My Real Life

A big storm was brewing for this weekend.

At one point, they were predicting 10-13 inches.

My original plan, this weekend, was to be in the city with Kim, Erin, and Michaela, celebrating my birthday at Sleep No More NYC.

Then the weather reports started rolling in and those of us who lived outside of the city started getting nervous. If they shut down mass transit, would be we able to get home? Would we have to pull over and sleep in our car on the way from the train stations home?

For people that needed to be home on Sunday night, it just was a little risky given the forecast.

So, we sold the tickets and cancelled our plans.

Not happily, but things happen.

So, I shifted my brain and started looking forward to a weekend snuggled in with Monkey Girl, Baby Monkey and Tiny, as Real Man and Monkey in the Middle were going to be out of town for a hockey tournament.

Snowed in with most of my babies, board games, fire in the fireplace, books, movies.

Okay, yes. I was starting to look forward to this.

So, Saturday rolled around and I went to work for a few hours, with the stage crew for our school musical. When we finished, Baby Monkey and I went to the store to pick up Smartfood.

You know, the cheesy popcorn?

It’s what he decided he wanted to have in the house to ride out the storm.

No problem, little guy. Smartfood we can do.

When we got to the store, we headed immediately to the popcorn aisle. But, when we got there, Baby Monkey decided that he was more in the mood for microwave popcorn, Extra Butter flavor.

I wasn’t quite as on board with that, but, eh, it’s a storm. Why not?

So, we grab that.

Then Baby Monkey says “Actually, can we also get some more grapes?”

If the kids ask for fruits or vegetables, it’s an automatic yes, so we moved to the produce aisle.

He grabbed the grapes, and then as we walked, I saw a container of snap peas.

I love snap peas.

Baby Monkey is allergic, but man do I love them.

So, I grabbed those, too.

Suddenly, I remembered we needed batteries, and the batteries were all the way across the store, so Baby Monkey and I started to make our way there.

And on the way, we passed the cookie aisle.

I keep seeing ads for the new “Oreo: The Most Stuf” and have been wanting to try them out.

They didn’t have those, but they did have Double Stuf, so I picked up a package of those, too.

By now, Baby Monkey and I had too much to carry and I wasn’t sure where we would find the batteries, so I sent him to the parking lot to get a cart.

And I kept walking.

And, oh, there was some hot apple cider in K-cups!

See, my vision of us all snuggled in front of the fire included a lot of food and hot beverages.

Despite my Danish roots, there’s an Italian grandmother in me somewhere, and I show love by trying to feed people.

I grabbed the K-cups, and then saw the Spaghettios.

Yeah, we need those for a snowstorm.

Ooh, and soup. We needed soup. Definitely soup.

And look what’s next to the soup!

It’s the crackers! Triscuits. Soup and Triscuits for a storm. Yes.

Oh, and you know what’s so good after playing the snow?

Peanut butter and jelly on toast.

But, I couldn’t remember if we had enough peanut butter or jelly in the house.

Or bread, for that matter.

Luckily, at this point, Baby Monkey had come back with a cart, which was a good thing because I couldn’t carry another thing.

Or, maybe it wasn’t a good thing.

Because I then laid eyes on the Pepperoni Pizza rolls.

Oh, how I love thee Totino’s Pizza Rolls.

To make a long story short, I checked out 30 minutes and $145 later.

I always roll my eyes at people who go crazy at the whisper of snow.

The Facebook memes of empty shelves before an impending storm make me laugh out loud.

Yet, I fell prey to the madness more easily than I would have imagined.

Now, I wasn’t panicking, thinking we’d starve without bread, milk and eggs.

But I certainly went overboard in the anticipation.

This post may seem like a contrast to my minimalism post, but, I know that everything I bought will be eaten.

Maybe not this weekend, but mark my words, it will be eaten.

Just don’t be surprised if Tiny winds up taking a frozen burrito to school for a snack next week.

Okay, this post isn’t actually about Genesis, or this amazing song, but once I came up with the title, the song popped into my head and I couldn’t shake it.

And now you can’t either.

You’re welcome.

A result of my Netflix addiction is that I recently binge-watched Marie Kondo’s “Tidying Up” and then watched the documentary “Minimalism.”

I’ve always been a purger of things.

I dabbled with professional organizing and was just about to get certified when I had baby number 3.

Number four?

At this point, who knows, but it didn’t work out.

