Wishes, Hopes, Blessings: Bring on 2012

Probably no surprise to learn these two are the biggest thing to happen to me this year.

I just tucked Leo and Ellie in and told them I'd "see them next year." Ellie asked me if it was going to be the Best Year Ever. Leo, meanwhile, was ecstatic. He finally gets to switch the month on the calendar over (well, start the new calendar but you know what I mean). He's been insistent the last week or so that it's January and not December. I can only guess that Mrs. L turned the calendar to January before the class left for winter break. In the meantime, Leo and I have actually been arguing about it. That boy is hard-headed.

But I'm a stickler for details and I absolutely do not put a calendar for the new year up before its time. As I mentioned last year, I'm not big on resolutions. I'm more a fan of sweeping quotes that make you feel good and perhaps help you (try) and live your life in a better way (gee, I don't ask for much, do I?). It's hard to top last year's choice for me. It's still one of my all-time favorites and one I turn to when I'm sad or frustrated or when I just need a little encouragement.

I'm doing things a little differently this year.

It's based on an old Irish blessing. It's wishes and hopes and yes, blessings, which I think we can all use a bit more of in these confusing, fragile, wonderful little lives we lead. Yes, it happened to appear in one of the final scenes of the finale of one of my favorite TV shows of all time (I'm sure it didn't hurt that when I first heard it I was about 100 years pregnant and severely hormonal--sobbing doesn't quite cover it).

May the wind be always at your back
And the sunshine warm upon your face
May the rains fall soft upon your field
Until the day we meet again

And the roof that hangs over your head
Find you shelter from the storm
Before the devil knows you're dead
May you be in heaven my friend

May good luck find you at your worst
And back luck lose you at your best
May your days be rich and full of wealth
And your nights be long when you need rest

And the roof that hangs over your head
Find you shelter from the storm
Before the devil knows you're dead
May you be in heaven my friend

And the road may it rise to meet your feet
And be downhill all the way to your door
May the grass below be green and the sky above be blue
May it be so forever more

And the roof that hangs over your head
Find you shelter from the storm
Before the devil knows you're dead
May you be in heaven my friend

Thanks for hanging in there with us this year. I'm excited to see what 2012 has in store for us.

And as I like to say to the kids: "Let's get this party started!"

Resolutions

I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions. I think I last made them sometime in high school. Lose thirty pounds. Run five times a week. Let's just say those didn't stick.

The sentiment of a fresh start is nice though. And who isn't a proponent of self-improvement?

Something Cate posted a few weeks ago has resonated for me since I read it (that's a good thing). I can't think of better resolutions than the ones she shared. By the way this is sometimes attributed to Mother Theresa but apparently it's debatable. The Roches also do a wonderful musical of rendition of this too.

People are often unreasonable, illogical,
and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, People may accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone
could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

This is another one of those passages I would just like to tattoo on my arm so I don't forget it. I just want to live it. This year, I'm really going to try.


It's been quite a memorable final week of 2010 for us, what with that little snow storm. I have a feeling 2011 is going to be quite remarkable too.

From our house to yours, a very, very Happy New Year!

Taking a Breath

And then, the clouds parted.

What a week.

I’ve had a few decent nights of sleep, several cups of coffee and a good amount of wine (not all of those beverages were consumed this morning, don’t worry).

I made scrambled eggs for Leo yesterday morning, even though there really wasn’t time. That night I let Ellie have the stray Valentine’s Day sucker I found in Leo’s backpack even though bedtime was in twenty minutes (is it true about sugar amping them up? I really haven’t decided. The girl sings and dances in her crib most nights until 10:30 p.m. anyway…)

Last night Leo and Ellie built hayrides way beyond bath time. Erin took them upstairs and the living room had that slightly tornado struck look. I quietly loaded all the Little People back to their appropriate places and went upstairs to join the splashing and the bubbles.

This morning (and every morning this week) Ellie and I drove to school with “Baby Beluga” on repeat. “Mommy it’s my favorite!” she says. Really? I hadn’t noticed. She commands me to “Sing Mommy! I will sing with you.” And of course, I do it. Not a bad way to start the day, is it?

I’m trying to relax a little. The heavy thoughts are still there. I’m acknowledging them but not letting them torture me.

Amidst all of this, I stumbled upon a wonderful quote that I have not been able to get out of my mind since I read it (and in this case, that’s a good thing). Can a quote be that powerful? It can be for me. I'm a professed quote junkie. It just fits everything I’ve been feeling lately (with credit to Cate who first introduced me to it). I’m headed to the library this weekend to check out both books by the author, Kate Braestrup. The passage below is from Marriage and Other Acts of Charity.

One hundred percent of marriages end. As long as we're being brutally realistic, however, why not admit the whole truth? One hundred percent of all relationships end: paternal, maternal, spousal, avuncular, friendly, or filial; one way or another, you will lose everyone you love, everyone you cannot bear to lose.

One response to this appalling reality is to posit the existence of heaven, a place where everyone gets to be together again, just like the old days (though, as my friend Moira declares, in heaven her husband is going to fold laundry).

