Winter birthday wishes

January 2nd usually marked the return to normalcy or a soft landing like the movie stuntmen made onto that huge pillow at the end of the holiday circus.  Rather the celebration of the Christ child and  the baby new year than me.  While I didn't want to be forgotten completely, I was happy to get back to life as we knew it with a tiny secret tucked behind my ear, kissed there by the aliens who, in the dead of night, have always given me promises of a good future, not just resolutions but truths to which I was completely committed.  I still believe in the probability of great achievement even in the face of total chaos and seemingly impossible obstacles.  Though I have never been good at the holidays, what with all the celebrating and wide opened hearts on display, the arrival of the girls brought a chance for me to live them with different eyes, a more gracious heart, and a sense of wonder and hope.

Every year since I can remember, the arrival of the "winter holidays" has brought a little bit of tension, a little bit of the blues, and an eerie calm like the dead quiet of the first inches of a massive Nor'easter falling heavily on whichever sleeping town or block I was living.  It feels somewhere between a whisper and the ringing in the air after a scream.  I can hear my breathing.  Sometimes I can see my breath.  Always I am aware that I am alive even if I can't move from the cold or the fear, and am fully aware of my surroundings even if I want to run.  Always I feel awkwardly alone even when surrounded by crowds of family and friends.  Alone but not quite lonely.  Here, but not quite here.  I can't be lonely with the two people standing on my neck, whispering in my ear, chatterbugging to my face.  Maybe that's why they came to me.  To connect me to place, pry open my wintered heart.

2013 was hardly different from previous years--family ups and downs, community involvement, extracurriculars, doctors' visits, health checks and scares and reassurances, travel, work, parenting, craziness.  I don't think I have counted my "best or worst" years since I was a child when the best or the worst was defined by gifts I received or didn't, skills I acquired or didn't, loves found or lost.  Now, every year starts off full of promise, more than 1/2 full with the days firmly on one side, ahead of me.  Every year I know that I will peel back the onion to find some other truth about myself, my soul's journey, my desire, and my fulfillment.  I make no promises other than to try to remain open to whatever comes, to avoid (or try not to bring it all the way to insane clown posse meltdown) the panicked shut down when the world delivers what I expected but for which I had somehow been poorly prepared.  At the beginning of every year I have promised myself, "This is the year for me.  This is the year I will find the path, stay on it, actualize."  I say this every year.  I believe it every time.  I don't write the directions, don't set the map in stone and quickly wander from the path...or perhaps discover the one worn in the ground, not paved.

I followed the breadcrumbs back to a language I'd almost forgotten I spoke.  Many speak it more eloquently, some with grace and agility, others flexibility, but when I speak to them too, they understand.  In 2013 I returned to dance. When I was a girl who hated her voice and was sure no one cared what I might have to say, there was dance.  When I needed to free myself from the torment of the bad years and celebrate the joys of the good, there was dance.  When I had a secret to keep, something that I needed to protect, I could dance around it, seal it in.  And then I stopped, quit moving altogether, froze, and then allowed myself to believe that another form of exercise, maybe the machines at the gym, maybe an abs class, could suffice.  They couldn't.  Not yoga, even with all the breath and meditating and connection to the divine, warmed my soul.  It was dance that first connected me to my own life force.  Reclaiming it was so helpful to everything in my life. 

When I was a little girl, my mother asked for the same things for her birthday, Christmas, and Mother's Day.  Peace and quiet and for everyone to get along.  We thought that was the craziest request on earth.  "That's all she wanted?" I'd wonder.  What a waste of a rub of the lamp.  You can have anything three little cherubs and a workaholic husband can offer!  I get it now.  As I reanimate the creative back into my life, each day becomes mine to do with it what I will.  I can ease myself out of the tepid pool of suburban monotony and feel passion burning me up again.  I want that more than I want anything else.

I have, and have admitted, struggling with the daily expectations of raising children and running a household.  I want to do them both well.  Hell, I want to do everything well, but I believe that I bring more to everything in my life with the creative spirit and energy weaving throughout.  At the start of every year, I remind myself of this.  Somewhere along the way the priorities shift and I find myself making excuses, putting off making art, writing, dancing, and allow the minutiae of parenting and being married to be more important.  I'm going to do better this year.  At least I am going to try.

My husband was gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and my birthday.  He has been for nearly every one of these holidays since we've been together.  I have stopped allowing myself to suffer this and surely cannot let his absence during these days define the entire year.  Or me.  Or my life.  I don't want to be defined by absence or by a "lack of."  But when he returns and asks what I want for all the holidays I missed, it's not a necklace, a scarf, socks, or new boots that I am after.  It is some of that quiet, some of that peace, some of the space where I can create or believe myself able again.  It is solitude and my own communion with the end of the year and the start of my new one.


