After a full year devoid of lockdowns, a year in which we dropped our masks and entered back into society, a year without homeschool but with so many gatherings to take its place, anxiety-wise, our quartet of a family (plus Kevin the Dog) are currently enjoying a cloudy day from home, specifically the couch. The past few weeks have been dominated by assemblies and dance concerts and end-of-school-year parties and Christmas and trips to the beach and we are tired.

Were we not thrown into this year via catapult? Because that’s what it feels like, and I’m feeling it. Which is why stillness feels so good right now. It also offers me a vantage point from which to think back on the year and appreciate what it had to offer, which I offer to you now. Before we draw a line under it (and before I’ve even gotten out to buy a planner for 2023, which is not helping my anxiety), here are some things I discovered in–and cannot recommend enough from–2022.

CURIOSITY

It’s annoying that there’s always more to learn. It’s so annoying, in fact, that some people live in denial of the fact altogether, choosing instead to believe that they already know everything! I know this because I used to be one of them! A funny thing happens, though, when we reach for material beyond what we already know, or believe, to be true: we grow. We learn and change and, I think, become more generally tolerable people to be around.

I’m reading from authors and thinkers whose names/beliefs would have sent me clutching my pearls and pitchfork a decade ago, and I’m so thankful for all I never knew that they’re teaching me. I’m thankful for Esau McCaulley and Jemar Tisby and Bryan Stevenson et al and all they’ve shown me about systemic racism in society and the church; for Steve Silberman and Bill Nason and Devon Price et al and all they’ve shown me about neurodivergence and the beauty of thinking differently; for Beth Barr and Kristin DuMez and Aimee Byrd et al and all they’ve written about gender roles and the patriarchy, Biblically-speaking; for Dan Siegel and Bessel Van der Kolk et al and what I’ve learned from them about neuropsychology and self-awareness and healing. I’m grateful for the book I just got about teaching kids their place in the greater story.

In her book Advent (which is not about what you think it’s about–another favourite theme of mine), Fleming Rutledge writes about something a former colleague told her about engaging children’s imaginations: “He said he didn’t mind his children believing in Santa Claus, because it was ‘training for transcendence.'” She writes of the importance of a childlike sense of wonder, which is missing from so many of us–this ability to be humbled and awed by all we don’t know.

BETTER SEATS

For the past few years, a group of friends and I have made a habit of going to the ballet regularly. A privileged treat, to be sure, but I’ve made every effort to cut corners when booking our seats, and for the most recent show, my deal-seeking landing me in a seat in which I could only picture Juliet’s balcony in my mind. And maybe see the tail-end of a pirouette when the dancer moved to the outer edge of stage right. I decided this would no longer do. What’s the point of being there if you can’t see?

I’m not skimping on the view any more. Where we choose to sit–in the Opera House, in life–impacts what we take away from a performance, a relationship, everything. Restricted views may end up costing more in the end.

FRIENDSHIP

I’m a terrible gift-giver. I have every intention of choosing gifts that reflect thoughtfulness and a desire to please the recipient, to show them that I really know them. Then I get tired of looking and grab the first nearly-relevant item off the shelf so I can get out of that God-forsaken mall. But I’ve received so many great presents recently, like a “nervous” sweatshirt, a too-perfect doormat, a mug that reads “I have the patience of a saint: Saint Cunty McFuckoff.” I can’t look at these gifts without laughing, and feeling deeply known (and loved anyway). Which brings me to…

