Chewy Feet

It came around again.

That’s what happens when twelve calendar months fly by. Once again it’s the anniversary of my amputation surgery. A day I’ll never forget. A day I dreamed about for years, even decades. A day I did years of research about, so I would have no regrets.

And it worked. Not only do I have no regrets, I’m still just as happy with my new foot, as ecstatic as the day I got it.

January 12th. It’s my ‘other’ birthday. The day I got to start over. I had a lot of trouble finding a doctor who would do the surgery for me. It was a ‘healthy’ foot, after all…no disease, no imminent threat to my health…just a serious threat to my long term mobility, which I guess doesn’t count in orthopedic medicine.

But I finally found my man. He was skeptical, but willing. He was brave enough to trust that I wouldn’t sue him, if I found that having one foot missing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

So every year, on January 12th, I send him another thank you card. In it I tell him all the things I’ve been able to do that year, because he believed in me. Sometimes I send him pictures, to prove my stories. I don’t want him to ever forget how important he was in my story.

Most years I try to commemorate in some way. It’s a birthday, in a sense, and should be celebrated. But I don’t want to bore my kids to death, since to them it’s ‘just mom’s foot’. So I try to make it fun. In past years we’ve had feet shaped cake or a huge foot shaped cookie. Last year we made regular cupcakes, with the outline of feet on them. My kids joked that the ones I messed up on were my ‘old’ deformed foot. We ate them after dinner and no one complained about having extra treats that day.

This year life was crazier than usual on January 12th. One of my four was in Texas, visiting friends. One had a racquetball court reserved and wouldn’t be home until late. My oldest son and youngest son were all we had left. And it was the night of the big Middle School Open House. That had to be a higher priority than my foot celebration.



But after the Open House, my youngest wanted to celebrate the night by going to McDonalds. We realized we’d never been inside our local McDonalds since we moved here, six months ago, and he had gift cards he’d gotten in his birthday card in October. They were burning a hole in his pocket.

So we went to visit the Golden Arches. It was past eight, in the evening, so we practically had the place to ourselves. My oldest son and I had discussed the occasion of my foot birthday, as we’d run errands, earlier in the day. He brought up the topic, as we sat around the table, eating our fries. Then he decided we should have a contest.

To commemorate the day, we should do something new. Like see who could carve a regular, flat McDonalds burger into the best rendition of mom’s foot. He’s a teenager, and this seemed like a very logical way to make the night special.

Each boy was given one burger and one plastic knife. They brainstormed for a few minutes, then dove in. This is what one of them came up with (blood and all, since it was ‘post surgery’). I won’t tell you which one, so I don’t alter the judging.



This is what the other came up with (turn your head to the right, the picture is sideways). He nearly perfected the large humped big toe I used to have. Both are pretty impressive, I think, considering the medium and available tools.



And then, the ultimate winner emerged.

“Wait! Wait!”, my oldest son proclaimed, waving the plastic knife in the air, “I’ve got one more entry! Wait, just a second…”

He proceeded to tear open a packet of artificial sweetener and make a pile on the tray. Then he took some small pieces of straw wrapper and curled them into tight little knots. Once he placed the knots strategically in the middle of the powdery pile, he announced, “There! That’s PERFECT! I WIN!”

It took just a few minutes before we all got it.

But in fact, my big boy had indeed won the challenge. Because the reality is, my foot was taken from that hospital room, to a mortuary, and cremated on January 12, 2003. It now sits in a velvet box in my closet. Some day soon I will throw those ashes off a beautiful mountainside, in a grand gesture to say goodbye to my old life and welcome in my new one.

But for now it’s a pile of ashes. And it looks a lot like the pile of Sweet N Low with wrapper bits sprinkled throughout. We know. We’ve looked in that velvet box.



Another year has flown by. Hopefully, and almost definitely, this will be the year the book about my journey to mobility will be published, and available to give to others who might be facing some hard life choices. And before I know it, another January will be rolling around. We’ll find a new way to celebrate, I’m sure.

But something else I’m sure about - it will, without a doubt, not ever be as creative and ketchup covered, as our celebration in January of 2012.

