These are my favorite three months of the year.
October, November, December–are you kidding me? We kick things off with pumpkin everything. I get some scorching-but-still-divine “me” time with my oven and mixer, baking until The Husband complains about gaining weight and The Kid asks for countless “big cookies.” Leaves crackle under our feet and the temperature finally, gloriously drops. Then it drops more to usher in November and Thanksgiving and the Macy’s Parade and the dog show and then…THEN it’s the grand finale, my favorite month of the year, the month to rival all others and stomp all over them with its romantic frostiness, prevailing goodwill, and sacred magic. CHRISTMASTIME, BITCHES.
(All praise to God.)
This year, though…it’s different.
These three months in this year, they share their glory and wonder with anxiety and anticipation. I ride them on a wave of ambivalence, knowing this will be our last Southeastern fall for awhile. Our last Christmas living in this house. Our last full season here, our home, before another place becomes home. It took years for this place to feel like home. Now we start all over again: new house, new schools, new therapists, new friends, new church, new country, new HEMISPHERE. Every day carries an undercurrent of last-ness, of finality, of nervous energy and, often, thickened teariness.
I’m a crying, gassy mess.
Last week I took TK back to the outdoor camp group–the one I had such a hard time finding the week before? That one. He approached this week’s treehouse with interest and hesitation, his own ambivalence written on his face, in his timid steps. He jumped on a trampoline. He pushed a rake around. Then he was invited to the top of the treehouse via a curved staircase.
He went. I followed him.
And when we got to the top, he got a bit too brave. He approached the edge a bit too closely, and was met with the leader’s gruff voice and pre-emptive, protective push. He was startled, and he looked to me with tears in his eyes, which is THE. WORST. for me, even when it’s a necessary evil, and I comforted him. Then it was time for the reason we’d come up there: the zip line.
He didn’t want to do it. I did and didn’t want him to. I’m split all down the middle these days, and not just because of Australia but because of life. Because of love. Because of kids. Nothing gets to be simple. But I nodded my head at him. “You’ve got this, buddy.” He sailed off, his face unconvinced. Terrified.
And then…the terror melted into euphoria and when he landed, I ran to meet him, and when he turned to me, his smile was the biggest.
He did it again.
When I moved to New York, my terror turned to euphoria. And, also, to bouts of depression, to deeper faith, to friendships, to falling in love. To finding home. And I’m about to do it again, with two boys and a husband in tow.
There are no shortcuts.
It hits me that I still want there to be. That I, in spite of all the rough-hewn paths of beauty, still, deep down, want ease and simplicity. I want to walk among soft clouds and perpetual sunshine. Then I read, in this amazing thing, what Heather Havrilesky said: “If you’re only walking in the clouds, you don’t feel where you are.” Then, on a Sunday morning, the question and an answer: “What is it that has brought you to your knees? Because it’s there you’ll find the love that is outside of you and for you.” And I realize it doesn’t show up on the sale rack or the luxury aisle, the eternal that is working itself out in our midst.
There can be ease and simplicity to the point of nothingness, or there can be this: these seasons split right down the middle, full of goodbyes and hellos, winter switching into summer, excitement and dread. Sitting outside one afternoon while the boys play with the Halloween decorations, I feel a lightness to the cooler air and for a second can’t remember if it’s fall or spring. I think about TH who is at our new house in Sydney, where the buds are bursting into life as the leaves fall from trees here, and realize it’s both.
It’s only when I’ve been brought to my knees that I’ve been able to really look up, to see now that we will always, no matter where home is, be under the same sky. The same sky that has covered us through the early days, when I filled out the OT survey on behalf of the kid and shook my head through tears over all he couldn’t yet do. Then last week, I answered the same questions with a smile at all he’s accomplished. There is the free fall, the sailing through the air in terror before the terror-melting grin appears. There is all that’s been left in our wake as we trod this path, all the tears and joy that have been and will be.
At lunch one afternoon as TH sleeps in Sydney and The Mom helps me here, we sit outside among other tables. TK finishes his PB&J and starts working the area: he approaches a couple at a table and grins at them. He walks up to a group of men and puts his hand on the back of one of them as if they’re old friends. This formerly silent boy is leaving joy in his wake as his Little Brother watches and laughs, gleeful. Then TK sidles up to the two men at the table next to us and begins a lengthy conversation full of complete sentences, and one of the men turns to me:
“He should go into politics. Or something where you speak a lot.”
And I tell them the story, how he didn’t say a word a year ago, because I love this story now that used to keep me up crying at night. It is our story. It is his.
He talks the whole way home under the same vast sky.