Title: "Motherly Missteps on the Road to Summer"
“Motherly Missteps on the Road to Summer”
I need to tuck the snowman lamp away. Here it is May and it’s still in my bedroom instead of nestling safely in a box in the garage. I can’t help thinking that a good mom would have put it away months ago.
Holidays cluster into bunches, orbs of sweetness that cannot be spoiled but each savored and eaten slowly. At least that’s what I picture holidays to be but somehow they often end up in a rather smashed up mess and I’m left thinking, “Well, at least that’s over with.”
Today, I’m so glad I can stop thinking about Halloween, which always includes a gaping divide of at least a hundred dollars between what my children want to wear and what we end up with. What planning and hoping and changing of minds! And then the weighty decisions, revised when a jury of friend’s proclaims them babyish and then finally settled, something less than what was wanted but hopefully something warm enough to keep them warm if October actually acts like October. Inevitably, any summer-like October tends to coincide with costumes of thick fur. But, if everyone gets through Halloween with a little candy, a handily-produced sweater and not enough face paint dripping on a costume to ruin it completely, I can live with that! This year we carved our pumpkin the day AFTER Halloween but I think that, since it was the same week, it should count. At least we carved one, right?
The shine of the costumes starts to wear off in November, just in time for me to talk my youngest out of wearing a tiara and fairy wings to Thanksgiving dinner. But oh the angst, which family gets a visit which day, which dishes must be cooked and brought and not singed and sampled so that not a single sister-in-law feels slighted because you didn’t even taste the casserole she slaved over and you deliberately (in her mind) skipped as a reflection of your feelings for her. A poop joke from a still-single uncle, piles of dirty plates and pans that you must offer several times to scrub and insist on helping with lest Facebook light up with posts about “those who don’t bother to help.” Honestly, I say a thankful prayer the day after which begins, “I thank thee that Thanksgiving is over.”
The last of the turkey is thawed and doctored up with spices just in time for the annual jingle bell decisions. Will we get a tree? Should we just set up the small one we already have or go all out with a long hike through a Christmas tree farm, everyone pointing out that different trees are perfect? Is there any hope of agreement? December 1st also begins a flurry of emails and phone calls over name drawings and price limits for family gifts. The mantle fills with cards, each one piling on the guilt hiding in the back of my drawer with blank Christmas cards that I meant to send last year.
I try to keep a list of cards to send but it gets lost under the notes for my Chaucer final. I pull out a pile of paper in my college library, glad my professors aren’t watching as I desperately look for my scribbles on the Wife of Bath. I sift through and find: a page of notes on the Franklin, a Christmas list that I can never fill from my five year old (“a horse, a big trampoline, my own room), a 2nd grade newsletter (“We need parents to send in 29 hand-decorated cookies, and $10 for a teacher gift and a book for either a boy or girl on the second grade reading level wrapped in Christmas paper”) and ah! Finally my notes! And for an hour I try not to think of how my daughter was the only one not wearing a matching Christmas bow and sweater when her class sang seasonal songs (not carols, there was one on Kwanza and one about a dreidel) for the PTA last week. Christmas arrives with a rush, greeted with my blurry eyes but it usually takes a couple days before my kids remember what was on their list that didn’t arrive under the tree. I savor those first days when they feel all their dreams are now realized. If only the bliss of newness could last!
Then New Year’s Day rushes up, chasing the last of the dried out pine needles out the door. Now THIS is my kind of holiday: a little food, some sparkling grape juice and a few games while we wait for a late bedtime. Open the door to welcome the New Year as we hear the neighbor’s setting off fireworks, thanking heaven that no one has invented a New Year’s Elf or decided that a New Year’s Baby needs to come down a chimney putting peppermint eggs under pillows in the dead of night. No, New Years has wonderfully low expectations. Perhaps no one had the energy to create elaborate rituals and I do hope society keeps it that way.
But the low key New Year brings with it the pesky Cupid, shooting arrows all over Wal-Mart while kids run around, losing class lists and anxiously squirreling around shoe boxes to decorate before the baby ruins all the stickers. The kids and the cards come home with stories of who got what for Valentine’s Day. Apparently, some kids are given video games and others are sent one dozen roses (“to the school, Mommy!”) just for being their daddy’s little girl. I bet THAT girl will be hard to please as an adult I think, as I eat the half-off chocolate heart my husband bought for me the day after Valentine’s Day because that’s the practical way to celebrate love.
I’m still finding Valentine hearts under their beds and in the toy box by the time Easter hops in with the inevitable push and shove of kids loving the eggs and some adults insisting they should prefer to mourn and rejoice over someone killed centuries ago. Easter morning is a scramble for acceptable shoes on the girls instead of their favorite crocs and another round of “tasting everyone’s dish” for lunch lest one start yet another round of hurt feelings now that the ones after Christmas have settled down. Easter is Thanksgiving with chocolate which makes Mom a little saner but the kids a little more hyper on the drive home. I’m definitely hoppy holidayed out!
But Easter is finally over! The snow man lamp languishes, waiting to be wrapped and nestled in the box in the garage, surrounded by ornaments that are only loved one month a year. There are still a few candy hearts in the daily candy bag in the cupboard, rolling in the bottom with a few jelly beans that no one has picked yet in our daily ritual of “one candy a day at 3pm.”
A few plastic Easter shells crunch under my feet when I tiptoe out to the garage to dig out the kick board and the floaties. Summer is coming! Summer, that delightful season when the only costumes are swim suits and sun screen is the only face paint. Summer is lovely because the TV doesn’t chatter quite so often about the latest toys and games which often rile my children into another round of the “I wants.” In fact, the TV often chatters alone because we’re all outside, spraying each other with the hose and running through the sprinkler.
I know this summer I’ll spend three hours each night entertaining my five year old while her siblings practice laps for the swim meet. But my home can be my home again without trees, tinsel, fake grass or hearts spilling from drawer to drawer and drifting from floor to floor. The Easter baskets are now flower baskets in the backyard and my kids are more focused on catching lighting bugs than making Christmas lists.
I know the days will drag and soon the kids will ask for different activities and more excitement. But for a few days, perhaps weeks, the slower pace will be enough. Enough. That’s all I wanted after all. It may not be November but the first of the summer is my traditional time of giving thanks. Everyone passed to the next grade so now we can sigh with relief. I know September waits, with school shopping for new classes and a new line up of teachers.
But now it is summer and now I can breathe, at least until someone splashes me from the small plastic pool. Today being a good mom is as easy as not waking the children early and maybe frying up a few chocolate chip pancakes. Even I can’t screw this up! If I do, I think there’s an old box of Eggos in the freezer. A toaster, some sunscreen and a few extra z’s: perfect ingredients for a summer to remember.