We've Officially Stopped Carving Pumpkins

My three kids are that old and disinterested. 

One (Junior) is away at college, one (Everett) is a sophomore in high school, and one (Cam) is in sixth grade.

We bought some pumpkins but only after they went on sale at a local farm in late October. And only because I had Everett and Cam trapped in the car with me and unless they wanted to walk home, they had to go to the pumpkin patch with me. 

Plop, the pumpkins went on the stoop. It's the first time in decades we didn't carve them. 

These rite-of-passage moments are bittersweet. While I miss the family activities of yesteryear, I don't always miss the hidden labor. I don't miss bickering about young boys using knives on slippery pumpkins. I don't miss worrying they would lose a finger. The scooping of the pumpkin guts was satisfying and slimy, but scraping five pumpkins clean was...very slimy. 

I still decorated for Halloween this year, but no one wanted to help. Instead I decorated against the audible rapid-fire spray of bullets in Fortnite and shouts to return to the lobby. When I suggested we play "Monster Mash" instead, they scoffed but assured me — "Yah, Mom, it's totally spooky" — that they still loved the lit skull in the bookcase.

 

Instead of Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest and Room on the Broom we watched Godzilla. Then Chuck and I fell asleep to the audible rapid-fire spray of bullets in Fortnite.

I also attended what will be the very last school Halloween parade for any of my kids. Watching the first graders against the sixth, I marveled at how giant Cam seemed in comparison. I knew he was glad I was there, but gone were the grandiose waves and beaming smiles for photos. Instead he breezed by me with his friends and gave me a cool wave over his shoulder.

 

 

This is the transition time — the time when everything that happens in your kids' lives is completely age appropriate but it still kind of breaks your heart. 

It's the time of insteads. 

And it's just the way it goes. 

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.   

How to tell your third kid from your first

 

Note the appropriate response here is: "When did THAT happen?" because let's be honest, life is moving so fast, there's no other question to ask.

When Nature Imitates Life

Every time I look out my dining room window and see these growing on the hill, I think, This is my household. My three sons.    

 

I can almost hear them bickering: Bruh, you're standing too close to me. Yo, let me squeeze in. Ouch! You're on my foot. You just elbowed my groin. Stand still. Why can't you ever just listen? Dude! Let me stand in between you guys. Guys!

 Etc. Etc. 

And for the love of all that's holy, one more etc.

They're tall and lanky, these guys on the hill. And now so are the guys inside my house. 

One son — Junior — is 16 years old and six feet tall; one — Everett — is 12, almost as tall as I am, and stuck in tweenager awkwardness; and one — Cam — is eight years old, trying desperately not to get left behind.

Junior was seven months old when I started this blog; in a few short weeks he'll round the corner towards his driver's license. I don't know where the years have gone but at the same time, I feel like we've lived 100 lifetimes since. 

Five years ago, when we first moved into our new home near New Haven and I first saw the plants in our yard, I thought we had accidentally planted corn. Really thin, oddly kerneled corn. I'd never seen them in Mulletville; then again, we only had 0.25 acres of crabgrass. 

 

I found out the strange, stalky weeds are actually common mullein. 

That summer, and every summer since, I hacked them down but this year I let them proliferate, and I kind of love them. The weed is delicate, with its rosette wreath of leaves, but strangely phallic. It's a little schizophrenic-looking, as if the top and bottom of the plant can't agree on who it wants to be.

It's said that mullein can be used to treat respiratory issues, to reduce inflammation, and in salves for burns or rashes. Mullein's velvety leaves were once used as toilet paper, hence its nickname, Cowboy Toilet Paper.

Interestingly, mullein spreads but isn't aggressively invasive. Like, Hey, if you let me grow here, I won't change your landscape, make extra work for you, or take over your home.

They're tall and lanky, these guys on the hill. And now, the more I think about it, so very unlike the guys inside my house.

So very, very unlike.

 

Where we're at as we head into summer.

 
Easter:

"Look, Mom! Everett made all of your moods on his Easter eggs."

 

Sometimes, husbands CAN get it

First, the bad news about my recent (er, em, 2 months ago) suet post: My suet wad fell on the ground after a windstorm.  

It melted and when I first found it I let out a long "eeeeew" because if you're grossly perverted, like me, you might see the remnants of a Peeping Tom, and not suet, in the leaves. 

Yes, ew. 

The smell of bacon brought me back to reality. 

 

I never got to see birds happily flitting about it — like the ones in Cinderella — but I did see an already-plump squirrel happen upon it and I swear to God, you could see the grin on his face as he sat down and went to town on the fat, nuts, and peanut butter. He ate the whole damn thing himself, that little fatty. Instead of shooing him away, I thought, "Good for you. Sit down and feast."

 

See, I'm trying out this new way of thinking, which is, slow the fuck down and enjoy life.

AND I LIKE IT.

A LOT.

Which kind of ties into the good thing that came from my last suet post: Chuck read it, and he came home from work and did the dishes. More than that, though, we had a heart-wrenching, brutally honest conversation about the lack of equality in the way our household runs, and how the distribution of labor needs to be reassessed.

Basically, I said, "If things don't change, I will have a nervous breakdown, and I will gladly let you commit me."

The whole family got in on it — Junior, age 13, Everett, age 10, and Cam, age 6, the two dogs, and our cat. Oh, and Chuck, of course, age 48.

It wasn't an overly prescribed conversation, in fact, it was pretty laid back. It wasn't about doling out more chores — not yet, at least — but instead how it feels to be the person managing the shitshow and constantly barking at everyone to pitch in. 

I call it Phase I.

At one point, I gestured at my chest and said pointedly, "THESE don't give me superpowers. My boobs don't make me better at loading the dishwasher or doing laundry or vacuuming."

So far, the biggest change has been in Chuck. He's pitching in more, but the best part is that he is starting to SEE, like me, the do-to list. He's reminding the kids to pick up after themselves. He's putting the laundry away alongside the kids. He's making dinner and doing the dishes. 

The most important part is that as Chuck takes on more, he's more conscious of the work and effort that go into running a household with working parents, three sons, two dogs, and a cat, and he's more connected to it, rather than detached in his easy, breezy "hey babe, this'll get done, I promise" way — which made me want to strangle him on a daily basis.

Nope, now he gets it. A lot more. 

And he's finally stopped leaving puddles outside my office window.

I'M KIDDING. Relax. It's suet, I swear. 

I love you, Chuck.