Every year since our sons were very young, our family has come to Florida for a week of visits with the grandparents and a welcome respite from the back side of winter.<\/p>\n
Yesterday morning, we stepped out our back door at 4:30 am, into a torrent of freezing rain, gusting wind, slush.\u00a0 In darkness, eyes still sleep-sandy, we made our way along the empty, icy roads to the airport — bright lights, security lines, hot Starbucks coffee.<\/p>\n
As always, the contrasts of the day astonished me.\u00a0 It is surreal, to wake up in one familiar place and go to sleep hours later in another.\u00a0 My parents\u2019 airy, modern home\u00a0 on a densely populated saltwater canal couldn\u2019t be more different than our own rustic wooden house in New Hampshire.\u00a0 In the course of one day we exchange dirty snow and still-bare trees for lush green lawn, bougainvillea, and rustling palms; fleeces and boots and gloves for shorts and sunglasses and bare feet.\u00a0 Drum fish commence their percussive mating call in the water beyond the open bedroom windows, the temperature is a mild sixty-eight degrees, the kitchen fruit bowl overflows with strawberries, avocados, cantaloupe.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t much to do here — no beach nearby, no cool sights to see or touristy events to attend.\u00a0 When the boys were little we would treat them to a Little Rascals video, go out for a pancake breaksfast, set up coloring books outdoors, play games of Clue.\u00a0 A trip to the Dairy Queen or a round of miniature golf might be the focus of the day.\u00a0 Yet, year after year, we\u2019ve come back, to do pretty much the same things we did the year before — spending a few days with Steve\u2019s parents three hours north of my folks, visiting my aunt and uncle, relaxing with my mom.\u00a0 Meanwhile, our sons grew up.\u00a0 Over time, Netflix movies replaced the Little Rascals, video games edged out board games (though Scrabble and Bananagrams have brought us back together around the table), laptops have taken the place of coloring books and crayons. Pancakes and Dairy Queen are still part of the agenda, though they don\u2019t elicit the excitement they once did.<\/p>\n
Waking up this morning on the fold-out couch in the den, to the smell of fresh coffee and the low coo of mourning doves,\u00a0 I was overcome with a sense of the long, slow passage of time.\u00a0 How much has changed in our lives, even as this one annual ritual has held.\u00a0 The privilege of being both mother and daughter in this house will come to an end, I know.\u00a0 The day will arrive when our boys will no longer choose a visit to grandma as a spring-break destination. \u00a0My parents, in their seventies, cannot be our hosts forever. There are plenty more changes in store.<\/p>\n
And so I am grateful for every morning that we find ourselves here, in any family combination, waking to birdsong and the sound of my mom making coffee in the kitchen.\u00a0 In recent years, Steve\u2019s father has passed away, and his mother has declined into the advanced stages of Alzheimer\u2019s.\u00a0 My aunt, sick for several years, passed in December.\u00a0 Our sons, at different schools, have different vacation schedules now, without even a single day of overlap.\u00a0 The family vacation of old has been transformed this year into a new, staggered arrangement of comings and goings.\u00a0 Everyone will get here, but not at the same time.\u00a0 This week, Jack is with us.\u00a0 Henry will arrive for his own spring break soon after his dad and brother head back north.\u00a0 For a few days in between boys’ visits,\u00a0 my mom and I will be all alone together — rarely possible when my two sons were both at home, but a special perk of this new life chapter.<\/p>\n
Slowly, I\u2019m learning to accept — no, appreciate<\/em> — the possibilities of our new reality.\u00a0 Needed less by my own children these days, I am free to create new, closer relationships with my parents.\u00a0 At seventeen, the age my son Jack is now, I considered an evening spent home alone with my mom and dad as some kind of social failure on my part.\u00a0 Now, at fifty-one, it is a rare treat.<\/p>\n Last summer, my feelings were often bruised by the sight of my son pacing the house, cell phone pressed to his ear, trying to make a plan, any plan, that would get him out of the house for the night.\u00a0 What I should have remembered, of course, is that life is transformation.\u00a0 The present moment is always in the process of becoming something else, just as our children are always growing and changing, becoming fuller expressions of themselves.\u00a0 They flee our presence as if pre-programmed to do so, and then they return, in time, by their own volition.\u00a0 Tonight, the old cribbage board has been taken out of the closet.\u00a0 As I sit here typing, Jack and Steve are side by side on the couch, shuffling cards, laughing, relaxed, talking in their own peculiar shorthand.\u00a0 We are three generations here under one roof, not quite a complete family, but content with one another\u2019s company.\u00a0 Sort of like old times, but different.<\/p>\n Every year since our sons were very young, our family has come to Florida for a week of visits with the grandparents and a welcome respite from the back side of winter. Yesterday morning, we stepped out our back door at 4:30 am, into a torrent of freezing rain, gusting wind, slush.\u00a0 In darkness, eyes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,27,33,35,39,8,9,10,14],"tags":[175,294,324,387],"class_list":{"0":"post-189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-acceptance","8":"category-change","9":"category-family-life","10":"category-impermanence-soul-work","11":"category-letting-go","12":"category-midlife","13":"category-parenting","14":"category-parenting-boys-parenting","15":"category-parenting-teens","16":"category-soul-work","17":"tag-family-life-2","18":"tag-midlife-2","19":"tag-parenting-2","20":"tag-sons","21":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}