The Perfect Present

“You hate Christmas?” Danielle with the lavender highlights exclaimed as I was paying for my cut and color at the beauty parlor. “How can you hate Christmas?”

“I’ll tell you how,” I said as I mounted my high horse and launched into my diatribe. The one I’ve repeated for as many years as I’ve been in charge of Christmas.

Christmas, to me, is like the seashore. I love everything about the shore. I love the sea breezes and the salty air. I love riding my bicycle back and forth on nice, flat terrain. I love salt water taffy and caramel corn and pizza on the boardwalk. I love the lazy, hazy days, outdoor showers and unlocked front doors. I love everything about the shore. Except the sand. If the beach were paved in some sort of soft-to-the-toe-touch astro turf or rubber matting or even real grass, I’d plop down in my beach chair and watch the waves for hours on end, like normal people do.

I love everything about Christmas. I love the smell of pine needles and bayberry candles. I love the cheery salutations and the hustle and bustle. I love the little ornaments and baubles that I pull out of the attic every year and the candlelight Christmas Eve service. I love the sappy TV shows and the holiday parties and the house filling up with wayward children and friends. I love everything about Christmas. Except for the presents. If I could take away all the gift-giving, I’d plop down in my Santa seat and welcome the holiday, like normal people do.

“The bottom line is, Danielle, finding all those perfect presents is just too much work.”

The next day I spoke to my sister, Emily, telephonically. We talk a lot at this time of year. Mainly because we like to get each other worked up. She loves the part of Christmas I hate. To her, the more presents the merrier. When we get together with my side of the family the day after Christmas, we sit in a circle until our haunches are sore, going round and round the room opening gift after gift for hours on end. Nothing makes Emily happier than giving and receiving.

Some years I have won the battle, and only because I’m louder than all three of my sisters combined. Over the years, at my suggestion, we have tried the grab bag option, but someone always grabs the wrong bag. We have tried doing a Secret Santa but someone always gets, or is, the Grinch. We’ve tried filling stockings, but someone always gets the one with a hole in the toe. And so, we buy for everyone. And fill stockings, to boot.

It doesn’t help that my kids, who are no longer kids, but because they came forth from my loins, will always be my kids and will; therefore, forever more be albatrosses around my neck at Christmas time, never want anything. I have to beg them for lists that finally show up two days too late to order from Amazon. And my ever-loving, low-maintenance spouse wants nothing more than family togetherness. But, you just can’t put a ribbon around that.

I tell them every year that this is the end. I’m not buying gifts just for the sake of buying gifts. I’ll give them the hundreds of dollars they want in cold, hard cash and call it a day. It’s just too heart-wrenching to try and find the perfect gift that will elicit the perfect joy. And the problem is, I just won’t stop trying.

Sister Emily came up with a psychologically-sound point in our last insides-shaking induced conversation. The holidays will always find our weakest links and weasel their way in. It doesn’t matter if you have the perfect family with the perfect kids complete with the Labrador retriever or if you have a dysfunctional family filled with lecherous, mothball-scented uncles and surly teenagers. It doesn’t matter if you have a Warren Buffet-rivaling bank account or pinch every penny you sneak into your credit union’s Christmas Club. It doesn’t matter if you have a significant other or no other relatives alive. If you drink too much or teetotal your way through dinner.  If you proselytize over politics or have no idea who Robert Mueller is. It doesn’t matter if you crave a table full of friends or want to simply sink into your shell. If you’re a gourmet cook or call for takeout.  It doesn’t matter if you spin the dreidel or sing Away in a Manger. If you let the holidays discover your Achilles’ heel, whether self-imposed, self-perceived or just plain selfish, those holidays are going to do their best to take you down.

I take what my sister says to heart, even when I shouldn't. And she listens way, way too hard to what comes out of my rapidly-running mouth. But this time, what she said hit home. One person's angst is another's joy. And we're all somewhat in control of our own happiness. 

So, as we approach the final countdown to Christmas, I'm going to do my best to heal my multiple heels and follow my ever-loving, low-maintenance spouse’s example.

Instead of fighting it, I'm going to try just putting a ribbon around it. 

But before I can fully enjoy it, I just need a few more days to finish up my fussing and fuming about all those perfect presents that have yet to be purchased. 

Breaking Tradition

“Mom!” the daughter says in a phone call from a time zone away. “I’ve got a great idea.”

At which point, I cringe. Then, I do what I refuse to do in yoga class. I breathe. And then, I respond.

“What’s your great idea?” I say trepidatiously. Because experience has taught me that when my offspring have a great idea, it either costs me angst, energy or money. Often all three.

“Why don’t we go to Jamaica for Christmas!”

“Great idea!” I say, thinking I’m keeping all traces of disdain out of my voice.

“Why not?” she counters. “You wouldn’t have to buy us any presents. We’ll just go away instead. It could be a new tradition.”

I’m all for traditions. As a matter of fact, my middle name is tradition. And the older I get, the more traditions I tradition. I traditionally go on a Caribbean cruise every year with my bosom buddy Patty, formerly known as Penny. I traditionally go on an annual off-season beach weekend with my friends from college. And then, to another location with the other college friends. I traditionally go to Chapel Hill for yearly reunions with the daughter and her friends and families. I traditionally play in a Hearts tournament every year that Donald traditionally wins. But that’s OK because the winner has to host the next one the next year. And I’m just as happy when it’s not me. And one of my longest standing traditions is attending the night-before-Thanksgiving party at the Schaeffer’s house.

I grew up on Woods Road, a horse-shoe enclave of a road in the suburbs of Philadelphia. My family moved in when I was four years old and the friends I made then are still my friends today. We grew up at the end of an era – that era once known in storybooks as Childhood. We lived a free and fun and unscheduled life and miraculously lived to tell the tale. We roamed the road in a pack, entertaining ourselves by calling phony numbers, riding bicycles from house to house, walking to Perkels’ Pharmacy, contacting JFK through séances on cold, rainy days, and playing Capture the Flag until dark on hot, summer nights.

And then we all grew up and went our separate ways.

But we always come back on Thanksgiving Eve.

There’s a whole tradition around Thanksgiving back on Woods Road which is fully chronicled in a post called The Toilet Bowl.

But, the short of the long story is that the Thanksgiving Eve party is an intergenerational event that isn’t likely to go away unless, of course, the Schaeffer house is sold in a sheriff’s sale. And the likelihood of that happening keeps my hope alive.

“We’re going to stop at Sandy Scott’s house before going to Schaeffer’s this year,” my sister, Emily, announced.

I blanched.

“It will be fun. You’ll get to see Wayne Marcolina and Brian Nelson. Debby Conly will be there. And Sandy’s sister, Linda. You always loved Linda!”

I laughed.

I spent a lifetime in high school jockeying for an invitation to party with the likes of Sandy Scott. She far outweighed me …in the popularity poll. But somehow, in the 40 some years since we’ve been young, the distinct lines between the cheerleaders and the cheerfearers, the druggies and the drugless, the smart and the smart alecs blur and we find common ground, wondering why in the world we never hung out together, way back when.

