I want to knit
I want to write
I want to teach
I want to paint
I want to clean, throw out, dismantle
I want to build, create, assemble
I want to sleep
I want to go out
I want to feel beautiful
I want to wallow in warm, cozy sweatpants
I want
to have the mental energy to do
The excitement I felt as a child spying Christmas lights through the trees, the twinkling points brightening the darkness, a magical apparition amidst a black backdrop – to say that’s gone away as I’ve gotten older would be a lie. It may have dimmed, but it hasn’t disappeared altogether.
Long drives to relatives’ houses, country roads turned unfamiliar by nightfall, the conical Christmas trees aglow in the windows we pass become the markers, the golden deer high on a hill the waypoints.
Our family traveled to one relative’s house both Christmas Eve and the following Saturday. The same route, the same sparkling spectacles, but somehow, within the space of a few days, the lights had lost their magic.
What once signaled possibility, now was a sad reminder that it was over; the points of light now a poignant prompt of what was. Looking at those lights depressed me in a way I couldn’t name. Not in the way it may have as a child, if Santa hadn’t brought me the one thing I coveted. Or knowing the time of unlimited treats was over. Perhaps because all the preparation leading up to that one day, all the hours reduced to a mere twenty-four, passed by in a flash. There was nothing now to which to look forward.
The lights would soon go out. The joyous strains of Christmas carols would end. The bleak days of winter would set in.
The end of the season is capped with the celebration of New Years’, but that’s always depressed me nearly as much – if not more.
A time to recount what we’ve done wrong during the past year, our mistakes, opportunities missed, amazing moments gone. Waiting in a suspended state, on edge, for – a kiss? A hangover? A mess of confetti to clean up? To wake up the next morning bleary eyed and cranky. What an auspicious way to herald a new beginning. The fact that, for years, New Years’ also signalled the end of vacation for me and the restart of my teaching schedule certainly didn’t help. That was anxiety-inducing and depressing in and of itself.
The whole of the time period between Christmas and New Years’ is a weird dead zone. There no longer is the excuse or mask of Christmas to impel us to at least fake happiness. There is a winding down, a let-down – with the building stress of creating a killer list of resolutions, ways to make our flawed selves better, to overcome our frail ways, to defeat the demons plaguing us for years in this one year. No pressure.
There is a hollow space in my chest during this time. A sadness somewhere behind my eyes and down in my throat. It is a return to normal. A return to a time with no distractions. While stressful with its added expectations and tasks, the time leading up to the holidays gives lots else to think about – rather than our problems. Or at least a good way to avoid them. Now it’s back to ‘ordinary time’.
And while that may not be the designation on the Church calendar at this time, that’s what it feels like to me. No longer extraordinary.
I know if I remove the decorations, the piles of gifts, the social commitments, there is the ultimate fulfillment of my wildest expectation in the birth of Christ. In the silence that follows all the earthly tumult is His quiet peace. I know I’m missing the point if I mistake the silence for sadness, when it should be taking me truly to the heart of the season, the true meaning. Perhaps that’s what the hollow is – the fact that I am missing it. But it is sometimes hard to cross the bridge between knowing and feeling – not because I do not want to, but because my body, or brain chemicals, or something won’t let me.
There is always the problem of unrealistic expectation. If I go from moment to moment, living it for what it is, sucking the marrow out of this minute, rather than anticipating the next, I will enjoy rather than lament. But I’ve always found it hard to balance preparation and mindfulness.
A couple of things I may try:
Reading these next New Years’ Eve would put a positive focus on the end of the year, what I’ve gained and experienced rather than what will be lost.
Also, viewing the holidays in the terms put forth in this post from Life at the Circus would help keep my perspective from being skewed negatively and keep the absence out of the space after the holiday. It may even keep me from feeling less in the pressure to make New Years’ resolutions.
May you all continue to see and feel the light of the season – even in the darkness behind your closed eyes. May you find ways to make that light last throughout the year to come.
After holiday dinner, it’s back home to sweet potato peels on the floor.
curled into ribbons just before rushing out the door.
