Whew. I love the holidays, still. Turns out.
And that nary a second to breath with how busy it all has been sure helps ward off grief, I guess? That’s a joke- it actually doesn’t… the mind is weaker after grief so I can crash normally, if I’m too busy or rushed, but not this time. I am grateful.
We had two birthdays in there too.
So lets see. The presents were all bought. For Christmas and the (now) 10 year old’s birthday. I then compared them for parity and we looked good there… and then I wrapped everything in green paper and it (unintentionally) looked like Minecraft under the tree. Look. Maybe next year I plan ahead on the gifts better and can therefore reign in the spending a bit. But I got it done this year all after Thanksgiving and if there was more than I maybe intended… it’s better than the alternative.
Then I also wrapped birthday gifts for the party 4 days before Christmas. The girls all prefer smaller family parties with events/experiences than big parties with their friends- and so that’s what we did this year too. The youngest picked homemade crepes with berries for her breakfast, ice skating, a train-ride in our local park, and going out for hibachi dinner. She’s very adamant about no combined birthday and Christmas gifts and making her birthday a standalone event (as did her dad with his birthday 2 days after Christmas)… and then picked to have a “Christmas themed birthday”- whatever the hell that is. It boiled down to a big Christmas balloon and a poinsettia cake and a live poinsettia instead of the flowers I usually do. Whatever kid, you got it.
Does that all sound tiring? Oh ho ho. Just you wait.
So the night before her birthday I got done with wrapping gifts at about 11pm and got exactly two hours of sleep before my oldest called me crying hysterically because her cat had been run over. He was alive, but his leg didn’t look right and he was screaming. So I get over there, assess him, and then at 1:45 we’re on our way to the 24 hour Emergency vet. I get them all checked in, put down my card for the expenses, they get him on pain meds and start doing x-rays. At almost 3am I tell my daughter I have to go get some sleep but to call me if she needs me. She has to stay for hours and hours more and leaves at 7:30 am with a cat in a cast who needs further surgery and a handful of pain meds to see him through the next few days till we can find a surgeon who can do the surgery during the busiest time of the year. I was, at the time, praying desperately for a Jewish or Buddhist feline surgeon to exist within a 100 mile radius and have some availabilities.
Two days later his normal vet (BLESS) was able to do the surgery and put pins in two spots on his leg… he will be okay.
And you’ve heard about the 10 Million Dollar Man, right? Well meet the 3 Thousand Dollar Cat. And while I actually do think we got off easy there, it did make me think of Lucas and his deadpan delivery of “He had a good run” to any proposed vet expenses. (He was joking of course. Mostly.) So I could almost hear that from him as I was writing these checks… but there is simply no other option right now. I too have a structurally important to my mental health cat… so I knew how important getting this cat through for my daughter was. Please have learned about cars though, buddy. Let’s never do this again.
So anyway. Back to the next morning and the birthday itself. Early 8am breakfast! Ice skating! Playing in the park and riding the train! Hibachi dinner! (my oldest slept through the first two and then met us at the park for the rest of the day).
Exhibit A on the crepes. Nobody ever wants breakfast tacos on their birthday?! FINE.
All day I kinda just felt like the past and present stacked up and overlapped. Like I could almost see my husband speeding around the ice at the same rink we went to, but from 15 years ago when he took me on my birthday. Or in the park on the train ride and with how many times he’d been there with me, with all of our kids at all different ages. Or her 2nd birthday when we took our toddler to the zoo for the first time and she fed a giraffe… it all kinda jumbled in the brain. And it was sad, of course, but mostly good. Only some mild disassociating needed to make it through.
Once we got home after dinner we did cake and gifts- and as my youngest opened her last gift one of the big lights over the kitchen island right behind her flicked on and off 3 or 4 times. Everyone’s eyes got really big. My oldest two teared up. The youngest smiled. And I said- “well dad just wanted to let you know he’s here and I guess that means the Van Gogh umbrella is from him!” and we all had a big family pile hug. It was… kind of stunning. Especially since it’s an LED bulb and they just kinda… don’t work like. It wasn’t loose in the socket and it hasn’t done it before or since.
We all knew what it was.
They’ve talked about it often in the days since.
And they all had a good day, even the oldest after the crisis, and especially the youngest. We all deserve good birthdays, and she got hers.
