The Holiday season descends and as if time wasn’t already moving too quickly, Halloween sneaks up ending summer to start the launch pattern for the rest of the year. Halloween ushers in Christmas decorations at the local Targets, startlingly early and before you’ve turned around Thanksgiving week is here to slingshot us to Christmas whose joyful chaos tumbles us head over heels past the New Year’s Eve celebrations and parties leaving us finally in the company of quiet January.
Christmas (and all that surrounds) is supposed to be the most wonderful time of year, but it is in that expectation that we so often find ourselves let down. We still remember that wonderful feeling of surprise and enchantment that the holiday season brought us when we were children and as adults we chase that same feeling of newness and it’s almost impossible to catch.
Sometimes we try to recreate it through our children, making their Christmas as joyful and enchanting as possible to live vicariously through their surprise and gratitude. But this too leaves so much room for letdown because children hardly ever convey the kind of gratitude that is truly soul-satisfying. Such are children, such is life.
But this year I am trying to be conscious of the warmth and magic of this time of year. I am fighting against the speeding train that is the holiday season rushing past. I’m walking duck-footed down the steep, sandy slope so that I can enjoy the view without slipping all the way down before I know what’s happened.
And it’s not just for the joy of the holidays. I am trying to slow my break-neck pace down in general. As good a report as Twila and I generally have, and as close-knit as our spirits truly are, I am becoming aware of how my high-strung nature, my irrepressible need to control, my often frantic pace, is impacting her. It is not uncommon now for Twila, when she gets frustrated, to stomp around the house growling and shouting “I am an-ga-ry!” She has also been known to turn down offers to read stories or go to the park because she is “too busy.” These seemingly innocent exercises in spirit and will have the tendency to cut straight to my heart and convict my own spirit for the way I often swirl around the house in a flurry of rush and irritation.
I’m not the first mom with the realization that I’m not living in the moment and I won’t be the last but I feel charged never the less, with the responsibility to at least teach Twila and Jada how to live in the moment. Because (at least in theory) I know there is another way to live. I know that it is good to slow down and enjoy the scenery. My parents weren’t afraid to drive to California instead of fly and though it may have been more a necessity than a luxury, those long trips through deserted deserts and mountains with no DVD player and only one children’s cassette tape taught us how to enjoy every possible aspect of a car ride with four children, how to really examine a landscape, how to invent games, together, and in our own minds. And I look back on those trips as a gift.
I have been asking myself lately, in this holiday season, am I giving Twila these kinds of gifts? Gifts of self-discipline and appreciation, memories of laughter and calm and true joy—not instant gratification or glitzy excitement—that she can look back on, draw on when life gets too fast-paced and stressful in her own adulthood?
Even though the pull to the wild, centrifugal force of the holiday season seems almost involuntary at times, I am trying to become aware of the times when these forces begin to draw me in. Ironically, some of the most stressful times of the holiday season for me are when I try to do something fun and festive with my daughter, like make crafts or bake cookies. I am constantly battling my need to control when Twila and I get creative together. I never realized what a control freak I am until Twila started wanting to do things her way and I found it almost impossible to allow her that freedom.
A year ago when we moved into our house, I had the fun idea that Twila and I could buy some big canvasses and paint them together. Let’s just say we had artistic differences and (though at long last we did find a rhythm in which we could paint together happily respecting each other’s vision—an accomplishment I count alongside childbirth and graduation from college) we more often now choose to paint separate canvases.
So it ended up being a blessing of the most unexpected sort, when my dad was available to come bake gingerbread cookies with Twila and Jada and me last week. I forget when I’m not doing it, how hard it is for me to let Twila get her hands on the process of baking (or anything) when we actually get going. How I picture it in my mind is never how it actually goes. I imagine us cooperating, Twila serenely stirring the dough (and not eating globs of raw egg infused batter) and Jada watching interestedly from her highchair. Instead Twila grabs handfuls of flower and wants to taste every spice we use; Jada screams if I set her down and also wants to taste everything in sight.
So when I started to tisk and cluck at Twila for messaging the dry ingredients, I was relieved that my dad was there to smile and laugh with her, to encourage her to get her fingers involved, enthusing that’s how real bakers do it; they get their whole bodies into it! And I felt myself relax ten degrees. As we mixed and stirred and baked, my dad and I took turns holding Jada (my dad always more successful at making her laugh and screech with delight) and helping Twila to messily knead the dough, roll it out, cut shapes of people and apples and eventually, slide the cookies into the oven.
And miraculously in this season of busyness and rushing, there was a three hour period in our kitchen that was fun and calm and festive. For Twila, a Christmas memory was made, for me I was given practice in slowing down and letting go of the reigns and seeing that everything was okay when I didn’t control every step from beginning to end. I was reminded that it’s okay to get messy. I was reminded too (as I so often am) how lucky we are to have all four of Twila and Jada’s grandparents in town, that it takes help to raise kids with joy and patience. And I was reminded that we can slow down, should slow down in this busy season to remind ourselves and teach our kids how to truly appreciate this time.
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