My favorite show on TLC was always “Clean Sweep” and then “Clean House” which was on the Style network.

I love organizing.

Now, I’m way better at organizing other people’s things than my own, but I keep my stuff in order.

Having four kids in the house does not really make it easy to keep this place neat and tidy, and I’m okay with that.

I don’t want to have a room in my house where no one is allowed to live.

But I also don’t want clutter.

So, I’m the purger and organizer in my family, even though it makes me bananas, sometimes.

As I watched “Tidying Up,” I emptied my nightstand and cleared it off. Tossed the junk, put things that didn’t belong there where they actually belonged, and then put it back together neatly and cleanly.

The next weekend, I went to Monkey Girl’s room.

She’s been talking about wanting to do a pre-college purge so that when she is leaving for college she doesn’t have to go through years’ worth of belongings to decide what to bring.

So, I brought a grocery bag to her room and said “Let’s toss 25 things.”

I figured, a little at a time and we could get it done.

Five hours later, we had filled three large, lawn-sized trash bags with old notebooks, stained and ripped clothes, wrappers, and all kinds of other things that had accumulated for the past few years.

We also had two large, lawn-sized trash bags full of clothes that we immediately put in a car and dropped at a donation bin.

It’s been awhile since we went through her stuff.

Now her room is neat, clean, organized, and even she said that she just feels like it’s easier to do everything because she doesn’t have to hunt for anything anymore.

Then, last weekend, I watched Minimalism.

I found it to be more about consumerism than minimalism, but it really spoke to me.

I have always said that I would love to live in a tiny house.

I could use the library for my books, my phone for my music, my computer for my writing.

I’d be set.

I truly don’t need stuff.

But I do have stuff.

Because I live in a house with five other people and in this house, there is space, and people seem to always need to fill space.

I’d be so fine with some unfilled space.

One of my favorite pictures in the world is this one:

It’s a picture of Monkey Girl and Tiny, a few months after we moved into this house.

We had quite a few rooms that were empty because our other houses didn’t have the rooms that this one has.

So, this was what was to become our dining room.

It’s my favorite picture because of the people in it, obviously, and the moment that I captured without either of them knowing.

But that room is now full.

It has a dining room table that seats 8, a china cabinet and a sideboard.

You can’t move around in that room.

And it’s functional and we use it frequently and I’m not saying that I wish we didn’t furnish it the way we did.

But look at that picture.

Think about the dreaming and thinking and twirling that could go on in that room.

There’s nothing to clean, nothing to break, nothing to have to deal with.

This year, I’m trying to have less.

Sounds weird to even write it.

But I have way more than I need, and this year I’m going to be paring down.

Except for my books. We aren’t discussing my books.

But everywhere else, things are going to go.

Because I don’t need it.

I have what I need and who I need and the rest can go to people who need it more than I do.

So, no, I’m not taking a cue from Phil and the gang and throwing it all away, but I am going to start to whittle away at the excess.

I’d rather spend my money on experiences and only bring in the things that will truly bring me joy.

Because if it doesn’t make me happy, why bring it here at all?

We have a saying in our house.

“Don’t yuck my yum.”

We use it when someone starts saying something nasty about something we like.

Kid 1: Ooh! I love X!

Kid 2: Ew! That’s so gross.

KId 1: Hey, you don’t have to like it, but don’t yuck my yum.

We didn’t make it up. One of us must have heard it somewhere. But, it works for us.

I mean, it’s no magic cure-all. There are still WWF quality wrestling matches, slammed doors, and “He won’t quit touching me!” at our house, but this phrase has helped my babies understand that you can not like something that someone else likes without trying to make the other person feel bad for liking it AND without saying anything bad about the other person.

And although “yum” is usually a word that is associated with food, it’s not a phrase that we use in only that way.

We use it for everything.

I think we need a little more “don’t yuck my yum” in the world.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

We. Don’t. All. Have. To. Like. The. Same. Things.

This applies to so very many things.

It applies to food.

Kale is the best thing that has ever been grown on this Earth. Kale is the most disgusting thing that has ever been grown on this earth.

It applies to books.

People were ready to go all Hunger Games on whether or not they enjoyed the Divergent series.

It applies to movies.

Geez. For awhile there, I thought Facebook was going to break with the people arguing over whether “Birdbox” was a good movie or total crap.

(I’m somewhere in the middle on that one.)

