Memorial Day weekend always reminds me of moving to NYC –
the heat, the humidity, the laziness of the first holiday of the year since New
Year’s Day in the middle of the bustle and noise of everyday life. Subsequent
years bore beach days and hungover days; brunch times and walks in the city;
Long Island days and barbeques in Bushwick.
Every year I longed for Memorial Day weekend to arrive so that I could
celebrate the beginning of summer, my real favourite season in NYC. This year
it crept up on me, my first Memorial Day as a family: a day where no one needed
to work, a day to spend together as we see fit, no plans, just mother, father
and baby time.
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Nowadays it’s really just the simple things that matter: a
walk in the park, watching the turtles watching you with their little heads
sticking out of the water, looking at the squirrel scampering away with the
acorn in its mouth, relaxing on a blanket under a tree and closing your eyes.
Choosing a pretty spring outfit for yourself and your daughter, knowing full
well that she doesn’t care if you are in a dress or pyjamas, or if she is in a
onesie or a dress, but doing it anyway because it is fun and because you can. Walking
along the sidewalk as a unit, mother, father, daughter, altogether as one,
making jokes and gazing at the pretty houses and gardens, imagining together
what our next home and garden will look like. Tickling your child under the
chin with a blade of grass and listening to her laugh and hoping that you will
hear that beautiful sound every day, forever.
Flushing ended up being a good choice for us, because
despite the commute into Manhattan, it really is beautiful here. There are
parks and gardens and trees and flowers everywhere and a happy alternative to
the race of the city and all that it entails. As I was walking around the
neighbourhood yesterday I realised just how much every single priority had
changed for the better. A walk in the park is just so much more enjoyable now,
as are all of those little things that we take for granted most of the time,
the turtles and the squirrels and the naps in the grass, the smell of concrete
after a rain shower, and the lilac bushes in bloom on the street corners. I
guess this is what my real happiness is…
Nowadays it’s really just the simple things that matter: a
walk in the park, watching the turtles watching you with their little heads
sticking out of the water, looking at the squirrel scampering away with the
acorn in its mouth, relaxing on a blanket under a tree and closing your eyes.
Choosing a pretty spring outfit for yourself and your daughter, knowing full
well that she doesn’t care if you are in a dress or pyjamas, or if she is in a
onesie or a dress, but doing it anyway because it is fun and because you can. Walking
along the sidewalk as a unit, mother, father, daughter, altogether as one,
making jokes and gazing at the pretty houses and gardens, imagining together
what our next home and garden will look like. Tickling your child under the
chin with a blade of grass and listening to her laugh and hoping that you will
hear that beautiful sound every day, forever.
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