Edit 34:The April Edit
April tends to arrive like an edit in progress.
Not the nice and neat kind either. This is the messier one. The kind where you're still not entirely sure what you're trying to say, and the work of figuring it out is the saying of it.
That's where I am this first day of the month. Sitting with it.
Because March—our March—is not for the faint of heart.
Every year, without fail, it arrives like a second January: a hard reset disguised as a season. My husband travels for work in stretches that turn me into the family's sole logistics coordinator, social director, physician, chef, and counselor—a role I have, over the years, become pretty good at. The Junior League recruitment season is still in full swing, which means scheduled events, coordinating calendars, and following up with everyone while dotting all the i's and crossing the t's. There are moments when a particular kind of tired washes over you—the kind that comes from pouring yourself into something you genuinely believe in—and you feel it in your bones. And yet…
There is an added layer because even as I am still very much in recruitment, the quiet work of transition is already beginning. New leadership is taking shape. The next chapter of the organization is coming into focus. It is the particular cadence of something that never really stops, only shifts—and learning to hold both the approaching ending and the beginning of a League year at the same time is its own kind of grace. It is a balancing act, but one I wouldn't trade for anything.
The heart of our March, though—the thing that has set the rhythm of this season for years now—is the trombone.
Our son plays. Really plays. Between regular rehearsals, United Sound, jazz band, and the Spring musical—where he performs in the pit band—March belongs to the music. And then there was the St. Patrick's Day parade—because of course there was. Jackson performed with the CCHS Marching Band down the streets of uptown Charlotte, trombone in hand, and I stood on the sidewalk doing what mothers do: beaming, camera raised, heart completely full. It was one more moment in a month that seemed determined to give us as many as possible.
The days are long for him, which makes them longer for us. There are late pickups and early calls and evenings spent in auditorium parking lots, and I won't pretend it's always graceful.
But here's what I keep coming back to: he loves it. You can see it in the way he moves through those long days—not dragged, but pulled forward by something. His friends are there. The music is there. And there is so much sweetness inside the exhaustion, if you know where to look.
This year, I knew to look. I had to. Because this is his last one.
He's a senior. And this Spring musical—the pit band, the late nights, the particular joy of performing something you've spent months learning—was the final one. I watched him and tried to memorize it, the way you do when you know a chapter is closing and you're not quite ready for it to.
As of today, April 1st, spring break begins. He has twenty days of school left before he graduates.
Twenty days.
I'll be honest, my mother's heart is all over the place. It is proud and tender and a little bit terrified and completely, overwhelmingly full. I don't have a tidy way to say it, so I won't try.
In the middle of all of it, there was my sweet Madeline. Time with her this month—unhurried, easy, ours—became its own kind of anchor. The two of them, my two, at such different but equally beautiful moments. One stepping toward the door. One still so gloriously in the middle of everything. I held both of them close this month, in the ways each of them needed.
And then, because March apparently hadn't quite finished with us yet, there was Twice.
Madeline flew in—because driving wasn't an option, and not going wasn't either—and we closed out the month the way it perhaps always deserved to end: in an arena full of joy, surrounded by the most glorious feminine energy, happy-screaming alongside thousands of other people who felt exactly the same way we did.
Madeline was absolutely elated when they performed ‘Doughnut’—not once, but twice. Twice, performing it twice. It's rarely ever performed live since it's in Japanese, which made it feel like a gift meant specifically for the people in that room who knew every single word. She was one of them. I watched her and thought—this. This is exactly why you fly your daughter in on no sleep with zero hesitation.
I was running on fumes for the better part of two days, but I would do it again without a second thought.
And now April.
So here is what I'm revising this season.
I'm revising the idea that surviving a full month means you made it through. We didn't just survive March—we were in it, fully, and I want to give that its due. The numerous car rides and the curtain calls and the St. Patrick's Day parade and the recruitment events and the dinners with friends and the mahjong tournament games (did I forget to mention this earlier?)—it was a lot, and it was also a lot of genuine living.
I'm releasing the nagging guilt of not slowing down sooner. Some seasons aren't meant to be slow. Some are meant to be full, and the wisdom is in knowing the difference and in trusting that rest will come, as it always does, on the other side.
And I'm ready—finally, wonderfully ready—to say out loud that twenty days feels like nothing and forever all at once. That watching your child step toward his next chapter while your daughter is still so fully in the middle of hers is one of the strangest, most sacred privileges of this life. That I am not ready. That I am so proud. That both of those things are true at the exact same time.
April arrives like an edit in progress.
And I am here…present, a little undone, and so deeply grateful for every. Single. Moment.
What is your heart sitting with as April begins? I'd love to know.
