Bliss

A few weeks ago, I posted about how I’d been working at making friends with Winter this year.  It’s been going well overall, I think.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time outdoors every day, whatever the weather, and I’ve cultivated some winter-appreciation activities indoors and out.

I just have to say it now, though: I’m done.

Really.  Stick a fork in me.

Winter, I am so over you.  And you know what?

It’s not me.  It’s you.  You’re one cold, relentless bastard.  L.L. Bean recently notified me that the snowshoes I have on backorder are expected to ship for delivery in June, and here’s the thing: I actually believe it may still be snowing then.  You see what you’ve done to my hope, Winter, you heartless S.O.B.?

We can’t go on like this.  I need a little “me” time.  A little space and distance.  A little goddamned Vitamin D.

Here’s the deal: I’ve booked a flight to Miami and am looking forward to some sun and fun with a girlfriend.  In the meantime, I am shamelessly dreaming of Summer.  That’s right.  Summer’s my favorite, and there’s no sense denying it any more.

Hell, there are pictures that absolutely make me drool.  My god, the memories…

First, there’s the way summer days evolve into summer nights:

There are the modes of transportation:

There’s the food and drink:

There’s Fourth of July:

There are lush gardens and flowers for clipping:

Even the storms are pretty:

So, though there is more snow falling outside right now, I will not grumble.  I will simply snuggle in to dream of Summer days.  You can’t steal my bliss, Winter.  You’ll run out of bluster soon, you cold, hard meanie, and in time I will once again feel like this:

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Happy

The Boy is home from college.  This is as it should be, since the semester has ended and the holidays are upon us.

What isn’t as it should be?

He’s not going back.

He informed me of his decision just a few weeks ago.  “I’m not sure what my path is,” he told me, “but I’m sure this isn’t it.”

This isn’t it?

This path I’d worked my tail off for eighteen years to afford him - he was just going to meander off it after one semester?  Abandon my hopes and dreams for him?  Turn me into some statistic about how single mothers fail their kids?

Because it was all about me, right?

I told him I felt he was making a mistake, that he ought to just tough it out through the spring semester and see if he felt differently.  But I also silently owned up to the fact that this was opening old wounds for me, and I was going to have to work to keep from imposing my issues on him.

See, I never finished college.  The full story is one for a book.  The Reader’s Digest version is this: I was unhappy at one school, and when I found myself in a downward spiral of Girl, Interrupted proportions, I decided transferring to another school would be the answer to my problems.  Then I decided to defer my enrollment and work for a while.  One year became two, two became three.  I found myself married and pregnant and divorced (more or less in that order).  I chipped away at my degree over the years, but as a single mom working full time and attending night school, I had more than a few moments where I wanted to travel through time and throttle my eighteen-year-old self.

Which, I suppose, is why I wanted to throttle my kid when he dropped his bombshell.  I mean, didn’t he get it?  I thought of all the years I’d have given anything to go back to the days of having a dorm room and a work-study job and enviably few responsibilities.  Didn’t he understand how good he had it?  Couldn’t he learn from my mistakes?

Of course he couldn’t.  None of us ever does.

A few of my friends suggested that I tell The Boy he had to stay at school.  That coming home wasn’t an option.

Ha!

Have you met my kid?

Pretty much since conception, he’s upended my every plan.  My pregnancy (which I’d intended to spend quilting cute things for his nursery) was miserable, thanks to Hyperemesis Gravidarum - you know, the brutal 24-hour-a-day variety of “morning sickness” that everyone now cares about because Kate Middleton suffered it.  And those dreams I had of singing lullabies to a sweet, cooing infant or writing for hours while he napped?  Not a chance.  My baby was colicky for a full six months, which basically meant that he never slept more than two hours at a stretch, and when he was awake he was often screaming inconsolably.  I kept waiting for his little head to spin around like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist.  And though the colic ultimately passed, his defiance of norms became his defining trait throughout childhood and into adolescence.  ‘Strong-willed’ would be the kind term.

The funny thing, though?  Things have a way of working out for The Boy.  I’ve learned - time and time again - not to sweat his quirks.  He can be frustrating as hell, but he’s also smart and funny and has a better sense of self than anyone I’ve ever met.  And while there may have been times when I wished I’d made better choices when I was eighteen, this much I cannot ignore: the path I took brought this awesome kid into my life, and being his mom has given me more joy than I can quantify.  There’s a lesson in that.