Progress

This is a picture of a McDonalds that sits across the parking lot from one of the two grocery stores in my town. It’s obviously seen better days. I have no idea why it’s being torn down, or what exciting business might be built in its place. But the first time I drove by it, as the back hoe began its work, I smiled. It’s a good sign to me.

I have nothing against Ronald’s place. We don’t go there very often, but I will boldly admit I do enjoy his food every now and then, especially his amazing French fries. But seeing his building falling to the ground made me happy because it’s a step in the process of feeling at home in my new hometown.

When we first drove around Evergreen, a year ago, we took note of where the groceries stores were, which fast food places existed in our mountain town (hint: not many), where I could find the local post office, and which roads led to the ski resorts. I did the mental mapping I do every time we move. Where will I go to run my daily errands, and which roads will I use to attend school functions?

This very McDonalds went on my mental map, mainly because it had a Red Box machine sitting out front, and it’s currently our favorite way to rent new movies.

Then autumn came, and we slowly but surely moved here. First the boys and Jeff, then I joined them. In December our daughter made the trek across the country, and we all officially became Colorado residents.

I’m still at the place where I rarely see someone I know in the grocery store. Our downstairs neighbor works at the floral department, so I sometimes get a wave from her. I often see people I think I know, because they remind me of someone I knew in New York, or Utah, or Missouri…but it’s never ‘them’. The reality is, I know about six people in our entire small town (not counting the checkout clerks, who I eagerly chat with every single week).

Meanwhile, I notice the other shoppers around me, greeting each other and giving hugs or handshakes, as they exclaim, ‘Hey there! It’s been a while since I’ve seen you!” I know someday I’ll have my first moment, my first, ‘Hey, I know you!’ moment as my cart crosses paths with a familiar face.

But the McDonalds being torn down, to be replaced by another building, gives me hope. Someday, maybe a year from now, maybe five, someone will ask for directions, and I’ll be able to say, “it’s down there, you know, by where the McDonalds used to be…” I’ll be an old timer. I’ll be a person who has watched our town grow and change. I’ll have memories of things that used to be here, but were replaced by other things.

Just this week I answered an ad from the free section of our local Craig’s List. I scored a huge tub of hypoallergenic (expensive!)laundry detergent that gave the woman’s daughter a rash. In the course of our meeting, we discovered our sons go to the same school, and are in the same class. In fact, my son’s best friend has a huge crush on this woman’s daughter.

We chatted about teenagers and shared some stories about our lives, and I now look forward to seeing her in the grocery store.
Who knows? Maybe she’ll be my first grocery store run in. I’ll come around the end of an aisle and realize I recognize someone.

Then I’ll be the one who pulls my cart to the side and says, “Hey! I know you!”


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Why He's Home

The end of January is coming at us like a brisk winter wind. I’m supposed to be taking my college boy back to the dorm. In fact, all of his besties from his first semester of dorm life have already returned. They text him like crazy, with messages along the lines of ‘we miss you, bro!’ (if that’s even the current lingo).

But my boy is still here, crammed into this tiny condo with us. He’s had a change of plans and suddenly it meant I was blessed with a few extra months in his company.

If you’ve gotten lost in the saga of our life this past year, I don’t blame you. I feel like I need Cliff Notes myself, just to remember the craziness we lived through in 2011. But here’s the nutshell (granted, the biggest nut you can think of).

Michael has always loved planes. His bedroom walls and bookcases were filled with posters and books about planes, from every war and every country. He also loves running, especially in the woods. He endured the two other track seasons, so he could be in shape for the only one that mattered, cross country.

He loves math and science (and hates English, books, reading…all the things his mom enjoys). As a child he was constantly figuring things out, taking things apart, putting them back together. When he was seven or eight, he walked through the kitchen and said, ‘Mom, you’re putting the dishes in wrong.’ At a glance, he could see that the way I loaded the plates in the dishwasher was ‘backwards’ from what the designers intended. I rarely load the dishwasher these days, without thinking about that moment. The moment I knew for sure my boy had an engineer’s brain.

