who knows where the time goes

Really, November? This is the time of the year when expectations only beat up on my reality and it’s started already. Last Sunday, after another long week, after I’d spent Saturday driving from one side of Minneapolis to the other to pick up my daughter Erin, and new baby Audrey to go visit my mom in Waconia, after I’d taken my oldest daughter Kathleen, to her dance lesson downtown and then picked her up, she asked, “Aren’t you going to go see Audrey today?” I looked puzzled, I’m sure, when she said, “To see her in her halloween costume?”

My face must have fallen, and this is where I felt like crappy Bubbe, not warm, loving, wonderful Bubbe. This added injury to the insult I must have started when I told Kathleen I’d thought of buying her boys, Elliot 13, and Max 8, some candy for her to take home, but then I over-thought it I guess, and thought, “Why would they need more candy?” And I’d told her this. I guess there are times I just over think, and I’m over cheap, but sometimes it does seem like there is just so much stuff, and so much well, hoopla over the holidays, and frankly, I’m tired of it.

Anyone who knows me knows I love my baby girls and grand-babies. I’m just not the commercial type of mom or Bubbe, and I only want to be when I see this look on Kathleen’s face. Erin and Megan seem cool with who I am, I get to be the geeky mom that only belongs to them, but Kathleen struggles with wanting me to be a different kind of mom. When she was young, she did get to be the only child for 5 years, and back then she had lots of Grandmothers and even great Grandmothers still alive. It was a culture of special holidays. My mom would bake all day for Christmas, Steve’s mom would decorate her tables with red tablecloths and crystal. My mom would bake Halloween cookies with orange sprinkles and we’d often have Thanksgiving dinner at two big houses filled with friends and family.

Was not this way as Kathleen got older, her parents got divorced, and her Grandfathers both died, and her Grandmothers were not as able to entertain. Her single again mom (me) just never quite got the hang of the holidays. Truth be told, I missed being the beloved daughter who just got to show up with her crazy kids. It’s coming on Thanksgiving again, and this is what it means for me. I will never walk through the back door of my parents house on Sheridan Avenue with my hands full of baby gear and have my dad give me a hug and tell me “Come on in, Happy Thanksgiving.” I will never smell his warm, clean smell and feel his shaved cheek, and the warm embrace of his checked flannel shirt. Walking through the kitchen, through the smell of turkey in the oven, my mom looking pretty in her apron, hearing my sibs just hanging out, waiting for a wonderful feast. Coming in from the brisk November to the warmth of someplace so good. I’m sorry Kathleen, I don’t know how to make this magic happen.