Dehydrated cantalope cut in the corner,
casualty of a frenzied fruit salad creation.
Boxes and ribbons and crumpled tissue paper
cast about the foot of the tree.
Accumulation of cookie crumbs and candy wrappers,
born of abandoned brooms and dustpans.
Time to pack things away instead of pulling them out,
to undo what took so long to do up,
unwind what’s so tightly wound.
After all the expectation and anticipation,
there is a void –
filled with the scraps of what was pretty and bright.
from xmasfreak.com
We are each responsible for our own life – no other person is or even can be.
~ Oprah Winfrey
Seems like a no-brainer,
but easier understood than lived.
Often we navigate our lives based on the obstacles or openings others put in front of us; in reaction to.
But what if we created a whole new point of origin?
If our bright spark of an idea lit off a streak of light that started with us and branched out into a candelabra of possibilities?
Here’s to all of us who claim our light. Who don’t wait for others to light it. Who open the gates of our cities, our hearts, for commerce, for community. Who bravely hang our lamps for all to see, for all to benefit from their light. Who give glory to God through claiming and utilizing our gifts.
Here’s to all of us who found businesses because we see a need and push our knowledge and creativity to fill it. Here’s to those who reach out of our comfort zone to bend the parameters of our career, broaden it. Here’s to the ones who leave the comfort of a steady paycheck with benefits to become our own bosses. Here’s to any and all of us willing to take a chance on our dreams.
Here’s to all of us claiming responsibility for our lives.
How long until the shine wears off? At what point does your blog stop being viable and become a chore? Or does it go through cycles, prone to the whims of your life just as you are?
I remember being upset, maybe even angry, when bloggers I loved decided to throw in the towel because posting and maintaining the blog was taking away from their real writing, their real life. Knowing full well it was what the bloggers needed at the time, I still selfishly didn’t want to let them go.
Then in a post I wrote two weeks ago, the last time I posted on a Thursday, I lamented the pull of personal writing vs. blog writing. That I was tapped out once I attended to one, with no inspiration left for the other. I could feel the burn. I understood the reasoning of those others I hadn’t wanted to take a hiatus.
Plus, with life being life – where the living of it gets in the way of, you know, living it – uninterrupted time to sit and think and create is at a premium. Usually I don’t get past ‘sit’ without wanting to close my eyes.
I know, lots of whining, when I could have been actually creating – and no, this is not my blosignation. I am nothing if not a stubborn mule. I have set my mind to a blog schedule and I will get back on it, come hell or high stress levels.
As always, it’s a matter of finding that sweet spot, that slice of solitude and peace – where words come easily and self-expression is crystal clear and empowering. Can I get an AMEN?
It all started with a tag, upon which was typed, a title.
‘A Pear of Pants’ Rick Devin
About a month ago, my aunt and I visited various artist studios as part of HopArts, an open house festival day. One artist’s bio captured my attention because of his whimsical, surrealistic images. I thought it would be a fun spot to scope out for my children. My aunt and I didn’t need the kids to enjoy Rick Devin’s studio. The bold, comical animals leapt off the canvases. His fabric sculptures oozed character. And then we noticed the titles of the pieces. We made a second pass of each piece, pointing out the titles, and laughing once more and more heartily. My aunt asked Devin whether he created the titles or the pieces first. He said it worked both ways. The depth of humor each title added struck me, but I don’t think I knew exactly why.
Then, this past weekend, I took my two oldest girls to Charlestown Gallery. My seven year-old is working on a painting badge for Girl Scouts and was scheduled to visit and talk to the curator/artists at the gallery. I brought my nine year-old along because she is blossoming with artistic talent and enthusiasm. I may have had as much, if not more, fun as they did.
I don’t know why I sometimes separate the visual and written arts. The creative process is much the same, only presented in a different medium. Each piece there was making a statement, telling a story, looking to evoke a feeling. And each was so varied – from artist to artist, even from work to work within one artist’s body. It wasn’t simply an image etched into being, any more than a story is words written on a page.
