Tradition

I told myself I was going to write a blog post each day while I was off work. I also told myself I was going to clean my house top to bottom, every single room. One room a day, one blog post a day. I was going to use my time off well and get shit done that I normally don’t have the time and energy to do while working full time.

Shocker – I did not complete either of these things, and I go back to work tomorrow.

Sure, I did do quite a bit of deep cleaning. I got the main parts of the house done. I did not get into the bedrooms, or the laundry room, or my office though. And I certainly did not write a blog post each day.

Mostly, I sat and worried while using TV as background noise.

I let the weight of all the things that needed to get done, along with the weight of being “jobless” keep me from doing anything. I know as well as you do that if I had gotten off my ass and done the cleaning, I would have felt better. If I had put words to paper, I also would have felt better.

But I did not, so I have spent the last two days busting my ass trying to get all the things accomplished before hecticness ensues again.

I also am prepping for a music festival weekend, so let’s add that on to my two-page long to-do list.

Some things never change. Like my own destructive nature – I will forever and always be a procrastinating perfectionist.

I did do some fun things, though. There were the annual garage sales in Luna Pier that I went to with Matt and his girlfriend. There was a lake day and fireworks with friends for the Fourth of July holiday. I got to spend as much time as I wanted to with my kids, when they were available for me. Matt is gone more often than not. It’s graduation season, and I swear he’s been going to a graduation party every day for weeks – not to mention the two jobs he’s holding down, and time to be spent with his girlfriend and their friends. Chase has been around though, and while we didn’t do a lot, we spent a lot of time joking and laughing, he helped me with some of my cleaning projects, and helped cook for the cookout we had for the holiday.

I told myself after the trip to Luna Pier that I was going to sit down and write about that specifically, because it’s an important piece of my story. I wrote it on my to-do list every day, and every day it got skipped, though. So, let’s talk about that for a minute, shall we?

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know the story about how I moved to Toledo with a bag of clothes and a box of books, and a baby growing inside of me. I had next to nothing, including things for my soon to be born child. I think I had a pack of bibs, a pack of onesies, the What to Expect books, a few bottles. . . and that was it. Nowhere near what I needed to care for a newborn child. It was the middle of May when I moved there, and Matt was due to be born in July. I can’t speak for twenty-year-old me and where I thought the items were going to come from that late in the game. I guess maybe I just thought it would all fall into place somehow.

Actually though, it did. Thanks to adultier adults guiding me.

Grandma took me to as many garage sales as she could find, shopped at thrift stores, and worked her Grandma magic to get odds and ends for the baby. Matt’s aunt and uncle purchased a crib for him and gave me some hand-me- downs from their boys. I can’t describe how thankful I was for these things. There were still some items that were needed though, and with the little income we had, I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure where they were going to come from.  

One afternoon, Grandma showed up at the apartment extremely excited – a nearby town in Michigan was going to have a city-wide garage sale. We’d been hitting a few around Toledo and neighboring little towns and had found some good neighborhood sales – but this was on a whole different level. Grandma lived for garage sales, and she swore this would be where we would find everything that we needed for the baby. It was the first weekend in July, and she was dead set that we were going. While I understood the need, I was not looking forward to the heat, and being on my feet that long. But the kid wasn’t gonna clothe himself, so I didn’t verbally object to the trip. I just braced myself for discomfort in the name of providing for my child. Turns out, that’s a lot of what parenthood is all about. Who knew?

Matt’s aunt came into town to go with us. She swore that I was going to walk the baby into existence, as I was already having Braxton Hicks contractions. I was not overly enthused at this idea, and prayed to any God that would listen that I did not go into labor at a fucking garage sale, of all places.

It was as hot, if not hotter, than I thought it would be. I was nine months pregnant with a ten-pound kid. I ended up sunburnt because I didn’t realize the importance of sunscreen back then. The day was a blur as we walked up one block and down the next. I found air-conditioning in the town library and spent longer than necessary picking out books for the baby. Then it was back into the heat.

We finished the day in the midafternoon, having found everything we needed and then some to care for this child of mine. Between Grandma and Matt’s aunt, everything he needed got bought that day.  We loaded up a truck bed with baby gear, and even though my hips hurt beyond anything I had ever felt before, despite the sunburn and swollen ankles, I finally felt secure that I would be able to at least have the necessary items to care for the baby when he came. The actual parenting part was still to be determined, but he wasn’t going to want for anything. And I knew damn well with all the help I had received already – and he wasn’t even here – he wasn’t going to ever feel anything less than loved. So he had that going for him, anyway.

He was born just a few weeks afterwards, with plenty of clothes and baby books, a baby tub and an excersaucer and swing, amongst other things.

And so the tradition was born. Every year, on the first weekend of July, we embark on our yearly journey to Luna Pier to garage sale. We missed two years because of Covid, but otherwise we are there at 730am, with our walking shoes on – and sunscreen, as I have learned the error of my ways.

It’s not always the same people now. Sometimes Grandma doesn’t come, sometimes she does. Sometimes Matt’s dad joins us, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes we all ride separate and meet up for lunch. Occasionally one of us will bring a long a friend. It just depends on life’s circumstances year to year. Regardless though, one of us is always there.

For years I used the annual garage sale to purchase gifts for Matt’s birthday – The timing couldn’t be more perfect. I found vintage Ninja turtles one year, a set of science books another. . . Countless books and pictures and random toys for both him and now Chase have been purchased and put into the back of the many vehicles I have owned and hauled back to Toledo to make life just a little easier.

At some point I blinked, and Matt was suddenly old enough to join me on the trip, picking up random trinkets and toys, eating snow cones, and marveling at the beautiful little town with me. Now, it’s become our tradition, and there’s something very sweet about that. What started as an emergency need for baby items has become a tradition with that child, who is very soon going to be 18 and a full-blown legal adult.

Every year as we drive into the town, I am reminded of waddling through it nine months pregnant and scared to death. And I look over at who that baby became, and I am so proud of how far we’ve come.

It’s more than just garage sales now, I suppose. It’s a sentimental mom’s way of keeping things in perspective. We don’t go there out of need any longer, we go for fun.