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Learning and trying to be kind and living my life as fully as I can stand it.

Friday, December 4, 2015

A little post

It's quiet in the house. Dark outside. The kids will be home soon.

I'm online, searching for a nativity scene. A creche. The set of figures that represents the birth of Jesus. Surprised to discover that I care a lot about having one and I care much more than I would have guessed about what it looks like.

Will I teach my children about Jesus? Geez, that is a big question.

Will we teach them about Santa?

I'm telling you, being in the parent role as we approach this holiday is bringing up all sorts of big questions that I don't feel ready to answer. And yet here I am, discovering that I want a nativity scene with a separate baby Jesus--not one with the babe in Mary's arms. So. . .huh. Maybe some of the decisions have already been made.

Christmas to me meant sleeping in the same bed with my brother and my sister on Christmas Eve until very recently. It meant new pajamas. Christmas morning meant beautiful, hushed, glowing tree with lights and three new ornaments from Santa every year. Donuts on a plate in the kitchen, from Santa. Taking turns opening presents, varying the order every year--from oldest to youngest or youngest to oldest or starting in the middle. We each watched the other with love and happiness, so glad to be able to gift one another.

It meant Christmas music, but more the religious songs like Adeste Fidelis or Joy to the World. Silent Night. The wood-smoke smell in chilly air. The big tree on the Eastern edge of Golden Gate Park with long strands of colored lights wrapping it in long columns. Magical. Midnight Mass, or an earlier Mass, with the familiar story of waiting for a child to be born.

It meant looking out the window from the back seat of the car, wondering in amazement at the moon following us home. Feeling safe and warm with my parents in the front seat, my siblings next to me.

Joy is hard to find right now, it seems. I feel blue a lot of the time. Overwhelmed. Surrounded by things I wish were done. Being hard on myself. Feeling so thin-skinned and sensitive and self-conscious that it's hard to come here to write because I second-guess almost every word that comes out of my mouth. And this is not how I want to be.

I think I'll go make a fire so I can welcome my four healthy children into a home that is warm.


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