My blanching had nothing to do with not wanting to fraternize with the friends of Sandy Scott.  I just was afraid to break tradition. My tradition dictated that I went to Schaeffer's and only Schaeffer's on Thanksgiving Eve. And I arrived by 8 pm.  If we went to Sandy Scott’s, I knew I’d want to stay and we’d be late.

And that’s exactly what happened.

But, when all was said and done and I had talked my tongue off both at Sandy Scott’s and at the Schaeffer’s, I realized that traditions can transition and still be just as traditional.

At this time of year, the world is steeped in tradition. We go to annual holiday parties where we spin dreidels and give gelt. We wear red and green and eat stuffed mushrooms and pigs-in-a-blanket. We buy gifts we can’t afford and get gifts we don’t need. We gather at elaborately decorated dinner tables with relatives we don’t like. And we do it all, year after year. Because, it’s what we do.

Traditions can get old and stale. Bothersome and boring. Dull and dreadworthy Unless, of course, you shake things up every now and then. Do something really radical like open presents on Christmas Eve. Engage the drooling Uncle Drew in conversation. Throw the football around with the high school kids. Turn down that one-more glass of wine or piece of pecan pie. You know the one - the one you wish you hadn't had. Or go for it, if you usually don’t. Invite friends to your all-family festivities. Give an unsuspecting, or even an undeserving person a gift. Stop at Sandy Scott’s Thanksgiving Eve party before the Schaeffer’s. 

And, if the Santostefanos don’t invite you for Christmas dinner this year, then go ahead and book that trip to Jamaica.

Because, after all, there's always a new tradition just waiting in the wings for an old tradition to be broken. 

Reconnecting with Friends Gone Foul

Chris Kirk was my roommate freshman year of college. We ended up together after she swooped in and saved me from my randomly-appointed roommate, Sue, who declared Holly Hobbies, horses and shopping among her interests. I don’t remember what I wrote back to her that summer before college, but I’m sure my response included no references to Holly Hobbies, horses or shopping.

Things went south pretty quickly for me and Sue. It was immediately apparent that I was much more interested in socializing than studying and would go to all lengths and hours to achieve my goal.

Apparently, I was as messy then as my kids are now. One day I came home from Consumer Math class to find a note taped to my mirror:

Please clean up your side of the room. I don’t like living in a pig sty.

When I shared the note with my friend Chris Kirk, she was outraged and immediately declared war. She arrived at my room with a roll of masking tape and taped a line from door to window, dividing the room in half.

“You can do whatever you want with your side of the room,” she said.

Shortly afterwards, Sue and I decided to part ways. It was an amicable divorce because, despite my slovenly ways, I was still a good person at heart. Not to mention a fun friend to have.  Chris Kirk moved in and shortly thereafter regretted her charitable “You can do whatever you want with your side of the room,” comment. She also rued the day she ever agreed to live with someone who insisted on sleeping with the windows wide open in 25 degree winters.

That freshman year of college we did a lot of fun things. Once we filled a bucket with water, leaned it precariously against our RA’s door, knocked and ran, flooding the room when she opened the door. We took all the contents of our across-the-hall friends’ room, including furniture, and set it up in the lobby for them to stumble upon as they returned from night class. We were pack animals, the six of us, eating processed chicken patties together in the college dining hall every single night, loudly flirting with the kitchen staff who were fortunate enough to get work study hours and barging into house parties en masse.

One Friday night after coming home from The Fort much later and much louder than my roommate, I donned my blue-flowered Lanz of Salzburg floor-length nightgown and crawled into bed without turning on the lights. After all, as you may have deduced, I was nothing if not a considerate roommate. I lay my head on the pillow, stretched out my legs in that final sigh-releasing breath, eager to pass out into a seamlessly dreamless sleep. And then I screamed. Bloody murder. I jumped up, flinging my sheets off my bed, hopping around the room barefoot in shocked revulsion.

It wasn’t long until the rest of the posse gathered in my room, cackling hysterically over the concoction Chris had created to line my sheets. It was a nice gooey mixture of shaving cream and pencil shavings with a little bit of crushed pretzel crumbs added in for texture. We were still finding remnants of dried shaving cream on the stucco block walls well into the spring.

We were inseparable, the six of us. We partied too much, studied too little and got ourselves in too much trouble for doing inappropriate things with inappropriate substances and inappropriate people. Our parents would have been very disappointed in us, had we not been such good liars. And so good at self-redemption.

By the end of our second year of college, half of us were gone. We transferred, quit or put our educations on hold. But we promised that we would always and forever remain the best of friends.

From that year forward, we established the Annual All Girls’ Christmas Party, a mandatory gathering for an overnight the first Saturday in December. We would rotate houses so we only had to host one-and-a-half times a decade and as we got married and had kids, the families would be required to vacate the premises for 24 hours. Our get-togethers have evolved into three-day weekends held at random times in the year, but we have done some version of the Annual All Girls' Christmas Party every single year since 1975.

And then, about 15 years ago, something happened.

There was some kind of phone call. Some kind of nasty words exchanged. Some kind of hurt feelings. Some kind of “If you can’t accept me for who I am…” With some kind of “Fine, then don’t come!”

We never saw Chris Kirk again.

But, social media has some kind of uncanny power to reconnect the unconnectible. As the years went by, Chris and I friended and followed and watched our families grow. We gave each other thumbs ups and likes and smiley face emojis and made many empty promises that we’d get together soon.

Last month, I found a long message from Chris, filled with toils and tribulations of parenthood and grandparenthood, sitting in my inbox.

“You just never know what the hell is around the bend in life,” she wrote. "Let's not give up on trying to get together."

Something about that sentiment touched my heart and I responded with a resounding, “I’m coming to see you.”

And I did.

We talked and laughed and reminisced, reminding each other why we became friends in the first place. And as we hashed out the foggy details of the demise of our friendship, neither one of us could justify why, since the blow up hadn’t been between her and me, we let life happen instead of mending fences with the first broken rail.

Chris Kirk hasn’t changed a bit. She looks exactly the same as she did the day I met her in Harley Hall. She laughs with the same gusto. Enthuses with the same passion. Cleans with the same vigor. And is the same size she was when she was 18 years-old. 

As I hopped back into the Old Minivan, I got that old familiar lump in my throat that I get when I say goodbye to people I love.

“We’ll get together again, soon!” we promised.

And this time, I know we will.

Because, after all,  you just never know what the hell is around the bend in life.

Why Can't We Just Accept a Compliment?

“I love the color of your hair!” the bare-breasted, middle-aged woman in the gym locker room gushed as I was making my wet-headed escape after Aquacize class last week. “It’s beautiful.”