GRACE

It’s, like, the only thing I write about, really, because everything else comes back to it. In fact, I was going to add subheadings like Grief and Therapy (see the lyrics at the end of this post) but this is getting long and my latest Netflix obsession isn’t going to watch itself, so I’ll just roll all that into this mammoth topic of grace, that rules my life and changes my heart and dictates my path. It’s grace that led me to therapy and healing and brings me through both, still, with all their gifts along the way. It’s grace that makes me curious enough to actually get to know a person before judging them (or at least to watch their documentary, which makes me wonder why they’re filming every scene of their lives but also shows me they brought receipts and what can I say? I have a soft spot for a man who takes his family across the world to a better life; also, gingers rock). It’s grace that shows me I’m being a bitch to the man who anticipates my needs better than anyone ever has (and it’s grace that allows me to vent about him when he drives me insane and still keeps us together). It’s grace that makes space for my sadness and joy and defeats and victories and weaves it all into a story that is worth being told because that story points to an even bigger one. It’s grace that brings people in my life who see the potential for me to make a difference warranting a possible career change (a possible career, period) and that opens terrifying and wonderful new worlds and possibilities, then lets me live in the tension of not knowing what will happen–and somehow makes that safe and exhilarating at the same time.

I’m thankful that 2022 held so much, but it didn’t hold everything, which is why we can look both back and ahead, and breathe in grace the whole time.

I don’t go to therapy to find out if I’m a freak
I go and I find the one and only answer every week
And it’s just me and all the memories to follow 
Down any course that fits within a fifty minute hour
And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
And she’s so kind, I think she wants to tell me something, 
But she knows that its much better if I get it for myself
And she says

What do you hear in these sounds? 
What do you hear in these sounds?

I say I hear a doubt, with the voice of true believing
And the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving
And she says “Oh, ” I say, “What?” she says, “Exactly, “
I say, “What, you think I’m angry
Does that mean you think I’m angry?”
She says “Look, you come here every week
With jigsaw pieces of your past
Its all on little soundbites and voices out of photographs
And that’s all yours, that’s the guide, that’s the map
So tell me, where does the arrow point to? 
Who invented roses?”
And

What do you hear in these sounds? 
What do you hear in these sounds?

And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink
But oh how I loved everybody else
When I finally got to talk so much about myself

And I wake up and I ask myself what state I’m in
And I say well I’m lucky, ’cause I am like East Berlin
I had this wall and what I knew of the free world
Was that I could see their fireworks
And I could hear their radio
And I thought that if we met, I would only start confessing
And they’d know that I was scared
They’d would know that I was guessing
But the wall came down and there they stood before me
With their stumbling and their mumbling
And their calling out just like me, and

The stories that nobody hears, and
I collect these sounds in my ears, and
That’s what I hear in these sounds, and
That’s what I hear in these,
That’s what I hear in these sounds.

–Dar Williams, “What Do You Hear in These Sounds”

I am officially “needs-pain-meds-after-a-run” years old.

Advil, or what they call Nurofen here, is getting me through a current season that may just be how things are now. A year ago, the same injury went away after a couple of months. Now it persists, just like that all-over-ache when I rise from a long-held sitting position (especially if it’s been on the floor). Age is showing up in my body, in my photos, in the fact that I just forgot what was going to be the last example in that list of three.

And yet we’ve spent every day of the current break (three days in!) playing soccer with the boys. The first day I was so winded after a couple of minutes that I wanted to quit (and ice my hammy), confirming my belief that my cardiovascular endurance is limited to scheduled, routine activities. We played on, though, and I watched Little Brother dramatically dive for the ball, and fall purposely and more spectacularly the harder I laughed, and I knew in that moment that this upside-down, summer-centric Advent season we live now will forever hold that image that age can’t rob from memory: LB with his bicycle helmet on (because, yes, we’re also doing bike-riding lessons–three days in!) and his concentrated squint and his ever-present laughter.

Age and youth side-by-side, he and I, and within myself, sprints across the field coupled with lessons on balance gained from years of falling. It’s never just one thing–it’s all the things together that make up a life. Ups and downs, highs and lows, beginnings and middles.

It’s all the things together that make up Christmas. This mixture of sacred and mundane: muppets singing carols and angels glowing on trees, brotherly fights in the backseat while age-old familiar notes float from the speakers, the memory of A Christmas Carol with friends at the theatre paired with a rushed dinner afterward because everyone is so. damn. tired. Especially this year, when we apparently all conspired to just jump back into normal life and act like that was normal after the previous two years we had? Like, really?

