Birthday Season

Birthday season is in full swing in our house. All the humans who live here turn another year older during a stretch of five weeks. And from the first week of January to the last week of February, if you add only the local members of our extended family into the mix, we have nine birthdays. That’s a lot of cake. And a lot of reflecting on the passage of time.  

This stretch of winter weeks used to entail lots of time spent baking (and frosting and eating) cupcakes, wrapping presents, and planning parties for little people. Recently, I came across decade-old photos from a dinosaur-themed birthday party, including some pictures of dino-masked preschoolers playing Pin the Tail on the T-Rex. The birthday honorees in those photos are now mere months away from having their drivers permits. Gulp. 

 

For a year after my youngest was born, I could claim I had three kids under the age of 3. It was a statement that was partly prideful (as in, “I don’t know how, but I am doing this!”), but also partly oh-my-gawd-help-me! Now that I’m about to have three teenagers in the house, I feel the same way. I am so proud of these humans my husband and I are raising. And I am so challenged by raising them. 

 

Early in my parenting career I realized, often in moments of panic, that I had no idea what I was doing. This parenting thing, it’s no joke. And sometimes it’s wicked hard. What if I did something that totally messed up these children I had born and am responsible for growing into adulthood? Fifteen years into being a mom, that feeling lingers, sometimes just a distant internal hum, other times an anxiety-laden roar.

 

When the kids were little and I’d be out with them – at the playground or in the grocery store, with all three loaded into the cart – well-meaning parents of much older children (or grandchildren) would smile wistfully and tell me to “enjoy every moment.” And, like parents of small children everywhere, I’d smile politely while silently calculating how many nights in the past month I’d slept for more than four consecutive hours and wondering if I should truly enjoy EVERY moment, including the ones occupied by diaper blowouts, toddler temper tantrums, and middle-of-the-night projectile vomiting.

 

But even then, I knew my babies would grow faster than I was prepared for. The sweetness of those baby and toddler stages – and of just about every stage since – trumped all the not-so-sweet stuff. I have tried, all along the way, to cherish the best moments, even the ones – or maybe especially the ones – comprising such normalcy as a 6-year-old holding my hand as we walked down the road or a teenager skunking me in a game of cribbage. I have made it a conscious habit to NOT wish time away. And, still, the time keeps flying by. 

 

These past few years, I’ve discovered that no one ever tells a mom of teenagers to “enjoy every moment.” But those more seasoned parents will often share a quiet look of sympathetic understanding or some vague words of encouragement. With my friends who are also parenting teens, I lament adolescent angst and eye-rolling attitudes – along with the realization that too soon these kids who can sometimes cause us so much consternation will be out of the house and onto their next stage – one that doesn’t involve hand-holding walks (at least not with Mom), after-dinner family games, homework help, or curfews.  

 

So I strive to continue to hold onto those best moments, even in the midst of the not-so-fun ones. I cherish those rare afternoon ski runs with a kid or three. Or when one of them hugs me and holds on just an extra second or two. Or when they share stories from their day, and I get a little glimpse into those worlds that are more and more separate from mine all the time. I know other parents of teenagers cherish these moments, too, because we sometimes talk about the wonder of that stolen time with our kids, who so often these days are at school or at work or off with their friends or hidden away in their rooms doing homework – or just avoiding their parents. 

 

And at least during Birthday Season, I know these teenagers of mine will emerge from their rooms once in a while. After all, there’s lots of cake to be eaten this time of year.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's February 3, 2022 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Giving Thanks

Some years ago, when the children who are now as tall as I am were still small, we established a family routine of sharing “thankful things” around the dinner table. In part, this was a replacement for saying grace, which my family did when I was a child. But really it is more an act of focusing, even for a few minutes, on some of the good things in our lives, no matter what kind of day we’ve all had.

Some evenings it is easy to spout off a list of thankful things. Others, of course, this practice is more challenging. On this week of traditional thanks-giving, near the end of a year that has been challenging in many ways, it seems more important than ever to focus, even for a little while, on the good things.  

