I want you to know I see you. You are not invisible. I know it looks like I'm doing other stuff, like I make alot of stockings and I muck alot of horseshit and I cater to my mom, but really I'm seeing you and your pain.
It's not all bad pain maybe it's growing. Better word. I see all that globby mixed up beauty in you.
The torrent happiness of Christmas with all the people I want to feel happy and the stacks of presents and cookies and baking and cooking and the welling up of the people all washed ashore at my doorstep, picking themselves up and walking in for awhile.
All of us confused because our normal productive routines are picked up and thrown out the window because there is this eddy whirlpool of time together that won't come again and is too busy and at the same time completely wasted, there's no math accomplished to a Boulder daughter who does math normally 8 hours a day. She now does a variety of family things and painting and in the place of math she is growing a tiny bit of anxiety about not doing the math. She will return to math because math is growing her so limitlessly well.
One other daughter put down her phone and picked up a ukulele which I just learned how to spell and a guitar and now she sings all day. With and without her friends who tumble through the house loud and laughing, with college looming only 8 months away does no one see this but me, maybe but we do all feel it, the littlest Bess buzzing off to grow herself still. In another place. But for now, a singsong homebird.
I get to see my old friend Nathan and his buddy Patrick, the two best sons a mom could ask for. Nathan works like a real man now, barely ever home, working with people who need someone to talk to, they took my costco buddy, my drive to costco therapy and pizza, they're using him for their own good but he's liking helping people, and then changing oil with Patrick after work. At Patrick's work nearby, they change oil and look under cars and talk about transmission fluid. Patrick has done everything for all our cars the way I have made stockings for everyone we know. Between us, Patrick and I have family car care disasters and Christmas morning surprises covered.
Then we have Nandy in the hospital and B's whole family going to help her, Linda baking cupcakes for the nurses who had to work christmas, Aela following doctors on rounds to casually eavesdrop on how she's doing in cold medical terms, B himself being there as much as he can so when she wakes up scared there's a face she knows. Wouldn't you want that? he says, cause that would be comforting. Even though his feet are freezing. But he does like the cafeteria. There's a whole salad bar, he says.
I see the struggling son from up north come through cause his mom is sick. He's in his late teens rejection phase even though it's hitting him much later, a later age than that. I see his circle of fear that he's not loved enough, the one we all have of course, but he's forgotten the self love, he's left that somewhere, in a sticky movie theater bathroom or class he never goes to anymore, it's sitting there on the floor somewhere waiting to be remembered cause no one else wants it, no one's gonna take it, that belongs only to him. It waits. Hoping to be found to ease the awful hole he's digging so ardently. Expertly, really, he's really very good at digging the hole and asking every angry question based on no fact. His brain will only allow him disappointment, and madness. Instead of forcibly turning his back on that and grabbing up the peace that is sprouting up all over his feet. We all have that, all of us, the joy right there look you can touch it all. But I know we are all more layered than we'd like to be sometimes and maybe we could grab lots of things but we're too busy just trying to survive the day. Sometimes. Right? So he's still in his two years now ongoing grasping for something pattern. B and I have gone through many phases of help for that situation. Some help has worked but mostly it's like holding up a plastic cup to a fireplace and watching the plastic moltenly curl up and melt away. So now I sip tea and hear, and offer chocolate.
So all this is churning under and around Christmas but Christmas itself? A clear fountain. A couch and some books and people content, happy is the nutella layer on everyone in our house. We just bask in the peace of all being together, being fed with food already made yesterday and waiting
all the prep is done and now we just rest, and I see everyone.
That's my job.