It’s hard for me to go anywhere in life without using it as a launching ground for making new friends. But, I have long prided myself on my self-imposed solitary social confinement at the gym. If I added chatting to my workout routine, I’d be killing half a day rather than half a morning on the obsessive exercise that seems to have absolutely no effect on my ever-growing girth. So, I was a bit taken aback when the long-haired, butt-naked woman confronted me in the locker room.

“Oh, thanks!” I said. “I pay enough for it!”

Thinking to myself, you have no idea what I go through at the beauty parlor.

“It’s beautiful,” she reiterated.

“Well it is pretty much my natural color, but it is definitely dyed.”

“It looks so soft,” she continued.

“Soft?” I said, involuntarily patting down my coarse, spiky locks. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said yet again.

“Ha!” I said. “You made my day.”

Before I reached the end of the aisle and before I was able to answer that inner voice that asked, “How can she even tell what color my hair is? It’s soaking wet!” I heard her turn to the woman at the locker next to her.

“Why couldn’t she just accept the compliment and say, thank you?”

Now, equally as important to me as my need to make friends is my need to not be misunderstood. So, so many random things come out of my mouth that I can’t possibly keep track of all of them, and thus, spend a good chunk of my life retracting them. So I almost turned around to address her behind-the-back, under-the-breath comment, but caught myself. Because, no doubt, I would explain my way right into a coffee date with her. And I don’t drink coffee.

But, the thing is, I DID accept the compliment. And, I DID say thank you.

And, that’s why I’ve been obsessing about it ever since.

I’m not the kind of person who can just say thank you and move on. After all, what kind of conversation would that be? In my mind, it’s just way too dismissive. Even if dismissive is the message I’m looking to project in the rare instances when I’m not trying to expand my stable of friends.

If the tables were turned and I said, for instance, “I like the positive body-image you radiate,” and she had simply responded, “Thank you,” I’d be thinking that she had something stuck up an exposed body part.

But, when I brought this up while playing Mahjong the other night, my friend Janice said, “It’s true. Women have a hard time accepting compliments.”

“On another note,” I said, shoving a spoonful of a low-carb cauliflower-rice casserole into my pie hole. “This is delicious.”

“Thanks, but I think it needs to be spicier.”

Ha! Case in point.

Which got us talking, as we turned our tiles, about why we can’t just be like the guys and accept compliments, forgive our foibles and stop apologizing for our shortcomings.

While I don’t come out and say the actual words too often, I say “I’m sorry” in other ways. If I do something apology-worthy, I will attempt to explain my behavior, delving into my past, my present and my future to justify what came out of my mouth, my oven or my womb. I’ll keep hammering the point home until the offendee ends up apologizing to me, feeling so bad that I feel so bad, or more likely just to shut me up.

Janice, says “I’m sorry,” all the time. And she really is. She has a heart bigger than the both of us, and these days, that’s pretty big. She’s sorry when she’s late. She’s sorry when she’s early. She’s sorry when she has a sad tale to tell and she’s sorry when she wins at Mahjong. And that’s really the only apology I’ll accept. I am sorry I’m not more like Janice.

Susan, the other Mahjonger, is not quite as apologetic as the two of us. She is truly sorry when life gives us lemons, and feels love and loss way deeper than I ever will. But she is tougher. She doesn’t beat herself up over her looks or her words or her actions. I’d love to be Susan.

As Janice won another game and I ate another handful of Stacy’s Pita Chips, for which we were both sorry, we continued conversing about why it is that we can’t just be.

We conceded that when someone tells a guy they like his sweater, he either just says ‘thanks,’ or more likely, ‘yeah, I do, too.’ If someone says the same thing to a woman, they tend to respond more on the lines of, ‘I got it on the discount rack,’ or ‘Really? Doesn’t it make me look fat?’

Sure, I know plenty of women who are oozing with confidence. Who can throw a dinner party without worry. Who show their curves with courage. Who can accept a compliment without controverting.

Those women give me something to aspire towards. So, while I’m working on becoming the me I’d like to be, I can try to respond to the body-beautiful women who covet my hair color with a simple “Thank You.”

And keep the rest of the commentary to myself.

I can try. 

But, the bottom line is, it ain’t me, babe. No, no, no, it ain’t me.

When in Doubt ... Dance

I’m the first to admit, I'm stone-cold tone deaf.

But I try.

Long ago, I discovered a soft-covered piano book filled with old-time songs and show tunes, hidden amongst hundreds of hardback books in the den of my childhood home. Why we had it, I don’t know – we had neither a piano nor a singer in the family. But, I can still picture the eight-year-old me sitting on the couch, with that book open on my lap, teaching myself to read music. I’d follow the notes with my finger and belt out the lyrics with satisfying confidence. But, the first time I heard a real rendition of Camptown Ladies Sing this Song, Doo-dah, Doo-dah, I was utterly destroyed by the disparity between my version of the song and what was real.

Still, I was able to fake my way into the children’s choir at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church. I loved the camaraderie, the burgundy-colored robes, the musty-smelling hymnals and watching the congregation squirm and snore from the perches of the choir loft. My tenure as a tenor was nearly thwarted when, at rehearsal one Thursday, the choir director was baffled by a grossly distorted execution of Onward Christian Soldiers. As he had us sing together one row at a time, in hopes of unearthing the off-key culprit, I quickly learned the fine art of lip syncing, thus saving my vantage point behind the altar.

As an adult, I am obsessed with the reality music shows. I’m jumping for joy that American Idol is returning and have watched every single season of The Voice. I text my friends, Laura and Jean throughout the show, asking who is better, Addison or Esera. My spouse, who thinks they’re all screamers, won’t engage me in such folly, still shocked that I can’t tell the difference between pitchy and powerful performances, shaking his head in dismay that even the worst interpretations of Landslide can always win my heart.

I can’t sing. Nor can I dance.

For a short time in my twenties, before Patty became Penny, we frequented a bar in Ambler, Pennsylvania. It was an after-hours dance club for those of us who had the energy to keep on going after the bars closed at 2 am. Late one night, or rather, early one morning, my dream came true and I met a handsome prince who dragged me to the dance floor and subsequently left me there.

“You have absolutely no rhythm, do you?” he said and walked away in disgust.

Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized that my flailing and stomping on the dance floor was any different from the moves I saw on American Bandstand. Or, that there was any correlation between having rhythm and finding love. 

“Oh, dear,” said Patty when I revealed to her my distorted perception of my dance moves. She knew it was time for an intervention and spent many hours spinning vinyl, coaching me to feel the bass, clap to the beat, move to the music. It was futile. She moved to Florida. And I gave up dancing.

I shuffled my way through Elton John’s Your Song at my wedding and couldn’t resist joining the neighborhood gang as we rocked out to Love Shack at Bob and Michelle’s marital celebration in Ocean City, but other than that have spent much of my adult life in fear of being dragged to the dance floor.

Which leads me to last Saturday night.

