I had been going strong for weeks.
Decorating, and shopping, and generally making things happen the way that moms do.
The push to make Christmas feel extra, well, EVERYTHING this year has been strong.
Whereas we may have always done 6 strands of lights outside, this year it would be
(Cover your eyes here, Justin)
at least 20; If not more.
My husband has looked at me sideways for days.
The marriage balance of a minimalist husband with OCD and a Christmas obsessed woman who believes that, actually, MORE is more is complicated, at best.
Last week he came home saying he’d bought all new outdoor lights, as our old ones had all burned out.
When I looked at what he was holding and realized it was only two strands of white lights,
I basically spun him around like we were playing Pin-the-Tail,
and sent him back to the store.
Christmases past may have been Quiet Country Home,
but this year I’m feeling Griswold style.
Two strands just will not do.
After a week of preparing and setting it all up,
after my legs ached from climbing up and down a ladder to pin things, and dangle things,
I looked around and basked in the glow.
The tree was up, the snowmen were up, the four tiny mice and the reindeer.
Everything looked just how I wanted!
Finally, this year something felt in its place.
But then, life happened.
The dirty ankle socks tossed up onto the entertainment cabinet, caught on the roof of my battery-lit snowy home.
The bits of dried leaves that the dog smuggled in captured in his tail.
The cat making himself comfortable in the midst of my nativity scene, driving barnyard animals so far away from where they’d been placed it looked obvious he was laying there out of jealousy.
Before long, the short-lived, beautiful feel of my Christmas home started to feel somewhat crumbly,
just like life had all year long:
Chaotic, messy, disorganized – just with more red and green added in.
I looked around, and felt something rising inside,
and I set out to get my Christmas back, no matter what it took.
I scrubbed the stove with a force that made my family’s eyes widen and look at one another.
I crushed recycling boxes with what can only be called a Power-Fist.
I gave orders, and quoted loud lists –
“WRITE IT ON THE WHITE BOARD!” –
as I stood on the couch to reach a shelf up high.
I’m sure they all just really felt #blessed by my Pulsating Jugular Vein Christmas cheer.
It wasn’t until I tried to plug the vacuum in and I had to fight a slightly bent prong trying to get it to go in to no avail that I completely lost my mind.
I’m glad I was not being recorded on video.
It would have gone viral by tonight.
I flung the cord into the hall, and flung my shoes to the other end.
I huffed loudly, “Oh, just FORGET IT!” and I went to lay, staring at the ceiling, alone on my bed.
My heart was racing. My breathing was fast.
Without even knowing what was happening to me, hot tears cascaded from my eyes and pooled in both of my ears.
“Is this it? Is this me actually finally going crazy? Is this hormones?
(Seems sort of early for the change…)
Is it hot in here?
Why can’t I breathe?”
I lay there confused by my own self, and letting that confusion just suck me in until, suddenly, my husband was standing at the foot of the bed.
Bowl in one hand, he slurped up a bite of something with a spoon.
I’m sure he was trying to build up the bravery to ask me what was wrong, but also not wanting me to eat his whole head off.
“What’s the matter?” He finally asked, with the timidity of one person trying to coax another off a roof.
I could have said, “Nothing,” but I went with what was true.
Before long, as I spoke it out loud, the mystery of my own feelings vanished.
Sometimes in just saying it the light starts to break through.
“I just want something – one thing – to feel familiar and good.
I want to look around me and feel like something gets to stay beautiful, and the way I remember it.
Tradition. I want it so much.
All this work I’ve been doing? I get that it’s mostly for me, but I just want it to be respected that this is something I need. Every flipping lightbulb.
Every flipping woodland scene.
I’m missing my friends. I am missing regular life.
I want my mom to come for Christmas, but I’m scared to let her,
and now Alena is coughing, and I’m tired of being terrified.”
More tears as he blinked for a minute, trying to take it all in.
Trying to find the end of a giant, messy ball so that he could help untangle it.
In the end he went with the best thing he could have,
“I understand everything you’re saying right now.
I feel the exact same way.”
We lay there together on the bed, I think both just trying to dwell in our thoughts for awhile.
Together and alone – The way marriage often is.
I thought about Christmas, and the difference between the way I want it to be
and how it often feels; Marred by my own expectations.
Trying to pin blame on others for it not going the exact way I wanted, while all the while
it was my own finger on “Self-Destruct.”
I thought about how fitting that Christmas comes in a barren season.
How part of the beauty in it is the stripping away,
and the cold, moonlit hush.
No leaves to bar the view of the stars, anymore.
Just a sky, and light, and us.
The way it comes quietly, and is there when we wake up.
Christmas comes in with it’s twinkle lights, and children’s song, and it’s simple joy without fuss to remind us that it’s about what it’s always been about:
The ultimate gift to us.
As I lay there pondering all this still on my bed,
Justin now asleep as he is nearly any time he is still for more than a minute,
I suddenly remembered a conversation I’d had with my 12 year old, Tessa merely days before.
I realized that it had been a gift in it’s own way that I did not yet know I would hold onto and unwrap in a dark and lonely feeling moment,
there listening to my husband snore.
We had been sitting on the couch late one night after everyone was in bed,
and I had asked her to list some things she loves, thinking it would help me with her gifts.
This child of mine has a deep-pool way about her, and I love to hear her describe things.
It’s often poetry when she does.
“I like when kids have bed-head,” she surprised me as her first thing.
I’d smiled thinking about it, and how I would have never thought of it, but that I really loved that one, too.
“I like when windows look like the perfect kind to watch a rainy day through,
When kids have nature names,
When swings under a willow tree almost tell you about themselves, “Your feet will definitely touch.”
I like tall grass (without tick, of course) and
Wood burning stoves
Mushrooms that look like gnomes live nearby
Dresses that aren’t fancy enough to make you aware you’re wearing a dress
The way that Baby’s Breath flowers look tiny, and at the same time like a lot
I love the way a bee’s whole being gets to be associated with flowers.
The way sitting in a rocking chair makes me only think about rocking, and then nothing more.
I like how easy it is to fall in love with an animal
That even after it rains, the forest still keeps dripping, making you feel like you are living in an actual pause.
I like overalls because they’re like wearing every single piece of clothing all at once.
And
I love that seeing a person sad can make someone else sad, and that seeing them happy can work the same. I love that feelings can be contagious.
I think that’s my main one.”
That night I’d sat there and written everything she had said down.
This girl of mine had expressed Love of Simple so eloquently.
I’d known they were all word gifts,
I just didn’t know they were for me to come back to later on.
As I lay there I remembered what this life, and this season is about all because
for a moment I saw it all through the eyes of a child;
Cold and fogged up window, with my nose pressed in.
No one cares if everything is perfect.
Perfect wrapping. Perfect bow.
No one will remember that Paige’s socks were flung there, or that we had dried leaf bits from the dog instead of snow.
What they’ll remember is the feeling.
The kind that love helps spread.
I think sometimes we think they want lit-up
Union Square,
when what they really loved most
were the paper chains instead.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
