Month: January 2007

Bye-bye holidays!

We’re back to our normal routine.  Waking early, shuffling one kid off to school, sending off two to P.E. at the YMCA, dodging the preschoolers and toddler as they careen around the house, doing laps.  Laundry, more laundry, dirty dishes, literature, math, grammar, neighborhood kids who just walk in the front door without even knocking, rain hurtling itself at the ground with such vehemence and force that I have to wonder why the weather is so angry with us.

Meanwhile, a high school kid in Tacoma shot and killed another high school kid in the school hallway. 

Unthinkable.  Incomprehensible.  Tragic.

Movie Reviews

Last night, I took my a neighbor boy and my three boys to see “Eragon.”  I am not the demographic the film-makers aimed at, but still, I must say that while I thought the pacing was good, I felt no emotional response whatsoever to the story.

All the way home, the boys repeated variations of “I make a meatball” using a Mario-from-Nintendo accent.  They giggled endlessly and while I couldn’t see them, I knew they were elbowing each other in their glee and hurry to outdo one another. 

Last week, I saw “The Good Shepherd,” which Larry King supposedly said was the “best spy film ever.”  I really wanted to love it, but found it dull and confusing.  In fact, midway through the movie, the snores of a man one row up caused all of us to look over and nod with empathy because we all felt like snoring, too.  However, a boring afternoon in the movie theater with my hand in a bag of popcorn is better than the most exciting day at home doing laundry, so I’m not complaining. 

New Year’s Day

Last year on this day, I wrote this totally entertaining description of our lovely time at the shore with our perfectly adorable and bestest friends in the whole world who had invited us to dig razor-clams over the New Year holiday.  This year, I have no such tale to tell.  We’re home.  And in fact, the boys aren’t here at all–they’ve all gone to play with friends, so they are making noise in someone else’s house.  Which is awesome, if you ask me. 

My daughter woke up at 6:40 a.m. for no apparent reason.  I rocked her for a few minutes, intending to return her to bed, but she asked in a sweet little voice, “Can I sleep in your bed?  I will not wake you up.” and I answered with some relief and utter fatigue, “Sure.”  She snuggled next to my back for about five minutes, then whispered, “I’m hungry.”

And her day began with a crunchy granola bar and television while I returned to bed for sporadic stretches of sleep until 9 a.m.  Predictably, she was crabby midway through the day and fell apart entirely when her adored brother left her to go play with his friend.  She couldn’t stop crying, so I persuaded her to lay down and watch Spongebob.  A while later, she drifted into my room where I was perusing my bookshelves, weeding out books I’ve already read and preparing a stack to give away on this very blog.  She sprawled out on the floor, right where I’d been standing, and fell asleep with her face tucked neatly under the bed. 

In the subsequent quiet, my husband said (from the comfort of the bed where he was watching football), “So this is how it will be when the kids are gone, huh?” and I said, “Yes, except you’ll be asking me every fifteen minutes what we’re having to eat.”  And he said, “What are we having to eat?” and I . . . well, I can’t tell you exactly what gesture I made, but those of you with impure minds can guess.

(We’re having leftover lasagna, which he won’t eat because of its heavy cheese content.  I’m having salad.  I guess he’ll starve to death.)

The stillness in the house is broken only by the tick-tocking of the kitchen clock and the phantom sounds of the Nintendo Wii bowling game which seems to play itself in the absence of children.  I hear the faint rumble of a football game on the television upstairs and the reedy hum of an airplane flying above the dark grey clouds outside.  And the heat just clicked on.

I could get used to an empty nest.

(Don’t tell the kids.)

It’s Making Me Wait

100_0100.jpg The most exquisite moment of my life happened the day I discovered with great certainty that I was pregnant for the first time. Sure, I was already a mother, having traversed the long and dusty trail of infertility and adoption . . . I still remember the afternoon we pulled into the driveway, me sitting between two car-seats holding 7-month old twins. Absolute dread and terror filled me. What had I done? What had we done when we paid money to adopt twin babies? The dream of velvet-cheeked babies that had sustained me for so many months had morphed into the reality of two babies who were kind of cranky from a long ride in the car.

Motherhood was reality. But pregnancy? Pregnancy was pure possibility, absolute anticipation, wide-open dreams. I loved the first days, when my body hid the secret my brain could hardly contain. I was pregnant, with child, no longer barren! I loved the later days when my belly was swollen with unborn dreams.

* * *

The best day of my life was the day my husband asked me to marry him. We sat by a pond in the balmy air of a Missouri September, making promises and dreaming of what the future would hold. During the long drive between our cities, we’d talk and talk about our family, the one we’d have some day. Our conversation held promise, dreams, anticipation. Those were the days before reality, before overdrawn checking accounts, vomiting children and dreary, rain-filled winters.

* * *

The best day ever was the day I held my dreams in my hand, climbed the steep stairs of the Greyhound bus and began my journey to the Midwest. I went to meet my destiny, to find my path, to open the doors with keys I’d find along the way. My life was a blank book, without lines, without words, without color. Anything could happen. The countryside sped by as I gazed out the window, waiting to see my future appear like the sun on the horizon.

* * *

Perhaps the best parts of life are the moments before it happens–the seconds before your first kiss, the blink before you say “I do,” the moment before the line turns blue, the minute before the shoulders clear, the day before kindergarten starts, the weeks before graduation, the day before Christmas, that time just before the clock strikes twelve.

When you stand on the mountain top, ready to swish your way down the hill, everything is right in the world. You hold the moment of pure exhilaration and triumph in the palm of your hand. You haven’t fallen, you haven’t reached the end. Everything is potential.

But the brief seconds of anticipation flicker rather than shine. No one can just stand on the peak of the mountain forever. You have to descend. You can’t grasp those flickering moments or hoard them . . . they slip through your fingers and rush by your head in a blur, leaving you with what’s left: reality.

Reality doesn’t offer the thrills and chills of those moments when anything can happen–your bingo numbers could be called! You could get a perfect score on the SATs! You could spot your soul mate across the room and live happily ever after. Reality is aching shoulders from holding that fussy baby all night. Reality is tripping over size 9 sneakers that your twin babies grew up to stink up. Reality is sharing a bathroom and wiping hair out of the drain.

And so, as the new year begins, I am poised on the pinnacle of anticipation. Anything could happen this year, absolutely anything. The days, weeks and months are unsullied by failure and sickness and tragedy. My calendar is blank, waiting to be filled. I hold possibility in my hands, the chance of success, of satisfaction, of joy.

The trick is learning to savor the anticipation of what’s next while embracing the reality of what’s now. That’s what I’ll be working on this year.

That and reading a book a week.

Do you have resolutions?