feeeeeeelings

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Party Like It’s 2020

Well, all my carefully calibrated Thanksgiving plans have evaporated – poof! Everyone is fine and feeling well so far, but I think we all understand that when an uninvited guest like Covid shows up to the party, most people will opt out of the festivities. 

This is life. Things happen. We are so lucky that it was a mild case of Covid and not something so much worse or more devastating. So very lucky. 

Nonetheless, I’m feeling…

  • Disappointed. It’s always nice to see family, especially when it’s been a while. (That came out snarkier than I intended, but I’m leaving it because it’s true.) I haven’t seen my niece in far too long, and I wanted to squeeze her and marvel at how much taller and more brilliant she’s become since I last saw her. And I had managed to orchestrate the exact houseguest experience that I preferred: everyone in my house, while we were ALL on a break, for a fixed and doable amount of time. None of those things is happening now. Carla is bereft. She was SO excited to see her cousin. And now: nothing.
  • Cranky. Now my least favorite type of houseguest experience is going to happen. My MIL has a doctor’s appointment the week after Thanksgiving, and instead of staying in a hotel as planned (after staying with us for Thanksgiving for six days), she and my FIL will now be staying at our house. Which is fine in the sense that we DO want to see them both, and spend time with them. But is less fine in the sense that now they will be staying at our house when Carla is in school and my husband is at work and I have all the normal challenges of keeping our workweek schedule running smoothly on top of hosting houseguests. (Who wants to throw me your best Using Up Thanksgiving Leftovers recipes I can try out on my in-laws next week please?)
  • Relieved. All of the pressure of hosting has been postponed by a week. 
  • Deflated. The most prevalent feeling is one of deflation – of all that anxiety and energy being stored up for weeks of planning and then having none of the fanfare of the fun part of hosting: showing people around the house, gathering for a big meal, playing games as a family. Add to that the fact that I have to gear myself up again, a week from now, to host – when I haven’t planned for THAT at all… and I’m reeling a little. 

I am hopeful that Whole Foods will allow us to dramatically downsize our turkey. I am hopeful that they will allow me to not bring home the two enormous veggie sides I already paid for, and that they will refund me. (And, if that’s not possible, I plan to make some Szechuan green beans out of the leftovers.) I am grateful that my little family of three will have time to ourselves. I am grateful it wasn’t something more serious that’s keeping us apart, and that there will be (God willing) opportunities to get together again. 

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To the Buyers of Our House

Welcome to this house, this lovely wonderful house that still feels like mine even though it is yours. Even though the rooms are now empty of everything but paint, as though I have traveled back in time twelve years to when my husband and I were just beginning the life we build in this space, imagining the years ahead with no idea what they would hold. (They held so much joy.)

I wanted to share with you a few things about this house, things that are too wordy or too silly to share through the mediator that is our realtor. Things that probably don’t need to be said – you will either find them out on your own, or they won’t matter to you one iota. But things I want to say. 

I’m sorry for all the things that are wrong – it’s an old house, and it has creaks and cracks. The windows are draftier than I’d like, and I wish I’d replaced them five years ago, for you and for us. We tried our best to keep this house in good condition, and we tried to fix the things that we would want to be fixed before we moved our family into a new house. It’s amazing how you live with something for so long and it becomes invisible, or just a thing you accept as you accept the bad with the good in anything you love, like how your spouse snores when he has a cold but refuses to take cold medicine or how your best friend gets so maudlin and depressive when she watches a specific movie but still insists on watching that movie once a month at least. These little flaws are so glaringly huge now that we are turning this house over to you, and I hope they seem less huge to you, or that they disappear quickly beneath all the good this place has to offer.

Our refrigerator, as you know from the disclosures we posted, is “functional but quirky.” It probably needs to be replaced, but I couldn’t bear buying a new fridge when this one does the essentials of what a person needs a fridge to do. It holds a lot of food and it keeps things cold and it looks very lovely in the kitchen. But it is a little quite needy. I don’t envy you the mornings you’ll find the meat drawer adhered to the bottom of the fridge with ice and have to remove large chunks with a butter knife and your hands. Will I miss the little musical chortles, as the fridge asserts its presence in the household? I don’t know. 

The back door sticks a little, when it’s humid.

