The Times They Are a Changin'

I've written about our muddled Easter traditions before, but for the most part, some or all of the family has usually managed to be together for some or all of Easter weekend. This year, however, our family is scattered: Em and Tuck are spring-breaking in Florida, and Darton and Emma are celebrated Easter in Rochester with Emma's family. They were all home less than a month ago, and I wasn't expecting anyone for Easter, but I'm still missing my kids. Like so many other things, our Easter traditions, such as they were, are changing too. It's been a couple of years since I filled Easter baskets and much longer since I hid black jelly beans on the black piano keys. But this year, I didn't even hang my pastel Easter lights or dig out my carrot-shaped candles, and there's no lemon truffle pie waiting in the fridge for Easter dinner. Instead, Steve and I spent a good bit of Easter Saturday filling out his retirement forms and worrying about our moms and the future, and things were feeling a bit bleak. But then, as it always does, Easter morning arrived filled with hope and promise. And we've just come home from a lovely Easter service where we were reminded that "the best is yet to come." So we are hanging on to that hope today. To top it all off, good ol' Ben, who lives in town, will be here for dinner tonight (and although there is no lemon truffle pie, we do have Easter M&M cookies)!

Happy Easter, one and all!

Red, White, and Feeling Blue

Just when you think you might finally be over the worst of the empty nest blues, a holiday tradition falls apart and you're left feeling kind of lost and bewildered. I really have no business complaining because our youngest was just home for a week, which overlapped with a visit from my mom (and short but fun visits with my family when we met in Erie to pick Mom up and take her back). This made the past few days feel like vacation: late nights, lazy mornings, meandering conversations, board games, crossword puzzles, and tennis matches. But then the fun ended. My mom left on Thursday; Em packed up this morning for a weekend trip to Canada with her boyfriend's family and is heading back to Syracuse from there. Meanwhile, our middle child, who had talked about coming home for the 4th, decided to stay in Rochester with his girlfriend this year; and our older son, who lives in town, made plans of his own for today. Of course, all of this is an inevitable part of parenting. The kids are doing exactly what they should be doing--growing up and having lives of their own. But ever since we said goodbye to Em this morning, Steve and I have been at loose ends. We're having a hard time remembering what we used to do on the 4th before we had kids. Thank goodness for Breakfast (and lunch) at Wimbledon--watching tennis used up some of the day. But night has fallen in England, and now we have to decide what to do with ourselves for the rest of the night. It's not really that there's nothing to do; it's more that we don't really feel like doing much of anything. We don't really want to go to the local fireworks alone and can't get excited about driving somewhere new to see fireworks because as it turns out, the 4th of July isn't really about going to see fireworks, it's about going to see fireworks with your kids . . .  and your friends . . . and your friends' kids. There are some aspects of an emptying nest you expect and try to prepare yourself for, but other things--like spending the 4th of July alone--end up taking you by surprise, and suddenly you realize you don't have quite the grip you thought you had on this new stage in life. So tonight, we might just stay home, watch a movie, make a backyard fire, and if we're feeling really ambitious, put the tent up and sleep outside. And bit by bit, we'll continue to explore this new (old?) territory, so that the next time we find ourselves alone on a holiday we'll understand the lay of the land better and won't feel quite so lost.

The Morning After

I had a piece of whole wheat toast this morning with a skim coat of peanut butter--my standard breakfast. But yesterday about this time, I was making pumpkin french toast and gingerbread chai lattes for a last salute to the holidays before my daughter headed back to Syracuse. She had been home for two and a half weeks--almost long enough to fool me into believing she was living here again. Her time at home included big events like Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, but just as important, if not more so, were all the little events: watching movies, playing games, lingering at the dinner table, leaving a light on when we go to bed, and seeing her bedroom door closed when we get up in the morning. Those are the things I think about on the morning after when the house is feeling big and empty again. There's no lack of things to keep me busy: I am behind on schoolwork, I need to put away the last of the Christmas decorations, there's laundry to do, snow to shovel, errands to run. But I having trouble attacking my to-do list. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, but I feel dark and heavy inside. Up until this morning, I have been busily pushing away a little nagging thought that this may well have been the last Christmas break that one of my kids was home for the holidays. My oldest  child lives in town, and we see him often, but the only night he slept here over the break was Christmas Eve. My middle child didn't make it home until the day after Christmas this year and was only here for a wonderful but all-too-brief weekend. In between the times my kids are here, I think I'm getting used to the new normal. But then when one or two or, best of all, all three of them are home, I realize anew how much I've been missing them and the days when all five of us were living here. I know those days are gone, and I'm so very lucky I see my kids as often as I do. But it's hard to go back to plain old toast after feasting on pumpkin spice and gingerbread!

