Saturday morning I got up bright and early--or as early as I could after a late night--and finished packing up for my trip. I had figured out that I should be able to drive there without an issue in the morning, and then we'd probably spend most of the weekend homebound because of the incoming snow storm. It looked like it should fade by later Sunday so I figured the roads would be fine by then to come home, but I still brought my work computer and an extra change of clothes just in case something changed and I needed to stay the night. I also loaded up some items for the snow--both for fun and safety--and five bags of hand-me-downs plus two separate bags of shoes! I had quite the full car!
I got on the road about when I figured I would. By the time I got coffee and breakfast and filled my gas tank, it was just about 8am. That meant I would get there shortly before 11am. The drive was clear and easy. The first hour seemed to take forever for some reason, but the rest went pretty quick and uneventfully.
From the moment I got there, my godson Mason was so excited! Heather must talk me up good because most three-year-olds are weird around people they don't know well, and he was instantly all in! I could pick him up for hugs, he wanted to show me things right away, he was just ready to go! I hadn't seen him in just over a year, and his talking was so good and he is really like such a little boy now. And he's really smart and clever, too! But of course he's also a three-year-old boy so he is always up for a tackle or a tickle or being a little crazy!
We spent most of Saturday just playing with toys and watching the snow fall outside.
He really likes my phone, and was happy to smile for a selfie--even if he is a squirmy worm! I was amazed this one wasn't blurry!
He really took a liking to games and videos on my phone, which was originally a distraction technique while dinner was being made, but it turned into his favorite thing...oops. We promptly had to dial that back a bit and make it more of a carefully portioned out activity because stopping became a challenge! What can I say, my phone is fun! We played with my koi pond app, and then tried to find a Duplo app because my kids loved them, but those seem to be mostly behind paywalls now. We tried out this silly fruit merge game where you fling fruits onto the board and try to collide the same fruits which then turn into other fruits. We eventually found out cherries become blueberries, blueberries become apples, apples become peaches, peaches become dragon fruits (we were very excited about dragon fruits!), dragon fruits become coconuts, and coconuts turn into a giant green fruit we couldn't identify--maybe a watermelon or cantaloupe or something? He really liked watching videos of almost anything, but was most excited when I showed him a video of the Cedar Downs ride at Cedar Point. Binghamton is the Carousel Capital of the World (so many public parks have them!) and Heather and I come from the Home of the Carousel, where the Herschell Carrousel factory was, so he comes by the fascination honestly. And when I told him there was one that went extra fast and raced, he loved it!
I guess I should share here that being a godparent is sort of an interesting place to be. Because we lived apart from our nieces and nephews, I suppose we never really had the close relationships with them like some people do. And we haven't really had particularly deep friendships with other couples since we became parents, even through years of sports and kids in school. It took up until three years ago to have one of my long-time, close friends have a child, so I haven't had a lot of experience with feeling connected to other people's kids quite like this. I imagine it's a little like a grandparent feels--that you have a strong love for them and a responsibility to them, but you get a little more leeway to be the "fun" authority figure because you're not the one ultimately responsible for making them into a decent human. As a parent you have a whole set of "rules" you hold yourself to, to not spoil your child and to discipline them properly. You don't want to set any bad precedents or lead them into bad habits, so I think you tend to be more strict--at least when your sanity can manage it. I mean, I know I'm not the only parent who regrets that a moment of survival mode probably started her children on a life-long relationship with screens, so sometimes a moment of weakness wins out. But as a whole, I think we try to find that balance between love and careful correction, but I personally struggled with that a lot and often think about how I wish I would have had more patience with my own kids, have been able to put love first and keep my sense of humor intact, rather than focusing so much on the discipline that felt necessary in the moment.
But as a godparent, while you still want to uphold the parents' rules, you probably have a little more ability to bend the rules, if only because it won't be your job to say no to it countless times in the foreseeable future. The parents can hopefully chalk it up as something special with that person and leave it at that. Or at least that's my take. But as someone who has been all parent, all the time for the last 15+ years, it's sort of a nice relief to get some time with a kid where you don't have to feel "on" all the time, where you have the energy reserves to be the fun adult for a day or two, and where it's OK if you use some light humor to counteract any misbehavior rather than feel like you have to be strict all the time, lest you seem flippant. It was nice to have that for a weekend--I just hope I didn't leave Heather with a kid who was constantly asking for a phone this week!