Thanksgiving is next in 2020’s this-year-it-will-look-different lineup. Since the middle of March, most things have been a bit – or a lot – out of whack. School has been different. Work has been different. Grocery shopping, soccer, visiting friends, going to the doctor, getting a book from the library – all different.

We’ve all adjusted, to varying degrees, to the shifting normal. I no longer forget to don my mask when I head into the post office (although it still feels a little odd). My kids have grown used to longer class periods in school and lunchtime spent six feet away from friends. Last weekend, my family celebrated my dad’s birthday with a woods walk and hot cider sipped around a fire, rather than a sit-down dinner and cake with candles. (I do wonder if I’ll ever again be comfortable eating birthday cake after the guest of honor has blown across it to extinguish candle flames.)

But holidays are different, and I think many of us are feeling a tinge of sadness at traditions set aside, for now, as we head into the first of a string of holidays that normally brighten a literally dark time of year.

My crew is lucky to live within a few miles of lots of extended family. My kids have grandparents around each corner, aunts and uncles down the road, and a cousin across the street. Normally, holidays are a time for blending the local McPhaul and McCarthy branches of the family, with the odd additional out-of-town guest or local friend adopted for the day – and the feast. Our average holiday dinner guest list is usually between 12 and 20, generally tilting toward the higher end.

Our normal gathering place for this particular holiday is my in-laws’ house, which we can reach – literally – by walking over the river (a brook, really) and through the woods. This year, though, along with most other folks, we’ll be marking Thanksgiving in our own homes, without any large gathering.

I bought a Thanksgiving turkey over the weekend for the first time – ever. The kids and I sat down about a week before Thanksgiving to plan out our own dinner-for-five menu. The main event, of course, is the bird. But also included are Gaga’s famous sticky rolls and a dish my kids call “glop,” along with Nana’s Swedish apple pie. While the setting and the company will shift, my kids insist the menu should stay as close to “normal” as possible.  

One tradition we’ll maintain, especially on this day of thanks-giving, is to share our thankful things with each other. In this year of feeling regularly uncertain and unsettled, I’m thankful for many things, including that my children have these family traditions, which will continue to evolve – even if, like most other things, they look a little different this year.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's November 25, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.    

Birthday Books

On a bookshelf in our family room, there are several photo albums wedged together. Some of these comprise photos I printed out (from film) and placed between the pages myself. There’s one from high school, a couple from my college years, and more from my post-college adventures in Colorado and Ireland.

The other albums are collections of childhood photos my mother gave me years ago. She was a master photo album-maker throughout the years of my childhood, keeping visual records of every trip we took, various childhood milestones, birthday parties and ski races, soccer camps and hiking trips – all compiled by year and labeled neatly. And then, several years ago, she took these apart, reassembled them by child, and gifted books to my brothers and me.

I once had great aspirations of keeping similar photo albums – thus, the college and immediately post-college years represented on my shelf. But then life got busier – and digital photos came into being. While I love the ease of taking and sharing images now, I rarely have them printed out anymore, let alone put neatly into albums with each event carefully labeled.

My husband and I were married 15 years ago, right around the time digital was really pushing film photography out of the way. In our bedroom, I have a box of wedding photos – something like 600 hundred of them – along with a lovely album that may someday contain those photos. And, while my older two children have a lovely baby book, my youngest has envelopes of photos somewhere that I may someday locate and organize into a book.

But – every year, each kid gets a book for his or her birthday. The photos are not individually printed and carefully placed between sticky-backed paperboard and clingy plastic cover, nor are they tucked by those little corner tabs onto pages. Rather, I download my photos onto a website, compile them there onto virtual pages, and then, through some photo site magic, they are printed directly onto pages, bound into a personalized book, and shipped to my doorstep.

