It was an especially busy week last week. Winter concerts backed up to fall sports banquets (don’t even ask) which piled on top of all of our regularly scheduled things to create a perfect storm of frenzied activity that looks, even in hindsight, exhausting. So it’s no wonder that I almost forgot about the Christmas pageant altogether and even more believable that I nearly overlooked that it would in fact be our very last one too.

In our school, the kids participate in a Christmas pageant from preschool through third grade. This means, if you are a person who likes to keep count, that my family has been in a Christmas pageant every year for nearly forever. We have pinned more than our fair share of ears on our little stable animals, rehearsed lines, practiced songs, and eased stage fright worries. One of the gifts of a larger family is that we move more slowly through childhood. We don’t simply move on from some ages and stages like more economically sized broods. Life and logistics means that we get to stay here a little longer, that our big kids get to linger in little kid land an extra beat, that we get chance after chance after chance to straighten those robes and adjust those halos.

But our youngest son is in third grade now, so this year represents a chapter turning. He has worked himself up from the most reluctant angel to a fairly recalcitrant cow to a barely mumbling narrator to nab himself a primo role as the wiseman Caspar this year. On the one hand, I marvel that the boy finally fits that crown on his head, that he actually delivered his lines, that he sang his song so loud and clear. My heart swells, love grows, pride overflows. On the other hand, well, I miss that little bugger of an angel.

For me, this yearly ritual has been a bit like visiting a favorite vacation spot. We have measured ourselves against this familiar signpost for so long that leaving this Christmas pageant stage behind is going to be a bit of an adjustment. The tree can sparkle like Clark Griswold himself lit her up and the cookies can arrange themsleves in their pretty tins, but the season has not really begun until I see some angels squirming onstage and hear some off-key but earnest singing. This has been as important to my holiday heart as cookies or carols, uncomfortable chairs be damned. My heart has needed the messy, loud, uncontainable thing I witness at these performances to degrinchify it and get it back to the size it should be just in time for Christmas.

But I am going to have to find a new frame of reference, because this Christmas pageant ship has sailed.  Lucky for me, I am getting really good at the whole bending, changing, and growing up thing. This time last year my oldest was a senior and getting ready for college. I wasn’t making resolutions because I was just hoping I could become the mom he needed me to be, the one that could let him go.

Now, my oldest son is home after finishing his first semester of college and we are all a little in awe that we are here.  We are a new improved version of the “us” I have always known and loved, but we are all getting to now the new individuals we have become in our time apart.  Moving beyond the Christmas pageant phase of our life is not the same as moving a kid out of the house, I know, but parts of it feel the same. Just like last year, I feel us all stepping forward into a brave new world.

Now we are no longer a “little kid” family. Toys R Us is not the mothership anymore. We are growing up from top to bottom, so I’ve decided to take my cues from the carol “Auld Lang Syne.” Not just a song about old friends,  I like what it says about being graceful and open to the passage of time. I like the parts about moving into the future without denying the past. Sure there has to be a last Christmas pageant, just like there was a first, but there is no use fighting it or crying about it.

Auld Lang Syne. Time goes by. So it does and so do we right along with it.  There is nothing to do but turn this chapter and wait eagerly for what is to come.

-Erin

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