We have never sent a Christmas letter in our holiday cards. Honestly, I’m lucky to get just the cards in the mail. If I tried to draft, and print, an actual letter my good holiday tidings would probably reach my nearest and dearest sometime after spring break.
And, something about an annual roundup of my family’s good fortune feels, fake.
Sure, my kid hit a home run! My daughter received a reading award! My two-year-old is walking and talking!
What you never read in those letters is that before that home run, my son spent the first six weeks of the season carrying around a nasty attitude and spent most of his time on the field muttering into his glove how unfair it was that he never won.
My daughter was presented with a beautiful award, several actually, by my wonderful friends on Facebook after I spent days complaining how the local library dismissed her from their summer reading program for having a learning disability. After that run-in my faith in community has never been lower.
And my walking and talking two-year-old is a walking and talking nightmare. She seems to find her way into anything sticky, messy or expensive and quite frankly, she is driving me batty.
Reality is perception and I never saw the need to make people think the grass on our side of the fence was always, Technicolor “greener” when in fact, sometimes, we could barely keep it watered.
So, dear friends, if I had to write a Christmas letter today, it would read something like this:
Boy, it’s been a long year. We’ve weathered my husband’s surgeries, the ups and downs of our daughter’s autism and learned just how difficult a rambunctious five-year-old boy and a pre-adolescent boy can be in the same household. Our pair of toddlers, while adorable and cute, have pushed us to the edges of our sanity. We’ve never quite gotten a handle on having constantly clean laundry for seven people and I’m pretty certain the transmission is going to give out on our vehicle any day now. We’ve spent much of the year on pins and needles as we’ve waited for the Army to announce what soldiers will remain employed under its new budget cuts and who will be sent packing. In preparation for an ousting, we’ve blown our budget trying to make plans and as a result, now know that shrimp is our least favorite flavor of ramen. But as 2012 closes and another year arrives we are all healthy, we are learning to work together as a team and love the community we are in. There are days that we fight. There are days that we cry. There are days that we put everyone to bed without a bath. But in the end, the important thing is that all our days are spent together. So here’s to a better 2013 and a life full of togetherness and love, even if it’s spent in stinky clothes while eating shrimp-flavored noodles.
To you and yours, Happy Holidays.
