Growing up all over again

At the end of October, my parents will be celebrating their 48th wedding anniversary. My birthday is the day after. As a little girl I could not understand why people would look at me strangely when I would proudly declare that I was born the day after my parents got married. Or, why my mother was always quick to point out that it was two years after their wedding.

Yes, that means in a few short weeks I will be 46. When I look at the number 46 in relation to me, I just can't quite seem to grasp that I'm "that" old.

There's no way to pretty it up. I may have a kid in first grade and watch the PBS Kids channel, but I'm middle aged.

When you consider that 46 x 2 is 92, I might be even a bit beyond.

"Mom, I just thought of something," announced our 12-year-old,
Tom, a few weeks ago when I was driving him to school.

"What dear?"

"In a few weeks you are going to be 4 years from 50. Isn't that hysterical?"

"Oh, yea, really hysterical. I can't stop laughing!"

Where the heck did the time go? Has it really been 30 years since my Sweet 16 surprise party? It feels like it was just yesterday.

I can still envision the pink rose corsage with the sugar cubes my parents bought me. Or remember how I felt when I went to school and saw the 'Happy Birthday' sign my friends made me.

I was a very innocent 16-year-old. I didn't have my first kiss until the spring of that year. Yet, I do remember it was at 16 when I realized it was official, I was on my way to adulthood. There was no turning back. Some people may have been excited at this prospect, I was terrified.

My dream was to become a singer and actress on Broadway. I wanted to live in Manhattan and had from the time I was a little girl. I saw the skyline all lit up on the few occasions my family would drive through the city to cross a bridge and I was enthralled. I knew in my heart that was where I belonged.

Since I also knew I wanted children one day, I figured at some point I might move back to the suburbs. But, I was adamant... I was not going to ever live on Long Island again.

My plan was that I would marry around age 25 and surely have my first child before I hit the extremely old age of 30. I would effortesly manage a busy thriving acting career with a very happy home life. Piece of cake.

Ten years later, my 26th birthday found me working in an office job I truly liked and living in the city I loved. My roommate and I had moved into a high rise apartment almost a year before.

I was very excited because it was the first of the five apartments I had lived in that had a dishwasher. I also loved that since we lived on the 26th floor, every night I could look out our window and see the lights of the city.

I had exchanged the dream of an acting career for the reality and joy of paying my bills and eating.

Even though I was four years shy of my 30th birthday, I felt as if my life was starting to take shape. Joe and I had been dating for more than a year, and I was sure that this would be the person I would marry. He had planned a great birthday weekend for me complete with a Broadway show.

Even though I was content to watch others preform, I still felt my creative soul longing to get out. Something felt missing.

I thought of going back to school, and was volunteering at my church's help line calling senior citizens who were shut in. I was content with the decission to stop pursuing an acting career. But at 26, I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I "grew" up.

Fast forward 10 years to when I was six months pregnant with our second child. We had recently moved six blocks from where I grew up, and I was a full-time mommy.

Let me repeat that, I was now living on Long Island only blocks from where I grew up. This was the last thing in the world my 16-year-old self thought would become of me. Yet, I was very happy.

My favorite birthday present was a then two-year-old Tom singing Happy Birthday to me with Joe. I remember that we went out to lunch at Wendy's because that's where Tom wanted to take me, and I was thrilled since I was constantly craving their vanilla Frosties. This craving had nothing to do with me, mind you, and everything to do with the little girl I was pregnant with.

My creative energy was being used raising my son and helping him through his speech delays and suspected learning issues. I was thirty-six, married, a homeowner and a soon to be mom of two. In a few months, I would have the "ideal" family of a boy and a girl. What more could I want?

Occasionaly I had thoughts of doing something more, but I was too busy with my life to pay them much mind.

Now weeks away from my 46th birthday, I feel closer to the creative part of myself than I ever have before. Discovering my love of writing a year ago has brought a sense of joy and peace I don't remember having since I was a teenager preforming on stage.

