2015

by Cathy

2015...

This is the year that I turn 45, celebrate my 18th wedding anniversary and see my first-born enter high school.

It sounds like someone else's life; someone much older than me. Those are some serious double-digit milestones, the kind reserved for "old" people I used to hear about when I was in the prime of my youth and all of this seemed light years away. Nonetheless, this is where I am in my life right now, crazy numbers and all, so I am here to face it and yes, embrace it.

It still doesn't make sense to me that we are in the year 2015. It still sounds ridiculously futuristic, as if we are living in another dimension. It was, after all, the year Marty traveled to in Back to the Future Part II.

Back to the Future is now

Back in the day, the decades had real sounding names with now marked events and characteristics that defined them for each of us, from the 1920s through to the 1990s. Each decade felt like it meant something, like each had its own representation and weight.

Then it all started sounding strange. How do we refer to the decades after the 90s? The zeroes? The two-thousands? What about the decade we're in now? Are we in the 10s? The 2010s? You don't hear people referring to decades like they once did because there's no non-awkward sounding, all encompassing way to refer to them. They all sound futuristic, even though we've been "in the future" for now, fifteen years. And if you ask me to define the marked characteristics of the last two decades since 2000, I'd venture to say that it's one big reality television show whirred into a technologically frenzied blur. Maybe I just don't care enough to distinguish these decades and acknowledge their own weight because they don't have a cool sounding name that warrants it. That's just me.

There is something, however, about the number and year, 2015, that compelled me to write about it. It's not an even-numbered year, yet it stands out because of the milestone simplicity it represents. It falls directly in the center of this decade, neatly separating the polar (and literal) opposites of what decades start/end, bring/take for people facing, dare I say, middle age.

Writing that statement was very sobering, as were writing the statements that follow...

This year, I am at equal distance from age 30 as I am from age 60. That stark calculation was made by me after an eye-opening statement made by Bella as we sat at home on this past blistery cold New Year's Eve 2014.
"Did you know that right now, at 2015, we are at equal distance from the year 2030 as we are from the year 2000?"
She wasn't even alive in 2000. So, again, those damned numbers. Why do they represent so much?

Well, they do and it's up to us to make these number mean something. God willing, this year like always, we intend to do so. Therefore, in addition to the wedding anniversary, high school milestone and 45th birthdays my husband and I will celebrate in 2015, we've also set goals. Goals put less pressure on results as they are plans to strive towards, not non-resolute resolutions.

We have goals to grow our business, to move into a single family home if plans take us in that direction, (and then maybe get a puppy to round out that American dream altogether), to buy a second car, and to travel to a place we haven't been before. Our personal goal, besides the ever-present "aim-to-salvage-what's-left-of-our-quasi-youthful-physique" goal, is to learn a new language and constantly strive to learn more and network more (Joe's) and for me, to finally embark on my lifelong dream.

We will continue to pray for our good health and those of our friends and family, to take in every minute of the crazy rate at which our girls are blossoming, maturing, molding their personalities, smoothing their rough edges and keeping sharp the ones that should stay that way, and to spend as much time with our parents as possible. The most challenging though for me, will be to make it through Bella's grammar school graduation and high school entrance without becoming a complete blubbering, broken down mess. Kids are, after all, the barometer against which the speediness of passing years is measured.

So please, 2015, seeing as you're right smack in the middle of this unnamed decade, do us a solid and slow down to let us take it all in.

---------------------------

Happy, healthy, prosperous New Year to our dedicated readers, followers, believers, supporters, fans and visitors from around the world. 

Over and...Done.

by Cathy

Today is the last, official day of school for my kids and I'm freaking out.
I did not expect this. At all.

It blindsided me during the usual morning breakfast rush. We were running late as usual but there was a relaxed feel to the harriedness. Then my youngest, Ari, knowing we were going to be late, asked if I could walk her to her locker after getting the obligatory tardy slip in the main office. (I did this last week, one day with her, but only after she insisted that I do it because as usual, I was in my own crazed bubble, mentally running through lists of where I have to go and what I have to do for the day. But boy, once I did it, I was so glad I did. Small, inside peeks into your child's school day - her stuff, her routine, her interaction with friends and teachers - is something I never get to really see.)

"Mommy, can you walk me to my locker today?"
"Oh, honey, papi will be taking you today."
"Papi," she turned. "Can you walk me to my locker today?"
He looked at me quizzically. "Why? Is it something I need to do?"
"No," I said flatly. "But just take her. It's something you'll remember doing. It's her last day of first grade."

Boom! Something inside my heart exploded. My husband noticed it but kept quiet. He turned to Bella, my now TWELVE-year old.

"Do you want me to walk you to your locker, too?" he offered quietly.
And just as we suspected, she replied, "No, that's okay."
At that moment, we both knowingly felt that pang of harsh reality that one day, we will not get asked to walk our kids to our lockers. Or lay with them at bedtime. Or read them a story. Or hold their hand. Or want to sleep in our bed or crawl in there in the middle of the night. One day, they just stop asking.

I quickly ushered them out the door with a kiss while my husband hurried them into taking an end-of-the-year photo before they drove off. In the still quietness that just minutes ago, was my hurricane of a kitchen, I sat and cried. Where was this coming from? From the quietness of the house that will one day be forever this quiet once they both move on and live their lives? From seeing the remnants of their rushed breakfast still on the table and realizing that for all the bitching I do about getting up early, and packing them lunch and snacks and preparing breakfast that the school year is already over and done?

Last night, as I was laying with Ari in bed (I don't refuse these invitations any more, I cherish them now) I saw she had posted some collages on her wall. Pictures of makeup, fashion, accessories that she put together.
"What are those?" I squinted in the dark.
"Oh, those are my pictures I cut out. I want to be a girl now."
"Noo!" I whispered loudly to her. "You are still little."
"Yeah, but mommy, I want to act like a big girl, but I'll still be little, okay?"
"But you're little, so you should act like a little girl."
"I'll still be little. I'm only six. But I just want to act like a big girl," she said, clutching her pillow and sheepy, clearly comforting my inability to accept this.

 I guess it makes sense that for all the comforting we dish out to our kids during the course of their childhood, it would only be fitting if they do the same for us at some point. I just don't want it to be so soon. I just dont' want it over and done with so fast.