Anxious Thoughts

By / December 28, 2015 / 2 Comments

One of my least favorite forms of anxiety is when there is an incident involving one of my kids and an adult from outside my house. The incident spawns a half dozen emotionally charged conversations which range between damage control and emotional processing. I then spend the next two days and nights with every spare cycle in my brain attempting to re-write it all. Could I have prevented it? I should have been more confrontational. I should have been more conciliatory. I should not have said that. Yes I should have, I should have said it stronger. Here is a thing I should have said, but didn’t. Here is a thing I think and feel, but didn’t say because it wasn’t constructive. Except maybe I should have said it. Here is another thing I should have made clear. Except I already tried to make it clear, didn’t I? Can I be blamed if the other party is incapable of hearing what my child and I are saying? I blame me anyway. Except I don’t because logic tells me that the incident occurred because the other adult overstepped bounds. Not our fault. But I should have handled it better.

And then there is the time that my brain spends trying to script out what I should say and do for imagined future conflicts. Because this isn’t over. More conversations will need to be had. And I dread them. Because I don’t expect them to go well. And I have to figure out how to stay focused on the important goals and not on venting feelings. My brain is really good at making up terrible scenarios where everything goes wrong from here and relationships crash and burn. It plays these scenarios out in the spaces between thoughts of conversational re-scripts. While I’m trying to be asleep.

The good news is that everyone inside my house is in accord about what happened. Conflict does not dwell inside my house. The other good news is that my child is more loving and Christ-like than I am in this. I may have to follow my child’s lead, which is right in line with scriptural instruction. More good news is that I have spoken to other adults in my child’s life and they are allies to my goals. I have not asked them to step into battle, but they will make sure that they take extra care to love and accept my child in the next few weeks. My child will need that.

Now if I can just get the noise in my brain to quiet down enough so that I can think clearly, that would be nice. I need clear thoughts to hear inspiration and guidance before I have any more conversations or take any actions.

The Day After Christmas

By / December 26, 2015

On the day after Christmas I spend time trying to remember what I was doing before the holiday took over all my available project-focused energy. I also spend time reading and playing a game with my kids. Howard is more focused than I am, he’s back at the drawing table, ready to get the work done. I feel guilt that I’ve not been a better business partner in the past few weeks. I would like to be able to match his creative drive instead of feeling like I’ve been a drag on the entire system.

In just one week we’ll have a new year. I don’t know how I feel about that. I wish that I did. I wish I could have a clear emotion of optimism and excitement, though I suppose I’m glad not to be mired in dread. I guess I feel much as I did last December. Though we’re all in a better place now than we were then. I still can’t see a clear path ahead, but the trail isn’t so dark and we have more maps than we had before.

On the first day of 2015 I said “Maybe at the end of the year I’ll be able to look back and tell a story about how it went.” I find myself as reluctant to formalize that story now as I was to predict it last January. The year was what it needed to be. Some of the hard things were necessary. I suspect that some of them were not. This next year will have hard things in it, but I hope it will have more triumphal moments, times where we stand in a good place disbelieving that we managed to arrive there. I would like one of those for each of my children who have been struggling. Bonus if Howard and I get one as well.

The path to those moments are paved with hard work, so I suppose I should get to it.

Gifts of Food

By / December 23, 2015

photo

On first glance it is just a box of chocolates, a nice gift. But this box was not purchased, every chocolate in that box was hand made by a great-grandmother assisted by her children and grand children. There are 55 different kinds of chocolates in that box. Creating them is a project that spans from September through December. Or so the note that came with the box tells me. This box came as a gift from a neighbor who knows we’ve been having a rough time. I feel honored that he chose to include us in what is obviously a treasured family tradition.

This is not the only gift that has come to our door in the past few days. We have kind and generous neighbors so there have been all sorts of snacks and treats. I am grateful for them all. Each is evidence of the goodness of people. They took time to think of us. I am especially grateful because other than writing a few Christmas cards, I haven’t had energy to think of Christmas beyond the walls of my house.

