10.14.2014

The weightiness of October

October is a complex month. In September, we're coasting along, riding the tail end of the long wave of summer...then October comes along and...wham! Fall is here. The temperature drops. The leaves fall. And it rains. A lot. I always forget how much it rains.

But there are also those gorgeous, #nofilter October days that make you wish that you could press pause on the temperature, the low humidity, the warm sunlight filtering through the vibrant trees. The days when I'm driving along in our neighborhood with the windows down, singing along to some awful song on the radio with the kids and exalting, "This is my most favorite time of the year!" The crisp, clear, days remind me of one of the best days of my life: Our wedding, on October 29, 2005. I remember poring over the Farmer's Almanac in the weeks prior to the wedding, analyzing the past years' weather and trying to calculate the chances of rain. Nothing was even scheduled to be outside, but I wanted pictures at the Grotto. It was a perfect, sunshiny day, of course. And I got my pictures.




Mark's birthday is in October--a day I admittedly always manage to bungle somehow. This year, for the big 36, we had just returned from our kid-free trip to the Pacific Northwest. I spent the afternoon visiting Jeanie and Uncle Phil, my mom, Leezie and Lily at the Farm. We got home too late for any formalities; I dashed into Weis to buy a cheesecake and poor Mark ordered his own birthday pizza. Wife of the year right here. But Papa and Diz came over, we sang, and the kids blew out the candles, and gave him a couple of gifts, including a glittery Redskins Christmas Ornament Eamon so sweetly picked out just for Daddy. He says it was all he wanted, glittery ornament and all. I think I still owe him.


Gotta say, that cheesecake was delicious. 

But with the celebrations of October come a bit of weightiness, too. The month can't slip by without bleak memories of losing both Grandmommy and Grandpop, just a year apart in mid-October of 2004 and 2005. How we all forged forward and had my wedding just two weeks after Grandpop's funeral, I don't know. Reflecting on that horrible contradiction of emotions still makes me a little nauseous, but all along I've known that having a big ol' party was what he would have wanted. The man already had his tux pressed and shoes shined. He was going to walk my Mom down the aisle.

10 (and 9) years gone by, yet I still hear their voices, still feel their papery, but smooth skin. Still feel the stiffness and stickiness of Grandmommy's voluminous, snow-white hair after she had it "done." Still hear Grandpop's cackling laugh and the sternness in his voice after he chastised me for doubting him..."99 out of 100 times, I am right." I tell stories about them to the kids all the time. They know the Farm as "Grandpop's Farm" even though they came long after he climbed that tractor for one last spin in the fields. Nora knows that she has Grandmommy's nose, and that we spotted it early on in one of her very first sonograms. And soon Nellie will be able to understand that maybe, just maybe, got her sparkling blue eyes from JDOC.

One of the BEST times--Oysters with Grandpop in NYC!

As my friend Crystal told me, it's far better to remember the birthday than the last day, so I never dwell on those dates. Yet they do manage to creep into my conscious on gloomier days, like today. I get an inexplicable sinking feeling and then realize the significance of the date. The memories flood back. The painful ones, yes, mostly the amazing ones that make me appreciate the time we had together and wish for just one more hour with each of them.

But back to the much better bits of October. Pretty soon, Halloween will be ringing our doorbell, and I better have some tricks and treats ready. It's going to be major. Like sugar-crazed preschoolers running wild around our house major. The kids are off of school that day, so of course we're throwing a party for Nora and her classmates, and likely some of E's friends too. And of course I've invited neighbors to come over to our house after trick-or-treating later that evening. I'm sure I'll go into a Pinterest-fueled fury leading into it all and will be making pumpkin-shaped cake pops until 3 a.m. the night before. Mark may want to divorce me. But then we'll have a great time, the kids will love their cakepops (and hopefully not smush them into our brand new carpet), and I'll pin my pics like it was all so easy, eventually forgetting how I vowed to never make those motherf&*$ing cake pops ever again.

It better not rain.

Halloween '13: Let's hope Nellie won't be so terrified this year. Or that Nora won't hug her so hard. 


This year, we'll be going on a variation of the bug and super hero theme, throwing in a princess for good measure. Can you guess who will be whom? 

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