And then that night after writing in my nightly journal to him and telling him how spectacular that move was, it felt like crossing a big thing on a list. We made it through successfully. Disasters managed and birthday party still had successfully, regardless of how tired I was.
As I drifted off I felt very… capable, I guess is the word, of seeing us all through. The normal planning and pulling off a party, setting the tone through example even in the face of grief myself, and then needing to be the emotional grounding during a crisis… it all didn’t break me and it won’t and I guess this is what becoming a matriarch feels like.
I have made the transition.
Someone get me a black dress and a black lace mantilla to wear ova’ here. I have fully stepped into the role.
I worked my ass off at work the whole week too, finally getting departmental budgets and planning done.
And then it was Christmas.
We spent Christmas Eve with my husband’s family (cousins and aunt in Austin, then with his brother and his family on the way back into our own town) and it was really good. The moon was beautiful on the drive home.
Once we got back the older girls helped me vacuum and straighten the living room really quickly and clean the kitchen. (Youngest one was asleep the second we got home.) Then I did the stockings and I even put a couple of things I’d bought for myself in mine because an empty stocking last year had made me sad. Lucas was always so good about doing good stocking gifts for me.
And then when I woke up in the morning and made coffee before anyone was up… my stocking was the fullest one. My 16 year old waited till I was in bed to fill up my stocking with all the stuff she and her sisters had bought. Candy and bath bombs and bamboo socks (those they ordered ahead of time- they remembered they were my favorite), etc etc. I hadn’t told them about the stocking thing making me sad, mind you. But that’s just how considerate they are. And I guess they’d noticed the effort Lucas and I had always put into stockings for each other.
Isn’t that stunning? Doesn’t it just take your breath away? These grieving teenagers and their elementary school younger sister came up with that all on their own. They got me other spectacularly good gifts too. I am so incredibly grateful for them and all we have had and still have. That was the feel of the day to me.
It was a good Christmas.
Christmas night I had a fire in the back, and no that isn’t an inferno in the front, just the Christmas lights highlighting the red oak and Bradford pear’s spectacular fall color this year.
And then, due to the “no rest for the weary” nature of December… we then had my husband’s birthday two days later. The girls and I hiked out to his tree. the plaque was still there, even after the flooding that had come through earlier in the year. It was so peaceful and serene and was the perfect activity. The water was cold and clear and we all got in the river. I also found many, many heart shaped rocks- which I had asked him for as a sign last year and hadn’t found a one. But this year… so many. This isn’t even all of them.
I’ll take them.
We then came home and they all went and hung out with friends for a few hours- which allowed me to prep for dinner. When I was out getting the steaks I got them all roses and wrote them a quick note as to what the Victorian flower language was for each color on the notes (I’d gotten a pink, white, and yellow one) and told them to pick which one they wanted as a gift from their dad- because he would have bought them himself for them if he could have. (I’m awfully confident in being his representative in such things).
Then I made the steaks and mashed potatoes and a salad and a cream sauce that I even lit cognac on fire for myself, and we sat down to watch The Godfather as my husband had loved that movie.
And we wrapped it all up at 10:30pm and it also was good and we did it up right. Cross it off the list too.
And today the plan was to drive to the valley and see our friends down there and tend Lucas’s family graves… and I canceled that trip. I had to. I know when too much is too much and I need rest, now. We’ll go down in a month or so. I need some lazing around days and so that is what I am giving myself. Rest. Rest from here till New Years.
And December was so blazingly sad last year, my hands were so shaky with the effort of hanging on by the time we got to New Years… but it’s better this year. The anguish isn’t there even if the grief still is. I’m standing on firmer footing, I am.
There is work yet to be done, it will probably never end, honestly, but I can be proud of all the fighting through I have done to claw back to peace. I am no longer an open wound pouring blood into the dirt below me. I ask you truly, is not a scar healed?
And I also cut my hair off and dyed it dark. A shedding or sorts and a new reflection in the mirror seemed appropriate. Hair holds on to pain or memory or something. And so I cut it purposefully for that shedding.
Anyway. That’s enough for now. I leave you with some memes. And I only have one more potentially hard day to get through before the turning of a new year. I fear a new year less than I did last year. So count it as a win.
the something garden 