The Fleeting Month of May

Where I live, May is the time for ephemeral things--apple blossoms, lilacs, migrating birds. Every year I'm reminded that if I don't pause, inhale, focus my binoculars, a sudden wind or rain or the mere passage of a few days will sweep away all of the sweet blossoms and feathers before I've taken the time to appreciate them. 

Fittingly, all my babies were born in May, their early days and weeks and months and years passing by like the flitting wing of a warbler, the falling petals of the serviceberry. But unlike spring, whose cycles repeat year after year after year, the progression of childhood is a one-way road. I marvel when I walk into a store that sells baby clothes and toys and books--so much STUFF for so fleeting a time. You'd be better off putting all that money toward their future college or car insurance and instead giving them a bit of crinckly paper or a cardboard box to play with for that microsecond of infancy.

For a while, the middle-childhood years feel a bit more like winter than spring, with days and weeks and months stretching out slow and taffy-like, and you begin to believe that you've been pushing the Sisyphean boulder of "brush your teeth" and "do your homework" and "stop tormenting your brother" up the mountain for eternity. But even that stage eventually passes and one day you wake up into a household of men, two actual 18-year-old MEN in your home, all simian arms and scratchy chins and rumbling baritone voices, and you gawp in disbelief that these six-foot bodies once fit inside your own (at the same time!).

My joke has always been, "He/they can't be one or five or twelve years old, because I'm not one or five or twelve years older." I'm certainly not eighteen and twenty-two years older than when my kids were born. There's nothing quite like witnessing your kids grow up to remind you that you yourself are aging. The other thing that raising kids reminds you of is your relative slacker-ness. In the first year alone, they learn to sit, crawl, walk, and talk. Meanwhile, you consider having taken a shower a major accomplishment. And it keeps going--reading, writing, long division, calculus, computer coding, Spanish, woodworking, pottery.

They just keep passing you by, each moment like a cottony aspen seed, exquisite as it drifts by on the slightest breeze, but impossible to grasp. Some years, like senior year, are like the snowstorm flurry of those seeds on a breezy May afternoon. So many moments passing by, and nothing to do but try your best to appreciate each one as it flits by, before May rolls into June and June into July and so on and on.

These babies turned 22, 18, and 18 last month!

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Sunrise, Sunset

Exactly 17 years ago today (it was a Friday then, too), we held M's fourth birthday party in the waiting lounge of the maternity ward of the hospital. There were no candles on the cake his grandparents brought---because hospital---but there was ice cream. I sat on one of those uncomfortable hospital couches dressed in a Johnny with two three-day-old babies propped on a nursing pillow, nursing. Curry had done M's birthday shopping, because it was more than I could face at nearly nine months pregnant with 14 1/2 pounds of baby (and online shopping barely existed yet!). He'd bought him Hotwheels and Hotwheels cases, clear plastic boxes with hinged lids, a six-pack of scotch tape, and Peter Pan and Wendy, the original unabridged version, which he'd read out loud several times over the next year.

M turns 21 today. Twenty-one!!! It's a significant birthday, because it's the one you really don't want to spend with your parents. (I remember my 21st. It wasn't pretty.) That's not a problem, since M's in France, on the very last week of his Grand Tour. I suppose the big 21 is a bit anticlimactic in Europe, where the drinking age is 18. And I'm pretty sure that's a good thing. (I was going to go on a digression here about white guys too young to order a beer being allowed to buy weapons of mass murder, but I want to keep it positive.)

This week, E and Z both took---and passed---their driving tests, which means I'm relieved of my jitneying duties, and also that I'll never go anywhere again because one or the other of them will have my car (and no doubt be fighting over which of them gets to drive) from here on out. Last Saturday, they attended their school's prom.

And on Tuesday, they turned 17. I didn't have to do much to get ready for their day---E didn't want any gifts and made his own plans with friends, and Z didn't want any plans and asked for Hawaiian shirts and expensive cologne---but still I experienced the Pavlovian early May panic I go through every year thinking about three impending birthdays (aka Second Christmas). (I'm already getting ready to panic next year when when we'll again have two proms, three birthdays, and three graduations.)

