Alone in Neverland

    Yesterday I was devastated to discover that I had forgotten a tradition that had been so important when the kids were growing up--pumpkin faced sugar cookies.  Shortly before Halloween I always made pumpkin shaped sugar cookies with jack-o-lantern faces.  We have been out of homemade cookies for a couple days, which is a tragedy all by itself, and I had been mulling over what kind to make.  It wasn't until my niece came over after school and we began to talk about upcoming Halloween activities that I realized I had totally forgotten the tradition.  When our daughter married and moved to Minnesota, I paid ridiculous postage to mail Halloween sugar cookies to her because I couldn't bear for her to not be part of the family tradition. (Although it was a relief not to eat the malevolent faced cookies she used to decorate.)  Now, all the children are gone from home and my carefully cultivated traditions are dying of neglect.  I still want very much to keep the traditions, I just don't know who I am keeping them for.  An innocuous cookie fired an arrow of emptiness right into my heart.
     I am afraid that the hole in my heart since my children left home will never close, and I am afraid that it will close, and I will lose the magic to the mundane.  Will the mystery of being out after dark turn to fear of stumbling? Will I start going to bed early on the 4th of July so I won't be disturbed by the fireworks?  Will leaf piles cease to be for jumping and hiding in and only represent work?  Am I alone in Neverland?
     I grew up starving for a chance to make some occasions stand apart from the ordinary days, but my childhood attempts were always sabotaged by my mother's mental illness. If I couldn't erase the bad memories I could, at least, bury them under layers of good ones with my own children.  My children are grown, my niece and nephew growing up, the memories are fading.  Now I know why I am so sad.  I have nothing new to put between me and the bad memories.  Once again writing has become my cheap therapist.
     But if I am alone in Neverland, I still choose to be making cookies.  My children appreciated the traditions, but they did not begin them and their growing up should not end them.  Perhaps in Neverland memories can be made out of cookie dough.  Maybe the magic of motherhood is not in having children, maybe it is in me.