Good Friday

When I was growing up, we went to church at noon on Good Friday.  It was a somber service for a somber day, but afterwards we went out for pie at The Landmark, a local restaurant.  We spent Saturday coloring Easter eggs in coffee mugs filled with vinegary-smelling dyes.  On the years the weather cooperated, we got up in the pre-dawn darkness for sunrise services.  When we got home, we hunted for our cellophane-wrapped Easter baskets and searched for the jelly beans my mom had hidden all over the living room.  Then we put on our best clothes and our freshly polished shoes and headed off to church where the sanctuary smelled of lilies as we sang "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" and "Up from the Grave He Arose."  We came home to Easter dinner, followed by an Easter egg hunt with the real hard-boiled eggs we had dyed the day before.  For many days after Easter we took the cracked, colorful eggs in our school lunches with little salt and pepper shakers and ate deviled eggs and pickled eggs for supper.  It was the same year after year.  Here's the strange thing: I re-created very few of these Easter traditions with my own kids.  Our church didn't have a Good Friday service, and most years classes were in session at the college, so I was teaching anyway.  My kids didn't like hard-boiled eggs, and it seemed wasteful to color eggs we were going to throw away, so some years we dipped white wax eggs in colored wax instead.  I hid my kids' Easter baskets, but I just used the twiggy baskets we had around the house and didn't wrap them in colorful cellophane.  Our church had Easter morning services and lilies, but we sang contemporary worship songs rather than "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." Some years, thanks to New York's long spring breaks, we drove to Florida to visit Steve's parents--those years we colored eggs on the patio in the tropical, eighty-degree heat, I packed Easter bags instead of baskets, we wore swimsuits instead of Easter finery and went the beach instead of to church on Easter Sunday.  I've spent a good bit of time worrying about this over the years.  I'm pretty big on traditions, and yet on this holiest of holidays, somehow I never could quite replicate the Easters of my childhood.  It's not the colorful cellophane-wrapped baskets or the Easter egg hunts I'm talking about, it's the Good Friday services, the sunrise services, and the reverence with which my parents approached Easter--those are the things that formed in me an unwavering, unshakeable faith in a loving God.  I hope and pray on this Good Friday that despite the piecemeal approach to Easter my kids have experienced over the years, they know, beyond a shadow of a doubt how precious they are to God. And regardless of how they mark these holy days in the years ahead, I hope every Good Friday and every Easter Sunday is a solid reminder of God's amazing grace and love.

Closing Night

Tonight is closing night of the high school musical, scores of people have put in hundreds of hours over the past five months.  My son Ben has been working on it since last summer when he chose the show.  And in a few hours it will all be over, living on only in the hearts and minds of all the kids and adults who worked on the show and of audience members who came to watch and cheer.  I am feeling sad and wistful about that, even though I am just one of those audience members.  As I've said before, I have a hard time with endings.  I know things can't go on forever; I know some things must end in order for other things to begin.  But still it's hard when musicals end, when friends move away, when your kids graduate from college and can no longer come home for breaks and holidays.  It's harder still when lives end, and widows like my mom and Steve's mom are left to carry on alone and when grown-up kids like me can't call their dads on Saturday mornings.  Yet all we can do is hold on to the sweet memories, while we forge ahead, thinking about what we're going to do next . . .

An Irish Lullaby

My mom was only partly Irish on one side of her family, but she loved Irish music. We grew up singing along with her Irish records in the days approaching St. Patrick's Day.  On the 17th, she greeted us with a "Top o' the mornin' to you," and we all wore green to school.  For some reason, instead of corned beef and cabbage, she simply served green foods for dinner.  I tried to carry on these traditions with my own kids.  They loved the green dinners, but despite the cassette tapes I made from my mom's old records, my kids never really got to know sweet Molly Malone or Clancy (who lowered the boom); they never fell asleep to an Irish lullaby.  These days, my kids wear green on St. Patrick's Day (if they remember), and I usually get a "top o' the morning" text from at least one of them, but it's been a while since we've had pesto, broccoli, kiwi, Granny Smith apples, celery sticks, pickles, and 7-up with green ice cubes for dinner.  I wonder sometimes what traditions my kids will carry on into their adult lives, what bits and pieces of their childhoods they will pass along to their own children.  I hope they hold onto the things that matter most.  But I know they can't hold onto everything; they need to make space to do things their own way and to create new traditions.  And I'm looking forward to watching it all unfold.