It was logical that he would go to school for something plane related. He also wanted, very badly, to get back to that perfect snow in Utah, the place where he’d learned to ski and fell in love with the powder . Soon he found out that one of the top aviation programs in the country was at Westminster College, in Salt Lake City. He had no ‘second choice’, when he applied to colleges. It was Westminster, and their amazing flight program, or nothing.

He was also sure that he wanted to fly in the military. Eventually he might settle for commercial planes, but all the exciting flying happens in the armed forces. We spent a year doing everything necessary to apply for an ROTC scholarship, with no luck. The program has become extremely desired, as college tuitions rise, and the selection process has become very tight.

When the money didn’t come in for his freshman year, but his desire was stronger than ever, we made a deal with him. We’d help him pay for the first year, with the understanding that he’d do everything he could to get the 3 year ROTC scholarship to cover the rest. That one year would cost us the equivalent of four years at our local state school.

We drove him to Utah in early August, and checked him in. He spent the next four months making lifetime friends, the kind you can only create in a dorm situation. As he settled into college, the rest of his family slowly but surely moved from New York to Colorado. It was nice to have him only a day’s drive away, when the Thanksgiving holiday rolled around.

While we were distracted with a million move related details, Michael was doing research. Not just school research (drat, those stupid English papers!), but life plans research. He was talking to recruiters, professors (many who were pilots), and school guidance counselors. He started to realize he needed a new plan for the next four years.

With the military being in a wave of cut backs, those scholarships are becoming more and more rare, especially if you went to an expensive, private school. Even if he finished his four years of college, with an exclusive aviation degree, there were no guarantees he would be able to get a spot in flight school in the military. Some years there are very few openings and you take what you can get. We heard this from so many sources that we started to believe it.

So, as I spent a harried week in NY, organizing the moving truck logistics, trying to get our old house’s heater to turn on before the pipes froze, and doing house sales negotiations over the phone with an assortment of realtors and attorneys, my boy called me from school.

He had changed his life plan and wanted my advice. Because, you know, I had nothing else going on…

Long story short, here’s his new plan. He’s jumping straight into the military. In May he’ll report to boot camp, then one of the longest training programs they have, in the EOD field (explosives). He’ll give them four years. In those four years he’ll get valuable training (which will use his incredible math and science skills, which pleases his mother), then possibly move to a flight related job when the openings come up.

At that point, four years from now, he can choose to stay in the military, if the EOD training agrees with him as much as I think it will, or he finds a flight path that suits him. Or he can choose to get out, and go back to that flight degree, this time with everything paid for. Either way, if he wants, he can be in his mid 20s, with a pilot’s license, and a wide variety of career options.

It was hard to swallow, at first. Especially as I sat in the middle of the chaos of the family relocation. We worked so long and hard to get him into the program and Westminster, and it’s an amazing school. But once we talked about it more, and I talked to the recruiter more, it all did seem to make a lot more sense.

Yes, I worry about his safety. Not only is he signing up for training that involves explosives (you know, stuff that blows up…) but he could very likely be sent overseas, where the locals might not treasure his life as much as his mama does.

But he’s excited. He is confident in his choices, and pumped about his future. Even as hard as it is to see his friends go back to that party- central dorm room without him, he’s stayed focused. He runs every day and lifts weights, to be ready for his next step.

He can’t wait to see other parts of the world, and be that guy who knows which wire you cut when there’s ten seconds before the bomb goes off (is it the red one or the blue one?...I always forget…)

And now that I’ve had some time to digest the new plan, I see other benefits to this timing. His younger brothers have now gone back to school. During the days it’s just me and him, and his older sister who is hunting for a job. We get to hang out, run errands together, and share life stories. I’m loving it.

And, another bonus. This mountain town we’ve moved to is not my son’s hometown. His high school memories will always reside in New York, and other school memories are scattered through the various states we’ve called home. Evergreen Colorado is only a place he visited with his family, back in April, as we took an early house hunting trip.