As it turns out, The Boy has a fairly concrete plan for his schooling: spring semester at community college, then transferring to an in-state school for the fall.  He’s done the work to make the shift.  He seems happy.  Truly happy.

And I can’t think of anything I would rather have my son be.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

The Boy and I meet.  And yes, childbirth is exhausting and makes for bad hair.

My little buddy.  I think he’s humoring me.  Do you know how much I love to play in sand?

He hated that buzz cut.  I was not allowed to do that to him ever again.

We’ve got sweet dance moves.  Probably thanks to all those times we watched Napoleon Dynamite.

I am permitted only one selfie per road trip.  Even though he does stuff like shoving a cheeseburger into his face at the last second.

Home for the Hollidays

Just five years ago, The Ex (then my boyfriend of a few years) and I were heading to a Christmas party.  He picked me up at my apartment. It was the place I’d called home for nearly seven years, and it was serving as our home base while we worked on the major renovation of the house we’d purchased up the road a few months prior.

“I’ve almost got the fireplace finished,” he told me as he helped me into his truck.  “Want to see?”

I did.

He drove the very short distance - five houses or so - to the old beach cottage that was to be our new home.  As the entire interior was a construction zone, I’d placed a small Christmas tree out on the deck, wrapping it in colored lights.  Snow had begun to fall that evening, and when we pulled into the driveway, I noted how dreamy it looked as it blanketed our little outdoor tree thinly in white.

I followed him into the house, noticing immediately that something was different.  Though gutted to the frame and littered with construction debris, our house somehow flickered with golden light.  The fireplace had once been a horrific throwback to the 1970’s: bright red brick with black grout.  Now, though, it was a fieldstone beauty - much like the one in my apartment, which I loved - and a fire glowed warmly within.

I was awestruck.  Earlier in the day, he and I had attempted to affix the new stones to the bare concrete face with little success; we’d posed as if in a strange game of Twister, our hands and feet pressing stones into cement and waiting for them to take.  More than once, we’d thought we had things set only to hear the disheartening crash of an avalanche as we walked away.

Now, though, every stone was in place.  A granite mantlepiece finished it all; I hadn’t even realized he had that beautiful bit of stone cut and ready to install.  While I tried to take it all in, he took me by both hands in front of the blaze at the hearth.

He proposed.

With snow falling on the small, brightly-lit Christmas tree outside and fire illuminating the mess and the progress inside, he put a diamond ring on my finger and asked me to be his wife.

It was the most romantic moment of my life.

In time, the construction zone morphed into our home.  I reveled in moving from finishing sheetrock to painting to decorating.  And when Christmas rolled around again, I loved hanging stockings on the mantelpiece.  My heart was in that house, and the hearth seemed the heart of the home.

Now, as my regular readers know, the man who gave me that romantic moment on a snowy night is not my boyfriend, my fiance, or even my husband - he is The Ex.  Our marriage was brief.  Our divorce was finalized earlier this year. 

This year, Thanksgiving and the subsequent plunge into the Christmas season have been bittersweet.  The romance of that lovely wedding proposal blinded me to myriad truths I’ve since faced.  I understand that he and I are better off apart. 

Still, it’s an interesting thing to have no real home at a time of year when the whole world seems focused on home and hearth.  From bare bones to sheetrock to creature comforts, I worked so hard to make that house our home.  Now there is no “us,” and that house is no longer my home.

This weekend, I decorated my tiny, temporary apartment for the holidays.  Far from the full day my house used to claim, this took less than an hour.  I saw The Ex at the dog beach and learned that he’d put up the Christmas tree.  I bit my tongue and did not ask about other things: the stockings and mantlepiece garland, the lights on the blue spruce planted in my father’s memory, the candles at the windows.

It is not my place even to ask anymore.

Now?

I am finding my way forward.  I am working on opening my heart again.  I am learning to trust those who truly deserve it.  I believe I am deserving of love - real, true, boundless love - and I am grateful for the chance to find it.

Memories may make some aspects of Christmas difficult this year, but I think the best I can do is be appreciative of all the beautiful moments in the midst of the difficulties - much like the fire and the proposal amidst the construction debris.

This holiday season, I wish The Ex peace, joy, and love.

I wish it for myself, too.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Beach house Christmas

'Tis the season

The pups approve

Hung by the chimney with care

Dad’s tree

This year: a tiny ‘tree’ for a tiny apartment

The tree on my neighbor’s dock makes me smile