Month: November 2015

November is a transitional month in a lot of ways. It’s the first month where even mild, sunny, autumnal-holdover days begin and end with a chill that foretells winter. Before the year ends, the days will start to get longer again. But November, often suddenly and bracingly cold, is dark without the tipping pendulum of a solstice. We’ve put away our summer wardrobe, but haven’t yet started to feel the camaraderie of the holiday season. We’re waiting, in November, it seems to me.

I was waiting, too, the last few weeks. Halloween came and left a silo of sugar in its wake. Instead of the occasional Kind bar and drizzle of honey, I began to mainline sugar. Oddly, then I didn’t feel that energetic, and I started letting my runs go from every other day or two to twice a week… or longer. Then Paris, and then the refugee backlash and I wasn’t just waiting. I was backsliding and coming up short on reasons to reinvest.

But November is transitional. Our routines are forced to change, but — and I forgot this for a little while — it’s up to us to make new ones.

I’d been limping along this past week with our mostly-neglected exercise bike, sitting and peddling, buoying myself with like-minded political blogs while watching my husband and daughters play some street racing video game (it’s still family time if we’re all together, right, even if some of us are being chased by the cops?).  While I had broken a sweat for the requisite minimum 3x/week (Thursday through Saturday: not my best showing, but still technically 3/3), I felt slacker’s guilt. There was no reason for this. I could do better. The forecast was warm and sunny, the snow melting… I timed a run for the warmest part of the day, and — it surprised me — I looked forward to it. Running is my time away in a way that sharing an animated street race can’t replace, sweat or no sweat.

And even though I’d been in the midst of nearly abandoning my routine, I suddenly felt renewed. Why would I give this up? My legs burned, my breath grew a little ragged and I was in a better place than I’d been in a couple weeks.

My concern with winter running, and I say this purely from speculation since I’ve always abandoned running with the first frost, is that I don’t want to look like a pre-schooler with skinned knees. Kids are tough. I am not. Also, it’s cold. In the matter of a few weeks, a nice day goes from 78 and sunny to, Did I have to chip ice off my windshield and did I choose footwear based on waterproofing? The sidewalks look like that ice planet from Star Wars, and the trails look worse.

Since June, I’ve been running one of several neighborhood routes, expanding as I added distance here and there. I start each of those routes in the same way, by crossing my street, running up the same hill, focused on the yellow warning “Dip” sign that signals the top of that first hill and the beginning of some downhill recovery action.

Today, in the midst of exactly that same routine, but hopscotching through icy sidewalks, I became aware of something. I could, if I so chose, run on the SUNNY side of the street.

The funny thing about the sunny side of the street was that it was literally right in front of me. Well, literally within my periphery. And it was as obstacle-free as my side was hurdled. But it didn’t immediately occur to me to cross the street. Because I run on THIS side of the street. I know which houses on this side of the street have free-range dogs and who never pulls their trash cans back in, forcing me to run around them. I know where the first seasonal decorations will go up, and I know which overhanging branches require a bob and weave.

On the OTHER side of the street? I honestly have no idea. It’s beyond logic, but that’s uncharted territory. I just don’t run over there. Those houses and their dogs and their branches are strangers… until today. Because sometimes crossing to the sunny side of the street is the only thing that makes any sense, even when — maybe especially when — we’re white-knuckling our routines like lifeboats. There are no medals for running through the snow when dry pavement is available, but sometimes I forget that the route is up to me.

November might not be so bad.

 

 

I used to say that my oldest daughter was born a well-adjusted 35-years-old and has only grown wiser and more mature since. Since I’ve now hit 35, I think I’ll adjust that to a well-adjusted 45-years-old, because I’m still hoping to meet that benchmark by then. My youngest, conversely, was born at the tail end of a tidal wave, and she’s still riding the crest each day. Some days it’s hard to watch, because it’s a tough way to navigate life, all ups and downs, and it’s hard to parent, because you’re constantly trying to span the difference between order and discipline and shelter and safe harbor and compassion. And I have to say, I get it, because I’m more tidal wave than alpine lake myself.

