In a futile attempt to make myself feel better, this was my breakfast this morning:

Why the carb overload, the heaping plate of comfort food?

Because I woke up thinking about a conversation I had with a woman I had just met this weekend. My sister-in-law asked me to be a sub at her Bunko game. I haven’t played Bunko for a long time—haven’t spent time with so many women at once for a long time, and it was lovely to talk like women do. To share a few frustrations and feel like other people are also going through what you’re going through. At one point I started talking to one of the women—I think her name was Jenny—about parenting. She had three kids fairly close to my kids’ ages, and she said “don’t you just love this phase of motherhood? I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed being a mom so much as I do now that they are teenagers and starting to go out on their own.”

I said, “Wow.”

I rolled the dice. I counted the two fours and rolled again.

“Wow. That makes me feel…”

Then I rolled the dice again and dropped the conversation altogether. Instead I thought about how inadequate language is, because it is hard for me to say how that makes me feel.

How I am enjoying being a parent the least I ever have.

And how guilty I feel about that.

And how I wish I could find the joy, how I try to, but how it gets swamped in worry, anger, frustration, sadness, melancholy.

Loneliness.

Really. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more lonely than when I’m in the room with a teenager who is feeling so absolutely angry at me that all he (or she) can do is shut down. Turn silent and turn away and box himself off from me.

I miss them so much.

I miss the idea of what I thought this would be like. I thought it would be easier than it has been. I thought the relationships I’d built with them as they grew up would be strong enough to shore us up against the buffeting winds of teenagehood. I imagined a lot of laughing and talking through it. Sure, I knew we’d have conflict. But I thought that I had already paid my dues. That all my angst and anger and screwing up and mistakes and regret from my teenage years would be enough. Would help make me into a good mom who would know how to parent teens well. Who would know what to say to prevent mistakes or to balm wounded hearts or to guide choices.

Turns out, no.

Turns out, I’m messing things up in ways that are entirely different than how my own parents messed things up, and it doesn’t seem to matter what I try to do, it’s always wrong.

And I miss feeling like my kids were happy. The struggle isn't only how I feel about this experience; it is mainly in knowing they are struggling, and in feeling helpless to do much about the struggle. There are so many things in their lives that I cannot fix. And the thing I can change—myself—I still cannot. I can't shift my knowledge of right and wrong in the ways they want me to, even though sometimes it would be so much easier to set it down. To stop fighting. To say yeah, sure. You don't have to go to school or to church, you can do whatever you want. Here's a joint, here's a beer, enjoy yourselves! Can I find you a stripper while I'm at it? They want laxness from me at a time when laxness feels like the worst thing I could give them.

How can I lead them to happiness?

So I ache. And I worry. And I pray. I meditate and I hike and I write. I try to talk to them in different ways. I try to be gentle. I try to offer advice that might help. I try to be as positive and patient and calm as I can.

I try not to make it about me (even though this blog post really is all about me), because most of all I remember what adolescence felt like. The bewildering intensity, the contrast between wanting freedom and feeling adulthood rushing at you too damn fast. I wanted to somehow make this easier for them. But I haven’t.

Maybe that is just the nature of being a teenager. Maybe it is just always going to be difficult no matter what.

Maybe it’s always hard on parents, too. Except, Jenny from Bunko isn’t the only mother who’s told me how much she loves parenting teenagers and new adults. I want to be that parent. But I’m not.

And it’s not even that I have horrible kids. I don’t. Sure—they are grumpy and difficult and make decisions I cannot agree with. They push boundaries and slam doors and swear far too much. But they are good kids. They work hard at their grades and their jobs. They make me laugh.  They are each brilliant in their unique ways. Sometimes they surprise me with their compassion, or they send me a funny meme that brightens my day, or they toss off a pun or correct someone’s punctuation or casually mention an obscure literary reference. They are becoming people and so sometimes they make messes, but they are becoming good people.

After the rebellious, moody, impossible messup of a teenager I was, I deserve far worse teenagers.

I know this.

I love them. So much.

But. This is hard. This is so hard. I know that parenting is always hard. I also haven’t forgotten what the hardness was like when everyone was little and it felt like you’d be changing diapers and playing with Fisher Price toys for.ev.er. It was monotonous and exhausting and someone was always touching you. I’m not casting a glowy, selective focus on the past; I know that was difficult, too. But what made that hardness bearable is that I always felt loved. Three hundred times a day, one or another of the kids would do something that would make me melt, would make me say “awwwww,” would remind me of why I was doing this. Because I love them—and they loved me back.

I miss feeling, with absolute certainty, that my kids love me.

I know—this blog post is pretty raw. I’m not sure I should post it. I know I sound selfish, like I am turning their teenage issues around and only focusing on how they affect me instead of what I can do to help them. When I am a parent, not a blogger, I try really hard not to do that. But here, in this post, I wanted to try to set it out in words—what I am feeling. Because (and I just realized this): we are both conflicted, just in different ways. Their conflicts are the ones of adolescence. Mine are the ones of middle-aged motherhood: I love them and I want them to choose, but I want them to never make a mistake, which is silly because then they would never learn anything, but I want to spare them the pain of learning the hard way (even though my own knowledge I’ve gained the hard way is my most precious). But middle age isn’t just parenting, it’s also worrying about your own parents and feeling like your body is starting to fail (hello, dislocated-for-three-weeks toe joint) and wondering if it’s already too late to achieve the ambitions you’ve held all your life and stressing about the 401k, the IRA, and the Roth. About upcoming performance reviews and surgeries and mortality.

With all that internal conflict going on, no wonder there is so much external combustion. Perhaps I need to be more forgiving of everyone. Even myself?

So today, while eating hash browns with cheese and English muffins with plum jam and hot chocolate with a rather large glug of cream in it, I say kudos. Kudos to you moms who are loving raising teenagers. I’m glad some of you exist in the world. That sounds sarcastic, but really: good for you. I wish I knew your secrets. I wish I didn’t feel like I was constantly walking a high wire and looking across the distance to see my kids on their own wires, higher than mine. I wish I weren’t always terrified that one of us will fall. I wish I knew how you do it.

Until I figure it out, I will keep muddling through. Maybe I won’t ever figure it out. At least there are hash browns with cheese, and English muffins, which really don’t fix anything, of course. They didn’t even really make me feel better. Writing this did, though. A little bit. And maybe someone else will read it and also feel a little bit better. A little bit less alone.

One of my goals this year has been to scrapbook less.

Which sounds like a really odd goal, until you realize what its counterpart goal is:

Write more.