Opening Night

My husband Steve and I met in the fall of 1979 at Beeghly Theater where we were both theatre majors.  My experience at Theatre Westminster was uneven at best, and when I graduated, I walked away from performing and have never looked back.  But Steve has continued to sing, act, and direct ever since.  And we're both big fans of musical theatre, so our kids grew up listening to musical soundtracks and watching musicals on television.  When our oldest child was in third grade, his first year at the "big" school, he saw a preview for the upcoming high school musical in a school assembly.  He was mesmerized.  He couldn't wait to see the whole show, so he and I got tickets for opening night of Oklahoma on the FHS stage in 1996.  For the next five years, we kept up the tradition of going to each opening night together: Bye, Bye Birdie in 1997, followed by Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Grease.  Then, finally, he was old enough to audition for his first show.  Despite having a ruptured eardrum on the night of auditions, he ended up in the cast of Oliver! his freshman year.   Over the next three years, he was in the casts of Les Misérables, 42nd Street, and Crazy for You.  In the fall of 2005, he headed off to college as a music education major, dreaming of teaching vocal music and directing musicals.  Almost right away, he realized music was not the right major for him and switched to inclusive childhood education.  Yet he still dreamed of directing  high school musicals one day.  The long-time director of the FHS musicals retired after Ben's sophomore year in high school; his successor directed six musicals and then retired, and in a surprising turn of events, Steve found himself directing the next three high school shows.  When Ben graduated in December of 2009 (that change in majors cost him an extra semester!), he moved back home temporarily to substitute teach and apply for teaching jobs, and he also worked on the musicals alongside his dad.  After directing Godspell in 2011, Steve decided to step down as director.  And much sooner than he ever could have imagined, Ben was hired as the next director.  My heart was in my throat a year ago as I sat in the dark auditorium on opening night and watched the lights come up on a silhouetted fiddler perched on a sloping roof and on my boy's dream-come-true.  Tonight is his second opening night, and I know that on the inside, the tuxedo-clad, 26-year-old director is just as  excited as he was as a third grader watching his first high school musical.  Break a leg, Ben!

The Red Plate

Somewhere along the way when the kids were growing up I read about and then bought a red "You Are Special Today" plate.  It came with an indelible black marker so you could write the dates and descriptions of the special days on the back of the plate to keep track of them.  We never did that because I envisioned more special days than we could record on the back of the plate.  Over the years we've used it to celebrate birthdays, basketball playoff games, cross-country championships, musicals, senior nights, graduations, college acceptances, and new jobs.  I hope my kids know they are special to me every day, but on big days (or on this particular occasion, on the eve before a big week), it's nice to have this plate to remind them how especially special they are.

Kindergarten Blankets

One of the items on the supply list for kindergarten for each of my kids was "nap mat."  In one of the many conversations a good friend and I had about kindergarten the summer before our first-borns headed off to school, she mentioned that she was going to make her son a thick blanket-like nap mat, using fabric from Jo-Ann's and fluffy polyester batting.  I loved this idea and decided to use Ben's bandanas to make his nap mat.  I did the same thing for my other two children, choosing brightly colored dolphin fabric for my science- and nature-loving middle child and for my youngest, cheerful cotton fabric that featured cute little faces of kids, many of whom had blonde curly hair just like Em's.  In the fourteen years since my youngest finished kindergarten, the blankets have been folded and stacked in the corner of our piano room.  Our house is big and old and drafty, and the kindergarten blankets became couch blankets for watching TV and floor blankets for our old dog who loved a bit of extra warmth and comfort.  Ben's bandana blanket has grown frail with age, so I've tucked it away for safe keeping, but we still use the other two, all these years later.  And every time I pull one out, I think back to those kindergarten days and what a leap of faith it was to send my children out into the world for the first time.  I hoped that when they unrolled their nap mats on days they were feeling sad or tired, they'd be cheered, warmed, and comforted.  I hoped in some subtle way, they would be reminded there was someone at home who loved them and was waiting for them to return at the end of the day.  And now that my children are grown and out in a much bigger world, it's an even bigger leap of faith to let go and watch them live their lives.  They no longer have time to nap or soft little blankets to stretch out on, but still I hope on days they are feeling sad or sick or worried, they know there is someone at home who loves them and is always waiting for the next time they come home.  

Perfect Penmanship

When I was in first grade, I got an "N" in handwriting.  Although I was only two years into my school career, I was already sensitive to the difference between an "E" (for "Excellent") and an "N" (for "Needs Improvement").  And since I was an early reader, I had gotten a lot of E's, so when I saw the "N" on my report card, I was taken aback.  I vowed to do better.  I was determined to give my penmanship the improvement my first-grade teacher said it needed.  It took a couple of years of practice, but eventually, one of my handwriting samples came back from the Peterson Handwriting Company as an "Outstanding" example of their method (even though I never held the pen the Peterson-way and often bypassed the "round-round-ready-write" warm-ups).  Except for occasional lapses when I'm in hurry, I've had neat handwriting ever since.  Yet, as tidy as my penmanship was, it always paled in comparison to my mom's perfect handwriting.  She could have made the Peterson alphabet cards that lined perimeters of the classrooms of my childhood.  Her cursive letters were beautifully formed and perfectly slanted.  Her printing was neat and crisp even when she was in a hurry.  But this week, I got a letter from my mom, and I realized her handwriting has changed.  I can tell she's still taking great care when she writes, but the letters are shaky now.  The hand that formed them is unsteady.  And it makes me feel so, so sad—not because her handwriting isn't perfect anymore, but because it is yet another sign that my sweet mom is aging.  Things that used to come easily and naturally to her have become difficult—things like making her own meals, remembering names, and now, writing letters.  I wish life wasn't such a struggle for her; I wish I could smooth her way, just as she always smoothed mine.  And in the back of my mind I can't help but wonder how many years it will be before my own daughter, whose handwriting is also beautiful and neat, begins to notice my careful penmanship beginning to falter.  I hope, like my mom, I will keep writing letters to my children and grandchildren anyway, even though it takes longer and my hand is unsteady.  And I hope, like me, they will know that despite the shaky handwriting, the love behind the letters is steady and true.  

"G" for Gail