Marking Time 2011 Style

Marking time.  I'm looking for my holiday normal and you know what?  It apparently doesn't exist.  I think the holidays tend to just throw shit at you and watch you duck and cover and rebound and hold onto the rails for dear life.  This is why I felt like I did.  I felt like there were no rails and this feeling has little to do with Christmas.

But, at least I have a way of marking time and realizing that its okay.  I haven't ruined Christmas by not being in my normal mood. I think the problem is that I haven't really left the house very much this month.  I don't leave the house much at all in fact.  Work and home.  The end.  I stopped going to my writing group for a while and it sucks.  Two hours, once a week in a room with like-minded folk writing crazy, sad, funny, touching, harsh, human stories is about as close to heaven as a girl like me can get.  And there are cookies and coffee.  Triple win.

In my quest of breaking out of the funk, I went back through time on the blog.  Here a few shots from my boys' first Christmas:

My God we look young.  No forehead lines Jenn!

 December 2005 - Seth learned how to give kisses.  

Sometimes they were more

welcome than others. 

 My four kids.  Danielle is the only

one who hasn't changed at all.

The chase apparently began winter of 2005. Poor Stella.

And then there was the Great Dog Chase of 2007.  

And then in 2008 the whole world went sideways.

In 2009 I quit my horrible job.  

In 2010 I was so sick I had to cancel Christmas dinner.  Everyone had to go to my parents' house while I was home with a fever, bronchitis and some sort of plague.  I missed an entire week of work.

On New Year's Day 2009 I made myself a promise.  Not a resolution, not a change to try something new.  But a new way of being in the world. I was going to stop doing a lot of things, I was going to keep it simple and small and close to home.  I was going to re-focus my life on one thing: my family.

And so, I did.  For two years I didn't volunteer, I didn't take on, I didn't make hasty changes.  A good thing too, because raising twins is crazy hard work.  Trying to balance full time work and all the crap I went through at Mount Holyoke, raising teenage daughters and finding time for my relationship was damn exhausting.  All worth it.   All wanted and needed and loved and appreciated.  

I'm looking back at those photos of my boys before things started to change.  When they were just two little dudes who were late in speaking.  All the things I wanted and hoped and dreamed of.  All the things I thought they were.  It turns out, they're better than all the things I had believed.  Seth has a heart the size of Alaska.  Those kissing pictures up there?  Tip of the iceberg.  My JP who refused to hold a pencil for the better part of a year?  He gave me a book for Christmas.  That he wrote.  JP is in the middle of facing his fears and learning how to deal with a sensory system consistently on overload.  He is learning to let go of his perfectionism and to embrace his eraser because "Erasers are our friends."  They don't tell you that these kids with autism are among the bravest of kids.  And they often find an extra guardian angel along way.  One might even call them a partner for life.

I have days where I feel totally incapable of being the mother they need and deserve.  I get tired.  It wears on you, this constant and non-stop encouragement, fielding and boundary setting.  The notes home from school filled sometimes with a barrage of bad news no matter how nicely its put... they are hard to take after a while.  And then all of a sudden a day or two of smiley faced stickers and you are filled up again with hope that sustains you. 

I can't help but wonder where we'll be a year from now.  I'm marking this year's holiday season with this post.  I'll look back next year and I'll remember all these feelings, all these thoughts and I will want to reach back through time and tell myself that it was all going to be fine. That no matter what happens, the journey is the thing.  That it will get easier.  That Autumn will find the right college and she'll love it the moment she closes her dorm room door and starts to unpack.  That Danielle will find her place in the world and her passion.  She'll be as stubborn and smart and beautiful as she always has been.  And Aaron.  He'll hang in there too.  And he'll be in school.  And he will be brilliant and finally, finally after all these years he will get to find his own silver lining.  

That Christmas feeling is right there, its out of reach still, but I'll get there.  It would really help if maybe we could have that snow though.