I look at these gifts and I’m once again astonished at the many forms that people use to express their creativity, gratitude, and love. Many of these people would be surprised that I use the word creativity in reference to their cookies or roll of wrapping paper. Yet even a hastily purchased candy bar with a note slapped on it is a creation. It seeks to create a feeling of connection and remembrance. It seeks to strengthen a friendship. The thoughts really do count for a lot.

Smashed

By / December 22, 2015 / 4 Comments

photo

It was not the outcome that anyone intended, yet somehow we ended up with shards of something that used to be whole. The shards were sharp, able to do more harm if they were not handled carefully. This is the story of many of my days these past couple of years. It is the story of yesterday when a person came to my house to talk to me about behavioral issues with one of my kids. The person departed and I was left with shards, not even sure where I fit in the metaphor. Am I the broken thing? Or am I the one who has to figure out how to clean up? Feels like both.

I went to my room and cried for a while. Then I talked with my child and we both cried for even longer, because harm has been done and needs to be made right. My child is both harmed and the one at fault. I have to spend energy preventing my mind from trying to analyze all of the moments that led up to the one where things were smashed. As if I could alter the outcome by finding decision points that led to alternate timelines. My mind also tells me that I’m blowing it all out of proportion. It is, after all, only a small broken thing. Clean up will be quick and we’ll move onward.

Except that I end up smashed (or cleaning up after smash) so often lately. Those tiny shards scatter themselves and sometimes I find my self bleeding because of shrapnel from something I thought I cleaned up long ago.

This too is part of the holiday. The house is filled with beauty, but also with things that are more prone to breaking. The pressure to make sure the moments are glowing and meaningful, also means that some of the fragile things will crack. I may be one of the fragile things. I am to be my best self, but that is difficult in a season which increases the demands on my limited resources. Even the articles, speeches, and pleas to simplify are commandments with which I must struggle to comply. Thus I find myself contemplating the shards of an ornament on the floor of the front room. Thinking about all the ways in which Christmas breaks people.

And also the ways that it heals people. And how sometimes things must be broken before they can become something else. And how the metaphor begins to fall apart before I’ve found my way through to an epiphany. I would like to have an epiphany. I would like to have a shining moment where I can clearly see that all the smashed days were necessary, part of a grand plan designed to help me and mine grow. I’m certain that some of them were critical. Perhaps yesterday was one of them. I’m also certain that some of them were just the result of human beings clumsily bumping into each other and accidentally doing harm. It would be nice to be able to see which days were which.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I’m better off treating all the smashed up days as if they were important. Maybe it is only in trying to find meaning in the shards of something broken that the brokenness gains any meaning at all. I do believe there is a plan, and it begins with me fetching a broom. We learn by doing, struggling, smashing, cleaning up, and moving on.

Impulse Purchase

By / December 20, 2015

We were only in the store because there was a birthday party. It started soon and Gleek needed a gift for her cousin. The store was bustling with Holiday energy and Gleek found many things that made her squee. We had gift in hand and were headed for the front of the store, when a cover caught my eye. I’d been moving so quickly that I had to backtrack three steps in order to take a closer look. I picked it up, glanced at a couple of pages, falling in love with the little round idea in its pages. I need this book. I felt it with certainty, so I did what I rarely do, I just added it to the stack and kept moving.

The check out line was, naturally, bracketed by items ready to be impulse bought. That was where we saw the 642 books. Again: I need this book. This time I considered longer. I had time since Gleek had to deliberate whether she wanted a 642 book or a craft book for herself. My rational mind had arguments against extra purchasing, but for once I listened to the child desire. More than child desire, it was as if a piece of me recognized itself and leaving the books at the store would be wrong. They came home with me.

photo

My instinct was not wrong. What Do You Do With an Idea? is charming in all the right ways. The 642 book will help me on the days when it feels like I have nothing to say. Not that I’ll use ideas from it for the blog, but that it will help me practice writing regularly again, which has been harder this past year.

Acquiring a new picture book made me remember the other picture books I have that hold a special place in my heart. I’ve collected them together on the shelf. I went to run my fingers over the spines and I remembered how much fun it was to read them aloud to my children. I miss the nightly snack and story time. I miss putting inflection into my words and watching young faces react to the story. I’m certain that story times will come to me again. There will be young children in my life in years to come. For now I’ll just treasure the stories and read them to myself.