Over the past dozen years, I’ve been to more life or death events of the Apreda family than I can count. This one was easy – a simple dinner in honor of Mike and Kristen’s engagement – a happy occasion made happier by witnessing the head-over-heels love and hope and joy that only a bride-to-be and groom-in-waiting can exude.

I had a ball bantering with the kids who were no longer kids but wage-earning, change-effecting, parent-pleasing conversationalists. I promised one of my all-time favorites a place at the altar with my favorite daughter. I conspired with another one on how to win back an old girlfriend I had known and loved. And I caught up with the abundance of Apreda friends and family members I hadn’t seen since Poppy’s wake.

And then, Theresa, the mother of Mike and future mother-in-law of Kristen, made a speech.

All I heard, because remember, I’ve heard a lot of these speeches, was, “So make sure you dance!”

That’s when I knew the fun and games were over.

“Oh, come on!” my friend Karen chided, later in the night. “This is the kind of music you danced to in West Virginia!”

Sure enough, it wasn’t Drake or Chance the Rapper or Rihanna blaring from the speakers, but The Marshall Tucker Band, The Allman Brothers and a little bit of the timeless tune, Happy, thrown in for good measure.  The kind of music I would consider dancing to, if indeed, I were to dance.

So, when Kool and the Gang commanded me to Celebrate Good Times! I let Karen lead me to the dance floor where I stomped and clapped and waved my arms, watching her every move to know when to make mine.

I have to admit, I had a good time, letting loose and flailing those limbs. I actually thought that I had, at long last, graciously and gracefully mastered the art of dance.

And for awhile, after the wine wore off and the music died, I harbored nothing but warm and fuzzy feelings about the fun-filled frenzy and the love that sustained it. I looked forward to dancing at Mike and Kristen’s wedding and texted, asking them to move the date up a year. I could hardly wait for another Apreda life or death event.

And then came the ultimate buzz kill. Cousin Kimberly tagged me on Facebook, posting proof positive of what I had done. I flipped through the pictures and smiled. And then read the comments.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who can’t dance! quipped Kevin.

I haven’t seen Kevin in 25 years. And so, I can’t help but wonder if this former West Virginia University housemate of mine could really tell from those still life photos that I had no rhythm. Or, if in fact, he was simply remembering with fondness, the me I used to be.

What Makes You Happy?

It’s the kind of question that’s easy to answer when you’re two-and-a-half sheets to the wind, sitting around a fire pit at The Carolina Inn on a 70-degree October night with your daughter, her four college roommates and parental representatives from each of the five families. It’s not a tough question to answer when you’ve spent the weekend with these five girls who, now in their fourth year out of school, may prefer to be called young women, but somehow you just can’t believe they, or you, are that old. And when you look around at the future in their faces and know you’re always going to be a part of each and every one of their lives, the question kind of answers itself.

But, Tom asked it anyway because, in the absence of the ultimate thought-provoking question-asker, Dan, he was the most likely to get a good discussion going.

While celebrating at the iconic Sutton’s Drug Store on the night of our daughters’ graduations back in 2014, we vowed that we parents would also keep our friendship going, committing to a yearly reunion in Chapel Hill. I was the first to do the pinky swear, but secretly questioned the likelihood of fifteen of us coming from far-flung places like New Jersey, Cleveland, Denver, DC, Knoxville, Chicago, Asheville, Columbus, Atlanta or New Orleans for the sole purpose of trying to keep a parent-child college fromance alive. I’ve made a lot of empty promises over a bottle of bourbon in my life and though this one sounded good, I highly doubted it would come to pass.

But it did. A lot of factors motivated us back to the University of North Carolina, not least of which were Sandra and Stephen. Tried and true Tar Heels, Sandra and Stephen had returned to Chapel Hill in their retirement and serendipitously cemented our group even before the rest of us had met. Lauren and her parents made small talk in the airport with a nice couple who were returning home after visiting their son in Denver. It was one of those “You’re going to love UNC!” “Here, take our number!” conversations that you can either follow up with or forget. Sandra and Stephen ended up serving as surrogate grandparents for the girls and innkeepers for the parents, housing ten or more of us on any given weekend. They became the heart and soul of our Chapel Hill family.

This was our fourth formal fall reunion. Some years we hang out with lots of the girls’ friends who have since become our friends because really, who wouldn’t want to be friends with us? Some years some parent is playing golf in Naples or covering the Bridgegate trial or hosting a fundraiser or forgot to add the weekend to the Travel Budget. But, regardless of who comes, every year we have a private party at Sutton’s, stroll the brick-pathed campus, savor a BLT from Merritt’s and revel in the realization that there’s really something quite special about what we do.

“So, what makes you happy?” Tom asked as we sat around the fire pit at The Carolina Inn on Saturday night.

Lauren is happy when she’s around her family, which is not surprising considering how happy Joe and Carla are to be around her. She is happy that she found a rewarding career and a job that makes a difference. She’s happy being with her friends. And the King of England.

What makes Molly happy are meaningful relationships. Good conversation. And sunshine.

Jenny, is happy with her wine. She finds joy in doing a job that’s important. A job that will become infinitely more important as she begins delivering babies next year. And true happiness would surely stem from delivering the babies of her very best friends.  

Julianne is happy when she’s good with herself. When she can do what she does just because it’s who she is. And, it makes her happy when the people she loves are down with that. Music and friends are what make her heart sing.

Julie’s happiness comes when she’s doing something helpful. It doesn’t have to be world-changing. It can just be a simple act of kindness. Like holding the door for someone. Or loving her husband. Her family. And her friends.

Wendi, who was not one of the five roommates but was with us for the evening and the source of my yet-to-be proclaimed proclamation finds herself happy when she meets people where they are. Not where the world wants them to be.

Joe is happy. Unassumingly happy. He doesn’t need a lot. He’s got his wife, Carla. He’s got his three kids. He’s got his grandchild. He’s just happy being happy.

Carla is happy with Joe. Really happy. She’s happy with her kids. She’s happy when she travels. So happy, in fact, that she actually has something called a yearly Travel Budget.

Sally gets her happiness from running. Working out. Endorphins. From coffee and wine. First the wine. Then the coffee. Then her friends and family.

Tom, not surprisingly, is happiest when he’s brewing up his next adventure. He loves to think ahead to a fun future. To the next Duke ticket conspiracy, the next Clef Hangers' performance, the next reunion. And when pressed, admits that he is happy spending time with his daughter.

Jackie is also happy when she’s with Julianne. And presumably when she’s with her husband, Tom. She is happy on a front porch. And at a fire pit. With friends. And a glass of wine.

Ruth is happy with good food, good friends and good wine. She is happy getting down with James Brown. With composting. With worms. With Jeff. With being a mom. And with being a Pescatarian.

And I, I am happy that my spouse encourages me to have the kind of fun I like to have. And that Wendi told me that she will never forget feeling a really special kind of energy when she came to our house in New Jersey five years ago. That makes me really happy.