The snow continued to fall all day and gradually got deeper. By the time I had to move my car to the
other side of the road for alternate parking at dinner time, there was a
solid couple inches out there. Based on the forecast we knew not to expect church in the morning because their church is a half hour away and more than likely it would be hard to get there. We had a delicious dinner and a little more playtime, and then Mason headed off to bed. We had been talking about our Christmas PJs earlier so I got mine on while he got his on, and we compared before he went to bed. He had Mickey Mouse ones so obviously his were cooler! Once he was in bed, that finally gave Heather and me a chance to do what we do best--talk! We had done it throughout the day, but as anyone with kids knows, you can only do so much before you get interrupted! Eventually I think all the excitement tired us out, too, so off to bed we went!
And sure enough, Sunday morning the snow was pretty substantial. Maybe about six inches or so, which is something I haven't seen in a while! The plows seemed to do a pretty solid job, even with on-street parking, and Heather's husband Peter very sweetly brushed off my car and dug it out for me. We had a lazy morning in our PJs, followed by some amazing French toast and sausage! It was nice thick bread, which I clearly never get at home, and it was so good! We ended up going right from pajamas into snow clothes, as it was time to explore outside!
Mason had been a little hesitant to go in the snow when we talked about it on Saturday. On Sunday he was asking to play on my phone and we essentially teamed up to say "Later...after we go out in the snow", and that did the trick...on went the snow pants! He was a little hesitant at first, which isn't surprising since he probably doesn't remember much about snow, but rather quickly he figured out he could flop down into it, and he loved that!
We pulled out my sled and did a pull across the yard, but that was short-lived before he just wanted to play again.
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| Snow angel! |
Mason also discovered the joy of eating snow. We directed him to the clean white snow away from the street and figured it was harmless enough! It was quite the winter wonderland outside. The trees were coated and it was just warm enough that it wasn't bad outside at all.
It was also fantastic packing snow, which made me think of Carter at
home because he spent all winter last year waiting for a decent snow
with packing snow to make snowballs. It seemed like every time it
snowed last year, which wasn't much, it was all powdery and not very fun
to play in. But this was great! It was hard to see in the picture, but we made a little snow family!
We decided to all take a walk to the park around the corner because there was a sledding hill over there. When we got to the park I tried pulling him on the sled, but that was a pretty immediate fail!
We righted the ship and continued on!
The carousel building looked lovely in the snow!
We tried a little hill across the way to gauge his tolerance for sledding. I went with him and he really liked it! He was very quickly asking to go on the big hill with the big kids! It was such a great hill and I said that if we had that hill in our neighborhood, Carter would be there every day! Mason absolutely loved it, and it's a good thing there were three of us because taking turns going up and down the hill was the only thing that let us do it as long as we did!
Here's a ride down with his dad!
And with his mom...
Of course when I tried to do a POV video, this happened:
But we got it right!
It was a little harder for Heather to get up the hill as much because, as I think I mentioned, part of the reason this visit was so important is because she was going in for major surgery this week. It's heart related--connected to a heart defect she's lived with all her life that's finally rearing its head--and stairs have been leaving her short of breath lately so clearly a snowy hill was not ideal! But every few runs she'd make it back up and take another ride. It was often a two-person job getting back up the hill between helping Mason and getting the sled up so Peter and I did what we could so she could rest.
Considering that sled is probably as old as I am--or close--it performed admirably. The rope finally bit the dust but that had definitely outlived its expected life span! I should be able to replace it. We had so much fun sliding and ultimately probably did more than a dozen runs before he was ready to go.