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving: this quiet holiday that falls between spooky, candy-filled Halloween and big, bright, present-filled Christmas is known for nothing but its food and its gentle reminder to be thankful. The Thanksgivings I remember most from growing up were spent around our laminated, oval dining room table, which was dressed up for the occasion with a heavy, freshly-ironed tablecloth and my mom's good dishes. There wasn't much fanfare to Thanksgiving at our house; it was just the six of us most of the time. My mom would build a log cabin out of Lincoln Logs and surround it with little pilgrim and Indian candles for the centerpiece, and the corner of the stereo cabinet held a wicker cornucopia filled with plastic fruit; that was about it as far as decorations went. As for holiday music, my mom would sing "Over the River and Through the Woods" as she made pies and fat turkey-shaped sugar cookies the day before Thanksgiving, and when we woke up on Thursday morning, she'd be in the kitchen humming "We Gather Together" as she stuffed the turkey and pared potatoes. We would eat early, then spend the rest of the day playing games and eating leftovers.  I'd like to be able to add "and giving thanks for food, shelter, and each other" to the end of the previous sentence, but in truth, we probably spent more time arguing over who would get the last Brown 'N Serve roll and squabbling over whose turn it was in Carrom than being thankful. And even worse, instead of being grateful for all the blessings we already had, my sister and brothers and I were mostly just biding our time on Thanksgiving afternoon, waiting for my mom to put the first Christmas record on the stereo. By Thanksgiving night, we were busy circling coveted items in the Sears and Penneys Christmas catalogs as we composed our extensive wish lists. Thanksgiving would just sort of slip away as we started getting ready for the "bigger and better" holiday. Over the years, though, Thanksgiving has become so much more than a gateway to Christmas for me. Christmas might be bigger, but bigger isn't always better. I've grown to love Thanksgiving's simplicity, its understated traditions and decorations, its identity as a holiday that celebrates being grateful. I like its slower pace and its tight focus: one day, one meal, one purpose--giving thanks. It doesn't seem to matter how early stores put up their Christmas displays or how many Black Friday promotions there are, because for me Thanksgiving stands tall and strong, unaffected and unassuming. I guess, in a way, Thanksgiving still plays a part in getting me ready for Christmas, not by bowing out of the way to give me time to work on my wish list, but by steadily reminding of how much I already have.

Halloween

I loved candy as a kid, and for me, Halloween was all about the candy.  In addition to the treats in my Halloween bag, our town had a Halloween parade every year; one year when my sister, brother, and I went as  Snap, Crackle, and Pop, we won a prize, but everyone who even entered the parade got a giant Hershey bar.  There were other good things about Halloween, too: pumpkin carving and a black and orange Halloween dinner at home--usually sloppy joes and carrot-raisin salad.  Some years there were parties with spooky decorations and bobbing for apples, although once I made the mistake of going as a cornstalk, and no one knew I was there.  But aside from that misstep, Halloween was pretty enjoyable, but even with all the candy, it was never my favorite holiday. When my kids were young, we had fun with costumes. The three of them were Captain Hook, Peter Pan, and Tinker Bell on Em's first Halloween. Another year the boys were Ice Miser and Heat Miser from The Year Without a Santa Claus and Em was Little Red Riding Hood thanks to her fascination with Into the Woods. The year we bought our house on Eagle Street, we had big Halloween costume party to thank the friends who had helped us move. When the kids got older, their costumes got less elaborate, and they didn't need us to take them trick-or-treating anymore. At the time I didn't feel too sad about letting go of that part of their childhoods; it was kind of a relief not to be sewing Halloween costumes at the height of the semester. And I'd never really liked the darker side of Halloween--all the blood and gore and zombies and horror that are part of the holiday. So I didn't think I'd miss celebrating Halloween when the kids were grown and gone. But I do. I feel a little melancholy during Halloween week when my only celebration is a homemade pumpkin spice latte and a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds. Last year, Steve and I didn't even carve our pumpkin, we just scooped the seeds out.  And we sure don't dress up in costumes to host or attend Halloween parties; we no longer play spooky sounds when we answer the door to the dozens of trick-or-treaters that flood Eagle Street. It makes me wonder, are we on our way to becoming like one of those old couples who lived on my old trick-or-treat route, the kind that handed out stale popcorn balls and mushy apples or pencils or dimes? Or even worse, the kind that turned off their porch light and pretended they weren't not home?  I'm pretty sure we won't, and here's why: I love buying Halloween candy. I choose my assortment carefully and shop early--that way Steve and I can nibble away at Almond Joys and Kit Kats, and Hershey bars for a couple of weeks before Halloween arrives. And even then, we are strategic in our distribution--we give out the Skittles and Nerds and Lifesaver Gummies first, saving the chocolate in case the trick-or-treater turnout is low, and we end up with leftovers.  So despite our lack of Halloween spirit, I think we're safe for now because, for us, Halloween is still all about the candy. Anybody want a peanut butter cup?

