Relief spread across Daniel’s face. “Really? You wouldn’t mind, Mom?”
Anna felt a jolt of shock. That wasn’t the response she’d expected. “Of course I wouldn’t mind,” she lied. The frequency with which she found herself lying to her own children in the name of good parenting had come as a shock to her. “We love hearing you play, but if you’d rather we weren’t there then we totally understand.” Another lie. She didn’t understand at all. “There will be plenty of other opportunities.”
But would there? The twins would be off to college the following year. Flying the nest.
It was something she tried not to think about. “I hope it goes well for you, honey.” She hoped that the girl he was trying to impress wasn’t about to break his heart.
When you had a child, everyone warned you about the lack of sleep and physical tiredness that came with parenting. No one talked about the emotional exhaustion. It had been a shock to her to discover that whatever her children felt, she felt. That their pain was her pain. Their struggles, her struggles. That long after you’d stopped being woken for night feeds, you’d be woken by anxiety for their future. Unlike Meg, who had been buffeted by the storms of complicated female friendship, Daniel had kept the same small loyal group of friends since preschool and up until recently he’d been too focused on music to think about girls, but that appeared to be changing.
Pete leaned forward to grab the salt. “Your mother and I will go out for dinner,” he said. “Date night. It will make a nice change. You can tell us about it after. Call if you need a ride home.”
Daniel shot him a grateful smile; Meg went back to her phone. Anna felt as if something important was slipping away.
She didn’t want to go out for dinner. She didn’t want date night. She wanted to go and listen to Daniel perform in the concert.
Wasn’t Pete at all bothered? Probably not. He didn’t seem to feel the passage of time the way she did, and maybe that was because his life wasn’t about to change as dramatically as hers. Their family and their children were her whole world, whereas they were one part of his world. He still commuted into his office in Manhattan three days a week, and on the other two days he worked from home, closeted away in his office.
She poked at the food on her plate.
She was being ridiculous, she knew that. At some point her children were going to leave home. That was the way of things. She’d always known the day would come, but it had been a distant worry. Now that day was fast approaching. She almost wished she hadn’t had twins. If there had been a gap between her children at least then she could have let go of them one at a time and gradually eased herself into a child-free life, instead of losing both at the same time.
She was dreading the moment she dropped them at college, no matter where that turned out to be. She’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to cry, but it was going to be hard. And harder still would be arriving home after.
The house was going to feel empty. Her life would feel empty. She was going to miss them so much. The chat, the chaos, even the bickering.
Suddenly, she envied Erica, who wasn’t facing major change. Yes, she’d turned forty but her life would be the same. She would still be doing the same job. Enjoying the same glamorous, exciting lifestyle. Anna’s was going to change dramatically, and she had no choice about that.
She loved her life. She wanted to freeze time. She wanted to hold on to life the way it was now.
Claudia was right. She had the perfect life. What Claudia probably didn’t appreciate was that Anna was about to lose it.
Panic engulfed her.
“Mom?” Daniel sounded worried and more than a little guilty. “Are you okay?”
No, she wasn’t okay, but the first rule of motherhood was to be calm and steady and always look in control. She produced her brightest smile. “I’m fine. Just planning where Dad and I can go to dinner. It will be a treat.” She had to stop thinking and worrying about the day when they would leave home, or she’d ruin the remaining days they had at home. She didn’t want to make that classic mistake of ruining today because she was worrying about tomorrow. She needed to make the most of the time she had left before they left home.
Erica would tell her to focus on the positives. The fact that her children would be going off to college as independent adults meant that she’d done a good job. She should be patting herself on the back for getting this far.
Her relationship with her children was inevitably going to change as they grew. She’d read a parenting book recently, about how to be a good parent to teenagers. Apparently, her job was to give them what they needed, not what she needed. And right now it seemed Daniel needed her not to go to the concert.
It didn’t matter if it felt as if someone had stabbed her in the chest; she had to accept it.
She sat up a little straighter.
Maybe she couldn’t go to the concert, but there were other things they could enjoy as a family and this was the right time of year for it.
“So who is excited about Christmas? I know we normally go to the forest to get our tree second weekend of December, but how would you feel about doing it sooner than that?” She ignored Pete’s look of surprise. “Does ten o’clock Saturday work for you? I can bake our favorite cinnamon cookies to eat while we’re decorating the tree. We could play games. I’ll make a special family dinner in the evening. It will be fun.”
Meg smothered a yawn. “I’m at a sleepover with Dana on Friday. It’s her birthday. I did tell you.”
“I know. Pizza and a movie. I have it on the calendar.” The photo calendar had been her Christmas gift to herself the year before. Each month was heralded by another family photo from her archives. Meg, aged ten, playing on her sled in the snow. Daniel with his guitar. A family holiday at the beach where they’d all squeezed into the shot and smiled for the camera. Treasured memories layered one upon another, like bricks in a house. That was how a family was built, wasn’t it? “But you’ll be back Saturday morning so I could make a stack of pancakes for breakfast and then we could go and choose the tree. We always do the tree together. It’s a family tradition.”
“Dana’s mom is taking us ice-skating on Saturday morning.” Meg saw her mother’s expression and sighed. “I guess I could miss it.”
“I have band practice at school in the morning,” Daniel said. “But we could do a different weekend.”
“No, we couldn’t. I have something on every weekend until Christmas,” Meg said. “My life is madness.”
Every weekend?
Anna felt a pressure in her chest. “Even our usual weekend?”
“Yes. And I did tell you.” Meg was defensive, a sure sign that she’d forgotten to mention it. “It’s Maya’s party on that Friday and I can’t not go because I’ve already said yes to Dana’s party so I have to say yes to Maya, too. I can’t appear to have favorites.”
Had her teenage friendships been as complicated as her daughter’s?
“But when were you thinking we’d get the tree?”
Meg squirmed. “I was thinking that maybe you and Dad could get the tree this year. I mean it’s not as if the choosing part is that big a deal. It’s having the tree that matters.”