Holidays – Are We There Yet?

Bowling for easter

I almost forgot Easter. It didn’t occur to me until the Monday before. Of course, my second thought was “If you hadn’t stopped going to church you would have known that.” That second thought is always a bitch.

I called my daughter, Jennifer, immediately. Her son, Elijah, is the only member of our family young enough to qualify for a hunt and a basket. I was somewhat relieved to hear he was spending Easter with his Dad. I’d miss spending time with him, but at least he didn’t have to know I’d forgotten Easter. I mean, who does that?

I toyed with the idea of getting the decorations down from the attic. By this time in years past, the branches on the dogwood out front would have begun to droop, ever so slightly, thanks to the pull of dozens of brightly-hued plastic eggs. I especially like to use the mirrored eggs. It pleases me to know that everyone, even drivers circling our cul-de-sac at night, is treated to a flash of springtime color. As I reached for a hand towel in the bathroom, I remembered the Easter towel that should have been there…the one with the puffball sewn on where the bunny’s tail would be. I imagined climbing the attic stairs…over and over again…and then repeating the process in the opposite direction in just a few days. And that settled that.

For the first time in my life, there would be no family get-together at Easter. It would just be me and my youngest son, Shane. I vacillated between guilt at not having arranged a more festive holiday for him, and excitement that we could do whatever we wanted without worrying about anyone’s schedule, or what to cook, or cleaning up or…anything. This Easter was ours to do as we saw fit.

By Thursday, I still hadn’t formulated a plan…and I was okay with that. Spontaneity has always been my friend. After all, hadn’t I been counseled, just the other day, that surrender is the key to happiness? I surrendered Easter, and within minutes Jennifer texted me with the news that Elijah was coming home on Saturday.

Easter was on again.

Having already nixed the decorations, moving dinner to a restaurant in another town was an easy decision. My daughter chose a restaurant my grandson would like. Fortunately, it was one of those places that have something for everyone. Nothing was actually good, but everything was basically edible.

I had placed an assortment of candies and gifts on the table before anyone else arrived. When the waitress reminded us to visit the dessert bar, my oldest son, Josh, produced a Reese’s egg and said, “I’ve got dessert.”

I held up my hand in a bid for attention.

“This is just the first part of our Easter celebration!”, I teased.

Five pairs of eyes stared back at me with expressions of wary incredulity.

“We’re going bowling!”, I announced.

Other than a couple of gasps the group was silent, and at least two pairs of formerly wary eyes now held something resembling fear.

“I don’t know…”, Josh began while retrieving his cell phone from his pants pocket. He pressed a button on the screen. “I’ve got to be somewhere at 3:00.”, he sort of whined. A glance at his phone revealed it was 12:45.

“Okay, then we’ll just bowl one game. We can do that in less than an hour and you’ll still have plenty of time.” I would not be denied.

GPS coordinates were entered while the youngest among us calculated, in short order, how to maximize time in the front seat. Shane slid in beside his older brother while Elijah climbed in next to me. He fastened his seat belt with one hand while reaching for my Ipod with the other.

Thirty minutes later we’d gotten past wondering how many other people had worn our rented shoes before us, and amassed a large collection of ten-pound bowling balls in assorted colors. Elijah would soon bowl three consecutive strikes, providing his contribution to an ever-changing lead. In the end, Josh would out-bowl us despite his earlier complaint, “It’s been years!”

I can’t remember who first suggested we start another game. I do know we all looked to Josh, He of the 3:00 Appointment. Never one to be comfortable with expressions of emotion, he ducked his head to hide a smile that couldn’t be missed.

“It’s alright with me…”, he allowed.

There was some talk of requesting the bumper guards be raised and Elijah, unhappy with his score despite the strikes, launched a search for the perfect ball. Soon, we were heading into the last frame of the second game.

By this time, we’d learned some things. For instance, no one knew until he won the first game that Josh used to own a pair of bowling shoes and a ball. At one time, he’d apparently enjoyed bowling a lot! Elijah taught his mother the “granny roll” even though he was too old to do it himself. And Jennifer’s husband, Chris, paid attention when I shared a tip I picked up in the bowling class I took in high school (Yes! High school! Those were the days…) and used it to win the second game handily. I smiled as I realized I’d been right to trust my instincts. Easter dinner was nice, but it wasn’t enough. We needed time together…fun time…a time to remember.