I and my hammy need a break. Because the body, she keeps the effing score. As does the brain, specifically, according to research, and it’s hard to find a better, more ready-made metaphor than the one in the association between trauma and memory–how trauma reduces out story, leaving instead a jumble of sensations and images because of the way memory is stored during these moments. How typical memory is a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. How, once full memories are recovered after/through therapy and a person can tell their particular trauma story, it often stops ravaging their brain and body and helps them, finally, leave it behind.

Stories literally heal.

And in another book, one I read every Advent, there’s this interpretation: that grace shows up in the places where we don’t believe, to convince us, which explains, for me, why it keeps showing up in the same places, in the same lessons. Beginnings, over and over, like learning to balance again and again, until that moment when you finally get it. Until you fall again, because we all, always, fall again. And there grace is again, to pick us up, sore hammy and all, to make sure that the beginning and end aren’t the same moment, but are separated by all that’s in between, so much then and now and ahead that you might be forgiven for thinking that there may actually be some stories that go on forever.

Every year around this time, the boys’ school sends out an email to a select group of parents: those whose kids are receiving an award at the Presentation Day Assembly. Every year around this time, my butt gets sweaty when I wonder if this email has gone out yet and I haven’t gotten one, or if the correspondence has yet to be transmitted–the old “is everyone hanging out without me” anxiety. I’ve been on both sides of this virtual aisle–the gifted inbox and the empty, the marking of the calendar and the leaving it blank.

This year I got two emails–the absolute best-case scenario so that one boy couldn’t lord it over the other–and marked my diary accordingly, then wondered who else of my friends had been similarly #blessed and who had not and when the awkwardness would crop up. There is an unwritten rule not to mention such things too soon–or maybe I’ve just made that up–and typically people wait until they’re about to burst either with excitement or from a desperation to know if everyone is, indeed, hanging out without them, and who exactly “everyone” is this year (again, I’ve been on both sides).

It’s all things, this process: exciting, fraught, depressing, glorious, gross. For my part, I turn into anything from a sincerely questioning individual to an avid conspiracy theorist. I may believe Biden won the election and the vaccine is legit, but when it comes to my kids I will entertain any theory under the sun regarding any information that could threaten their well-being. “My mind is like a bad neighbourhood,” writes Anne Lamott. “I try not to go there alone.” Same, girl. This has been all too easy lately with distractions like Netflix, true crime podcasts, and social media, but occasionally my forays into the darkest corners of my mental suburbs turn up some real scary shit. Did The Kid actually receive the votes to be a class leader yet was snubbed because of his disability? And this year, when all his class awards had been given out and Little Brother was still empty-handed and turned back to me like, “What the hell? You said I was getting one,” I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d misread the email or someone was having a joke at my expense.

BUTT SWEAT.

Contrast this with the school’s annual dance concerts, one day of two performances and bottomless exhaustion. Everyone gets to (read: is required) to participate, and though the routines are pretty uniform in choreography across the class groups, each kid puts their own spin on the number. Which meant that I got to watch–twice–as TK nervously approached the stage then, in true TK fashion, smiled his way through his dance while LB, fresh off complaints about stomach pain that were, I believe, actually anxiety, pursed his lips and squinted his eyes in concentration and an effort to get. it. exactly. RIGHT. They both made it through, in their own way.

And I made it through: through the dance performances, where regrettably there is no open bar, and through the awards presentation, where regrettably there was no air conditioning. I sat, the back of my dress soaked through with sweat, battling excitement and anxiety, pride and confusion (TK himself was confused about getting the PE award but didn’t turn it down). I watched people who’ve always seemed to not care about this sort of thing melt with pride about their own kids. We all thrive on recognition–anyone who says they don’t is a lying liar–because who doesn’t want to be seen? And perhaps even more, want their kids to be seen? Although is this actually, really being seen? Awards season itself can be a bad neighbourhood, and we are not given emotional bulletproof vests when we become parents (I’ve checked; they don’t exist).

