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Home for the Holidays

December 23, 2014 //
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It’s the holiday break from work, and I’ve got a couple of weeks at the end of the year to get some needed down time, celebrate the holidays, and invest my time in my own needs and agenda for a few precious days. Time to share with loved ones. Time to meditate. Time to explore the world within – or the world beyond these walls and windows. Time for me. Time for love. It’s a great idea…isn’t it?

Being home for the holidays holds so much promise, so much potential…so much risk. Yep. Risk, too. Risk of drama, risk of disappointment, risk of ‘failure’…and all of that self-selected and self-imposed. It’s easy to get attached to a particular idea, a particular dream of holiday magic, and find myself disappointed, not in the moment, but overall – having invested too much in a pretty daydream, and failing to enjoy the precious moment that is.  I sometimes also get hung up on what was, and what wasn’t; that’s just the chaos and damage, leaking through to now.

I sing holiday carols – I love most of them, the heartfelt yearning, the love, the wonder, the sentiment. I sing along with them and feel.  There are a few that always make me weep; I am grieving, in some cases, feelings I don’t have for myself, or crying because what is real can sometimes hurt so much. One of my favorite emotional holiday carols is “I’ll Be Home for Christmas“, an old WWII era carol. The homesick sorrow of soldiers on the battlefield, missing their loved ones and the safety of a holiday at home…it’s not why I cry. I cry when I hear/sing that carol because I don’t have that home to go back to; it’s an empty promise. It’s spelled out in the song, too… “I’ll be home for Christmas…if only in my dreams…” Yes. I will also be home for Christmas, every year, no matter what…if only in my dreams. What do you feel when you think of ‘home’? Where is that place for you? Is it a geographical location, or the companionship of a specific other person? Is it a place, or a place in your heart?

I do have a very clear idea of what these holidays feel like, and I’ve been ‘home for the holidays’ on a level that amounted to ‘proof of concept’ more than once. It remains an experience of rare heart and beauty, and great sentiment. The price of admission is feeling the feelings, and being with others who share them. It’s called ‘the magic of Christmas’ because the experience of it is not a given, and it is an experience worth cherishing, nurturing, and savoring.

This morning is an ordinary enough Tuesday morning, I guess. I was wakened earlier than I wanted to be awake by the sounds of doors, voices, laundry… I looked at the clock, stunned to see all that going on at such an early hour, on a day I expected the house to be rather quiet. Morning appointments trump sleeping in.  This morning I find myself recognizing that this particular desire to ‘sleep until I wake’ isn’t so easily fulfilled, the logistics are complicated, and require a shared commitment that is lacking, and the frustration and disappointment of failing to find my way to the quality of sleep and rest I am seeking is becoming its own thing. Time to let it go, I guess; it’s not worth being irritated about not achieving it. “Enough sleep” will have to be enough.

I’m in pain, again today. I’m in enough pain that Rx pain relief doesn’t do much to relieve the pain, just dulls it somewhat and renders it manageable. I’m in enough pain to be uncomfortable to be around, for people sensitive to that sort of thing; it’s just too obvious that I am uncomfortable. I’m in enough pain to struggle to manage my mood, and my temper. Yoga doesn’t take away the pain, but it does make movement easier, and a bit less uncomfortable moment to moment. Everyday pain has become so every day at this point it is now a challenge to remember a time when I didn’t hurt like this, although wisdom and intellect tell me that such a point of view is flawed and inaccurate. I have hurt like this, in winter, for years now. It always sucks just this much.

home for the holidays...

home for the holidays…

Home for the holidays – the adult version; I know what I want, I know that it is ‘real’, and I know I can’t have it. What I can have is still a wonderful holiday, still worthy, still filled with joy; there are verbs involved, and a certain level of adult acceptance – and self-acceptance – are required, and perhaps ‘some assembly’. We can’t always get what we want… Today is a good day to celebrate the holidays that are, with the people who are here.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, winter, Words

Simple Pleasures

November 30, 2014 //
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It’s late, and the house is quiet. The weekend is over, Thanksgiving is past, and this moment right now is the space between waking and sleeping. I’m not quite ready to let the weekend go. I’m also not particularly in need of an audience, or someone with whom to share this quiet moment. My sharing, for now, is handled and this moment, now, is my own. It’s a very nice quiet one.

An annual celebration of light.

An annual celebration of light.