This is not quite the same as the old photo albums, of course. The kids won’t be able, decades from now, to pull out a photo and turn it over to see if there are names or a date penciled carefully onto the back. But they serve as a record, nonetheless, and they have become a beloved birthday tradition – for both the receivers and the giver.

The kids like to turn the pages – quickly on the first look, then more slowly – to remember what they’ve done over the past 12 months, where they’ve been, and with whom. Like the photos from my childhood, these images show soccer games and skiing buddies, treks through the mountains, family trips and gatherings, sleepovers and time spent with friends. There are often sighs of happy contentment and a few giggles as the kids turn through the year just passed.

Making the books is time-consuming, and it is often agonizing to whittle the hundreds of digital photos I’ve taken over the course of a year down to a much smaller number that will fit within a book. But I love to go through those photos and remember, too. It’s a reminder to take a deep breath and enjoy these moments, even as they seem to fly by.

Often, on their birthdays, or after the birthday chaos has quieted some, the kids will go into the other room, pull out the collection of books from earlier birthdays, and flip through those as well. I think they like to remember how little they once were – to them it seems like forever ago, to me just the other day – to see traditions unfold across the years and new adventures mixed in.

Sometimes, one of my children will mention a place I’ve been to or a person I’ve shared stories with, and I’m able to pull a dusty album off the shelf and find a photo of that time, place, or personality. I hope these birthday books stand the test of time and go with my children wherever they wander. Then, someday, they can pull a book off a shelf, remember and share the stories held within.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay was published in the Littleton Record as Meghan's Close to Home column on February 14, 2020.

Cake

I think it was the unicorn cake that did me in. Or maybe the one fashioned to look something like our cat Feargus. Really, it was most likely the sheer number of celebratory confections I made each year in a short window of time during those preschool and early elementary years. Cupcakes for classmates at school, more cupcakes for parties with friends, cakes for family celebrations.

We barely make it through the winter holidays before we dive headlong into birthday season here. All

five of us – just the McPhauls living under this one roof – have birthdays within the span of 34 days. Add birthdays for a grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, and a cousin – all living locally – within a couple weeks of that timeframe, and it makes for a lot of birthdays. And a lot of cake.

In those early kid birthday years, I carefully crafted pretty cakes. At least as pretty as I could make them. Everything was from scratch. The frosting was piped to perfection. Hours were spent on each creation. This morning-person mama sometimes stayed up far too late to make sure the cakes were ready for the next day – because who has time during the daylight hours to decorate cakes with toddlers running around needing attention all the time?!?

There was the train cake, carefully assembled from an array of specially shaped mini cakes. There was the simpler pond cake – round and blue-frosted with green lily pads and rubber ducky candles. There was a rabbit cake for my bunny-loving girl and a tractor cake for my John Deere-obsessed boy. There were snowman and soccer ball and pink puppy cakes. There were dinosaur cupcakes and butterfly cupcakes and panda bear cupcakes with Junior Mint noses and chocolate chip eyes.

And then there was the unicorn. That cake involved a rocking horse-shaped cake pan, a meticulously frosted ice cream cone horn adhered to the cake with icing and covered in glittery sprinkles, and different-colored strands of frosting comprising the mane and tail. That unicorn was my pièce de résistance, my crowning glory in cake making.

It certainly wouldn’t have won any prizes on Cake Wars, but my four-year-old loved it.

Since that creation, I’ve knocked my cake-making endeavors down several notches. One year we even had a no-cake birthday season. We spent the day of two birthdays (my twins’) in Boston and had gelato for dessert at Quincy Market. We were in Disney World – a whole different sort of chaos – for the littlest’s birthday.

Mostly, though, we just keep the cakes simple.

The birthday kids get to choose the flavor (box mix) and the color of frosting (always homemade) and select a traditional-shaped cake pan. The number of candles lit corresponds to the birthday year. “Happy Birthday” is sung with gusto by people who love them. Their happy faces still glow in the light of those little candles as they make birthday wishes before blowing out the flames.

