• 

Is there anything more mind-bendingly contradictory than Christmas shopping in the middle of summer as “Winter Wonderland” plays in the background of the toy store?

This is our life now, and this is our Christmas this year: staying put in the sweltering Sydney heat, waking up in our own beds (read: our own bed, as the kids will assuredly end up in ours, with the dog on the floor next to us all) instead of in a hotel, running down our own stairs to our own tree, half a world away from the place where this happened last.

It is crazy, and beautiful, and makes no sense, and–like so much else in our story–this is how I know it is right and true.

Tomorrow (today, when you’re reading this) is The Kid’s ninth birthday, nearly a decade of him, of being a mother. Impossible and nonsensical and true. Last weekend, though, we went to someone else’s birthday party, and as is his custom, he rued going. And so did I, with his constant query–Why–from the backseat, but I know that if he and I only ever left the house when we wanted to, we would never leave it. We were great at lockdown, not so much at regular life, and so I forced us both to attend a celebration to which we had been generously invited.

It was a soccer party, so we watched. We sat together, argued, observed, negotiated, expressed our gratitude, and left. I could feel his anxiety lift as we climbed into the car, and I knew that for him–just like for me–it’s not about not caring, but about caring too much, about being overwhelmed too easily, about feeling all the feelings. And this is why I push him, why I push myself, with compromises and limits and boundaries in place to keep us safe, but push nonetheless: to show us both that we can do hard things.

And then we can come home.

And, as always, the points of grace in it all: expressions of understanding, waves he gives his friends and the way they interrupt their rough play to wave back, as though he could even be their point of grace in the midst of a mayhem he’d rather avoid. What a gift he is, has been for nearly a decade.

And Little Brother? Well, he had a playdate on the weekend that was just all kinds of too easy, and as I heard him play Mario Kart downstairs with his friend, TK joining them to–don’t I love it–watch, I wondered what I should be doing? How I should be facilitating? And grace whispered, “Stop. Enjoy.” So I did. I read, and listened to Christmas music, and just sat. At the party, my place was on a bench beside TK. At the playdate, it was on the couch by myself.

We keep finding our places.

Even as I look for kitchen gadgets shipped over from America and hidden in the backs of drawers, or try to hunt down the still-missing beloved Betty Crocker Cooky Book from YM so I can get my bake on, or Annie Dillard’s A Writing Life that hasn’t materialised from the boxes that arrived a year ago, we find so much else: we find ourselves on the street in front of our house meeting neighbours at a Christmas party, the kids eating fairy bread and The Husband and me doing our best impression of sociable people and the guy who lives next door returning Kevin to us (“Kev” to all the neighbours) after he’s snuck out.

The kids find themselves in a beloved school, a second home of many, among friends who truly know them. I find myself in an online group that started as a joke–Suburban Housewives Against Trump–but has somehow turned into a joyful encouragement over the last few months. TH finds himself headed toward a new job, Sydney-based. I find myself running alongside the water, in awe of how we got here. That we got here. To our place.