And It Was All Yellow

 

I don't want to write about the present or the immediate future. It just makes me feel some kind of way. I've been looking back a lot more. There is something comforting about the past. It is etched in stone, unchangeable and familiar. Happy times passed are blessings that can be revisited when times are hard. When my children are struggling or having a bad attitude, I close my eyes and remember them little. How I would rock with my oldest and bury my face into her neck and smell her baby smell. How my youngest would crawl into my lap and rest her curls on my chest, and reach up and play with my ear lobes. It doesn't matter how old they are, I will always think of them like that. 

A smell, a song, a place can just bring you back to a moment in time that has passed. This week, I was driving home and Yellow came on the radio. It's mid-August and it was like I was suddenly in New York City. 

It's so weird that we live thousands of days and we don't remember most of them. But others we remember so clearly, every detail. Births, deaths, times that are especially happy and times that are especially sad. That day in New York was one of those days burned into my memory forever. 

It was the end of August 2001. A week before my husband left for the ARMY- which was August 29th. We decided that we wanted to go to New York City for the day. It was me, my husband, and two guy friends that we worked with. I was 17. He picked me up early that morning, in his white Saturn station wagon and we drove to Mount Holly. We loaded onto a coach bus. It was like a party bus with tables. We were so pumped. The boys mostly talked about going to the Virgin Records store to get some obscure CD. That is a very old-fashioned statement. 

It was only an hour and a half drive into Manhattan. We got off the bus and made our way to Times Square. I had been to New York City a few times before - mostly for school trips. I'd been to the top of the Empire State Building and seen a Broadway show but there was something different about being there - young and alone with my boyfriend and friends, just exploring the city. 

We made our way to Times Square. The streets were bustling with people and everything was just so BIG. All I did was look UP - at the forest of buildings. I pointed to the World Trade Center Towers. They seemed to reach up to the heavens. I recall pointing at them and saying, "Look! They are the tallest buildings in the city!" I remembered that moment as I watched them fall a few weeks later. He was already gone by then. 

It was a hot day- but not too hot. Not sticky hot. It was hot enough to feel like summer. There were so many little shops. I wanted to shop for clothes. The boys had no interest in that at all. There was a small clothing store just by Virgin Records. "I want to stop in here. I'll meet you there," I told them. They were like, "Okay." Then, I was all alone. 

I stepped into this clothing store that, I swear to you, was barely bigger than a walk-in closet. It had so many cute and funky things and I wanted to buy everything. It wasn't the kind of stuff you'd find in South Jersey. I fell in love with this cherry red sweater vest. I love that sweater vest. I still own it and I still wear it, multiple times a year. My 14 year old discovered it this year, and she low-key stole it from me. It's hanging in her closet right now. I'll get it back someday. 

Once I was done with my shopping, I headed over to Virgin Records. It was larger than life. You walked in and it was massive. There was an escalator! There seemed to be rows and rows of endless CDs. I meandered through the store, looking around for my boyfriend. I found him in the electronica section. He never went to raves but he liked the rave-type music. When we went to check out, there was a huge rack dedicated to Coldplay's Parachutes album. They were the hot, new band. Ever since then, whenever I hear Yellow, I am standing in the Virgin Records store in Times Square admiring the rack of Coldplay CDs again. 

We left Virgin Records and we ate. I don't remember what we had for lunch. That is the one detail that is missing. After lunch, we headed to Central Park. There was a man selling pretzels from a cart and there were people walking dogs, couples on blankets, and joggers passing by. We were getting tired, I was getting the post-lunch haze. We sought rest on a big rock. I sat on the rock next to my husband and leaned against him. The boys talked, but I just watched. The sky was crystal blue and the leaves and grass were this vibrant emerald green. There was a slight breeze and the tree branches swayed like they were dancing around us. The city towered behind the trees. There was a boy playing catch with his father. It's weird, that I can't tell you what I had for dinner last Tuesday but I will forever remember watching them. The boy had on a blue baseball cap, and squinted just slightly as he followed the ball into his glove. 

It is a moment I think I'll remember forever. I was happy and peaceful and in this place that so beautiful, it was like being in a movie. I could have stayed there all afternoon, but we moved on. 