And not just write, but polish. And be brave enough to take the next step, which is finding markets and submitting.

Part of the “scrapbook less” goal has been a massive purge of supplies. I got rid of so much stuff. I was brutal in answering the question “do I really need this?” I did this in an attempt to streamline my process, so anything time consuming—painting, stamping, embossing—is mostly gone. (I did keep my alphabet stamps and some of my favorite designs.) I want to use the supplies that make the process simple and quick, so that I can focus on what feels most important to me, which is the story.

Then summer happened, and I definitely achieved my “scrapbook less” goal. I also wrote less, and left my room only partly-finished. This is because I need solitude to feel creative and I wanted to spend time with my kids while they were home from school.

Once September came, though, I have done a little bit of scrapbooking. And I am finding that I have a new question. With each layout I make, I find myself thinking does this matter? By which I mean, does this matter? In thirty or fifty or one hundred years, will this story or photo be important to anyone?

This question is changing my focus.

I am asking myself—what is the most important thing? If scrapbooking is my hobby, the thing I spend time on if I’m not with my kids or working on my writing, I want that time to be well-used. Out of the random ramblings of thought, I have made a list. For me, the things I want most to scrapbook are:

1. Everyday stories. The family lore that might be forgotten otherwise. This includes “life right now” style layouts and personality snippets.
2. Holidays and events. Maybe this isn’t the coolest or hipster-ish scrapbooking thing. But for me, it’s important that I record some details about Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, birthdays, first and last days of school, and vacations.
3. The love I have for my kids. I want to leave a record so they never have to wonder.
4. My own stories. This came as a surprise to me. I love the concept of scrapping about myself but I rarely do it.

In essence, this means no fluff. Fewer layouts that are about just one pretty photo. It means layouts that always have a story; it means spending my time on the story instead of the embellishments. It means I want to be specific and informative.

This felt like a good direction for me.

So I’ve been working my way through the pictures I printed at the beginning of the summer. I got to this one

which I love. It tugs at my heart pretty hard, and I wanted to put in Jacob’s book. It’s just one picture, though, and I didn’t really have a story to go along with it. As I pondered, it started to feel like the fluff I wanted to avoid. I looked at it and felt so much conflict, because I loved this phase of my motherhood, the very end of my kids’ childhoods before anyone had turned into a teenager. When Jake felt like he still was firmly Jake. Sometimes I want to leave the mess and negativity and stress of parenting teenagers. I want to go right back to the days this photo represents, the days when I felt like I knew my children and when I knew myself as their mother.

When I didn’t question everything.

And yet, doubting myself so much, I still look at this photo and can see the future Jake in 10-year-old Jake’s face.

And I remembered I still love him. Despite the mess and negativity and stress, the arguments and the tug-of-war and the worry.

So I took a deep breath and I tried to put into words what I remembered about that Jake on that day, about the person he used to be. It isn’t the most amazing journaling ever. It isn’t prize-winning writing. It’s just me getting my feelings out. It might even be fluff.

It might not matter in a decade or two.

But as I wrote, something happened in my heart. Or maybe in my throat, where the lump of fear and worry might have shifted just a bit. Might have shrunk. Because as I wrote, I began to understand that he is still that person. It might not be as easy to see now, in the muddle of adolescence, but he is still himself.

I wrote the journaling, and then I went to bed, and I couldn’t sleep for a little while because I was filled with something strange…something I remember feeling but haven’t for a while. A lightness. Could it be hope?

Yes, that is it. Hope.

And how magical is that—that after all these years of scrapbooking, after writing journaling for thousands of layouts, I can still be impacted. It still brings me joy, it is still a process that helps me and makes me a better person and teaches me things I couldn’t learn otherwise.

So I am adding a fifth thing to my list. It can’t always be practical and future-based. Sometimes it can still be about the process:

5.   Photos that tug at who I am right now. That photo grabbed my attention because it held something more than what I could see. It wanted to lead me to a little piece of knowledge. And that is important too.

I want to pursue my dreams of being a real writer. Along the way, I’ve let scrapbooking fill up all my time, and I can’t do that if I want to fulfill my goal. Bu moving forward, I know that I will never not scrapbook. It is an essential part of who I am and how I process my world, and will always be one of the things I do.

Last night, I took Kendell by the shoulders and shook him (as much as I can "shake" my husband!) and said "do you know what happens tomorrow? Tomorrow I will have an empty house!" and then I burst into tears.

(goofing off with cousins at a family party in June)

Because while I will appreciate the quiet, I wasn't ready. Because while I am glad they are back to schedules and homework and tasks and actually using their brains, I wanted more time with them at home. Because this year, I didn't want summer to end.

(model faces on one of Haley's visits home)

Not that it didn't hold its many challenges. There were plenty of arguments and chore wars and some pretty intense discussions about choices, the future, and consequences. (Parenting teenagers is not for the weak of heart.) I have had plenty of moments when I have sat on my back porch and questioned every single choice I've made in the past 17 years and wondered how I managed to make such a mess of things. Or I've been so mad I couldn't sit still.

(Kaleb's 10th birthday family dinner)

And it hasn't been the summer I wanted it to be. Jake and Nathan both had lots of scout adventures, but when it came down to us taking a family vacation, I couldn't get anyone to commit or want to take time off of work. Then I decided, I don't care, they're going anyway, this is Jake's last summer before he graduates. So I planned a beach vacation on the central California coast, starting in Cayucos and ending in San Francisco, with a day of driving the Big Sur highway, a zipline excursion, an afternoon in Muir Woods, and of course tickets to Alcatraz, with maybe a stop in Yosemite on the drive home.

(Jake works at Pizza Pie Cafe, and they were one of the entries in the parade. You should see him toss pizza dough. It's pretty amazing!)

But I waited too long. Alcatraz was sold out, all of the non-scary hotels along the coast were booked, Haley decided she couldn't afford to miss that much work.

(on Pioneer Day, Utah's state holiday)

So there wasn't a family vacation this summer. (Even though the one I planned would have been awesome.)

(This is on Father's Day. It took awhile to get them to stop goofing off, but I love the photos I took of them laughing together.)

Back in the first week of June, when summer was just starting, what I wanted was for our family to draw closer and get stronger. I also wanted to make some good memories. I'm not sure I accomplished that. It was more complicated and messy. But as I sent Jake and Nathan off to high school together this morning, I realized it doesn't matter what I wanted to do. My chance at an idyllic summer is over. I didn't do all of it—but I think we are a little bit closer and stronger, despite the rough and complicated bits. Or maybe even because of them.

