Sleep-deprived Sophie, who stayed up late on December 31 to ring in 2016 with her friend, crankily proclaimed on New Year’s Day that “Today is just another day.”
She’s not wrong. January 1 doesn’t really have anything going for it, other than its pole position as the first day of the Gregorian calendar year.
Which got me thinking. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to wake up every January 1 and realize that a single aspect of your life had magically changed for the better? Screw new year’s resolutions. They require thought, intent and effort. Why isn’t there the equivalent of a fairy godmother for New Year’s Day?
“Bye, Sophie!” yelled Papa as we were leaving for the bus stop yesterday.
After a brief pause, our 10-year old suddenly turned around and ran to her father, who was standing in the vestibule waving to her. She hugged him so tightly around his midriff that she squeezed a grin right out of him.
I’m trying hard to get into the holiday spirit. I truly am. But the world is making it difficult to feel joyful these days. Shameless politicians spewing hate and intolerance and ignorance. People killing other people for sport. Heartbreaking refugee crises. Climate change. The continued assault against women’s reproductive rights and sensible gun control legislation. Racism and all the other -isms that have festered just below the surface for so long but are now oozing out in the open, no thanks to those damn politicians whose words and deeds are making such -isms an acceptable part of everyday discourse.
“Mom, what do women Inuits do?” Sophie had started to think about her first big social studies project of the year. The other morning, she and I began to consult websites and bookmarked a few pages that, at quick glance, seemed to offer at least a modicum of useful facts. Not dissertation-worthy, mind you, but sufficient for a 5th grader’s one-page paper. When we finished, it was almost time for her to catch the bus to school.
Sophie shot up four inches in the past year. I never appreciated the miracle of a four-inch growth spurt until I observed her over the summer and realized both to my delight and horror that my little girl’s body had stretched out – not unlike Gumby – and almost entirely lost its childlike proportions. Unbeknownst to us, her body was apparently preparing itself for its tenth birthday, a milestone she finally reached this evening at 8:49 pm.
I breathed in the salt-infused air from our hotel on Cape Cod Bay, bidding farewell to summer from North Truro, a couple of miles outside of Provincetown. The glorious week with our extended family went by all too quickly.
I’ve always loved surprises. Receiving them, giving them – both make my heart skip an extra beat. Now that I’m a mom, I’m primarily the giver of surprises. I’ve had a lot of practice perfecting them. Especially when successful execution requires me to pretend I’m still a lawyer and keep a secret for eight long months.
I bought the tickets back in November, when I didn’t yet know whether we’d be in town to use them. I kept the event under wraps because surprises are fun and also because if I told Sophie about it and we couldn’t go after all, she’d hold a grudge for decades.
The day before the show, I started to prepare her.
As Chloe’s middle school graduation approaches, I feel a bit unmoored and I’m not quite sure what to make of it.
For every positive thought I have when I think about the milestone – pride, relief, happiness, excitement for Chloe’s future – I have an equal and opposite reaction, and those reactions all essentially revolve around the overwhelming fact that in three short months, my 14-year old will be a freshman in HIGH SCHOOL. Setting aside the fact that this makes me feel old, it primarily makes me nervous, but not for the reasons you might think.
Do you save your kids’ texts? If you’re like me, and never really gave those little pearls much thought (beyond the exasperated eye rolls provoked by said children’s texts), you might want to consider doing it.