My birthday starts up the music, begins the lightly playing song that guides me through the year.  It is wintry and quiet and moody and grey and cloudy followed by bursts of sun in a cerulean blue sky, cold as hell frozen over, that thaws into a promising spring.  I've bundled up into it and survived the shortest day of the year and the longest parade of holiday celebrations.  And on this day, I danced and wrote and drew a little sketch.  Running head first, out the window, to the stunt man's pillow down below.  To the new year.  Mine.



(c) Copyright 2014.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Snow day

One of my favorite sounds the people make is that last sigh before they pass out in this world and cross over to dreams.  I put them to bed every evening and wait for that release to make my creeping tip toe out of their room and into my own peace and quiet.  Tonight, after what for me was an absolutely incredible day, save the final Metallica blast freak out performance by my overtired, overwrought, juiced up three and 3/4 year old, I put the girls in their beds and waited.  The youngest, she of epic meltdown fame, passed out so quickly I was still talking to her.  She fell asleep sitting up, propped by pillows and lulled by the sound of the Miami sound machine (of course it wasn't Miami Sound Machine, that stuff is too high energy, but I cannot help but call the white noise nature sounds the MSM) but Lily, the oldest sweet pea wanted to recount the details of her glorious day and reassure me that, after the earlier insanity, I was indeed a decent mother.  (Thank you, Lily.)

The day really had been incredible.  After waiting out the blizzard inside watching Barbie videos, doing massive craft projects, and coloring book marathons, we were finally free this morning to get out and dip into the powdery white stuff.  I can't lie.  It was awesome and took me right back to the Blizzard of '78.  I remember walking in my backyard and saddling up to the five foot fence that protected the yard and standing over it.  The reflection of the light on all that white snow made it look and feel like we were all on some luminescent planet.  I thought to say the moon, but I suspected that it was too dark, like all the grainy photos showed.  Jumping into those snow drifts with the girls made me giddy out of my mind and seeing the joy on their faces, their rosy cheeks, their elation was contagious.

I am often asked, especially when faced with crummy weather, too much rain or snow or cold, if I miss my life in the Caribbean.  Frankly, the answer is resoundingly NO!  I have always loved the seasons.  I think it's what we all say when faced with the furthest corner, pointiest angle on the weather dial in each season--too much rain or snow or cold, no one ever gets crazy about the heat asking if I'd rather be in Barbados, maybe because they recall that I told them it could be stiflingly hot on fire and disarmingly humid.  But I do so love a change of season and even more to live in each one of them and feel fully what each has to offer.  Whether that is the hottest hot summer, allergy-provoking spring with rain, rain, rain, and more rain, chilly falls with those deliciously colored leaves, apple picking, and outdoor sporting events where it's just a tiny bit too cold, and then this.  Powdery, fluffy, scary, freaking-everyone-the-fuck-out snow! 

As it's falling, there is that nervous energy, expectation, hope, fear that it just might get too much to handle.  Once we're safely inside the house watching it from the window, it makes everything around us look so peaceful, so calm, so still.  After, there is the shoveling, the removal, the clearing away, when the air takes over your lungs, and it breathes in so clean and blue, and everyone looks beautiful in that light.  It feels like that freezing cold water you jump into after sweating it out in the steam room.  It hurts a little bit, is completely shocking, and then you feel incredible that you dared do it, handled it, and can get back up and sweat it out again.  Falling into a pile of snow, a huge bank of it, feels like falling into the clouds.  It makes you giggle and that silliness is infectious.  The girls and I spent the morning making snow forts and chairs and throwing snowballs, marching our tracks into the deep banks, and (for those two) eating, eating, and eating snow!

The highlight of today had to be the sledding.  Lily walked over with some friends and Virginie and I followed behind.  Following behind meant Virginie walking a little, being carried a little or a lot, then walking or trudging through the snow, being carried, walking and arriving at a hill across from the town hall where dozens of kids were sledding their faces off.  Really.  Everyone was red and ruddy-cheeked, all smiles, and laughter.  Lily must have gone down that hill twenty times, forwards, backwards, spinning around, over bumps and hills, flat terrain.  Virginie and I worked as a team and went down probably ten times on our own.  Each time we got to the bottom, we laughed and smiled, jumped up and raced back to the top of the hill.  When we'd finally had our fill, the three of us walked home with our good friends and had an early dinner, beer, wine, wicked conversation, full on play for the girls.  All of which ended with the terrorizing, "I'm so crazy I am going to make you wonder if you are a good mother" fall out proffered by the three and 3/4 year old tired out of her brain.

By the time I was back in my own room, make up off, snuggled in the bed, reading on line, writing, and watching TV, all was forgiven because really, nothing could take away the joy from this beautiful, snowy day.


(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.