The oven is quite slow to heat. Everything will take longer to cook than you think it will. Especially the Thanksgiving turkey. (ESPECIALLY THE TURKEY.)

The carpets are old. They were old when we moved in. We tried to take care of them, but – as you’ll note from a few bright pink splotches that no amount of scrubbing can remove – we wanted to wait to replace them until our child was old enough not to ruin new carpet, and we have not yet reached that age. Perhaps these carpets will last until your kids are that age. (Do kids reach that age? One can hope.)

These may seem like a lot of problems, but for me – and I hope, soon, for you – they are outweighed by the joy this house has brought us. 

Can you hear the echoes of laughter and singing? There have been so much of both these past dozen years.

I love the big sliding glass doors in the living room, through which you and your children can watch this little pocket of nature. I’ve always marveled that so many creatures amble through the yard in our urban-edge-of-suburban neighborhood. We’ve seen opossums and raccoons, skunks and groundhogs, innumerable deer and squirrels and rabbits. There’s a chipmunk who likes to come sit on the step and contemplate the world. A red-tailed hawk that will alight on the top of the swing set and contemplate the chipmunk and its many options for dinner. Cats will wander through, sometimes yowling for some action. Very occasionally, the neighbor’s dog will escape through the hedges into this yard – a sighting which always filled my child with delight. My daughter and I spent the bulk of her first three months in front of these windows, looking outside at the grass and trees and sky, naming all the wonderful things in the world, watching squirrels tumble around in the grass and regard one another from gravity-defying positions on the trunk of the enormous backyard oak.

The primary bedroom in this house is enormous. Believe me – after looking at dozens of houses, all much bigger than this one, there are few primary bedrooms that rival it in size. The closet is vast. The ceilings soar and it had ample room for our king bed, a dresser, a couch and two armchairs. It was big enough for our whole family to gather in on lazy weekend mornings. Even among all the furniture, it can comfortably sleep a small child (or two, I assume) who won’t return to her room after a nightmare. 

I will miss the light coming in through the bedroom’s east window. The way the glow suffuses the dormer first, while the rest of the room remains drowsy and dim.

You will, I’m sure, want to choose your own paint colors. But in case you like the ones we picked and painted ourselves – my husband up on a ladder, carefully filling in the walls up to the peaks of the ceilings – there are cans of paint in the basement. My daughter’s room is painted in February Frost, the softest shade of lilac. How carefully we chose that color, how deliberately we picked the furnishings and artwork for her room. The dormer is the perfect size for an armchair and a lamp, for reading Goodnight Moon and I Am a Bunny and all the exploits of Curious George. When your kids inevitably, too-speedily get older, as mine has, that space is the perfect size for a desk and chair, for schoolwork and coloring and LEGO building and playing with dolls. 

The back deck gets impossibly hot in the afternoons – the sun shines directly on it. But the yard itself, with its abundance of trees, is cool in the shade. The hedges and trees make it feel like a private oasis. I hope you fill the yard, as we have, with shrieks of joy from running under the sprinklers, with iridescent bubbles and bursting water balloons, with the thwack of a badminton racket hitting the shuttlecock, with songs sung while swinging, with astonishment and awe as fireflies pinprick the dark with their bright signals. 

The basement walls are red, yellow, and blue – a bold choice, I know. (And not ours.) But they grow on you. The basement itself doesn’t feel like a basement. It’s not damp or dark or creepy. It’s hosted many hours of imaginative play, overseen the conception of thousands of artworks, housed so much laughter. 

In the autumn, the tree in the southwest corner of the yard bursts into the most brilliant yellow. You can see the leaves, even now, beginning to transform. I won’t get to see its exuberant celebration of fall this year. But you will, and I hope it fills you with happiness each day until the leaves fall. 

The driveway and the sidewalks out front are perfect for chalk. Rainbows and body tracings and elaborate games of hopscotch. 

The ice cream shop is just the right distance away for a leisurely summer stroll. As you walk, you’ll pass through the school parking lot – that’s where my daughter learned how to ride her bike; maybe your kids will learn to ride their bikes there too. We spent so many hours there, circling and circling the lot. The sports field is great for running and cartwheels and games of catch. 

Keep an eye out when you drive past the school. People don’t always stop at the stop sign, even though they should.

