The day before yesterday was my daughter’s eleventh birthday. Though she enjoyed receiving a new Wii game, a Target gift card, a gym bag and some cash, I’m pretty sure her favorite present was this handmade card from her little brother.
Because people throw around that heart and soul stuff all the time, but when you say blood you really mean it.
1. You know you are a true chocoholic when you realize there isn’t a chocolate nut cluster in the world that stands a chance against you.
2. Or, a peanut butter blossom.
3. If your son has never had an instance where he has scratched his crotch in public, you can be sure he will do it for the first time in the middle of his school Christmas play.
4. When he’s standing directly in front of the principal.
5. And, you can be sure he’ll do it for a second time when he’s performing during the children’s Christmas Eve Mass.
6. While standing in front of an entire congregation.
7. And your priest.
8. You may underestimate how bad of a charades player your sister says she is, until she acts out West Side Story by simply belting out, “Maria…”
9. If your daughter gets a camera for Christmas, it’s possible that she will think she is the next Annie Lebovitz and you will have to pose for pictures for days on end.
10. And, during those days on end when you’ve been living off of beer, wine, egg nog, rum, Bailey’s and apple pie, you probably won’t look very pretty in those photographs.
11. When you are 38 years old and your parents still spoil you, you’ll feel like a kid again.
12. If you are participating in a White Elephant gift exchange, you won’t feel so bad about contributing something tacky when you receive a clock from 1982. With dust on it.
13. If you have to make three different trips to the carry out in the middle of your family gathering, you will realize that you are related to a forgetful bunch.
14. Either that, or they drink a lot.
For as long as I can remember, my husband, our two kids and I have gathered around our dining room table for a traditional dinner on Christmas Eve. First, we attend church, then come home and I put a ham in the oven.
The only problem with this arrangement, is that the children’s Mass, in which my kids often participate, is at 6:00 PM…which means we don’t get home until after 7:00. I don’t like to leave the oven on when we’re not home, so Christmas Eve dinner is always a very late one.
This year I tried something new. I pulled out my gigantic, electric roaster and threw the ham inside before we left for church. That way we came home to a fully cooked ham.
Actually, it was a little too fully cooked.
And as we sat around the table aglow with candlelight and set with my mother’s Christmas china, my daughter didn’t let it go unnoticed when she said, “You know, I like dry meat. It’s easier to cut.”
Not too long ago, I almost saw a pedestrian get killed. Cross-traffic was stopped at a light, or so this woman thought, and she stepped off the curb and into the crosswalk. A car ran the red light and missed her by inches.
The scene often runs through my mind in slow motion. I picture her hair getting blown by the passing car that almost ran her down. Yet, in my memory, her hair isn’t tossed by a whoosh of air. It is a gentle breeze because the picture runs so slow.
I feel much the same way about the time my son stopped breathing after one of his surgeries. I remember the frenzy and the near-constant push of medication. I remember my son screaming and then suddenly hearing nothing but the nurse yelling at him. But, all of that craziness also drags on in my mind. It’s as if remembering it at the pace at which it happened is too much for me to endure.
When I go back to the moment when my aunt told me that my cousin had died, I see her mouth move sluggishly as she said, “He’s gone”. When I recall standing next to my niece in the ICU when she took her last breaths, the blips on her monitor barely move in my mind.
I think painful memories work that way. They travel through us at a rate so as not to shock our hearts into stopping.
But, I want the good memories to slow down. I need pictures of happiness and light to linger in my head. Those images are far too fleeting.
My New Year’s resolution is to stop walking around in a perpetual state of anxiety and make my brain happy. To nurse my soul and to stop letting bad thoughts plod along slowly. I want to make the good feelings last longer than the rotten ones.
All of the negative, slow motion moments in my life are wearing me down and it’s high time I sent them packing.
Then, I’m going to invite bliss and ask it to kick up its heels and stay a while.
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