A Long December

I went swimming at the MLK rec center for the first time since quarantine this month. It occurred to me as I swam that one day in the next few years I’ll quit having these “first time I”ve done x since COVID” moments. Of course, some other event worth dating things from will come along soon enough, with the kids preparing to graduate.

The thing about the end of a chapter of your life as it nears is that it does force you to be present and appreciative. You’re always asking yourself “Is this the last time I’ll do this with the kids?” Is this the last time we have spaghetti together, the four of us? Is this our last Yule dinner with the godparents? Is this the last time we all four go to a movie? Is this the last time we visit the pet store for supplies as a unit? The last time we all eat holiday candy together? How many more days until my oldest turns 18? Until she graduates? Until she moves away? How much time will I have with my youngest until she follows her?

Attempting to swim full laps for the first time in almost three years was humbling. I couldn’t find my swim cap, which I must have lost in the move. The seal around my goggles had gone out from three years in the drawer. I spent an hour in the pool, made some laps, but half the time just the kickboard in the empty shallows where my kids once played. No children were there when I visited. I tried to get the teens to go swim with me, but they were busy with their own pursuits, as they so often have been this last year.

I bought a rec center pass on faith, knowing that the guilt of the cost will force me back to the pool at least twenty times in the next twelve months to justify the expense. While the worst of our financial woes are hopefully past - enough so that I quit the restaurant job in November - we’re still massively in debt from the COVID years, and my plans to get us out of the hole will take at least another 24 months, if not 36. All those plans hinge on me making more money, so I still have two jobs for now. There’s the job I love where I don’t make enough, and the job I hate, the one where I apply and interview for work that will carry me into the third quarter of my life without worry. Both are difficult in different ways.

This year will the third year the children go to Nashville without me for the Christian holiday. It gets easier each time, especially as this year I have started planning for what life will look like when they are adults. My proposal for the holidays once they are grown is that we should always make a vacation of the time, go somewhere altogether different if we can. Of course, this plan presupposes funds I do not have and will not have unless I push my career forward again. This goal for future holidays keeps me motivated at the second job, as my day job would never pay me enough to make the holiday vacation plans plausible.

If I have done my job as mother right enough - and I hope I have - I should have the girls with me at least one holiday a year, all of us together, never wondering about last times too much. I don’t care if it’s the winter holidays so much, just once a year I want us all together. I want this so that there will never be a thought about the last time we do a thing, only a series of first times - the first time after a graduation, the first time after a relationship starts or stops, the first time someone new is with us.

Here’s to 2024 and all the future first times. This year has to be better than the last.