I don’t know how much like “Little Women” I pictured the holidays with four daughters to be,
but it was much more than this.
I guess I pictured fireside chats, waiting for the kettle to whistle, and all of the girls gathered around to listen to stories, snuggled together under homemade quilts, heads full of curls.
Not only did I never learn how to do a single quilting stitch, though,
but it turned out our main Christmas tradition would end up looking more like us all hoping Dad doesn’t stroke-out from the amount of stuff in the garage when we send him to retrieve all the bins for us.
In the early years my husband and I would decorate the house together.
We’d minimally include the girls, and after they went to bed we would readjust what they’d done.
He would do his traditional rant about “why we even need to save all this stuff anyway” as he handed me down boxes and wreaths,
and then he would have his annual psychotic break over the Christmas lights being tangled around hour three.
One year, after getting so frustrated when the lights got hung up on their 7th branch, and after pulling at the end of the wire rapidly and violently as if he was trying to start a lawnmower instead,
he did the only thing I guess he could think to do in the moment, and he took off silently, just walking down the street.
Not only was this walk in the pouring rain without an umbrella, though,
but a brief little gander out the front window with my very wifely slightly-squinted-eyeballs revealed he had also neglected to even put shoes on.
He: Like some sort of depressive ad set to soft instrumental piano,
Me: Calmly untangling lights from my throne.
After that year I realized he needed to be set free from it all.
He could get the bins down, then disassociate somewhere in peace, I thought.
Like “everything else around here” I’d just do it alone.
I’d send the daughter with the perpetually bouncing soccer ball to take it to her room, and
I’d give the one with the inability to handle most family dynamics some rescuing, solitary task to do;
But the first year I started this Martyr-like behavior, one teen daughter quietly noticed,
and – like a little glimmer keeping Christmas hope alive – she asked if there was anything she could do.
Since that day, the whole family still does the tree itself together, but the preparatory cleaning, and the planning, and the fastening of garlands and bows became what me and my daughter Tessa do together every year all on our own.
It’s become an unexpected, and treasured tradition, and a time I can count on connecting with her.
She climbs up on ladders, and we wipe beads of sweat off our brows together.
The family that has a sweaty upper lip together stays together.
Isn’t that how the saying goes?
Just a few years ago, when Tessa was in middle school, we went through a really rough patch together. So many silent passes in that same hallway we were now decorating.
So much me on the outside of a closed door,
and so much her in her room.
This year, as I watched her fastening lights in the hallway, I thought,
“Wow. Look at how far we’ve come…”
This year, getting to the place where I was even in the mood for holidays at all felt like it came extra slow,
but it was her excitement, and encouragement that took me by the hand, and led me gently to join her.
She paired the TV to instrumental Christmas music on her phone.
She set the TV to play a crackling fire that I kept commenting was, oddly, making me feel actually warm.
She kept reminding me to take breaks,
and maybe eat some food?
We had shared visions, made plans, and we executed them.
At one point, from the top of a ladder where something wasn’t going how she wanted,
instead of getting frustrated, she stopped and looked at me, breathed, smiled, and said something I don’t think I’ll ever forget her saying:
“I find the best way to do this is to go into it with a positive attitude.”
I know that was said with a mixture of sarcasm and truth.
I know it was a nod to the many times neither one of us do.
I saw her there that day, above me,
teaching me a thing that I thought I knew.
Once we were finished, she hugged me and joked about how much more she understood me now. She said she felt OCD about the house, and would be ready to physically fight anyone who left trash somewhere after she’d done so much work.
She then did an entire skit where she laughed and stormed around and shook her finger, loudly saying, “DO YOU PEOPLE HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I EVEN DO ALL DAY?!”
I felt humbled, because I knew exactly where she got that from,
even though I simply laughed in return.
I don’t want our holidays to be so full of self-imposed to-do lists, and frustrations over the things that go wrong.
I don’t want my daughters to see me as a mom that so often gripes about doing everything alone.
I realized all these years I had judged my husband out there walking down the street with no shoes,
when I’d just expressed my frustrations a whole different way:
The Martyr Way that sighs and gripes about always having to take everything on.
Now, every year, I think I will picture her up on that ladder in the hall,
reminding me that everything in life is about the attitude you go in with.
Am I filling the house with sweetness?
Am I fluffing the quilts?
Or am I so focused on the tasks involved, that I’ve pushed them all into their separate rooms?
This year I’m going to try to remember that in the Little Women picture my imagination held,
it wasn’t cleanliness and order it was ever about.
When I get to the heart of it, what I want for my family, and for myself, is a gentle,
warm feeling room. That’s all it ever was.
That won’t even make me sweaty.
I can easily have that.
I have a soft voice. I have two open arms.
This year, even in the midst of so many discouragements and pressures that come from the modern world,
I will try to slow my heart and my mind down, step back in time with them to simpler days, simpler things;
And this year, what I will try to remember most
is that what you end up surrounded by
has so very much to do with
what you have allowed to flow.
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.
