When I was about Avery’s age I wrote something terrible on a
piece of paper and folded it up and shoved it in my bedroom junk drawer. It said something to the effect of “mom ruins
the holidays.” I am not sure exactly why
I wrote it. I didn’t feel that way all
of the time, but that day I must have felt it.
Perhaps she raised her voice as we were fighting in the background while
she tried to finish up homemade teacher gift treats. (I still remember the pride I felt carrying
in chocolate covered Oreos for my second grade teacher.) Maybe she forced me to clean my room as were
getting ready to have friends over to exchange gifts and bake roughly 200
hundred dozen cookies. (When I think of
Christmas I think of red tins filled with angel cookies with white lace skirts
trimmed with silver balls and secretly dream of my mom surprising me with a
batch someday.) It could have been
because despite having bought and wrapped mountains of presents for me in the
dead of night I still was complaining about not getting a Cabbage Patch Kid and
she pointed out my greediness. Maybe it
was as simple as me not understanding why she wasn’t getting into the magic of
the season as much as the rest of us. I
have these very distinct memories of sitting in the dark in the living room
with my dad – the glow of turquoise lights from our Christmas tree and the hum
of a musical clear glass Christmas tree music box in the background. It was one of the safest and warmest moments
of my childhood, but it didn’t involve my mom.
Where was she anyway? Why was her
joy and excitement for the season not quite as unbridled as ours…
Flash
forward to my drive to the donut store at 6:30 this morning to buy treats for
my advisory class where I found myself in tears as I remembered this cruel note. I was tired and emotional after a week
tackling this to do list:
Wrap white
elephant gifts for three different events
Plan
activities for Girl Scout Christmas Party
Wrap
presents for husband’s family Christmas on Saturday
Buy food
for husband’s family Christmas
Address 100
Christmas cards
Pick up stamps
for said Christmas cards
Prep gifts for teachers at Ridgeway
and EEE in time to deliver them when I go to read a holiday story to Unit A
Shop and cook for party for 50 at
my house Friday
Secure sitters for holiday
functions
Do laundry nightly so we are ready
for our trip this weekend
Pack for trip this weekend
Pick up bananas for class Christmas party
Pick up bananas for class Christmas party
Pick up present for Emma after
remembering that even though she doesn’t teach at Ridgeway she should be on our
teacher gift list because she teaches our most loveable (read challenging)
child in the most dedicated of ways
Clean house for party
This is all in addition to the
normal feed kids, bathe kids, go to work, etc, etc…. and the abnormal grade MU finals, shut down
classroom for the semester tasks
I feel like most of the holiday to do list falls on me. I know Sephus will help if I ask him too (he
is a wonderfully loving and caring dad and husband), but the initial awareness
that it needs doing tends to come from me and the busier I get the more I just
do it because who has time to talk about doing it. This seems to be a universal experience for
wives and moms based on conversations with women my age. Knowing that my friends too are overwhelmed
by these activities and the constant burden of bearing the responsibility for
all these tasks made me feel suddenly connected to my mother in a deeper way
than I have ever felt since starting this adventure called parenting. It suddenly occurred to me that the reason
that my mom could not completely embrace the magic of Christmas with the rest
of us was because she WAS the magic of Christmas. Moms are like the house elves of the holidays
toiling tirelessly so that these treats, packages and experiences arrive like a
feast before us to make the happiest days of our childhood. Though we don’t realize it at the time, our
apprenticeship into being a mom comes as we watch them each December prepping
to one day recreate this joy for our own families even if it means missing out
on some of it ourselves.
One of the most shameful moments of
my life came when my mom found the note a few months after I wrote it when I no
longer felt that way at all, but I did not know how to apologize or explain
what I felt when I did write it. To this
day I have hoped that the memory was simply written off as one of 2 million
horrible things your children say to you as you raise them. I hope to make up for the way I surely made
her feel that day with an apology thirty years in the making and a genuine Thank
You… Thank you mom.
I see you now in ways I couldn’t see you then. Thank you for forgiveness. Thanks for selfless acts of love. Thanks for being our magic.
