First Date

On October 3, 1980, a curly-haired college boy, dressed in Levis and a denim jacket, showed up at 135 E. Neshannock Street to take me on a first date. We went to see Somewhere in Time, starring Christopher Reeve. We were both poor college students, and I remember wondering if I should offer to pay for my own ticket, but he took care of it. I can't remember if we got anything to eat afterwards. But what I do remember is pulling into the graveled area at the back of my parents' deep backyard and sitting in his car, a blue and white Pontiac he'd inherited from his parents, and talking. We talked, and talked, and talked. About our families, our childhoods, our hopes and dreams. Although I didn't know that first night that he was the one, the boy I was going to marry; I did know that I felt safe and at home with him in a way an introvert like me rarely feels with people. We dated the rest of that school year, broke up in May, got back together the following October, and by November had decided to get married. So here we are thirty-six years later: he still buys my movie tickets, we still talk and talk and talk, and I still feel safe and at home when I'm with him. Here's to first dates, to October evenings, and most of all, to that boy!

Our Third Son

Photo by Tim Nichols

Do you remember the book Chester's Way by Kevin Henkes? It's about a little mouse named Chester who had his own way of doing things. Chester's best friend Wilson liked all the same things. "Chester and Wilson. Wilson and Chester. That's the way it was." The book goes on to describe all the fun things Chester and Wilson did together, but then one day Lilly moves into the neighborhood, and Lilly has her own way of doing things. Chester and Wilson aren't too sure about Lilly at first. But after she saves them from some bullies, Chester and Wilson realize they can learn a few things from Lilly and her way of doing things. They also see that life is more fun with Lilly, and soon the three of them are inseparable. "Chester and Wilson and Lilly. Lilly and Wilson and Chester. That's the way it was." Until the very end of the book when "Victor moves into the neighborhood . . . "

That story reminds me of our story. It started with Ben, who had his own way of doing things. When Darton came along, he fit right in. Ben and Darton, Darton and Ben. That's the way it was. And life was good. Then Emily arrived on the scene. From the beginning, Emily had her own way of doing things. As time passed, the boys realized they could learn a thing or two from their baby sister, and they also saw that life was more fun with three. Ben, Darton, and Emily. Emily, Darton, and Ben. That's the way it was. For years. And years. I referred to them as B, D, E, and rattled off "two sons and a daughter" whenever anyone asked about my kids.

And then Tucker showed up. At first he was Darton's teammate and friend. But then, at cross-country camp, he got to know Emily, and before long Tucker started spending more and more time on Eagle Street. It turned out he had his own way of doing things. For starters, he likes mild chicken wings and doesn't eat broccoli. But we soon discovered that Tucker made family dinners, game nights, tennis matches, road trips, and holidays more fun, and we also realized we could learn a thing or two from the new guy. When our fifteen-year-old dog was dying, Tucker was the one who gently said, "You've gotta let him go." When our front door was sticking and wouldn't open the whole way, Tucker said, "I can fix that," and he did. And most important, he loves our girl and knows how to make her happy. So now we have three sons and a daughter, and we couldn't be happier about it. Ben, Darton, Emily and Tucker. Tucker, Emily, Darton and Ben. That's the way it is. (Until Emma moves into the neighborhood . . . but that's a story for a future entry!)

Photo by Nicole Mason

Emily Krauza?

"A son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter's a daughter all of her life."

The first time I heard this saying was on an episode of That Girl when Mrs. Hollinger was bemoaning the idea of losing her beloved son Donald to That Girl, Ann Marie. I wondered then (and I wonder now) how much, if any, truth there was to it. As the mom of two boys, I'm hoping not much. But as the mom of a newly-married daughter, I'm clinging pretty hard to the second part these days. Em and Tuck had been together for nearly eight years when they got married in August, so we were pretty used to them as a couple, but I was aware, if not quite prepared, for the reality that married is different than dating. The first big adjustment came right away--the week of their honeymoon. In the months, weeks, and days leading up to the wedding, I probably talked more with Em than I had since the days she and I were home together before she started school. But when the newlyweds pulled out of our driveway on August 21st, things went from famine to feast in a hurry. Of course, that's exactly as it should be, but that doesn't mean I wasn't feeling the withdrawal. As the week progressed, I knew I had to stick to the rules I set for myself when each of the kids left for college: let them initiate the texting or calling, and even then, keep my replies short. A new school year started for me on the Monday after the wedding, so I kept pretty busy with that and with sorting through the mountain of leftover wedding china and decorations. But keeping busy isn't the same thing as being happy, and I'll admit it was kind of a tough week for Steve and me--we were missing our girl. But we got through its and contact with the honeymooners has long-since been restored: we get texts, calls, and even snapchats pretty regularly. So things have more or less returned to normal. But not exactly. Although, according to the saying, Em will be our daughter all of her life, she's no longer just our daughter, Emily Wendell; she is now Tucker's wife, Emily Krauza. And it's a lot more than just a name change (though even that is going to take some getting used to!). The landscape has been subtly rearranged, the boundaries have shifted. And I need to respect the new lines, to step back a bit. I know that from now on, when some happy thing or some sad thing or really any big thing happens, Tuck will be--and should be--Em's first call, her first listener. And although I thought I'd come to terms with this before, I need to face up to the truth that Em's old room (and Ben's and Darton's) is just that: her old room. She has a new home and a new life with Tucker that is separate from our home and our life. And not only that, she has a new extended family now too. So I need to do what I've been trying to do all along with this blog: loosen my grip on my kids and on the past, as I work through the changes and try, once again, to find my equilibrium in this ever-changing life.

