Table talk & tissues

We're pretty big on dinner here. We sit down together almost every school night for a meal and some conversation. Some nights are better than others. Some nights our conversations are really just telling the kids to please sit down and eat. But other nights - we talk. And those nights make all the others worthwhile.

Two nights ago dinner was all about our garden dreams. Last night, it was more about the actual fact of moving. It will be a pretty fast transition - school is done June 10th and we have to be out of the house by June 15th. I think the kids will go to stay with their cousins while we pack and drive across the country. So, after a long build-up, it's going to feel pretty sudden. One day, class party. The next day, leave forever. It gives the usual summer excitement a different feel.

Last night my son was sad about moving. I have no experience with this. As a child, I never moved. So I'm not really sure the best way to deal with this. The hardest part of the move for me is accepting the fact that it will make him sad. At least in the short run. We've always been pretty honest with our kids, so it feels false to just keep telling him how great it's going to be. He's leaving everything he knows.

So when he said "I'll probably cry" - I told him I know I'll cry.

"I wonder if my friends will cry."

I wonder the same thing. But I'm buying extra tissues just in case.

As memories will do - thinking of times that Mom cried brought him around to other times. He remembers a time when I was having a "melt-down". In his words -- after the baby that didn't live. As I said - we've always been honest with our kids. So when he was 3 - he knew we were expecting, and he knew when that ended. And he remembers.

I remember too. I remember sitting in the doctor's office for hours, bleeding out a tiny life and some small part of myself. I remember the doctor, not my doctor, just some woman I'd never met, handling this incident as though it were an every day thing. I know it is. I know the statistics But for me, and for every other person who has gone through it - it wasn't an everyday thing. I remember my husband calling - unknowing - on a business trip in Vermont - and having to tell him what was happening. I can only imagine what his trip home must have been like. At least I had friends to call. I think his scars are a little thicker than mine on this one. This, too, has been part of our table talk. And it is a part of who we are as a family.

I asked him if he remembered all the doctor trips before his sister was born. He was just her age - not quite 4 1/2. He does -- he remembers the ultrasounds - the goo spread on my pregnant belly and the big machine. I had a great doctor. She'd have him stand at the end of the bed while she did the exam and started the ultrasound, finding the heartbeat to be sure everything was ok before she invited him around to see. I remember her kindness as a counterpoint to the other doctor's unintentional cruelty.

Memories are funny. They aren't easy to organize. They swoop in and take you places you aren't planning to go. This happens to me a lot these days. As excited as I am about moving, we have history here. For my kids - this is all they know. I need to let them be sad about that. We'll just keep talking. And I'll keep a stock of tissues.

In our next house, I think we'll have a booth in the kitchen. Most kitchens these days have an island with a bar. You sit all in a row - shoulder to shoulder but not eye to eye. But our builder put a booth in the most recent drawing. After seeing us with our kids and listening to our thoughts on how we want to live -- he thought a booth was better.

I never thought about a booth. But I think I like it.

Slide on in next to me, and let's sit a spell.

I'll get the tissues.