My girls and I talked about what some of the pieces might mean, what the artist may have intended. When they each gave a different interpretation of the same piece, we discussed how what the viewer brings to the image is as important as the original intent of the artist. My mind whirled on to the reader response school of literary critique. When I peered at another painting, analyzing it as I would a piece of literature, trying to understand its meaning, I formed a vague notion – when I looked at that tag naming its title and an unexpected door opened, leading me into a richer, more detailed room.
“Heading Out’ by David Witbeck
All art is storytelling. The thought processes involved in the creative process bend and stretch the parameters of meaning; forcing the close study of the object right in front of us and how it fits into the bigger picture. Even the ‘simple’ experience of viewing the outcome of the creative process – without engaging in its creation – pays many of the same dividends. One is still engaged. Though my daughters hadn’t made the art, they made their own meaning. The hand of the artist reached through the canvas and provoked a thought process in them that made them view the world through different eyes.
The creative arts help us to interpret and synthesize our world in a way our practical, procedural lives won’t let us. The value of that can be seen no matter which way one looks at it.
Give Thanks for 3 Things a Day – Guideposts.
Varied pieces contributing to the cohesive, fulfilled whole. This article provides some good things about which to think.
The days are chock full
but I’m not doing anything.
The pages of the calendar fly by
and yet I’m still waiting.
I’m floating, dragging
running, sleepwalking
There is gratitude
peace
joy
I’ve only to reach out my hand and touch it
But I’m paralyzed.
Last night for dinner, we had ‘Impossibly Easy Cheeseburger Pie’ – which would have been impossibly easy to prepare had I not flipped the dish upside down into the oven.
Just as the oven timer beeped, my husband’s gastrointestinal juices gearing up, I gripped the glass pie plate on either side with my ove-gloved hands and proceeded to do a spastic ground beef ballet. Time slowed down as it only can during inevitable and unavoidable catastrophe. I watched helplessly as the plate tilted at an ever-alarmingly steep angle and poured the eggy, cheesy, beefy crumbles down into the multifaceted cavity between the open oven door and hot oven floor.
My husband, on the phone with his parents, ran into the room to see what was the matter, alerted by my cries. I still can’t recall if what I said was appropriate for his parents, hanging in midair on the phone in his hand, to overhear. When he’d hung up and reentered the room, he asked how it happened – to which I do remember answering quite snippily that if I knew how it happened, I wouldn’t have let it happen. I said that I meant to do it, to spite him, to ruin the family dinner, that it was my intent all along. Yes, it was my grandest moment.
Impossibly Easy, my ass
You see, it never really was about the impossibly irritating cheeseburger pie. I knew when I gripped it, my hold was tenuous at best. I was already floating off on some negative tangent as we’d traipsed the troop into the school gymnasium to vote. The kids flitting about on the periphery, drawing the dirty looks of the board of canvassers representative, didn’t help. My rotors, failing brakes, something squeaking all day as I drove down the road didn’t help. Money troubles and a possible looming lay-off didn’t help. The greasy mess congealed to the bottom of my stove was just the icing on an already slimy cake.
After I winged a plastic spatula just to the right of him, he thumped a couple of walls, I lied down on the bathroom floor for a good cry (all while the kids played doorbell ditch on their own home) – I set to cleaning the stove. I’m not sure I’ll ever want to prepare or eat this dish again. I discovered places in my stove I never knew existed – just wide enough to allow a chunk of mangled food in and just small enough to prevent my fingers to take it out.
The good thing about this all-around disgusting evolution is that my oven is now clean! It is ready for the onslaught of Thanksgiving like it never would have been had I not spilled food all over its-hotter-than-a-spilled-pie-plate-of-ooze insides. And that’s about the only good thing. I’m not proud of my behavior. None of the issues precipitating the great pie-plate debate of ’14 were resolved. I still feel pretty mushy about the whole thing.
If only it was as impossibly easy to wipe away the grime of our lives.
The past few weeks have been a little trying. Our family seems to be on the cusp of something big. I can only say that now after these last few weeks. In the midst of running, running, running, it was all I could do to put one foot in the front of the other – or shuffle them along. I knew things were crazy, and was reacting accordingly, but I didn’t know why.