No, we don’t have to agree on everything.

But, the danger comes when we start to personalize the differences in preferences.

When the kid who brings kale in their lunchbox is told that he is disgusting instead of the food getting the insult.

When people who love the Divergent series are told they aren’t serious readers.

Last week, Kim Bongiorno, who writes the blog, Let Me Start By Saying, authored a post where she was comically contrasting her love of books, and her subsequent difficulty in parting with books, with Marie Kondo’s philosophy that you only need to own and keep a few books, total.

It was, as is everything Kim writes, humorous and on point. She made herself the butt of the joke, while not saying anything negative about Marie. It was her own inability to part with her books that was the punchline, and, wow, did I identify with what she said and it made me laugh.

Most people got the joke and played along.

But then the inability to understand Marie’s point of view of books as clutter reared its ugly head and commenters began to make ugly statements about Marie Kondo, herself.

Kim removed the post.

Yucking someone’s yum is everywhere.

And, of course, it applies to politics.

Because, these days, everything applies to politics.

I’m a History teacher, and in my class, we discuss current events every day.

Always have.

There are two schools of thought on discussing politics in a classroom.

One is, never tell the kids where you stand on the issues.

That’s not the school that I subscribe to.

I share my opinions with my students, yet, I tell them, up front, that anything I share isn’t with the goal of changing their minds.

I share my opinions with them so that they will share their opinions with me, and so when we disagree, I can model for them how to disagree with someone respectfully.

And they do it beautifully.

My classrooms are beautifully and radically diverse and we tackle the tough stuff.

I have students who are staunchly anti-immigration having conversations with students who have just arrived from another country, asking questions about their experiences and why they came here, as well as answering questions about why they feel a wall will solve some problems in this country.

I’ve heard students on both sides of every issue say things like “I never thought of it that way before.”

Because they hear me say it to them.

And while, at the end of the class, no one has changed their mind about anything, everyone has learned a little something that they hadn’t really considered before.

Sometimes the “why” someone feels a certain way about something is just as important as what they feel.

I’m not saying we need to be Kumbaya about everything.

We all have non-negotiables.

We all have things where we say “This is absolutely not okay with me, no matter what you have to say about it.”

And that’s okay, too.

But we never get anywhere when we put our hands over our ears and yell “Nah nah nah…I can’t hear you!” when what someone is saying makes us uncomfortable.

Listen to each other.

You don’t have to agree. You can even staunchly disagree.

But listen.

Because the more we refuse to listen, the more divided we become and the harder it will be for us to ever get to a place where we can find the small similarities between us and eventually find compromise.

I believe I have documented the fact that this family, well, this family minus Real Man, are big fans of Dr. Who.

We started watching the show a few years ago and we quickly binged every episode from it’s 2005 reboot with Christopher Ecclestone.

It’s quirky and humorous and touching and we have just always loved it.

Especially episodes with the Daleks.

Am I right?

We fell in love with Ecclestone’s doctor and were sure we would never enjoy the show the same way when he left and David Tennant showed up, but it turned out that we loved Tennant even more.

Then when Tennant left and Matt Smith arrived as the new doctor, we said there was no way he was going to be able to fill those shoes. And yet…

Matt Smith and Karen Gillian were the absolute best. The best.

When Matt Smith left and Peter Capaldi came in, we truly did not love the show as much as we had with the other doctors, but the storylines still captivated us and we remained true fans of the show, even if we weren’t huge fans of the new doctor, himself.

And then Peter Capaldi left and we had our first female doctor, Jodie Whittaker.

We weren’t sure how we were going to feel about Whittaker’s take on the doctor, but we were willing to give it a try, as we had been proven wrong before.

The week before the premiere, BBCAmerica had a Dr. Who marathon where they showed every episode of the David Tennant and Matt Smith years and we went through and recorded all of our favorites and spent hours reliving those moments.

It was a good week. The three big kids and I joined together in the living room to watch those episodes and remembered little phrases that we used to repeat to each other and small moments in episodes that we have talked about throughout the years.

And then we gathered to watch the premiere of the new season.

This season is a really new season, as the entire writing team changed.

And, this is a new season, might I add, that unveiled the first female doctor…EVER.

That’s a big deal.

People have an image of who the doctor is and what HE should be.

Except now HE is going to be a SHE and that excites me for little girls everywhere.

And then we watched the show.