We started to make our way back to where the bus station was. We stopped at Barnes and Noble. It was two stories high and had a much better selection than the bookstores of my hometown. I purchased the complete works of E.E. Cummings. 

By the time we left the bookstore, the sky had turned grey. Then, all of a sudden it started to rain. Hard. Torrential rain. We tried to get onto a bus, since that was the closet thing to us where we could seek shelter but we were immediately kicked off because we didn't have any bus tokens. 

There was a Hooters close-by and we made a run for it. When we stepped into the restaurant, we were all soaked and laughing. There was barely anyone there, it was that weird time between lunch and dinner. We decided to stay and get a snack and wait out the rain. We were seated at a table near the bar. There was a middle-aged man sitting there. 

We sat down and talked and were just being ourselves and the man seemed interested in us. He asked us questions. "Where you kids from?" in a thick, stereotypical New York accent. "You kids like MTV?" he asked. Of course we did. You weren't a real teenager if you didn't come home from school, grab a snack and sit down to watch Total Request Live with Carson Daly. We told him that we did. "You know what I call it?" he replied. "I call it EMPTY-V. Get it?" and he laughed and laughed at his own joke. It was a dad joke and none of us laughed with him. He talked about "young people today," not in a way that was offensive per se, but there was something about the decline of morality that bothered him that was reflected in us. 

It has always been that way. Every generation thinks that theirs was better than the current one. The youth are vilified in a lot of ways and discounted for their lack of wisdom. But it's not their fault, and it wasn't ours. When you are young you don't know what you don't know. When you are young, deep down you feel like you'll be that way forever because it's all you've known your entire life up until then. We were young and wild and free that day and nothing that man said to us could have changed that. 

It did stop raining and we made our way back to the bus station, dodging puddles and trying to shrug off the underlying anxiety of missing our ride home. We piled into the bus and collapsed into the seats, tired from our day of exploring the city. The ride home seemed shorter than the ride there. I pulled my book from the bag and read the entire way. The boys i mean are not refined was my favorite: https://genius.com/E-e-cummings-the-boys-i-mean-are-not-refined-annotated

The boys certainly were not refined then and I don't imagine they are much more now, 20 years later. 

It was dusk by the time we rolled into Mount Holly. We unloaded the bus and loaded into the station wagon. We listened to the new Gorillaz CD the whole way home. My husband had this HUGE binder of CDS. I swear it weighed 10 pounds, sheet after sheet of shiny circles. His collection was enviable. The only good part about him leaving for the AMRY was that he was going to give me his binder of CDs for safekeeping. We laughed and joked around the entire way home. We were back in town before my curfew so I went back to his house. Our friends left and we walked into the house and it was empty. It was unusual for that time of the evening that everyone would be gone. 

It seemed like a gift, the perfect ending to the perfect day. The lights in the living room were dim and the house was silent except for the raindrops on the roof. That was in August 19 years ago. 

That's strange to think - all the time between then and now is a blur. My children are almost the age I was then. The other night, I laid in bed with my daughter. She didn't protest. I studied her face. "You only have one more first day of school left. Like, in your whole life. That's crazy." She smiled. "You're getting old." She always tells me that. "It's weird because sometimes, in my head, I still think I'm the same as I was when I was your age. Then, when I am around you and your sister, I think No, I'm definitely not." I don't think she understood what I was trying to say, "Did you have wine tonight?" she asked. I hadn't. But she'll know what I mean someday.

I should feel different. I know more things. But like practical things. I can cook a turkey without checking the internet and I can file taxes and get stains out of blouses. But I actually know less. Things are less certain. That day in New York, everything was perfect and I was so sure about everything. Life is so black and white when you are young. Sometimes things are complicated only because they make them be so. For instance, teenagers with relationship problems are so funny. Like, you can just break up. Nothing will happen. You don't need to sell a house or figure out kids every other weekend. You only have to keep yourself alive and you have people facilitating that. Your body parts are still in their original places....You can't appreciate the simpleness of life until it gets messy. Until you have children of your own. And once-in-a-century pandemics happen. 

Maybe I am still that girl, walking down the sidewalk in Times Square, looking UP. I still have some of those things from that day with me - the boy, the red sweater vest, the poem. Even the Coldplay album- on Spotify, of course. 

