Drifting

I feel like I am drifting from someone right now and it makes me feel a sort of panicky deja vu. Like I have felt like this befpre--friendship's swan song, a sad farewell of a trainwreak you could see coming miles away. This, and perhaps many, entries might not make much sense and for that, I apologize. I feel a bit scattered and it shows.

I think that a good part of what is causing this rift is the lack of stability--that is we just dont know if we are coming or going. And that sense of insecurity and waffling about whether or not we are going to be around must make it difficult to commit to being friends when you dont know if the friendship will sustain itself over time. But does friendship work that way? If you found out that you had a finite amoun of time with a friend, would you start to push away too?

We have lost a number of close friendships over distant moves. It is a hard thing, keeping things alive and current when you cant hang out and watch a movie or sit and chat over a cup of tea. And while it is a sad fact of life, it is still a fact of life. (This is one of those realizations that I have come to, much like understanding that I have a hard time letting go) You see, I used to kid myself that if I only tried harder and put more of myself into it, I could still have the same friendship to return to. but I have come to understand that to sustain some friendships, I do need to be able to sit down and have a cup of tea and share a hug and a laugh and a cry. And despite being able to find time for the things around me that need doing, I am less good at emailing things that arent trite and contrived, at picking up the phone and being chatty. And, while I am mostly OK with the fact that I have never been a phone kind of person, I do feel like I am the one at fault for losing out on what should be.

We are drifting and I dont know what to do about it. So we pretend nothing is wrong and that the awkward conversations have other causes and the stilted visits are because of other stresses that dont involve one another. And we go on.

Letting Go

I have a hard time letting go. You might be asking yourself what would make an English major write a sentence with such an obvious dangling modifier. Or, if you know me, you might just be saying "Yeah, duh. Tell me something I didn't know." But the truth of the matter is, you dont come here looking for things you dont know. I have come to a personal realization that I have a hard time letting go and while it is neither new nor revolutionary, the way that I have begun to understand the idea that I have a hard time letting go is.

For a great deal of my life, I have been knee deep in stuff. I believe the buzz word these days is clutter. I have been labelled as a packrat, I have been called a messy hoarder. I have been accused of hanging on long after it is necessary and appropriate. I know all these things about myself and, year after year, I make a determination that I am going to change my clutter-collecting ways, embark on decluttering missions and purging expeditions.

Perhaps it is the bane of half baked resolutions to come undone. I think that a goal that is earnestly desired is rarely acheived easily, no? So I carry on, year after year, labouring under the delusion that if I just buy the right container, the right basket, the right organizer, that my life will become less and by extension, I shall become less burdened. Alas, it isnt the way of things.

Years of purging and releasing bags of stuff back to the annals of the thrift stores from whence so much had come have only produced corners of my home devoted to black bags of stuff and boxes of recycling. You smirk because you know its true. The stuff has merely migrated into bags and the problem isnt solved because there is simply more stuff to take its place. And greater than before, the bags are a reminder of how unsightly stuff can be. At least when it was just knicknacks on a shelf, it looked reasonable, but knicknacks in a garbage bag? Just looks like garbage. And so the home with stuff now looks like a home with stuff AND garbage sitting in an untidy heap waiting for some absolution that only appears to arrive at teh turn of every year.

So this year I am resolved NOT to make resolutions. And though I will never be rid of the guilt of my stuff and will not quite be able to conquer the urge to purge and buy magazines promising to "Cut the Clutter!" and "Declutter in only 10 days", I have begun the journey of understanding that I have a hard time letting go.

Time

Time, especially around the holidays, is a funny beast. On the one hand, it seems like there is not enough of it to get the things that need to get done, done. And yet, somehow, there always seems to be time for surfing the internet, trolling the forums, and browsing the blogroll. How is the elusive time thing alotted in your head?

Personally, I try not to worry too much about time. Yeah, I get the kids to school (on time, mostly) and I manage to feed them around the socially accepted feeding times, but when I am not working, I tend to the clock (and subsequently the calendar) very little. Time takes on an ethereal quality, something that lingers on the edge of my consciousness but doesnt take up much of my energy.

I began thinking about time when someone asked how I ever managed to find time to do the things that I do. And the honest answer is, I dont know. I dont know how I can raise three kids and make and send handmade Christmas cards and sew blankets and buy extra presents for underpriviledged families. I dont know how I can complete scrapbooks and read novels and learn new recipes. I just do. And, perhaps I do it at the expense of other things, I dont notice. I do have a wonderful husband who is unfettered by social conventions and is, not glad necessarily but willing, to do the laundry and the dishes, who likes to cook and will hold the baby. I am an extremely lucky one.