The twins wanted pie, not cake, so I made them two beautiful tarts---one triple berry with ginger strudel and one lemon---only I left the tarts in the oven waaaay too long, because the filling didn't look set and I couldn't/wouldn't trust the cooking time. We ended up with very overdone pie. I know there's a metaphor in there for me, but it comes a year too early; I couldn't send them on their way now if I wanted to (and they're definitely not set).

A version of this post went out recently to subscribers of my newsletter, along with some bonus material. Subscribe here and receive a free PDF of my illustrated short essay "Eleven Ways to Raise a Wild Child."

Finish It Friday: Bedroom Curtains

After repainting and cleaning and reorganizing of the boys' room, I had only one small job left to do to finish it—take one long curtain and make it into two short ones for their small south windows. I put this off for a long time because I knew the silky, slippery material would be a pain to work with, and I didn't want to deal with the math of figuring out how much to cut off the bottom in order to leave enough to make tabs and a hem and have both curtains come out the same size. It turned out to be not that bad on either count (although the material is no fun to work with, and I regret having agreed to buying them, but I was worn down by E and Z's total contrariness on the whole curtain issue).

Somehow I only managed to get one curtain in the photo, but I can assure you they're pretty close to being the same length. I also put in curtain rods, replacing the old white ones with red-and-blue car finials. I made the mistake of buying one long rod for these two windows without having actually measured. It was just barely long enough and didn't leave as much of an overhang as the other two curtains have, but I don't suppose anyone but me will ever notice. As I sat perched precariously on the edge of Z's loft bed, taking out the screws on the old curtain rods and putting in the new ones, it occurred to me that in removing the old froggie curtains we were removing the almost the last traces of childhood from this room, and especially the last traces of M, for whom I made the curtains after a long (long, long) trip to the fabric store when he was very little.

The curtain refresh was probably several years too late (although rainbow frogs aren't really all that babyish are they?), but that didn't make the moment any less poignant.

New Boys' Room

It's taken a long time to get E and Z's room spiffed up for them since M moved into his own room last November. First we had to spackle and repaint the ceiling and walls, which took most of February. Then we had to clean out the closet, into which I had shoved everything but the beds and dressers before we painted. All the furniture, toys, books, and random junk had to come out, get sorted into piles for keep, toss, give away, and store. Then I had to paint the walls. Then I had to put everything back, arranged neatly (notice how I drop the "we"—we all know who exactly did most of this work).



Meanwhile, C was busy in the garage building new desks for the nearly high-schoolers, all from scrap wood (inspired by a butcher block counter that my inlaws were replacing). We each finished our respective jobs right before our trip to D.C. in early August, and since then the room has been arranged, enjoyed, and made messy cozy again.



Two small items remain to be done: a switchplate for the closet light swithc (I was going to decoupage one with old maps, but Z, who is really into maps, tells me this would look tacky) and curtains on the small windows (I have a third purple Indian-print panel, which I need to make into two half-panels, but right now my sewing machine is inaccessible due to all the stuff I've "cleaned up" from the rest of the house having accumulated in my bedroom).

I was hoping that after they saw how tiny M's dorm room is, E and Z would have greater appreciation for the expansiveness (and hominess) of this space, but still it does not seem to be big enough for the two of them, and most study sessions turn into Nerf gun battles. So much for that soothing purple color.

It Goes By So Fast

Eighteen years ago I held my first child in my arms. Approaching his one-month birthday, he was holding his head up and his eyes had cleared from milky newborn blue to bright, sparkling sapphire. Everything about him seemed longer, stronger, and less babyish. I turned to my husband and cried, "He's growing up so fast!"

I had no idea.

That baby graduated from high school last Friday. I spent the morning, when I should have been getting ready for work, searching through photo albums for his first-day-of-preschool picture. I remembered it so clearly: his lime-green Oscar the Grouch sweatshirt and the faded red Australia baseball cap that he never took off. How enormous his mini backpack appeared. How tiny he looked walking up to the school's red front door (that part I misremembered—the door was gray). How full of hopes and dreams and possibilities I was. How both nervous and eager to learn he was.

I'm not going to say it seemed like yesterday, but damn if those fifteen years didn't fly by. Which is not to say there weren't interminably slow times—that year I had two infants and a four-year-old, which is shrouded in a fog of exhaustion; age eleven (or was it nine?), when my sweet boy became a sassy know-it-all; the hour-and-half betwen 6:30 and 8:00 p.m., which lasts a lifetime when you have young children.

