And if she’d done that, she’d have something in the future that wasn’t about to change.
“I used to work in the same company as Erica. In fact, I was promoted before she was.” The moment the words left her mouth she felt embarrassed. What was she doing? Trying to prove that she was worthy of the cool title, too? Was she really that insecure about herself and her place in the world? Since when was your worth measured in terms of job title and salary?
“You were promoted before she was?” Daniel’s eyes widened, as if he couldn’t even picture his mother occupying the same space as Erica. “Why did you give up?”
“You know why.” Meg rolled her eyes at her brother. “She had us.”
Daniel looked troubled. “But you could have carried on working.”
It intrigued her how simple the world seemed to her children. They saw everything in black-and-white, no shades of gray. Maybe that was one of the advantages of hitting forty. You saw things in a more nuanced way.
“I could have carried on working.” She smiled. “But I enjoyed being a mother. Our family has always been my priority, and I have no regrets about that.” No regrets, but lately she’d wondered how her life might look if she’d made different decisions. “You’ll be making these decisions yourself one day.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to have children with the state the planet is in,” Meg said. “Your generation has broken it. Thanks a lot, Mom.”
Anna blinked. Now she was being held personally responsible for global warming.
“Anyway, you can still go back to work. It’s not too late. As Dad says, forty isn’t that ancient.” Meg helped herself to another piece of garlic bread. “Priya’s mom has just gone back to work in a doctor’s office.”
Anna tried to imagine herself working in a doctor’s office.
That wouldn’t happen. She’d been out of the workforce for too long. She had no skills. She’d have to retrain and she wouldn’t even know what to retrain as. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do. Her life stretched ahead, empty and without purpose. She imagined herself walking from room to room, tidying things that were already tidy.
She’d always known this moment would come, so why wasn’t she better prepared?
After the kids had cleared the table and helped load the dishwasher—she might be a stay-at-home mother, but she wasn’t a walkover—she glanced at Pete.
“It seems you and I are getting the tree by ourselves on Saturday.”
“Mmm. I can pick one up on my way home from work on Friday if you like. I pass a store that sells them.”
His answer unlocked the misery she’d kept inside. “Sure. Why not just add it to our weekly shopping? Maybe we should buy one already decorated so we don’t have to bother with that part, either.” She saw him raise his eyebrows and sighed. “Sorry. Ignore me.”
“I was trying to be helpful,” he said mildly, “but clearly it wasn’t a good suggestion. What’s wrong? What am I missing?”
“Evidently nothing!” She felt frustrated that he didn’t understand without her needing to explain. “Am I the only person in this family who appreciates tradition? Don’t you care at all that the kids don’t want us at their concert, and that they don’t want to join us to get the Christmas tree? A Christmas tree isn’t a chore. It isn’t something to be ticked off the to-do list like laundry.”
He paused. “Anna—”
“Don’t Anna me.”
He rubbed his fingers across the bridge of his nose, the way he always did when he was trying to figure out exactly what to say. “It’s not that they don’t want to come with us to get a tree. It’s that they had other plans. We could do it at a different time.”
“They didn’t appear to care much. And did you notice that they didn’t seem at all bothered that I’m going away? But that’s not the point. The point is that the tree has always been everyone’s priority. As soon as we hit November, they’d be begging us to get the tree, remember? They wouldn’t have missed the trip for anything.”
“I remember. I remember the year we caved in and got it at the end of November.” He smiled and she smiled, too, because it was a happy memory.
“It had lost most of its needles by Christmas Eve.”
Pete nodded. “You can’t expect them to want to do the same things they did as kids. And look at it this way—it’s great that they have friends they want to hang out with.”
“I know, but this is Christmas. At Christmas plenty of families have traditions that they repeat year after year. That’s why they’re called traditions. I don’t see why that has to change. Doesn’t it make you at all sad to think we’re not going to do it?”
“I haven’t really thought about it. But you obviously have.” He was sympathetic. “I know how much you’ve always loved Christmas. I tell you what. Why don’t we go and get that tree together and then we’ll go out to lunch at that new place in town? We can make a day of it. Make it special. It will be an Anna and Pete day.”
She felt a rush of nostalgia.
After the twins were born, they’d occasionally taken up the offer of babysitting from Pete’s mother and enjoyed what they’d both affectionately called “Anna and Pete days.” Time when they could be together and focus on themselves, and not the twins. Those days had been precious. They’d gone to the movies in the afternoon and crunched their way through a bucket of popcorn. They’d checked in to a hotel and had sex. Once, they’d checked in to a hotel and simply slept. But most of the time they’d talked and focused on each other.
It seemed like a long time ago.
“It’s not the same. It’s just me, isn’t it? I’m the only one who cares. It wouldn’t bother you if we picked up a Christmas tree from the side of the road. You’re doing it to humor me.”
“I like having a Christmas tree. It’s not important to me how we get that tree, but it’s important to you. And if it’s important to you then it’s important to me.” His tone was steady as he watched her. “But this isn’t really about the tree, is it?”
Her throat thickened. He knew her so well.
“It’s about everything changing. About them leaving home. I’ve dreaded this moment for so long, but I’ve always managed to bury it and tell myself it isn’t happening yet. But tonight I realized it’s already happening.” She felt emotion build. “Maybe the kids haven’t actually left, but in some ways it feels as if they have.”
“They’re growing up. Taking their own journeys.”
“I know. But we’ve always been on the journey with them until now, and letting them go feels—” She swallowed. “It feels hard. It isn’t such a big deal for you, I know. You go to work in the morning and you’re busy, and I bet you don’t really think about us. You have something else to focus on, but the kids—our family—that’s my whole life.”
“I know. You’ve created a wonderful home, and it’s mostly thanks to you that we have two happy and well-adjusted kids who are confident enough to get out there and live life the way they want to live it. Our role now is to support them as they do it.”