As we put our own spin on our answers, trying to outdo each other’s happiness factor, it became quite clear, sitting around the dual-generational fire pit at The Carolina Inn on Saturday night, that we are, indeed, a pretty happy bunch of people.

And, maybe that’s just because we all know how important it is to make the time to do the things that make us happy. In the places that make us happy. With the people who make us happy.

Or, maybe it’s because while we know that we can't be responsible for anyone else’s happiness, the truth of it is, we are.

And that, in itself, is a very happy thought.

Can't You Just Learn Our Language?

“Why is it,” I asked Diana, my lovely 22 year-old bi-lingual co-worker. “That when I say, Anything else? those guys all nod but then don’t order anything else?”

“Because they don’t understand what you’re saying,” she answered.

“How can they not understand what I’m saying?”

Diana shrugged.

I rolled my eyes and took another order from another Spanish-as-a-first-language customer, assuming from that moment forward that a nod meant, “No, I’m good. That’s all I need.”

I was back on the Food Truck, working a 12-day stint at the Capital Challenge Horse Show in Upper Marlboro, Maryland which is somewhere in somewhat close proximity to Washington, DC. We were working long days, sometimes from 6 am to 9 pm and I spent the time bent at the waist, leaning down to take food orders from hungry horse people.

Hungry horse people range from six year-olds showing their ponies to seasoned professionals traveling the circuit more weeks than not throughout the year. There were owners and trainers, stable managers and barn hands, handlers and grooms, riders and spectators, blacksmiths and braiders, announcers and judges, office workers, horse doctors, show owners and a whole slew of handsome guys who worked the grounds.

This slew of handsome guys who worked the grounds made our day. They were fun and happy and never missed a meal. For the most part, they were Spanish-speakers who knew enough English to get by. Those who didn’t were were covered by those who did.

“He wants a steak sandwich, no peppers,” Ricky, one of my favorite boyfriends would pipe up when I was struggling to make sense of one of the four Juan’s orders.

“Gotcha,” I said. “Anything else?”

Ricky nodded. And I knew it was time to ring up the tab.

I grew up in an all-white, English-as-a-first-language Philadelphia suburb where my exposure to other languages was limited to the classroom. I took French in high school and with the help of a dictionary would be able to order a hunk of cheese and a baguette in a pinch in Paris. But Spanish? I can’t get beyond hola. And certainly wouldn’t be able to put the upside-down, right-side up exclamation points in the correct place to save my life.

As the world got smaller and I got older, I found myself raising my family in a town renowned for its diversity located right outside of New York City. My white kids were minorities in the public schools and friends of all cultures passed through my kitchen thanking me for rides and meals and homework help in all different tones, variations and comprehensions of the English language. I have had a zillion first generation American friends, many who were born in other countries and moved here in their youth and have taught ESL conversation classes to Korean and Japanese women whose husbands’ jobs have brought them to the US.

But, I didn’t really get the whole language thing until I met Daniel.

“Hola!” Daniel chirped from the other side of the food truck. Daniel worked for one of the horse farms and was on his fourth coffee of the morning.

“Hola!” I responded, thinking I was pretty savvy.

“Oh, you know Spanish!” he exclaimed, feeling pretty certain that I didn’t.

“Si, senor. Je parle Espanol.”

“That’s French,” Doug called over his shoulder as he threw together a breakfast burrito.

“How do you say I speak Spanish in Spanish?” I whispered to the aforementioned bi-lingual Diana.

“Yo hablo espanol.”

“Yo hablo espanol,” I repeated in my English-accented Spanish and Daniel laughed.

“I’ll teach you,” Daniel said. “Habla espanol al final de la semana.”

“What did he say?” I whispered to Diana.

“He says you’ll be fluent in Spanish by the end of the week.”

“Si!” I said. “Gracious.”

“Nada.”

And off he went.

The next time Daniel showed up at the Food Truck, he ordered his sandwich in Spanish with a “Comprende?”

I nodded my head, though I didn’t comprende nada.

“Ha!” Diana chimed in. “You did exactly what they do. You just nodded your head because you don’t understand what they’re saying! Now do you get it?”

It wasn’t long before I had mastered how Daniel liked his bacon, egg and cheese on a bagel and memorized the Spanish words for five dollars and fifty cents, you’re my favorite boyfriend and how many coffees have you had?

Daniel was relentless. No matter how busy we were, he only spoke in Spanish. It got to the point where I’d see him coming and run to the back of the truck to make coffee whether we needed it or not. I’d hobble to the port-a-potty when it was time for his afternoon snack and I’d accidently on purpose position myself to take the next full-fledged English-speaker in line, leaving Diana to deal with Daniel.

I found myself getting flustered and anxious trying to keep up with Daniel. I felt embarrassed and stupid. And for the first time in my life, I held my tongue. Simply because I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say.

By the end of the horse show, I was far from fluent. But I had learned a few Spanish words and could catch the gist of the truck banter between Diana and the short-order cook, Goomer (which I’m 100 percent sure is not how he spells his name).

But in attempting to learn Spanish, I learned something far more important. I saw first-hand how difficult it must be for people in our country who are trying desperately to assimilate and speak our language. How humiliating it can be. How annoying it can be. And how horribly rude some of us can be.

So, to all of my heavily accented friends and friends-to-be who, in just wanting to be understand and be understood, have been met with eye rolls and heavy sighs and impatient responses, all I can say is:

Shame on us.  And, que bueno por ti.

Que bueno por ti.

What's the Right Age to Have a Baby?

“Thirty,” I said definitively to Hannah. “Thirty is when you should have your first child.”

Hannah is 26 years-old and has been married less than a month. Which made her a perfect target. Give a gaggle of mothers a bottle of wine or three and it’s just a matter of sips before they start imposing their impervious opinions on the procreation process. Despite being forward-thinking, feministly-prone, somewhat-intelligent women, we were first and foremost mothers, and therefore couldn’t keep our mouths shut even if we had wanted to.

But, in our defense, it wasn’t a completely random discussion. We were having our monthly Writer’s Group meeting and were all abuzz about the birth of Ismee’s week-old novel. Water in May joined our group as an embryo; we nursed it and nurtured it and were now basking in the postpartum it-takes-a-village glow.

Though the book is our group’s metaphorical baby, it’s also a story about a baby. A baby growing in the belly of a 15-year-old girl desperate to be loved by someone who won’t leave her. And when the doctors discover a serious heart defect in the fetus, poor young Mari’s life becomes even more of a roller coaster ride than it already was.

So, it was somewhat of a natural segue to talk about Hannah’s unborn children.

There were five of us there the other night. Hannah and four mothers, all representing a different phase of parenthood. I’m the oldest in the group with the oldest kids, two who are out of college, and one who swears he’s graduating this spring. I procreated at 34, 36 and 38-years-old. Lisa is younger than I am, but not as much younger as she looks. She had one kid in her 30s and one kid when she was over 40. Maria, who is our other pride and joy of a published author with her Young Adult novel, The Secret Side of Empty, did the right thing, reproducing at 30 followed by a rapid repeat. And Ismee, whose youngest is still just seven-years-old had the first of her three girls at 32.