I finally tracked down the album with the photo I sought and went outside to take its corollary—the last day of high school. I wished him well, watched him drive out of the driveway, and burst into tears. My baby had grown up so fast!

That evening, after a comedy of errors trying to get everyone to the Civic Center on time, I watched that baby march across the stage and receive his diploma, now a self-assured and self-aware young man, and one of the most content people I know, ready and eager to move onto the next stage. I didn't cry—I'd released all my tears that morning. I didn't feel sad or nostalgic or wistful. I felt happy and proud and full of love for this man, that baby, that little boy.

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Boys' Room Refresh ~ Purple!

After M moved to his own bedroom last November, and after he finally finished clearing all of his junk out of it much, much later, we started prepping what was now E and Z's room for a slight remodel (this room has undergone a number reorganizations as the needs of three boys have evolved and changed: bunk beds, overhaul part I and part II, loft bed). But after 16 years and three boys, the room needed a lot more than reorganization this time around; it needed a total facelift.

Not even a construction zone can take E away from his Minecraft.

The first order of business was to fill about 18 trillion pushpin holes on the walls and ceiling (yes, ceiling) with joint compound, and paint said ceiling with two coats of white to cover a film of dirty finger and footprints (the downside of bunk beds). Then we got started with the walls.

At first Z wanted purple and E wanted hot pink. Hot pink doesn't exactly work with my color scheme, and I figure at least one compensation for having all boy children is that I've never had to live with a pink room in my house. Then E switched to purple and Z decided he wanted red. Or black. So we went with purple. (When I told a friend whose kids were little in the 90s, she said, "You mean like Barney?"  Since he'd gone extinct by the time my kids were preschool age, hadn't even thought of Barney, but now I gotta admit, yeah, it's pretty close to the color of Barney.)

The whole process took several weeks, requiring, as it did, for C and I to both have the time and the enthusiasm at the same time on the weekends, so E and Z have been living with their room dismantled for a while. Sunday afternoon, after the paint dried, I washed the floors and all the woodwork, cleaned the construction (and preconstruction) dust off all the furniture, made up the beds with new sheets and clean bedding, and put the furniture into place. Then at midnight my internal Mom alarm went off—Z had come down with a sudden stomach virus and didn't have time to get down from his loft bed. He had the foresight to keep his bedding clean by leaning over the rail, sea-sick-syle, and I spent the middle of the night rewashing the floor and all of the furniture and the woodwork and the newly painted wall (fortunately, the room was not its usual state of chaos, and E's basket of clean laundry was just outside the splash radius, and all of the dresser drawers were closed). I've reconsidered my brief thought of getting a rug for between the beds.

We still need to get desks and window treatments, clean out the closet, which is stuffed with outgrown toys and books and all of the things that had taken up space in the room before we started on the walls, and decorate (though I'm in no hurry to hang anything on the wall anytime soon).

Three Teenagers

Another successful (or at least survived) Birthday Season having come to a close, we now have a house full of teenagers. That's right: E and Z turned 13 on Thursday and M turned 17 Sunday.

Now I'll be the last person to tell any new parent (or any parent) that "It gets easier." Because, while you do spend less time bathed in your child's bodily fluids, the "it" becomes a bit more existential. However, I recently spent some time rereading early blog posts and let's just say, whatever teenagers have in store for me over the next seven years, I'm pretty glad they're not toddlers any more. Let's just take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?

• There was the "greatest night of my life, "when the twins learned to vomit in the toilet.
• The time E and Z made an indoor sandbox…with organic cocoa powder.
• And the tiredness of sleep deprivation…oh the tiredness.
• The night of the burnt fritatta. 
• My resignation letter.
• When I came home to the house in shambles and the TV upside down on the floor.
• More vomit and sleep deprivation.
• The morning routine with toddlers.
• Minute-by-minute breakdown of day with small children and boring job. (If you click on any of these, this one's probably the most entertaining.)

But now? Now they all sleep through the night. They get themselves dressed. They haven't puked in my bed in years. They even clean the house (with much reminding/coaxing/cajoling).