I sit at my computer and let my thoughts take over and form words on the screen. I get excited when the perfect sentence comes to me. It may sound silly or even trite, but I feel alive.

My family is now complete with two boys and a girl. Being the mother to three children, one with very serious issues, takes up most of my energy and time.
 But last year when Peter started full-day kindergarten, I found the time to listen to the stirrings my soul. It's a little scary, but also very exciting.

Is it possible to finally find out what you want to be when you grow up at age 46?

Just what will the next 10 years bring? I can't wait to find out.

Motherhood Ate My Brain

I've had false alarms for years, but the other day it finally happened. I lost my last remaining pre-mommy brain cell. After 13 years, it's official: Motherhood ate my brain.

The lawsuit I'm planning to file against my three children names my mind as the victim, and the damages I hope to recover include... six American Girl dolls, 1.27 million Lego blocks, and my 12-year-old's collection of Beatles CDs?

I guess it's not worth it.

No, motherhood ate my brain and nothing I do will bring it back.

I could live with this side effect of motherhood were it not for the fact that while my brain dwindled my waistline expanded.

I never thought I would be one of "those" women who let herself go while caring for her children. I'm not sure how it happened. I worked very hard to develop a mommy style that could withstand chocolate pudding and sweet potato stains while retaining some of my pre-mom style. When I look at pictures of me with my first two babies, I can still recognize Kathy ca. 1997.

But, I think it was just one too many mommy crises that did me in.

Two rides in an ambulance with Tom because of allergic reactions to peanuts, five MRIs for Lizzy, plus one 48 hour brain scan, two surgeries for Peter, countless speech, occupational and physical therapists coming in and out of my house for each child, a calender full of meetings for three different schools, a husband who commutes and does not get home till late, a host of specialist and late night calls from doctors that scared the bejeezus out of me, and much, much more!

Being the obsessive and compulsive person I am, I could tell you the origin and situation of each pound gained, each pound lost, and each pound re-gained.

It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't react to every stressful situation by eating. Before I had my children, the stress of life may have caused me to gain a pound or two, but then my life would go back to "normal" and so would my weight. What am I supposed to do when crazy is the new normal?

This year, after countless weight loss programs, work-out DVDs and trips to the gym I made the resolution to not make any resolutions about my weight. Being a fan of the author Geneen Roth long before Oprah found her, I thought it would be easy to go back to the conscious way of eating she prescribes. It worked in my twenties and half of my thirties with great success.

I would eat when I was hungry and feel my feelings when I wasn't. I would slow down, enjoy my food in a relaxing and stress-free enviroment. How hard could it be to go back to my pre-mom ways of eating?

The other night is a perfect illustration of just how hard it is going to be.

The children and I were eating dinner together, which we do most weeknights because my husband gets home too late to join us. I was sitting there trying to enjoy my dinner and listen to my hunger.

I was dealing with a wonderful case of tween attitude from my 12-year-old son and trying my best to not engage in an argument over his bedtime. At the same time, my youngest decided that he would try to eat his dinner, which was pasta, without any hands. My daughter, who has special needs, was in her own world talking to herself one minute, laughing at her brother the next, and occasionally screaming out of frustration to add some variety.

I wish I could say this was unusual, but it's not. What was unusual, was my complete lack of patience. I couldn't muster one ounce of compassion and sat there fuming. I was tired and cranky and had had enough. At that moment, I could throw each child out the door or do something equally drastic.

I started to give my usual spiel of: Tom don't argue with me... Peter, don't eat like a puppy, and... Come on Lizzy focus. But, this time using the years of vocal training my parents paid for, I sang it in my best opera voice.

All logic went out the window. My mom brain took completely over as I insisted that if my son was going to continue to argue with me he was going to have to sing it. There we were, four people having our own little production of "Mommy's finally flipped."

Suffice it to say, we all started laughing. And I got through another meal without selling one of my children.

Our little production made such an impression on Lizzy that the next day I learned from her teacher that when she couldn't move her chair to her satisfaction she started to complain by singing in an operatic voice.