Eh.

We are now six episodes in and I gotta tell ya…we still aren’t loving it.

I don’t think that there is necessarily an issue with Jodie Whittaker, herself.

She’s quite delightful.

I think it’s the storytelling.

It’s slower than we are used to. There’s not much action. They aren’t really traveling much.

And, if you are a Dr. Who fan, you know that one of the best parts of the show is the banter between the doctor and his/her companions.

It’s quick, it’s funny, it’s engaging.

And from this season of the show…

It’s lacking.

There’s no humor and the storylines are slow and serious and just not…getting it.

I almost didn’t write this post because I’m not into complaining and publicly bashing things and people.

But this isn’t a bash. It’s more of a “c’mon new writers…lighten up” request.

Because, you know, I’ve just got a ton of screenwriters who actually read this blog.

It’s hard when things change. When things you are used to morph into something new.
And it’s early, yet. It’s still possible that the show could hit it’s stride and suck us right back into our Dr. Who obsession.

But right now?

Not so much.

Yesterday, we had to say goodbye to Gramps, our hermit crab.

Gramps’ buddy, Shelly, lost his (or her…we were never really sure) battle with life in the crabitat a few months after we purchased them in August 2017, and Gramps has been going it solo since then.

We don’t have pets.

Instead, we have four kids.

So we’ve never had to flush a goldfish or put a dog to sleep, etc.

Our children have never had a close relative die or even a close family friend, and so they haven’t really ever had to deal with death beyond when their character in a video game dies.

Which, of course, then respawns, so even that isn’t real experience with death and totally messes with a child’s expectations of what happens when a person dies.

So, yesterday, Real Man catches my eye in the kitchen and gestures toward the crabitat where I see Gramps’ shell turned upside down, his dry little legs extended over the edge, unmoving and completely dead.

My first thought was “Oh crap…I forgot to spray down the crabitat with moisture last weekend. I killed him,” because, (and this will come as no surprise to the moms in the group) despite the fact that he’s the kid’s pet, the responsibility for keeping him alive falls on MY shoulders.

But then I remembered that I certainly had taken care of Gramps last weekend, and that a year and a half is a pretty good life for a hermit crab living in a plastic cage in northern New Jersey.

Real Man and I took the shell out of the crabitat and put it on the counter. We touched the legs to make sure they were really not moving, and they weren’t. We talked about what to do and we decided we would flush the body and clean out the shell to either add to the shell collection in the bathroom or in case we ever got more hermit crabs.

Real Man had a paper towel and pulled on the legs and they separated from the shell and from the remainder of the body. The big claw and legs were now in the paper towel and the other big claw and legs were still in the shell. We’d have to dig it out.

But, right then is when Tiny came into the kitchen and asked what we were doing.

So, we told him Gramps had died and he cried and cried.

I took him to the living room where we sat on the couch and reminisced about the good times we had with Gramps.

“Remember when we made Gramps and obstacle course out of blocks?”

“Remember when Shelly used to try to climb out of the crabitat by standing on Gramps’ shell?”

“Remember when we used to make funny voices for Gramps and Shelly and make up fake conversations for them?”

(All of which happened about a year ago, because it’s a hermit crab, which is not a fun pet, and which the kids really never paid attention to after a few months)

I told Tiny that Gramps was probably happy to be reunited with Shelly in hermit crab heaven which he quickly refuted with “Shelly isn’t in heaven…she’s in the sewer…you flushed her!” which was a point I found myself unable to argue.

As I comforted Tiny, Real Man poked his head around the corner and gestured for me to come back in the kitchen with big eyes.

I left Tiny in the capable hands of his brother who was reminding him of other fun times with Gramps (“Remember when Mom was cleaning Gramps crabitat and put him on the counter and forgot about him and we found him in the laundry room the next day?”) and went to the kitchen.

“So,” Real Man began, “I don’t think he’s dead.”

“Excuse me?” I answered. “You just pulled half of his body out of the shell!”

“Yeah…but…” and he held up his phone and showed me an article he had Googled about how sometimes hermit crabs molt their old legs off and grow new legs underneath.

And he picked up the shell and showed me what we had thought were other legs but weren’t, in fact, fresh, new, pink legs.

Which were moving.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

I immediately cleaned out the crabitat and refilled the water and the food and we set Gramps right in the water dish and he started to rock and roll.

And I was so excited, there were tears of joy in my eyes.