And we are all completely different kinds of mothers.

“I bet you can’t wait till your daughter goes to college next year!” I said to Maria.

“Are you kidding?” she said, wide-eyed. “I cried last week when I realized it was the last time my son and daughter would have a first-day-of-school together.”

That was a milestone that had somehow gone completely over my head.

“You know, I could possibly have three adult children living with me this time next year,” I bemoaned.

“Oh, I’d love that!” Lisa exclaimed as my eyes widened in horror.

Hannah’s newly-wedded husband is in the midst of the long and arduous process of becoming a surgeon. There’s a good chance he'll have to relocate for a fellowship and then again as he goes on to find the OR of his dreams. Which means they may not be near family or family-friendly jobs if they have a baby in the next few years.

“Oh, please,” I said. “That’s no excuse. I didn’t have anyone around when I starting banging out babies. That’s why God created daycare.”

“And besides,” another one of us said. “You’ve got a surgeon for a husband. You’ll be able to afford a full-time nanny.”

“No! We'll be broke for at least 15 years!” Hannah protested.

“And by then you’ll be way too old to have a baby.”

“Ahem,” Lisa admonished. “She’s only 26. Do the math…”

We went on to marvel at the diverse paths we all traversed as we dreamed of winning the Pulitzer Prize, or even landing a piddly advance for a first novel. We were a pediatric cardiologist, a flutist extraordinaire, a lawyer, a librarian, a marketing guru, a human rights advocate, a copywriter, a food truck worker.

“Just don’t ever think you’ll be able to sit at home and write when you have a baby,” Ismee warned. “It’s not going to happen.”

“Yeah, at least not until you can plop the kid in front of the TV for days at a time…”

“Oh, I never did that!” Maria cried. “I was actually horrified when my daughter came home from a friend’s house announcing she had discovered the wonders of YouTube! And that was freshman year of high school. Just kidding. But really, I kept them away from the evils of TV for a long time.”

“Not me,” I said, much to no one’s surprise.

But I didn’t write The Great American Novel while I was raising kids either. Instead I penned the best-selling program, How to Volunteer your Earning Potential Away.

“You know what, go ahead and have a baby now,” I said. “Don’t wait till you’re 30.”

“You can bring it to our Writer’s Group meetings!” one member enthused.

“The thing is,” I said. “The sooner you do it; the sooner you’re done.”

I imagined my life if I had had my first child at 26. I would have been one of those young, hip moms who was actually able to get down on my haunches in the pumpkin patch. I’d never have been accused of being someone’s grandmother at back-to-school night. And the photos of me and my daughter on Facebook would receive bounteous comments of “OMG. You look like her sister, not her mother!”

I’d be able to babysit my kids’ kids without the help of a cane (for walking, not whipping), I’d have college way paid off by now and could retire to a 55 and over community while I was still young enough to enjoy it.

Life would be good.

And then I thought about all the things I did between 26 and 34 when I had my first child. I would have missed ringing in the New Year in Moscow, bike riding in France, singing Karaoke in Manila, eating unidentifiable animal parts in Hong Kong, spending summers in Brigantine, launching CNBC and partying my heart out until I had no more desire to do so.

When I finally had my kids, I was done with all that. And ready, willing and able to move on to the next phase of my life.

Some of us don’t have the luxury of planning a family. Some of us have pop-up surprises. Some of us have problems conceiving. Some of us have to wait for a baby to adopt. Some of us swear we’ll never have any and end up with four. Some of us want a brood and end up with an only child. Some of us change our minds a-hundred-and-fifty-thousand times about when, why and where to start a family.

And when the baby comes along, the timing may not be right. The career may not be set. The wallet may not be full. The living conditions may not be ideal. We might be too old or too young, too selfish or too sedentary, too driven or too poor. There’s always something that will cast shadows and raise doubts.

But, as I said to my nephew when he found out he was going to be a father at the tender age of 19, “You will never, ever regret having this child.”

And somehow, we never do.

And somehow, along the way, some of us even find a way to land that job, buy that house, live that dream and write that book. 

No matter how old or young we were when we had our kids.

Just Go Ahead and Buy the Reefer

When we moved to a new and improved house across town eleven-and-a-half years ago, I pulled off the great refrigerator caper. I bequeathed the old and cruddy reefer to the new owner of the old and cruddy house. I then relinquished the side-by-side refrigerator that came with the new house out to the garage and purchased a new, white freezer-on-the-top (which was still somewhat fashionably acceptable) to reside in my new red-countered kitchen.

I didn’t want an old and cruddy refrigerator in my new house. Nor did I want a side-by-side refrigerator in my new house. I pictured multiple pans of lasagna that wouldn’t fit, pre-prepped party hors d’oeuvres that would teeter askewly and deep corn pots filled with whatever I might fill them with that would never, ever fit in the narrow shelves of a side-by-side. I rationalized that having an outdoor refrigerator would be a huge boon for something somewhere down the road.

However, the real reason behind the refrigerator swap was that more than anything, I wanted an ice maker. But, feeling somewhat unworthy of such an extravagance, I bought the cheapest model I could find.

And, as they say. You get what you pay for.

It didn’t take long for my favorite feature to die, leaving me to fill eight, yes eight, ice cube trays every single day. And, while I am admittedly prone to embellishment, those who know me can vouch for the authenticity of that icy statement.

My anger and guilt kept me from putting another red cent into my poor purchase and soon found myself taking on do-it-yourself projects such as repairing the cracked vegetable drawer with red duct tape and jimmying the door-shelves so that ketchup and sweet gherkin bottles would no longer slip through the bent metal guardrails and crash to the floor. I regularly rotated produce from the back of the refrigerator to keep it from freezing which left us with exactly half the cooling space we paid for. Finally, last year, something somewhere inside broke and the freezer began filling with water. That promptly turned into ice. That had to be hacked away with a sharp object. That went flying in shards to the floor, causing puddles and problems I was no longer willing to live with.

And, so for months, I researched refrigerators. I renewed my online subscription to Consumer Reports. I went from Home Depot to Lowe’s to PC Richard and back again. I measured and remeasured. I debated top freezer, bottom freezer, French door, four-door and the good, old side-by-side models.

But instead of making a purchase, I just kept picking away at the ice in the freezer. Emptying the bowl in the back of the refrigerator where, when I didn’t hack in a timely fashion, water drip, drip, dripped until it overflowed into the cold-cuts and on downward into the fruit drawer. Month after month.

Then one day I snapped. I drove to Lowe’s, pointed at a big, stainless steel, built-in icemakered, bottom door freezer and said, “I’ll take it.”

And from the moment I plopped the credit card on the counter, I started backpedaling in my brain.

I fretted about it not fitting in the space I had measured eighteen times. I fussed about the price. I fumed about having to be held captive, not knowing if I would be at the beginning, middle or end of the four-hour delivery window. But most of all, I wasn't sure I could live without my memorabilia that adorned the refrigerator door.

