Having our high school daughter away for a year and our son in community college but living at home and working until he goes away to university next fall has been a gradual introduction to what it will be like to have no kids at home. I know Chloe will be back and finishing high school next year, so having her gone is like practice, and there are more and more times when there are no kids at home. Like this Easter weekend.
I am truly enjoying not feeling a little bit guilty about not getting out the Easter decorations. I didn't always get out the few bunnies and other pastel accessories, but I always felt guilty if I didn't because it's my job to create happy memories of familial traditions. That we don't have too many absolute traditions is perhaps tradition enough. In the meantime, I am so happy that I don't have to dig out the Easter baskets, but that freedom is tempered by worry: is it going to be this easy for me to turn into an apathetic old person who never celebrates anything? I know people like that and I've always thought it sad. That implies that it was all nothing more than a pretense put on for the kids. And it indicates that rather than enjoying doing those things for my family, I saw it as a chore. And that's just unspeakably lazy.
I don't want to be that crabby person. The kind of person who doesn't bother with a Christmas tree or Valentine's Day or our anniversary. I'm desperately afraid that "Too much bother" will too easily become my mantra if I don't have someone to go to the bother for. That does not mean, however, that I am not reveling in the lack of responsibility required of me this Easter weekend.
Don't get too used to this, next year those decorations are going to be all over the place.
Posted by: Chloe | Sunday, March 27, 2005 at 06:57 AM