Mother's Day

"Anything, any loss of sleep, any loss of ease, was worth the sweet, and too, too brief time of holding little ones until they burst out of your arms and into the world." --Rafael Yglesias in Only Children

Last year on Mother's Day, I wrote a post honoring my mom; this year I want to honor my kids. As any parent will attest, having children changes you forever. But what I've been realizing lately is that having kids keeps changing you. Like most children, I learned a lot from my parents as I was growing up; much of who I am was shaped by who they were.  It wasn't until I had kids of my own that I realized the current runs both ways--children shape parents just as much as parents shape children.  When our kids are young, we teach them how the world works.  We share our favorite foods, places, and hobbies with them.  We try our best to help them develop good manners, strong faith, and healthy habits. But then, somewhere around the time our kids hit middle school, the balance shifts and we start learning from them.  As their worlds expand, so does ours. They start to share their favorite music and movies with us; we follow their team buses to places we've never been before; we learn about backpacking, guild auditions, and cross-country running. When they get to high school, our kids bring the world to us--they show us pictures and tell us stories of their trips to France, Italy, Greece, Puerto Rico, and Australia.  They help us see and feel and understand things we never even imagined.  Then they go off to college, and they begin to live the lives we tried to prepare them for as they were growing up in our homes. When they come home on breaks, we are surprised by the changes: the new maturity, outlooks, attitudes. In some ways, they are the children they've always been, but in other ways, they are young adults who feel more like friends.  All of a sudden we realize they are showing us how the world works (especially the world of technology!). We admire and learn from their generosity, their fearlessness, their stamina and self-discipline. They remind us that it's important to have fun, to take risks, and to dream big.  On this Mother's Day weekend, I want to thank my kids--not just for all the breakfasts in bed and Mother's Day gifts over the years, but for the many ways they've changed me, and for all the things I continue to learn from them.

"I would like them to be the happy end of my story."
--Margaret Atwood

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.

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.

Valentine Memories

When I was in first grade, I got a big, purple, lacy valentine from red-headed, freckle-faced Eddie Humphrey.  It's been more than forty years since I've seen Eddie, but I've never forgotten him or that valentine.  Throughout elementary school, I remember turning shoe boxes into fancy valentine boxes by covering them with construction paper and doilies and cutting a slit in the top.  And I remember my mom making red Jello hearts surrounded by a frill of whipped cream.  When my kids were in elementary school, I remember them carefully filling out store-bought valentines for their classmates and working on homemade valentines for family.  I remember making heart-shaped pizza, jello hearts, and pink-frosted valentine cut-out cookies for them for dinner.  Just last year, I remember going to Buffalo to watch Em's basketball team play Daemen in a February 14th conference game.  The one thing I don't remember is going out for dinner with my husband on Valentine's Day.  Since my memory is poor, I asked Steve about it last night, and he got this puzzled look on his face and said, "I don't think we ever did, did we?"  I'm not sure why--February 14th couldn't have fallen on a school night every year for the past thirty years.  Maybe we were always either too busy, too tired, or too poor?  Well, we're changing that tonight--no heart-shaped pizza, no Jello hearts, no basketball games; instead, even though it's a school night, my sweetheart and I are throwing caution to the wind and going out for dinner on Valentine's Day!

