Category: Gratitude

Christmas Eve will find me

Where the love light gleams. I’m home for Christmas, that part is true. But it does feel a bit like a dream. I’m not completely here but I’d really like to be. After all, time is precious. I want to soak up the time I have left with my parents. All of it.

I sat in Christmas Eve church with my parents this evening. I believe in g/God about as much as I believe in elves at this point in my life but I went because it’s tradition and, although technically unspoken, very evident that my mother’s Christmas wish includes going to Christmas Eve church with whichever of her children may be home. All of four people in a congregation of about 150-200 were wearing masks, and two below their noses. This is a redneck (and red), steel mill and farming town. The virus is wholly and completely political here. It’s maddening but it is what it is. I was prepared for this earlier when I pasted on a smile, put down my book, curled my hair, and agreed to get in the car to go along.

My brother is also home this year, which is always welcome, but was doing husband duties with one of the three houses required in his in-law-visits any time they are home. Marrying a gal from our hometown when he lives 10hrs away should/could have been great but, a gal from a split home, with a grown brother who is also a single dad … there’s a lot going on. And those obligations always seem to get priority. We are an accommodating family by nature. So we take my brother when we can get him. It’s been eleven years. We are used to taking the leftovers and being authentically grateful.

Christmas church (like Christmas songs and movies) makes me nostalgic rather than joyful. And I always tear up during the service more than once, regardless of heartache (past or present). The poinsettias on the altar are always “in memory of” my grandparents and my uncle. I have no memories of my grandfather, who died the year I was born, but my grandma and my uncle were a daily part of my life until I left for college. We all lived on the same farm land. I saw them every day. And in 2002/3, I lost both of them, on that farm, within six months of each other. I have no shortage of childhood emotional trauma. But I was in my early 20s then and those losses felt different than the things that had come before. Insurmountable, really. I also lost both of them mere months before my first heartbreak. 2003 was an awful, awful year. And I cannot help but reflect on it every time I’m sitting on the hard, wooden church pew on Christmas Eve, looking at the flowers in honor of my family, staring up at the rafters of a beautiful narthex that served as backdrop for so much of my formative spiritual and social development, and listening to hymns that I can still almost viscerally hear my grandmother singing next to me. Though I haven’t actually heard her voice or felt her arms in nearly 20 years.

I also look around at all the familiar faces, but with more wrinkles and inches and shades of grey. The couples I remember as a child — often now permanently missing one part of what I always assumed would be an eternal pair. And “kids” who were toddlers when I was in youth group, are now balding, with beer bellies, mirror images of their dads & moms, with adolescent and even teenage children of their own. It’s always a little bizarre. As if I’m in some Scrooge-like vision of the future, only, I’m no longer a teenager or even a college kid. And yet, I’ve been experiencing this same future version of actual reality since I was in college. As if I’ve been watching life go by as reflected in everyone but myself, one Christmas Eve service at a time.

Sure, I notice that I am older. Obviously I see that I am 42 when I look in the mirror. And it is never lost on me that I am still “the single kid” tagging along with my parents to Christmas church, to family functions, to everywhere. I hate it. I’ve always hated it. I’ve always felt like an other. The years have passed but that feeling hasn’t.

It was so hard seeing the family of distant cousins in front of us, the parents about 15 years younger than mine, their three children, who farm the hillside across from ours, all married within the past five years, all with small children of their own. And tonight, the two boys, both with new baby boys of their own, only a couple months apart. We watched them coo and gurgle and smile from a few pews away. It makes me feel guilty not to be able to give that to my parents; they would be the world’s greatest grandparents! I think they were born for those roles. And yet, my brother and his wife seem content with just their dog. And me? I’m not content right now but I am trying to be. I try to play up my career and the fulfillment it gives me and downplay the singleness in any given year, but especially this year. This most recent bout of unbelievable betrayal is kind of too hard for me to fake.

I am grateful to be home, surrounded by people I love. But I am struggling a bit. I’m struggling to keep the melancholy at the periphery, to stay present, to stay gracious and patient. At this, the “happiest” time of the year.

Is this what he wanted? Is this the end game he hoped for? To shred the confidence and certainty and trust of someone who selflessly gave to him, and then when the illusion is broken, when his façade has been stripped away, he takes comfort in knowing that somewhere, two months later, that other someone is still sitting around wondering how they could have been so blind? Why they are spending yet another Christmas alone? While he’s spending his first Christmas Eve as a married man, to a woman I never knew existed.

If only in my dreams, right? That’s how the song goes so maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it will have all been a dream. Maybe, like Scrooge, I’ll get to wake up tomorrow and it will be twenty years ago and I’ll be able to get it right this time.

Music for the Mood: I’ll Be Home for Christmas – Michael Bublé

The good prevails

It’s during times like these that I wonder what my life is about. I work. I come home. I walk, I watch tv, I listen to music, I cook (sometimes), I play mindless games on my phone, or I read. Occasionally I go out with friends. But mostly, I feel like I just exist.

Tonight I got a text from a former student. One of my favorites. I have so many, really. But this one … he has continued to make me proud from nearly the day I met him. He makes me feel grateful.

Grateful to have an impact on the lives of young people. Their success is my success. I receive so much joy from watching them grow and stretch and become who they want to be. If I can play any infinitesimally small part in that growth, I am immeasurably happy. These are the moments I need to hold on to.