I sighed as I took down a slew of Santostefano pictures; Katelyn and Heather’s first communion/last time in church photo, Christmas cards with dead dogs, Heather’s high school graduation picture. And Brian’s. But where was Kate’s? I smiled seeing the Landers kids, happy at the beach, year after year. I looked at Lana and grinned, remembering the fun I had with her mama at her age. I chuckled at Matt Woolley, flanked by his ever-smiling twin sisters, Jan and Claire. I marveled at how young the Preschel boys looked and how proud the Sextons were in that 2014 on-to-college and out-of-college card. I put away Brandon Wimbush’s high school graduation picture knowing there will be a whole lot more of him to come as he quarterbacks his way into the NFL.

I put aside Save-the-Dates for Alex and Nate, Sonia and Phil and Joe and Julie Claire, reliving those ultra fun weddings. I took down the invitation to my mother’s 90^th birthday party, the picture of three-year-old Olivia pumping her little legs on a swing and a 2015 Mets’ schedule. I welled up looking at two of Ginny Brown’s business cards I had pilfered from her photo show and shook my head as I removed the college acceptance letter to a school no one attended.

I grinned at my many refrigerator magnets:

• Good writing is true writing.
• Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of life.
• Friendship is when people know all about you but like you anyway.
• She liked to stir things up.
• Stop me before I volunteer again.
• If you don’t grow up by middle age, you don’t have to.
• I wish I were an only child.
• God bless this empty nest.

I took down the funeral cards. Jason Mejia, Saresh Varky, Chuckles Malone, Taki, Phil Apreda, Sal Formisano and the miniature wedding photo of the Kieliszek’s.  I re-read the newspaper articles about Chris Jones' basketball season at Pitt, Milan Johnson making buckets at Teaneck High and Anthony Apreda bearing his Tommy John scar at Bergen Catholic, back in the days when he stayed at a school for more than one year.

I removed Koree’s postcard, an abstract drawing of a basketball court, asking Leo to consider transferring to his Connecticut prep school. The picture of Ruby Mather jumping for joy in all her Sugar Plum glory. The torn paper that read Tanya loves Mrs. Betsy in one corner and Taylor loves her more in the other. And the note the daughter wrote before returning to college in 2011: Family -- In times of trouble, ask yourselves, What Would Tim Tebow Do?

I set aside the pictures of Amadou, Jordan, Saul and Jaelin decked out in goofy garb. Jamal Williams’ baby picture. The polaroid of the lovely Taryn McDonald. Mike Apreda and Kamal Kendricks’ business cards. Alec DeMattheis’ baseball card and Oksana’s birthday card. I noted how young Coach Fernando and Coach Tom looked holding onto that Teaneck Southern backstop. How handsome Jordan Ellerbee and Danny Pinto looked in their graduation pictures. I wondered where my picture of the female Apreda was and remembered how happy I was when Tanya Sanchez finally brought me hers and placed it front and center.

I love my new stainless steel refrigerator. I no longer worry about what will freeze, what will wilt and how many jars will tumble out. And I feel genuine joy every morning when I’m greeted by an over-abundance of freshly-made ice cubes.

I chastise myself for not biting the bullet and buying the new reefer years ago. But I also realize that sometimes you just can't enjoy a brighter future until you're willing to part with the past. 

My Proudest Mothering Moment

Like every other mother out there, I’ve had many a moment of absolute, unadulterated pride. Of course, I’ve had equal moments of horror, panic, embarrassment and yes, shame. But, sometimes it’s better to keep those moments to ourselves.

I’ve been proud as a peacock as my three children graduated from pre-school, then elementary school, then middle school, then high school and then two-thirds of them from college. I’ve delighted in the daughter earning her Master’s degree while working a full-time job.  

I’ve beamed as my sons hit home runs, struck out batters, threw touchdown passes and hit buzzer beaters. I’ve had my heart swell when the daughter landed her back handspring and brought home hard-earned cheerleading trophies.

I’ve smiled at report cards and through teacher conferences. I’ve been delighted by awards and college acceptances and choices of careers. I’ve relished their collective senses of independence, adventure and humor.

And I’ve been oh so happy when they’ve written unsolicited thank you notes.

But, my proudest mothering moment didn’t come until just last week, in my twenty-fifth year of parenting.

Not surprisingly, considering my self-centered nature, my proudest had nothing to do with a kid’s accomplishment or kind action or contribution to society. Rather, it was a moment that measured how far I, as a mother, had finally come.

I sent my kid to college without me.

Full disclosure. That kid who went to college without me is a senior. That kid who went to college without me is the last in line of three, all of whom have come and gone on their own many times.

The daughter moved to New Orleans four years ago without the help of her mother, who happened to be on a cruise that week. And that same mother didn’t see the middle son’s final resting place in Los Angeles until graduation weekend. But those were logistic rather than voluntary rights of refusal.

I’ve certainly done my share of making beds, wiping window sills, stocking refrigerators and scrubbing toilets. Not to mention purchasing furniture, appliances, toilet paper and cleaning products that for some reason never have to be replenished.

And I had every intention of doing it for this one.

“I think it’s better if you don’t go to Leo’s new place,” the middle son warned after helping his younger brother do the heavy lifting from a lovely complex a mile from campus to a first-floor apartment in a battered house right in the heart of Collegeville, USA.

“That bad?” I asked.

The middle son didn’t answer.

And, so I picture my poor, dear son meeting mice on the way to the urine-stenched bathroom in the middle of the night, stubbing his toe on broken floorboards along the way. I see him swatting roaches off the kitchen counter as he warms his hands over the oven burner on winter nights as the wind whips through the broken panes of uncurtained windows. I see him huddled in a corner of the living room, laptop on his lap, plugged into an over extended extension cord trying desperately to finish a fifteen-page philosophy paper while his roommates catch up on Game of Thrones.

I see piles and piles of clothes on the floor that never make it into a bureau, because not only is there no closet, there’s no room in the bedroom for anything but two beds. One for him. And one for a roommate. 

I visualize the couch they picked up for $40. And see the stuffing oozing out of its burn holes. I hear the squeaky springs. And I smell the college cocktail – that sweet scent of stale beer and empty Chinese food containers.

I imagined myself tackling that apartment, tucking in my son’s sheets and fluffing his pillows. Folding his bath towels and washing out his Brita pitcher. I envisioned multiple trips to Target for under-the-bed storage bins and over-the-door hooks. Washing kitchen towels and scraping last year’s eggs from cast iron pans. Lysoling the refrigerator and mopping unidentified sticky substances off the floor.

