christmas spirit

We Live With An Elf

I love Christmas.  I truly love everything about it.  I love the tree, the baking, the music, the decorating, the gifting.  I really have always enjoyed this time of year, but this year, something is different.  We have a preschooler who is old enough now to be really into Christmas, but young enough to be untouched by any outside cynicism.  His innocence is pure joy and it’s infectious. The spirit of Christmas is alive in our home.  And it’s wonderful.

It actually feels at times like we live with an elf.  I don’t know how else to put it.  My three and a half year old is an elf.  The amount of Christmas spirit this kid embodies is astounding.  Even by my estimation, and I start listening to Christmas music around Halloween.  His excitement for the season brims over throughout the day.  Christmas carols can be heard pretty much at all waking hours and even when he is supposed to be sleeping.  You can walk by the door to his room and hear “Jingle Bells” most every morning.  And when we are out and about in the world, he greets his fellow humans with a hearty “Happy Holidays!” “Happy Kwanza!” Or “Happy Harmonica!”  He is equally excited for ALL holidays. It is all joy to him.

Being around this amazing child is a constant reminder of the good that is inately in people.  He is a human reminder of the joy and wonder that lives inside us, somewhere.  I am infinitely lucky.  I get to remember the wonder and feel his joy every day. It becomes my own.  My child makes me believe in the good of man.  He makes me believe in Magic and, of course, Santa Claus.  It is such a gift to see the season through his eyes.  A gift I want to never end.

My wish for you this Holiday Season, is to see Joy, through a child’s eyes.  Allow yourself to believe in the good of mankind.  Let yourself believe in the impossible.  Remember, believing is seeing.  I am sure I sound like a broken record. But I am the luckiest mommy in the whole world.  I believe it.  So it is so.   In the words of Nancy Tillman,

          Your tree may be large as the room will allow

          With a big yellow star on the upper most bough

          But of one thing I’m certain, I’m sure of one thing,

          It is LOVE that makes the angels sing.

Thank you, my little O, for showing me what Christmas is made of.  And for making the angels sing.  Oh how they sing!  Happy Holidays Everyone!

Until next time, thanks for reading.  And remember, behind every great kid is a mom who is pretty sure she is screwing it up.  Joyous Noel! Xo

 

Wanted Rose Colored Glasses

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I have always loved the holidays.  I am the type of girl who starts listening to Christmas music right after Halloween.  I love decorating, baking cookies, wrapping gifts and making all sorts of homemade delights.  This year, though, I am slow to start.  I am finding it hard to get in the spirit.   Real life seems harsher this year for many reasons. The woman who taught me about Christmas, my Mother, is sick.  She is in a rehabilitation facility in need of 24/7 assistance.   Wrapping my head around this painfully slow loss would be enough.  But let’s add the notion of spouting “Peace on Earth” and “Love and Joy” feeling somewhat fake this year, knowing that racism and hate is very much alive and evidently empowered in our beloved country.   This post-truth era bullshit we are experiencing makes all the songs and tidings of goodwill seem phony.  So phony it’s sad.  Even the Carpenter’s Christmas Album feels weird this year.

There is an anger and sadness inside of me I don’t quite know what to do with.  I feel incredible loss.  I  feel this odd, out of body loss one experiences as an aging parent slowly slips away.   It is the strangest feeling to miss your mother while she is right in front of you.  It’s excruciating, really.  I also feel the loss of the sense of good I thought the world inherently possessed.  It’s as if I have woken up in an alternate universe.  And now it’s time to play Christmas carols and get on with things….and it just feels false.  I don’t want to sing the Hallelujah Chorus while white supremists are appointed to top White House positions.  I want to scream, “Stop!”

I’m sorry for my rant of negativity.  I’m sorry I’m political.  I’m sorry that I give a shit.   I have been trying so hard to find the positives.  I am desperate to find them.  I need to find them, if not for my own good, for the good of my family, who needs me to see the good.  It is my thing to see the good.  There is a pair of rose colored glasses in our home with my name all over them.  They are just broken in about five different places right now.  There is no doubt, my role in the play “Our Life,” is that of Pollyanna.  I’m failing miserably.

One of my biggest fears is that I will not be able to sweep this state of mind away with peppermint lattes and wishes for Santa.  My mother is wrapped in almost every memory I have of Christmas.  Her exquisite detail of preserving the magic of Santa for all of us…the way she made each of us feel special..the time she took enjoying the season herself.  I remember coming home from school close to Christmas Day, walking into the house filled with the aroma of holiday baking and the sounds of Johnny Mathis on the record player.   I remember waking up each Christmas morning and it was as if elves had sprinkled christmas magic all over the house.  She was gifted in magic.

I know I should celebrate those memories.  And I suppose I will.  It’s just right now there is a sadness attached to the sweetness.  Like the last bite of the most delicious cake that can never be baked again.  I guess I just need more time.  Until next time, keep fighting the good fight and remember, behind every great kid is a mom who is pretty sure she screwing it up.  Thanks for reading.  Xo