Family Stories: Same songs, different tunes

I feel fortunate to get to write this “Back Porch” column for The Buzz. Through interviews, I have learned how to make a mean milk punch and also that some of my most serious friends secretly read racy novels. I have been given space to reflect on such important topics as pumpkin spice, hairdresser break-ups, and the shocking photos of Sixteen Candles’ Jake Ryan on the occasion of his 60th birthday. 

But my favorite subjects (much to their chagrin) are my children. Not just my children, but our children, because I imagine that much of what I navigate as a mom is someone else’s experience as well. Same song, different tune. 

These stories about my/our children run the gamut. There was the one about scrubbing kids and their belongings when they come home from summer camp. The sand in their bathing suits, that lake smell deep inside the camp trunks, the bars of soap that came home looking just as perfect as the day they left (that one my daughter still denies, but I have the photo to prove it).

There was the story about my first child trying to decide on a college, and her younger sister setting us all straight: “Whatevs,” my then-14-year-old, now 22-year-old, said, as I secretly took notes to share in “Back Porch.” “We talk about [college] nonstop, all day, morning, after school, dinner, after dinner. What-ev-er.”

The time I wrote about the deep fear I felt sitting in the passenger seat as my youngest daughter asked for the nth time, “This is the brake, right?” That was a rough one for both of us. For me, well, you know why. For her, it was awkward when another lawyer at the courthouse asked her dad if she had gotten any better at driving.

It was also awkward when she went for her first high school sleepover and the new friend’s mom said, “Oh I just read about you and your bedbugs in The Buzz.”

And then there was the time I published a photo (without her knowledge) of the disaster zone that was my oldest daughter’s college dorm room when I went to pick her up for the summer after her freshman year. The room I had so lovingly decorated with her roommate’s mom was now, the night before move-out, full of: “Half-drunk water bottles, various dispensers of Carmex…pictures and trinkets still on shelves, and…my favorite, a karaoke microphone buried in the unmade bed. Right next to the Mardi Gras beads, also in the bed.” My daughter will tell you it wasn’t as bad as what I wrote. I will tell you it absolutely was.

In between, there have been Halloween stories and mean girl stories and stories about my children as babies sitting on the kitchen floor delighting in pouring the contents of a Cheerios box over their heads. After acquiring three stepsons, I have written about their favorite (and least favorite) dinners I have made (that’s a little more delicate – I haven’t taken the liberty of dissecting their lives in print, yet). Most recently, last fall, I wrote about the heavy pit-of-my-stomach feeling I got when I realized I was sending my youngest daughter off to college for the last time. And the gratitude I felt having time to connect over leisurely dinners with friends, now lifelong, whose friendship sparked before we were mothers, not just because our children happened to be in the same ballet class. In that story, I quoted my friend: “All the young moms say It’s gonna get easier, right? I just tell them it’s gonna get different.”

This month, it all feels really different. I just moved my oldest daughter into her first real apartment, with a rug and bright block print throw pillows and all the things to entertain her friends. This is the first time I will live in the same city as a child who is not living in my house.

And in a couple of weeks, I will celebrate my youngest daughter’s college graduation. We aren’t sure where she will land, but it probably won’t be around the corner, at least for a while. 

We are transitioning to Sunday dinners, hosting whichever of five children are free. It’s a happy new tradition, and it’s also very strange to think we are closer to grandchildren than we are to the days of Cheerios in the hair of my own children.

There will be new stories to tell, as funny if not quite as sweet. Just different. I hope you won’t mind if I keep telling them. Thanks for nodding along with me.

Editor’s note: Find past Back Porch columns, including the ones referenced in this month’s column, at thebuzzmagazines.com/back-porch.