people of Ohio, but we are California girls and we need her back in flip flops and sunshine. I have several different threads (group messages that I refer to as threads, which wikipedia tells me is a real thing, but the two teens and two adults scoff at and mock me for...you know, if scoffing and mocking were allowed, but clearly they are not because that would be disrespectful and that does not happen in my house, of course). These texting threads are the perspective in life  that keep me sane when dealing with my life.

I'm watching The Bachelor. I know. You don't need to say anything, I know. But, the two adults watch it and I like to have topics of conversation with them that don't involve me giving the solicited, yet  ignored advice. So, here I am joining bachelor nation in its maybe 400th season.  

I only have one real observation. I have many, many observations, but only one real one. Only one that rolls over and over in my mind as I watch both the show and my brain cells spill out onto the carpet. 

While I may be new to watching the show in season 400, I am not new to it's concept. And while I, at age 49, am new to watching the show, I feel certain the 20+ girls ages 22 to whatever are not new to watching the show, nor it's concept either. Yet, there are several that seem shocked that the show goes on after they kiss this man and announce their love, or actually "deep, one of a kind connection" with him. It appears that at this moment they expect the bachelor to announce, "Yes, me too. Let's shut this whole thing down! ABC, host of 400 seasons...this time is different, We are going to wrap up tonight and let the other 20+ girls go home. It's a shocker, but we are doing it. Thank God I don't have a contract that expects me to hang in there for the next 15 episodes and since all you really wanted was for to find true love then you will be supportive of this decision."

That's all. That's my one real observation. I will spare you the many more that I have, because again, it is season 400. The thoughts have all been shared.


Right now, with this new found promise to write, I have about ten started and unfinished articles in the works. Some with great potential and some that are really just awful. But, I have decided that if I am going to get anywhere with posting blog pieces more frequently, good, bad or indifferent I am just going to have to post more frequently. Meaning...some may be really awful. 

And just like that...

Our youngest turned 13 at the end of July. This seems impossible. Surreal in a way I cannot wrap my head around. Mary is a teenager. I now have three teenagers and one almost adult. And in March I will have three teenagers and one adult. And next July I will be a stone's throw away from fifty.

It is happening, all this adulting and moving on. It doesn't matter if I am ready for it, it is happening. This summer found our oldest in Bali. Nicole was there to fulfill a college credit and teach English to the children. Her social media is full of lots of pictures. She had  the time of her life. None of the pictures have the non English speaking children, but lots of colorful landscape and colorful drinks.

Our high school Jr. was in New York this summer at a journalism program in Manhattan. It woke Paige up. She is ready now to think about college and leaving home and decide what kind of experience she will have in two years.

The college bound second born has been  home working four jobs before heading to New York for school in the fall. Reagan has a work ethic like no other. It was impressive. It is her time. Going across country is the right move for her. It isn't all rainbows and unicorns as she gets ready to go.  We draw battle lines. She wanting to be an adult. Me wanting her to do things my way.

They are adventurous. They have a bigger picture of life than the small town we chose to raise them in. This was by design. It was what I wanted for them. A big picture view of life and what is out there. It's both exciting and mind numbing in a way that is hard to describe. Because even though this is what I wanted for them, there is also the reality that this is what will lead them all away from us. Which I knew. Which I have been planning for, but still...planning is different than happening.

I quit my job. Some will say I "retired" and that is a nice word. But I was a teacher for 25 years, some of those years part time,  and I am not 50 so the state teacher retirement system isn't going to let me "retire." It's really a system only designed to benefit those that work for many years, in a row, and decide to leave well after 50. It's fine. It was time for me to go. I no longer agreed with the profession I was once so in love with. I wasn't teaching anymore so much as just giving a series of constant tests. With each test I was just saying, "THIS test is the important one!!!" Only really none of them were important. But this is a blog for another day.

I will miss the children. There were a few success stories along the way. A few I made a difference in their lives. Mostly I will miss my grade level partner. He was hard to leave. For ten years I had the best of the best. I do not say this lightly. I had worked with some REALLY good people before Ken. But Ken, he was gold. I did not have even one moment of one day that I was frustrated or angry or irritated or even vaguely annoyed. Every day I showed up, we smiled, we laughed, we enjoyed the day. He understood not to worry about the small things. He understood how to be flexible. He understood what is important. He understood it all. I was blessed.

In my new "retirement" I am subbing. I really love it. I am teaching and enjoying the children, without the stress of any kind of responsibility to the district. It is a good fit for me right now. On my second day of subbing I was displaced to the library. Basically the largest tree in Lodi had fallen on the classroom I was to teach in that day. No one was hurt, it happened in the night. It was surreal to be there on a day that changed the history of a school. It is a small country school and many generations have passed through it's doors and the memories associated with the beautiful tree are deeply felt. I arrived home that day to all of the trees behind my home gone. We back up to a railroad and they are in charge of the land. No warning given. They just cut down all the trees. My beautiful, peaceful, shady backyard. Ruined. And just like that in one day...trees, important, old, huge trees...all gone.


God is speaking to me. He is speaking to me loudly and with wood chippers. I need to quiet myself, be still and listen to what he is trying to say to me. This is not my strong suit. I am more of a "charge ahead and get it done (and done my way) kind of girl." But, even I know he is speaking to me. 


It's all just changing. It's changing and I have been excellent at embracing the changes and letting go, but in reality I was only good at letting go of  the change I had total control over. The changes I didn't have control over, I was hanging on to...tightly, with white knuckles and no blood flow. On tree day...there it was...change, big change I had no control over. Time to let go. So that is where I am and what I am trying to do. Trying to let go of things I have no control over. It's a process. But, you know God is speaking to me so I am working on it...If the trees mean something else, I will let you know.