Listening to Silence

By / December 19, 2015

photo(4)

I’ll admit that a photo of a buffalo standing in the snow doesn’t immediately make me think of Christmas, but then I didn’t promise that all my photos and stories would be holiday themed.

I suppose I should have spent this final Saturday before Christmas in preparing for that celebration. Certainly every store clerk thinks it should be the focus of my life. “Are you ready for Christmas?” they all ask. I answer “No.” because that is much shorter than launching into a speech about how complicated that question is. I’ve written about being ready for Christmas. It isn’t something that I do. There is never a moment where I sigh and think “Now I’m ready.” I always arrive at the holiday unprepared in one way or another.

Which brings me back to the buffalo. Instead of spending today with lists and shopping in an effort to be prepared, I spent the day visiting. Mostly I visited people, but since I was in the neighborhood, I also drove out to visit the animals and silence on Antelope Island. As I drove across the causeway I thought how nice it would be if I could get a picture of a “Christmas” buffalo in the snow so I could write about it. I didn’t expect that. Usually I only see the buffalo from afar, but this one was standing right by the road.

I also saw several dozen jack rabbits.
photo
They were less obliging about posing for photos.

I stood for a while outside my car and just listened. It is so silent on the island that I can hear the flap of birds’ wings from a hundred yards away. I heard a coyote crying out from over on the mountain. Sometimes a car would drive by, ripping through the silence with machine noise, but the silence came back and filled me. With nothing around me but the sounds of far off animals, my thoughts slow and still. I find calmness inside that I often forget is there when I’m surrounded by my comforts and their attached responsibilities.

photo(3)
Wild places have no expectations of me. They just are. When I’m in one I’m more able to just let myself be as well. I wish that Antelope Island were closer to me than a 90 minute drive. I would sneak away there more often.

photo(5)

Christmas Tree

By / December 18, 2015

photo

It is a Christmas tree like many others. Some Christmas trees are gorgeous, a treat for the eyes, and a thing for admiration. Mine is lovely, but in an ordinary way. If you were to line up my tree with a dozen others, it wouldn’t win any prizes, at least not if the judges were objective. But objectivity isn’t the point of Christmas, neither is competition. My tree is special and beautiful because it is mine, because it adds light to our house, because the mish mash of odd ornaments all have stories, because we’re the ones who haul it out to assemble it each year. I love that my tree doesn’t need to be special for me to love it. Or to put it another way, it is special because I love it. Even if no one but my family can see how special it is.

The Gift of a Cat

By / June 23, 2017 / 1 Comment

photo

I’ve written about our cat before: how I found her, how we had to give her back, how she chose to come back to us, and how she became ours permanently. She has been ours since 2010 and she adds a lot to our lives. I thought my allergies would mean I could never have a cat live in the house with me. I’m very grateful that this turned out to be false.

Our cat is getting older now. She’s becoming an old lady kitty. Every day we get to have her is a gift, which is why I took the opportunity to photograph her under the tree among other gifts of this season.

Little Wooden Soldier

By / December 16, 2015

photo

This little wooden soldier has been in my life for a long time. My first memory of him was when he was attached to a musical night light lamp in my childhood friend’s room. The soldier had two friends with him on a wooden platform and when the lamp was wound up, they went around carousel style. I think I was three or four. I remember playing with the lamp, winding it up, and eventually breaking the music box portion. These friends lived right across the street from us and they were more like auxiliary family rather than friends. Friend’s mom was an extra mother for me. She loved me, gave me many horse books, encouraged me in creative pursuits, and didn’t even get very angry when her son and I painted splotches on the walls of her house.

At some point my friend out grew his need for a nightlight. His mother, wise woman that she was, took the little soldiers and turned them into Christmas ornaments. It is possible that she did this just prior to them moving away. One of the little soldiers was given to me. He has hung on my tree every year since. When I pull him out of the ornament box I think about my childhood friends. I think about the woman who was so kind to me and who has since died. I’ll never get to hug her again or tell her thank you.

The soldier smiles at me and he keeps marching, reminding me of good things past and that good things are ahead too.