It’s December 6. While I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, I found out that’s the day the Dutch celebrate Christmas. The day I arrived was the day they turned on the Christmas lights. It felt meant to be.
Today, I got updated Ancestry DNA results – that put the Netherlands smack in the center of two overlapping circles, my own Venn Diagram of genealogy. So, I’m celebrating some Dutch heritage, and feeling festive.
This week, I’ve been watching cheesy Christmas movies, eating chocolate-covered raisins, and meditating for 40-50 minutes a day. Last year, I was doing two of those things. I’ll let you guess which ones.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be putting up a series of posts about my trip. I’m feeling an apprehension that I haven’t felt before about posting. Sure, I felt a twinge about the sex books, but this trip feels bigger than that.
I could whitewash it. But as they say, if you’re going to lie, you’d better hope you have a good memory. I don’t, which is why I write everything down. So I’d rather tell the truth than try to keep my story straight.
I went to the Netherlands because what I wanted to do is illegal in the U.S. That makes some people uncomfortable.
I don’t want to put a disclaimer up about my content, but I do want to invite you, if you choose to keep scrolling when those posts start coming, to keep an open heart and to stay curious. It’s been a phrase that has been coming up in my life for 3/4 of a year now – that invitation to stay curious.
It’s a lot easier said than done. I often get judgemental, indignant, and hurt before I remember the part about curiosity. So go ahead and feel those other things, too. But remember the curiosity.
Halloween and I have a difficult past. I lived next door to a church growing up. We were regularly subjected to smashed pumpkins, raw eggs, and sometimes toilet paper.
The year I was seven was the last year I was allowed to Trick or Treat. After that, we didn’t “celebrate” Halloween anymore. We would close all our blinds and hunker down that night. We watched old musicals and ate candy. It became a tradition, and two other families joined us. We’d rotate houses, eventually ending up at the house of the family who lived furthest out in the country, and therefore got the fewest Trick-or-Treaters.
I grew up and had kids. I didn’t think much about Halloween, and my kids were too little to care.
Except One was in Pre-K at a Catholic school. And they did all kinds of seasonal activities. At the time, I was kind of shocked. Why were Christians celebrating Halloween? By then, I thought we didn’t. Among Evangelicals, it had kind of become a thing.
My kid learned what vampires were from that school, and I was pissed. I remember having an uncomfortable conversation with his teacher about it.
We started our own tradition of take-out pizza by candlelight on Halloween. I would watch the Trick-or-Treaters go by. There were lights on up and down the block. It was the only night most of our neighbors came out and talked to each other. I found myself wondering why we were staying out of it.
Last week, I sat down on Monday and wrote a post in a state of overwhelm after a good, but crazy, few days. The busy weekend had merged into a disjointed beginning to the week.
This past weekend was quieter and more reflective, and I wanted to save the good parts for posterity.
The weekend started with a work shift Friday night. The out-going nurse gave me a great report – informative and unapologetic, just the way I like it. Over the course of my shift, I had unexpectedly meaningful conversations with a patient and a doctor, and a pretty deep phone conversation with a patient’s significant other.
I came home feeling grateful for the opportunity to connect with other human beings about the meaning of life and what comes after.
I slept like a rock that Saturday when I got home, until 6 p.m. It was the day before my birthday. When I woke up, I came downstairs, still in a bit of a fog. The kitchen was a hive of activity as my family worked to make my birthday dinner.
This July 4th felt a little icky.
I’ve been thinking about it, trying to nail it down. I know it began with the Election Season last fall and the toxic atmosphere online that caused me to take a step back from the news and finally be ready to quit Facebook.
My big kids are out of town staying with their aunt, and I have been home alone with the Littles. Granted, I was only alone with them for one day, Tuesday, since Monday was a travel day. Today, the Chaplain had off for the holiday and was here to help me out.
But Tuesday was the day I needed to recover from that traveling over the weekend and using a TON of social and emotional capital that I didn’t really have to spend. By the last day of the trip, I was feeling full of the meaning that comes from spending time with people with whom you have shared memories and a certain understanding.
I was also completely exhausted and had lost my voice.
And once we were home, my First Day Back was home alone with the Littles.
(Mother’s Day 2017, the first Mother’s Day since I was a mom that I spent away from my kids, except the one I was pregnant with)
I started to write a post about Mother’s Day and how difficult it can be. It occurred to me as I was writing that there was still time to do something about that.
It has been a long debunked myth that men can read minds. Yet I still remain hopeful in certain situations that this will prove to be untrue.
One of those situations is Mother’s Day.
