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Roller Coasters, Sleepovers and Pool Parties, Oh My!

I am 31 going on 32 ( in just a few short weeks, 32 shopping days to be exact). This week, I got to be a ten year old again- albeit an incredibly stressed out and uber responsible one, but a ten year old all the same.
Tuesday night was the pool party, complete with snocones, muscle floaties and bug bites galore. In celebration of the entire year, or perhaps nothing really in particular, a friend had the girl scouts out to her home, and the mothers (who declined to wear bathing suits, each believing they had a flaw to hide, and yet each knowing that of all groups, ours would be last to judge) sat in lawn chairs and discussed mother things like summer camp, teachers, and communicable diseases. The giggly gaggle of girl scouts, clad in vibrants tankinis, bikinis and skirted one pieces, flopped and splashed and dog paddled for hours, coming up only for air and slowly congealing pizza. I sat between the two groups, because as mother of little babies, one must be always on toes, always quick to be the rescuer, the nurturer, the consoler. The sun was bright on Tuesday, and it was warm and breezy, and truly one of the days that reminds you why you may you have moved back to the northeast in the first place. I let the ants scuttle across my bare toes, in search of the abundant crumb hills left by the children in their haste, and felt the heat and excitement of the day lay baby kisses across my nose. I listened to the sounds of exhuberant children who knew they were within a hair of summer vacation, and I suddenly became one of them. The day suddenly became endless, and the idea that fireflies were merely lying in wait on the other side of the woods was titillating. I could hear music where there was none, and laughter bubbling up from within myself when really, no jokes had been told. Suddenly, the house for sale no longer belonged to me, and the children I had sired were just old friends. The bills in a growing pile back at home were addressed to a neighbor, and my lumbering old body was suddenly lithe and perky once more.
These feeling were able to live through the next day, as we joyfully welcomed the end of the school year (as short as it seemed) and the beginning of a summer of unknowns. I giggled when Morgan's classmate threw up his ice cream outside the tilt-a-whirl at Hoffman's, and screamed with the girls as the umbrellas tossed them into the air. I ate over-fried cheese sticks with Rhiannon and Lucas, and salivated over the huge pile of presents in the corner.
Then, last night, the slumber party. Whispering with Laurie in the basement, as the girls let each new drama unfold like a favorite sweater, making towering sundaes of pure disgustingness, and staying up much too late, making pipe cleaner animals.
And then...today... I aged 22 years. I woke up with fussing babies, and washed an endless amount of dishes. I paid the bills and sighed at the balance in my bank account. I snapped at Lucas for throwing a tantrum, and longed for a nap on the couch. As I bent to put the party decorations away, I felt my knees scream in protest, and I realized how fleeting it is. How not long from now, Rhiannon will be my age, with her shoulders broad and strong from having to hold up her little world, and her eyes lined from years of laughter and worry, and her breasts stretched from nursing each baby until they no longer need her and yearn for her. How I will blink today and it will be tomorrow, and those little things that got me down yesterday will be so insignificant, and those same children will be adults.
I realize this more every day that I live, in tiny ways that add up exponentially- life is short. And I am starting to believe (and perhaps this is why so many insist that after 30 is when life suddenly makes sense) that when the doorstep is darkened by the impending realities of responsibility, adulthood and accountability, it is best to pretend not to be home. Allow yourself to be ten as often as possible. And so tonight, I will get my hands dirty and make chocolate with Morgan, and eat too much of it without thinking of diets, and I will wake up tomorrow, giddy as a schoolgirl, as we drive to the infinte ocean in maine. I will build sand castles and eat ice cream cones, and succumb to Drake and josh with the kids in the hotel room. I will forget about realtors, and messy rooms, and agendas and appointments. I will stow away every memory in my mental scrapbook, but more importantly will know that the kids will be doing the same. And that in 22 years time, they will be able to dust each and every memory off and get to be ten again. And again. And again.

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