Day 87: The Ties That Bind

Although I’ve mentioned my children at various times in these posts, I haven’t painted a very cohesive portrait of our family -- probably a reflection of the fact that we’ve yet to be in the same state this summer. The kids have been coming and going, doing their own things. Frequently we’ve only had one child at home, and sometimes not even that. I’ve spent a few nights alone in the house with no one but the dogs to keep me company (D complains that they wake him up every morning around 6:00 to be fed, but they always let me sleep late). The house has been very clean and very quiet. I miss the noise; I miss the children who make the noise.

My children are now 19, 17, 15 and 13: four children in six years. I know it’s not as intense as “Jon and Kate Plus 8”, but there were lots of crazy, overwhelming times. For me, the late twentieth/early twenty-first century is pretty much a black hole. Had Y2K actually come to fruition, I wouldn’t have noticed. During those years my favorite song – or at least the one I found most cathartic -- was “Fly Away” by Lenny Kravitz. I always felt better after screaming, “I want to get away, I want to fly away…” Seriously, it was my theme song.

Life is easier now. My children all manage to bathe and feed themselves (although their table manners are atrocious); they do their homework with little help from me; they no longer push one another down the basement stairs in a laundry basket; no one needs me to bake cupcakes for a party at school. That’s a shame, because I make really delicious cupcakes.

In just a few minutes I’m heading up to Maine with two of my kids to meet the rest of our family. My husband drove up yesterday to pick up H, the youngest, who’s been at camp there for the last four weeks. I wonder if she still thinks everything is disgusting. He met J, who’s been at a pre-college program in the mid-west since early July, at the Portland airport. I wonder if rising senior J is counting the days until he goes to college for good. Has “Fly Away” become his theme song?

I vividly remember my first day of kindergarten, forty-five years ago. I didn’t go to nursery school. I never had a babysitter. I’d really never been away from my mom. Miss Gardner was my teacher. I hated her, but not until the second day. I was dumbstruck by a girl named Faith who had a thick fringe of black bangs that hit her eyebrows; for some reason I thought she was a character from “The Addams Family”. We sang “B-I-N-G-O” and snacked on graham crackers and milk. But the best part of all was when we were led outside at the end of class and I saw my mom waiting for me, wearing her yellow-flowered wrap-around skirt. I was so relieved to see her. I thought she was beautiful.

Time to go.

My family is waiting.

I’m so relieved.

I think they’re beautiful.