So many great things happened today, all in ONE day, that all of a sudden the true meaning of Christmas smacked me square in the face. It was fabulous feeling to know how blessed and lucky I am, and so overwhelming that it suddenly stopped me in my tracks. Not that I’m not aware of or don’t appreciate my blessings, but suddenly it just hit me. I was presented with the BEST gifts ever – and the givers didn’t even realize that they gave me a gift, and they certainly then didn’t realize the magnitude of their gifts!
First, at 10:30 this morning, a girlfriends’ group text came in wanting to know if anyone was available to meet for lunch at 12:30. Surprisingly, five of us were. And we did. It was the best lunch ever. With work schedules, kids, Christmas bustle and the like, it was a small miracle that an impromptu text had us gathered together two hours later. We couldn’t have done that if we tried. And then there we sat, long after the lunch plates were removed and the drink glasses were drained, and we talked and talked and enjoyed. We really caught up with each other.
With all of us having Seniors in high school on the verge of big college plans and diverse and exciting visions for themselves, we reminisced about our own plans and dreams that we had at that age. We learned that each of us moms has regrets that we didn’t follow our own dreams, didn’t become who we thought we would when we were embarking on our own college years. Had we followed our dreams, we would have been two lawyers, two nurses, and a movie star lunching around that table. But all of a sudden, we’re in our 50s and it seems that those dashed dreams are now just something that we talk about with our middle-aged girlfriends over lunch.
However, since we’ve known each other and each other’s children since the kids were in Kindergarten, it has been wonderful to watch our little bundles of joy grow, mature, and become young adult achievers. It’s exciting to see where our kids’ dreams will take them. We’re like a group of cheerleader moms, now watching and guiding our kids from the sidelines as they make important life decisions for themselves and blossom into adulthood, with each of us genuinely rooting for the others’ kid as much as we root for our own.
But better yet, it’s so easy to be 50-something with a small group of terrific women who aren’t embarrassed to share broken dreams, parenting faults, and fears and cautious hopes for ourselves and for our children. It’s refreshing to have honest friends. We don’t judge. We rally, encourage, love, and laugh.
Today, we found out that each of us still has the dreams and ideals of our 18-year-old selves simmering inside. With our own children almost ready to fly the coop, we realized after sharing our innermost thoughts that we can modify our long-forgotten dreams, make new goals for ourselves, find a new kind of fulfillment. I left our lunch date today with a precious, uplifting, motivational gift from these girlfriends, and they don’t even know that they gave me this gift. Or maybe they do – because I have a sneaking suspicion that they left with the same gift. : )
When I got home, the mail had been delivered. Among the junk mail flyers, sale ads, and solicitations for car insurance was a small package from my aunt. I carefully opened the package because I knew that it held precious cargo. Inside was a blue and green plaid jumper with a white shirt that my brother wore almost 50 years ago! This outfit was passed on to our younger boy cousins when my brothers outgrew it back in the ’70s, and who knew that my aunt had lovingly cared for and saved this outfit for all of these years! On my brother’s 48th birthday last month, I had posted on Facebook a picture of him (wearing this outfit) from 1969. To my surprise and delight, my aunt saw the post and told me that she still had that outfit and wondered if I would like to have it. So now here it was, right there on my kitchen counter all these years later! Someday, when and if my sons have sons, I will have my grandson(s) wear it.
I am so thankful for my aunt, that she is sentimental and sweet, that she provided this throwback to me. I was only four when my brother wore that outfit, but our mom had had Olan Mills portraits taken of her babies when we were each eight months old – and my brother was wearing the blue and green plaid jumper in his portrait. Mom eventually had the four portraits professionally matted into one elegant frame. She hung it proudly on the wall in her bedroom for most of my life, and it now hangs in my own hallway.
By opening this package with the plaid jumper and white collared shirt inside, my aunt immediately sent me back in time to my childhood, to my mom, to my siblings and the house that we grew up in, to a time that makes me feel so happy to recollect. Time flies so fast, but for a moment, my little-girl memories came flooding back. I closed my eyes and embraced them, drank them in. Happiness.
The framed portraits of her four babies that Mom displayed so proudly.
Also in the mail was a Christmas card with a return address from the vicinity of my hometown, 1200 miles away in Pittsburgh. It was from a gracious and lovely cousin in our large, extended Italian family. It’s always a feel-good feeling to be remembered and I was grateful to have received the card. However, what was inside went straight to my heart. Along with a save-the-date for next summer’s family reunion, she wrote one simple sentence that meant everything to me: “Loved your Facebook posting at Thanksgiving dedicated to your mom. So sweet!”.
