Senioritis

The Universe or God of Heat Waves must be smiling on me. I’m not ready for Finn’s senior year. I’m taking the school cancellation as a reprieve to collect myself. I’ve been in denial. Well not really, but I have been stuffing emotions like a chipmunk until this evening when at a stop light the dam broke and I burst into tears as Donna Summer sang McArthur Park on Sirius 70s on 7. (Don’t judge.)

Something about the cake in the rain and never having the recipe again pierced me to the core even though I never baked a cake in my life. I do eat them and I am pretty sure I don’t even know what that song is about but this is no time for metaphors.

My outburst happened before I knew school was cancelled. The same school I thought started Wednesday not Tuesday. The miscalculation left me running around erratically cleaning, going to Staples and otherwise pleading with my boys to organize their rooms because… SCHOOL WAS STARTING!

Anyway, I digress. This senior thing is hard; it’s happy and exciting and - sorry folks, pretty much worse than Kindergarten drop off.

I keep going back in my head to this woman I worked with 11 years ago. Finn was in Kindergarten and Dylan still working his way out of diapers. Every time I met her for a meeting at her desk she’d ask how the boys were and click her tongue, shake her head and say, “It’s going to go by sooooo fast.” My indoor voice would say, ‘Lady I just graduated from not coming to work with spit-up on my sweater to the handprint on boobs and backside stage and I probably won’t wear white pants for the next decade so can I JUST ENJOY THEM.’

In real life, I smiled and seethed in the same way you do when the total stranger touches your pregnant belly in the checkout of Stop&Shop. I’m not totally sure why work lady bothered me so. I suppose if I still worked with her I would have to grudgingly tell her she was right.

Wasn’t I just chasing Buzz Lightyear through the house? Running around every school morning with one shoe on looking for my work badge that Dylan hid in his toy box while shrieking we’re late for school, only to find Finn six feet up in the air in the front-yard tree waiting for me.

As someone who writes messages about change and transition for a living, I am not sure how I missed the transformation before we got here. There were visible signs after all,  like “Hey mom, you’re so short you could be my arm rest,” or when I would come home and not recognize the 6’3, 250 pound man in the distance walking the dog and think, “Who the hell is walking Snowball?…oh,  it’s Finn.”

The truth is, I have loved every beautiful, messy stage we have moved though together and I am looking forward to next steps. The things we do together as mom and son have evolved of course. I don’t have to get him off to school anymore; I do have to wait up for him and worry. We don’t watch Disney Channel anymore but I do get Twitter DMs featuring, SNL, Jimmy Fallon or some outlandish Trump tweet and I relish them.

And now that I’ve had time to think and he is not a senior in my mind until this Thursday, I’ve embraced the change. This year is another beginning – a time for big decisions and new choices – a time to fly solo and let go. I know he knows I’ll be cheering the loudest from the sidelines.

Ready or not, here we go!

Fifteen Years 1-4-3

Today is my 15th wedding anniversary. I think it deserves a little fanfare. There is no grand party for celebrating 15 years with your spouse, no commercial card that I could find that says, "Happy Fifteenth."

June 7, 1997

So here on my blog, I am making up my own public display of affection.
These years have been the happiest moments of my life even when  pregnancy loss, my father's death and other family issues have swung the mood pendulum temporarily in the other direction.
As a child of divorce, I had one thing I aspired to as a little girl more than my goal of becoming a writer- to have an intact family of my own.
Every railroad track I crossed over, every shooting star and birthday candle wish was always the same. I honestly didn't think it would come true.
And then it did.
When Mark and I started our journey more than a decade and a half ago we had no idea what we would discover about each other - the good, the bad and unflattering. But the journey has been such great fun. We put off having kids right away and then when it seemed right, we decided to become parents. It's been tiring, exhilarating and lovely in ways I could have never imagined, like when we all meet in the kitchen and one of us or the boys yell: "Group Hug!"  We smoosh into a huddle of hugs and kisses that make me want to hold on to the moment forever.
Some days it doesn't seem like 15 years has passed until your 7 year-old introduces you as "middle-aged."
Mark and I  "re-met" after high school while being radical in the political sense. We were 26. The city we grew up in, Holyoke, was pursuing taking over its hydroelectric dam. It was a contentious political fight. He was the engineer on the project and I was envelope stuffing for the cause.
There was a meeting at Maloney's bar. We got to talking and exchanged numbers.
A few weeks later I called his answering machine and asked him out.
I regretted the voicemail message at the time because I had never asked anyone out before and now it was on tape - a record of potential rejection. Lucky for me he called back and said we should do dinner and a movie. I had just suggested a movie.
Our first date was at Aqua Vitae - an Italian restaurant in Hadley no longer around. He ate lasagna and I had eggplant Parmesan. Before the movie we went to the Hampshire Mall arcade and I lost miserably in the game wack-a-mole.
He still liked me.
After three months we pinkie swore an engagement because we didn't want to listen to everyone calling us crazy.
We made it official at 10 months. Our whole life was ahead of us.
The wedding was grand.
Yet it's the every day stuff that still makes me swoon as I did after our first kiss in Northampton.
When I have too much to talk about - usually at night while Mark is trying to go to sleep - we joke that I have not gotten in my 5,000 words for the day.
Through most of our marriage, save for when he was in grad school, Mark cooks because well, I burn.
I'm grateful.
My husband is the only one who can tell me I'm behaving insanely and I believe him.
 "If you were having a heart attack Pat you would have been dead 8,000 times."
We laugh and move on.
This may sound strange to say but I love our fights.  Fighting fair has been an evolution- talking instead of the silent treatment.  I especially love when we realize how stupid an argument is and burst out laughing noting the fight was more about being over tired or flummoxed about that matchbox car that was flushed down the toilet because one of the boys wanted to see where it would go.
I so appreciate  his calm, smart, and direct mind as a balance to my passionate, creative, and often impatient energy.
I don't mind saying my husband, my best friend, brings out the best in me. I had a feeling he would even before he proposed.
I was driving into work at the newspaper when the realization hit me...I am going to marry this man and have his/our kids.
I LOVE him.
It was a visceral.
Fantastic really.
And so it is today, just even better.