“Nothing good happens fast.”
That’s what the pundits say. But I sure hope they’re wrong, because sometimes, that’s what you need – something good, and fast. You need it yesterday. Or at least overnight.
Take the time my in-laws, my family, and all our friends were coming to our house the next morning for a backyard party. The occasion was our first-born’s first birthday so perhaps we should have seen it coming a year away.
But nobody with a newborn can see any farther ahead than the next diaper change, so it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that I hadn’t planned enough for this party.
That first birthday was a huge milestone, not for the baby, who was oblivious, but for us, the mom and dad.
For me, not to be flat on my back in the hospital, recovering from a C-section; for my husband, not to still be struggling with how to install the car seat; for both of us, not to be spending every single moment in terror, but only half of them. Yes, this was something to be celebrated, with the people who had helped us achieve it.
But why had I uttered the fateful words, “Sure, come on over! It’ll be fun!”
I, who had never entertained more than two other people at our home, and only then after swearing them to secrecy about the state of anything they found there? Now, suddenly I’d invited everyone whose opinion I was most afraid of, and all at the same time? What had possessed me?
At least I had thought far enough ahead to order a cake, and some sandwich platters. I had even purchased napkins and balloons. But as I stood in the backyard and looked around, I realized that just mowing the grass and hosing down the lawn furniture was not enough to put the place in a festive mood. It needed flowers, flags, something. But how would I ever pull that off by morning?
It reminded me of all-nighters in college, when I’d lock myself into my bedroom with donuts and prayer, hoping to emerge into daylight with 10 pages of typescript that weren’t total gibberish.
My roommate had a bigger problem. She was an art major, and needed six oil paintings finished by morning. We almost passed out from the fumes long before she was done. With every window wide open, we shivered from the cold instead.
But the worst for me was the lab report I was supposed to compile for some science class out of data I should have been collecting all month. Every night, at the same time, I was supposed to go outside and record the phases of the moon. Was it my fault it rained half the time, and stayed overcast the other half? Okay, there were a few nights when it was clear.
Those nights I just forgot. So there I was, the night before the assignment was due, with a month’s worth of data to forge – I mean, fudge.
This proved one of the most formative experiences of my college years. It convinced me that wherever my future lay, it was not in the sciences.
But none of that was going to help me with the Backyard of the Dead.
“What are we going to do?” I yelped at my husband. I was on the verge of hysterics. “It’s not like we’re Alice in Wonderland, with enough gardeners to paint the red roses white!”
“That’s it!” he shouted, and dashed off.
He returned an hour later with a carload of flowers, in little pots. “We just dig a lot of holes in the ground, and plop these in,” he said.
“What, just like this?” I asked him. “With the pots and the price tags still on them? Won’t they die?”
“Not till after the party,” he replied, “and do you really care what happens after that?”
“Well, no,” I admitted. So we took turns holding the baby and putting plants in the ground.
The next morning, we were all still alive, and I got my overnight sensation. But more importantly, once my panic receded, I was able to realize that none of my superficial worries really mattered. What mattered was that we had made it through nine months of pregnancy and 12 months of parenthood with our family and our friendships still amazingly intact.
Hmm. Maybe the pundits have a point after all. Maybe the good things do take time – because they’re worth it.
All are invited to Judy’s stand-up performance at Governor’s Comedy Club in Levittown on Sunday, Oct. 13, at 3 p.m. See www.govs.com for details.