I did get a call from Craig in the middle of it saying that Carter probably needed to get into the doctor on Monday because he was sounding worse. He'd had a "smoker's cough" for a couple weeks. Not terrible but it sounded uncomfortable and wet-ish, and yet he felt fine and said it didn't hurt. His energy level was good and fever or no shortness of breath, so it didn't seem like pneumonia or anything like that, so we just kept an eye on it. He maybe had some sniffles at most leading up to it, but definitely not a full-fledged cold, so we were confused where it came from since it wasn't a typical post-viral cough situation. But now he was sniffling and sneezing, so germ-phobe Jacob was annoyed and we figured with hitting the two-week mark it was probably time. We did COVID test him the next morning and he was fine, and the doctor ended up just saying to keep an eye on it since his chest sounded clear and there was no fever. Winter's so fun, isn't it? Oy. But I have plenty of reminders in my Facebook memories this time of year of how much worse it can be, so I guess I feel lucky that's all it was!
We walked back home for some lunch, and I couldn't resist snapping this photo.
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| Sweet little family! |
We were sure he'd conk out for a nap after all that action, but noooope. He was as silly as ever! We did do a little more time on my phone and computer, as promised, mostly watching sledding videos from when all four of us went on our big sledding day a few years ago and from when Carter and I made our own sledding hill over at his school during one of our last big snowfalls a couple years ago. He liked those!
At some point that day, Heather started going through the hand-me-downs I brought. There were three full bags of 3Ts, which he's already in, plus two bags of 4Ts (not to mention two grocery bags of shoes!). We figured he wouldn't need much of the winter stuff since he already has a bunch, so I told her that if she wanted to go through the 3Ts while I was there to pick out anything that might still be useful, I'd bring back what she didn't need and give them away here. I already have a bag of 2Ts that ended up mixed in with the bigger stuff, so I could probably just get rid of them all together through the Buy Nothing page. She's got enough on her hands the next couple months with surgery recovery that I figured that would be much easier! Of course, after a while, walking nicely through the "aisle" in the middle of the clothes lost its fun and we ended up with this!
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| Silly boy wanted to be buried! |
In the meantime, the roads seemed good so Heather had called her mom to see if she wanted to stop over. I had said the previous day that it was a bummer that the snow might prevent me from seeing her this visit. She lived in the Tonawandas forever, but once Mason came along, she decided it made sense to move to Binghamton to spend time with him and help out, and it made even more sense once Heather's brother moved to Albany for work and wasn't in WNY either. I love Heather's mom--she is a spunky lady and always has been! She lived through our Hot Looks doll fashion shows and whatever other ridiculousness we concocted during sleepovers when we were tweens (especially since Heather's dad worked nights and she was usually solo with us), and she has weathered all the tough stuff life has thrown at her like a champ. It's shocking to think she's pushing 80 because she still gets around pretty well and has a very youthful attitude. Her other grandchild is grown so I think it's been a treat to have a little guy like Mason to keep her smiling! It was such a treat to have her stop over and hang out with us for the rest of the afternoon. I was thinking on the way home that the evolution of friends' parents is such an odd part of growing up. Early on we think our parents are everything, and then we go through this phase where our own parents are completely embarrassing for pretty much our last 8-10 years under their roof. However, I'm not sure I ever thought that way about friends' parents. Their kids might have been mortified but I don't ever recall thinking anyone's parents were that cringey. On the contrary, I probably thought they were cooler than mine, or at least had plenty of empathy if their parents did something legitimately embarrassing, since I had embarrassing ones of my own. Heck, there were always parents you wanted to ride with for school field trips, or parents who you didn't mind getting a ride home from, or whatever. I can't quite tell if Jacob is embarrassed by us at this point, but if he is, he doesn't really complain about it much. I know I was a jerk sometimes right up through college, so I guess I'm lucky? Anyway, I think as we get older, we realize everyone feels the same way about their parents and they're not really as embarrassing as we thought. By then it's even easier to relate to friends' parents (or even older relatives) and enjoy their presence, so it's always fun when we get to spend time with her.
Anyway, before I left, she snapped this picture for us...