Simple is still delicious. And with so many of us turning another year older this month, there is always plenty of cake to go around. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 25, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Daddy's Girl

My father turned 80 this week, which has meant celebrating with friends and family, lots of funny stories and old fart jokes, and perusing eight decades of photographs. These snapshots are moments and memories preserved through the years: a curly-haired little boy in knee socks and pressed white shorts, a teenaged hockey player, a collegiate soccer athlete, a young professional dressed neatly in a suit for a formal portrait, a happy-go-lucky 20-something laughing with friends in a convertible, a dapper groom, a fun-loving dad, a beloved grandfather.

Dad and me, circa 1980.

Known as Red, Billy, Uncle Bill, Coach, Mr. M, and Poppy, my father has been many things to many people. To me he is, simply and perfectly, Dad. He is the first man I ever looked up to and the first one I ever loved. He’s been one of my favorite people for all the time I’ve been alive. I am, and have always been, a Daddy’s girl.

Dad has always seemed sort of timeless to me. He’s been a responsible adult for a long time, but he’s also maintained a youthfulness and joie de vivre you don’t always find in responsible adults. He is a teller of stories, an athlete, a funny-face maker, a handyman, an exuberant dancer – the kind of guy everyone loves. He is one of the most patient people I’ve ever known and has both the mischievous humor and sensitivity of an Irishman, the mind of an engineer and the heart of a poet.

My dad grew up in a series of tenements in Springfield, Massachusetts, where his grandparents had settled when they arrived from the old country of County Cork. I doubt life in the city was easy in the years spanning the Great Depression and World War II, but to hear Dad tell it his childhood was nothing but happy. He played stick ball and kick the can and pond hockey with neighborhood kids and once got lost wandering Forest Park, causing his sainted mother a fair amount of angst before the local cop brought little Billy home.

This lost-and-found tale is one of the stories I loved as a kid, one my children have now heard many times. Another favorite is the time Dad and his fraternity brothers in the 1950s were told they needed to class up mealtimes in the dining room. They showed up the next evening in suit jackets and ties – but no pants. Poor Flora, the fraternity cook, got quite a shock.

Dad was the first in his family to graduate college, paying tuition by working his way through the summers for his father, a highway foreman for the city. Those days of wrestling a clattering jackhammer may have contributed to Dad’s less-than-stellar hearing, although this sometimes makes for really funny conversations. Like when my 8-year-old son announced he’d like to be a zoologist, and his Poppy made a funny face and said, “Why would you want to be a urologist?” Once the adults around the table recovered from the ensuing bout of laughter, we had to explain to the children what a urologist does. It is not a career path any of them care to pursue.

During Dad’s career of 30-plus years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he left the house each morning at 5:30 to beat the traffic en route to his office in a Boston suburb, starting his day early so he could be home in time for dinner with the family. He and Mom took my brothers and me skiing and hiking from the time we were babies, and on an epic road trip one summer to explore national parks and cool landmarks from New England to the Rockies. He (and Mom) coached my sports teams when I was a kid. He taught me to play cribbage and tried to help me with my math homework by showing me the “easy” way to figure the answers.

When I went to college, Dad often drove me out to school, six hours away, and he was my copilot when I moved to Colorado after graduation, driving cross-country in an old Bronco II laden with the possessions of a 22-year-old. During these long drives I heard more stories, gleaned bits of sage Dad advice, and realized my father had a full life that preceded his parenthood.

We all inherit something from our parents: the shape of our eyes or color of our hair, interests and life goals, sometimes the way we look at the world. From Dad I have gained a penchant for pancakes and a love of mountains, the habit of singing made up songs about random things and of tapping my fingers on the steering wheel as I drive, a sensitivity that causes my eyes to grow watery at anything mildly emotive, but also a quickness to laugh. His influence is why I endeavor to stay fit and active (even if I don’t listen to the advice he continues to share on the chairlift regarding my ski technique) and why I look for an elephant in the full moon. I have never once seen the illusive elephant, but Dad swears it’s there, so I still look.