So we “win” and don’t “win,” and we counsel our kids through their ups and downs as we navigate them ourselves alongside them, and I listen as the school’s staff keeps using the word learners to describe the youngest among us, knowing that we are all that: learning, struggling, stumbling around trying to figure it out and get it right, whatever that means. Let me know if you figure it out. I’ll be on the couch, rehydrating and sleeping off this latest performance and CBT-ing and praying and meditating my way through remembering what matters most.

Somehow I see
Who I could be
Just being with you
That’s the view from here

What do we have to go through to meet the truest version of ourselves?

I was listening to one of my standard podcasts the other day, and the episode was a retelling of Jack London’s short story “The South of the Slot,” about a man leading a double life who has to make a choice. My own existence hasn’t been so ripe for retellings (although I do that, here, every week…) or dramatic, but multiple personalities aren’t, I think, so pathological as they are common. What I’m saying is that we are all more than one person throughout our lives, in different times or to different people or in different places. Luckily for me, I’ve found a version of myself that’s worth settling on–not without flaws or revisitations by past selves, mind you, but worth settling on nonetheless–and I think of how close I came to never meeting her. To never knowing me.

Because at one point, she had a choice to stay or leave: to try her hand in her comfort zone among everyone she knew, or to roll the dice on a cross-country move to a place she’d visited once but had somehow connected with instantly. Out of desire and desperation and a touch of insanity, she chose to leave, to go, to come to the place where–after spending her years becoming a professional–she learned to be a person. Which set in motion so much of everything else, beginning with a proposal on a Manhattan rooftop (or was it a boozy late-night confession a year before that?).

The next time the chance to stay or leave popped up, she was sure it was time to stay. She was wrong. Just like she had been about so many things, including that her son’s diagnosis was incorrect or that some people are more valuable than others or that home is singular. It was by way of being wrong that she was afforded the grace to a better, truer, path–but she had to be curious (and desperate) enough to take it. Luckily, she was.

The other night, we were playing a family game and everyone had to vote on who was the happiest then point to that person. In a strange turn of events, the three males in our house all gestured to me, leaving me wondering what was wrong with them. If they knew me but at all. I am not the happiest person! I kind of pride myself on that! And yet, here they are listening to me sing my way around the house and laugh with them and play soccer in the garage and it’s almost like they completely forgot about the times I’ve lost my temper or raised my voice or been a Petty Bitch (patent pending)…

Or maybe I’ve forgotten–forgotten all the moments that have added up to who I am now, that have brought me here. Here, where I no longer have an orderly and clean car, but one littered with sand and crumbs. Here, where I run my way around multiple beaches before watching Little Brother play soccer on Saturday mornings. Here, where I listen to LB sing “Amazing Grace” not because he learned it in church but because his class sang it at their phasmids’ funeral (all the phasmids were named Kevin, btw). Here, where the best conversations are had in the car because it’s then that I can trick the boys into sharing the most without their realising it. Here, where I work with The Kid through not winning the class leader election because 30 people went for 6 spots and he’s disappointed but still knows who he is apart from all that (and I battle my sudden urge to embrace conspiracy theories when it comes to voting processes). Here, where I find myself more at home on a beach than in a pew on Sundays. Currently. Here, where I often come home sandy-haired and salt-covered. Here, where I’m learning from people I never expected to teach me because it’s so obvious that discrimination is just ignorance mixed with hate and fear, and disability has more to do with how we treat people than what they are capable of, and there’s always time to learn new languages.

Here, where I almost got into a fistfight with two seniors over a stolen parking place yesterday, because here is also where there is more work to be done. Or, I should say, always more grace to be had.