![\"\"](\"https:\/\/askmrsmom.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Xmas-Blues-11-241x300.jpg\" "\\"Xmas")
<\/a>Since I wrote last, I tried my best to keep my Blueberry Christmas vow. \u00a0I let my grandson trim the tree\u00a0with\u00a0me and didn’t move the ornaments he placed. Not even secretly after he was in bed. \u00a0Huge advancement in fighting my OCD perfectionism. \u00a0I started Christmas shopping the week before Christmas and with the help of my best friend Amazon, everyone had a present wrapped and under the tree by the 23rd. \u00a0A land speed record for me.<\/p>\nI had my annual Christmas Eve gathering and didn’t panic when it started at five and all \u00a0the food was not on the table and extra hands in the kitchen had not arrived. Overall, I hung in there, foot in cast and all, and we had a great holiday.<\/p>\n
But in the midst of the holiday festivities, I had a nagging, uncomfortable aching behind my smiles and laughter. \u00a0It started when my\u00a0mother\u00a0told me a childhood friend’s twenty-five-year-old son had been killed in a motorcycle accident in LA, the day before Thanksgiving. \u00a0The vision of their perfect child sliding under a city bus replayed in my mind, especially late at night. With my son’s battle with cancer, the reality of someone experiencing what I fear most pushes my worst\u00a0nightmare\u00a0to the forefront of my mind rather than staying neatly tucked in the\u00a0back\u00a0behind my obsession\u00a0with death by tornado where I like to keep it hidden.<\/p>\n
The news of the December 14\u00a0shooting in Connecticut was the icing on my sad sack cake. Watching the press coverage of all those faces of anguish and horror and shock sent me back to, May 20, 1988, when a babysitter named Laurie Dann entered my daughter’s second grade classroom and shot five children, leaving one dead. For one of the longest hours in my life, \u00a0I didn’t know if my little girl was\u00a0dead\u00a0or alive. Her school shooting, too, was a\u00a0Friday. \u00a0Her school was also entered around 9:30 AM. I couldn’t look at those innocent faces. The parents’ twisted expressions of unthinkable grief. \u00a0I am haunted by their unopened presents under the tree and the hopes they had for their babies. A town forever changed. Lives that will have a\u00a0gaping\u00a0hole in every\u00a0family\u00a0portrait. Every\u00a0uncelebrated\u00a0birthday.<\/p>\n
Yearning for a quiet place to take a deep breath, sit with a cup of morning tea, I found I had no place to do it. \u00a0I stopped seeing my house as a happy, joy-filled place full of giggles and wonder. \u00a0Instead it felt like a wild, jumbled jungle of two-year-old toys, two-year-old pitter patter, two-year-old constant chatter, six-month-old smiles and spit up and “cry it out” at bedtime. \u00a0Booster seats and potty seats left me looking for my seat.<\/p>\n
Yes, being in the midst of the young parent days I have already lived through is at times exhausting. But more, it’s a constant reminder of the passage of time. In a blink, my days of dry Cheerios on a high chair tray, haul and drag it all to Grammy’s\u00a0and back, Aunt Ruth’s for the State Fair, \u00a0August beach vacations, diapers, big wheels– they are all gone. \u00a0And I am face to face with the reality of fewer years to live than I have lived.<\/div>\n
In my blue funk of looking back with some regrets and feeling unsettled in\u00a0my present, I even forgot to pull out our 60-year-old copy of\u00a0
The Night Before Christmas<\/em>\u00a0this year. And we have a child in the house to be awed by it.<\/div>\nSo as you can probably tell, I’ve been in a low place. \u00a0 A combo\u00a0 dose of my mom’s side of the\u00a0family’s\u00a0over-sentimentality gene and some heavier winter blues. Perhaps I am headed for some Prozac. Or “reboot” therapy.<\/div>\n
Or both.<\/div>\n
But more likely, I will pull\u00a0myself\u00a0up by the bootstraps, as my mother used to say.<\/div>\n
That is if I can find them. \u00a0Whatever bootstraps are.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since I wrote last, I tried my best to keep my Blueberry Christmas vow. \u00a0I let my grandson trim the tree\u00a0with\u00a0me and didn’t move the ornaments he placed. Not even secretly after he was in bed. \u00a0Huge advancement in fighting my OCD perfectionism. \u00a0I started Christmas shopping the week before Christmas and with the …<\/p>\n
>>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Blues - askmsmom.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/askmrsmom.com\/?p=1270\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Blues - askmsmom.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\" Since I wrote last, I tried my best to keep my Blueberry Christmas vow. \u00a0I let my grandson trim the tree\u00a0with\u00a0me and didn’t move the ornaments he placed. 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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/askmrsmom.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Xmas-Blues-11.jpg\" "\\"Xmas")
<\/a>Since I wrote last, I tried my best to keep my Blueberry Christmas vow. \u00a0I let my grandson trim the tree\u00a0with\u00a0me and didn’t move the ornaments he placed. Not even secretly after he was in bed. \u00a0Huge advancement in fighting my OCD perfectionism. \u00a0I started Christmas shopping the week before Christmas and with the help of my best friend Amazon, everyone had a present wrapped and under the tree by the 23rd. \u00a0A land speed record for me.<\/p>\n