As fun-loving as he is, Dad also has a strong sentimental side. The morning of my wedding he was visibly, and adorably, nervous. When my husband and I announced my first pregnancy, Mom literally jumped for joy, while Dad smiled through watery eyes. He tears up at the first note of “Danny Boy.” For 45 years he has written a poem, sweet and sometimes silly, in every birthday, anniversary, and Valentine’s Day card he gives my mother.

When my older daughter was a baby and wanted to always be in motion, Dad spent hours carrying her around the house singing a little ditty he made up just for her. When my youngest was born he sang Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (an Irish-American lullaby) to her, even if she wasn’t fussy.

My kids adore my dad as much as I do. They love his stories and his silliness and the way he sometimes laughs so hard he cries. For this momentous birthday, the kids wrote poems as gifts. One is an acrostic poem of POPPY, ending in “Youthful,” the other a haiku whose middle line is “You can always make me laugh.”

Here’s to laughter and love, family and playfulness, stories shared and memories made, and an everlasting youthfulness. Happy birthday, Dad, from your little girl.

  

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 27, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

Hitting the Big 4-0

I turned 40 this week. The Big 4-0. It still sounds weird to me when I hear myself say it out loud: “I’m 40.” Nonetheless, the proof is there – in the date on my license, the “laugh lines” on my face and the grey hairs, and the experiences of my life. As I approached the big birthday I found myself contemplating age and aging.
 

I’ve never really had a good role model for how to “act your age.” A couple years shy of 80, my dad still skis most days in the winter, hikes with the grandkids in summer, and acts as his own general contractor and head carpenter for a happily endless array of house projects. I’m likely to find my mom, a good bit younger than my dad, but still considered a “senior,” outside sledding with the children or digging in the garden, rather than tucked quietly into a grandmotherly rocker.

So hitting a new decade mark has me a bit bewildered. How is a 40-year-old supposed to act? Where in my life should I be at this age? How the heck did I get to 40, when I feel like I was 27 just last week? When you’re a teenager, it feels like reaching 18, then 21, will take forever. At 21, 30 seems distant. At 30, the beginning of a new decade may still be a personal shock, but your 20s were just a few months ago. And then, suddenly it seems, the 20s are in the distant past, and you’re in the midst of middle age.

In the last few weeks, I’ve read articles and blog posts about aging gracefully, coming to terms with turning 40, things older people regret doing – or not doing – during their youth, and things you can do at 40 that you couldn’t at 20. All a bunch of hogwash, really.

Here’s how I look at it: there are certain things we can do now, at whatever age we are, that we couldn’t do 5 years ago or 20 years ago or last week. And there are things we could do then that we can’t do now. Most of it is not directly tied to age, but rather to perspective and experience.

When I was in my 20s, I could ride my mountain bike for long periods of time, at high elevations, without collapsing. That’s because I used to ride my mountain bike a lot, and I lived in a town whose elevation was 9,000 feet above sea level. I have friends, my age and older, who can still do that, because they ride bikes a lot and are bad asses. Me, not so much.

But today I can do a handstand in yoga class, because it’s something I’ve practiced. I can run five miles without getting too tired or too bored. I can be perfectly content sitting at home with a glass of wine and a good book on a Saturday night. I also get more done most days before 7:30 a.m. than I used to in an entire week. That is a simple necessity when managing three children, a house, a small menagerie of furry pets, and professional responsibilities.

Would I trade 40 for 20? Nope. Just as when I was 20 I wouldn’t have dreamed of fast forwarding two decades to 40. There are certainly things I miss about those younger days – being able to walk down to the bar just to see if there was anything interesting going on, sleeping late on days off from work, skiing endless powder runs without worrying about collecting kids from their ski lessons, and – perhaps this one most of all – having the freedom to hop in the car and head out of town for a weeks-long road trip, or deciding on a whim to move to a different country for six months.