Make sure you buy a lot (no, a LOT) of candy. Our little cul-de-sac gets a ton of trick-or-treaters. Hordes of them, surging around the block in waves. And it’s such a safe, limited trick-or-treating path for your own little ones. All the neighbors held back special treats for my daughter and she felt emboldened to go up to their stoops by herself to ask for candy.

When it snows – and it will – know that the neighbors don’t bother shoveling the sidewalks. It’s not ideal for dog walking, or accessibility, but on the plus side, there are massive hills of plowed snow for climbing and sliding down. The front yard is perfect for making angels and snow sculptures. 

I know we mentioned this briefly in the list of things we love about living here, but our neighbors are truly one of a kind. Don’t think that they are intrusive or nosy – in fact, they are very good at keeping to themselves. I prefer to think of them as aware. Many of them have known each other for decades, have raised their children together. I think they want to be involved, but won’t push. It took me many years and one effusive, extroverted child to do more than smile and wave in passing. But now these kind, generous, lovely people number among my friends. S texts me long missives about her life and is interested in the minute details of mine. F has the kindest, gentlest manner, lets my daughter walk her dog, and notifies her when tadpoles have arrived in her backyard pond; she’s offered her recycling bin if we need it, her house when our power has gone out, her car when we were filling ours over and over with boxes. L is an expert gardener who shares her fresh grown tomatoes with my daughter, who taught her to love green beans and broccoli, who lets her pet and brush and pamper her dog, who always has a gentle smile and a kind word to share. R and his wife bought Girl Scout cookies every year and offered to give Carla rides to school any time we needed it. T attended my child’s school events in the absence of a grandparent, took me out for breakfast, brings us homemade cookies, runs the neighborhood block party and is irreverent and sincere in equal parts. G and C gave me baby gifts when I was pregnant and suggested babysitters when my daughter was small and C threw her arms around me when she learned we were leaving. Everyone – everyone – knows my daughter by name, keeps an eye out for her as she rides her bike, lets her join in on family games of cornhole in the front yard, welcomes her affection for their dogs (or cats). They are your neighbors now and I hope you build the same kind of relationships with them. 

We planned our family here. We brought our baby home to this house. In this space, we’ve watched her grow and flourish. We have been so happy here. We hope the same will be true for you.

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Times I Cried Watching A League of Their Own

Carla and I have been working our way through some of the family movies you suggested. So far, we’ve done Freaky Friday, in which I think Lindsay Lohan is excellent. Bend it Like Beckham which was more relationship-heavy than I remembered (and, dare I say, sort of boring?). Newsies, which has a banging soundtrack, and to which Carla said, “Why aren’t there any girl characters?” (She’s not wrong; by my count, there are four total women in the entire movie.) 

Most recently, we dove into A League of Their Own. I started crying pretty much right away. I don’t recall it being a tearjerker, do you? The tears welled up so often that I started making a list. (Um, mild spoilers if you have somehow not yet seen this absolute masterpiece of a movie.)

  • When Marla’s dad blamed her lack of femininity on himself, because he raised her alone after his wife died
  • When Marla left her dad, who was so supportive of her baseball prowess, but is now all alone
  • When Shirley Baker couldn’t find her name on the list, and then when another player figured out that Shirley couldn’t read and helped her find her name and they all cheered
  • When all the women were so excited to be chosen as members of the All American League
  • When Doris talked about how her boyfriend made her feel less-than because she can play ball
  • When Mae said “they ain’t closing me down”
  • When the Black woman threw a ball to one of the Peaches and nodded to the Peaches in a way that said, “Yes, I know I should be among you and it’s super shitty that I’m not simply because of the color of my skin.”
  • When the stands were full of cheering crowds
  • The first time the Peaches sing Evelyn’s song in the locker room 
  • When the telegram guy comes into the locker room with the telegram for Betty Spaghetti
  • When Dottie sobs with relief that the telegram wasn’t about Bob, and with worry for the potential that the next one might have his name on it
  • When Bob shows up at Dottie’s door and she can’t believe he’s there, in person, alive
  • When Dottie says “Can we just hold each other for the rest of our lives?”
  • When Jimmy gives Dottie the “baseball gets inside you” speech
  • The entire portion of the film devoted to the series when Dottie is up at bat against Kit, and Kit so fiercely wants to win and Dottie is so stoic and unflappable
  • When Dottie drops the ball and Kit’s team wins
  • When Dottie tells Kit the things she won’t miss from baseball and hugs Kit and tells her she loves her
  • When Old Dottie tells Old Marla she lost her husband just that winter
  • When Old Stillwell tells Old Dottie his mom died

