Remembering February

Morbid title aside, we had so much fun in February.  I am completely delighted that the calendar says March and equally horrified at the continuing freezing temperatures and predictions for snow storms.  HELLO, SPRING??????? Anybody home????????????????? Seriously.  Get out of hibernation, please.

Winter flew this year.  Maybe it was because I was so crazy busy with school and camp activities.  Maybe it’s because I’m older {rolls eyes} and the proverbial time flying phenomenon has come to pass.  Maybe it was because camp’s schedule is always broken up into six week sections and so I never looked at the entire winter at once.  Whatever it was, the speeding has stopped and I am completely done.  Done with winter, with cold, with coats.  Done with the smell of wood smoke and the near-constant grey skies.  Done with drab landscapes and early nighttime.  Done.  Just DONE.  I’ve given up on spring coming.  Somehow it’s a thousand times worse to see March and feel cold simultaneously.

But like I said, February was a fun month.

February was Valentines Day mostly celebrated with little people.  Parties at our house are all-boy and it was so much fun to decorate with pink for a change.  Considering the fact that they demanded BB gun ketchup art instead of smiley faces on their hamburgers today, the phrase, “the boys loved Valentines Day,” should be duly noted.

They happily gobbled down heart shaped pancakes with chocolate chips and strawberries and maple syrup and a dollop of whipped cream.

In a rare moment of loveliness, David managed to come home for lunch after being on the road for nearly fifteen hours the day prior. Oh the perks of working close to home.

We nibbled on nachos and drank iced tea.  Smiled at the pink cupcakes with real strawberries in and on them.  But my favorite moment was teaching the boys about chocolate fondue thanks to a darling little fondue pot my mom gave me a few years ago.  Their eyes sparkled and their strawberries shoveled up melted chocolate like bull dozers.  Their mouths bulged with berries and cupcakes and the place in my heart that felt so bereft on Valentines Day two years ago, as I headed toward the hospital for a D&C, filled with a sense of healing.  Life is not what we dream, but life is so rich and full because God is so good.  We don’t always get to celebrate special days and events the way we’d like to; but when we do, celebrating feels like the best gift in the world.

I told the boys they had to take a little rest in the afternoon since David and I were headed out for a dinner date and bedtime was going to be late.  They snuggled into the covers with a bit of resistance and in an effort to get them to think calm, happy thoughts instead of only battle-the-idea-of-naps thoughts I asked, “What is your favorite thing of all the special things today?”  Hands down, I knew it would be the chocolate fondue.  But nope, Liam said it for both of them.  “Going to a babysitters tonight!”

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My friend, Anita, and I spent three happy days together, hopping from topic to topic even faster than we restaurant hopped which is saying a lot considering the fact that we hit Starbucks, McAlisters Deli, Sweet Frog and Panera Bread in less than thirty-six hours.  Don’t judge.  We haven’t seen each other except via skype for four years and I had to introduce her to all my favorites.  I moved to Virginia when I was twelve and Anita was sixteen. She was everything I wanted to be … pretty, sparkly, fluent with words, and full of laughter.  She made friends easily and quickly became not only my friend, but also my mentor.  I remember the first time I had the nerve to ask her to critique an English assignment.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Her dad hired me to work at their family owned candy shop one day a week so that someone would know the ropes should they ever want to go on vacation.  I couldn’t believe they were paying me to eat chocolate and hang out with Anita.  I probably should have been paying them.  When I was seventeen, it was Anita who was moving.  Her family relocated to Ireland as missionaries …. permanently.

I was devastated.  For years, we wrote letters to each other every week.  Not just quick little notes, but four big sheets of paper filled on both sides kind of letters.  Eventually, we switched to email and then when I was in college, our conversations nearly disappeared.  Now we rely on intermittent emails, skype, and the truth that our friendship endures even during periods of silence.  Anita is currently in Poland teaching English.  Even in the globally connected world we live in today, Poland is far away.

But Anita knows me and I know her.  Before she came, a mutual friend we’ve met in the last five years asked Anita, “How are you and Michelle friends?  You’re not at all alike.”  It’s true.  Kind of. And it made me pause.  Have you ever wondered what makes some friendships work and other relationships never really take off past the chit chat stage?  We’re not really alike.  On Monday, as we drove the three hours back to my place from where she’d been staying with family, we stopped to shop.  Out of all the stores we shopped, we found ONE thing we both liked.  I touched a purse and she said, “That’s a nice purse,” and we both kind of did a double take.  “Can you believe we actually liked the same thing?”  Nope.  I love pink and ruffles and the scent of jasmine.  She loves emerald green and big scarves and straight iced coffee.  But when it comes to the bigger stuff, we’re both alike.  We both hold strong opinions and are fully capable of verbalizing them.  Rather than making us butt heads most of the time, it affords us a measure of safety with each other.  We are rarely left assuming what the other is thinking.  We both like to create … me occasionally, she often.  We both like to write and can talk about book sales and the vulnerability of writing honestly knowing the other person completely understands.  We’ve walked through dreams come true and dreams deferred and, while our dreams aren’t synonomous, the celebration or grief associated is.  We both love chocolate although she’s much quicker to sniff out the stale versions.  We both live life passionately and long to live it well, not just putting in so much time.  How are we friends?  How could we not be friends?  After all, anyone who has seen my seventeen year old self and the eight page letters of immaturity generated during that time had better stay a friend. 😉

So we shopped.

And ate.

And the next day at our house we played with fabric and trim to cover cheap journals we’d picked up the day before.

We brainstormed briefly about book covers and got distracted.

Anita taught the boys about zentangles and I declared three days of spring break in school so not even a minute would be lost.

We stayed up late.

Drank coffee and ate chocolate.

And then it was time.  Time to drive the three hours back to the airport and say goodbye.  Except I never do well at saying goodbyes because I hate them.

I drove home thinking about friendship and how different our lives are.  About her jetting off to Poland and me driving back to the middle of nowhere.  About marriage and being single.  About doing the things God asks of us and believing that He empowers every situation in our lives.  About the way it sometimes seems that God arranges circumstances in our lives and work for us to do more for the work it does within us than the work we accomplish outside of us.  I miss her.  But I’d a thousand times rather miss my friends than to have never known them at all.  God is so good to have created us for community and communication.

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February was also the month of our long-awaited and much-anticipated visit from Dennis and Ali and their girls.  We loved having them here and Liam especially was just ecstatic because Sky was coming!  Most of the time we see Adam’s friends or hang out with kids who are closer to his age.  Well, Sky is only a few months older than Liam but I didn’t think much of it because when we go to church he always hangs out with Kadi or Ava.  But that Saturday morning he was dancing around the living room singing, “Sky is coming! Sky is coming.”  And then he looked at me in all seriousness and said, “I can’t wait til Sky comes.  I will even let her play princess.”  Let me tell you, this is a flat out honor.  Nearly every time we leave church Liam gives us a rundown tinged with disgust and superiority.  “Ava just always wants to play princess and she wants me to be the prince and I don’t want to play princess.”  Which is really funny because I rarely see them playing princess.

Sky came and shocked his little heart with her tomboyish little self.  They spent hours hunting in the field or in the house when it grew dark.  Sunday morning we were getting ready to head to chapel instead of church because Dennis was going to talk to the boys.  Liam, who normally is beside himself with excitement at getting to go to chapel, groaned loudly.  “Can’t someone just stay here with me and Sky so we can keep playing?”

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Happy March, everyone! Cheers to ignoring the forecast that predicts eight to twelve inches of snow by tomorrow night and dreams of robins digging for earthworms in the backyard.

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