They definitely were not tears of I had already imagined the counter where the crabitat sat being clear, for once, and the freedom of not having to remember to feed and water that thing every weekend.

Definitely not those kind of tears.

And we went in the living room and said “So, guess what, Tiny? Gramps isn’t dead after all!” and we explained the whole thing and so now Tiny thinks life is like a video game where, if your legs get cut off, they’ll grow back and if you die, you might not really be dead…the doctor might have just made a mistake and so death isn’t really a permanent thing, despite our very thorough explanations that we just got it wrong the first time.

So, yeah.

Thanks, Gramps.

The town we live in has an amazing community theater.

When I was a kid, it was this old run-down theater that showed old movies.

The owner had two Dalmatians that used to guard the doors and you always had the feeling like the ceiling was going to fall down on you at any minute, and so you wind up staring at the ceiling more than you would be looking at the screen.

But then someone got the idea to fix the place up and donors spent millions and the result is now a legit theater that attracts real celebrities, shows, and amazing events.

So, when the calendar of events comes out, each year, I always peruse it with great excitement. I don’t get to a lot of the shows, but there’s usually at least one that I really want to see.

My parents get tickets to a lot of the shows, but then one or both of them winds up being tired and so we wind up with the tickets, so I’ve seen quite a few things that I didn’t know I was going to enjoy and wound up loving.

This August, when the catalog came out, I saw that The Price is Right Live was coming to town.

And I almost passed out with excitement.

Let me give you a little background.

Growing up, The Price is Right was my jam.

My Mom loved the show and my Grandma loved the show, and so, if I wasn’t in school at 11 am, I was in front of the tv with Bob Barker.

By 7 years old, I could tell you the both exact price of Mop-n-Glo AND guess the price of a Chevy Chevette within a dollar.

I loved all the games they played. I dreamed of punching out paper circles and grabbing cash, of watching the mountain climber climb the steep incline, and spinning the big wheel.

However, the big draw…the game I loved more than anything else…was Plinko.

Those big, round chips.

I just wanted to hold them and climb the stairs to the top of the Plinko board and drop the chips down, watch them make their way through the maze, and drop into the $500 slot at the bottom.

Oh, how I longed to play Plinko.

One summer, I found a board and I nailed long nails in a maze pattern, drew dollar amounts on the wood, and spent hours with my friends dropping my self-made chips down the board. (I’m looking at you, Gail and Erin)

Anyway, we wound up with two tickets to the show and my parents had two tickets. But, my Dad wasn’t feeling well, so Monkey Girl and I took our tickets and my Mom and Baby Monkey (who is twelve and totally not a baby, but when you name someone on a blog when they are three, it sticks) went with my Mom.

What a show.

We watched people get called down, we saw clips of the show from the past 40 years with crazy antics as people got called on down. We cheered, we laughed. It was awesome.

Person after person was called on down. In between, people’s names were drawn and they won Amazon gift cards. I didn’t care that they weren’t calling my name. Monkey Girl and I were having a blast.

And then it was time for the last round of people to get called, and they called one name and then I heard it.

“Amy Bozza! Come on down!”

What?

I jumped up and screamed and yelled and ran down the aisle.

Along the way I saw one of my students and her mother and we waved and screamed at each other.

We had to sit and wait while the people who were before us made their bids, and then we were able to watch one guy win a trip to Hawaii.

And then it was our turn.

We got up to the stand, Mark Walberg said “hi” to all of us, (no, not that Mark Wahlberg…this is the one who is the host of Antique Roadshow, but still pretty darn cool), and rolled out the first item up for bid.

An electric guitar and amplifier.

The first thought in my head was $1,200, but then the people next to me started to bid.

They bid low and I started to second guess myself.

So, when my turn came, I said “$850.”

And then Fran, who stood to my left, said “851.”

And immediately, I knew she had won.

I said “Fran,” in a voice that my own children would have recognized immediately as my tone of exasperation and I slapped the podium in front of me.

Walberg laughed and told the audience that I was mad at Fran and then said “She didn’t come here to make friends, Amy,” which I knew to be true, but still…dammit Fran!

And, of course, the electric guitar and amplifier was $1,150, and would have been mine if not for Fran.

So, the producer gives me a t-shirt and I go back to my seat and I watch Fran and Mark banter on stage and then they open the curtain and Fran gets to play…

Yeah, you knew it.