Christmas Is Coming

Maybe it started with the candy strings: strips of green felt with twenty-four pieces of candy tied on with red yarn.  Beginning December first, my sister and brothers and I untied a candy cane or red gumdrop or Hershey Kiss every night after dinner, as we counted down the days to Christmas. Or maybe it was the way my mom read one chapter of The Adventures of Santa Claus every night in December and helped us memorize Luke 2, verse by verse.  Or maybe it was her approach to decorating for Christmas--every day while we were at school, she would choose one thing from the big cardboard Christmas box to put up while we were at school; we'd come home to find the manger scene on the coffee table, a cardboard Santa face on the fridge, jingle bells on the door, or the lantern candle in the middle of the dining room table.  Whatever the reason, for as long as I can remember, I have liked the anticipation of Christmas as much as or maybe even more than Christmas Day itself.  When I was a kid, I pored over the Sears Wish Book during the long, slow early days of December, carefully circling the toys I wanted most.  Like most kids, I had trouble sleeping on Christmas eve and loved those pre-dawn hours of Christmas morning before it all began.  I shivered in anticipation as I peeked down the hallway and spied my lumpy red knee sock pinned to the fireplace screen in the shadowy darkness.  When I grew up and had kids of my own, December days were anything but long and slow.  It seemed as though every minute was crammed full of shopping and baking, teaching and grading, piano classes and church play practices, concerts and ball games.  Instead of counting down the days to Christmas, I was racing the clock trying to finish everything in time. By the time my kids reached the jingle bells on the ends of their candy strings, I was usually out of breath and low on energy.  But even amidst all the hustle and bustle, a little refrain played over and over in my head: Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming! And every year Christmas eve would cast its spell on me--I'd be just as caught up in the wonder and magic of it as I'd been when I was ten. It felt like the whole world was holding its breath, waiting, anticipating, hoping.  When my kids left for college one by one, the pace started to slow down a bit.  Suddenly, I found myself counting down the days again.  This year, it'll be December 22nd before all their cars pile up in the driveway.  Only on the 24th will all three kids be sleeping in their old beds upstairs.  I'll be the last one up, filling stockings and setting the table for Christmas brunch.  As I'm turning off the Christmas lights, I'll pause for a moment before our manger scene, lit from behind by a single electric candle, and once again I'll feel the magic of Christmas, the promise of what is to come, the thrill of hope.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Four of the original six ornaments we got as wedding gifts

When Steve and I got ready to decorate our first little Christmas tree in our first little apartment thirty years ago, we had six sweet ornaments we had gotten as wedding gifts, as well as a few stray ornaments Steve had snagged from his parents' collection.  Our tree was pretty sparse for the first few years of our marriage.  But a year or two after our second son was born, I started a tradition of buying each of the kids a Christmas ornament each year.  The idea was that when they eventually left home, they would have more than six ornaments to decorate their first tree.  In the meantime, their ornaments filled in the spaces on our family Christmas tree.  As their collections grew, so did the size of our tree.  Steve and I accumulated more ornaments of our own over the years, too, but but most of the decorations on our tree are from the kids' collections.  Every year, they each put up their own ornaments first, fighting over prime tree space.  A few years ago as our kids were getting older and closer to having their own trees, I discovered a flaw in my plan:  I had grown attached to the ornaments I bought for the kids--each one reminds me of the child I bought it for and the year I found it.  And I've gotten quite used to having them on our tree year after year.   Last night on the way home from Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, we were making plans to chop down our Christmas tree this weekend, since the three kids won't all be home again until the weekend before Christmas.  My oldest child, Ben, has an apartment with room for a tree this year, so as we were talking about decorating our family tree, Ben casually mentioned that he would be needing to take his box of ornaments to his own house this year.   I know he's right.  I know it's time.  I know that was the plan all along.  But it's going to be very strange not to see his ornaments nestled in among the others on our tree this year.  And how long will it be before all the kids' ornaments have disappeared from our tree?  At least we still have Rocking Horse,  Christmas Broom, Thimblehead, and Sleeping Mouse!

Some of my favorites from Ben's collection

 

Happy 4th!

The thing I remember most about the 4th of July from when I was a kid is driving somewhere to see fireworks, parking along the side of the road, watching from the hood of the car, and then leaving before the finale so we wouldn't get stuck in traffic.  This was not a holiday tradition I wanted to pass along to my own kids.  So early on we established a 4th of July tradition we rarely break if we're in town.  First, we picnic with friends--the same good friends every year.  Then along toward dusk, we caravan down to Memorial Park on the Lake Erie shore in Dunkirk, New York.  It's the kind of thing my dad would have hated--you have to park several blocks away and walk the rest of the way; it's crowded, it's loud, the air is sticky with the smell of cotton candy, funnel cakes, and kettle corn; when you finally find a place to spread out your blanket, you're inevitably behind a tree; and when it's over, there's all kinds of traffic and it takes forever to get home.  But we return year after year--it's tradition!  When the kids were young, we brought a stroller or the wagon, a cooler with juice boxes and snacks (to avoid the high prices and long lines at the street vendors), and a damp washcloth in a plastic bag to wipe faces and hands sticky with the cotton candy they cajoled us into buying anyway.  We travel more lightly these days--just a blanket to sit on.  We've learned to go later--often arriving just before the first few booms.  We've accepted the fact that we'll always be crammed into a crowded spot behind a tree.  And sometimes we're missing one or more of the kids.  But as long as some of our kids are home on the 4th of July, we'll keep going.  And we'll never leave before the finale!