This was by far the SHORTEST school year with the LONGEST ending.  The month of May is always a grueling marathon for moms. We all know this going in – we try to head it all off at the pass – but by May 15 we are ALL losing our sanity.  My to-do list was longer than my arm and it was a smeared, crumpled mess that I could barely pry from my clenched fist by mid-month.  Why do schools wait until the last several weeks of the year to have every special event imaginable?  There are talent shows, school plays, field days, art shows, teacher appreciation week and the list goes on and on. It’s enough to set the most organized, well-prepared momma crying in aisle twelve of the grocery store because she can’t even remember why she’s there and she can’t read all the smeared lines on her to do list!!!  CAN I GET A WITNESS PEOPLE!?

My fave is when we’re informed that NOW OUR PRESENCE IS REQUIRED so we can hear our kid recite a two-minute poem!!??? WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS???  This requires showering and non-yoga pant outfits!!! Don’t they realize that collectively moms are all acknowledging we have reached DEF CON FIVE – I repeat DEF CON FIVE?  The minions are nearly out for summer and ALL HANDS NEED TO BE ON DECK IN PREPARATION.  It’s a lot of stress. That’s all I’m saying. Thank God it’s over. Adios May! Don’t let the door hitcha in the butt.

Sigh.  Deep breaths.  So, somehow we all survived the trauma that is the month of May.  Praise the Lord. For the Key family the end of May signals high tailing it outta town to celebrate that fact that we have all survived.  This doesn’t necessarily mean there are kudos all around for glowing report cards.  It doesn’t reflect frolicking hand in hand with teachers as we recount each joyous day they had with said minions throughout the school year. It means we SURVIVED.  In my book, survival calls for celebration.

So the hubbs comes up with this idea to try a new place for vacay.  My answer is “What’s wrong with the old place!?”  But whatever.  I’m game for anything since alarm clocks are now at the off position and book bags are being burned in the back yard and homework is nearly just a bad memory.  (Homework is almost like childbirth – just days after it’s over you almost forget it was as bad as it was.  Well, almost.  But you know what I mean.)

I really couldn’t believe we were set to leave town.  I was thinking to myself “There’s actually a jet out there being gassed up because it’s gonna fly us outta here! We have have made it to the finish line!!”  I’m so excited that I almost don’t mind reminding the tween FOR THE THIRD TIME that he really should put clothes on his naked body since we are ready to leave.  As I turn around to hand him his travel toothbrush I WALK INTO HIM MID CARTWHEEL – while he’s still in the nude – with a force so strong that he knocks me IN MY JAW AND INTO THE WALL!  I literally didn’t know what hit me at first but then my brain called up the last image of said tween’s bony butt and his heel coming at my jaw at 50 mph.  I saw stars!  Then I saw blood!  Then I felt a pain so enormous I couldn’t even process what was happening.  I was so angry and so hurt that I did what many moms might do in such a situation.  I sat on my toilet, locked the door behind me and cried.  I cried hard.  I could hear him crying hard on the other side of the door too – he was scared and sorry.  But I couldn’t even answer him to say whether I was okay because I mostly wasn’t.  While there was the shock of getting socked in the jaw, I realized my tears were seemingly endless because this school year was another tough one for him, and when your kid has a tough school year you do too.  So I sat there and figured I should just keep crying until I was all done, because if you don’t get rid of all the tears you need to shed they linger.  Then they creep back up on you at inopportune times when you’re NOT sitting on your toilet – alone- behind a locked door and you end up looking like a wacko.

My lip was bloody and swollen, my jaw hurt to the touch and I was certain it was pushed out of it’s place.  No matter.  Jets don’t wait.  So off we were.  Family fun time was officially kicking off and I was in a catatonic state with facial injuries.  I mostly didn’t speak during the plane rides or layovers.  It hurt just to think. My head was on fire.

Then fast forward to our vacation’s first morning.  A quiet walk with the hubbs through a beautiful maze of green with the backdrop of Costa Rican mountains and tropical foliage and he says “Look there’s the spa. Go in and pick some stuff out to have done because you need it.”  Who am I to argue?  I’m thinking, “Wives, just submit to your husbands already.”  So the next thing I know I’m walking into a room with rose petals on the floor and delicate aromas wafting through the air.  All those spa sounds that are cued up in most places are actually just naturally happening as I’m in this gorgeous outdoor cabana with flowy sheer curtains and like a thousand little birds and wildlife that are making a symphony of happy outside.

The serenity of the moment was a huge band aid on the previous day’s bruises.

Deep breaths.  Beautiful.  Happy.  Special.  My heart begins to go back to it’s normal rhythm once again.  In my mind I kept saying “Praise the Lord!” over and over and over.  He’s so good isn’t He?  Did I mention the rose petals ON THE FLOOR!?  How frivolous and spectacular is THAT!? He specializes in spectacular. “Praise the Lord…praise the Lord”, I just keep saying it in my head to the rhythm of those amazing birds and frogs and whatever else was joining in.  I thought at one point I heard turkey sounds.  Costa Rican turkeys were lurking and joining in the fun!? And that’s when I opened one eye to see if I could find the turkey and instead – standing almost taller than the bright blue sky – I see the HUGE VOLCANO that was towering above us.  Yeah…I almost forgot that was there.  I thought to myself “What a great metaphor for my life,”  or any of our lives for that matter.  There’s a huge volcano that could blow at any minute towering right above us – ALL THE TIME.  Even in the midst of strewn rose petals and happy.

Why run from lava that’s not flowing when you could be smelling the rose petals?

