For all the messes, chaos and, far too often, poor sleep that comes with a house full up with children, I (like many parents) frequently have wished I could keep my children at a specific age and time.
For his first six months of life, my second baby had such severe colic, the sanguine nature of my third baby was unsettling. Like Shirley MacLaine in “Terms of Endearment,” I confess I sometimes awoke my third baby to ensure he was OK. Accompanying the gift of a child who slept when put to bed and rarely fussed while awake, my older boys were enviably close.
The same summer my third baby was born, the big boys got bunk beds. Each night I’d tuck in 3-year-old Hugo on the top bunk and 6-year-old Claude on the bottom, just as they wanted. Two hours later, when I’d return to turn off their nightlight, they were always together in the bottom bed, sound asleep, limbs entangled.
I savored that summer with a sweet baby and little boys in swimsuits eating watermelon on the front porch, competing to see who could spit their seeds farthest out into the garden. So much laughter, I wished I could stop time, but on it marched.
Christmas 2003 was the last year all three boys, then ages 9, 6 and 3, believed in Santa Claus. When they came downstairs that morning, they found a letter from the old elf by their stockings. It told them to follow the ribbon attached to the letter. It wended yards and yards away from the fireplace, through the dining room, into the kitchen, down the basement stairs to, “Oh, my gosh, look!” they cried out to one another, “An air hockey table!”
The summer of 2007, I packed the boys and plenty of gear into my 5-speed Toyota Matrix and drove due south on the first leg of a cross-country trip. We saw amazing landscapes, national parks and museums. We also had mishaps that were not as funny then as they seem now. It was a pivotal trip, especially for the eldest two, who often refer to their childhoods as either before or after our multistate adventure.
Claude and Hugo were teenagers when the first of my bumper-crop babies, another boy, arrived. Two years later, my only daughter followed. For several glorious years, I had a home full up with some of my favorite people.
That’s not to say it was always easy. Hugo, the one who had been a colicky baby, was often a horrid teen. Feeling abandoned by his father, as did his brothers, Hugo’s behavior seemed devised to see if I, too, would abandon him. Instead, I tough-loved him to adulthood. It wasn’t fun, but it paid jackpot dividends.
Too soon — suddenly it seemed — the big boys fledged to college. The first to the University of Michigan, the second to Eastman School of Music in Rochester, the last to Ohio State. The house became quieter, dinners harder to cook. (Scaling down meals after years of doubling batches is oddly difficult.)
COVID, wretched as it was, brought them all back home for several months. In spite of the many difficulties of a global pandemic, thoughts of 2020 make my heart keen because undoubtedly it was the last time all my children will ever be home for more than a short visit.
The next best thing, year after year, has been Thanksgiving.
For more than a decade, we spent it with family in northern Michigan where my stepmom, my partner and I did all the cooking. I appreciated that not all college students eagerly went home for the holidays — some of my sons’ friends spent the holiday with us.
This year, Hugo, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he’s a manager at a performing arts center not unlike Cleveland’s Playhouse Square, could not get out of work to come home. Thanksgiving also fell on Hugo’s 27th birthday. “What if we all come to you?” I asked him.
Hugo and I work side by side in the kitchen for a day and a half to prepare a Thanksgiving spread made with many family recipes. When we weren’t cooking, we watched old movies, went on long walks and played euchre with the others, including Claude who flew in from Washington, D.C., and stayed for a week.
My two eldest sons are still enviably close, which has more to do with luck than anything I ever did. That they were born into the same family as their best friend is a relationship few are fortunate to experience.
This coming summer Hugo will marry his phenomenal girlfriend, Claudia. Yep, that’s her name. And I’m sure at the wedding I’ll once again want to stop time so as to savor the joy.
Long ago I realized that an important part of a parent’s role is the making of a child’s memories — both those that are fond and others that are instructional. I realize now that in so doing I have also created a book’s worth of invaluable remembrances for myself.
And no matter how endearing any current moment, I’ve come to trust that the next phase will further expand my heart.
This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, December 3, 2023.
Whoopsie Piggle 