THINGS CHANGE

The Facebook memory that popped up the other day was a picture of a collage of holiday cards that I had stuck to the side of my refrigerator. For a tiny moment, I almost shared that memory but then I looked closer at some of those cards. Many of the cards were photo cards containing pictures of my dear friends and their families. I didn’t share the memory because first of all, it’s not a great picture, but secondly a few of those cards do not reflect a few of those families today. In fact at least two of the families in that picture have had drastic, heart breaking changes in the last five years. One photo card is from a college friend with her husband and two children all smiling brightly for the camera. I considered the husband to be a great friend too, but he left my friend in a surprising and shocking way. He turned out to be not the person I thought he was or who anyone thought he was. After deciding not to share this memory, I studied that photo looking for signs on his face or in his eyes only to shake my head and realize he was the best actor of us all.

I’m sure my friends remember my holiday cards of the past and how different my cards look today. I wanted to hold onto a tradition that could not be recreated with any other person but Chris. I have given up on the idea of elaborate and funny holiday photos. I like to think of my cards now as more of a sarcastic head nod to the suburban family unit. I’ve stopped trying to get a nice photo of all of us together and instead, I patch together individual pictures of us. I’m the hardest to find because I am rarely in front of the camera these days. Maybe it’s time for another 365 day self portrait project. I always seem to quilt something together just in time to take advantage of a big holiday card print sale, even if the picture of Josephine on this year’s card was actually taken last year. It was the best I could do this year. A series of unfortunate haircuts made Josephine not as photogenic as usual and let’s face it. We’ve all experienced a year of unfortunate haircuts.

I had Talaura on speaker phone Saturday evening and we chatted while I roamed around my house doing chores. I had a stack of unopened cards sitting on my desk and I began to open them one by one and then tape them up on bookshelf for display. Anna and Greg greeted me from the cover of their card with a drooling half grinning baby. They referred to themselves not by name but as “Mateo’s grandparents”, as they should. I am kind of in love with their new empty nest status and how they have entered a stage of life that is less parenting and more spoil the grand baby. The card also arrived from a different address than where I sent my card to them. So, hopefully that gets returned soon so that I can put the correct address on it. Then I opened the card from Todd and I said out loud to Talaura that these children are unrecognizable. That’s not entirely true. I still recognize Todd’s boys, but they’ve mostly lost that ‘boy’ look and have moved on to ‘young man’. Talaura and I chatted about how strange that those two were now closely resembling adults.

Michael has been struggling to get the Cabbage to send them a Christmas wish list this year. They finally responded with “I’m a teenager now. I’m not supposed to want or like things.” They have grown past the surprises and excitement that comes at Christmas when you believe that a white bearded old man is going to break into your home, not to steal your toys, but to give you more toys. I still plan on setting out a nice beer and some pretzels for Santa because I like a bit of whimsy with my holidays. It feels strange to see everyone growing up and getting older when I feel as though I have not changed. It took me so long to finally do “adult” things like buying a lawnmower and a house, cremating a husband. I feel stuck at an in between stage of life where I’m just responsible enough to stay employed.

For a brief period of time as a small child, I can remember spending hours pretending to be Wendy from Peter Pan. I’d interrupt adventures and insist that it was bath time or tea time or bed time. I would tell my stuffed animals who were playing the Lost Boys to be more sensible. I’m sure many of you are nodding your heads and thinking “of course you did, Cindy.” Commanding sensibility is my brand, but as I watch my dearest friends’ children growing up, I find myself wanting less sensibility or more silliness. I don’t want to be a Wendy any more. I don’t want to be Peter and leader of the pack, but I think I’m ready to try fitting in with the Lost Boy crowd.

THE OCCASIONAL PUNCH TO THE GUT

Ghost

2 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Ghost"

I came home from work to find the picture sitting on my home desk. Blurred and faded. Chris in the act of impersonating a jelly fish or reenacting a scene from the Simpsons. It could be either of those things. I recognize the room. It is the room where we all spent half our days hanging out, the student government office in Trout Hall. Is it even still called Trout Hall? For some reason I don't think so. I vaguely remember them moving the student government office too after we all graduated. God, this image is from a hazy lifetime ago, back when we were all so young and not so jaded by life's disappointments. That school was our Hogwarts. I don't think any of us even thought about what we'd do next, when we finally graduated and had to leave. 

I think we were all surprised and a little shell shocked when we realized that we would one day leave that place to stumble through to the next thing. Some times I wonder and dream about what it would have looked like to never leave. Not necessarily staying on as students, but moving into teaching. The only time teaching has ever crossed my mind was if I could teach there. I have no desire to do it otherwise. I wonder what we would look like, how the group of us would have changed if we had all stayed put. Would we just be older versions of our idyllic selves? Chris and Amy would have turned the UFO Independent Study into a yearly event. I would have taken over Dr. MaGrath's campus gardening project. Jen would be dragging a group of art students around to various places to sit and draw. Basically we would be the lost boys to Chris's Peter Pan. Never growing up.

Was I his Wendy?

I remember how it felt like we were not grown ups. Not even when we moved on from graduate school and entered the so called 'real world'. We still seemed to be just playing at adulthood. Like it was a game or a theater production. We watched cartoons and collected toys. We had hand-me-down everything from cars to couches. We still scavenged home decor from thrift stores and garbage dumpsters. The idea of being able to buy a house was so far out there that we thought it would be easier to buy land on the moon. We bought scooters and lived with his mom. We were children right up until the day we moved to Kansas City. We moved in an actual moving van for the first time, not a horse trailer borrowed from a neighbor. We bought a lawnmower and we bought a house. Our couch was still a hand-me-down couch and our furniture was still an eclectic mix of thrift store and IKEA, but it was our house with a garage and a fenced-in backyard. 

We were better off never growing up. 

The Cabbage was the one to find that picture. It had been tucked inside a book and had fallen free when she pulled the book from the shelf. There is always an odd tug and pull that I feel whenever my current life runs into my past life. Michael and the Cabbage are always respectful of my past. They placed that picture on my desk instead of back in the book it fell out of because they thought I might want it. Which was nice and sweet. But it still feels odd for them to run across such a random and totally honest picture of Chris. Like a science fiction show when dimensions in timelines cross paths. For a moment my timeline gets twisted into a loop and the now meets up with the then ever so briefly. Just enough to feel the oddness of it before it flips back into place. Like a twisting rubber band. 

We are better off never growing up.