Plinko.

Fran had to guess the correct number in four different products to win four Plinko chips.

Fran got three right.

From my seat, I got all four right.

Fran climbed the stairs…my stairs.

Fran dropped the chips…my Plinko chips.

Fran won about $1,500…my $1,500.

So, yeah, I didn’t get on stage and I didn’t win the money, but I won a t-shirt and I had a great, great time.

And tonight, I’m setting the DVR to start recording The Price is Right while I’m at work, because I need to study.

Because next year…the Showcase Showdown is all mine.

I see a lot of movies. I can’t help myself. I just love them.

And, over the years, I’ve instilled that love of movies in my children.

While we are happy to curl up on the couch with a good movie we’ve borrowed from the library or paid a buck for at the Redbox, the truth is, we would all rather be in the theater, price be damned.

I’m a fan of the action, the horror, the drama, the romance, the comedy…heck…I’m a fan of it all. And I thoroughly enjoy them all. I have favorite scenes and characters and moments and I find myself thinking about the films I watch far after the closing credits have rolled and the lights have come up.

Most of the time, I am entertained. I rarely see a movie that I don’t enjoy on some level. Even when everyone around me is shaking their heads and muttering at the two hours they will never recover, I leave with a smile, because I’ve found something redeeming in the film.

Yet, every now and then, there’s more.

It’s the last day of summer, today, as I go back to school on Tuesday.

My big plan was to take a day trip to the beach and give a proper farewell to #summer2018, but when I awoke to the rain hitting the roof, I figured it was best to change the plan.

So, I bought tickets to see Christopher Robin.

I can’t pass up a movie about Winnie-the-Pooh, as I have a lifelong obsession with the little guy.

We honeymooned in Disney, and I came back with more jewelry and articles of clothing bearing his likeness than any adult should ever own.

I taught a class at a summer camp called “The World of Pooh” where we read stories, colored pictures, and sang songs, all from the realm of the Hundred Acre Wood.

And when the monkeys started coming along, the nursery was decorated, from top to bottom, in a classic Pooh theme.

(…and often, they decorated themselves, top to bottom, in a classic poo theme, but that’s another story)

So, when I hear Winnie-the-Pooh, my ears perk up and I give whatever it is my full attention.

And so, on this rainy August afternoon, Monkey Girl, Baby Monkey, Tiny and I headed to the theater to see what this film was all about.

As you might imagine, it was predictable. If you’ve seen the trailer, you realize it’s a story about a man who has forgotten how to play…how to live.

Much like Robin Williams grown up Peter Pan in “Hook,” (another favorite of mine), Ewan McGregor is an adult Christopher Robin. A very busy, distracted, business-oriented, family forgetting adult.

And through a certain set of circumstances, he comes to be reunited with his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood who help him save the day, save his family, and save his soul.

Tears flowed…hard…as Christopher Robin left behind his friends.

Every day…for years…Pooh returned to the door through which Christopher Robin used to crawl to visit the Hundred Acre Wood. And his shoulders would slump as he would realize his friend wasn’t coming, and I heard the sniffles throughout the theater and realized it was hitting all of us hard.

Exactly as the filmmakers knew it would.

Predictable in every way.

And yet…

I saw much of myself in the character of the adult Christopher Robin.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m playful, I’m youthful, and I love my monkeys.

But, I’m human, and at times, I’m very much an adult who is busy and doesn’t have time for the silly.

Who doesn’t make time.

I have lists upon lists of things that need to be done, and the truth is, they are things that actually do need to be done.

And as I complete one thing, I am already thinking about the next thing to be done.

But the result is that I am often distracted in the moments where I would truly rather be present.

One of my favorite lines is at the end of the film.

Winnie-the-Pooh asks Christopher Robin what day it is, to which he replies, “Today.”

Winnie-the-Pooh responds, “Oh good…today is my favorite day.”

I love it.

And in a year where I continually find myself focusing on the future…

(Mourning a daughter who is leaving for college in a year, but is still here right now, is a perfect example)

…I want to embrace that philosophy.

So, this year, I’m adding a mantra to my life.

Number one is, and will always remain Be as Kind as Possible, as Often as Possible

But, mantra number two?

Today is my favorite day.

The thing I remember the most about Back to School shopping is the smell of my new shoes.

I’d open the boxes over and over again, and I’d just inhale the scent of the new leather.