In the meantime, however, what are those of us still here on earth to do in the face of loss? Jesus has some advice: When he is no longer physically present, he tells his disciples, then those who really loved him should go on to love others -- lots of others -- just as they had loved him. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it to me." If you can't, in fact, go on to love others, you never truly loved him to begin with.

But you don't need to take it from Christ. Maude in the movie Harold and Maude says the same thing: Love more. Start with your siblings, or your spouse, or your parents, but don't stop there. Love whoever needs what you have; love the ones who have been placed in your path.

It seems so obvious, doesn't it? It is the kind of knowledge we all should know, and instead even the wisest need reminders. Fortunately, the reminders do come, from sages and prophets and out of the mouths of babes: If your heart breaks, let it break open. Love more.

I'm trying. I'm really trying.

What She Said

I’m reading The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman. It’s a memoir I would have never picked up but there it was, sitting on the "free books" table at work.

And so I began reading it last night, bored and exhausted on the cold, black, commute home.

The book Edelman became famous for is Motherless Daughters, which I started reading while my mother was dying. I sobbed through most of the book, a large portion of which includes women in their own words, talking about losing their mothers, many at very young ages.

I came away from the book mostly feeling like an ass for having such insurmountable, life-changing grief that I lost my mother at the comparatively geriatric age of newly turned 26, when there were so many sad souls out there who lost moms as preteens or teens or worse, just infants or toddlers.

But in Edelman's current book, I came across a passage that hit me to my core and summed up so eloquently what I feel, when I do allow myself to go there, to the grief (which isn’t often and really, who has the time?).

It’s at a point in the story where Edelman is consulting child development books on how to best handle her thee-year-old daughter’s imaginary friend. Edelman’s mother died when she was in high school, so she has no mom to turn to for parenting advice. Hmm. Sounds familiar.

Edelman writes, “I like to think that my mother, as a grandmother, would have been eager to share stories about her own early foibles to save me from making the same mistakes thirty years later, but really, who knows…

Probably my mother, whom I remember as gentle with her opinions, would have stepped back and allowed me to forge my own parenting path. Probably. Maybe? The truth is, I don’t know, and sometimes this not knowing makes me so sad I can forget how to swallow.”

Yes. Oh, yes.

Quote

"Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug."
--Og Mandido

Quote

I just finished Vicki Forman's heartbreaking but exquisite and extremely worthwhile book for any parent, especially of a child with a disability--This Lovely Life. I'm still reeling from it.

I thought this was particularly wonderful:

"It's so difficult to love another person and yourself for what they are and not what they do or who they could be. To stay in this moment and know it in all its pleasure and its pain. The world is a beautiful place. How often do we say this aloud?"

I expect this book will stay with me for some time.

"On St. Patrick’s Day, 18 years ago, I became a mother..."

Just wanted to share a nice piece on parenting from today's parenting blog on nyt.com (It's a great blog if you've never checked it out before).

Click here to read "What a Mother Learns in 18 Years"

Funny

My new favorite quote.

Tina Fey, on having more children, in the January Vanity Fair.

"I feel like the window is closing...Obviously you want the best chance of the baby being healthy, and I think with our life and jobs right as they are at this moment, it doesn't seem possible. It's the year after the baby comes that is like someone hitting you every day in the face with a hammer."

My New Favorite Quote

"Happiness is an inside job."

Normally, so called inspirational quotes inspire me for about a day and then they lose their oomph. But I love this one. I am hoping it has staying power. I just think it's really powerful. No other explanation required.

Another Reason Why I Love The New Yorker

Read this. Please. I confess that I love the show 30 Rock and I do find the actor Alec Baldwin quite funny as the character he plays on the show, but I've never felt strongly about him as an actor. I still don't, after reading this, but this is one of the most well-written, interesting profiles I have ever read. That's one of the things I love about The New Yorker. It can take something you never thought you really cared about-say, Alec Baldwin, or thumbtacks, and make it interesting.

It is about restlessness, creativity, dissatisfaction, loneliness, self-loathing and a reminder that money most definitely does not buy happiness.

Sound depressing? It's actually not. In parts it's actually laugh-out-loud funny. And trust me, it's way better than thumbtacks.

Time.

We went to Mystic, Connecticut for the weekend.

I couldn't help but think about this time last year. It was pretty much exactly a year ago we made the same trip. Stayed at the same fabulous hotel. We had just bought our new car (it was our first road trip in it). We hadn't yet had the pleasure of making a certain Miss Ellie's acquaintance.

Pictured above, last year I sat on this same bench, hugely pregnant with Ellie, while Erin took Leo to the Birds of the Outback exhibit at the aquarium (you can see the bird exhibit in the background of the photo). This year I sat holding in my lap an adorable, almost one-year-old baby! Where does the time go? I mean really. Cause this whole time flies thing is getting ridiculous.

What I will never understand is how certain days just drag. The difficult times, they just seem to take forever. But the good times? They go way too fast. You turn around and it's July 4. And then you close your eyes and it's Thanksgiving. Time is at once eternal and fleeting.

To borrow the words from one of my favorite plays:

"You cannot imagine how time ... can be ... so still. It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it."

To come, more pictures of the trip. And me not being so existential. We had a great time.