He was growing up so fast. He was taller than ever and his body had started to fill out with muscle. He wasn’t my baby anymore. While that made some part of me cry out with protest, most of me was just so proud of the young man he was becoming.
“Family movie night is hard for me too, Mom,” he sniffled into my shirt.
I blanched with new grief. I had never stopped to think about how family movie night might hurt my children. I had wanted to keep their routine and help maintain Grady’s memory. I had waded through my own heartache and forced myself to endure a night that I dreaded all week long.
And why?
So we could all be sad together?
That just didn’t seem worth it.
I pulled back so I could look Blake in the eyes. He blinked rapidly and tried to avoid my gaze. My heart shattered into a million pieces.
“Let’s do something different then.”
“What?” He finally looked up at me and the sadness started to chip away. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,it just seems like if this movie night thing is making all of us sad, we should try something different, something that might make us happy.”
“Mom, are you coming?” Abby bounced into the kitchen with Lucy on her heels.Jacetoddled in after them and hugged me too. His little arms wrapped around my leg and he looked up at me, babbling about juicy.
“I don’t know,Abs. Blake and I were just talking about changing up the Friday night line up.”
She tilted her head, “What does that mean?”
“What if instead of watching a movie tonight, we played games instead.”
“Like Candy Land?” Abby asked.
“Not Candy Land!” Blake whined.
I smiled at him again. “How about we play a couple games? You can both pick one.”
“And me too!” Lucy demanded.
“Sure,Luce.You too.”
“Me! Me! Me!”Jacejoined in.
I moved the kids to the kitchen table and set them up with popcorn and juice. I ran down to the basement and pulled out some games that had sat on a shelf for too long.
An hour and a half later, we had laughed our way through Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, UNO and Old Maid.
The night hadn’t been easy.Jacehad been a handful and destroyed more than one of our attempts at playing. Abby had plenty ofattitudeto throw around and wasn’t always satisfied with the outcome of the game. Okay, honestly, she was a terrible loser. I would have to work with her on that.
The night tried my patience and made me question if getting out all of these games was really better than just cuddling on the couch during a movie. Movies were so much easier, but infinitely more painful.
By the time I had them tuckedin,I’d decided that I would make this our new tradition. I had been waffling up until bedtime. I was exhausted from the evening, but so were the kids. They went to bed happily. They brushed their teeth calmly and jumped into bed, ready to end the day.
I knew their better behavior was more than their level of exhaustion. They felt fulfilled for the first time in a long time. I wouldn’t always be able to fill the role of both parents, but tonight I’d given them the attention they needed and the focus they craved. I hadn’t punished them for their unruly behavior by taking away the games; I’d worked to refocus their energy on some friendly competition instead. And they needed that.
The sharp burn of humiliation seared over my skin. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to realize how hard our movie night tradition was for them. I’d been too busy wallowing in my own grief to notice theirs. What a selfish mom I could be.
I walked back downstairs in my pajamas, wanting to clean up the games and the kitchen and then collapse face first in bed. And I knew I looked as tired as I felt.
The holidays were coming up. We’d somehow waded through the first few months of school and now had Thanksgiving to look forward to next week.
I looked down at scattered UNO cards and knew I had to do something like this for us during the upcoming holidays. We would not survive Thanksgiving and Christmas if we had to relive every tradition Grady had helped us build.
