FRESHMAN CHRISTMAS

I am going to spend the next ten days blogging about Christmas – Christmas past, Christmas present and Christmas future.

In terms of Christmas present this will be a first for all of us freshman parents and for our freshman. This is the largest hunk of time they are home during the entire school year.  Most of them will be back in their rooms and the family fold for a good month.

It will require adjustment, patience and open communication on all sides to get through parts of it without fights, hurt feelings, dashed expectations and ruined plans. While they will be happy to be home my guess is there will be a certain amount of rug peeing mixed hopefully with a lot of hugs, love, good times and that odd, expression “holiday cheer.”

I think much of what we freshman parents do this holiday will be a template for holidays to come; how much freedom we give them, how much we accept and acknowledge their new individuality and choices and how little guilt we hand out along with the gifts.

It will also be a challenge for them in how well they unpack their newfound independence along with their dirty clothes. How well they readjust themselves to the family dynamic and keep their freedom while respecting the household rules and the fact when you are home, moms worry, siblings butt in, and eighteen years of patterns are not broken in three months.

That being said, this new Christmas starts the lifelong pattern of free choice of where our kids will spend the holidays for the rest of our lives. Will we be one of those families when the thought of an extended stay with us coupled with the added stress of mandatory cheer makes them cringe?

Will they be forever choosing friends and in-law’s holiday table over ours?  Will we wreck the whole experience for them causing them to feel like it’s just a big duty and chore to have to schlep to mom’s where she nags and second guesses your choices about everything from your mate to your job, to the way you’ve cut your hair?

These are all-important questions and ones many of us need to ask ourselves before this holiday arrives. We have three more then after this and if they don’t come home  chances are we will only have ourselves to blame.

I for one, want to be one of the families, where my both my kids can’t wait to get here. Where fun, warmth, understanding and a safe haven is more plentiful than another cashmere sweater or purse we don’t need.

Christmas is very hard for many families and it’s hard for them because it’s a family holiday and many families are a mess and the stress of holiday cheer becomes a huge burden when you have many memories of holidays where cheer only came out of a bottle and not from the people around you. And one the biggest problems with families who are a mess and trust me, no family is without it’s issues; as I continue to write about all these things more and more people come forth with their stories and everyone has something.

But one of the biggest problems is people would rather not own it and pretend the issues don’t exist than sit down and work through them so they can all be happier. And the holidays are the time when this comes out in full throttle. Here we are all pretending to be happy when there are all these things we are not happy about – yet we are refusing to deal with and that makes the whole thing so far from cheery.

I don’t know that talking about them under the tree serves anyone’s purpose but if we shoot down issues as they arise they don’t grow like a tumor that everyone pretends isn’t there  yet it’s sitting in the middle of the room next to the tree.

It’s why I talk about everything – even online- no one in my family ever did.  And I learned first hand that issues unresolved turn into fights that can destroy.  And for some reason the holidays – when we are supposed to be full of cheer bring out fights about really lame things because the big things are shoved in a drawer.

Can we blame it on Norman Rockwell and  all those images of the happy family together?  Do we blame it on the TV Shows of our youth and the fake the films we grew up on depicting everyone loving each other and getting along? Only of late when a certain snarkiness and cynicism crept into films do we get movies where the dread of the holidays overrides the joy and the family secrets are revealed and some healing often takes place because we don’t want to leave a Christmas movie feeling bummed out. But the myth continues as it sends the message families work on these things when most of the time they don’t.

Many people fall apart at the holidays. More suicides happen at New Years than any other time of the year. It is not a coincidence.

People without big families who all get along can feel very lost and alone.  And yes Virginia, there are big families who all get along and I know them, and they love the holidays and they become a cornerstone for great memories and time together. I did not make this stuff up.

I do not come from one of those even though I supposedly have two families; I have my mother and my father. Two different families, I have spent one Christmas with my father in the last thirty-two years, and I have not spent a Christmas with my mother in over ten. My husband’s family doesn’t celebrate Christmas. The family I made is the only real family I have, I am an orphan for the most part and so for me setting the right tone now means everything to me.

I think and we all know I am no expert, I am a freshman at this, but I think what the freshman wants, what all kids want no matter what their age  is an acknowledgment of how they are separate from you, yet at the same time deeply connected.  Whether you approve of some of their choices or not, unless your opinion is solicited or they are headed over a cliff keep them to yourself. This does not mean you can’t have meaningful discussions about big life issues, but it’s how and when you do it; tone is a huge part. And sometimes you just have to back off; I have learned they will come to you for advice when they need it if you are not constantly dispensing it when they don’t feel they do.

If you are one big I know it all machine, which trust me I have the potential for being it only causes them to retreat.

I had a friend call me bossy the other day, they asked me for advice, I gave it, then gave some more, and was then taken down a notch for being too in your face with the way I say things. Probably not unfair, I thought I was being helpful and caring, but it was clearly not how I came off. I will not offer advice unsolicited now for some time. And the advice I give will be very measured.

But with our kids they have been making choices about everything from when they get up to when they go to bed to whether they wear gloves in the snow or skip three meals in a row.

It’s hard after all these years to shut up, at lest for me for whom shutting up is akin to not breathing. But if I want my daughter to respect and want to be with me, if I want a Rockwellian version of a family, if it’s possible and I believe it is. Call me crazy but I do, then I must learn a new bag of tricks.

I have already started by not booking her for endless events without consulting her schedule. I have warned her in advance that we have two nights of family plans in the week we are all home.  I made no others.

We are going away for two and a half weeks so she only has about ten days total to catch up with her friends who are home, so I step back and let her make her schedule as she sees fit. If she sees her friends it does not mean she does not love me. We all have to keep that in mind.

This does not mean that certain household rules don’t have to be adhered to, one does that with ones spouse or houseguests.
I am one of those annoying people who do not allow shoes in the house; this is something I have to remind Taylor about constantly. She got better about it over Thanksgiving. Lucy just clumped into my room in filthy UGGS and she heard about it you can be sure.

We can’t let the dogs out of the kitchen, I like lights off in rooms we are not using. I have certain things that are benign and must be followed as though they seem inconqential they are how we run the household. But that is very different than handing over a fully booked schedule of events they have not signed on for.

We go away for Christmas. We have for years. I do it because being around America I find is too painful. I hate the thought that my children don’t have grandparents that show up at Christmas or we show up there. I hate there is a family out there yet we are all estranged because none of the details were worked out properly when they should have been.
Bad patterns of behavior were set and Christmas with family became a chore and burden and many years of misery were the result.

So we take off for places far and exotic. That is my way of celebrating, it’s the way our foursome chooses to make memories and be together and celebrate.

It was a choice I made close to ten years ago and one I don’t regret.

It’s one of those when life gives you lemons you make lemonade.

And it’s turned out great- really it has. It doesn’t erase the pain or the fact I wish it was different. But it makes for a different kind of fun and fun we have.
There is tons of cheer when on XMAS Day you are at the great Pyramids in Cairo. This year we will bring in New Years watching the fireworks in Bangkok. And on XMAS Day we will be winging our way to Tokyo.

I love to travel – a gift handed down from both my mother and grandmother; my best memories of my times with my mother were circling the globe. I suppose it’s not an accident that’s the way I choose to  celebrate Christmas. If things had worked out differently she would be with us. Makes me sad it can’t be. But that is the past and it’s too late to undo it.

But if we all do it right now, our kids will not be saying this ten, twenty or thirty years from now. Hopefully, we will all be somewhere together enjoying holiday cheer.

FRESHMAN MOM

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