"Isn't that funny Kathy, where could she have picked that up?"

Where indeed?

Oddly enough it was on this night that I knew all my pre-mom brain cells were gone. And I had a pretty good idea of how not only I reached my present size, but how hard it was going to be to find my way back. It's very hard to listen to your hunger when the noise of your children blocks it out.

Knowing my obsessive nature I trust I will find the balance between the stressed-out mom I am and the healthy, in-shape mom I have yet to become. I do enjoy the gym and have more physical stamina then I have had in years. I also make fairly good food choices, most days.

After all, it did take me almost 13 years to get here. I just hope it doesn't take me another 13 years to return.

A Link in the Chain

I was boiling eggs for our kids to color for Easter when I realized it was official... I'm a grown-up.

I am 45, and you would think this revelation would have hit me sooner. But my sisters and I all waited until our thirties and forties to have children and had an extended childhood of sorts.

I've been on my own since I was 23, but it wasn't until I had my own children that my parents stopped coloring eggs with us, or at least, for us, if we couldn't come early for the egg coloring. There was also a lovely Easter basket waiting for me on Easter morning.

As I was getting everything ready for our brood this year, it occurred to me that the torch has been passed. Memories of my own childhood are still on my mind, but they have been surpassed by memories I have of the family I created with my husband.

We've developed our own traditions, different from the ones I grew up with. A case in point would be my version of egg coloring, which is certainly not as professional as my father's. He would faint if he saw the mess I made as I added color to the bowls because the kit I bought was not doing such a good job.
 
There were no kits in my house when I was growing up. We used food coloring. If my father had his way, we would have made dye from the vegetables and flowers my sisters and I would have had to forage for in the suburban wilds of Long Island.

Thank you Mom for keeping Grizzly Adams on a leash.

My father's egg coloring operation was enough for an army of bunnies. The egg holders were fashioned out of wire: Store bought holders were not for us. The bowls of dye were lined in a row, and were laid out so the festivities could begin.

My father has been coloring eggs my whole life, even when there wasn't a baby or child in sight.

My parents love to celebrate holidays. My mother made the most beautiful Easter baskets for us filled with handmade chocolate bunnies, intricately decorated sugar eggs, and other truly beautiful confections from speciality candy stores.

Mass-market bunnies were not for her girls. The baskets frequently had a theme, such as a garden or spring toys. I remember when I was eight she did a sewing theme and I got pink thread, a pin cushion, and sewing needles.

There was a magical excitement to walk downstairs and find the baskets we set out the night before lined in a row and filled with treats. Each basket was topped with a beautiful bow or ribbon that mom would put in our hair for church. 

My sisters and I would giggle, eat jelly beans, and compare what the bunny brought us: "I got pink bubbles..." "I got blue..." "My bunny has a purple bow..." "Mine has yellow."

The Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus were all important traditions throughout my childhood. They were so important that long after we were children, my parents incorporated them into our holidays. Egg hunts and all. This of course was a source of amusement for our husbands.

The other day my 12-year old, Tom, and I were discussing our plans for Easter. It has been extra fun this year because our six-year old Peter has been so excited over the prospect of a visit from the Easter Bunny.

"Mom, it is so cute that he believes in the Easter Bunny," said Tom, who was four when he figured there was no such thing.

"It just doesn't make sense," he said at the time.

I shared with him that, until he was born, my parents still hid eggs for me and his aunts. He thought this was hysterical. The image of his grown mother and her sisters looking for colored eggs was just too much. Then he said, "That's so cute mom."

My parents are in their glory now with seven grandchildren ranging from 12 years down to five months. My mother's beautiful baskets are now reserved for her grandchildren, who open them up with the same amazement my sisters and I had.

The egg hunts are much more exciting now with children rushing all over the yard.

I relish the idea that years from now there will be a whole new generation talking about their own memories of my parents and the holidays they made special.

In my house, I am the one and only official Easter Bunny. Different perhaps then the bunny of my childhood, but just as special for our three children.

The chain continues.