The Truth about the Holidays

I have been off of work since last Friday. It has been a marathon since the minute I got into the car.  I do not get time at home very often and when I do, I am determined to make the most of every minute.  Those minutes will not come around again and each picture makes me painfully aware that my children are marching towards the next stage of life.  It is the stage where I will cease to be the coolest person on the planet and couch time watching movies will suddenly become more important to me than it is to them.   It is a parental right of passage to watch them grow, but I am determined to suck every moment out of the time that I do get.  In the past four days we have attended a church BBQ, feasted on warm cinnamon buns for breakfast, made Christmas snowflakes, watched Disney movies while eating pasta wrapped under blankets, and had dinner with Pop Pop.  The kids are nearly dizzy with the change in our typical routine.  Their laughter has filled the apartment with warmth and love.  We have enjoyed every moment while trying to suppress the gnawing ache that begins sometime around the holiday season and will not dissipate until the last present has been opened and New Year's resolutions are firmly in place. 

Holidays are bittersweet in our home.  I believe this is true for any parent that has navigated the muddy waters of the custody system.  From the moment of conception, the holidays become something we do for our children.  We cook the dishes that they like, decorate with the ornaments that they are attached to, and organize parties intended to foster their joy.  Celebrations cease to be about us.  We are busy, overwhelmed, and often stressed throughout the holiday season.  However, when we finally collapse into a chair and take a look at all the happy and satiated faces that surround us, we would not trade a minute of our efforts.   From that joy, we receive our sustenance.  Sleep seems to matter less than the delighted giggle of a child as they tear into a gift or discover that the simple sugar cookie has a chocolate filling.  When you “ share” your children in a divorce, no one gives you a handbook that explains how to have a holiday without that joy.  Lawyers congratulate you on reaching a satisfactory settlement.  Their livelihood depends on your desperate grab for your share of the pie in a divorce.   The best interest of the children often falls by the wayside in the face of interrogatories and other things that force you to recall only the worst things about your former partner.  They do not tell you to prepare yourself because the first time your kids drive away at Christmas time you will feel like your heart is being ripped out of your chest.   50% of the holidays are never going to feel like enough. They don’t tell you that learning to celebrate the holiday without your children present is the emotional equivalent of learning to walk a second time.   

I am sitting here writing this and trying to pretend that Wednesday will not come.  It is not my year to have my kids for Thanksgiving.  Last year I had them for our family reunion.  My Ex and I have mastered the art of playing fair in a joint effort to ease the pain of divorce for the children that we share.  I am grateful that they are thriving in a situation that had the potential to rip them to pieces, but tomorrow will not be any easier.  On the outside, I will smile and laugh.  I will hug them  and tell them that I can’t wait to seem them on Friday.  I will tell them to eat plenty of turkey because I know their dad and step-mother can cook.  I will tell them to say hello to their Nana for me and assure them that I have a place to celebrate.  On the outside, I will do all those things because it is what they need but on the inside I will break.  I will mourn internally over the fact that it will be someone else’s hands that craft the pies and make the macaroni and cheese.  I will rail against the injustice of a system that thinks they can possibly survive away from me.   On the inside, it will feel like my heart is in pieces and I will want to go upstairs and hide under a blanket until my house rings with laughter again. That is not what I will do.  Instead, I will go upstairs and make casseroles and apple dump cake.   I will lay out Christmas decorations to put up when they return on Friday.   I will say a silent prayer for my sweet husband who contends with an absence much more permanent than my own this time of year. I am a helpless bystander on his journey most days.  Only God, time, and his indomitable spirit will be able to ease the ache that family court has left in his heart.  I will remember the pies baked with love every Thanksgiving and packed up to be eaten outside of my mother’s embrace and the construction paper Christmas tree on the wall of my father’s first post divorce apartment and bless my parents for their efforts.  I did not understand the significance of these gestures than the way that I do now.  I will put one foot in front of the other and march forward in the face of the pain.  Five years into my post divorce existence, I have learned to do this without faltering.  My struggles are no longer external and obvious to anyone that sees me. We will continue to construct our new normal, full of marathon days of fun and holiday compromises.   If I do it right, my children will only ever think about the time that we do have together and never stop to contemplate our moments apart.