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| Mason loves "Mason sandwiches"! |
As sunset and dinner time approached, I decided I should probably get on the road. The radar was clear and while I knew I'd be driving in the dark regardless, the earlier I could get home, the better. Plus there was a big Bills game at 8pm! I packed up my stuff and brought it down, and then we all chatted again for a while. Mason seemed to get awfully snuggly about then--wanting to be picked up, laying his head on shoulders--and eventually he fell asleep on Heather so she laid him out on the couch. We finally tired him out! I hated to leave while he was sleeping, especially since he was rather concerned about me leaving on Saturday night and we had to reassure him I'd be there in the morning, but it probably made things easier, too. It was hard to leave, especially knowing the challenging weeks they likely have ahead with the surgery and recovery, but it had been a really fun trip and I felt so grateful that it was able to happen.
My trip home felt shockingly fast. I stopped for gas and a Slurpee about a half hour in (on purpose--I knew there was a Speedway station right off the highway) and then stopped just past the halfway point to get some dinner. It broke it up well, and I still swear by that route because there are so many more exits and notable spots along the route than when you take the Thruway. It's rare you go more than 10 minutes without an exit, and there are enough interesting things and cities along the way that it feels like you're consistently making progress, or could stop if you needed to. And the last 30+ minutes being my route home from Geneseo just makes it easier for some reason. It was a good drive and the night was capped off by a very important Bills win!
So, back to the grind this week, but thankfully with a long weekend ahead. But I guess you could consider this the epilogue of this trip: I was thinking the other day about how relationships change significance as we get older. Heather and I probably most needed each other through our grade school years because we were always the two smallest in the class and it helped us feel less isolated to have someone else who understood that feeling. We built a good friendship over those years, seeing each other nearly every day up through 8th grade (even Sundays at church). But then life changed in some ways. In high school our in-school paths barely crossed. I don't think we had any classes together, and maybe only one lunch if I recall? We still had church and youth group and to some degree summers, but for the most part we had separate groups of "daily" friends. I think there was a time where the commonalities waned a bit, and we didn't even have social media as a backup back then. Not that we weren't still friends, but life got busier and we didn't have the routine time together that we had as kids. We emailed through college, checked in back at home, and visited a bit after that once we moved away. She enjoyed my kids once I had them, but clearly I was busier by that point so we generally did what we could around schedules. Looking back, I think our lives had diverged a lot at that point. We lived in different places, we had very different jobs, I was pretty overwhelmed by motherhood, and probably felt a little weird about that knowing her struggles in that area. We always had the past to fall back on, which helped whenever we got together, and catching up was always a good way to reconnect. But I think Mason's arrival moved us into a new phase of life where we had new things to build on. We could relate on the motherhood thing so we weren't so reliant on the past to deepen the relationship, so having yet another (new) commonality definitely made it stronger.
I think, too, that the older you get, the more you realize that a relationship that lasts this long is rare, and something to be treasured. I think we take for granted a lot of relationships when we're younger. You think your high school friends will be your friends forever, or later your college friends, so maybe it's easier to let older friendships fade because you don't relate to them as much anymore and you have others to keep you occupied. Newer ones are the shiny new thing and they fit more easily into your current stage of life. But as it turns out, sometimes those friendships don't hold as well as we expect because our lives continue to evolve. Nowadays social media may keep you connected to a broader group some degree--I admit I love being able to watch old friends' lives from afar--but keeping a true in-person friendship is harder, and ultimately I think only a select few are lucky enough to have things align enough to survive. And even some of the good ones tend to fade over time for the reason I mentioned above--that if too much of your life together exists in the past and if you can't find new things to connect on, it gets harder to sustain it. That's probably why concerts are Mary's and my main reason to get together these days, despite such a deep relationship in college. Our current lives are very different and it gets harder to find common ground to keep the conversations going. But music still works as a common interest and I appreciate that we can pick up where we left off each time, but admittedly the in-betweens are harder to find reasons to connect. So, long story short, I'm grateful Heather and I got something special to bond over in this phase of our lives. Mason was a godsend in more ways than one. And now that I'm at this stage of my life, it's pretty apparent how rare it is to have a friendship that lasts 40+ years, when even some of the 20+ year ones have faded, so it feels that much more important to hold on to it however we can.
I know that's a lot of deep thinking for what was otherwise a fun post, but I think--especially since she's in surgery as I type--that it's important to recognize something as special as we have and to be thankful that it's had a chance to evolve to something stronger in this stage of our lives. It's a big deal and we're very blessed.
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