And at least one of them cleans up pretty good.

Blue Hair!

For a while Z has been asking me to dye his hair blue and I've been resisting, not because I have a problem with a blue-haired kid, but because the whole process seemed like it would be a huge pain in the a**. Finally, though, he convinced me, and last Saturday he went from this:

To this:

I forgot to take in-between shots of his head covered in bleach and his head covered in blue dye with a shower cap. What I really wish I'd captured was the post-bleached/pre-dyed hair, when he was back to his old white-blond toddler self. We went to a cookout that evening, and Z kept his hood on the whole time. Then I was gone all day Sunday and when I came home, I found that this had happened:

It turned out that a kid who prefers to blend into the background was a mite uncomfortable with a mop of blue hair, so he had C buzz it all off.

But he bravely went to school the next day and bravely took his hood off (because hoods aren't allowed at school).

And, of course, other kids said the usual, predictable, a-holey things kids say. In the meantime, Z got used to his blue head and now he kinda likes it. So do I.

Weekend Things ~ Hermit Island Camping

We made our annual Hermit Island pilgrimage for, I'm gonna say, the twelfth year in a row.



We had put it off from the usual weekend, for reasons of a certain 16-year-old having his birthday.



And we put it off from Memorial Weekend for reasons of the weather forecast looking cold and gloomy.



But we finally made it this past weekend, the latest in the season we've ever gone (not counting that first time, which was in September).



It might also have been the coldest weekend we've ever had, despite it being June.



But it only rained a very little bit Friday night while we ate dinner (after having kindly held off long enough to set up camp and cook).



In past years, we've brought along various configurations of friends and family.



But having barely gotten our acts together enough to get ourselves there, we didn't manage to bring anyone along.



So we had a quiet, low-key weekend.



I tried to spend most of the time reading, but with interruptions of "Hey, Mom…" every few seconds, ever sentence got read two or three times.



The boys rode their bikes to the store two or three times every day.



Having a source of junk food that close at their disposal was something of a novelty.



And they found a huge chunk of styrofoam on the beach,



which provided hours of entertainment, first as a physics experiment in balance and then as a surfboard.



And, once again, I thought about how this place that never changes, which we visit exactly once each year (usually during Birthday Season) provides a fitting measurement device for boys that change constantly.



A kind of living growth chart.



It was, as always, a fitting segue to summer, a pause and placeholder in the ever-revolving years.



And a good reminder to not let traditions fall by the wayside, just because we're tired or cold or it might rain.

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This Guy

Milo, 6, at a monster truck rally.

Turns 16 today.

Milo, almost-16, behind the wheel. I think his 6-year-old self would be disappointed it's a Volvo and not a monster truck.

In the last month, he's finished drivers ed, gotten his driving permit, and interviewed for (and got!) his first job. I've been joking that he can move out now. But I guess he still needs me for a little while longer—at least until that permit becomes a license and his paychecks start coming in.

Freedom Trail Two

Friday we joined E and Z on their fifth grade class trip to walk the Freedom Trail in Boson. We had a memorial to attend in Rhode Island the next day, so C, M, and I all went (and we got to drive our own car, rather than spend six hours in a bus with 26 eleven-year-olds). This trip felt a lot faster and more frenetic than M's trip four years ago did, but then I looked back at the post from that trip and saw that I wrote that it was "like the ADD tour history," so I guess it had been a hectic tour then, too. 

We started with a climb up to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument.

Hit a couple of cemeteries.

Took a peek in Old North Church.

 Visited the Statehouse.

 And everything in between.

We finished it off with a visit to the Tea Party Museum.

 

 And a taxi across the water back to Charlestown.

The kids have been studying the Revolutionary War all year and this trip is meant to put places to the names, make history come alive. The kids, though, mostly seemed to enjoy the bustle and energy of a big city, waving at the cars driving by over the bridge and parkour-ing around the steps and benches and curbs and parks whenever we stopped for a break. In the long run, though, I think some of it will have sunk in--the 290 steps to the top of the monument, the really great interpretive presentation about the Battle of Bunker Hill, throwing replica tea boxes off a boat into the Charles River, the actual windows where the two-if-by-sea lamps were hung, the spot where the Boston Massacre took place.