Can Money Pay for All the Days I Lived Awake but Half Asleep?

                       

This pandemic has done something to me. That has been an ongoing theme, hasn't it? I am not silent about it - at all. But I have this underlying fear that it has changed who I am forever. I used to think that I was unshakeable. But I feel fragile now. I used to think I was funny and witty. But I don't feel like that anymore. I feel like I'm a shiny penny that got all rusty. I'm sprouting gray hair all of a sudden. The other day, my oldest was going through my hair. "Oh my God, mom! You have EIGHT gray hairs. I'm going to pluck them out." I shooed her away, "I'll be bald at this rate!" I'm getting older and the children are too. I feel it in my soul. 

Here we are in the middle of all this and I feel so strange. There are things that need to be done, that are coming at us fast. My oldest is a junior. She is starting school virtually next week, which I have all kinds of feelings about. This time next year we'll be getting ready to look at college applications. We'll really have to narrow down her list and schedule virtual tours. Virtual tours. Fuck. 

There will be ACTs and SATs and getting our finances in order for FAFSA. In 9 months, there will be senior pictures to schedule. My youngest has things to do. She'll need a portfolio and application materials finished by November for Governor's School for next summer. There will be permit tests to study for. She wants to go to a different high school than her home high school and she will need to take the ACT and do applications. These are things that need to happen, that we need to prepare for- pandemic or not. 

And yet, I don't even want to bring any of it up. To anyone. To myself even. I feel like just adjusting to what this school year will look like is taxing and overwhelming enough. We are in this weird holding pattern. A new normal. Except it's not normal at all. Can there even be a new normal for people that know and understand what life can really be like? What life was like before? I'm not sure. I can get used to things. I can get used to wearing a mask and I can get used to things being canceled and I can get used to the fear and the discord but I'm not sure that I can ever accept these things as being normal. I really struggle with that. 

I feel like I am living in a haze. Where time seems suspended. It's like waking up from a dream and opening your eyes and for just a moment - you don't know who you are, where you are, what day it is, whether it's closer to day or night. Regardless, you are safe, you are in your own bed. But for just a few seconds, you don't have your bearings straight. That's what this is like. It's like being stuck in that moment. It's not bad or good. It's just strange. 

And then there is me. Here I am at the finish line of the raising up my children. I am 36 years old. Then what? Then I have this whole life to worry about my adult children? I'm going to re-invent myself. I'm going to start wearing funky shoes. That's going to be my signature thing. The lady that wears funky shoes. I brought these:

Maybe wearing fun, funky shoes will make me feel fun and funky. Maybe then I'll feel like I shiny penny again. 

I probably will dye the gray out. Or maybe do an Anne Bancroft type of thing? 

Maybe I'll write stories. About real people with a lot of mystery and a little bit of sex. Mostly to entertain myself and pass the time. 

I'll plant flowers and cook dinner for my husband. Maybe we'll be able to travel again someday. Maybe I'll go to Spain for a month and we can be strangers for a while. I need some adventure in my life. 

The point it is, I feel tired. I am not funny anymore. Everything is weird. The children are in a life-changing moment and I am in a crisis about what to do with the next 50 years of my life. I'll let you know if I ever figure any of it out.

Lift Me Up

         
July was long for us. In some ways, longer than March was. A lot of feelings, a lot of disappointment, a lot of pandemic fatigue. I have been unable to see a light at the end of this tunnel and that has been difficult. I have been marinating in it for some time now. How can we get through this time without any end in sight? How can I make sure my children can get what they need and keep them safe? How can I get to the other side of my anger if I feel like I am drowning in it?

I have spent a lot of time, being alone in my thoughts, reflecting and praying. I am grateful to my children. They keep me going. Even on days where I feel like everything is falling apart and I am at the very end of my rope, I will still get up and make balloon garlands for birthdays, and plan little outings, and make special meals. I read this thing about as mothers, we are the keepers of everyone's sadness and disappointment. That just resonated so much. It really is true. But the small things that I do to try to get the children excited (or distracted) and attempting to create some sort of normalcy has given me purpose.