For all her ebb and flow, my youngest has a depth that sometimes catches me off-guard. She understands, on a level that doesn’t seem consistent with a 7-year-old, that she has demons to fight. “Can I talk to you on the spinny chair?” she’ll ask, and we’ll have a cuddle conference about what’s on her mind. A couple of nights ago, she was distraught because she was afraid that she was “becoming one of the bad kids.” And while I certainly don’t think she’s on a downward spiral, especially given her penchant for introspection, for the first time this year, we have a good behavior treasure box to choose from as reinforcement for positive days. “I try to make good decisions, Mommy; I really do. But then I see Jack making bad choices, and it looks like more fun, and then I want to do that instead.”

I share this story not so that in 30 years she can resent my internet overshare, but because I think it’s amazing and honest and universal. I try to make good choices, but the bad choices look like more fun. Short term, bad choices are enticing. We know the bad choices aren’t going to end well, but, well, they’re just so tempting.

As sometimes comes up on this blog, I’m trying to make better choices. 2015 was my year of good choices… for the most part. Let’s say it was the year of, more than less, better choices. It turns out, I feel a lot better if I eat real food and exercise. If it comes in a box from the tempting middle of the grocery store or has a shelf life of more than a week, maybe two tops, it’s not going to make me feel better in the long run. Wheat, dairy, corn, excess sugar… by trial and error, I’ve figured out that those are bad decisions for me. And yet… I tried, again, this week to reintroduce pizza. I really, really miss pizza. I don’t mind eating spaghetti squash when my family eats pasta, and I don’t miss having a bun to hold onto a hamburger. But pizza looks like a party that I wasn’t invited to. It seems unfair that before I gave it up – or rather gave up the wheat and the dairy – I didn’t know that pizza and I didn’t get along. I felt borderline awful all the time, but I still had a solid, comforting relationship with pizza. This week, I tried gluten free crust, no cheese, with pepperoni, banana peppers and a sprinkle of feta. I mean, yes, feta is dairy. But only a LITTLE bit of dairy. Even without the traditional mozzarella, that pizza tasted so good. Good is actually not the right word. It was a homecoming. And then, it wasn’t. And I felt awful.

This week has been difficult in general, and I recognize that it’s ludicrous to compare my impersonal heartache in the last week to those who lost friends and loved ones, to those who are spending another week on the run from that same craven terror mechanism, with no known destination beyond “away from here.” Last week’s attacks on Paris were gut-wrenching. Having lived within a few miles of the Aurora movie theater shooting, I know a community can wake up in the morning to find itself a headline, suddenly living in the before and after. Before, we were another Denver suburb, and after, part of a national conversation. Paris will have any number of before and afters and my heart breaks for them. But it was the national outcry against the refugees fleeing that same unthinkable violence that made me forget that in 2015, I make good, or at least better, choices. I was – am – soul-sick and angry and incredulous, and those emotions seem to go better with five pieces of leftover Halloween candy and a glass of wine than with an apple and a run. We’ve been sharing a lot with you, my children mentioned, pointedly. Ah hem, well, yes. And I put a roof over your head. So we’re even, mmkay?

And so I drifted this week. Sometimes bad choices look like more fun. It’s staying up late even as you do the math in your head, If I go to bed in the next 30 minutes, I’ll still get 7 hours of sleep. Okay, so if I go to bed by midnight, I’ll still get six hours of sleep. Crap!, how did it get to be 12:40am?!  And sometimes bad choices look like the embodiment of a security blanket. I don’t know how to deal with my disappointment in the world around me, so I’ll turn to those things that have never disappointed me… a pile of Reese’s cups, a baseball-sized serving of candied cashews and – seriously, did my husband really choose this week to decide we should try box wine? – because that box never runs dry. Or at least, it hasn’t yet… it’s only been a few days, so if it had, this would be a blog on a different topic.

I’ve been running – jogging – pretty regularly for 5 months or so now. And I have a very specific exercise agreement with one of my best friends that mandates 3 days a week of exercise. “I’m 0/3,” I texted her this morning. “It’s cold.”  We have an Even Steven policy, and I was already one down. She was sympathetic, but when she ran later in the day, she was unambiguous in her text back, “Even Steven… go.” I’m simplifying it a little, but at its heart, it was what I needed. I’m 1/3 now this week, and I feel better for it. I haven’t raided the Halloween candy, and I’m drinking water instead of wine. I’m rebounding into better choices.

