My girls woke me this morning, both of them clamoring at the side of my bed, touching my hands, my face, tugging at what scraps of blanket my husband didn't steal. Little Sister had spent her second night in her big girl bed, and she didn't get out of bed "even one time," according to Miss E. But now they are up. They are ready. They are hungry. It's Christmas Eve.
We made pancakes together while listening to holiday music. After a little while, their daddy roused, entering the kitchen holding two dolls that had been deposited in bed to keep him company.
"I woke up with these two, but I swear, it didn't mean anything," he insisted.
I snorted. My girls were oblivious.
While we made banana faces on each pancake and sprinkled them with powdered sugar snow, two delivery men arrived with a new mattress and box spring to replace the broken one we have been sleeping on for more than a year, the mattress that dips in all of the places my body did when carrying first one baby, and then another. I am not sorry to see it go. My legs and belly and hips are changed enough that even my sentimentality will not miss a ruined mattress.
The delivery men commented on how good breakfast smelled, but because my husband thinks giving them pancakes might be weird, I boxed up some cookies instead. Miss E waited patiently to hand them over, returned to her plate once she had done.
"I gave him the cookies and said 'Merry Christmas' and he smiled," she said, mirroring the expression. "I'm a nice girl."
I want to say, "Sometimes."
But I don't.
The day passed quickly after that, with errands and tidying up and naps and meals. I made sure to write what mattered to me in my journal, to remember to be grateful for what I have, to remember that there are good things, sweet, sincere, worthy little things. But even so when we each opened a present before bundling into the car to look at Christmas lights, when we clutched travel cups of homemade hot cocoa, when Little Sister was as agreeable as ever and Miss E dawdled and complained and finally relented, I felt the nag of anxiety.
"I wish my heart didn't feel so heavy," I told my husband. I have told him this before, with different words. I have been telling him this a lot lately.
There have been hard days in the past. Months. Sometimes more. Knowing it's temporary doesn't make it any easier in the moment, and neither does the guilt I feel in not being completely present, in feeling like I am wasting beautiful moments by not being able to truly give in to them. Still, I read this tonight and I am heartened. Because it is in my nature to feel first and write soon after I am here now, sitting beside my Christmas tree. There are too many presents underneath but because I am not supposed to feel sorry about yet more things I am trying not to.
The light is steady.
The light is warm.
The light is mine, and it is my children and in my children, in the love I feel for my husband. It shows us who and how we are, roots us in what we can do together, for each other, for others. I am frightened and I am sad but I am not undone.
I am daily remaking.
It is Christmas Eve and what I have and hope for myself I hope for you, too.