Raincity Mama

A while ago I received an odd phone call from my grand­fa­ther. He wasn’t mak­ing much sense and he hung up on me. He was call­ing from a blocked num­ber so I couldn’t call him back. I did what any sen­si­ble per­son does and freaked out. I called my par­ents’ house and had to explain it twice. My mom sensed the panic in my voice and got my dad to call to check to see if my grand­fa­ther was ok.

I sat there for about 30 min­utes feel­ing anx­ious won­der­ing why my grand­fa­ther was call­ing me. My dad called me back to tell me that my grand­fa­ther was just fine. He was call­ing from his cell­phone and didn’t have his hear­ing aid in so he couldn’t hear me. He wanted to ask me if I wanted my grandmother’s china. I was relieved and sur­prised. The only thing of my grandmother’s that I asked for and received was a token ceramic fig­urine that I have fond mem­o­ries of, it is the shape of a dog and my grand­mother would use it to rest her glasses on. It now sits at my desk at work and I use it every­day. I’ve been very care­ful to not ask for any­thing else.

It sur­prised me that I was being offered my grandmother’s china. I am the only grand­daugh­ter and my chil­dren are the only great grand­chil­dren so I guess it makes sense that I would be asked first. It just never occured to me to ask for it. As a mat­ter of fact I could not even remem­ber what the set looked like. Try as I might I could not sum­mon an image of it. The only set I could remem­ber was an anniver­sary set my grand­mother received for their 50 wed­ding anniver­sary and there is no way I’d be offered that.

Last week my dad dropped off the china set and I took a peek. It is a fairly basic pat­tern, cream and blue with gold trim. I’d be proud to have it on my table. The only thing that pains me is that it will have to be hand-washed due to the gold trim. We don’t have much in the way of stuff that must be hand-washed. The same goes for clothes that must be dry cleaned or ironed for that matter.

I now own an 8 piece set of china that will be rel­e­gated to spe­cial occa­sions. We don’t live like that. I need to have stuff that we can use every­day. If this needs to be packed away then I will never use it and it will sit unused gath­er­ing dusk in our crawl space. My mom wants me to keep it and pass it on to the Smoochie; but that will be decades from now!

What do you do with sen­ti­men­tal items that you don’t feel com­fort­able using. We are try­ing so hard to pare down what we have to items that we love and use every­day so keep­ing this china for Christ­mas doesn’t jive with how we want to live. Tell me, what you have done with stuff you have inherited?

I dropped the kids off at my par­ents house on Sat­ur­day and then I had a few hours to spend with the hus­band. We decided to go for lunch and sit and talk. It was so nice to really recon­nect. Sure, we chat­ted about the kids and work stuff but we got to talk about other stuff too.

After lunch we walked back home and some time left to get down to busi­ness. It is a rare treat that we are alone in the house together so we made use of our time wisely. *wink wink*. There are many projects that we could have tack­led but spend­ing the day recon­nect­ing was what we needed. Yes, we need to set up the kids’ room so that they can move in there and out of our room. We could have started to get the gar­den ready for plant­ing or cleared out the office or any of the one hun­dred other to-do items of the ever expand­ing list; but we both decided that we needed time for us. I still cringe when I think about all the half fin­ished and not-yet-started projects but time together is so rare and I think that we both ben­e­fit from refo­cus­ing on “us” that I can ratio­nal­ize putting off the chores. I also think that it is impor­tant that we show the kids that we are putting our mar­riage as a pri­or­ity and that means that we have to set aside to work on our mar­riage just as we do for every­thing else.

I’m already plot­ting our next after­noon together. What do you do to stay con­nected with your spouse?

We’re not hol­i­day peo­ple. I like to think that I’m a hol­i­day per­son but in real­ity I’m not. When it comes to Hal­loween, I think your lit­tle Pump­kin or Gob­lin are adorable, but find­ing cos­tumes for my tod­dlers and get­ting them dressed when I’m not going to let them eat candy feels like too much work. Yes, I love the trap­pings of Christ­mas but I’m loathe to actu­ally do the work to get them. If you have bought a tree I may even help you dec­o­rate it if you ply me with Christ­mas bak­ing but this year we couldn’t put one up because the kids cer­tainly would have destroyed it. Basi­cally right now I’m ignor­ing hol­i­days using the excuse that my kids are too young to enjoy them. They may not remem­ber but I will remember.

Valentine’s Day was just a few days ago. I don’t con­sider this to be a kid friendly hol­i­day. In school I remem­ber mak­ing the lit­tle mail­box to hang off my desk. I remem­ber whin­ing because my mom had bought the wrong cards, I had wanted Scooby Doo and instead I got generic cards. I recall watch­ing the other stu­dents as we went around the room drop­ping off our cards, try­ing to count to see how many cards I would get. Even though we were sup­posed to give a card to each stu­dent there were those that got extra spe­cial cards. I would get so dis­ap­pointed to see that my mail­box only con­tained cards that has hastily scrib­bled names; not see­ing the irony that all the cards I have out were filled out under duress as I sat at the kitchen table rush­ing to fin­ish so I could watch Dukes of Hazzard.

