Relief

That week is over. We made it through and a weight has lifted. It was over last night, I sighed with relief last night as I realised we had done it. As I wrapped the last present and put it under the tree, as I sat down on the couch to half watch the movie the boys had chosen. It felt like holidays for the first time then but now as the birds are waking and everyone else sleeps, in the quiet of the sunrise under the full moon I can process what that really means. 

I knew last week would be a big one. I started planning (ie. worrying about) it back in October when I realised the kids finished school a week before we both finished work. This was new, I’d always been around, flexible, almost always worked casual jobs and the couple of times I had been employed part time at this time of year we had been moving and I had finished up with the kids. This time though, we’ve just got here, it’s been a year and I’m just getting into the job I’m in. We don’t know anyone that well yet, we don’t have daycare setup or available, nor would the boys be happy with that option. Back in October it seemed impossible to make three days of work, with kids off school actually work but we did. The people I was able to reach out to went above and beyond, made the impossible happen and helped us all more than they needed to. The logistics of the week were worked out and setup weeks ago and still I knew it was going to be hard. Lining up the pick ups and drop offs, setting up the structures so that it could all flow within them. I wrote lists and worked out timings and ran through everything in my head over and over until the week came around.

Not only did I need to get through it but I needed to function through it and function well. As we have inched closer to the end of the year, to Christmas and the holidays, the usual things have wound down but some parts of my work have wound up. Being there for people, in the role I’m in, means that the masks come off, the smiles that are plastered on for the shopping trips and the end of year events get a rest when my door closes and the reality of this time of year shows up. As the date of our holiday closure got closer there was more winding up than winding down, energetically, and while I may have been able to crumble under that in the past and have an agency nurse pick up a shift or two for me, it’s different now. I need to be there and I need to be ok.

It’s the same at home as these kids get bigger, as their needs change, as all of the ‘ends’ arrive for them. The physical timings and logistics of the week were easy to prepare for compared to the energetic ones. So much awareness was required to get through it in one piece, to keep the cogs turning and to be able to show up for each person who needed me along the way. 

It’s been hard not to look back to this time last year. I have been caught in remembering and wishing and feeling as though the differences between then and now mean something about how I’m getting it all wrong. This time last year we were headed home for Christmas after close to three months in the caravan. This time last year there was ease and space in abundance. I was glowing on the inside from the amount of space I had been bathed in. We had settled into each other’s spaces, the rhythms of nature and the Earth rather than ‘life’ and ‘the world’. We were all on top of each other all the time but our edges weren’t running the show. There was enough space to buffer our edges and enough ease to get us through the bumps that inevitably still happened without bumping and crashing into each other.

This past week, amongst the tricky logistics and energetics were multiple, recurring, ‘crazy’ inducing crashes into each other. The kids had forgotten how to be with each other consistently and with my focus and energy spread between so many things I wasn’t able to absorb those bumps or even help them through as well as I would like, as well as I could this time last year. There were a lot of moments standing at the kitchen bench taking big, slow breaths, lots of thoughts of ‘why…is this so hard?’ and ‘how…am I supposed to do this, get through to them, get this right?’. It was just a lot of bumps in a very confined space, I can see that now but at the time all I could feel was a rocking from side to side that felt like it would never end.

Yesterday was a good day. Yesterday was a slow morning, pancake flipping, nowhere to be at any particular time, a very productive trip to the shops. It was tying up all of the loose ends I had to make friends with throughout the week. It was shifting my perspective to see and know that these three little people had been feeling all of the things I had been feeling throughout the week. They were wobbly and tired and just getting through the week the best they could like I was. They were bouncing and crashing off each other, the safety of each other, with the stuff that I wasn’t able to absorb for them while I was still focused on my work. They were just in the thick of all that last week was, just like me. Yesterday there was space for the conversations that flatten out the bumps, for the moments of searching for and finding equilibrium. There were emotions and questions and breathing together and just being. There were also lots of ticks on the long list and accomplishments achieved together. On the surface, the relief was about being ‘ready for Christmas’, having the last present wrapped and one less list on the bench (ie. in my head) but really the relief is the feeling of equilibrium between us all. I haven’t bathed in three months of it at this point like I had last year but last night I felt the beginnings of it. I felt the answers to those questions that have been taunting me at the kitchen bench. We will find it again, it hasn’t gone far and as long as it remains in my awareness as our goal post we will always find our way back to it.