(Kaleb played lots of soccer this summer!)

What I realized this morning as summer ended is that what I want is to hold on somehow, to everything that is fleeting, to the structure of my family right now before it changes again, and the activities and vacations are the way I try to do that. But it is also (or perhaps really) in the small moments—the time we laughed at a joke we probably shouldn't, or someone was unexpectedly kind, or we talked about nothing really important—that matter most to me. That is what life is, really, not the vacations or the extravagant outings, but the time we had together, where ever it happened.

(It isn't a successful summer unless we both FIND a snake in the yard and TEASE Kendell with it!)

I just find, here at the end of summer, myself in the mental space I have been in for all of these years of raising teenagers. Wishing I could be better at it, somehow. Doubting my ability to be the mom my kids actually need. Wishing they could step into my heart somehow so they would know my intentions. Wondering if I have really shown them that I love them, if they can ever even know that. Wishing my heart could be still and I could just be confident, somehow, in feeling I had done anything right.

(Kaleb and I had an adventure at a new man-made pond in my hometown. I taught him how to float on his back,)

The extra week of summer I feel like we needed could hardly have accomplished that anyway.

(Nathan is the grill master!)

One of my friends says that the first day of school for kids is the equivalent of Christmas for moms: all the wishes finally fulfilled. There have been summers when I have felt that way, too. But as time runs out on summers with kids at home, the first day of school is less and less a reward for me. More and more, it is a reckoning. Did I do enough? Did I tell them I love them? Did I show them any happiness? I tried. I both failed and succeeded. I can only keep trying—to hold on, to savor, to show them I love them in my imperfect ways. To hope it will have been enough.

(My favorite day this summer, when we all went to Lagoon and had a great time together. These people—my family is who matters most to me. Always.)

Wait—who says that? Who could hate summer, with its flowers and its break from school and its long days of lingering sunshine? 

OK, maybe hate is too strong a word. Dislike. Am made uncomfortable by. Have a complicated relationship with.

I mean, it's not the kind of negative emotion I have for Valentine's Day.

Or even Mother's Day.

It's just...well, summer is my least-favorite season. Even though I love so many things about it: yes, the flowers, but also running that's rarely interrupted by weather, hiking, summer vacations, green everywhere, late-afternoon thunderstorms, mowing the lawn, backyard barbecues.

I love all of those things.

But sometimes the things I don't love about summer outweigh what I do. Namely:

1. Shorts. Seriously. I have been shopping for my entire adult life for shorts I look good in, and I have never found them. The length doesn't matter—what matters is that my thighs look enormous in shorts. There's something about pants that balances out my disproportionate quads (just a little...I am always self-conscious about my legs) but in shorts they just look awful. And this isn't limited to regular, every-day shorts; it's also a problem with running shorts. You know those tiny little swishy running shorts that most runners wear? Yeah. Those don't work in my thigh-touching world. But running shorts with any sort of looseness also look pretty awful on me. Like I'm an escaped junior-high PE teacher. It's kind of strange, but true: the only running shorts that don't look awful on me are the tight ones. The tight long ones.

2. Short sleeves. Nope...my summer clothing disagreements are not limited to shorts. The older I get the more aware I am of my chubby arms. In every other season I can manage this self-consciousness with one of my favorite clothing items, the cardigan. But even I (with my body's occasional inability, due to my unhappy thyroid, to properly manage my body temperature) can't go around in cardigans all summer.

3. It's hot. I don't like being cold, either. (Apparently this post is devolving into one big whine-fest.) But I have a tendency to be emotionally effected by the heat. And not in a good way. Translation: I can turn fairly quickly, in a hot room or building, into a raving psychopath. (It’s not as bad outside.) Being hot makes me grumpy, and it's usually not reversible like being cold is. You can always add layers but there are only so many clothes you can take off.

4. Hay fever. This isn't a problem every year. For reasons unknown (but which I could probably uncover if I went to an allergist), some years are really bad and some years I never sneeze once. This has been my worst hay fever summer for five or six years and I am not happy to be so forcefully reminded of how miserable the sneezing and the constant throat tickle and the always-burning eyes are. What makes it worse is I can't function if I take hay fever meds. Even the non-drowsy ones turn me into a sort-of living zombie. I did have a little bit of success the year I tried Singulair. No itchy nose or raspy lungs. Unfortunately it made me bawl. Random, unpredictable crying. Not as bad as Prednizone but close.

5. Swimming. I don't mean swimming in nature. But, you know, putting on a swimming suit and sunscreen and finding the goggles and the snacks and the beach towels and then going to a swimming pool. My kids love it (well...Kaleb still loves swimming. Jake & Nathan only want to do nothing. See #6.)  and I just...don't. I can remember loving it, especially the long afternoons Becky and I spent in the pool at the Landmark casino in Las Vegas. But now that I'm grown up, swimming annoys me. It has more than a little to do with the same reason I hate shorts (chubby thighs). Maybe if I had the slender legs of women whose thighs don't touch, I'd also love swimming. (And really. Don't even get me started on swimming suits. The one part of my body that isn't chubby is the only part I wish were, as well as the part that swim suits try to emphasize. If you have any. Which I don't.)

6. The kids are home. OK, that sounds even more awful than saying I hate summer. I love spending time with my kids, and I love having them around, and I love that we don't have to worry about homework, grades, exams, forgotten projects. But Bad Mom syndrome starts setting in pretty quickly—it flashes up when I realize all that they've mostly done with entire days is watch TV, play video games, and eat snacks. (This article pretty well sums up what I mean. Really. If you're a mom with kids at home, you should read it. I'll wait.) And argue with me about the jobs they don't want to do. All of my Mom Failings are highlighted in the summer. At least for the rest of the year I make sure they, you know, go to school 'n stuff. I want to be one of those fabulous moms who has tons of activities planned for her kids...but usually that involves swimming. And, let’s face it: the teenagers don’t want to do anything else. They don’t want to go to the pool, the zoo, the mountains for a picnic. They’d rather nah. So then I feel bad that they don’t want to do anything, and I feel bad for not making them or I feel bad FOR making them, and I feel bad for Kaleb who ends up doing less stuff.

7. Sunburns. I used to love lying out in the sun. Used to, when my skin had the capacity to get brown. Now it just burns and peels, burns and peels, in an unending cycle that's only punctuated by the weird even-whiter dots I get instead of a tan. True, I do​ love peeling. Except, I don't love worrying about skin cancer and wrinkles. 

