The Best Gifts

Tis the season, to go shopping.

Whether it starts on Black Friday, or on the encroachment of Black Friday into Thanksgiving day, or whether one waits until “Cyber Monday,” or even until the last minute, the time has come for all of us to start looking for that perfect gift for everyone on our holiday and Christmas shopping lists.

Personally, I’m a fan of getting links to items that the loved ones on my list want. It’s especially helpful when my younger family members send me links, or when links are sent to me on behalf of the youngest ones. I really don’t find it impersonal but rather helpful. After all, I do want to get people something they want, so for me the guarantee that I have done so is a good thing.

I do have to say that I find a bit of enjoyment in getting someone a gift they truly do like without direction though. It shows that I know the person well enough to get it right on my own.

No one has asked me yet this year what I want for Christmas. I’m okay with that because I don’t really have an answer.

I could say that the one thing I want most no one in this world will ever be able to give me. While that is a true statement, I wouldn’t give that as an answer because, while not intended to be condescending, it would sound that way as it comes from a place of long-standing pain.

I could also say that I have received tremendous gifts time and again throughout this year.

I have been given a job opportunity that has proved to be a reasonably good fit.

I have gotten the gift of time back when friends, and family, have given me a ride home when I would have otherwise had to wait for at least two more hours before getting home to do the things I need and want to do.

I have been allowed to be myself and to be honest with friends when I wasn’t at my best, or when I just wasn’t able to be fun company.

I have been offered, and given, a listening ear by both friends and family during some dark and sad times these past few months.

I was blessed to have one friend who was willing to come to my house and guide me through breathing exercises, sit with me for an hour or so, and make sure I was okay until my husband came home that night.

I have received patience, support, understanding, encouragement, and love from my husband through both the good things that have happened this year, and through the hardest days I’ve endured in a long time.

I have enjoyed sushi with my sisters, and a lot of laughter and fun when the family has gotten together throughout this year.

I was able to meet my newest niece in the summer and have been able to see her grow over the past several months.

I have been able to spend time with my niece who has grown into a young woman and is venturing out to make her mark on the world.

I have spent time with my husband’s granddaughters who are growing into “little people” as he says, and have met his newest – his first grandson.

Even though I haven’t been to Tawas Point this year, I have enjoyed lunch on a lovely lake – fresh walleye no less.

I have eaten some lovely and delicious cupcakes.

I have been able to enjoy terrific Thai food several times this year.

I have even enjoyed the rather long drives (especially when one is hungry) to get some of the best Mexican food on this side of the state, listening to baseball in the summer and watching the sunset on the way home.

I have loved the long afternoons that turned into evenings that my husband and I have spent at hotels, isolated from the world and all of its problems if even for one night.

Some of the greatest gifts I have enjoyed this year are the memories made and the pictures that captured those memories, making them like gifts that can be opened over and over again.

With Christmas fast approaching and the frantic search for gifts just beginning, I would tell those of you who have me on your list that I’m grateful for the gifts you’ve already given me this year.

I hope that I can give you some special gifts in return, not only this Christmas but throughout the coming new year.

 

Through the Years: The Changing Holidays

“It just doesn’t feel like the holidays.”

I’ve heard it said, and although I’ve said it myself, I’m not exactly certain what that statement means.

I would expect it means different things to different people. It’s likely that people who have moved away from a climate where they experienced backyard football games on cold Thanksgiving days and spending time sledding with family on white Christmases may feel like it’s hard to get in the mood if they’re surrounded by sand and palm trees.

Perhaps other people may be dealing with some struggles in their lives and may be finding it challenging to uncover the merriment in the midst of caring for an ailing family member while others are happily planning family gathers and checking off their shopping lists.

It does seem that with the coming of the holiday season there is a certain expectation that the cares of the world are supposed to fade away and life should be filled only with the good things. That would certainly be wonderful.

Learning that reality is much different from that wistful holiday expectation was a painful process for me.

I have loved the holiday season all of my life. I was blessed with two parents; a sister; maternal grandma and paternal grandpa; an aunt, uncle and several cousins that made the holidays special for me. Even after the cousins had grown up and grown apart to an extent, I still had wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas times with my parents, my three sisters, and my grandparents before they passed. I had made the promise to myself as a young woman that I would always be home for the holidays.