My mom, gone 17 years now, was loved by everyone. I had written a post about our last Thanksgiving together, bittersweet, as her cancerous body was failing her. Knowing that she’s in others’ hearts and minds means the world to me. Knowing that my writing is aiding in keeping Mom’s memory alive is the most rewarding thing ever. I miss my mom so much, and to have her mentioned, remembered, and missed by others too is such a gift to me. I carry my mom in my heart every single day and I can’t even explain how amazing it feels to know that others also carry her still. Along with their own beloved moms, they have room for mine.
That one simple sentence inside this Christmas card just stopped me in my tracks. Standing there in the kitchen, so thankful for those words, then smiling again at the baby outfit from long ago sent by my sweet aunt, and pumped from the spontaneous and uplifting lunch date with my girlfriends that I had just come home from, it suddenly became so clear to me that I had just received my Christmas presents. No need for Santa to come down my chimney on Christmas Eve. I had just experienced the true gifts and real meaning of Christmas: Friendship, family, and memories.
What was lovely about today: The gifts I received today are what was lovely about today. And….driving home, James Taylor’s and Carly Simon’s catchy version of “Mockingbird” came on the radio. It’s much faster and more flashy than the lullaby rendition that I used to sing to my newborn sons, but a total pleasure to hear and sing along with. So after the long conversation over lunch with my girlfriends about our Seniors’ college paths, it was nice to go back to when my Senior son was tiny enough to fit in the crook of my arm, a precious little six-pounder whom I had so many hopes and dreams for. He is everything I hoped and dreamed he would be.
Her foresight wasn’t that far off. We are both rich (not the money kind of rich, but the blessings kind of rich) with kids, houses, and wine. She was a little off thinking that we would (or even could) stay up till all hours of the night drinking wine. For example, about four years ago, we both flew to Chicago from our respective homes, 1,200 miles apart, to spend a weekend with her “little” sister, who is just 10 years younger than us. Upon our 9:00 Friday night arrival, Little Sister wanted to take us to a club. With secret sideways glances at each other, we declined – and were SO happy instead to homestead on the couch in Little Sister’s gorgeous urban condo. There we sat, in our favorite pajamas, catching up on life over wine and cheese and chocolates. We lasted no later than the 11:00 news.
My friendship with my BFF spans many decades of tears and laughter, schooling, funerals, engagements, weddings, divorce, baptisms, vacations, parenting. You name it and we’ve been through it together, always knowing that the other is there to help us through to the other side, good or bad, regardless of time, distance, or circumstance. This is the beauty of a genuine friendship, one that is comfortable, trusting, true, natural, honest, essential.
When I became a parent, I then gained another great group of local friends – especially when my oldest started school. I met my core group of martini-drinking girlfriends at orientation, when all of our firstborns were starting kindergarten. Sometimes you just click, and we just did. Thirteen years later, we still plan girls’ nights out, happy hour get-togethers, lunch dates, and Pokeno house parties, but now with no need to worry about babysitters, the time, or having to get up super early with young children as our children are now young adults who are trying out their fledgling wings. Freedom!! (For us moms, I mean!) I really enjoy my girlfriends and I’m grateful to have them in my life. Each of us knows that with one text message or one phone call, a problem can be solved, a question can be answered, or a get-together can be planned. I especially appreciate that each of us has different strengths and weaknesses. We know how to draw on the best of each other in the good times – and how to rally together in the broken-wing times. It is reassuring and great fun to have a small group of strong, wonderful, devoted women who are lovingly invested with me in our journey through parenting, friendship, and adulthood shenanigans! I don’t know what I’d do without their warmth and steadfast love.
This summer’s adventures included a cruise from Seattle to Alaska on Royal Caribbean’s gorgeous Explorer of the Seas. Once my husband, teen sons, and I sailed away from the Port of Seattle, we switched our phones over to “airplane mode” due to the exorbitant cost of the ship’s wifi service. So that’s it. Our fancy smartphones’ only function then was as a plain old camera. Phone calls, texting, online gaming, and Googling became a thing of the very recent past in one quick swipe.
But what came next was an unexpected surprise and resulted in one of the most relaxing days that I have probably ever had – at least since I can remember. At 6:40 the following morning, our ship slowly coasted into the silent waterway of Tracy Arm Fjord, then anchored. The waterway is narrow, only about a half mile wide, and gives way to 3,000-foot rising mountains and granite cliffs that have narrow but high waterfalls cascading down the crevices and a dramatic blue glacier furrowed into one of the valleys. Seals silently emerged from the deep and slid their way onto broken off pieces of glacier that floated randomly around the ship. The water was flat and clear, like a lake, and the air was brisk.
The most striking thing was the silence. With the ship’s engines turned off, we soundlessly sat among the peaceful glacial scenery devoid of any human development, human disturbance, human presence. It was so quiet – and so beautiful. There was so much to take in! My husband and I homesteaded at a table for four on the top deck of the ship with our hot coffee and hot tea and sweaters. Soon enough, our two teens joined us with their hot oatmeal. It was brisk up there with July temperatures in the 50s – colder than wintertime for this girl’s South Florida blood.