8. Miscellaneous annoyances. Bugs! (especially mosquitos, which love me, and flies, which I detest.)  It's too hot to cook my favorite meals. Traffic—one of the reasons I'm not a fabulous mom with tons of activities planned is that everyone else is also going, and the older I get the less I can deal with lots of annoying people everywhere. The electricity bill (hate it though I do, I'll happily pay it. Probably my neighbors and/or friends would be willing to pay it if I refused, because the cost of air conditioning is so much more bearable than a grumpy Amy). The untenable process of blowing your hair dry after a shower and even though you're paying a $*(#&$ fortune for air conditioning it is apparently no match for the heat of your blow dryer, which never seems to dry a damn lock of hair because the water from the shower just gets replaced with sweat.

As I wrote my list, I realized something: most of the things I dislike about summer are things I wish I could change about myself. Or maybe just accept with more grace. Maybe, in the end, that’s the reason I don’t like summer: it forces me to see more clearly my faults. They’re easier to overlook in the other seasons. 

This morning, I slept in to a glorious 9:00 a.m., and then I got up to make breakfast for Kaleb. Jake and Nathan (being teenagers) were still asleep, and Kendell was working on homework, so it was just me and Kaleb in the kitchen. Scrambling eggs, cooking buttery hash browns, serving up orange juice. Talking about his favorite music (Imagine Dragons and One Republic) and the birthday party he went to yesterday and how excited he is for school to be out.

I feel like I’ve made great strides, lately (a lot of them since writing this post, which helped me process in ways I didn’t know I needed to process), in enjoying my teenagers. I’ve worked to stop referring so much to their younger years and to love them for who they are right now. I am happier as a mom and less acutely-tuned to my mistakes. I’m much more aware of the goodness that comes in having teenagers. We’ve had some really great conversations and I feel like things are more open and honest and healthy for all of us.

I have some great teenage boys.

But I am also grateful I still have a little one. I’m grateful to be reminded to play, to run outside, to fill every free second possible with kicking a soccer ball. Sure, he’s not little little anymore. He’s almost getting preteen-ish. But he still does some little-kid stuff. He’ll curl up next to me in bed sometimes. He tells me all of his stories. He says sweet and innocent funny things. (Like last week, when he was telling me what he learned in his language arts class about Greek myths, and I helped straighten out the details of the Persephone story. When I said, “so Persephone gets to spend the spring and summer with her mother, Demeter, and that’s why there are flowers then. Six months with her mom,” Kaleb said, “six months solid with your mom? That’s probably good enough” and it still makes me laugh.) Maybe that’s it—that he still has the innocence of childhood. He still loves gently and simply. It’s uncomplicated and sweet.

(I have a high forehead...but somehow in selfies it looks ridiculously, weirdly high)

There are five and a half years between Nathan and Kaleb. Sometimes this big age gap is a problem. Sometimes (OK, quite often), I wish I would’ve had one more baby, right after Kaleb was born, so that he could have a sibling his age. But sometimes the gap is perfect. Having a little one while you also have teenagers means living with feet in both sides of motherhood. It is a balancing act, but it keeps you even. It gives you perspective—the little one won’t always be difficult in the way that little ones are, the teenagers weren’t always difficult in the way they are now. It is a peace and a comfort having a little hand to hold.

One day soon, Kaleb himself will be a teenager. Considering that age gap, there will be a good long while when he’s the only kid in the house. The only teenager. It does make me worry: how will I cope with him being a teenager without having a little one to balance me out? Maybe I’ll have a grandchild by then. Maybe Kendell will just have to buck up and deal with me getting a cat. Maybe I will find something else I don’t know about that will make things be OK.

It won’t always be like this: high schoolers and grade schoolers, all in one house. It is a good, sweet, busy time of life. And it felt important this morning, while we cooked eggs and giggled because I spilled the orange juice, to put it down in words so I don’t forget. 

When we were in Disneyland last month, we rode the Little Mermaid ride. (It wasn’t there the last time we went, so this was new for us.) It’s one of those classic Disney ride through scenes of the movie, with songs from the soundtrack playing. And it took me about ten seconds inside the ride before I found myself in tears.

See, The Little Mermaid was Haley’s favorite movie for several years. When she was still a blonde, curly-haired, precocious cherub:

It was the first movie she saw in a movie theater, the summer she was two when they re-released it for a few months. She had a Little Mermaid bike and a Little Mermaid backpack and a Little Mermaid coloring book. Her fourth birthday party was Little Mermaid-themed. And for about 18 months, she watched it almost every day.

I don’t think I’ve watched The Little Mermaid in 14 or 15 years, but being surrounded by the movie—the songs and the characters—in that ride at Disneyland brought me right back to how it felt being that mom, when Haley was three and Jake was a baby, and I was going to school but still thought of myself as a stay-at-home mom. Before I learned so much of what my adult life has taught me. Those were happy, sweet days.

One afternoon when she was almost three, Haley finished her movie and paused the VCR on the credits. Then she sighed and said, “Oh, Mom. It’s just so…romantic.” I looked at her expression and her body language and all of the yearning in her sweet, young face, and I decided we’d need less Little Mermaid in our lives.

Because really, when you stop to think about it, it’s a horrible story. Put it into human, non-magical-fish terms: a girl is unhappy in the family and place where she grew up, so she searches out somewhere new to live, based on “falling in love” with a boy she’s seen once. The cost for this relocation is her voice. Her voice. And she’s got to convince this boy to fall in love with her, after changing nearly everything about herself.

It creates such false ideas of what love is about. How can anyone fall in love with Ariel when she doesn't know who she is? They are only falling in love with their idea of her. I looked at Haley and I wanted her to never be like Ariel. I didn’t want her to ever give up her voice. I want her to one day be loved for exactly who she is. I wanted her to always use her voice and to not feel silenced or stifled. I want her to learn to love someone, after sharing experiences and friendship and meals together, to take the time to not only trust her heart but to understand something of herself before she becomes someone’s wife.

But I’ve also always been bothered by Ariel’s determined need to be somewhere other. Unhappy in the place she was created in and adapted for, she has to change so much of herself to be adapted for the new place she thinks is where she belongs. Part of me thinks, OK, this is good. It is good that if we don’t feel happy with the circumstances we are raised in, there are always other options. But it also makes me terribly sad—to make such drastic changes to find happiness.

I realized, in the process of writing this very blog post, that Haley feels a little bit like Ariel to me, right now in her life. Not the voice part—she has her voice and she is not giving it up for anything. But the other part, the feeling like maybe the place and the way she was raised might not be the place she fits. I keep reminding myself that this is good, and that she is figuring out her path, and that my idea of happiness (like King Triton’s) might not be her idea of happiness. And I do want her to grow into a happy adult life.