Two years ago we lost a member of our family. Things have never been the same since, and they never will be. Those precious memories can’t be duplicated but we can make new ones…different ones. We can make the most of what we have left. That’s what he would want us to do. I’ll bet he would have loved bowling for Easter.

Photograph can be found at: http://playandgo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/kingpin-easter.jpg

To my mind, Halloween has always represented the top of a slide; a long slide, the big metal kind that burns your legs in summer, but not so badly that you don’t mount the ladder a second, and even a third, time. And, it doesn’t go straight down. There are twists and turns, and bumps and dips. All in all, it’s a pretty raucous ride.

Thanksgiving used to represent one of the bumps, a high-point on the path towards the next bump of Christmas, on the way to the New Year’s sand pit that leaves tiny black flecks on the backs of your calves and the palms of your hands.

Nowadays, though, I would characterize Thanksgiving as more of a twist, a turn requiring careful navigation before resuming the descent.

My reticence about the holiday became clear to me a couple of years ago as I read posts on a social website to which I subscribed. There were several prompts along the line of “How Will You Spend Your Thanksgiving?”, and “Share Your Favorite Thanksgiving Memory”. As I scanned menus I wouldn’t choose from and ticked off strangers’ guest lists, complete with anecdotes, I began to feel sad. It became clear, relatively quickly, that my plan to post a virtual cornucopia of familial dysfunction would elicit a reaction similar to that experienced by a person unable to quash a particularly loud belch after finishing an elegant meal. Not that I have ever been in that exact situation, mind you. My embarrassing belch came disguised as a yawn, which I shielded prettily with one hand, in hopes that our English teacher wouldn’t mistake a night of late-night TV for impolite disinterest. The offending sound was as much a surprise to me as it was to the quarterback of our high school football team, who sat in the next row and two desks closer to the front of the room. His was the only face to turn in my direction.

“Excuse you!”, he bellowed through his laugh which soon became a chorus.

I responded with a weak smile, refusing to acquiesce to an overwhelming desire to escape the room. My intention here, though, is not to write about teenage angst.

My mother was a product of the times in which she lived. The decade of the sixties is widely associated with peace, love, and rock and roll. But due to a burgeoning space program, the sixties also ushered in canned vegetables, enveloped spice packs, and crystallized orange drink. Grocery stores remodeled to make room for the “Freezer Section”, and my mother was all over it.

She made an exception, though, at holiday time. Thanksgiving dinners were prepared fresh, with only the finest ingredients, and usually featured the same dishes year after year. One holiday she decided her Coke Salad was boring, and introduced instead a pale, orange concoction featuring apricots. Realizing our dinner wouldn’t include plump, juicy cherries confined by coke-flavored cottage cheese, I loudly bemoaned her decision. My sisters echoed my sentiment and the cherries were back in place the following year. What I didn’t realize until recently, though, is that while the center of our table might have been held by a large pine-cone, threaded with multi-colored strips of construction paper, my mother was truly our Thanksgiving centerpiece.

This year, Thanksgiving will find my sister, Candi, hosting her husband’s family at their beach-side condominium. It sounds like a lovely way to spend the holiday, but I wasn’t invited. After assisting with accommodations for the in-laws, my father called seeking reassurance that his three remaining daughters could provide a holiday at “home”. Two weeks later, he called again.

Several telephone calls later resulted in our “family dinner” being held in Cleveland, Georgia, a picturesque mountain town about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta. My sister, Holly, is excited to serve turkey she raised from a chick. I visited the unfortunate fowl a couple of weeks ago. At that point she hadn’t decided which of the several strikingly unattractive birds would make the sacrifice. That’s okay…I didn’t really want to know.

All three of my children have chosen to settle near the town of their birth, necessitating a seventy-five mile drive to my house for Thanksgiving. My daughter will work until four in the afternoon, pushing our dinner late into the evening. They will settle for a store-bought turkey, smoked the day before, and my impressions of the earlier celebration. They will bring friends. My house will be packed to over-flowing, and laughter will fill every corner of every room.

But, I’ll still miss the cherries…

Tag: Holidays

Bowling For Easter

Thanksglibbing