We listened to Bryan Adams, Journey, and REO Speedwagon albums nonstop. I had my first job as a K Mart cashier, and he was into disassembling his Matchbox and Hotwheels cars, then repainting and reassembling them. He came with me to pick up my part-time paycheck and I let him talk me into buying him a fancy model car paint and brush carousel with every paint color in the rainbow. He said he’d pay me back. ha ha We worked on superb school projects and baked cookies together, sometimes pigging out on the rest of the raw dough because we got tired of baking it. ha ha (Mom didn’t know that.)
What’s cool about Bryan Adams is that he is just a cool guy. His edgy guitar-playing rocker vibe makes him tough enough for guys to appreciate, and his seductive lyrics and earnest love songs make him soft enough for us ladies to want to drink in the romance. It’s a win-win combination for both sexes.
Bryan doesn’t know it, but we go way back. His song, Cuts Like a Knife, was wildly popular when I was a teen going through a break-up with my first love. Every time I hear that song, I have a specific memory of walking down my neighborhood street with my BFF, discussing teen-aged angst and ambitious dreams. My first love and I got back together more than once, but the song is sort of an instant flashback to that time in my life, and definitely not an unwelcome one as I had a pretty good time being a teenager. Any song from the Cuts Like a Knife album, which my younger brother and I practically wore out on our record player (we knew every word to every song), sends me on an immediate and sentimental journey back to a very happy place, and it makes me smile.
I feel like I’m growing old with Bryan Adams. Last night, he mentioned how thankful he is to Ozzy Osbourne and bands like Journey and Fleetwood Mac for allowing him the chance to be their opening acts back in the day. Then, during my college years, came the MTV music videos in the days of big hair, shoulder pads, and neon-colored and/or black leather clothing. And now here we are, three decades later, Bryan’s thinning hair slicked back and mine tinged with gray. My favorite part about Bryan Adams is that he’s unpretentious, unaffected, authentic – but still a free spirit with his raw, raspy talent – and, that over the years, he did not allow fame and fortune to change him into an entitled, cocky, man-diva. He’s still real, he’s one of us, and he just keeps getting better with age, like (some) men seem to do. ; )
Upon our arrival into Dublin, we headed to Dooley Car Rental to pick up our pre-arranged tiny little stick-shift car with the steering wheel on the passenger side. (It’s a good thing my husband has driving talents as he had to drive on the wrong side of the road, shift with his left hand, navigate roundabouts in the opposite direction, and parallel park backwards. I was merely the backseat driver.) Our rental car pick-up was quick and uneventful; however, it was my first indication that we were far, far away from home.
Worldwide, teens are all the same. One day, we were comfortably and warmly homesteaded on the train for our 30-minute ride into Dublin when we stopped at a station that was apparently near a school. A gaggle of uniformed 14- and 15-year old boys and their Jansport backpacks embarked and settled in next to us. Pure entertainment. They were just like similarly-aged American teens with pimply-faced awkwardness, lively, boyish banter with an occasional forbidden swear word thrown in for dramatic effect and coolness factor among their peers, and haircuts that no mother loves (but, hey, you have to pick your battles). They had really cute accents. Their train ride included devouring bags of Hunky Dory potato chips, a brand that hubby and I found amusing and brought home for our own teenage sons to devour.
My boys are in an early college program at FAU High School and, starting with 10th grade, all classes are taken at the university. So, with an 11th-grader who is now confident and comfortable skateboarding his way around the university campus like any other college kid, and with a 9th-grader who is still under the watchful eye of his teachers and guidance counselors in the very hip 9th-grade building on the very edge of campus, I’ve only really mastered the perimeters of the university campus and the car line at the high school building.
So, last Wednesday, when I was on a mission for Santa to go to the campus bookstore to purchase FAU hoodies and stocking stuffers, I had to do some preliminary online research to find my way. I figured out that the campus bookstore was in the “Breezeway”. I kind of knew where the Breezeway was, somewhere near the library, and I sort of knew where the library was.
On my way to the bookstore, I walked by or saw signs pointing to Subway, Papa John’s, a convenience store, Einstein Bros Bagels, a print shop, Dunkin Donuts, Wendy’s, a barber shop, a movie theater, a juice bar, an art gallery, a sports bar and billiards place with craft brews, a sushi restaurant…. whaaaat??
our selections and spent our entire budgets. When I’d go home for a weekend, my mom would let me raid the kitchen cabinets and take whatever I wanted to stock up my own dorm-room supply of food with. Her mailed care packages in between my trips home always included canned tuna and peanut butter because she feared I wasn’t getting enough protein.
be lovely.be true 