But I am also so deeply sad about this. I had always tried, as a mom, to create a family inside of which my children felt loved. I wanted my home to feel like home to them. I didn't want them to be miserable and yearning for the day they could leave to find their real home. And maybe I set myself up for disappointment by my very expectations—they can’t simultaneously leave to find themselves and always be tugged back home. Her job right now is finding her way, and mine is to cheer her going.

I cannot say how hard it is to let her go.

And I can’t keep myself from thinking about Ariel. After all the initial rush and flutter of falling in love and marriage. After blistered feet and torn toenails and bunions. After really living—does she ever miss it? The swimming? The power in her tail and the freedom of her old life?

That is why it is so hard to see your kids moving away. Because there is so much joy to be had—but also so much heartache. I want Haley—want all my kids—to choose wisely. To never know the lingering bitterness of opportunities missed because of bad choices. To not be swayed by what only seems magical or pretty or enticing or fun, but is really dangerous or destructive or just not the right place to be. I want them to find real happiness, built on them each discovering and then sharing who they really are.

And they have to find it for themselves.

When the Little Mermaid ride was finished, Kaleb looked at me, confused. “Why you crying, Mom?” he asked. (He knows by now, almost ten years into his life, that his mom is a crier, and that the best thing to do is just to ask.) I couldn’t truly explain it to him because I didn’t quite understand it myself, yet. Memory and nostalgia—looking back—mixed with anticipation and fear—looking forward. It’s just that I so want their futures, the ones they are starting to discover, to be good ones, and there are so many ways for them to end up in something that’s almost good. Or nearly happy. Or even downright bad, hard, or disappointing. I want them to not be tricked by the world’s idea of sigh…so romantic. I want them to end up somewhere real, somewhere that is truly good, with their voices intact.

I'm just not sure I've done the right things to help them do that.

A few weeks ago, I found out something disturbing about one of the high school baseball teams in our little town. A whole bunch of very inappropriate (and, frankly, shocking, even for me!) behavior resulted in most of the team being expelled from school and kicked off the team.

Then I found out some stuff about my kids that I had no idea was happening.

Teenagers!

Suddenly I am remembering how, when you’re a teenager, you have this entirely different and secret life from the ones your parents think you have. At least, I did; I thought it was just me and my friends when I was in the middle of it, but I’ve since learned through many different stories that it wasn’t. Not just me. In fact, maybe my conspicuous rebellion—the black clothes and the attitude and the refusal to follow any rules—was the most honest way to go about it. My parents didn’t know the details of my stories, but it would’ve been hard for them to miss the big picture.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the secret life of adolescents. About why they present a “normal” perspective to their family and something entirely “other” to their friends. Some of it has to do with not wanting to let their parents down, I think. But some of it is just that need to do exactly what you want, with no one to tell you that you can’t, even when it’s the dumbest thing you could do. How much heartache could be spared if we all could just (somehow) manage to talk to each other? But claiming your emerging self is hard because it’s still emerging. Still forming and changing. And sharing your hardest stories, even with—especially with—your parents sometimes feels impossible.

So with those thoughts in my head, the arrival on my hold shelf of the YA novel Love Letters to the Dead, by Ava Dellaira, was perfect timing. It tells the story of Laurel, who is just starting her first year of high school. High school, the place where her sister, May, had the time of her life—until she died. That first day of high school, Laurel gets an assignment from her English teacher: write a letter to someone dead. She starts with Kurt Cobain, because May loved him; she doesn’t turn the letter in to her English teacher, but uses the assignment as a way of figuring out what is happening to her. She writes letters to Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Mr. Ed, Amelia Earhart. Bit by bit, they tell the story of her freshman year, and also of the year before and, eventually, what really happened to May. And what really happened to Laurel.

I wanted to read this the very second I heard about it. (It’s hard to get on the top of the hold list when you’re a librarian!) It appealed to me for several reasons. One: brilliant English assignment! (Filed away in the “just in case I ever teach again” folder in my brain.) Two: it’s an intriguing concept. What dead people might be picked? Why? Who would I write to? (There would be a lot of poets on my list.) Three: that thing I have for sad novels.

It didn’t disappointment. Laurel’s life takes some pretty wide swings, as she adjusts to her new school and tries to figure out her place in this new world, without her sister or her mom (who fled to California after May’s death). She drinks, she does drugs, she skips school, yet she does a pretty good job of keeping it all hidden from her dad, who is only barely coping, too. She builds her secret new life, but she has an older one, which is the secret life she sort-of shared with May, who had her own secrets as well. It’s a devastating book, really. But it is also a book about redemption, about honesty, about how sharing your secret life makes it bearable and how telling your secrets helps you to live with them. It made me think about what I do, as the parent of teenagers, to make it hard for them to tell me things, to construct their own secret lives. It made me want to be better at creating the right environment for them to open up to me. If they just will.

What dead person could you write a letter to? What would you tell him/her?

​I followed a link from someone's Facebook feed (I can't remember whose now!) to this article this morning, and it's been driving me crazy ever since. She makes some important, true points, especially about it being OK to tell the truth about motherhood not always being easy. We all need to be gentle with each other and take care of instead of criticizing each other.

But as the "be grateful for this time" isn't a criticism, it also triggered my "yeah, but" reflex.

I know it's A Thing. I did it once and was swiftly rebuked and I haven't done it again. It's just not cool, as the mom of teenagers (when did I get this old?), to tell a mom of young kids that she should be grateful for her experiences, or that she should savor the time she has with her little kids, even when she's covered in poop and as thoroughly exhausted as she could ever imagine being. Who would be grateful for those days when your kids are little, and you feel like all you do is change diapers and nurse the baby while you're playing with Fisher Price toys with the toddler and the preschooler is drawing flowers on the kitchen wall with metallic Sharpies? When there are no adults around except you, and no possibilities of a break, and yes, even when you do get to bed there's often a little body already there, one who takes up an impossible amount of space for all its seeming tininess. When days are long and downright boring sometimes, and if you have to have one more tea party where you sip imaginary tea and eat imaginary cookies you might just lose your marbles.

And then some stupid old mother, with all of her kids at school all day, tells you you should be grateful? Have all of the old mothers forgotten just how hard it is, taking care of a bunch of little ones? Have their memories of tinies been filtered of the hard, exhausting, boring, repetitive details, leaving only the blissful ones, when the baby is clean and sleeping, and the top of her downy little head is the softest and most heavenly thing imaginable?