I’ve never forgotten that smell, and when I catch a whiff of it again, it takes me right back to my childhood.

When I was a kid, back to school clothes shopping was done in Ohio with my Grandma.

Every summer, because my parents worked, I would spend about 2 weeks at sleepaway camp, and then I would be shipped off, from NJ to Ohio, to spend about a month with my grandparents.

They were four of my favorite weeks of the year.

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about my Grandma Lawrence before. She was my world when I was a kid, but I didn’t get to see her often enough at all because of where we both lived. So, when I would go out there for that month in the summer, we spent every second together.

We played cards, badminton, sat with the Avon lady and bought little perfumes and lip glosses, read books, watched tv, played board games, drove the Bookmobile, and I’d sit on the basement stairs and watch her do the neighbor ladies’ hair in the remnants of the beauty salon she used to run out of her house.

And every year, she took me shopping for my back to school clothes.

As a kid, it never dawned on me that she was doing this to help my parents out, financially. That it eased a heavy burden that was on their shoulders, as my Dad was working full time, but was also pursuing a degree in the city, and my Mom was working two jobs.

It probably wouldn’t have mattered, even if I had known, because as far as I was concerned, Grandma buying my back to school clothes made them…magical.

She would take me to the only department store that Ashtabula, Ohio had, at the time. Carlisle’s.

I can still remember exactly where the children’s and juniors sections were in that store, and the thrill I would get when we would walk through the doors.

She never said anything about whether she liked what I was buying. She just smiled and said “Are you sure?” and I’d consider and sometimes I’d say “No” and put it back, and sometimes I’d say “Yep” and move on.

I was careful not to buy more than I thought that she could afford, but she always encouraged me to pick up “one more thing” and I would happily do so.

White jeans with rainbow pinstripes.

Legwarmers.

Any 80’s kid clothing you can imagine, if I had it, it’s because my Grandma bought it for me.

And then there were the shoes.

The kids shoes were upstairs in this weird little alcove.

As much time as we spent in the clothing department, we spent double that in the kids shoes.

I could get one pair of sneakers and one pair of dress shoes and one pair of “other” shoes.

One year, the “other” shoes were capezios.

Another year they were jellies.

Yet another year, they were saddle shoes.

And for a few years, the “other” shoes were bucks.

I’d never wear them out of the store.

In fact, I’d never wear them until school started.

I kept the boxes shut tight, as if by keeping them closed, I could preserve the memory of shopping with my Grandma, knowing once they were out and on my feet, I was home and too many miles away from her.

But once school started, I wore them all, and was grateful to have them.

Now, my Mom and I take my kids clothes shopping, and it’s different.

First of all, Grandma lives three minutes away and they see her all the time.

And the mall where we shop is a mall where we shop at least four or five times a year.

Just like when I was a kid, my Mom takes them shopping to help me out with the expenses, and because she just loves “doing” for these children.

Maybe because it’s four of them at once and no one wants to wait while someone else is browsing.

The boys sit and feed dollars into the massage chairs in the mall while Monkey Girl searches for just the right thing in a few stores.

Monkey Girl browses on her phone while the boys try on endless pairs of pants, because long legs and tiny waists are hard to buy for.

Inevitably, someone gets grumpy, someone cries, and someone (I’m looking at you, Tiny) is always hungry.

But, that’s life with four kids.

So, yeah, it’s different, but the experience that my kids are having with my Mom has it’s own type of magic.

Every trip ends with cookies as we exit the mall, which is a part of the experience they ask about before we even get in the car to start the trip.

There are smiles and jokes and memories that are made, and reminisced about, every year.

“Remember when that guy tried to sell Monkey Girl a hair straightener and Grandma said ‘I’m the Grandma!’ in that crazy voice to the guy?”

Different memories than I had with my back to school shopping experiences, but cherished memories for my kids, nonetheless.

So, while the experience may be different, because times are different, and they are different, when they get home, these kids who normally don’t seem to know where their closets or dressers are, suddenly are hanging their new clothes, reverently, to preserve them for Day One.

And their new shoes?

They sit, preserved in their boxes, until that first day of school; I like to think, preserving the memory of the time spent with Grandma and Mom that one day, will be far in the past.

1. Tiny needed to be told that it was a person in a suit, and not a real raptor in the cage, in order for him to stand for that picture
2. My hair was going in that raptor’s mouth