Estrangement and Joy

It’s Christmas Day! I’m so thankful we celebrate Christmas the way we do in America. I love it. Maybe it is my imagination but it seems like this year there is less emphasis on materialism and more focus on basics- the things that are most important. I love it. It’s been a mixed bag though as it is perhaps for many people.

I love my children with everything in me and would give my life in a heartbeat for each of them. But there is a word I dislike- estranged. Not all my children share Christmas with me because they choose not to do so. As history unfolds during the coming year I will be sharing the saga that brought us all to where we are this day. It is a long story and I won't try and make it short. It sometimes seems way too complicated to even consider documenting but I intend to do my best.

Nonetheless this Christmas like so many is a mixture of sharing love, joy and laughter along with sadness, regrets, guilt feelings and longings for much more. The reality of not having all my children near me at Christmas time cuts my heart deeply. I try focusing on what I do have and who does want to be with me.

The children who dismiss me believe I have been an inadequate mother. Of course I have been that. Is any mother adequate to the daunting calling? Many do better than I but I have tried, with many failings to be sure but I have tried, never given up and always, always loved my kids beyond description. I don’t know about other mothers but nothing can change my love for my children even if they divorce me as their mom.

Yesterday- Christmas eve those who chose at this time to love me and be with me made it hands down one of the best days of my year. They did that by giving me the gift of their time. There is no greater gift we can give to another human being. We enjoyed a marvelous sit down brunch at the dining room table - all of us together. Then we managed to get everyone out the door and went ice skating at an outdoor downtown city ice rink.

Everyone else at the skate rink seemed happier than people usually are. It was so much fun. There were lots of Santa hats and smiles and people saying Merry Christmas to strangers. Wow!  We skated in our coats, hats, scarves and gloves to Christmas music. Hats are fantastic for keeping warm. I guess that is why hats are put on babies’ heads at birth to prevent loss of body heat. I remember that too with all my babies. Once a mother always a motherJ Watching them skate, smile, laugh and have fun was such a gift. The expedition was a big hit- hooray!

After skating we came home and prepared a to die for dinner with as much natural and organic ingredients as possible. We had spiced cider, wine, turkey, uncured ham, mashed organic potatoes, organic yams, salad, and peas, chopped, steamed organic Swiss chard, gravy and lots of cranberry sauce. I prefer the whole berry kind- how about you? Cranberry sauce is probably my favorite part of the feast. Incidentally everything was zero calories! The best part is we all sat together at the table eating and conversing- to me sharing a meal with good conversation is one of the most beautiful evidences of being civilized creatures.

I've heard that in some cultures eating together is a way of sealing contracts and agreements. Eating is such a basic human function yet also an intimate experience we can share with others. I first observed people who valued food with meaningful conversation during my college years. I was so impressed and forever changed by this practice of eating good food artfully prepared and served with flowers on the table and plenty of talking and listening. I decided this was really living!

While preparing for and enjoying all the merriment I was pondering how God so often commanded his people in the Old Testament to have feasts. He had them do it right – usually at least seven days. That seems more humane as one day just isn’t enough to spend time doing fun, relaxing things. I love the way Europeans have more humane holidays/vacations than we in the United States. Europeans know how to take long holidays that provide adequate time for exploring, relaxing, regrouping and whatever one needs to do to regain what is needed for working the rest of the year. Americans are all about work at break neck speed, sometimes working till we drop. We could use more balance with time off from work enabling us to work better or at least be more fully human.

Last December I listened to the audio version of Mike Huckaby’s book which is his biography centered around the Christmas’s in his life- a good way to recall the years of our lives. I’ve let Christmas veer me off the main track of documenting history and I’ve prattled about other things. Call it procrastination too as I wrestle with how to approach this day by day endeavor I’ve committed to for at least the coming year. It's scary.

Last night at dinner we discussed Bing Crosby and how he was as a father and family man. My kids heard he was abusive and that his oldest son wrote about it in a book. My mother (Elle) insists Crosby was not abusive but rather a strict disciplinarian whose kids were not allowed to run wild like some Hollywood brats. Could this be a generational perspective about what acceptable or good discipline looks like? My mom mentioned that the daughter of Betty Davis wrote a biography that included unfavorable things about her mother. Betty asked her daughter why she hadn’t waited until after her death to write lies about her.

Sometimes people lie and twist the truth. Sometimes people perceive reality in very different ways. This is a tough thing to understand or swallow. How can two people see one thing so differently? I believe I have failed in some ways as a mother but I also believe that my estranged children have distorted reality to fit what they have been told or want to believe is true partly to justify some of their own less than admirable choices. I feel they do not know the real me because for so long they have caricatured me as someone I am not, tried to force me to fit into their story of me and at times even ganged up on me in their verbal abuse and rejection. 

Have you ever been around others who treat you a certain way so often that you start behaving that way even if it isn’t really who you are?  Am I making any sense ? Sometimes children become the way we treat them- like the kid placed in the slow reading group who lives up to the expectation. Adults can do it too. I can start behaving like a bitch if I am consistently surrounded by those treating me like one. Who wants to be around people like that anyway? This is both hilarious and sad but I prefer to laugh today because laughter is great medicine.

Well I’ve tried to cajole and win their love far too long because they are my children and I wanted their love and mistakenly tried all I could to get it.  I tried, pursued, cajoled, gifted, hoped, accepted any treatment that came my way, allowing myself to be mistreated, demeaned, ignored and regarded as a dumpster. This only contributed fuel to the fire of their disrespect and disdain. Oh I forgot – mothers are responsible for all the problems not only of their children but also the entire universe! LOL

Merry merry Christmas. I hope you write- is anybody there!

Christmas 2010

Christmas feast preparation

Christmas fire and candles