stardate 12.1.2020

 Has it been a year already? Or perhaps I should say, WHAT a year it has been? And maybe not in a good way either.  For most of us I think this has been a year of change, but not slow, gradual, itchy change, but painful, raw edged, deep, tearing changes.  2020 has HURT. A younger version of me might have looked on the bright side and said that it can’t possibly get any worse?  But I know better so I am not tempting fate to ask that question.

I have struggled over the last couple of months trying to decide if it was worth blogging this year?  I have fallen short of 25 days more often than not. My children are grown and maybe they are tired of me telling stories about them?  I don’t know, sometimes I just don’t feel like being my cheery, jolly self and maybe it might be easier to lay on the couch under a blanket and just NOT this year.  

Yet here I am, with the blogging, so… I don’t know, I thought I might miss it.  What if something wonderful happened and I didn’t have this venue to share it?  I thought about my annual post about saying their names, and the people that were torn away from me, from all of us, this year, and although they deserve better, the least I can do is say their names.  

I am cognizant of mortality.  I have no immediate plans to depart this mortal coil, but I am acutely aware I have no control over that, and eventually I won’t be here with the blogging and the holiday trash talking.  My mom left behind journals, but they don’t always answer the questions that linger.  At the very least I’ll have this to leave for my boys, to remember I loved to brag on them, and that I loved Christmas.  

So here we are.  Let me catch you up on our main characters- Kathleen and I? Still married.  Paul? Working at Lowes. living at home, and bringing kindness into the world everyday.  Markese graduated high school, woot woot!  He is still with us as he figures out his next move, He had a plan but the pandemic and the quarantine sort of derailed that.  Matthew is also done with high school, and as of October has been living in Tucson, AZ with my sister Jenni and her kids and working at her gluten free bakery, Dedicated. I love those three chicken nuggets so very much. Blah blah blah words, what else? We all had Covid in August.  It was the worst. The Worst. We are all still alive, so clearly we had mild cases despite some of us being a higher risk.  We all have varying lingering issues.  But again, Thankfully we are all still alive.

Ugh, that’s hardly the cheerful welcome to Christmas I was intending.  But here we are.  Something is stirring in the back of my brain.  Some half formulated memory or forgotten thought… something something no, not the one about how home magazines post WW2 shaped how christmas is celebrated in the US and we collectively just think it was always that way, when really it was marketing propaganda, (although that's a big thought right there), but something smaller and quieter, maybe all the bright lights, shiny toys, and loud music is trying to balance the darkness and sadness?  Like a candle in the darkness?

Enough musing for today.  Happy December, because I really need some happy.