In which I pretend this Fourth of July post is right on time

I won't pretend to be totally Zen as holidays approach, nor as I pack Lil E's bag full of clothes, stuffed animal babies, Star Wars figures, light sabers of both plastic and homemade from wrapping paper tubes, gray rocks picked up on walks, pennies, cardboard tags from every toy he's gotten in the last six months, and sometimes even a bracelet or two of mine so (as he says) "we can think of each other" (apparently, over a not-so-secret love of bling).

I get clenched up and sometimes, in a panic, make too many plans for any of the hours I have (supposedly) to myself. The good thing is, that all that fades, usually within minutes of saying goodbye to the boy and ascending the stairs to a quiet house while he skips off to the car with his dad. In the big picture, we're still new at this, I know. But I am breathing deeper and it is getting better. We've come a long way since those first, very tough holidays (was it only a year ago that we were dealing with night dryness?) when I felt like I was releasing my little boy to the entire universe, not just for a day or weekend with his father.

This Fourth of July, my day with Lil E was actually the third.  Here, in Chicago, the third is when the good stuff happens. There are fireworks downtown to an audience of more than a million people, and it is all beautiful chaos that echoes and reflects off of our amazing skyline. Since I've been working so hard on enjoying -- not just surviving -- my time without Lil E, I also know how important it is that we do the same when we are together. So we took the train right into the epicenter of it all, met up with fun friends and soaked up the best of the holiday.

                                        

Leaving downtown was exhausting -- everyone leaving at once and many of them packing into El cars along with us, our umbrella stroller and giant bag of snacks. Even as I breathed a little deeper and harder than I'd been practicing while carrying a heavily half-asleep child with everything else up steep stairs from the train platform to the sidewalk, I was happy to hold on to the holiday for just a little bit longer.

                                        

I fell asleep for a few minutes, snuggled up to Lil E, as I put him to bed that night. The sound of much smaller fireworks sounded off outside the window to his bedroom giving way to the steady waves of his breathing. The chaos crowds and the calm as he clung to me when we left it, the bright flashes of light and stillness of the dark, his squeals and the silence at home, our time together and our time apart -- all of it was in balance.

This holiday, this year, it worked out just fine. It was exactly as it should be.