But now he’s having time to explore this beautiful town. He’s running her trails and running mom’s errands, learning where to find the nearest Red Box and groceries. Every day that passes, he builds more memories here, and it becomes a bigger part of him. I want him to go out into the world with a sense of ‘home’. If he didn’t have these four months, with nothing but time to explore, it would have taken a lot of school breaks and holidays to finally feel like he belonged here.

So that’s why my son is still in my household. It’s why he still shows up in pictures I post on Facebook, when all of my friend’s college aged kids have disappeared from their shots of daily life.

It’s not a life change I saw coming, just a year ago, but neither is our current family life situation. A lot can change in a year. But there’s nothing that says unexpected change can’t end up being a good thing. A new path. New opportunities. Hey, who knows where life will find us just twelve months from now.

I guess we’ll just have to keep our minds open, and patiently wait and see.


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The Book Deal

For most of my life I dreamed of getting rid of my left foot. When I was ten, it started twisting and turning into something that embarrassed me, scared me, and eventually had the power to shape my self esteem and character. I spent a good part of my life trying to hide it. I spent many weeks on crutches, after repeated surgeries did nothing to change it. It wasn’t until I was tucked safely into an encouraging marriage, to a man who didn’t care about my foot, but instead about my heart, that I was able to exhale, and stop letting it rule my life.

Once I got brave enough to get rid of it, eight years ago, I never looked back. Through all the ups and downs (mostly ups) that have come with adjusting to a metal leg, I have never, for one micro second, wished I had my old foot back. My worst day on this new leg is still a hundred times better than the best day on my old flesh and bone limb.

I have always loved to write, and when the kids were little I poured that hobby into writing essays and stories. Once I was propped up on our king sized bed, waiting for amputation stitches to heal, it suddenly occurred to me that the journey to becoming an amputee might be something good to write about. It actually happened something like this (an excerpt from the first chapter of my book):

We were laying in bed, watching TV, the cat curled up in the place where my calf would have been, if I had a lower left leg. The title amputee was still new and the results of my radical decision still up for grabs.

"I really think I want to write about this," I said to my life mate, out of the blue.

"Write about what?"

He could not connect my comment to the episode of the Daily Show that blared across the room.

"My surgery. My decision. The reason I had it cut off."

"Oh." He turned to face me. "Yeah, that'd be good. Write it all out. Get down the details. Tell your story."

His encouragement made the wheels of composition turn in my brain.

"But where do I start? Last year? The year before that? When we first began letting our family know I was choosing to lose a limb?"

He was quiet, reflective. Jon Stewart had been muted and my man was fully engaged in this new conversation.

"No…you need to start at the beginning. The very beginning. There's no other way to do it."

"But why?" It seemed excessive, vain.

"Well, because….because for someone to understand how you could be happy to lose a leg, they have to see the sadness that came before. To understand why a grown woman would beg a doctor to perform such a drastic surgery they first have to see the little girl who hid on the playground and forgot how to run. They first have to witness the life you had, the years you had, with a limb you grew to hate."

His answer made me silent. He was right. I had to start at the beginning. There was no other place to start. To understand the decision I made at age 37 you first have to understand who I was at age five.

And so I dove in. So much of my decision came from the events in life that shape who you are. I was raised in a big foster family, which made our natural family of seven constantly in a state of super sized flux. I noticed my foot starting to grow wrong, but hated bothering my overworked parents about it, knowing they had bigger things on their plates.

I hung out in the middle of the commotion, happy to fly under the radar, as I silently questioned and feared what that twisting foot meant for my future.

Years of doctors visits and quizzing any medical professional I could, about the idea of cutting it off and starting over, only to be told it was a foot with a pulse (not diseased) so amputation would never be an option, beat down my resolve.

Then marriage came, to the first man I had ever shown my naked foot (and he valiantly said, “What’s the big deal again?...”) and children arrived. More medical issues arose, this time not concerning me, but my mother and then my newborn son. I learned to step up, and fight for medical answers. I learned that doctors are just people. Many of them are heroes, but many of them are misinformed. It was up to me to decide my own fate, when it came to my wayward foot.

Finally, through a series of other events, and eventual access to a bigger and bigger internet world, I decided to have that surgery, that so many doctors had told me would never be possible.