As an adult I find myself torn as to the sta­tus of this as a real hol­i­day. Flow­ers are ridicu­lously over-priced and I don’t want to eat cheap heart shaped choco­lates. I have stopped buy­ing gift cards all together because I think it is a waste of money to buy them only to glance at them, chuckle at the car­toon and then throw them away. But I do want the romance that I think goes with this hol­i­day. I want to be wooed. What I’m miss­ing is that I’m wooed every­day. Each time I find my phone fully charged or come down in the morn­ing to find my cof­fee made, the cof­fee he doesn’t drink, I’m being wooed. It is there, but I want more. A fully charged cell­phone is nice but I want some­thing a lit­tle more roman­tic. I blame the movies for my unre­al­is­tic expectations.

Sat­ur­day I asked if we could go out for din­ner and we ended up going to our favourite Mex­i­can place. We went early so we wouldn’t have to wait. We got the kids seated, we ordered and the waiter dropped off the chips and salsa as well as some crayons and paper. The kids were engrossed in colour­ing and nib­bled away on chips but there was no romance. It is hard to have any kind of adult con­ver­sa­tion when try­ing to keep the kids from eat­ing crayons instead of chips. Or keep­ing them on the chairs when the wants to run around the room and check out the kitchen. This restau­rant only has one high­chair and it was being used. We went through the trou­ble of putting our high­chairs in the car but once we got into the restau­rant my hus­band thought it would be fine just let­ting the kids sit on reg­u­lar chairs.

The restau­rant was packed and it took a while for our food to show up. The kids were done with colour­ing and chips were no longer hold­ing their atten­tion. Our food arrived and I got to sit and eat with a squirm­ing girl in my lap, try­ing to keep her from knock­ing over my drink or burn­ing her­self on the plate. I really didn’t know why I thought that this would be a good idea. The hus­band see­ing my mount­ing dis­tress took the girl on his lap while I rushed to eat my food. This is so not what I had in mind. I sit here writ­ing this after the fact and I waf­fle between whin­ing and admon­ish­ing myself. What did I think was going to hap­pen? It is my own fault for tak­ing the kids out to eat. All I wanted was a nice din­ner out, is that too much to ask? They won’t be this lit­tle for long and there will be lots of time to have din­ner out. Waaaa!

We sur­vived the din­ner, it wasn’t a cat­a­stro­phe, just not what I wanted. I wanted a lit­tle bit of magic. I’m real­iz­ing that I need to make my own magic. I could have picked a dif­fer­ent restau­rant or I could have arranged to have my par­ents watch the kids while we went out. I need to stop wait­ing for the Hol­ly­wood romance to mag­i­cally appear, I make it hap­pen if it is impor­tant to me.

I’m not nor­mally into Easter but I think that it could be a lot of fun for the kids. I have great mem­o­ries search­ing for eggs and munch­ing on choco­late and I need to be the one to make that hap­pen for our kids. They deserve to have a those mem­o­ries too. I need to make the magic hap­pen instead of wish­ing for it. My refrain at work is that “I’m a tech­ni­cian not a magi­cian” but I’m real­iz­ing that I need to work on my magic skills. Not just for the kids but for myself too.

It is almost a month until Christ­mas. I haven’t started any prepa­ra­tions yet. My hus­band and I were talk­ing the other day and I think that we are either going to get a tiny tree and put it up on a shelf or we will not have a tree this year. I can’t imag­ine try­ing to keep the kids from destroy­ing it, I don’t think that’d be fair to my mom since she is the one with them the major­ity of the week.

We have a shelf but buy­ing a tiny live tree just doesn’t seem right. We don’t have a safe area to put up a reg­u­lar sized tree unless we put it in the kitchen but then I won’t be able to cook. The other option is to wait and put it up on Christ­mas Eve but we are going to my father-in-law’s house so we won’t be home to do it. The time crunch is a fac­tor plus the cost. Last year we bought a small­ish tree and paid almost $55! I know that we could buy a bar­gain tree but I hate they way they look plus they are usu­ally quite dry and drop a ton of needles.

This is going to be the last year that Christ­mas is quiet. The kids have no idea what it is so we can get away with hav­ing one last sub­dued Christmas.

I’m all for adapt­ing my hol­i­day tra­di­tions and I’m look­ing for­ward to cre­at­ing new hol­i­day tra­di­tions with the kids and hin. For me the tree was always a big deal. Next year will be fun to get the kids to help dec­o­rate the tree. I think that for this year I’ll get the kids to help me bake cook­ies and I’ll have to look to see if I can find some non-ugly dec­o­ra­tions for the house.

What hol­i­day tra­di­tions do you do with your kids?