Making Memories:

Canned Meat and Other Culinary Clashes

My husband and I arrived in our household from opposite culinary planets.  Anyone who has ever eaten a meal with my mother can attest to the fact that even her basic food bordered on gourmet.   Throwing a meal together still involved fresh ingredients and tons of spices when she was cooking.  I am not that good.  My children know the pleasure of parboiled noodles and space age orange cheese powder.  I will eat anything that my snobby palate qualifies, as quality, without hesitation.   My husband, however, suffers from no such hang-ups when it comes to his cuisine.  He will eat nearly anything that is not nailed down.  I have seen him combine condiments in a fashion that defies comprehension I ate my first packet of Ramen noodles and prepackaged Lipton Rice with him.  We avoided the bottom shelf of the grocery store growing up, too many ingredients we could not pronounce.  We fought, during one of our financial rough spots, over my obsession with artichoke hearts and fresh garlic.  I can say, with great honesty that I picked the wrong economic time to get obsessed with Clean Eating.  The fresh zucchini with the garlic crust was not worth two days without gas money. Eventually, we made it to the culinary middle ground where we are sacrificing neither quality nor money.  At least I thought we had.  Then IT came in the last grocery-shopping trip.  Six cans of SPAM sitting in my cabinet, taunting me with its odd consistency and five-year shelf life.    Food, of any sort in a can, has never been my thing.   Meat in a can has a particularly nightmarish quality because it taunts me with visions of botulism and salmonella.  I know this is neurotic, but I have learned to embrace the overly anxious side of myself and make it work for good instead of evil.  Part of me wants to throw it out but I will not.  He has succeeded in turning me into a dollar watcher.  I cannot bring myself to throw out something that we paid for with our hours away from the children and lost time as a couple. 

I am going to cook SPAM.  The thought makes me shudder, but I am going to do it because that is the challenge that has been presented to me.  I will, however, be darned if I am going to sit around my table gnawing on chunks of fried congealed meat product slathered in ketchup.  I am going to turn this SPAM into a culinary event if it kills me and it might because let us face it we are talking about SPAM.  The internet provides a surprising number of suggestions.

I do notice that the majority of the recopies involve SPAM sculptures.  My assumption is that this is a desperate bid on the part of the chef.  They are hoping that the wonders of the eye will detract from the terrors of the taste buds. I opt to for Korea BBQ Spam with Quinoa and mixed vegetables.   My mother would be proud of my industriousness and newfound thrifty nature, but I am still not sure she would partake in my canned meat concoction.   We sit down to dine.  The flavor is not bad, but the chunks of stir-fried SPAM slide down my throat in quite the odd fashion.  The salt content is so high that I am convinced that I can feel the skin on the roof of my mouther withering. He pats my hand while we are eating.

“It is really good but this is the last time I buy SPAM, I promise,” He says with a smile.

I am relieved until I contemplate the four additional cans that are still lurking behind the cabinet door. 

Morning Madness and Bathroom Battles

I want to murder my alarm clock.  I don’t just want to turn it off.  I actually want to take a sharp object and drive it straight through the middle of the blasted beeping box.  Turning it off just doesn't not seem substantial enough because no matter how many times I turn it off, it always beeps again.  I just want to stay warm under the covers with my husband and cats until well-rested children clamber over me for hugs and breakfast.  I want to get up and make cinnamon roll turkeys and bask in the joy of staying at home with my children.    However, that is simply not to be.  He goes first, stumbling and groaning into the kitchen to hit the button on the coffee pot.  We keep talking about quitting coffee, smashing the pot, and becoming those well-hydrated healthy parents that function on their own vigor and and not caffeine fumes.  I’ll believe it when we do it.  Finally, once my husband turns off the fan, I am out out of bed, stumbling and racing the clock.  Clothes, shoes, into the bathroom and out again.  We have one bathroom and four people stumbling out the door every morning.  Basic bodily functions trump my eyeliner at all times.  I try not to be bitter as I pick up the next task, silently chanting in my head, don’t forget to finish your make-up.  I have left for work half done before and arrived to stares and whispers.  There is no one more unforgiving of flaws in the appearance than middle school girls.  Out my husband comes holding my glasses.  Since the day I forgot my classes and didn't clue in until route 70 looked a bit fuzzy, he has made remembering those his responsibility.  Now the kids are awake and the bathroom wars begin in earnest.  One races ahead of the other and the “I gotta go” dancing starts.

“Get Dressed”

“I have to Pee”

“You can’t put your pants on while you wait?”