And I love my new leg. I love my new options. I love sharing my story. It’s about much more than a leg that I lost. It’s about never giving up, on getting the life you really want. For some people it might mean losing that extra weight. For some it might mean working on the quality of their marriage. For me, it meant losing a limb.

It was scary. But it was so worth it, in the end.

I wrote the bulk of the manuscript for my book, that I’m calling “Just One Foot: How Amputation Cured My Disability”, then spent months researching how to get it published. This was over five years ago, when the publishing industry was just starting to wobble. E books were coming on the market, and everyone was scrambling, to figure out what it meant to traditional books.

I got many nibbles, many notes of encouragement from publishers, and lots of flat out rejections, but no takers. Life picked up in intensity, and the manuscript was buried in the back files of my computer for the past couple of years.

Then, for some reason, in the middle of this chaotic move from NY to Colorado, I pulled out my files again. I found a great memoir on the new book shelf of our local library that inspired me. I wrote the author and told her I loved her book, but that something about it had also inspired me to pull out my old files.

She kindly replied to my email (as many of my favorite authors do, something I’ll always be grateful for) and encouraged me in my own writing. She also shared with me that she had self published her book, then was picked up by a traditional publisher.

I’ve toyed with self publishing in the past. The main reason I’d dragged my feet about doing it myself, was the respect factor. I was in a wonderful writers group in NY, filled with published writers, and it just seemed like, to be picked up by a traditional publisher was the standard to meet. It meant your work was worthy and edited well. It meant it ‘deserved’ to be in print.

But in the past few years I’ve heard more and more stories that contradict that advice. Some really great books have been self published. My book can be a great book, without a traditional publisher, but it’s just up to me to make sure it’s right. The editing needs to be spotless. The layout needs to be professional. The cover needs to be perfect. And at that point, what’s the harm in getting it out there ‘myself’?

I’ve now decided I’ve reached the point where I’d rather have it out there, than wait for the stars to align, and have the Manhattan guys calling my number. I’d love to get my story into the hands that need it. The people who approach me at the gym and say, “My nephew just got back from Iraq and lost his leg. How can I encourage him?” The people who are brave enough to ask about my lost limb, then fascinated when I tell them I chose to have it taken off (there is just not time in the aisle of Walmart, to give them the deep reasons for my decision). And the friends I grew up with, many of whom had no idea I had anything more than a slight limp, as we navigated the years of middle school, high school, and college.

I truly believe, in this age of constantly changing technology, that my story will not be the exception, in years to come. The foot I wear today was not created a handful of years ago, when I was getting my first leg. I can’t wait to see what technology will bring me in the future. I see it in the same light as hip replacements and organ transplants. The old part didn’t work, there are parts that can replace it. Why would we not choose to start over?

I’d love to get my story out there, at the beginning of this new age, to introduce the idea to our changing world.

Because I really and truly believe in the subtitle to my soon to be published book - amputation most definitely cured my disability.




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Thank you, por todo

“Thank you! Thank you! Por todo! Por todo!”

The little man scurried in and out of the crowd of men that surrounded him, saying these words over and over again. Each man nodded in acknowledgement, as they shook each other’s hands. One turned to put the tow rope back in his trunk. Another kicked the small tree limbs to the side of the road, so vehicles could once again pass by.

We happened upon the scene just as it was unfolding. As we rounded a hairpin turn, on the mountain road we’d chosen to explore in our new home state of Colorado, we saw a commotion. Two small SUVs were parked on the right shoulder of the road. They were only half off the road, since the shoulder dropped off to a steep cliff. Huddled in front, between, and behind the vehicles was an assortment of dark skinned women and young children, all dressed in their holiday clothes, since it was Christmas Day.

On the left side of the road was the problem. A group of well dressed young men, in their shiny best shoes, surrounded a small truck, that had fallen off the side of the road, into a deep snow bank. Behind the wheel of the truck was a tiny, elderly Hispanic man. It was not clear which people knew each other, and who had just stopped to be good Samaritans. But it was immediately apparent that few of them spoke English.

