It's a lazy day, this post-Thanksgiving Sunday. Cold, rainy, all my family curled up in the living room, still in our pj's. Darling Daughter just returned from Santa Barbara, visiting friends and doing the full college tour at UC-Santa Barbara, and she's telling tales. My niece is laying on the couch. Sweet Boy's watching a movie. The dogs are asleep. The girls are begging John to make them breakfast, and suddenly I smell bacon.
I'm trying really hard not to feel poignant about all this, not remember Lindsey's only here another six weeks and Maddy's old enough to look at colleges and choosing nothing closer than 3,000 miles from home. (She has two college criteria, in addition to a good dance program ... no trudging to class in cold, snowy, rainy weather and, she argues, since college is the best chance to explore somewhere brand new, completely unencumbered, & on her parents' dime, she might as well go someplace as different from home as possible. She's always been scarily rational & fearless about these kinds of things.)
So taking her lead, I won't get melancholy about all this impending Change, especially since melancholy never actually wards off the inevitable. (And I remember Lindsey and my friend Liz are weathering their first holiday season without their mothers so I don't have much cause for sadness in comparison.) I'll enjoy their company & this exquisitely lazy day instead.
And I think I've got 'em convinced to go with me to the gym.