That was all fun stuff, and I’m really glad I did it. There are good stories in those experiences, and a few bad ones, too. They all make up the wandering road of my life to this point. I’m also really happy with where I am now. I think if I were still road tripping around, solo, I’d be pretty bummed. Even back then I knew I wanted to settle down sometime, have kids, do good work. And that’s where 40 finds me.

So here’s my birthday epiphany for the year I hit the Big 4-0: however old you are, embrace life. Whatever your age, do the best you can at whatever it is you’re doing. Hopefully it’s something you want to be doing, somewhere you want to be. That way, when you look back, you’ll have fond memories instead of regrets. And when you look forward, you’ll have some idea of where you want to be going, even if you’re surprised when that next big birthday sneaks up on you.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul and posted to her Blog: Writings From A Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 24, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

Comfort and Joy

Early this week my youngest daughter was sick. Normally spirited and silly, she spent a couple of days sad and tired and on the couch, cuddled up with two favorite items given as gifts. The first is her pink, pajama-clad stuffed dog, given to her when she was only a few days old by her Aunt Laura, and which she sleeps with every night. The other is “Auntie Carol’s blanket,” given to us last Christmas by someone who has known me since I was new to the world.

Auntie Carol is not technically my aunt, but the woman who was my next door neighbor for the first 18 years of my life, and who adopted the entire neighborhood to love. My children have met Auntie Carol only a couple of times, but they adore the soft, cream-colored blanket she crocheted for us. Perhaps they can feel the love of this woman who is kind and gentle and one of the most truly sweet people I have ever known. Whatever she put into that blanket has made it a coveted treasure in our home, and one that brought a semblance of comfort to a sad little girl with a fever and sore throat.

We all have gifts that are cherished for the comfort and joy they bring to us. Some of them are favorites for a short while, others for a lifetime.

For my 25^th birthday, my mother gave me the diamond from her own mother’s engagement ring, strung on a simple gold chain. I have worn that necklace on the rare occasion that I am dressed up, but also when I need a little extra luck or support. It belonged first to my grandmother, and so when it hangs from my neck, I feel her spirit is with me. I wore it on my wedding day, along with the diamond studs my almost-husband presented to me the night before, which were a perfect match.

When I had my first babies – twins – my friend Becky, who has been my buddy since we were ourselves wee babes, sent me a ridiculously soft robe and super cozy socks. Another time, those gifts would have been just plain nice. But at that exact point in my life they were a touch of luxury when I felt both happy and exhausted, but certainly not luxurious.

Some of my favorite gifts now are those that remind me of my past, distant or recent. My mother

has given me albums filled with photographs from my childhood through to my children’s first years. My son and daughters love to look at these photos, to see how Mama and Uncle Billy and Uncle Michael looked as kids, and what Nana and Poppy looked like years before they became grandparents. A picture really is worth a thousand words, and just as many emotions.

Tucked away here and there, in my office, in the drawer of my bedside table, in the basket on the kitchen counter that holds various “stuff,” are little treasures from my children. Birthday cards made before they could write, self-portraits of each of them drawn in crayon with perfect u-shaped smiles and big ears and no noses, notes in washable marker declaring, “I love Mama.”

Those love notes are mere scribbles to anyone but me. My Nana’s diamond is just a diamond to anyone else, but it is a sentimental treasure to me, just as the earrings my husband gave me are special because they were his last gift to me before we married, left on my pillow on the eve of our wedding. The photographs from my past contain my memories, and those of my family. The super-soft robe from Becky is special because she knew, at that exact moment in my life, that I needed something warm and soft and easy. Auntie Carol’s blanket is simply a blanket made from neat rows of soft yarn, but for me and for my children, it represents the comfort of home. 

The best gifts are not necessarily the ones that come in the biggest box or tied with the prettiest ribbon. The best gifts are the ones that bring us joy and comfort, whether through touch, familiarity, promises of the future, or memories recalled.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted on her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears in the March 8, 2013 edition of the Record-Littleton.