We stopped, of course, because our vehicle contained three strong men, who could contribute to the rescue operation. One was my husband, who always seems to be the one to step up when someone needs rescuing, and the other two were my tall teen sons, whose characters are very similar to their dads. They eagerly jumped from our truck and hurried over to the action.

What followed was a series of tries, pushing and pulling that little truck, trying to release it from the grip of a greedy snow bank. With every attempt, it seemed to become more lodged into place. My sons, not understanding most of what the other men were saying, gestured and nodded, as they thought of new ideas, and followed the pantomimed instructions of the people around them. At one point my oldest son decided to hike a bit up the side of the hill, to retrieve some branches to use for traction. The snow bank that had the little truck trapped was thrilled to grab my boy’s legs, and when he sunk up to the top of his thigh with his second step, there were hearty laughs all around, no translation needed.

For almost an hour the effort continued. A group of people, pulled together in a common mission, in the middle of a sunny holiday afternoon. Finally, a truck came around the corner, that had another willing helper, but this time one who owned a tow rope. Our big Suburban had been no help, when there was no way to tie it to the little truck. Within minutes the two vehicles were attached and with one big thrust, the tiny truck was dislodged.

In the middle of the road, finally free from his bondage, the small Hispanic man jumped out of the truck and eagerly thanked the crowd around him. Most of them barely acknowledged his words. Men who choose to be silent heroes are generally not the accolade type. They were just content to pack up their gear and be on their way.

But their effort meant the world to one small man, who only spoke broken English. “Thank you! Por todo! Thank you! Por todo!” It was all he could say.

And I came away from the scene with just as much gratitude. We have tried to raise our children to be open and accepting of all people, no matter the color of their skin or the size of their wallet. For my fifteen year old, who rarely sees the value of his tedious Spanish classes, it was a lesson in how very valuable having language skills can be. And for my maturing teen boys, who both walked away feeling two feet taller that day, it was a great reminder that we’re all put on this earth to help each other out. Even if we don’t share a common language.

Someone needs help. You help them. And it feels good to everyone who comes out the other side.

To the precious little Hispanic man, who was so very grateful for the kindness of strangers, I have a message for you too. Thank you for giving my boys an opportunity to open their hearts on a sunny Christmas day. It’s a memory I know they will carry with them for a very long time. So gracias, for everything.

Thank you, por todo.


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Home

Home.

It’s a small word. Non assuming. Just four little letters that every kindergartener knows. So simple, and yet it has the potential to make me weep.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard a song by this name, sung by an adorable artist named Michael Buble. Its lyrics cut through my soul and immediately emptied out the reservoir of tears I hold in my heart.

May be surrounded by
A million people, I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home
I miss you, you know.

The first time I heard it, and it’s achingly beautiful tone and melody, I cried for my mom. For almost two decades she was my home. And I miss her, so desperately. She left the planet when I was in my mid 20’s- a new wife, a new mom, a brand new adult. I had planned to know her in a new way, and a sudden stroke took her from me.

With her loss came a loss of home. She was the glue that kept our family together. She’d organized our huge household for decades, and she put the magic in every holiday. I instantly felt at home, with every greeting that met me at her front door. I can still hear her voice, calling out in pure joy, as I’d come home from college. “Ju - deeeee! My Judy’s home!”

They’re three simple words I miss, as much as I miss the home base she embodied.

I envy my friends, who still have their parents, and because of it, their home bases. My dad remarried an amazing woman, who keeps him healthy and happy. But their home together is a place I visit, not a home I return to.

Let me go home
I’m just too far
From where you are
I wanna come home

And so I was forced to move on, and create my own sense of home. For the past decade and a half I’ve thrown myself into making a nest that my children can feel safe in. We’ve changed houses, moved from state to state, but my first priority, even before the moving truck shows up, is making my children feel at home. I want them to remember how my voice was filled with adoration as each one of them walked in the door, whether their bedrooms were unpacked yet or not.

Home. It sometimes takes a while. In our Utah house, the newest house we’ve ever owned, we were settled in quickly. Surrounded by a street full of friendly families, we felt very at home, in a few short months.