My husband has been fabulous. He has really struggled this month too. Not openly, but in his silent kind of way. Parents are only as happy as their saddest child and the disappointment crushed him as well. We have been doing a really good job of supporting each other. If he is having a bad day or seems off, I make him get out of the house and take a walk with me. If I'm having a dark day, he'll step in and help with the housework or make me breakfast, and sometimes, he just rubs my back. It's his way of saying, "I know you are struggling, and I'm here and will walk through this with you," without saying anything at all. We've been really leaning on each other a lot and that is a blessing.

The last time I wrote a blog, I talked about how they were playing Christmas songs on the radio and I thought it was strange. That night, I was making Shrimp Scampi for dinner. I had the radio playing Christmas music, because why not? It was strange that it was on the menu that day because we ALWAYS have Shrimp Scampi on Christmas Eve. So, I'm cooking and singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and it felt weirdly like December 24th. I called my family in for dinner and placed the plates on the table and then went to shut off the radio.

"It's feels like Christmas!" my oldest declared. "I love Christmas" my youngest said. "It's really right around the corner," I said. "It will be fall before we know it." "Fall is my FAVORITE," my oldest said. It's all of ours. "OMG! Yesssss! Let's go all in this year. I'm buying all the pumpkin spice candles, we'll eat soup and do all-the-things." The girls got excited and started talking about all the fun things we do in September-December that covid can't cancel. Drinking hot chocolate and watching spooky movies, the corn maze (I think it will be open), carving pumpkins. We decided that if they cancel trick or treating, we'll still have a "party" with just us. We'll dress up and build a fire and listen to our Halloween playlist and eat sweets. We always watch the Thanksgiving Day parade on Thanksgiving, but if it's canceled we decided we'll watch the one from 2007. It's on Youtube. That way all the balloons will be from when THEY were kids. We'll make cinnamon buns and play games.

Of course, we'll do all the Christmas things. The drive-through lights are perfect for covid time, and there will be crafts and movies and food and the hope of a New Year around the corner. We don't participate in holidays with our extended families anymore, and so there is no loss there. We will do what we always do, celebrate quietly, just us. My brother-in-law told me once that "Everyone knows that I only care about my 4." Some would think this a rude or harsh thing to say, but I always appreciate people who speak the truth. He's right in a lot of ways. I used to dread the holidays, there used to be so stressful and awkward and terrible. I don't only care about my 4, but I care about my 4 the most, and unapologetically so. We are quite content in each other's company and I am excited about it.

While we sat at the table and talked about the approaching months, the darkness lifted a bit. My girls were EXCITED about something. In that moment, I decided that 2020 and it's stank coochie energy can go somewhere else. We are going away for a long weekend this week, to just have a reset. When we get back, I'm going to decorate for the fall. I don't care if it's August and 100 degrees inside. I am baking a pumpkin pie and pretending it's here already. We need that.

My oldest will start school virtually but they did approve her to go on campus for 2 weeks in November. I'm not counting on it AT ALL, but if it could happen, it will be good. I'm going to buy her a "Class of 2022" shirt for the first day of school and take her to a special breakfast. I've been connecting with other parents in the area to form "study groups" so the kids can interact and do their school work. She seems really open to it and while she's not excited about it, she seems to have accepted. We are going to do everything we can to make this special for her and pray that she gets a normal senior year.

My heart aches for the Class of 2021, many of them aren't going back. Some kids went to school on a random day in March and they never knew they would never go back to school again. I saw one child last week, a rising senior and he said he wasn't going back. "How are feeling about it?" I asked him. He shrugged. "Everything is ruined anyway." I worry about the kids. Not just the teenagers, all the young people. All of this is so hard, I pray for them.

We have elected for my youngest to go back to school face-to-face. They make you sign a liability waiver. People are really upset about the waiver. I've signed a lot of these waivers. When she did gymnastics, horseback riding, even trampoline parks have the "assume the risk of serious injury or death." It is not an easy thing. If I felt like my child could thrive and be a whole person and receive the education she needs virtually, I would keep her home. But that is not the case. I know I'll probably get shamed about this decision, but I've gotten shamed about a lot of my decisions and I honestly, don't give one f*ck.

We are holding on, for now. We are here. God is here. We are just doing the best we can.