Of course we didn't forget.

Because here's a truth: being a mother is always hard. We didn't forget how hard those days were. We just know that harder things are coming. Not the early school years—those, in general, are pretty good. I'm talking about the universal truth you don't learn until it's too late: you didn't have a baby. You just had a premature teenager.

Changing diapers all day long is hard. Never feeling like you can leave that nursing baby who refuses to take a bottle is hard. Mothering little ones is hard, hard work. But I promise: you meet an entirely new kind of hard when you start raising a teenager. Because then it's not just poop. It's shit. The difficult parts of raising teenagers are life changing. If they don't keep their grades up their chance at a scholarship will be ruined. If they don't figure out why their best friend suddenly hates them, they'll feel like a social pariah. If they don't dress right, have the right hair or make-up or clothes or car or shoes or cell phone or ___________ (insert whatever is currently popular) they feel like freaks. There is heartache and backstabbing and pissy teachers and overwhelming amounts of homework, the Amazonian piranha nightmare that is junior high and high school. Plus acne and boobs and armpit hair and what the hell is my body doing.

As a mother of teenagers, you still don't get any sleep. Sure, no one crawls into bed with you anymore. And yeah, they sleep through the night. Sort of—if you count staying up till 1:45 a.m. finishing a homework project and then getting up at 5:00 because it takes time to look this good as "sleeping through the night." But you don't, because of worrying. And there are a million different worries. Are they smoking pot in secret? Are they having sex with their girl/boyfriends? Are they looking at porn despite all your best filtering efforts? Are they drinkers or bulimics or cutters, are they depressed or manic or just normal adolescents? Is their social life proof you raised a Mean Girl? Is the _____ sports team too much or not enough? How will their current choices help them in the future that's rapidly smacking them in the face?

When toddlers make a mistake, you have to reach for some paper towels or the vacuum or sometimes even the phone to call the doctor. When teenagers make a mistake it changes their lives.

And those are just the things you worry about. There's also the way you look at them and your heart still, fifteen years later, does that fluttery thing when you can't believe that such a person as this amazing creature exists, and you helped to create him—and then he looks at you with the deepest contempt, or annoyance, or superiority. When every question is answered with a half-grunt, or a shoulder shrug, or a body language that is screaming silent epithets at you. Or you finally have to realize that the little girl who used to adore drinking imaginary tea with you would rather have her fingernails pulled off—her hair shorn—her cell phone taken away than spend any actual, real time with you. (Unless the mall is involved, but then only because you have the credit card.)

And that is why, dear young moms, we old moms tell you to be grateful. To savor. It's because sometimes we'd like to trade our hard for yours. It's because you cannot know until it happens: the little days don't last forever. That is both a blessing and a devastation. Yes, it is nice to be on the other side, the diaper-bag-free, everyone-is-potty-trained-and-can-feed-their-own-damn-selves side. But it isn't easier. It's just hard in a different way.

It's not that we old moms think you young moms shouldn't feel what you feel. The hard parts are as real as the happy parts. It's not monstrous to feel what you feel. We just want you to see that the hard parts aren't the only parts. And sure: probably no one would ever tell the mom of teenagers to savor these days. To be grateful for them. To be happy that you're so mad at your kid you just threw a block of cheese at him. Except, you know...I tell myself that. Because for all of the hard things, there are still blissful moments. Like when you're driving down the road and a song comes on that you both love (which is a miracle in itself!) and you both sing along, loudly and badly, but with laughter. Or when your teenage son gets a glint in his eye and then tells you a joke that is maybe slightly off-color but not too much. Or when you find the right bit of advice to give your teenage daughter, and she tries it and it works and then she says thank you. When you find the perfect prom dress or the girl says yes to a date. When you see them fail but keep trying, when you see them succeed, when you see them begin to stride out into the world, wearing the identity you helped to shape—those are the best savoring moments.

But I also try to savor the hard times. Or perhaps savor is too strong a word. Just not lose myself in the utter misery of them, because there is also another worse thing: they leave. You think you will always have them with you (sometimes you think you will never be free of them) but you won't. You will always be the mother of your children but you won't always be actively mothering them. They grow and grow and grow, and then they are grown up. And they leave. This time, with whatever hardness it holds, is always worth savoring. It is always worth being grateful for. Because it will always, always pass by.

The suggestion of old mothers to young mothers that they savor, that they know they are blessed and lucky even in the hard moments, doesn't come from a place of condescension. It isn't because we've forgotten. It's not because we're know-it-all jerks who want to be the boss of you. It's not because we're unstable weirdos who want to cuddle our teenagers. (They're pretty smelly.) It's just because we're farther into this journey of motherhood and we know just how quickly the time passes, and how swiftly the end comes, and because we want you to be able to look back and know you felt, thoroughly and utterly felt, the moments you were given.

It's because we want that for ourselves, too. And because sometimes, eventually, it will be too late, and the moment—good, hard, blissful, boring, mundane, extraordinary—will be gone.

In the LDS church, we have a scripture that says “Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy.”

(Adam and Eve, by Marc Chagall)

I love this scripture for its simple, succinct summary of the Christian viewpoint.

But it’s also always bothered me a bit, because really: Eve fell. She chose to partake of the fruit first. I suppose the traditional view is to see her as the person who let evil into the world. But I don’t see it like that. I think that Eve fell that choice might enter the world, and the power to choose is the power to create our own joy.

(Not as snappy as the scripture, I know.)

Think about the fruit she chose to pluck off of the tree: the knowledge of good and evil. Think of where she existed, in Eden, where all was peaceful. There have been many times in my life when I have longed to visit Eden. To not always be buffeted by regret, by fear that I am not a good enough mother or wife or Christian, to feel only absolute love and acceptance because that is all I’d ever known. But I don’t think I would want to live there. In truth, I imagine Eden as a somewhat sleepy place. (Really, quite a bit like the wood between the worlds.) But there Eve is, in Eden. In peace, and never having known anything other than peace, she makes a choice: to act.

But before I can imagine her making that choice, what I wonder about is God Himself, placing the tree of knowledge into the Garden of Eden in the first place. He knew that eventually, Adam and Eve would pick the fruit. He didn’t hide it from them. He knew they would choose; He knew the consequences. He didn’t have to put the tree there—He didn’t have to offer them that choice. But He did, because without choosing to learn, Eve and Adam could not move forward.

What I wonder, though, is how God could bear it. How could he bear giving them the freedom to make choices that would bring them sorrow?