And then, I talked myself off the ledge by reminding myself of my summer sublet with my friend Ann. The sublet that came with a cat. And a cat food bowl filled with maggots. I thought about the Shippensburg flophouse where Betsy and Betsy and Sue and Sue lived. We decorated the walls with Rolling Stone magazine covers and lived through the winter with no heat in the upstairs bedrooms. I remembered the two-story apartment in West Virginia where I lived with Fran, Linda, Kevin and a bunch of canines. It was furnished with furniture older than all of us put together, had no shower, but was stumbling distance from the bar.

I laughed at myself, knowing that Leo’s roommates’ mothers would never let their kids live, let alone pay for, an uninhabitable hovel. And that reality rarely resembles what we are seeing in our mind's eye.

So I did something that is oh so hard for me to do.

I let it go.

Because, in a moment of clarity, I realized that no matter what I do or don’t do on move-in day, I can’t control what happens on day two, or day twenty-two.

And so, I hugged my six-foot baby boy goodbye in the driveway and sent him on his way to fend for himself. 

Just like a good mother should.

The Fine Art of Letting Go

“Mom,” the middle child said patiently. “You either throw it away now, or I throw it away in 40 years.”

The first thing that came to mind was, Oh, what a sweet optimist I have raised. The next thought was Oh, what a heartless soul I have raised.

Max is the child I call on to help me with the household drudgery that I can’t seem to bring myself to do. He does the grocery shopping. He cuts the lawn. He organizes kitchen cabinets. He walks the dog. And he cleans out the basement.

We have lived in our “new” house for almost 12 years now, having moved from a cute little Cape Cod on the other side of town.

There was a lot of fun crammed into that little house on Broad Street. We had a Fisher Price tool bench. A make-believe kitchen. A plethora of plastic food. An army of soldiers. A lot, a lot of Legos. Toy cars and more toy cars. And of course, the requisite Little Tikes orange and yellow cozy coupe. Every toy fire truck ever made.  A bevy of books.  Costumes and coloring books. Magic markers and building blocks. Stacking rings and wooden trains. 53 million stuffed animals. Musical instruments and soccer balls, wiffle balls and beach balls. A yellow metal construction truck and matching crane. A personalized rocking horse and Barbie dolls. Lots and lots of Barbie dolls. Transformers and Power Rangers. A Buzz Lightyear and a Tamagotchi. A multitude of VHS movies and cassette tapes filled with Raffi singing silly kid songs. Games. Board games and card games. Electronic games and educational games. And lots of random playing pieces, action figures, tiddly winks and Lincoln Logs in plastic shoe boxes all over the house. All over the house.

Yes, there was a lot of fun crammed into that little house on Broad Street. But that fun came at a cost. It was a house filled with clutter and chaos. And never a second of calm. We lived directly across the quiet street from a playground, making our house a highly desirable toddler destination. But, the mothers of those toddlers, they knew never, ever to come to my house unannounced. Once, just once, my playgroup friends Anne and Kerri did just that. And they still talk about the look of horror on my face as I stood with them on the doorstop floundering over excuses for why they couldn’t enter the house.  

When, gambling on winning the lottery between then and now, we depleted the college fund and moved to a bigger house across town, I crossed the first big something off my bucket list.

I got a dumpster.

My friend Claire, who had also long coveted a dumpster, came and helped me sort out treasures from trash. Having a strong aversion to inanimate objects, she was ruthless.  

“You can’t throw that out!” I screeched, grabbing the little straw box with the pink and blue flowers out of the to-go pile. “I got that on my high school trip to Nassau!”

She rolled her eyes and held up a Phillies’ ticket from 1980.

“That was the year they won the World Series!” I cried.

“And?”

“I can name every single player on that team!” I protested.

“Take a picture of it.”

I reluctantly let the ticket flicker into the pile with the legless kitchen chair and two-wheeled tricycle.

I was bullied into disposing of 49 pieces of Tupperware, 36 of which had no lids. I was allowed to keep no more than five tote bags, of which I had 28. I could keep wedding presents as long as I had used them in the last ten years and only if I could identify who they were from. Little did Claire know that when I kept running upstairs, I was checking my wedding present list that was tucked on a shelf next to my computer.  

When all was said and done, I still moved way more than I should have to our new house. But the house was bigger, had a huge garage and eaves in the attic where I could store boxes and boxes of all-important items that, for the record, remain in the same boxes, in the same attic, 12 years later.

As I pulled out of the Broad Street driveway for the final time, minivan loaded down with breakables and can't-bear-to-part-with objects pulled out of the dumpster when Claire wasn’t looking, I vowed, in a Scarlett O’Hara moment of earnestness, that I would never, ever live in that kind of chaos again.

And I haven’t. I hired a cleaning professional who kept the new house clean until I couldn’t stand the night-before, pre-cleaning pressure and sent her packing. I now have cobwebs and dog hair decorating corners of my living room, but if someone stops by unannounced, they are always allowed inside.

But the basement. The big basement with the La-Z-Boy recliners and the big TV and the 50s-style bar across one end, slowly but surely became a dumping ground. It became loaded down with baseball bats, coolers, musty luggage, broken printers, CDs, unused computers, sports trophies, half-filled water bottles, fully-empty liquor bottles, ragged sheets, ragged rags, rolled up rugs, unrolled wrapping paper, boxes and boxes of china and silver and drinking glasses, dozens of platters and serving bowls, a sofa bed that I refuse to pay to dispose of, and of course, the three-legged chairs. Plural.

I don’t hang out in the basement because it gives me agita. And I don’t clean the basement because it’s too overwhelming. So, when Max took on the project last week, I felt a mix of fear and freedom.

“Mom,” he said. “This has got to go!”

“Absolutely not!” I cried as I pulled the tarnished-beyond-recognition napkin ring out of the to-go pile. “That was my napkin ring when I was growing up.”

Max rolled his eyes.

“You have never in my lifetime used a napkin ring.”

“I’m going to start,” I said, snatching it from him.

“Vase,” he said. “You have thirty of them. Pick five to keep.”

My eyes bulged.

“OK. Ten. No more than that.”

And in the end, because I’m the mother, I won. Boxes and boxes of never-seen-the-light-of-day china and silver and no! You can’t get rid of that – that was Aunt Mary’s trinkets made their way up to the attic.

Before the garbage went out, I rooted through the bag, letting the cleatless football cleats and the unstrung youth baseball gloves go. But, I pulled out the dog bowl that had held Chester’s (the dog that’s been dead for seven years) last meal. And everything else went up to the attic.

“Mom,” Max said. “I’m just going to throw it all out in 40 years when you die.”

And, I know he will.

I just have to hope that as I bow out of this world, forty years hence, and my kids use their meager inheritance to get a dumpster, that they forgive me for being a memory mongrel and trying to immortalize mortality. 

And that, as they toss all those boxes and boxes of inanimate objects, that I'll be looking down (or up, as the case may be) with a smile, knowing that I've finally learned the lesson of life. That I'll have, at long last, come to terms with what I've known all along.

It's not about the things that are stashed in attics or in boxes in basements. It's the memories that are stored in hearts. That's what's going to keep you alive. 

Forever and ever.