Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays! As I sit down to write my annual Christmas letter, it is December 20, 2009, and my house is a wreck, I’m tired from power shopping today, I still have a stash of gifts in the car that I need to bring in the house, and I have yet to wrap any gifts. I have a list of Christmas activities and projects that I want to do with my children now that they’re on break but know that we’re never going to fit it all into 4 short days. I’m tempted to not write this letter at all, but cannot do it because it would break tradition, and to me that’s an important part of Christmas: Tradition.

When we began to decorate the house the morning after Thanksgiving, that’s tradition. And when we went to a Christmas tree farm to cut down a fresh Blue Spruce tree to put up in our living room like we did this year, that’s tradition (although it seems that our “traditional tree” keeps getting larger each year – 7 feet our first year, 10 feet last year, 12 feet this year!). As we bake gingerbread men, snowballs, and sugar cookies in Christmas shapes (that we have partially done this year), that’s tradition. As Christmas approaches and I begin to feel stressed that THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME LEFT! and begin to pull out my hair, that too, unfortunately, is tradition!

Writing Down My Daughter

Having a girl has always been my great dream. I always thought I would have a girl first, a firstborn daughter like I was to my mother. Instead I had a boy. For awhile he was my everything. Then when he was 1 ½ I found out I was pregnant again. My hopes for a girl returned. One of each and our family would be complete, I thought. But, as fate dictated, I had another boy. Initially I was disappointed but soon the overwhelming task of taking care of two children under the age of 2 ½ buried my desire for a girl.

Over the years I’ve always answered the question whether we were going to have another child and try for a girl with an emphatic “No!” My husband and I like the one child per adult ratio. But this year when I turned 40 something happened. My body began to fail me. I was plagued with illness, fatigue, irregular menstrual cycles, intense PMS, and depression. I realized that I was entering perimenopause, the time when the body prepares for the cessation of menses. The time when fertility slows down and then stops.

I felt out of touch with myself and my body. I knew something was amiss but just couldn’t put my finger on it. The last four years of mothering had stomped on and trampled over the spark that was me. I felt like there was a foreigner stationed in my body and somewhere inside was a vibrant, energetic being waiting to be remembered. Ever since my 40^th birthday lost dreams and desires had come knocking on my door demanding to be let out.