How This Christmas will Look

Walking from my bedroom to the kitchen the other day I noticed a strange emotion bubbling forth. It was joy. Christmas songs playing, my oven warm from baking and suddenly I began to cry.

It has been well over 20 years since the Christmas season has elicited joy in my heart. Poisoned darts of sugar plums and smiling Santas ripe with tainted children’s tears. I have filled our stockings and wrapped our gifts followed by defeated puffs of contempt and misery. Yep, that is what over 20 years of Christmases have looked like at our house.

It is a sad reality that parents only realize the damage they have done to their children once it has already been done and the only thing left to wrap up with shiny new paper and glittering bows are apologies. Rubbed off the edge with the side of an old penny found at the bottom of my washing machine, I believe I discovered an expiration date from a decade too far gone to remember on that last “I’m sorry” from last year’s cards I threw away.

My go-to excuse has been my chronic, life-long depression. It’s true, I do have chronic depression and it does wreak havoc and does cause anger and sadness and words that should never be said. But we are all born with the same ability to make decisions and choose a path and take a breath and put a clean piece of gauze on a gaping, bleeding wound.

But this year, in the midst of my havoc and anger I have found a new outlook in the unlikeliest of places – cycling class.

The first week of class I thought I would die. But then something happened. A.J., on my right, started saying “no quit, no quit.” Soon Jenny, on my left, was following suit and quietly under my breath I said it too.

On my way home that night, sweat-soaked and red-faced I developed a love-hate relationship with this class on the second floor of a bicycle shop off College Ave. And I went back the next night, because Jenny was expecting me and said I would and I don’t like to be a quitter. And it cost money.

Soon one week moved into the next. Mike teaching one class and then Craig or Pete and finally Mary and Conor two nights a week. At first I liked one class over another but by week three every class was the same small community of regular cyclers. And they encouraged me. And they repeated words that kept my legs moving and they counted down the time left in the red zone and they cheered me on and before I could let my negativity flood the plain of this last month of the year I learned something… because we are always learning something and even when we think we know it all and it will never change, it does.

This year I am reminded, once again, that it is a community of people that keep me going. Oftentimes it ends up being people that have no obligation to do so. But they do. Because that’s what people do.

 There are many different versions of the definition of “community” but they all involve people who share a common goal and in doing so each person becomes better. I have become better this year because I stayed in the red zone longer than I ever thought possible and now I am in better shape.

But the most important thing I learned is that if I repeat the words I need the most, when I need them most, I have the real ability to overcome, and change my brain, and change my focus.

For some people those words are a prayer to God in heaven and sometimes they are simply “keep moving, keep moving.”  I know it works because this year I tried it. And now not only have I kept moving, I am moving forward.

Crash Course in Parenting my Adult Children

Recently I found myself longing to put a cranky toddler to bed; longing to make the choices for my child of sweat pants or blue jeans, water or milk, swim class or soccer. For the last 10 years of my life my youngest son has been encouraging me to get out of my box, now everything I read tells me to stay in my box. It’s called the “parent of an adult child” box and recently I just taped it closed with a thick layer of strapping tape.

After losing my temper with said child, I logged onto my computer and searched for ways to cope while inch by precious inch I attempted to let go of the life that is not mine to make choices for any longer. It’s not that I don’t already know this, but saying it when my son was making choices I liked and saying it while watching matchbox cars crash a remote controlled speedway in my mind are different.

I would love to give credit for the following quotes but I cannot remember anymore where I found them since I have read so many columns, from so many sites, over so many days. But here is some of the wisdom I found:

“Parent the child you have, not the child you wish you had”; “Accept the reality that there is a good chance your child may throw away opportunities despite all of your good influence”; “Don’t define your relationship around the problem.”

What?! Where does this stuff come from? The wisdom of a thousand parents cutting holes in the sides of cardboard moving boxes from U-Haul?

I know a thing or two about parenting, people, because in spite of what my boys might imply when I turn every decision worth more than two cents over to their dad, I am a parent. And in order for me to continue on my new adventure of parent to adults and not to toddlers or teenagers, I have created my own list for the people who don’t like the typical mumbo jumbo. Even if I was not a parent, I was a child and I have parents, and when I think of how awesome I would have turned out had my parents followed this advice, you’ll want to follow it too.

1. If you don’t parent the child you wish you had, then you are failing to see the potential that lies under every decision you dislike and simply accepting them for who they are: a person without enough experience to live life yet, and determined to make mistakes you can tell them not to make.

2. Do not accept the reality that there is a good chance that your child may throw away opportunities despite all of your good influence. For starters, don’t kid yourself that you had any good influence on your children. My children have become the adults they are because I have parented them as the children I have wished they would become (see above): great kids in spite of a mom who overslept, 

overspent and over-lost-her-temper times two. I would suggest that that is the reality of many homes.

3. Not defining your relationship around the problem is like ignoring an elephant in your kitchen. Alleged parent: “So what did you do today?” Adult child: “Ummm….I spent time doing that thing you don’t want me to do.” Alleged parent: “What are your plans for the week?” Adult child: “I’m going to spend more time doing that thing you don’t want me to do.” Alleged parent: “Well, O.K., honey, have fun, I love you no matter what choice you make, no matter what I wish, and no matter how many years I spent not parenting you.”

And finally, since none of this will likely ever work, because I’m not good at accepting reality, or realistic articles on being a real parent, here is really my best advice: Alexandra Fuller writes in her book Leaving before the Rains Come, “Perhaps most of us never stop needing a person from whom we can fledge and return repeatedly, continually trying out our independence in the knowledge that there is somewhere and someone to which and to whom we can return.”

Little fledglings finding wings, I am your somewhere and someone to which and to whom you can always return. Now go, fly.