Photo by Nicole Mason

Labor Day and Back-to-School Muffins

I've been away from the blog for a while, thinking maybe I'd finally adjusted to our empty nest (or fretting that I'd gone on far too long about the struggle). But I'm realizing two things: 1) I'll probably never fully adjust, and 2) this season in life (every season in life?) is just one change and one challenge after another. So I'm back, trying to come to terms with my life by writing about it.

For years I've made cranberry-apple-carrot muffins every fall when bags of fresh cranberries first appear in the produce department. I make a batch or two, then cranberries disappear from the grocery store (and I never remember to freeze any), and that's it for another year. Last fall I made a batch when the kids were home, but we didn't end up eating many of them, so I froze the leftovers and Steve and I started taking them in our lunches. When we finished the batch, we missed having them for lunches, so I made more and more until all the cranberries were gone. I tried making other kinds of muffins to take their place, but none were quite as good. Eventually, I tried substituting extra apples and carrots for the missing cranberries, and they were still good! I made batch after batch right up until the end of June. This morning, I mixed up the first batch of the new school year. Then it hit me: tomorrow is Steve's last first day of school; he's retiring at the end of the year. My mind tumbled back through the years as I thought about the way the call from Silver Creek came just in the nick of time in August of 1988--right before I accepted the back-breaking, low-paying job I'd been offered at Fulton-Montgomery Community College.  For the past twenty-nine years, the new year has begun for us not in snowy January but under the blue skies and bright sun of late August/early September. Sure, our back-to-school preparations have changed over the years. I've had to gradually (and grudgingly) adjust to the fact that back-to-school shopping means picking up a new pair of reading glasses rather than buying crayons or calculators or dorm-room bedding. And I've accepted that getting ready for lunch packing means making healthy muffins rather than stocking up on Fruit by the Foot and Fritos. But I can't quite imagine what Labor Day is going to feel like next year when it's not the-day-before-the-first-day-of-school for Steve or how I'll ever get used to not going back to school each August when my own teaching career comes to an end. For now, I guess we'll do what we've always done: take it a day at a time and figure things out as we go along. As for rest of this quiet Labor Day, I think I'll relax, eat a muffin, and get ready to wish Steve a happy last first day of school!

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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.

Getting Old

Maybe it was the back-to-back visits we had with my husband's mom and my mom this past summer. Or perhaps it was the fifty cents we saved when we went to a movie two days before my husband's 55th birthday, and the woman at the ticket desk gave him an early birthday present: the senior citizen's discount. Or maybe it's just the way I hobble around when I first get up after sitting for a while. Whatever the reason, lately I've been pondering what it's like to be old and how to get there gracefully. I've always been the kind of person who thinks about and tries to imagine what the next stage in life will be like and how I will fit into it. I used to daydream about going to college, getting married, and having kids. I paid attention to the lives of people a little farther down the path than I was and looked for tips on what I should do, how I should act, and what I should remember. So these days I've been watching Steve's mom and my mom for clues about the stage in life that my husband and I are just beginning to teeter on the edge of. I've watched them cope with losing their husbands and living alone. I've seen them give up riding their bikes, taking walks when the sidewalks are snowy, and having holiday celebrations in their homes. I've wondered what it must feel like, after all those years of feeding your family and hosting dinner parties, to lose your ability (but not your desire) to make a meal for company or even for yourself. When Steve's mom was eighty-nine, she decided to move into an assisted living facility in Williamsburg. She gave up her car, her life in Fredonia, and much of her independence for the security and peace of mind that come with knowing she has built-in help if she needs it. At eighty-two, my mom still drives (around town) and still lives in her own home. Although she may change her mind in the future, she recently told a friend she has no plans to move until she goes to heaven. Yet despite these differences in our moms'  living situations, the borders of each of their lives have shrunk. For many years, your life expands. You learn to crawl, then walk, then drive; you move from your playpen to your yard to your neighborhood, and finally out into the great big world. Then somewhere along the way, almost imperceptibly at first, life starts to get smaller again. At first it's kind of a relief not to have somewhere to be or something to do every single minute; you're glad to ease up on the accelerator a bit; you welcome the little pockets of rest that come your way. But then, before you know it, you have hardly anywhere to go, almost nothing to do, and way too much time on your hands. And you start to feel lonely and . . . old. There's not really much you can do about it except try to make the best of your little world, and both of our moms have done that. They stay involved in the lives of their children and grandchildren (and great-grandchildren), they spend time with friends, they enjoy simple pleasures, they keep learning, and they keep living. And whether they realize it or not, they're still doing what good parents have always done: smoothing the path and shining a light so their children can find their way.

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!