The loft has been transformed into a holiday paradise. There are very personal, particular, even… ‘magical’ qualities to the holiday season for me, that go far beyond jingles, sales, advertisements, tradition, marketing, habit, or expectations. I made the winter holidays my own, a very long time ago. Today, I sipped my last coffee of the day surrounded by colored lights, and fantastical glass ornaments of all imaginable sorts, quite content to enjoy the things about this holiday season that move me so much. I’ve tried hard for so many years, and in so many relationships, to share this particular experience, this magic, this wondrous transformative understanding of the winter holidays that is my own experience of it… I’m not sure that I’ve ever really succeeded beyond communicating with some modest success that these are holidays that matter to me. That’s enough. It has to be. We are each having our own experience.

Ornaments as metaphors; love is a lighthouse.

Ornaments as metaphors; love is a lighthouse.

For me, preparing the house for the holidays, decorating, setting up the holiday tree are more than tradition, or habit, or expectation; they are in important ritual in the cycle of my life, letting every year end on a note of warmth, love, generosity, appreciation, gratitude, and value – no matter how bad the nightmares, or how traumatic the reality. Each year I unpack the ornaments and treasure the moments I recall as I handle them, and look them over in the light. I place each one so carefully, considering even ‘now details’ and how the precious memories it holds fit the context of my life; I place some prominently, and tuck others around in the back where they are less likely to be seen, or asked about. Each year the tree is a monument to life, to emotion, to memory – to the content and meaning of life and love, experienced over time. Bits of sentiment, souvenirs, and trophies, too, perhaps; my life in glass and glitter cherished through the season, and packed away ever so carefully once the new year arrives.

Some ornaments are purchased, others are handmade.

Some ornaments are purchased, others are handmade.

I sat, hands warm and wrapped around my coffee cup, enjoying a moment of stillness and waiting on our evening meal, it finally became more real…how little need there is for any one else to ‘really get it’, so long as I am true to myself, my values, and I am accepted and valued within my relationships such that I can enjoy the experience that is my own without any particular hindrance.  A lovely moment, a gentle lesson in life’s curriculum; I almost managed not to wonder if I feel exactly precisely all of this every year, without being able to understand that I have, that I do, that I will… I did manage not to be frustrated with that thought, it too passed, and I enjoyed the stillness.

Holiday magic - everyone makes their own.

Holiday magic – everyone makes their own.

These simple harmless pleasures contribute to this amazing journey, enjoying them is part of who I am – and it’s one of the very best parts, too – I woke up to a better understanding about ‘experiencing’ and ‘sharing’ and how distinct from each other those ideas can be, and how utterly okay that actually is. It’s a nice idea on which to end such a nice day, such a good weekend.

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, winter, women, Words

Remember That One Time…?

November 29, 2013 //
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Remember that one Thanksgiving, the hard one, the one with the moods and the tantrums, the stress, the hard work, the tense conversations and everyone trying so hard? Me, too. We probably all do – or something very like it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I’m thankful to see another one come and go. I’m thankful that generally speaking I don’t have a lingering recollection of the challenges of the holidays, only the fun, the recipes, the wonder.  Yesterday will be one of those Thanksgivings.  Long after all reminders of the difficult moments have faded, I’ll still be remembering the delicious turkey, the flavorful potatoes,  the exceptional cranberry sauce, and the look in a toddler’s eyes trying that flavor for the very first time – wide-eyed wonder and awe, and delight.  Years from now I will still remember with fond gratitude how my partner happily took on serving the pie I made earlier in the day, because I was just too tired to handle that one more task.  I’ll remember how my other partner seemed always at the ready with that extra pair of hands someone needed in the moment.  I’ll remember the quiet beauty of the classical music in the background, and the delicious sweetness of the Ipsus we served with dessert. I’ll remember the tasty pork loin brought over for the meal by a dear friend of many years, and his excellent biscuits. I’ll remember how good everything tasted, and how happy I was with the pie crust I hadn’t planned to make from scratch, but did.  I’ll remember how lovely the table looked, how gracious my partners were, how well-behaved the baby was. I’ll remember the affection and the warmth of the holiday meal.

Happily, and in no small part due to my TBI, I’m probably going to forget about my mood swings, hot flashes, headache, aching knee, arthritis pain, the incredible workload, the pace of the day, and the rather extraordinarily ugly tantrum I had in the morning when my PTSD met me in the corridors of hormone hell after I got an unexpected email from an ex.  (Yep. Still very very human. I checked. O_0 )

Unfortunately, my partners probably won’t have the luxury of forgetting the difficult bits. I’m thankful to be so well loved in spite of that.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, grief, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships
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