Throughout my career in education, people have told me time and again that it is a thankless job. That you rarely, if ever, get to see the seeds you plant grow & thrive. I have never felt that way. I have always felt loved, appreciated, and valued by my kids. I have so many “smile file” memories and moments. At least monthly, even though I haven’t been working in a school in four years.

There have been tragedies and unspeakable things, and always the routine frustrations and bureaucracy of a school and the American education system. But even in the trenches, you have a family. A cadre of educators who are all fighting together for the collective good. Some better than others. But for me? I always felt like I mattered.

Outside of my work, I can scarcely remember a time, maybe with the exception of my parents, when I have felt that same level of value, of importance, of significance. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all do that for each other, in all contexts?

That’s a world I want to live and love in. Where good always prevails.

Mood music: Times Like These – Foo Fighters (acoustic)

Content

I am content. I want to remember that this happened. That it is possible. How rarely can any of us say that? Are there still things I would change or things that rankle? Sure. I want to feel pretty and be skinnier. Who doesn’t? I want my parents and my brother to never grow old and to always be happy & healthy. I want this man to make me more of a priority. But I have him and I like him and he makes me so happy. For most of my life, I longed for this feeling so I’m going to revel in it as long as I can and try to keep pushing away the niggling thoughts leftover from heartaches past. Mostly though, I want the world to make sense, to be fair and equitable and safe. And I want to be proud to be an American again.

But for tonight, for this moment, I feel content. And that feels really nice.

This is 40

I was excited to turn 30. It was, and still is, to date, my best year. I’m not feeling any particular type of way about turning 40.

I have lots of feelings. Obviously. I am who I am, after all.

Introspection has become part of my daily life. It’s how I take care of myself. I walk 45 minutes each way to and from work every day and, although I listen to podcasts, my brain is constantly churning. Sometimes sparked or provoked by the podcasts but often in spite of or at least parallel to. John laughs at me for my overactive mind but he also helps quiet it. He might be the best part of this milestone.

Lately, for the past several weeks, through the unwelcome remnants of unsettling dreams or human apparitions of heartaches past, I keep thinking about exes. Maybe not so much them, as men or as personalities or even individual qualities, but their impact on my life, for better or, more accurately, for worse …… it’s hard not to imagine my 40 years of life within the context of the things that have shaped me the most. And, with the most brutal truth, shaped the absence of roles I thought I would be playing by this point in my life; roles that seemed and still do, to some extent, innate and inevitable. And yet, roles I may never and likely will never get to try on. Having a child of my own, with John, or g/God forbid, someone in the future, seems unlikely at this age. I’m not in a rush or, I guess, I am not in a place where it is feasible. I live in 385 sq ft. My guy still weirdly lives with roommates. I am not moving to the suburbs. Tiptoeing across the threshold of 40, these are the things I regret and yet, I do realize that it’s silly to regret something you really did not have control over. You’re allowed to regret missing out though, right? I don’t know. This isn’t like a trip to Cabo that I chose not to take.

Relationships, for me, have had the single greatest impact on my four decades as a human, particularly the past two, and I don’t know how to really sit with or accept that reality. Although, even as I type that, I know that isn’t really true. The first one in college, the one after college, the one when I moved here from Pittsburgh … they all still hurt. It isn’t hard for me to recognize or admit but I would guess that, to anyone other than me, even those that know me best, this statement would be utterly unbelievable or, at the very least, induce an eye roll or a casual shrug and a hair flip. To me though, looking at past relationships, and even many friendships, is like being stuck in a hall of mirrors at a county fair. Unpack that as you wish.

So, this is 40. Seems a lot like both 20 and 30 in my head and heart. Wonder if 50 will come with a wider lens. And instructions on how to use it properly.

Tiger Lily Vegas

What does it all mean?

Tiger Lily Vegas was the name of a cat. In college, maybe senior or super senior year (victory lap), my small and beloved group of guy friends and I illegally had a cat in the dorms for a few, gloriously scandalous weeks. Considering virtually everything was against the rules at our tiny, conservative, Christian college, this was a very big deal.

I wanted to name her Tigerlily. Natalie Merchant was my muse at the time, I think. The guys wanted to name her Vegas (we were unabashedly into the movie Swingers then). “You’re so money baby and you don’t even know it.” Maybe we should have named her Double Down. Anyway, we compromised on Lily Vegas and, after a number of adventures and learning what it was really like to have a cat, illegally or not, in a confined space, we got caught. Probably the smell although, I don’t remember those lesser details now, fifteen years later. Lily Vegas lived out her days on my family’s farm, having babies, killing rodents and living the life fantastic until a car squashed her. I’m not a cat person, or even a pet person, but I had an affinity for Lily Vegas, for what she represented, the memories, the subversion.

I have so many memories and stories like this in my head, upstaged in volume only by thoughts. I like to write but rarely do it, except in the occasional, introspective, wordy and admittedly obnoxious social media post about whatever is rankling or inspiring at that moment. After college, I had a blog and it was cathartic and I met great “friends” there, a few of whom I am still connected with through social media. Some days, especially when I’m walking the 2.5 miles to or from work and my mind wanders or I’m lying in bed unable to sleep, I think about how I wish I had someone to turn to and talk about all these random things. So here we go. Buckle up.