I sometimes fear going back to work full time in the new year because I will miss drifiting from project to project and being afforded the luxury of attending to my children as they need me. I will miss not having to look at the clock.

And yet, a quandry. Yes, I do not live by the clock, but I cherish all the moments that time counts, all the memories that we pack in between the seconds and the hours. And as the year draws to a close, we often look back on the months and the days and the hours and wonder how the time has gone so quickly. My little one is already 6 months and it feels as though only yesterday I was holding him as a newborn. How has it been 5 years since I got married? How did 10 years pass after Sarah's death? Time marked in other ways suddenly feels frightening and tumbling.

And here I sit, late in the night, the soft sounds of sleep like a coccoon around me. My son lies in my arms as I type, as my babies have so often passed the nights with me. I will miss this flexibility, this haze of timelessness that exists within the four walls of my house. It is time that is mine alone and I savour these decadent minutes before bed.

Trying to stay on top of things

Having a conversation with a 5 year old is somewhat frustrating. Our conversation today almost drove me to drink

"What is that?"
"Its the wall for the basement laundry room"
"What's it for?"
"Its for the WALL"
Well, but I want to know what its for"
????
I lost my temper "It's for the WALL so that the laundry room will have a WALL. I don't know how else to explain what a WALL is for"
"Oh"

Maybe I am closer to PPD than I thought but my head almost exploded. I am pretty conscientious about post partum depression, having failed to see it in myself last time until it was at critical mass and I was in a severe state of depression. There would be days when I would lay on the couch and snooze with Elena while Julia would have to feed herself out of the fruit bowl at lunchtime because I would simply forget to get lunch. And once I got meds, boom, like a while new person--one who would make meals at appropriate times and sleep at normal hours. So with the arrival of bouncing baby boy, I was almost hyper-aware of my moods, paid attention to my eating habits and sleeping routines. I make sure the kids are fed and dressed and at school on time. I dress myself everyday ( dont take this as a given when there is a new baby in the house and no reason to leave) and try to make sure that I have time to myself so that I am not lost in the shuffle of "mom! mom! mom!" I think, in part, I wanted to silence the naysayers who said I shouldnt have more babies because I had PPD last time around, even though that seems ridiculous because the chemical imbalance that is depression is not even remotely in my own control.

I feel good. I dont type that with impunity, I really do feel good. I feel accomplished (I have finished three scrapbooks in the last 3 months!), the kids are relatively happy and my relationship with my husband is as steady as it ever has been (taking money issues out for the most part has been the greatest help in this department, I think). but somedays things just get away from me and I have to try not to beat myself over it becuase who doesnt have off days, right? What is important, and what I have to continually remind myself about, is that I still want to get up tomorrow, still have things I am looking forward to and still want laugh things off.

Someday soon, maybe tomorrow when the wave of it is less poignant, I will stop berating myself over having locked all the kids in the running van this morning when I got out to brush the snow off. I will not worry about the moments when I felt like breaking down because I did manage to hold it together and not linger on the memory of peering in to the frosted windows and seeing how Jacob's hat had slid over and was covering his nose and mouth and hearing him crying because he had mittens on his little hands and couldnt take his hat off himself and listening to Julia's helpless cries of fear at being left in the van and not able to go to school. I will be comforted by Elena's steadfast calmness becuase she was so sure of my ability to get into the car and help them out. And I will pat myself on the back for having the ability to guide Julia through unbuckling her carseat buckle and sliding out to open the door for me in relative short order and with minimal freaking out.

It'll be funny one day, right?

The fine balance of Christmas

We dont believe in God at our house. Before you start hurling tomatoes, let me reassure you that we dont believe that there isnt a God, we just arent exactly positive there is one either. So the holidays present somewhat of a logical dilemma. On the one hand, while we want to embrace the other feel-good happy happy Hallmark moments that are part and parcel with three and five year olds and Christmas we dont want to be buying TOO much into the crass consumerism. On the other hand, we dont want to emphasize the "reason for the season" line either. A difficult line to walk that gets more difficult as subsequent years pile onto of one another.

You see, now that a certain five year old is getting older and wiser, she has questions that havent yet been asked and, thus, havent been dodged before. And since we also dont believe in lying to the kids if they ask a stright question, we often answer with a straight answer. No end of hilarity ensues. Questions like "Jesus died a long time ago didnt he?" "Yes, he did" "What happened to Jesus?" get answered by my oh-so anti-organized-religion husband who tosses gems out like "Oh, he gets killed by some guys" which then prompts the question "Why did those bad men kill Jesus?" And I then sing out "Dinnertime!" thus alleviating a somewhat awkward situation. Nevermind that her last thought was that "once you're dead, you stay dead forever and ever like our fish at school who got dead and then was flushed down the toilet." What would I say to that come Easter? Argh.

