I won't let that Halloween go! I won't, I tell you.

After years of dying a slow professional death at Mulletville Corp and then resurrecting my career through a series of part-time, freelance, and contract gigs, I’ve been full-time in the same marketing office for almost seven years. 

Yes, I've worked in a terrifically dysfunctional office with a group of people who work incredibly hard but are quite literally falling apart emotionally for almost a decade. Go me! 

Today during a meeting, the conversation veered off from someone's spouse's infusion (or was it someone's mother's dementia? No, it may have been someone's sister's goiter..) to the weather on Halloween. 

As it happens during meetings desperate to avoid pointless agendas, talk settled there for awhile.

"Looks windy Friday."

"I heard rain."

"Poor trick-or-treaters..." 

"Their little costumes..." 

"At least not freezing cold."  

"Ah yes, good point."

"At least not a hurricane followed by a blizzard!" I blurted.

No one could argue with that. 

"Remember," I asked. "Halloween 2012?" 

Try as I might, I cannot forget that Halloween. There are the obvious reasons it stands out: there was a hurricane, during which we lost power. After years of me waking every few hours to tend to children, my husband Chuck finally understood what I'd been experiencing when he had to wake every few hours to tend to the generator. (On sale now: Chuck's biography, "I Successfully Slept Through the Early Years.")

Halloween was postponed in our town, Mulletville Lite, and someone brilliant in town decided that it should be held a few days later during a major snowstorm. As we trick-or-treated in feet of snow, and I carried my hefty toddler — whose slippery snowsuit kept sliding down my body — my neighbor chided me for complaining too much. 

Of course I was insulted. Chide moi? The woman who had made multiple costumes, carved pumpkins with a toddler, raked leaves, drank cider, glued googly eyes to construction paper bats, sang "The Monster Mash," and done autumn leaf rubbings? Moi?   

Years later, I see that night as one of those "aha moments" — when the preposterous demands of parenthood light up like a neon sign. 

See, when you're pregnant, you understand motherhood will probably demand things of you. Of course it will. How could it not? You have to help another human (maybe several) survive and thrive. 

What you can't imagine is how utterly preposterous those things will be. 

Things like wiping your kid's ass while simultaneously holding a puke bin for another kid while answering a work email while gulping down half a sandwich. Speeding to a doctor's appointment because your kid has a 105 fever and realizing you only have one shoe on, you left your wallet at home and you're on E — and you forgot it's 2:30 and your other kid doesn't have after school club that day and who the fuck can get him off the bus? 

The list is endless. 

The indignity is that the preposterous acts go so... uncelebrated. Your kids don't appreciate them. The Universe doesn't give awards for them. Your boss doesn't want to hear about them because it usually means you were late to work or missed a deadline. Spouses and partners are usually unimpressed because when you share all the preposterous things you've done, they usually hear all the preposterous things they didn't do and get defensive.

No winning here.  

So yah, it may rain for Halloween this year. 

But at least it won't snow in the -20 degree pitch black dark of night! And the walk won't be uphill in both directions! And... 

Oh my...I'm old.

When your kid isn't a kid anymore...

 

Junior is graduating from high school. 

When I started this blog in 2008, Junior was still sleeping in a man-made cocoon called the Amby bed. He hadn't yet uttered his first words or stepped his first wobbly steps. A year into new motherhood, I was standing on the sidelines of a strange new world full of "Mommy and Me" groups, anxiety-inducing milestones, sleepless nights, and a newfound, ever-encompassing sense of worry that I would never be good enough.

This blog was a lovely break from that, and back then, before the onslaught of social media, it provided the sweetest sense of community. 

Seventeen years later, all of that is a distant blur. I once had to ask a woman at a park if it was okay to send baby Junior down a slide. "Was he old enough?" I needed to know. Now I could mother blindfolded, with both arms tied behind my back, hanging upside down. 

I guess they call that seasoned.

I would give a pinky finger to go back in time to just one of those nights when Junior was little. To sit in a moment of rocking him — his silky head under my nose — or rubbing his nubby back, soft and precious in a footie pajama set. 

I reminded myself to close my eyes enough in those moments and to breathe it in, despite the worry and fatigue. Despite the fear that I would somehow mess him up beyond repair. I reminded myself to stop and remember because I honestly did know this time would come.

Now he's 18, and he's a really amazing human being. He's thoughtful and charismatic and kind. He helps me cook. He helps me move furniture. He's handsome and tall. He walks his grandmothers to the car and opens their door. He's also a damn good older brother. 

He's everything and then some more. 

And I know it — it's the proverbial "setting free" time. There's no going back. Just forward.

And just holy shit. It sure does just stop you in your tracks.