Why do we embrace what we could avoid? Why do we know the consequences, but turn blindly into them? I couldn’t really offer my daughter any true wisdom about learning to make better choices as we grow older, because it’s still hit or miss for me, from choosing to atrophy on the couch in a pile of candy wrappers or choosing the shoes I know for sure will hurt my feet within 20 minutes of putting them on, to choosing sharp, cutting words with those I love most when what I really mean is, I’m tired, I’m disillusioned, and I need to nurse my wounds for a little while.

But what I actually told my little one was, We all make bad choices sometimes. It doesn’t mean we’re bad people, but it means we can keep trying to do better.

So, I’m trying to do better, again. And if anyone wants to provide me with a good behavior rewards box, I’m open to negotiating terms.

When one of my good friends didn’t yet know me very well, she once said something to the effect of, “But you’re not the type to stress over the little things.” I don’t know if I actually laughed right in her face or not, but certainly, now that we know each other better, she knows the truth. I’m glad I occasionally project a laid-back image to acquaintances, but I’m definitely a tightly-wound stress mess much of the time. I like to think no more a mess than everyone else, but I’m not always sure of that.

I assumed that as we became adults, certain things would just come together. We’d have matching dishes and fresh fruit. In actuality, our dishes mostly match but are still hand-me-downs that I’ve never liked, and our fresh fruit supply routinely runs out by Wednesday. I realize grocery stores are open Wednesday-Friday, but we mostly live on packaged fruit cups and applesauce pouches until the weekend because who has time?

I used to excuse our lack of prepared adultness with the fact that we weren’t in our “real” house yet. As long as we knew we were still in starter homes, planning on staying 3-5 years until the next step up, it seemed fairly acceptable to live like we were, maybe not in college, but perhaps like our first apartment. We’d replace the plastic blinds with wooden slats and real curtains when we had windows that we were going to live with awhile, and we’d invest in a substantial kitchen table when we knew milk wasn’t going to be spilled on it biweekly.

When I was in college, there was an open door policy for drop-in visiting. The 30-something me is horrified by that idea. Not for the 19-year-old me, but as applied to my current life. “Who lives like this?!” I ask, surveying the disarray in our non-starter permanent home. I’d blame the kids, but there is definitely enough non-kid clutter to keep them out of the hot seat, or at least sharing it.

Real life (giant stuffed monkey included):

While I decry the state of our living room and kitchen counters, I’m horrible about clutter. I keep coupons for no reason, since I can count the number of non-Kohl’s coupons I have used on one hand. I accidentally throw out at least double the amount of Education box tops that I keep, even though I have a ziplock bag just for box tops sitting next to the coffee maker (because where else would you keep it). I just took down my Welcome Spring wall-hanger sign along with the Halloween decorations. And honestly, that same thing happened last year, too, because I don’t have a seasonal Summer replacement. We only take down the Halloween decorations expediently because I’m a Halloween-grinch, which I know, I know, is unfun and disappointing of me. My desktop calendar at home is nearly always at least two months behind. At work, someone at my last two jobs has taken it upon themselves to be my calendar turner.

And this happens:

Empty tissue box, with temporary pocket pack, as foundation of new tissue box. And lest you think that this is in any way acceptable, note the location of the recycling bin. Also, I still haven’t done anything about it in the time it has taken to write this blog.

Anyway, this is the time of year that I start putting our cluttered, hectic lives under a microscope because it’s getting colder, the days are shorter, and the holidays are coming and we have so much to do! I know the holidays are coming because in the first mail delivery after Halloween I received 5 Christmas catalogs. Catalogs I seem unable to just recycle because, of course, I love my children and I might want to order something from the Mind Ware (brainy toys for kids of all ages) catalog, or the Lakeshore (gifts for growing minds) catalog. Otherwise what kind of mother would I be? Well played, catalogs. So, I’ll just leave them right where I can eventually not order anything from them two months from now.