Then we bought our fixer upper in New York. It took several years to feel like we belonged there, as we tore down walls, sanded sheetrock, and built a new kitchen from the ground up. All four kids were in school, from kindergarten to ninth grade, and life got crazy. There was little time to do the things that make someone feel like they’re home. Many holidays came and went, and as we built new traditions, surrounded by those specific walls, home started to grow on us.

And here we are again. The New York house now has a new family creating their own memories surrounded by its renovated walls. Our furniture has been cleared out and moved to storage. Our pictures no longer hang on the walls. The only hint that we once lived there is the growth chart scratched in the dining room trim board. It snakes up the wall, a reminder of all the growth that took place there.

Another airplane
Another sunny place
I’m lucky I know
But I wanna go home
Mmm, I got to go home

Home. It’s time to find it again. We’re in a new state, a place that we love, but we still feel like visitors. The skiing is great. The views are amazing. But we don’t feel like we’re home yet. It doesn’t help that we’re stuck in a very small condo, the six of us trying to make do until better arrangements can be made. We were sucked dry by the New York house sale, financially, and it just might make sense to stay put, in this lower cost living situation, as we try to recover. But we’ve already been here since August, and we are all ready to move out, move on, to find our new nest.

Another winter day
Has come and gone away
In even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home
Just let me go home

We’re still crunching the numbers. Technically we could go ahead and find the rental house we’ll call home, until we recover all the equity we lost in the house sale. But the bite it will take out of our monthly budget could be used, at least for now, to pay down the debts we owe from our nightmare year of 2011. It’s a hard decision to make. Move into a more home-like place, and be in debt forever, or make this arrangement work, and get on top of the finances faster.

We all crave home. I crave it when I’m reminded of things my mother is missing, with every year that my children change and grow. But I also miss it, as my children do, when it applies to our everyday surroundings. Having a place that feels like ‘your own’. Having somewhere that you can let your hair down at the end of a hard day. Having somewhere that’s filled with people who know you well, but love you anyway.

This week we’ll decide. Either we’ll extend our contract on this small condo or we’ll find a more permanent rental house in town. Both decisions come with big implications. But I’m telling you this - if we decide to stay in this place, this lovely small space that has always felt temporary to me, there will have to be some changes made. We will use a bit of money to tweak this place, to personalize it, to turn it into a place that isn’t just a safe place to sleep and eat.

We need, we crave, something that feels like home.

Real Christmas Joy

I write this post, not to brag about its outcome, or to complain about its frustrations. I write it so I can remember.

Christmas 2011 was a very unusual holiday, to say the least. We’ve celebrated in many different houses, and in many different states. We’ve done the Santa thing so many years they all seem to blur together. We’ve never had a lot of money, but somehow it came together every year. That is, until this year.



This year we were more than lean. For the past six months we’ve been supporting two households, in two different states, while we waited for our NY house to sell. Our family’s been broken up, put back together in sections, then hung out to dry. We’ve been living in a tiny temporary condo, until we could figure out what was going to happen with the empty house we owned back East. Every penny we’ve taken in has gone out to some immediate need.



I saw the holiday approaching and had to give myself some quick pep talks. The kids are older, they’ll understand. This is a good life lesson for them. Sometimes crap happens in life and you push forward and make the best of it. It doesn’t mean life’s over, just postponed for a bit. It doesn’t take much money to just be together and make new memories.

We have all of the things that matter most - good health, loving extended families, a roof over our head, grocery money when the cupboards are bare, and a tight knit family who knows how to rally together when times get hard.

My daughter and I swung by the thrift store to get a small artificial tree (all of our holiday decorations are with our ‘stuff’ , in a moving company storage unit). While we were there, we picked up a few games and puzzles for our youngest family member, who, at 11, still needed something under a tree. We strung up some cheap lights and wrapped some garland around the back of the futon. Bring on the holiday!

We swung over to Utah to pick up my college son, one of my best gifts of the season. It felt so good to have all my chickens back in the nest. All six of us squeezed into our limited living space, but I heard very few complaints.