It was while I was home for Christmas one year as a single woman working in another part of the state that I started to realize that even on Christmas Eve bad things could happen.

My grandpa had fallen in his room and was incoherent at best when I called 911. My dad went with him to the hospital where grandpa was admitted. Dad made it back in time for some of the Christmas Eve service.

At 102, grandpa had seen a lot of Christmases, but that would be his last, and he would spend it in the hospital rather than with his family.

After I married, I realized that the promise I had made that I would always be home for Christmas was a rather useless one. I spend the first year I was married with strangers on Christmas Eve rather than in church with family singing Silent Night by candlelight.

My husband’s aunt was not well, so I went with him, his mother, and his sister to a fairly large gathering that his cousins had held at their home for many years.  The event was held in a lovely home that lacked nothing in the way of holiday spirit; one area featured snowmen of all sizes, another a village, and another the large Christmas tree. I did know some of my husband’s cousins, and that made the event a little bit fun, but I still found myself feeling sad and lonely at a time that really had always been the most wonderful time of year for me.

A few years later, after my husband’s aunt had passed and his mother had started to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, we spent part of Christmas Eve in the hospital with her. We were just about to leave for Christmas Eve service when we got the call that an ambulance had been called to the facility where she lived.

Last year, several years after my mother in law passed away, we were back in the hospital on both Christmas Eve and Christmas day visiting my sister-in-law. She continued to experience frequent periods of atrial fibrillation after several attempts to correct the arrhythmia and was suffering from kidney failure. We were uncertain if she would survive to the new year. Fortunately, an ablation and the insertion of a pacemaker on December 29th corrected that issue, and she began dialysis to take care of the kidney function issues.

At one time in my life, realizing that the beginning of the holiday season is just a week away would have filled me with excitement. I would have been eager to get out my little tree and all of my crystal ice cycle ornaments that glistened in the white lights. I would have been looking forward to having Christmas music playing while I relaxed in flannel PJs in my painstakingly decorated apartment. I would have been preparing to travel north to spend part of the day out in the snow with my sisters, the afternoon by the fire, and the evening around the table with everyone I loved.

Those days are gone, forever in some cases. Many of the people I loved are gone. Many of the people my husband loved are gone. My little sisters are young women now.

As I think about the approaching holiday season, and about everything that has changed, and about how I’ve changed, I wonder if I have changed too much.

I wonder if can still find some eagerness to get out my little tree with the crystal ice cycles, even though a few have broken over the years, and the white lights have been replaced with the colorful lights my husband likes. I wonder if I’ll still be able to enjoy listening to Christmas music in the coming weeks, even though I’ll have to wait for my ride home after long days at work. I wonder if I can enjoy this season for all that it represents regardless of whether I can go home and find everyone healthy, or of whether life has yet another trial awaiting me.

If you’ve seen How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know that even after the Grinch took everything he could that remotely represented Christmas, “Christmas came. It came just the same.”

And so it will come in 2017, whether life tries to steal everything that makes it feel like Christmas to us or not.  As a person of faith, I celebrate Christmas as a day that changed the world forever, ultimately for the best. It is with that hope that will I look forward to this holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving and a Happy Holiday Season to all of you.

 

 

 

 

Greener Grass

“The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”

We’ve all heard that cliché. Often it is used as a way to reprimand someone who is being less than perfectly grateful for what she has and would like to experience something else.

While the statement is not without its merits, it is also frequently used as an unnecessary critique with the intent of inducing guilt.

Balancing being grateful for what one has while still hoping for and striving for something better is not always the easiest thing to do. While gratitude should always be a part of our lives, so should be looking forward to the things that we hope to achieve and to be able to do one day.

In a way, it is in those hopes that we find the strength to endure the monotony of life.

The argument could be made that, if one is not content, then moving on to “greener pastures” would only lead to a new bout of discontent in time. That argument too has its validity.

People who move on only to find that they need to move on again are considered to be discontented and restless.

Discontentment is defined as “dissatisfaction with one’s circumstances,” while restlessness is defined as “unable to rest or relax as a result of anxiety or boredom.”