Now I wonder if my elevated stress levels and difficulty in calming them were not a direct result: my subconscious reaction to what my conscious self wasn’t ready to admit was a huge deal.
My five year-old, in her last year of preschool, more and more frequently laments the fact that she cannot ride the bus to big-kid school like the others. She wants to stay at preschool and eat lunch with her friends. She’s ‘reading’ books to me and asking how to spell different words.
My seven year-old is coming into her own, blossoming with independent applications of math reasoning she’s learned at school. She reads books aloud with an expression well beyond her years and worthy of an audio recording. She’s requesting and engaging in social interactions and activities – on her own.
My nine year-old has joined two after school activities, doubling her previous involvement. She is in her last year of elementary school; her last year of recess; her last year of riding the bus with her sisters. She is looking longer and leaner every day.
And me? I am nearing the destination of days full of adult time. All three of them will be in school full-day next year. I will be free to . . . earn the money we’ve sorely been missing since I’ve been at home? Write my way into posterity? Query until they can no longer say no?
I haven’t been gazing longingly at this point in time as the end all and be all. But it hovered like some kind of talisman – a time when, my life would go back to normal? When adult life (ie working, I guess) would resume? When I’d be able to exhale that breath I’ve been holding since the first labor pain of the first child?
And though my mind has set up the first day of the next academic year as the first day of this new life, I’ve finally realized that we’re all in the transition to it now. My five year-old is prepping to be the big girl – already a little too cool for preschool. My seven year-old is branching out in social groups – excited and a little less apprehensive to do so on her own. My nine year-old is claiming activities and beliefs as her own – independent from her parents and sisters.
Friends, acquaintances, and other parents always asked what activities my kids were in. I always thought I saw some semblance of shock when I answered, “None.” We didn’t do adorable dance classes at three years-old. We didn’t do t-ball, and soccer, and gymnastics, oh my. They never expressed an dire interest in any of these things and my husband and I never pushed it. There was plenty of time for that – and they would determine the time.
The time is now.
We may have avoided the cost and inconvenient schedules of such activities up to this point, but now it’s on. I’ve started the taxi-driver lifestyle I’ve avoided thus far.
It hit me like a ton of bricks last week when I rushed to finish an on-line Girl Scout leader training, compile fund raising monies, feed the kids dinner before we rushed to a Girl Scout meeting, dress them in Halloween costumes for a Girl Scout Halloween party, babysit one of their classmates, see my husband, help (nag) the kids to finish their homework, steal Halloween candy they’d acquired before even Trick-or-Treating, talk to my husband, smear their faces and hair with foul chemicals to turn them into unrecognizable ghouls for Halloween and rush late to another party after peeling countless tangelos to make festive pumpkin snacks – all while suffering from a compound case of sleep deprivation and PMS.
Unbelievably, it took me awhile to realize why last week was so hard for me to handle. Any week has the potential to be miserable. But when the everyday congeals into one big blob of ‘life is about to get a whole lot more complicated’, sometimes the blob is so frickin’ big it takes awhile to digest.
My girls are growing up! As wistful as I was watching them walk away from me for the first time, leaving them in the classroom alone for the first time, hearing ‘Mom’ instead of ‘Mama’ for the first time, those were mere speed bumps compared to this swift elevation. I have entered the ‘Mom, could you drop me off at so-and-so’s’ part of motherhood; the ‘Mom, pick me up after school’ part; the ‘We’ll be done at 4:15, Ma’ part; the ‘But I want to eat lunch with my friends, Mom’ part.
In addition to my ambivalent mom underbelly, I also have my own personal fears to fight. I’ve been home exclusively since 2008. The thought of returning to my previous job, even if I could even secure it, makes me want to vomit. Launching the totally exciting, yet daunting new idea I have for employment makes me want to seize. Not only am I being forced out of my old ‘job’ with all these developments, but forced into a totally new one.
All of our times, they are a-changin’. No wonder the woman, mom, worker in me is revolting.
from Blue-Cat00
Chopping Potatoes 