Picture Perfect

By Wednesday night we will be six out of eight all tucked in under the same roof. And I relish these preparation days filled with list-making, menu revisions, laundry, cleaning and grocery shopping…crammed into every nook of free time. I’ve gladly abandoned new reading material in order to de-clutter closets and cupboards no one will use, swept up in the intoxicating current of anticipation: we’ll be together.
I don’t envision a Norman Rockwell homecoming, because we are not of that mettle.  Invariably I will miss arrivals because I’ll be upstairs frantically making the bed I thought had been finished, or cleaning out the shower trap for the first time since the last visit.  Likely I will find myself sweaty and terse at the failure to achieve unrealistic, innumerable goals.
But somewhere along my path of mothering, these individuals pocketed my independence and scattered it with them on their adventures and travail, and only when they gather near -- briefly-- do I feel whole.

They share a history and I love to see them in the same place...looking back or looking on. They hug and debate and praise and criticize and compete.  I’ve cried a little bit about the missing faces – wishing it mattered to all of them as intrinsically as it does me and knowing there is no way that it could.  They are made of me: genes, prayers, tears, and all my years of trying over and over to learn how to be a parent.  They are made of me – and then so much more. So I sit when there is a moment with just one…and deepen our acquaintance.  If I met him in a staff meeting, or observed her with her client, what would I see?  What if I heard her stories and his songs without already knowing the voices?  Who are they to the people with no preconceived ideas and expectations?

Dusting the cherry bookcase for the third time this week, I polish one from the collection of framed photographs.  Only the best of times were worth capturing on film and the resultant impression is cheerfully perfect.  With scrubbed and smiling faces and matching clothes, everyone is lined up in age order.  Perhaps they hated those outfits for their grandfather’s 80th birthday portrait – but I didn’t.  I hunted for weeks to find a pale yellow that “worked” for everyone.  Like preparation for this visit, I wanted all the peripherals to be aesthetically harmonious.  But those days were seldom neat and never tidy.  Likewise, the minute they crowd through the door – voices ahead of them searching for the others – order will be gone, replaced by the boisterous, messy connecting of old friends. 
And I can barely wait.