Picture it, if you will, Josh Groban’s “O Holy Night” softly
streaming through the speakers on a crisp morning. This invokes feelings of peace and joy and
happiness, right? Yes, unless it is
playing in my tiny Prius as three people search, scramble and throw things
around looking for a pen while yelling at each other about not being
prepared. I needed a pen to write a note
for tutorials on the back of the HEB receipt we found stuck to the floor of the
car and neither child had a pen or pencil in their enormous, voluminous
backpacks. They tried to turn it on me
but I quickly deflected all blame and responsibility and ruined the boy’s life
by actually walking him into middle school and asking the first person I saw
for a pen.
This is going to be my Christmas season this year: soft
rumblings of holiday bliss in the background drowned out by the craziness of
our lives. I usually write something
about pausing to enjoy the season or not getting caught up in the crazy but I
am fully onboard the crazy train and I say let it rip! Basketball games and gifts to get each week
before the games? Sure, sign me up and
don’t let me know until the night before. Winter Concerts where kids need to be there
ten minutes before I get home from work?
Totally doable! Cookies for this,
beverages for that and White Elephant gifts too? God bless us, every one.
This is just the way life is this year and it would be silly
to think that the magic of Christmas would slow things down. I am a little sad that the busyness is
creating havoc with some of our normal traditions, but I think that is part of
the kids growing up and turning our lives into a whirlwind. During one of my unemployed years, I crafted
an advent calendar out of trees made from colored Christmas paper and not only
did it actually turn out, the kids loved it. I know they love it and while I
know that, I forgot to buy candy to put under the trees until December 2nd. The candy I bought didn’t fit under the trees
and while trying to make it fit and doing homework with the boy and putting
together lunches for the next day, I gave up.
I knocked all the little trees over, piled the candy in the middle and
considered it done. Maybe I will buy one
of the nicely packaged ones from Starbucks and let my children feel the love
from a giant corporation this holiday season.
 |
| Timber!!! |
I drank so much
coffee yesterday my heart hurt, but in kind of a good way, like it was finally
keeping up with my brain. Work is just
as crazy as everyone is trying to cram the last few weeks of the semester in. One of the things I do here at work is
personally visit students in class with very overdue books. They love (?) the personal attention and it
helps me put a face with a name. Yesterday,
as I was running around to classes trying to hunt down overdue books, I found a
kid lying unconscious in the stairwell. It
almost didn’t surprise me. Later on this
same day, a teacher yelled out to me as I was once again on the hunt that
someone in her class was having a seizure and could I help? Of course I can help. Thinking about this later I think that all
the busyness of our lives has brought me to the realization that everything and
anything is going to happen every second of the day. I don’t have to be prepared for it; I just
have to go with it. I am going to apply
this to the Christmas season too. I
might not be able to stop and do all the tiny things that make used to make it
enjoyable, but I can still enjoy the blur of lights as I run along.
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