PLEASE NOTE:
THERE IS A SPECIAL NOTE AT THE END OF THIS WEEK’S BLOG.
And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.
Well, here in the States, it’s Thanksgiving Day. But I have to be honest. I’m not feeling particularly grateful. When I originally began to write this blog, back at the end of 2016, though, I deliberately did not make it a gratitude list. To me, it’s too easy to go rote with gratitude lists, because we all know what we “should” be grateful for. I’ve known too many people that start filling out their gratitude lists with the same things, over and over. I’m grateful for my kids. I’m grateful for my spouse. I’m grateful for my home. I’m grateful for my job. And so on.
For me, it was more important to show a Moment when I involuntarily smiled. When I didn’t smile because I was supposed to, but I smiled because I honestly felt something.
And so here we are, near the tail end of a year when it’s been particularly difficult to write these Moments, and to feel those sudden involuntary feelings.
In 2017, I thought I was having the worst year of my life. It started in late 2016, when I was assaulted while walking my dogs. Then, throughout 2017, Michael lost his job, not once, but twice, taking our health insurance with them, Olivia was bullied so extremely, we had to move her to a new high school, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
I no longer think 2017 was the worst year of my life.
On December 2nd, 2017, I was waiting for Michael outside of the MetroMarket where he was working at the time. He opened the car door, leaned inside and said, “Who wants to see something pretty?” And he handed me a Christmas cactus in full bloom.
I gasped. And then I wrote that day’s blog about it.
That line, “Who wants to see something pretty?” is from the TV movie, The Homecoming, which launched my favorite television series ever, The Waltons. At the time, Olivia, the Walton mother, was played by Patricia Neal. Near the beginning of the movie, she’s in the root cellar, picking out apples for her applesauce cake, when she turns and sees her Christmas cactus, in full bloom. She goes into the kitchen with it hidden behind her back, and she says to all the children seated around the table, “Who wants to see something pretty?”
And in 2017, Michael brought this cactus, and this line, out to me, where I sat glumly in my car, waiting for him to come home from work.
I didn’t just smile. I laughed out loud.
So this year, this new “worst year”, I was forewarned by many people that the holidays would be hard. And I’ve found this to be true.
The Christmas cactus that Michael gave me in 2017 sits in the window of the AllWriters’ classroom. Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed it was loaded with buds. But I was feeling too sad to really stop and pay attention.
There was one late night/early morning, when I took our dog Ursula out for her final potty break before I went to bed, that I stopped with her at the top of the stairs. Looking down, I said, “Do you know the last time your dad took you out was the morning of January 17th? It’s been all me since then.”
She looked at me and wagged her tail. Every morning, when she and I go downstairs for her first visit outside, she comes back in and sits down in the living room. She faces Michael’s recliner. She sits and she stares. And sometimes, I stare with her.
And then one morning this week, I brought her inside and stopped dead by the window.
The cactus was in full bloom. Bright hot pink blooms spilled everywhere, and there were even more buds about to burst. And I heard Michael say, “Kathie! Who wants to see something pretty?”
I did.
And I smiled and laughed out loud.
There’s another line from The Homecoming that I’ve been hearing echo in my head lately too, though not in Michael’s voice. In Patricia Neal’s. In the movie, the father, John Walton, has not made it home yet from the job he’d taken pretty far away, and there’s been a bus accident. One man died, and Olivia (Patricia Neal) was worried that it was John. Near the end of the movie, Patricia Neal says, “The only thing I want to see is your daddy walking through that door.”
Me too.
But in the meantime, I will look at my Christmas cactus, and smile.
By the way…there’s a reason why our daughter Olivia is named Olivia.
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.
SPECIAL NOTE
I don’t think it’s any surprise that I’m having a great deal of difficulty. Dealing with Michael’s horrific accident, followed by five months of his trying to recover, followed by his death, and now the five months after, has been really, really hard.
The last “worst year of my life” was in 2017, which I wrote about in today’s blog. This is where this blog came from, when I decided to write one moment a day that made me smile, in an attempt to show myself that there was more to my life than sadness. I wrote the blog every day for a year, only missing one day, the day Michael lost his job for a second time. And it kept me going.
After that first year of everyday writing, I’ve kept it up with the once-a-week blog, and in its entirety, the blog has been going for eight years. And it’s changed my life.
No, I am not quitting.
Instead, because of where I am now, which is in a tailspin, I’m going to return, for one month, to writing the blog on a daily basis. For the entire month of December, I will write and post every day.
It got me out of a tailspin once. I’m hoping it will do it again. I need uplifting, and that uplifting has to come from me.
So starting on Sunday, December 1st, the blog will return to its original daily posts, until the last day of this truly awful year.
Fingers crossed that it will help. Despite. Anyway.
Beautiful. I really enjoy these. I will look forward to December.
Thank you, Michele. ❤️