My kids all seemed to be enjoying each other and trying their best to give everyone the space they needed. No one argued when, at the family meeting, I announced that not only would there be no ‘real’ gifts under the tree, but that each of them would have one bath towel for the time being. (It’s the only way to keep my laundry under control and make sure I am not met with a pile of wet towels after every morning’s shower routine). No one complained that sleeping arrangements were going to be ‘snug’, at best. They just jumped in and did what had to be done, to get through the following weeks.

Christmas Eve came and we all looked at each other, thinking, “What do we do now?”

The only answer was to get out of the house. We piled in the car and drove down to a local pub. While jazzy Christmas carols played overhead, we had the pool tables all to ourselves. The pizza was hot and good, the friendly banter between my children was relaxed and comfortable.



I looked around and realized we’d raised some pretty great people. Two of ours are officially adults. So much of the time I can only see the ways I've failed them through the years. On Christmas Eve I had to step back and see them in a different light. They’re nice people. Kind and helpful to not only their friends, but their younger siblings too (most of the time). They are fun to be around and are going to find their way in the world, mistakes and all, in the years to come.



We came home, watched some Christmas clips on Hulu, then called it a night.

The next morning didn’t feel at all like Christmas. No little children rushing to wake us up, excited to see what Santa had left. But instead I found a note on the kitchen table. Next to the cookies and milk that were left out the night before by our way-too-old-for-Santa 11 year old, was a sign that said “Don’t Stop Believin’”. It didn’t take much asking around to figure out which of his older siblings took the Santa bites from the cookies and took the time to write the note.



Then, as we sat around the thrift store tree, so my youngest could unwrap his few token gifts, I noticed presents for the older kids, as well as my husband and myself. My 15 year old was grinning from ear to ear. He’d felt bad that there were so few gifts under the tree, so he’d taken the liberty to wrap up some things from around the house, silly gifts, so that everyone had something to unwrap.

Laughter filled our little condo as we took turns unwrapping our special gifts. My husband couldn’t imagine what could be in his small present, which sounded like rice when he shook the box. It was the box of matches from the kitchen. My oldest son couldn’t help but grin as he unwrapped his one (not two) flip flop. Little guy was very surprised to watch his older sister unwrap ‘her’ gift, which happened to be his ipod. My son whose name means laughter came through again, and made a pretty empty holiday feel rich and full once again.



An hour later all three of my boys were at the kitchen table, playing a board game we’d picked up for my little guy at the thrift store. Even when they figured out that it only had three of the dozens of pieces it needed, they came up with their own rules and played a few rounds.



After that, they set up the little guy’s simple hot wheels track set and had races down the long orange track, to see who could make their car jump and crash into our homemade gingerbread houses. Later they came up with variations to this game, hiding out in their one shared bedroom for hours.



Instead of concentrating on what we didn’t have, we all made do with what we do have. We don’t have much counter space, so we cooked a store bought lasagna and had a yummy non-traditional holiday meal. We don’t have TV service, so we pulled up holiday specials on Hulu. We don’t have room to spread out and have our own space as the afternoon wore on, so took advantage of what we do have - amazing scenery right outside our window. We all piled in the car and took some beautiful drives down snowy country roads.



Along a winding road we came across a family stuck in the ditch. My big strong teen age sons took great pride in jumping in to help dig through snow banks to find logs for traction, then anchoring their weight behind the vehicle, with every attempt to dislodge it. Somewhere on the outskirts of Golden we found an empty parking lot full of wet, slushy snow, and my boys took turns learning how to do the perfect donut with the family Suburban. There were many smiles that day.



It wasn’t the holiday I’d have dreamed of. There was very little Martha Stewart could have lived with. But it was special, so special to his mom who has tried so hard every year, to make it as fun as possible for her kids. For once, they turned the tables and gave back the gift of celebrating. They showed me, the one who usually farms out the pep talks, what the holiday is all about.

It’s about just relaxing and enjoying the people you love. It’s about finding fun in every day, from wrapping up one of your brother’s flip flops, to finding a way to make a board game with few pieces actually work. They were the gift I wanted. To be surrounded by these four people I love so much and their dad, my best friend. But surprise! I ended up with so much more.