The Po Show

Goodbye, Belmont, Massachussetts

Today is Matthew's last day of school. I think I'm way sadder than he is, not surprisingly. I gave his teacher a hug yesterday as I picked him up, since I won't see her today. She was so wonderful. Now she's off to Vietnam for two years! Should be interesting for a young woman from the Midwest :).

I spent a lot of time this year complaining, and now I'm sad it's over. Yeah, my job was crappy, there were a lot of problems with getting Matthew acclimated to his school, with getting Tessa acclimated to daycare. But I love the house we live in, even if it's not ours; I LOVE this area. I love Boston, which is close enough to access the museums and beautiful neighborhoods, but far enough away that we avoid the horrific traffic.

I spent way too much time this year just getting by. I wish I had enjoyed it more while it was happening. The kids spent way too much time sitting around the house watching TV, especially in the winter, which I guess was unavoidable. I'm going to make MUCH more of an effort in the coming year, at Matthew's new school and in our neighborhood, getting to know people. I feel slightly more mentally healthy, slightly less socially phobic. I'm still a mess, but I'm going to try harder. I owe it to the kids, both Matthew who needs a catalyst for developing friendships, and Tessa, who is a social butterfly.

Packing continues apace, with more to be done. It's that tricky time of wanting to get everything in boxes, but having a few days left when things are needed for general use. After the initial push of packing, I feel sluggish, uncertain about what to pack next. I'm just sad, sad to be leaving. And of course my period has come four days early, no doubt brought on by the stress! Ugh, hormonal surge, last minute packing, and my last days at work.

Thursday is my last day, Tessa's last day at daycare, and the movers come. When she and I come home in the evening, all our stuff will be gone (other than the stuff that we're bringing with us to CA). I think she's going to have a hard time with it. I know I am. Then on Friday we'll clean the house and drive away, to spend the weekend in NY before leaving on Tuesday for CA. I feel badly that Tessa's third birthday will fall in the middle of this weird transitory period, on Sunday. My baby's third birthday, overshadowed by this move (Ross' 38th birthday will be on Saturday, but he doesn't care that it's overshadowed :)). She spent her third year here; it's the only home she remembers. And now it's no longer her home.

I'll be fine, consumed with business as everything comes down to the wire, but I'm taking a little break and letting myself be maudlin. Goodbye, Belmont, MA. You were a good place to spend 10 and a half months.

Boxes

We spent a lot of time over the weekend packing. I hate how you spend hours packing, and fill many large boxes full of stuff, and then you look around and it looks like you haven't done a damn thing.

Being masochistic, we started with the three most scary rooms: the kitchen and the kids' bedrooms. Packing and unpacking the kitchen is always so difficult. There are all the cabinets, secreting away the millions of items from everyday sight. Then when you start taking things out of the cabinets and putting them into boxes, it's like some Saturday Night Live skit in which a character is pulling things out of a cabinet and another character, as a joke, is putting things back into the cabinet from the other side. Plus so much kitchen crap has to be wrapped first. Plus I couldn't just empty out cabinets; I had to selectively take and leave things, since we do have to use some stuff in the next week and a half.

Tessa's room was a pain, with all the toys and clothes (plus, she does need some stuff to play with and wear), but it wasn't too awful. I made a lot of executive decisions about what was staying and what was getting thrown out. That is the one good thing about moving. You're given an opportunity to purge, and otherwise you'd drown in Happy Meal toys.

Matthew's room, on the other hand, was much harder. He needed to be an active participant in decision-making on whether things were kept, donated, or thrown away. It was a long process, especially when he continually paused to play with the toys he was pulling out of his toybox. He kept getting tired, and wanting to quit or take yet another break, and I kept having to say "Okay, your choice is that you decide what you keep and what you get rid of, or I decide what you keep and what you get rid of. And you can't get upset if I get rid of something that you wanted to keep." Given that choice, he kept wanting to participate.

So we have all these boxes, full of our stuff. Some of it is old stuff, some of it is new. Some of it predates our parenthood, some predates Tessa, some of it even predates our couplehood (very little of that, considering Ross and I have been a couple for 18 + years!). And there is still a TON of stuff yet to be put into boxes. It just sits around the house, like it has for almost a year now, like we're not going anywhere. This house went from unfamiliar to familiar, and now we're about to leave forever.

I have such a hard time with the finality of moving, that all of your stuff gets cleared out from the places it has sat. The memories are portable, but they lose focus as they lose the site of their original occurrence. The place that you live forms a palette for your life; the things that happen need a place to happen. I'll miss the place in which this year happened.

"The Three Friends"

Matthew had a fabulous week last week. All week he was in the best mood, happy, chatty. His teacher commented on it, the afterschool coordinator commented on it.

He had, on the spur of the moment, decided to put together a puppet show at afterschool care (called KED, kindergarten extended day). He enlisted the help of first one little girl, then two others, then a whole group of kids who all wanted to participate. He organized participants, he assigned tasks, he came up with a story line (the puppet show was called "The Three Friends"). There were sign up sheets and props and backgrounds. It turned into a three part, three day event! At first Matthew thought that he would charge everyone who wanted to take part, but then he decided that they could participate for free.

The first part was last Wednesday. Matthew handed out puppets, assigned roles, served cups of water to the audience, and then narrated the puppet show. It was a resounding success, so they decided to have another the next day. Even more kids wanted to be a part of the show. Matthew was giddy with how well it went. He said he wished he could go to KED the next day or on Monday so they could do the final, and best, installment of the show.