“Good-bye Honey”

“Where are my shoes?”

A short form slides past me as I try to sneak into the bathroom to yank my hair into a clip.  Oh well, pack up the lap top that I would like to hurtle out of a window.  Only two more days until I am off for a week.  Maybe I'll make cinnamon turkeys then but probably not.  The first two days will probably be spent staring at a wall and regaining my missing stamina. 

“ Put on your hat”

“I can’t find my glasses”

“You are wearing them Mommy”

My head spins with visions of bathrobes and cinnamon bun turkeys.  That is not the life we know.  I don’t think that my kids would know what to do without the crush of time and the manic pace.  

“Your shoes are on the wrong feet”

“I like them this way”

Finally my make-up is done.  I am hastily throwing my lunch into a bag.  Somehow, I don’t manage to pack my own lunch in the evenings.  I am frantically searching for my key.  My daughter finds the keys in the fridge.  Bags of cereal are deposited into well-trained hands and we are off.  Late as usual but with hugs and kisses and lots of love.  

Just a few things about Me.....

I love reading "Mommy" blogs.  I peruse the articles reading about the struggles of juggling six kids and a dog or "The Mommy Wars", that still don't make any sense to me.  Often the blogs make me feel like I am not crazy but at the same time manage to make me feel  strangely inadequate.  As the holidays approach and the internet is peppered with pictures of perfect holiday tables, holiday cookies that border on being art, themed Christmas trees, and women that have managed to do all this and escape with both their outfits and their hair intact, I find that this feeling intensifies.  You see, I am most certainly NOT that mother.  I love my kids with a passion that still makes me weak in the knees but that love has yet to lead me to juggle the competing priorities of motherhood with any sort of particular skill.
I am both a full-time teacher and a mother.  "Oh I don't know how you manage" some of the other mothers say, and the reality is that I don't always manage.  My children have eaten more than one meal on foam plates in the back of the car with juice boxes balanced carefully on their laps.  I am guilty of handing them over to the television set when I can't take anymore and yelling when the situation doesn't call for it.  My house is a mess, all 800 sq feet of it.  On multiple occasions I have sounded the alarm for assistance from my own mother when the mess felt like it may swallow all of us whole.  I have cried myself to sleep because I have no idea how to make the time stretch to get it all done.  I felt like a rock star when I remembered all the dress up days for spirit week and a failure when I had to tell my 7 year old that I could not make it to American Education week.  In the midst of my personal and very internal emotional roller coaster, my children are thriving.
I am a devoted Christian that has spent the majority of my life perpetually broken.  My first marriage failed but I can't find it in myself to regret the marriage because it blessed me with my children.  I have been blessed to provide my children with a loving step-father. He is my best friend and my rock. He knows how to make me laugh when I want to scream.   I thank God for his love because it is in his arms that I have wrestled the pain of watching my kids drive away when I should be packing them up to go to my grandmother's for Christmas dinner.  We have figured out how to balance each other while the world falls in around our ears. I know the angst of pulling my child's fingers loose and handing them over when they are screaming for me to stay simply because a piece of paper says I have to do so.  I also know the utter euphoria that comes from bringing them home again each week and ability to truly glory in each moment we have.
My kids and I have grown up together.  I was only 22 when I had my daughter.  It does not sound terribly young but I have lived six lifetimes in between 22 and 32.  My children fill me with amazing joy (and admittedly anxiety) and everything I do is for the good of my family.  They may have to find my keys for me in the mornings or make sure that I remember to make a grocery list because my head is in the clouds.  Once or twice their socks have not matched on school day and I am more likely to be found in sweat shirts than in sweater sets.  Life has been messy and at times I have grieved for the mess.  I have mourned the loss of the perfect mother that never existed.  At 32 years old, after countless hours of suffering and even more hours of immeasurable joy, I have learned that there is beauty in the mess.  In all honesty, I have embraced the mess because it has shaped my family into the beautifully unique unit that it has become.  It has created bonds, that forged in fire, are unbreakable.
So, my blog is not going to explain how to make the perfect sock turkey.  I am not going to be able to teach anyone how to french braid or turn old clothing into beautiful new designer duds.  I won't be posting pictures of my holiday table or teaching anyone how to feed a family of 10 for 3 dollars a serving.  I am simply going to share my mess, in all of its painfully real glory,  with you.