But He did, of course. And Eve chose knowledge, and let choice loose into the world. Do you think she regretted her choice? I don’t think she did. Despite weeds and noxious plants, despite eating her bread by the sweat of her brow. I think even if she had known the sorrows her choice would bring to her, she would still chose.

This is because of two things. First is that in the Garden of Eden, in her constant state of peacefulness, it would be impossible to know, to truly understand, what joy feels like. Without the contrast of sorrow, joy is nothing but another green hue in a garden. We have to know sadness to understand happiness.

But I don’t think it’s only that. I think this is also true: knowledge gained by experience is valuable. What could Eve learn in Eden? God could tell her about having children and becoming a parent. But until she held the newborn Cain in her arms, she would never really know that terrifying joy of being a parent. Until she learned of his mistakes, she couldn’t imagine the sorrow a beloved child could bring to her. Until she experienced the results of her own choices, she could never know anything.

What I would like to ask Eve is this: was it worth it? Was the knowledge of both good and evil worth sharing the power of choice with the world? And once you know, is there ever again any real peace to be had?

I picture Eve, standing before the tree, in her last moments of innocence. Did she hesitate? Or was she certain that the knowledge would be worth it?

Then I picture myself, and the many times I have stood in front of the tree. The many times I have devoured the fruit of knowledge of both good and evil. When it has dripped from my chin and my elbows, and sometimes it has been sweetness, but quite often it has been bitter.

I think about what I have learned from those moments of gaining knowledge. If I could go back and change the bitter ones, I would not. I value too highly the knowledge I have gained.

But now I see my children. They are old enough to stand in front of the tree themselves. The can reach whatever forbidden fruit they choose to curve their hands around. They can tug it from its stem and lift it to their chins, and only when they have bitten will they know for certain if it is sweet or bitter fruit.

And this is the great conundrum of choice: I don’t want them to find the bitter fruit. I don’t want them to know that feeling of sorrow dripping from your fingertips. Even though I wouldn’t take back my own bad choices. Even though I value beyond bitterness or sorrow what my difficult experiences have taught me, I don’t want them to feel it. What I want is to be like God, simply telling Adam and Eve about the world.

What I want is to keep them safe in Eden.

Even though I know they can’t stay there. Even though I know they have to gain the knowledge they will obtain. Even though I know that sorrow will make them understand joy. I don’t want them to suffer. Instead, what I want is for my knowledge to be a thing I could give them. A stone talisman that they could always keep in their pockets, to rub with their thumb and receive knowledge without agony.

Of course it doesn’t work that way. And that is the bitter fruit I am eating right now: I cannot do it for them. Eve didn’t just give me the power to choose. She gave it to them, too. And oh, how I want them to choose correctly. How I want them to know that they create themselves by the power of choice. They choose their sorrows and their joys, and as they grow they get to wield that power with more and more independence, until the time when I am no longer an influence on what they choose, when I will also no longer be responsible for the consequences.

One of my edgy Mormon friends told me that he thinks the thing that God values most is agency. It is within God’s power to make us choose something different, but in nearly all cases, He does not. He always lets us choose, even knowing that our choices will bring us sorrow, suffering, darkness, or pain. I think my friend has a point, but I also think he is missing an equally important thing: the atonement. Through Eve’s choice, God gave us the power to choose. Through Christ’s choice, He gives us the ability to be forgiven when we choose incorrectly. Without one, neither would have any meaning. Forgiveness doesn’t always take away the consequences of our choices (I think, in fact, that it almost never does). But it does let us have a little piece of Eden within us, to go along with the salt of knowing.

What extraordinary power Eve unleashed on the world. What extraordinary opportunity. We are all, I am learning—me, and you, and my children as they grow, and yours—also Eves. Standing in front of the tree of knowledge. Plucking the fruit. Savoring. Grimacing. Shaping our lives. The only thing I can do to help my kids, as they stand and pluck, and pluck and reach and grab and have placed in their hands, is to teach, and to tell stories, and to hope that what I have taught will be enough to help them find the sweetness and endure the bitterness and not, in the end, be changed utterly by the knowledge they gain.

Last Christmas and the year before that, I had sick kids—kids with the stomach flu, no less. I was feeling like there might be a Greek God of Holidays whom I’ve offended in some manner—is it my wrapping skills? Decorations? My mockery of Elf on the Shelf? (It couldn’t be a Greek Goddess of Holidays because if such an entity existed, she would have nothing but compassion for all mothers everywhere, especially in December.) It seemed like this deity was fairly annoyed with me and thus wrecking vengeance via the untimely presence of the rotavirus.

I wasn’t sure what to do to placate him. In fact, I wasn’t really holding out any hopes for a non-puking Christmas this year. Bad things come in threes and all that. And in all honesty, my excitement for Christmas this year was pretty lacking. I kept looking back at the Christmases when I had a houseful of tiny little believers and feeling nostalgic. Not even a good nostalgia, but the kind that makes it hard to appreciate anything right now because of remembering so fervently what used to be.

But then all three of my boys got the stomach flu—during the week before Christmas! Which meant there was a very good likelihood that no one would be throwing up, or recuperating from throwing up, on Christmas. And then I started looking at the weather report for December 25, and the chances for snow changed from 60% to 75% to 90% as the day got closer. And then I managed to get almost every little bit of wrapping finished way before Christmas Eve. We got Haley home from Florida without any problems, everyone was happy, and I let myself hope—not even a little bit, but hope hard and big and surely—for a perfect Christmas (finally!) I started letting go of that ugly nostalgia that was making me live in the past, and seeing what is good about right now.

And everything really was on track for a nearly-perfect Christmas. I couldn’t figure out what to cook on Christmas Eve. Usually we have sweet pork burritos with all of the extras, but Haley is a vegetarian now, and while she insisted that she didn’t need a special meal, I wanted something that everyone could eat together. I worried about this for a while, until I was desperate enough to ask Kendell for suggestions, and he said “why don’t we just go out to eat?” For a few minutes that sounded like heresy, like something that might anger that vengeful Greek god, but then I thought about the benefits: no dishes, less stress, everyone could pick something they loved. So instead of cooking, on Christmas Eve we went to Chili’s. (I know…not very fancy, but that’s OK. Choices for everyone!) We had a great time, eating and laughing together and playing rounds of Trivia Crack together on our phones.

It was a good choice.