So what should we do about that??

I decided to tune back in to the symphony of lovely those Costa Rican animals were making for me.  What?  Am I gonna take on a volcano now too?  No. It’s not going anywhere.  Whether we can SEE the volcano or not – it’s ALWAYS there.  WHY RUN FROM LAVA THAT’S NOT FLOWING YET WHEN YOU CAN STOP AND SMELL THE ROSE PETALS?

Deep…breaths…of…thanks. This moment is my gift and I’m taking it.

Then off in the not-so-far distance I could actually hear the tween yelling “Dad! There’s an iguana over here!”

Pops diving into the East River from Greenpoint, our Brooklyn neighborhood. Circa 1960 something.

Looking out my bedroom window as a kid I had a great view of Manhattan.  From our small Brooklyn apartment or more specifically my bedroom – which was the size of a glorified broom closet – I could see the majestic Manhattan skyline.  It didn’t matter that I had to look past an old factory and several other small buildings because when the Twin Towers stand gloriously before you, anchoring the mammoth of concrete and glass that is NYC, all you can see is POSSIBILITY. You are breathing in opportunity and breathing out doubt. It’s like getting a private invitation to take on the world.

Sometimes I wonder if this glimmering reminder sitting outside my window is responsible for instilling confidence in me early on.  Well, it was either that or my MA or a little of both.  MA was always reminding me that I could do anything.  Actually, it was more of a mandate than a reminder but that’s how my MA operates.

Confidence is a good thing. These days it’s a necessary thing. More than any other time in my life, even my days as a professional trying to move up the next rung on the workplace ladder, it’s NOW that I’m reaching deepest for that confidence. Why?  Well, because my life has so many layers of crazy that some days I’m really not sure I’m able to do this thing.  I’m smothered in CRAZY. There’s family crazy, kid crazy, school crazy, friend crazy – crazy is indiscriminate to every single facet of my world. And THIS is why I refer to my life as CRAZY TOWN. Thanks for stopping by, I bid you a hearty welcome!

On the surface, my CRAZY TOWN may seem pretty status quo.  I’m a middle-aged momma, married to a middle-aged dad and we have two boys.  There’s a house and a dog in the mix, along with the typical packed schedules and what not.  But much like nouvelle cuisine, a base of “familiar” is kicked up a notch with an eclectic mix of the unexpected.  For instance, there’s an extended cast of family characters and circumstances woven through my CRAZY TOWN that turns everything upside down. It’s sort of like sprinkling chocolate shavings on a platter of duck confit.  At first you’re thinking “Duck Confit AND chocolate? This is just weird!” – but by your last bite you’re agreeing that it all kinda goes together.  That’s my life and family. It goes together like…duck confit and shaved chocolate.

Another layer of said shaved chocolate definitely comes from my famliy’s culture.  I’m Puerto Rican. A very pale, red-headed Puerto Rican – two concepts that seemingly negate each other. My parents were both born on this tiny Caribbean island that has more flavor and character than an entire continent fifty times its size.  We’re BIG personality people.  We’re LOUD and PROUD.  And there are LOTS of us.  I have more than twenty five first cousins.  Everything we do is an instant party – including funerals.  I’m so serious. Food and festivities are our go to and it never, EVER gets old.  We can keep a fiesta going for DAYS people. Random dancing is literally like breathing air.  It just happens.  On your way to the bathroom?  RANDOM DANCING WITH WHOEVER IS IN THE HALLWAY.  It happens. It’s awesome and wonderful and although I look more Irish than Puerto Rican to some, I have immense pride in my heritage and all things Puerto Rican.  These are MY PEOPLE – these are mi gente.

Speaking of my people – the base of this stockpot of CRAZY are my parents Ed and Edna.  They are kind of like a Latino version of Ben Stiller’s parents from Meet the Fockers.  For 57 years these two have navigated their tenuous relationship in a way that’s comedic, tragic and everything in between.  They have perpetually teetered on ending their “love capade” for longer than I’ve drawn breath, but somehow they have this unbreakable commitment that borders on serving a jail sentence. Every interlude with them includes talking over each other, arguing, laughing, repeating everything twice and shouting. They are quite the spicy combo.

On the homestead there is the awesome hubbs who keeps me sane and laughing and together we parent our teen and tween who are basically Felix Unger and Oscar Madison.  No – there is absolutely no stretch of the imagination in that description of our children.  They are as different from each other as humanly possible so as to S T R E T C H our parenting skills like yoga positions that are LITERALLY KILLING US SOFTLY EVERY DAY.

Throw the tween’s exhausting ADHD in the mix along with his brother’s basic teen junk ON TOP OF all the rest of the CRAZY and there you have it.  It’s a whole community working together as well as against itself to comprise what I affectionately refer to as my life in CRAZY TOWN.

My life is hard and easy, excruciating and fun – it’s YING and YANG in every possible way as to make sure I am continually on my knees and praying!  Since I realize that no matter what the “flavor of the day” is – it’s good for us to share our experiences, spur each other on when we feel like we just wanna nap FOREVER in a fetal position or snap each other out of the ruts we fall into because LIFE IS CRAZY AND IT IS HARD.  We need each other to remind us that LIFE IS ALSO GOOD and IT’S BETTER TOGETHER.

So I invite you to join in all this incredulous fun.  I’ll be sharing RECIPES and PARTY IDEAS along the way because there’s a lot of that going on in between pulling my hair out as a mom and wife and all the other hats I wear each day.  Remember I’m Puerto Rican so we can turn anything into a party.