Leaky Bottles - Mostly Polished.

Leaking Bottles

Fall for many means a start to school.   Someone once said of me that school is my hobby. I am sure in some ways it is a hobby however, I have many hobbies, writing, paper art, drawing, photography, quilting so many more that I dare not share them all in fear my husband may one day read this.    

For me, fall means quilting.  I am a desert dweller but every fall I meander up to the cooler plains of the Grand Canyon State to quilt.  I go with my mother.  It is our special time, every year.  It is odd that as a child I did not think that one day I would long for time with my mom.  She worked and I was busy. That has changed. I realize the lunar cycle slips almost silently by and the importance of our annual trek develops eagerness. As her hair becomes a bit snowier and her back a bit more bent I see that she heads off to bed a bit earlier, she sighs more as she stands, eats less. With each of these new developments, I see a representation of another tick and another tock.  While I pray for many more years, I am painfully aware that the time slipping quietly through the cracks.

I became a mother just a year out of my teens.  I was young, but not too young. Over the next six years, I repeated the process of motherhood three times. Four children, some said it was too many, I say it was just right. Each precious. Each unique. Each grew quickly. I remember one fall day audibly saying with a bit of weariness in my voice, “I am a mother of four children, all under the age of six.”  That was yesterday, wasn’t it?  

I am pretty sure all I did was blink and my four dependents were in either middle or high school.  Soccer games, dance lessons, little league and band concerts, I went to so many band concerts.  My husband and I agree, we go to them all, and we did! Perhaps one of my favorites was when I heard a school orchestra belt out Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance, a pinnacle for any mother of four.  Sometimes it felt like all I did was run them from place to place only to return home where I would hastily pull a meal of tater tots and ground beef smothered in cheese together for dinner. 

 Each year as fall rolled around, all my children arrived home with an envelope informing me that an image that sadly, most often with a bland blue background would be available for purchase. All for the rock bottom price of $42.  I purchased the largest package, also known as A2, to weigh down the wallets of grandparents, aunts, uncles and assorted family friends.  Of course, the coveted 8x10 is spoken for, as it had a place of honor on our own walls.

As I wrote four separate checks, I would lament softly, wondering if I could get all four of them in one photo and save a little dough.   It was often several weeks later and most often, after a haircut or new pair of shoes that one or more would present me with a large white envelope with a clear front, meant to display the fabulous photography skills.

  There it would be comments of course, but overall, we were happy with the results, wild hairs and all.  On an evening after all the envelopes were accounted, I would pry back the metal tabs, on the frame that held a treasure of memories and remove the previous year’s collection.  The glossy photos from the newborn to the last year stacked neatly for inspection.  Each of my children would join me on my walk down memory lane. Always a time filled with comments that disclosed they had grown.  First through third grades often went something like, “Let me see me as a baby”.  Then their bodies stretched morphing to young women and men, my girls discovered make-up, my son video games. The opposite sex became less icky and more interesting, the comments reflected a bit more of society and less of my little angels, “Eww, I was so weird in that shirt…” also a favorite “LOOK at my hair it’s so fuzzy!”  My only reprieve, my son, he liked them all or perhaps he just did not care. My guess, the latter.

            The annual changing of the guard commenced only after each child had reviewed their lives from infancy to the current year.  I dutifully would place the current image to the top of the stack,  line up the younger years to fall into place behind then newest addition replace the cardboard back press down the metal tabs return the frame to the rightful place.   The new photo would stand sentry for a year until the next year’s image would take its place. Look how they have grown, time was trickling slowly but nonetheless it was moving.

While my children were off at school I, often I find myself humming in our home.  The echoes of emptiness bounce off the walls. I feel a looming dread that all too soon it would just be my voice in this big house. Soon the early afternoon would rescue me from those thoughts. The car door would slam their voices soon filled the void; the daily reports both good and bad replaced the melancholy that is emptiness. 

This year on a blistering, remember I live in a desert, late-May afternoon my son entered the home office and proclaimed that his application to Northern Arizona University now confirmed, he would be a Lumberjack.  I swelled with pride.  I was excited at his news. Accepted to the school of his choice he beamed.  I remember standing, my knees were a bit weak as I flung my arms as best I could around his much higher neck and drew him in for an embrace that marked yet another passage of time. He bent his back to reach down to return my hug. 

He released me, his six-foot three-inch frame almost floated away with that paper in his hand.   He released me.  It was the first time I had to consider what our home would be like without my son.  I tucked away my longing for time.  It seemed so very far away.  After all, he had just graduated from high school, all summer I thought, all summer.

He got a job, a summer job and I realized he was gone most days, and nights. He had friends to spend time with, tomorrow we would say, tomorrow we will play a game of Magic the Gathering.  Tomorrow, as they say, never came. 

Soon August crept in and stole away my son.  He left for school. One day he was there, the next, gone.  I still walk in his room and miss him. My heart searches for him in the crowd.  Once when he was a toddler, he was lost at an outdoor festival. I was never more terrified than on that day.  I scoured the crowd looking for that sweet face.  Today, I look around and see a man—yes a man, about his height and I always look… is it him? No silly, he is miles away. 

When he calls, I try to be strong.  I battle to stop myself from saying how much I miss him when he text. I do not want him to know how empty I feel.  How hollow our home now sounds without the deep heady burst of laughter that would come bellowing from his room as he played League of Legends (LOL to those of us that know) with his friends.  The thud of his grownup frame as it tumbles down the stairs to ask if I will make him meatloaf for dinner. What kid likes meatloaf?  Mine. He loves it; it is his favorite, meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  I hide how much I long for the hugs he always had ready for me when my day was not going so well. The push down the tightness in my throat as I attempt to force my eyes to remain dry when I think of his blue eyes lighting up when he will tell me about the newest film in the theater.  He loves movies, just like his mom.  I wait for the familiar chime of Google Hangout, because I know if I contacted him as often as I thought of him, we would never hang up.    I realize that time has moved all too quickly.

I knew the day my children had grown and moved on would come. Someday.  I knew I would miss them. What I did not know was what an ache I would have to share in their lives when they were gone.  

As of today, three of my four children have "flown the coop".   I still like to hum and sing when I am alone in my house.  Great acoustics.  Recently, hummed the song "Time in a Bottle” as the ping of the words hit the walls they bounced back and the melody moved from a hum to a lonely outpouring of my soul.  The chorus morphed into an earworm that burrowed deep into my heart,  “There never seems to be enough time, to do the things we want to do…” over and over again for days now it plagues me.

I think there may come a day when the heat of the summer beats down a demand for reprieve will come and one of my children will join me on an annual trek. Perhaps not quilting, this is my mother’s love, but something, something that we can enjoy together.  My eldest will go with me to the ocean, then my next will bake with me, my boy, games or a movie and my youngest, perhaps a theater event.  However, we will do it every year, just us; it will be a way to cork the leaking bottle of time.  

Today, I sit looking at my mother, we are quilting together. I am stitching away on a beautiful Texas Star and I watch as she pushes fabric through her machine, creating a quilt that one day may lie on my bed, and remind me of how we patched our own bottle.