So neither of these are traits that one would list on a resume. There are aspects of both of these traits that aren’t inherently negative in my opinion though.

Sometimes circumstances are worthy of resulting in one’s dissatisfaction. Realizing that and being willing to do something to change the circumstances rather than surrendering to them seems to me to indicate awareness of and acceptance of reality.

Restlessness may be viewed as a bit more negative, but it’s quite similar. Boredom due to a job that is no longer fulfilling or to circumstances that are no longer acceptable seems indicative of a mature and introspective person who realizes that things need to change.

if it does indeed take courage to change, than why is hoping to, wanting to, and planning to make a change viewed as such a negative thing?

I realize that making change for the sake of change or without the proper planning may prove the cliché true, however, it is often the case in life that the timing will never be perfect. Sometimes one just has to move forward.

I believe that sometimes it is the case that the grass truly is greener on the other side. The bottom line is that one never knows until one takes that chance to go see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Picture Completed

As a sixteen year old who had no interest in babies or having a family of my own, neither at that point or ever in my life, I wasn’t too excited to hear that the topic of a rarely called family meeting was that my parents had decided to become foster parents.

I don’t remember jealousy being an issue. It was more the teenage notion that I didn’t like the idea of changes that could mean inconvenience for me. Though I don’t remember exactly how I made that point, I am certain that I expressed some protest at the possibility of having to take care of crying babies.

Even as a narcissistic teenager, I began to find that the experience was somewhat interesting though.

I remember coming home from school one day, and mom saying that we should go look in the crib. A little girl just a few days old lay sleeping, tucked tightly in a blanket in the center of the pure white sheet.

At times my parents would be called to take a placement and would have to go to the hospital to pick up the babies who had no parents waiting eagerly to take them home. If the child were a little older, a department of social services staff member would bring the child to our house.

My parents chose to take placements of infants primarily, but would on occasion take children in the toddler age group. I think the oldest child who spent time as a foster child in our home was nearly three years old.

Due to space in the household and the preference of my parents, we usually had only one child in our home at a time. I believe it was only once that we had two children for a few months. That was certainly an interesting experience as both were less than a year old and were only about six months apart in age.

While the children were in our home, they were part of the family, though few if any of them would remember their time with us. I remember many of them though.

It was our family tradition to spend Christmas Eve at grandma’s. She was in her 80’s and lived in an apartment complex for senior citizens. Her apartment was nice though and had an ample living room area. She needed help to decorate and to host the celebration by that point, but the table top tree was looking lovely, and the nativity set that had been a part of her Christmas Eve décor for decades was set up on the mid level of the stand that held her TV.

Below the nativity scene on a soft blanket on the floor one of the foster babies lay sleeping. Under the Christmas tree, grandma had a little package for that little girl. Though it was an inexpensive toy, it was a gift from the heart for a little girl who would only be part of our family for a few weeks.

Some of the foster babies were with us for only a few weeks, some for a few months, but two little girls were with us for over a year, and those two changed our family forever.

I was a senior in high school when the first came to us. She was brought into our living room by a DSS worker who handed her to me. She was about six months old with blond, curly hair.

I was away at college when my parents went to court and celebrated her adoption into our family.

I was also away at college when my family took another adorable little girl, who had come into our home as an infant, to see that same judge who had granted the first adoption and would grant this adoption as well.

As a college student and then as a young adult working in another city, I missed a lot of the details of their growing up, but I was always excited to see them and to spend time with them when I was home for the holidays.

These two little girls who entered my life when I was a teenager have become lovely young women. The older of the two has worked as a paramedic, is musically talented, has been married for several years, has a lovely home, and has recently become a mother herself.

The younger was given several physical challenges through the DNA of her biological parents, and though she could say it’s not fair, she is a sweet and loving person who enjoys playing the violin and has become friends with some members of the popular musical group Celtic Women.

The two girls are not biological siblings, and they are not our biological siblings, but for more years than I can even remember now, we have been sisters.

As a teenager I couldn’t imagine our family being any different than it was. Now I cannot imagine how our family could have ever been complete without the two sisters who changed the picture forever.

In recognition of National Adoption Awareness Month