I thought if anyone needed an example of a few ways this time had done me wrong,
all they would have to do was look at a quarantined Easter with kids.
I went into it so unprepared.
I’d waited too long to order things for baskets on Amazon, and all that my trip to the store’s Easter aisle yielded was a spindly woman that stood much to close to me sounding like she only ever exhaled,
so I turned on one heel and left there as fast as I could.
I had thought I’d make a salad or maybe some asparagus to go with the tri-tip that Justin had brought home from Costco for us,
but the strike-out in the Easter aisle was merely a premonition of things to come in produce, because there was not one solitary stalk of asparagus or wayward salad kit.
As there was no way I was about to shroud my kitchen Dexter style and go into all the work it would take to safely prepare anything not already in a bag,
I left that store, instead, with one bag of flaming hot Cheetos and the realization that this Easter was about to look a whole lot different than I had hoped –
Us, gnawing on big hunks of steak in one hand,
a handful of hot Cheetos in the other,
running through the yard on day 3 of the same pajamas,
hunting eggs filled with dry brown rice because – Hey –
at least we had plenty of that.
Yes, our family Easter photos might,
if left untouched by filters, get flagged as offensive content on the Internet.
It was going to have to be what it would be.
By the time lunch rolled around Easter afternoon, yet another challenge was thrown our way as the grill we were cooking our meat on, fresh with a full tank of propane,
completely stopped working mid-cook.
Now, not only would we maybe be eating only steak and Cheetos, but that meat?
It might also be raw.
So, a scramble was underway to save Easter.
We decided to do all that we could;
And something happened during the scramble:
We realized we were actually having one of the best holidays we had ever had.
I, normally feeling the pressure to make every holiday perfect, often to the detriment of my own family’s joy,
was suddenly set free from all expectation of how it should go.
Justin, normally deep in the throws of his own OCD about how the house looks for a holiday had candy in the hand where his mini-vac usually goes, and a relaxed smile on his face.
Paige hadn’t cried that I was pulling her hair too hard while braiding it that morning,
which is the benefit of all of us just letting our hair perpetually look like we were involved in some kind of dare.
Chloe was unburdened by her normal wailing crisis over what to wear.
While we waited for our Forever Meat to finish cooking now in the oven,
our traditional Easter Family Photo was taken by setting the self-timer and propping my phone up on the cob-webbed yard-waste can in the front yard.
Before we finally ate, my eight year old, Paige, cupped two plastic Easter egg cups to the top of her head and told us to all look!
She was horny!
She then sang a song she’d written on the spot that went
“Look at me! I’m horny! I’m horny, horny, horny.”
We all screamed for her to PLEASE STOP SAYING THAT WORD.
“What word? HORNY? How is horny a bad word? It’s just horns. See. Horny. GEEZ. Now there’s an ‘H’ word, too?!”
Then she mumbled,
“How is a kid s’posed to even REMEMBER this all?!”
We watched a movie together.
We laughed with, and at each other.
My face hurt from smiling so much.
At the end of it all we looked around at our
no-baskets, never-dyed-eggs, lounge-wear ridden, messy house, kid that won’t stop saying the “H” word holiday and agreed that, somehow, it had been one of our very best ones.
And that has been one of the things that has caught me most about this time:
The way almost nothing is what I would have expected.
Not the ways I spend my days,
or how homeschooling has gone.
Not the way the girls are suddenly getting along.
I have taught them to do things in this time I’ve never taken the time to teach them before.
The other day I showed them how to sculpt with clay, and the sight of their hands pushing and pulling to create a thing they envisioned made me feel like that moment was the beginning of everything they needed to become THEM.
Like I was watching the moment they all realized they had the power to shape something much more than clay.
It’s like the whole thing has been one big egg hunt, really,
with me finding treasures hidden in the tall grass.
Bright little pops of happiness
there if you’re looking for them.
I sat beside Tessa on the couch one afternoon.
We were just quietly watching a show.
I remember that I turned to look at her,
and as I did, I noticed something.
I realized that for the first time in maybe 6 years
she has fingernails.
The sight of them caught me a little off-guard.
Tessa has always chewed her nails when things feel tense, and the last few years of various school and social stresses, and personal issues have led to years of nails chewed so far below the quick that sometimes her fingers bled.
But now we are forced to slow down.
Now there is no school pressure,
or pressure to find where she fits,
because she knows that she fits right here.
Now, every busy thing has been struck from our calendar.
Now our kids get to just BE.
I bend to pick up an egg in the grass…
It says “Now she has fingernails.”
There are bright eggs like these all over if we look.
Laughter at tables,
Family photo taken from the trash can,
Funny songs of your eight year old,
The specific sights and sounds that make up your life…
So, I’m gathering mine up in the basket of
Time that I Never Get Back,
and I will choose to carry it in my heart forever to remember that
sometimes the best little treasures are hidden inside the things we were just sure
would go wrong.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