When we got home, I sent the kids downstairs to pick up the basement and get the space ready while I got started on some of the food for the morning. I made pie dough, double-chocolate-chip cookie dough, cinnamon-roll dough, and the chocolate cake. Then I went downstairs, and that’s when everything got off track. The basement wasn’t finished, and instead of being patient, I snipped a little bit, and then I went upstairs to get Kendell and he snipped at me for something, and then we opened PJs and read the Christmas story from the Bible. But when I tucked Kaleb into bed, I was in tears, because no one was throwing up but everyone was tense and I was just full of this sort of empty frustration. I had let my hope take me to a place that was too full of anticipation, to certain that this year would be a perfect year.

Too connected to the idea of “perfect” in the first place, probably.

But I got Kaleb tucked in, and I started defrosting the sausage for the morning, and then Kendell discovered that I was upset. So he got mad at the kids (instead of just acknowledging that yes, he’d been a jerk, which would have completely diffused me) and then the kids got mad at him, and then I went downstairs to mediate our lovely Christmas Eve discussion.

Leaving all hopes for a sweet Christmas floating around the ceiling somewhere.

I suppose I should just take it as a sign that our kids are growing up, because it’s not unusual for Kendell and me to have a BUA (big ugly argument) sometime in December, brought on by the tension and the spending and the expectations. Now the kids are just old enough to be included! Isn’t that fabulous?

I’m not going to record all of the argument. Or any of it. I cannot say it was any one person’s fault (except for my tendency to say it was all my fault) so I’m not placing any blame. Maybe all of the recriminations and stinging words had been waiting to be flung for quite a while, and it was just, like the previous years’ stomach flu, untimely. But it was long and ugly and discouraging. I left it feeling raw and undone and in a fairly dark place, especially since it happened on Christmas Eve, which is lovely and sweet and fun (or it’s supposed to be) but is also the pinnacle of a mother’s busy-ness. To have such bitterness uncovered right then was just…it changed me. It confirmed all of my fears that yes, my efforts at being a good mother really have failed.

The only saving grace is that at least Kaleb was asleep.

When we finally came to a sort of uneasy peace, I still had so much to do. I went upstairs and finished the pie, baked the cookies, made the cinnamon rolls, made the breakfast casserole, and started the wassail simmering. Then I did my Santa work: gathered up the gifts from all of their hiding places, put the bows on (I always do the bows when I put the gifts under the tree, so that they don’t get smooshed), stuffed the stockings, ate some of the snacks on the Santa plate, cleaned up all the mess, and then fell into bed. It was 3:45 before I got there, and I was still upset so I couldn’t fall asleep even though I was so exhausted I couldn’t think straight.

I must have finally managed it, because I was dreaming, and something strange was troubling my dreams, and then all of a sudden I wasn’t asleep because the smoke alarm was blaring, and I realized that strange thing was the smell of something burning—cinnamon and cloves and allspice berries, apple juice and orange juice.

I forgot, it seems, the very last step of my usual Christmas-Eve preparations:  turning off the wassail.

It had simmered dry, and then the solids started burning, filling the kitchen with smoke. I raced down the hall into the kitchen, where the smoke looked just like it does in a movie: heavy and thick near the ceiling (where I’d left my hopes), gradually thinning towards the legs of the table. I ran to the stove, turned off the burner, grabbed the pan and filled it with water, burning my palms on the handles. Kaleb and Kendell weren’t far behind me. Kaleb was confused and excited. He said, “Is Santa here?” and then I had to just hug him because this Christmas Eve/early morning—it was 6:18—was so far from happy Christmas memories for him that I wanted to curl into a ball and die.

Of course, there’s no curling allowed on Christmas morning when your house is filled with smoke.

Kendell turned off the smoke alarm and we opened the kitchen and front room windows. Then he stood at the front door and Kaleb and I stood at the back door, fanning out the smoke. The promised snow had arrived—it hadn’t started falling yet when I went to bed—and with it a ferocious wind. It was so cold, and the snow was blowing in, so I sent Kaleb back to his bed to warm up, while Kendell and I kept fanning.

I didn’t want to know this, but I can tell you that the exact scent of a ruined Christmas is burned wassail. That specific smokiness, built of cinnamon and spices and sweetness but turned bitter and harsh and pungent—I might not ever smell it again. But it is what disappointment smells like.

What I wanted to do was just go back to bed. To actually sleep, and to just not be awake anymore. Feeling that feeling. But Christmas, especially with a nine-year-old, waits for no broken-down mom, so a couple of hours later—none of the teenagers having woken up for the fire—we went downstairs to see what Santa had brought. That is a story I will share tomorrow, but today I just want to share what I will take from that hard Christmas Eve:

Most of that argument really was my fault. I don’t say that as a martyr but because of what I have learned, thinking about it. I worked myself into a sort of mom-frenzy, wanting Christmas to be perfect. Part of this desire was for Kaleb, my last believer who really does deserve a few more years of childhood Christmas mornings. Of believing. But it was also for my Bigs. I wanted them to feel a little bit of the magic they used to feel when they were the believers. And I wanted us to be happy together. Who knows—maybe this is the last Christmas we will all spend together like this. Maybe in another year, Haley will want to do Christmas with friends, or a boyfriend, or something else entirely. Not too shortly, Jake will be graduated from high school and off to college and/or a mission, with Nathan following closely behind. I just, in my deepest part, wanted one more year. Together, with just us. With us happy together. So I built it up and I pushed myself to make it as perfect as I could, and I didn’t sleep enough during the days before, and despite not wanting to hope, I hoped. I let expectation push me, and then a small thing (the couch not being turned around, the floor not being vacuumed) was too much to bear. I snapped and that started the whole cascade of expectations, ending in me almost burning down my house.

So next Christmas, I am not going to do this. Not to myself or anyone else. I’m not going to build up the expectations. I’m not going to cling to wishing things could be like they used to be. I am not going to hope to make it perfect. I’m not going to try to make it perfect. I’m just going to do what I can, without making myself crazy from the pressure. I’m going to look for the small perfect moments—which were also there this Christmas, despite the drama—and savor them, and just breath. Just not build it up so much that I snap because someone didn’t pick up their socks. I’m going to shop earlier and perhaps bake less and definitely ask fewer things of myself, and remember that my deepest desire—the thing I built all of that stack of expectation on—wasn’t really about the kids loving their presents (although that’s part of it). It is really about just wanting us to be together in a good and happy way. I want to seek out the experiences that will help us do just that, and let go, somehow, of all the other desires.

Maybe then the Greek God of Holidays will finally be appeased.

(Coming tomorrow: the really good parts of Christmas 2014, because really: there were some)