2012: A New Year

I'm quite sure the primary ingredient in a blog is content, someone, ie me, actually writing something.
At least semi-regularly. There we go, I'm not a writer. 

It's early in the new year, I'm in a new local (way back you'll recall I moved to my hometown, it was over two months ago yet curiously only what, 3 blog entries?) cafe enjoying a dark roast, some time to myself, and pondering. Not pondering deeply, I think I've done that and now just want to get on with things.

Earlier I wrote three entries, saved, never posted. I worried the tone was too negative.
This phase is rife with memories in the making, frustrations, at times a sense of having compromised too much of my own life but most of all (having been through illness and death with my father) the daily awareness (sometimes awareness comes after poking myself) that this is a pivotal time in life and these are the right changes at the right time.

Something that has stuck with me from the early days of returning home are the words my mother says almost every evening: 'OK I'll see you in the morning'. She goes to her bedroom, I go downstairs to ours. It's comforting. I'm happy knowing she can retire for the night secure in the knowledge that  she is alone no longer, her next day will have company and the day will be easier to get through, the one person she's closest to in this world is here with her. It doesn't have to be that way for everyone, indeed it isn't for most, for me it's as it should be.

The Christmas season was quiet but lovely. I had plenty of time at home with my mother and spent New Year's with friends in my other home, Toronto. Humor me with a little recap that wasn't posted:

I love the hush of the holiday season. I love Christmas for many reasons: the halt of life as we know it, suddenly it's acceptable to laze about all day, eating whatever, whenever, coffee with Baileys, cookies at breakfast....a sanctioned free-for-all.

This was the first year in perhaps fifteen or more that I've been home well before The Big Day.
It's the first year I've trimmed the tree with my mother in all these years.  With Christmas music playing ( I love sappy holiday music) we sorted through the years and decades of ornaments, recounting where they came from, the age, those that were bought the year my parents married (1952) and those that belonged to my grandmother making them over 100 years old. I should have taken some pictures but of course it's January now, the season is packed away....next year.

My mom pulled out ornaments I'd never seen before, these delicate ornaments belonging to her mother usually stay in storage but this year they were on the tree. With a big smile on her face she pulled out 'Sputnik', the silver spiky ornament named, of course, after the satellite launched by the Soviet Union in the 50s (there is an abstract resemblance...sort of), this was my favourite ornament in childhood. We gave my dear departed dad's Roy Rogers ornament a prominent front of tree spot (those of you who knew anything of my father are not at all surprised that there's a Roy Rogers ornament).

She busied herself with her annual baking: two types of shortbread, squares, pie; sadly these were signs of her decline, she's always been an excellent baker but this year nothing turned out as it usually does. Her shortbread recovered somewhat in round two (we tossed the first batches), the apple pie on Christmas Day wasn't quite right. Despite these new moments we had ample time by the tree and fire, old movies, lots of treats, music and (a first!) a fresh, local turkey. I insisted we should try something different and look beyond the usual frozen turkey from Walmart my parents would buy each year in Port Huron (my mom did take a stab at suggesting we drive to Port Huron to buy one, just before Black Friday, honestly....). It was a lovely season, what I really wanted I got: time at home.

It's a new year. We look forward to a slightly altered life plan that has us moving to an area west of my old home in the big city (I have to add I'm not sad about leaving my hometown, this extended visit has simply reaffirmed that it's not home anymore, doesn't fit), a new career path for me, and an adventure for my mother (she seems to  be looking forward to it....now....we'll see when D-Day arrives, it's a big shift for her).

We have more property to sell, two households to sort through, we'll be very busy and no doubt we'll encounter bumps along the way (thus far two houses we had interest in have sold on us, one was a dream house) but the changes are positive. We're on the right road now. I'm grateful to be on any road frankly. Last year brought about lots of questions, hand wringing and emotion with the loss of career, sale of my beloved house and leaving my city. In retrospect it's been freeing...for the most part, some days it's freeing because I tell myself it is.

I find blogging therapeutic, I guess that's partly the point. I decided to launch into this as a way to process my own feelings, changes, challenges and wondered if it might spark something in others  faced with the same. It's not easy to log the moments without it sounding harsh at times but I've been going through this for some time--first with my father's illness and death and now my mother's challenges--and I know first hand, even when you want to be present for it all, when you willingly make changes in your life to accommodate, you still have many hours and days that chafe (supremely!).

I will try to more regularly log the good and the not so; for those of you 'in it' or if you can see it coming you know there is great joy but also frustration; when my entries feel harsh it's just honesty seeping in.

Lo and behold three people have recently asked me about updates so I guess I have a small (obligated, all are friends) audience.

It's a new year, change continues, bring it on.


Happy Quite Belated New Year