The colder weather, catalogs, and a tiny bit of snow has reminded me of the upcoming holidays. It’s been such a warm fall, I’m not in a November mindset yet. Every year, the holidays make me want to do better. I want to manage my time better so that we have free evenings to read classic Christmas stories snuggled in front of a fire. I want to have miles of clear counter space to spontaneously bake cookies if we want to, and craft supplies to make any number of cork reindeer and felt Christmas trees and tiny foam crèches. I want to create wonderful holiday memories for my children, and myself, that they will want to continue when they are the adults, as I want to recreate the traditions of my own childhood. As adults, of course, they won’t have the time or the counter space, but they’ll wish for both, because their childhood memories will be so warm.

And so, despite the fact that my life is already in general disorder, I’ll start to search for “Kid-Friendly Holiday Crafts” on Google and Pinterest. Pinterest will overflow with deceptively simple-looking ideas, and I will possibly even pick up supplies for some of them, which I will store on the counters I meant to leave clear for rolling out cookies from Great-Grandma Rinehart’s recipes. And I’ll read suggested articles called, “Decorating with Cranberries,” and scour the pine trees at the park across the street for perfectly shaped turkey pinecones. But I will draw the line at Elf on the Shelf because, honestly, I am only one person, and I am not magic.

When I think about what made my childhood holidays memorable… it’s spiced cider and putting the extra leaves in the table, and icing (and eating) dozens of cookies; it’s sorting through the basket of Christmas cards and letters, cutting down a Christmas tree, and John McCutcheon’s Christmas album on Christmas morning; it’s sitting with my cousin Sarah as we opened our identical Christmas night gowns, which we then wore while we opened our similar-yet-perhaps-brunette-for-her-blonde-for me dolls. (We were/are the only granddaughters on that side of the family, and only a year apart.) And some years we probably made cotton-ball snowmen, and some years we probably made clothespin reindeer, and for a few years we could fit on the living room couch like this (and I don’t specifically remember those awesome slippers I’m wearing but I wish I did):

My children don’t have exactly the same holiday dynamic, which I’ve come to realize is okay. Their cousins live 1000 miles away, but they have an uncle who will tirelessly play Candy Land with them. We don’t cut down a Christmas tree from a farm, but they don’t miss what they don’t know, and they love the urban tree-lot version, and the house still smells like pine. In the end, it’s anyone’s guess what holiday memories fall away and what will stay with them as they become the adults of a new generation of holidays. Odds are, though, it won’t be anything gleaned from a Decorating with Cranberries article.

This year, I’m going to try to remember that memories don’t have to be constructed out of Pinterest ingredients, and they don’t have to look like they came off an Etsy site or even straight out of my grandmother’s oven. They can include a little clutter and a little room for error. One of my favorite Christmas ornaments is the plaster footprint from our oldest’s first Christmas. Each year it’s hard to believe that the growing girl trimming the tree with us was once so tiny. But what’s also great about that baby’s first Christmas ornament, what makes me smile each time we take it out, is that when we poured the plaster and left it on our counter to set, it came out of the mold reflecting the tilt of the house itself, with the top thicker than the bottom. Built in 1929, there were already a lot of holidays celebrated in that house. The house was old and getting settled; we were young and getting settled, and neither process was without its flaws. The imperfection of that ornament makes it more meaningful to me, a better reflection of the young parents we were, not quite on level ground, feeling our way through parenting and home-ownership and baby’s first Christmas, wanting to get it all right, but already understanding that we wouldn’t.

One day, we’ll have matching dishes we chose ourselves, and there won’t be quite so many stuffed animals in the living room. We won’t break crayons underfoot as we walk through the house or find the long missing soccer sock in the bottom of the grandfather clock. We’ll move on to other messes and other stresses, and again the days will get colder, and the nights will get longer, and because we’re not perfect, the holidays won’t be, either. But they’ll be the stuff that memories are made of, and as long as those memories are full of love and spiced cider, it’s hard to go wrong. And I really think that empty tissue box could be made into an easy kid’s craft of Santa’s sleigh. I’m glad we kept it around.