I’m pretty teary these days. I always tend to get emotional around Carla’s birthday (although less so the past few years, which I thought was a good trend; maybe “turning ten” feels like such a big deal, it’s bringing up extra stuff?). I cannot believe she’s hitting double digits. I cannot believe I’ve known her for a full decade. I cannot believe she is about to head into her final year of elementary school. She brings me so much joy and fills my life with so much light and love and energy and glitter – literal and metaphorical – and I just want time to slow down. 

Some people try to talk me out of these feelings. It’s good that Carla is growing up. It’s what she should be doing. It’s better than the alternative. And to those people I say: yes. You are right. I am so proud and overwhelmed by happiness that I get to watch this person grow and change and become ever more herself. It is a precious gift and one that I do not take for granted. 

And yet I am unabashedly sentimental about Carla of yesterday. I want to feel unborn Carla kick against my hand pressed to my stomach. I want to cradle fresh-baked-loaf-of-bread Carla in my arms and watch her head loll, milk-drunk, against my shoulder. I want to trail toddler Carla down the sidewalk, stopping as she points out every acorn, every leaf, every ant with wonderment and glee infusing her squeaky toddler voice. I want to watch kindergarten Carla spin in her twirly skirt and second grade Carla slide down a snow-covered slide and fourth grade Carla play her guitar. I want all of these things at once, just as much as I want to see what middle school and high school and college and parent Carla will be like. I can hold both of those things – the joy and nostalgia, the excitement for what is yet to come and the grief for what no longer is – in my heart and I can give myself space to feel it all.

We also watched A League of Their Own on the day we put in an offer on a new house. I could feel it, that this was OUR new house. It has everything we could want – a mudroom! a crafting space! room for so many books! – and more. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood, with kids Carla’s age in houses on either side of the house and across the street (the one thing our wonderful current neighborhood lacks is kids her age). It has walking trails and ponds and a playground. And there are so many dogs, you guys. So many dogs. It’s pretty close to perfect, and we put in a competitive offer, and I had a good feeling we would get it, but then we had to wait. Watching A League of Their Own was as much a way to distract myself as it was exposing Carla to the great films of my youth. So I’m sure at least some of the crying was less about the characters’ situation and more about the opposing forces of wanting something so much while also being deeply afraid of letting go of the wonderful thing I already have. 

Because when we say hello to a new house – a house we want, and love – we have to say goodbye to the wonderful house we live in now.

It’s just a house. But. This house is so inextricably tied up with Carla. With Carla and the rapid passage of time. 

My husband and I decided, here, in this house, that we wanted a baby. I walked from my bathroom down the hall to my husband’s home office and announced I was pregnant. We painted our baby’s room the perfect shade of pale purple and carefully chose art for her walls. We brought baby Carla home to this house. I slept on the floor in front of her crib countless times. I sat with her on the carpet in the living room, pointing out the sliding glass doors to the wonderful goings on in the yard: the squirrels and bunnies frolicking in the grass, the sun moving over the lawn and peeking through the hedges, the leaves of the oak tree shifting overhead. She learned how to walk here, how to ride a bike, how to swing and blow bubbles and do multiplication. This home was our refuge during the lockdown of 2020. It’s housed ten thousand make-believe games, a hundred thousand art projects, countless hours of singing. How can I leave this house when it’s so full of Carla? So full of versions of Carla that exist only in memory and the molecules of these walls?

Letting go – even when it is a good thing, even when it is the way things should be – is so hard for me. Maybe it is hard for you, too. If not, I envy your ability to leap across the gap to the next thing, confident that you will find footing on the other side. 

As always with anything: Things could change, things could fall apart. As it stands now, we close on our new house in July and will likely move in August or September. This will be Carla’s last birthday in this house, the house she’s lived in her entire life. I am so excited. I am so sad. I hold both of these feelings at once in my heart.