This was astonishing to hear, that he wished he could go to KED on additional days. Many of you will remember how difficult it was for him earlier in the year (even as recently as February), how we were asked to more than one conference, how they wanted us to hire an aide to shadow him in the room because he was so disruptive and was hurting other kids. We had wanted to transition him into afternoon care, but they told us "they wouldn't recommend it." I was afraid they were going to kick him out all together. We rearranged our schedules so that he only had to go to KED three days a week. I hated that he was so unhappy there, that it was so hard for him.

And here he was, not just taking part in activities but actually organizing them, talking about his friends, being so excited and happy. Coupled with the wonderful team meeting yesterday, I'm just amazed at how much progress he's made this year. It's unbelievable.

Of course I feel a terrible sense of guilt (you knew this couldn't be all positive, right? :p) that we're taking him away from all these kids he's finally comfortable with and throwing him yet again into a new environment and a new set of transitions. He's worked so hard, and suffered so much, and now he's not getting to enjoy the payoff for very long.

Yesterday was the final act of "The Three Friends," and Matthew said it was great. Everyone had a fun time. Especially Matthew.

The Toughest

Yeah, I thought it was Peter Tosh, too. No, it's Tessa, my going-to-be-three years old this month baby girl (!!!).

We're just constantly amazed by how tough she is. Though she also whines and clings to me constantly, wanting to be held and carried, she shows startling fortitude.

The latest case in point was on Monday, when we were driving back home after having walked around the South End of Boston. The kids were both really hungry and wanted lunch. Ross asked me what I wanted, and I couldn't bear the thought of fast food, which is what I knew the kids wanted. I wanted pho, Vietnamese noodles. Tessa will eat noodles, but Matthew won't touch them anymore (he loved them up to the age of four, go figure). So when we drove by a Burger King, we swung back around the block (no easy feat in Boston!) to pick up the kids' lunch before going to the pho place.

We went through the drive through and I set up the kids' chicken tenders and fries in their bags so they could eat them while we drove. Matthew happily started in on his food, but Tessa started to protest.

"I want to eat INSIDE,!" she cried, pointing as we drove away from the building. I explained that we went through the drive through because we were going to the noodle place. I reached in her bag and offered her a chicken tender. She pushed it away.

"NO, I want to eat in THERE!"

I offered her some fries. She pushed them away. I pulled out her TOY and started to open it. She yanked it out of my hand and shoved it back into the bag, then clutched the bag to her chest.

"Do you want a drink of lemonade?," I asked. She had just been complaining about being thirsty and wanting a drink. She took the cup from me and set it on her lap, holding tightly onto the top. I tried to take it back, thinking it might spill.

"NO, give it back to me! PLEASE give it back to me!!," she cried. I gave it back and she held it tightly to her side.

So there she rode, with her Kids Meal bag clutched to her chest and her drink clutched against her side. She was starving and thirsty, but she had decided that she wanted to eat indoors, so she waited until we got to the place where she could do so. Meanwhile Matthew munched fries and onion rings and chicken tenders and drank his Sprite, but Tessa sat stonily right next to him and waited.

That girl is The Toughest.

Memorial Day Weekend

Busy, busy, busy. On Saturday we went to the nearest outlet mall, where I spent lots of time TRYING to shop while my children kvetched and whined. And in Tessa's case, laid on the floor, getting in people's way. Ross did get two Brooks Brothers suits for a really good price (since he's going to be a corporate schmo soon), and I got a couple pairs of badly needed shorts. And I got a kickass pair of Wichita Birkenstocks for 50 bucks! I've always wanted some, the ones that look like nice black leather shoes, but they're normally like $150.

On Sunday we drove out to the North Shore and had seafood at this really famous place (can't have lived in MA all this time and not had famous fried lobster and clams) and then went to the beach. It was beautiful, with brilliantly clear water and nice sand beaches. The water was FREEZING though, and the kids kept trying to get me to wade out with them. What they neglected to consider first was that when you go out into water, your clothes will get wet (it wasn't really bathing suit weather yet) and despite my constant reminders of this fact, they both got their shorts wet. Tessa wanted to strip on the beach, which I wouldn't let her do, and Matthew complained bitterly about sand in his shorts rubbing his skin.

On Monday we walked around Boston a bit, though Tessa either wanted to be carried (all 34 pounds of her!) or climbed every railing in sight, which made for slow progress. Matthew complained about being hungry the whole time (never thought I'd see the day where he'd complain about being hungry!).

Last night, as we folded laundry, I said to Ross, "It was such a nice weekend!" I said it without irony; I really meant that it had been so nice that we were all together and had gone out and done different things everyday. Then I laughed, because I'd spent the whole weekend in various stages of aggravation, listening to the kids bitch and bitching back at them myself. Sort of like childbirth, where you forget the bad parts and glow about the overall experience.

Memorial Day is always kind of hard for me, because my dad's birthday was May 30, so it was always around Memorial Day. In my family, we always went to the cemetery on MD, to visit all our dead relatives. When I was a child, it was all distant aunts and uncles of my mother, whom I'd never known. It's much more poignant to think about my dad, and my grandparents, and my aunts and uncles, who are all gone now. I take a virtual trip to the cemetery in my own mind, and say hi to all the gravemarkers, and think about the ones who used to be a part of my life but who are only aging memories now.

It makes me appreciate the real time, the now time, the time with the family I have now.