It is easier this year now that Julia doesnt attend a Catholic school (yeah, she went for one year. We couldnt help it) and isnt fed a daily diet of the Holy Trinity that makes no sense to her. She had finally stopped asking why that man had his arms on an X on the wall and why the lady (Mary) was in a little box (creche?) on the floor but, like a steel trap, she hadnt forgotten about it, just stopped wondering about it aloud, I guess.

My MIL, bless her heart, cough cough, gave us a DVD with the animated story of the first Christmas. We hemmed and hawed about whether or not to let them watch it and then gave in, since we really didnt want to unbalance the forces and put too much emphasis on the Santa list making, gift grubbing, buying end of Christmas. "Mary is Jesus' mommy and Joseph is Jesus' daddy." "Yes" "And Jesus was in Mary's tummy just like Jacob was in your tummy" "Yes" "So why didnt she go to the hospital like you went to the hospital?" "Did I have a special star in the sky too?" "I want one too!" "No me first!" And on and on. It was Christmas at its finest. I was feeling particularly unchristian afterwards.

I think we are afraid in part of how Julia would take to religion, given the right indoctrination. She is by nature someone whom organized religion would hold great appeal. But we'd like her to make her own choices about it, informed ones with little pressure and brimstone threats. Elena I worry less about. At three she has a healthy dose of her father's skepticism that would ward off most of the pressure that comes with choosing a set of religious beliefs.

This is the last year we can unilaterally make these conscious choices for them, I think. In the new year we will be getting a nanny who, like many Filipino nationals, is very religious. I would be absurd to think that having a caregiver who belives in something very fervently will not effect her mannerisms, her vocabulary and her celebrations around the children. And so, I will enjoy grappling with these ideas this Christmas knowing that next year will be a completely different ballgame.

November- Julia

Julia's personality grows stronger with time. She remains sensitive and anxious at times, funny and tender at others. She has developed some angst about how others percieve her--part and parcel with being sensitive in general I think, but has learned some coping mechanisms that help her to phase out what she needs to do for herself and for others to make her life easier. She dotes on her brother and sister and I couldnt ask for a better helper in the house even though we are both headstrong and stubborn.

School is, as ever, something that comes easily for her. She loves the challenges of the school work, finds some of the social aspects more trying but has hit the plateau where friends are beginning to take on agreater and greater importance. She will often tell me that she would rather have stay at home days but I know that without the steady diet of school she will wither. She is starting to read (!) and can tell me what letter sounds string together. Of course, it isnt easy but some days (like some day last week) she will surprise me. We were driving and as we passed the signs byt eh road I could hear her sounding out letters that she could see. Suddenly she said, "Mom! That says PIZZA!" And indeed it did. Pride in herself nearly burst out of the car and helped to give her a much needed self esteem boost. For some reason she always doubts herself and as such we are always trying (not too hard or too much) to make her feel important and relevant and boosted. Praise is such a fine line to walk.

(Sweaters thanks to Aunty Rachel!)

This Christmas I have recently come to understand just what a diferent creature Julia is. She has always been one who collects toys rather than plays with them. That is, she was never a child who had a doll who was the baby and she was the mommy, she didnt create storylines, per se. She would line up evey single animal she owned--some days by size, some days by colour, some days in a random row. But always just lining them up. I worried a bit when she was small just how obsessive she was about them but shrugged it off. When Elena came along and she played in a typical way, Julia would play alongside her, alwmost as though she were learning how to play in this way. But her instinct always led her to simply hoard the toys. And as she grows, her behaviours havent changed, just her discrimination about what she hoards. And that is simply what she does and as difficult as it is for me to come to grips with the fact that she just doesnt do things the way other kids might, there is nothing wrong with it. I shouldnt push her to change and I should embrace her quirks. But its hard and I have a heck of a time admitting it. So, whew, there it is. Baby steps, you know?
Both girls love crafts but Julia takes things to the next level. She wanted no toys this Christmas, but rather wanted Santa to bring her scrapbooking stuff "like moms". It touches me and breaks my heart all at the same time.

We've been having some ongoing issues with the girls in their loft bed--they are unable to fall asleep in bed becuase they want to talk and play and do everything but sleep. We have taken to putting them on the stairs without lecturing or commenting or getting angry since the "get mad" card clearly wasnt working out for us in this particular situation. We have declared that in the next house, they will NOT be sharing a bedroom, nevermind a bed anymore, but, as challeging as it is, somedays I go up to tuck them in and I find this and it makes me want to have them share a room and a bed and stay small like this forever.