Failings
I’m sitting here in the dark of our living room. It is nearly midnight, and I’m wide awake, totally alone and have tears pouring down my face. It’s a night like so many I’ve had before… Only this time, I’m not drowning in self-pity. My pity is instead reserved for my 9-week old boy.
And a little for myself, I guess….
Right now, a jolly Easter Rabbit should be hippity-hopping ’round the globe, and our mid-size end-of-terrace home should be on his mission road map. He’s meant to visit all the little girls and boys, leaving a whopping great basket full of tooth decay and distractions. The day should be spent in a pastel haze, with the overwhelming smells of boiled eggs and chocolate permeating the air. Children should be dressed up in embarassingly sweet new outfits and made to pose for photographs with confused smiles on their little faces.
Some people would chastise me for my focus on sweets and silliness rather than the religous aspect of the holiday. But let’s be honest… most of us only go to church on Easter as an obligation or a way of “earning” our decadence for the rest of the day… And I for one am at least not hypocritical enough to pretend to be interested in hearing the story of a man who was raised from the dead and sent up to heaven to sit at the hand of God when I COULD be hearing the story of a happy little bunny tromping across the world to bring me a basket full of fun.
But herein lies the problem… the Easter Bunny isn’t coming.
Not to our house. Not tomorrow.
Dexter’s first major holiday will pass by with no new outfit, no tiny candies or prettily dyed eggs, and if we take photographs, there’ll be no way of distinguishing the importance of the day from any other day we have taken photos.
I’m sick about it. I’m truly just beside myself with sadness that we’ve let down our baby.
Mark doesn’t get it, of course. He logically points out that Dexter won’t remember the day, nor will he understand what’s going on anyway.
But *I* understand. *I* get it. And I will remember…
that we did nothing.
And much like my gut-wrenching disappointment recently when Mark failed to recognise the importance of my first ever Mother’s Day (no card, no present, not even any acknowledgement until I posted about it on Facebook - despite weeks of reminders), I know that this is just another in a long line of observances that he just won’t care about.
But how can I not?
With Dexter, everything - EVERYTHING - is a first. This is not just HIS first Easter, it is OUR first Easter as parents, as a family. Sure there will be others (presumably!), but this is the ONLY first we will have. Just like my first Mother’s Day came after 29 years of anticipation and passed without any fuss at all, so this holiday will seemingly pass by with nothing but a wry smile and a lot of regret.
And empty promises that next year will be different.
This post originated at A Mother Thing (http://www.amotherthing.com). If you want to leave a comment, please do so here: http://www.amotherthing.com/2011/04/failings/#comments