Alexey Stiop/iStock
My 2001 scrapbook ends abruptly after Christmas that year. There's a hastily cropped photo of my son, then 3, grinning and holding up a toy car that I don't remember, followed by a blank white page. And that's it. No Christmas dinner. No New Year's Eve. No 2002, 2003, 2004....You get the idea.
Meanwhile, my mother has scrapbooked practically every waking moment of the entire decade. She even made us our very own scrapbook for our Disney World trip - and she wasn't even there. No doubt she's already plastered down photos of our Easter gathering from this past weekend, and festooned them with stickers that look like colored eggs and paper cut-outs of rabbits.
I have done nothing of the sort. I didn't even put out Easter decorations this year, largely because it hadn't occurred to me to do so until Friday, when I overheard two moms among the holiday crowds at the supermarket talking about their decorations:
"Oh, it's not too late to put them out," one mom assured the other.
Oh yes it is,I thought. Besides, if I'd bothered to dig them out of the attic on Good Friday, no doubt they'd stay up until Fourth of July. After all, I left my Christmas wreath up until well into March. Oh, bah humbug.
I was lamenting my apparent inability to keep up with chronicling and celebrating the holidays, the milestones and the years gone by when I spotted a little reassurance that perhaps I'm not alone.
While my neighbors were away for spring break last week, I was taking care of their pets in their impossibly neat home. I mean, really: How can they keep up a house with two kids, a cat, a guinea pig and fish that have been known to jump out of the tank with the teeny tiny sponge by their kitchen sink?
Anyhow, I was heading down their hallway to fill up the cat's bowl with water when I saw three small wooden deer near the couch. Wait a minute, I thought. That one's got a red nose. It was true: There in the dust- and clutter-free living room, were Christmas decorations!In April!
Yes! Yes, I am not the only one in the neighborhood who can't keep up with it all! Yes, I'm not the only one who's seasonally challenged! Yes, I am, no doubt, not the only one who ditched scrapbooking nearly a decade ago!
When I got home, I received an e-mail from the father of a girl who's in the church choir with my son. He was forwarding an e-mail from the choir director, who'd lost my e-mail address, that said that choir practice was cancelled for the next two weeks.
"Thanks," I wrote back. "I hate to say it, but with baseball and soccer starting this week, the idea of not having choir practice, well, can I get an Amen?" And then I apologized for never sending him the video of our kids singing at Christmas mass like I'd promised months ago.
He replied, "AMEN. No problem with the video. We, much like yourself, can't see time available to actually watch it until July anyway."
Ah, yes. Just in time to take down the Easter decorations.
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