Skip to main content

December Thaw

Everyone has been sick here. It feels like it has been weeks since any of us has had a good night’s sleep and it feels like that way probably because it’s true. And this morning I woke up and everyone was all plugged in with the shades drawn, marinating in their own germs and I just snapped. I could not stay inside even one more day: especially not a stunningly gorgeous and unusually warm December one. So I started screaming at everyone that we all needed to get dressed in the next ten minutes because we were going ice skating.

Like, immediately. It was a completely random ice skating emergency.

I have no idea why this break with normal life happened. It’s just that I was so tired of being tired, of laundry and Tylenol and screens and I needed LIFE. Real life with capital letters and the kind that you can fill your lungs with. And everyone was running around looking for pants and Phil was asking if there was time for a shower and I was like, “… a shower?! Are you mad?! We have to go!” He looked genuinely afraid and said he was still going to shower, but really quickly. I silently promised myself right then and there I would never ever forgive him for being so selfish and not understanding my sense of urgency.

I bundled everyone and stuffed us in the car, grabbed the camera and the diaper bag and the keys and slammed the door. Phil asked if they served coffee at the rink. COFFEE? We are having a LIFE emergency cloaked inside an ice skating emergency and he is asking about coffee. Intolerable.

We drove to the outdoor rink silently. Dylan was mad at Ruby and Ruby was mad at Dylan because these are the roles they are fated to play in life. I think the baby was stunned into silence by the speed with which she had been dressed and placed in the car. Particularly since she hadn’t left the house in two weeks. I wasn’t speaking to Phil, obviously. And Phil was not speaking to me, either because he was angry, desperately in need of coffee, too afraid, or some combination of all of the above.

We arrived at the rink and it was already bustling with skaters. Tucked in the middle of the city, they offered free skates and your last chance to hear Christmas music on December 27th. The kids were nervous. Somehow at five and seven we’d never taken them before. And me? Well after all my bluster about needing to go and skate and live and be free and don’t be afraid – TRY! You can do it! I got scared. I remembered I hadn’t been on skates in 20 years and I hid behind the baby and said I clearly couldn’t because I needed to stay with her. Also, somehow the ground was much farther away than it used to be.

So my amazing husband and son and daughter, still wiping the sleep from their eyes, gingerly stepped on to the ice. It had been years for Phil too, but that wasn’t going to stop him. And the kids? Well they fell. They fell a lot. But the most amazing thing happened. They kept getting up. All of those moments when I had lectured them about not quitting and the power of persistence? They were actually listening! Or just really determined to figure out how to skate.

Eventually Phil glided off and I reluctantly stuffed myself into a pair and went out there with them. They took off without me like they’d been skating forever and deep down somewhere inside of me the nine year old version of myself took over and remembered sort of how to do this. Sort of. It wasn’t pretty. If anyone remembers that episode of Friends where Phoebe tries running? It sort of looked like that, but on skates. But it didn’t matter because I skated as if life was actually meant for living and not for scowling and fearing. And there was music and joy and wild laughing as we fell and skated and even briefly they let me hold their hands. It was amazing. Actually it was better than that. It was capital letters AMAZING.

And when we walked back through the park to our car I actually reached out to hold my husband's hand. Right there in the middle of the city, in the middle of winter, an unexpected late December thaw was upon us. With it came the promise of cooler heads and warmer hearts.

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rachel Hollis' Instagram is The Bad Place

  Women, mothers, pull up a chair.  I wish to have a word with you about Rachel Hollis, toxic positivity, and women as a commodity.  Do you know Rachel Hollis? She is a self proclaimed motivational speaker and life coach. She has nearly 2 million followers on Instagram, has published multiple NY Times bestsellers, and runs her own business, has a product line in Target, a clothing line on QVC, her own fitness app, and sells out large convention size stadiums where people pay $40 for a general ticket or up to $200 per person for a VIP pass that will give them things like “digital swag” (those two words together form a new one that has an unclear meaning to me), and video playback on all speakers. Rachel Hollis is a business and the thing that she is selling? Why that’s you. It wasn’t always this way. As one of the few bloggers still kicking around that started out nearly nine years ago, many of us old folks can tell you how quickly the landscape of personal essays and blogging changed.
13 comments
Read more

Distracted Living

Last week, I almost killed my daughter. It started off as really any other week ever does. My husband had been travelling pretty much non-stop for nearly the entire month. Whether we wanted to or not, we were all falling into a fairly regular rhythm without him, at least Monday-Friday. With school and activities and for better or worse, the days seemed to move rather quickly but by evening all three of us were stretched thin. Collectively, we all seemed to peek at maximum crabbiness somewhere around 6pm. It was shortly after this time last Wednesday night that I brought the kids upstairs to help them get washed up for bed. My daughter had an upset stomach for most of the day but I hadn’t thought much of it. She was otherwise happy and playing and generally herself. I did know that she was very tired. Still, we were a good hour and a half from her usual bedtime of around 8pm. I put her in the bath and let it start to fill and left the room to go start the shower for my son. This is
44 comments
Read more

Keeping it Real

I received an email tonight from a fellow mom. Really, it was more of a detailed confession of all of the things she’d done wrong today as a mother. It ended with two simple words: “Parent fail.” Her email both broke my heart and made me super angry because you see, she’s really a terrific mom. But today, she must have used someone else’s measuring stick to make that call. It troubled me in particular because motherhood and parenthood for that matter, is definitely not measured or won or lost on a battle by battle or day to day basis. We’re in this for the long haul people. Did your child watch six hours of TV today or eat pizza for dinner every night this week? What really matters at the end of the day? Let’s just admit my own bias here. If we are measuring this stuff on a day to day basis, I’m assuming I would have done a pretty sub-par job by most people’s standards. I brought my son to the grocery store in a rainbow colored clown wig and pajamas because it was the only way I co
19 comments
Read more