The End of Year Reckoning

I read somewhere that life can be seen like waves in the ocean.  Sometimes you are cresting, on top, unstoppable, other times you are dumped, rolling along with the detritus on the ocean’s floor unable to take a breath until the wave’s power wanes and you can catch your breath again.  This year for our family has been a little like riding a surfboard in a storm surge – sometimes we’ve got to our feet, but a lot of the time it’s seemed as if we’ve only just managed to hang on with the tips of our toes.

It’s been a loooong time since I’ve done this – sat down to write in order to make sense of things – but I’m tired, on the emotional side and just feel the need to take some kind of stock.  It’s been a big week on top of a big month on top of a big year – not a bad year, just a big year. We’ve moved house, changed jobs, had a son travel overseas by himself for the first time and a daughter begin high school.  We’ve had an amazing trip to Nepal with my sisters to visit the orphanage begun by my youngest sister, we’ve fund-raised for the orphanage, we’ve adopted a Nepalese puppy as well as committed to help support 9 Nepalese children. Each one of the family has faced new challenges: at school, in terms of sports and hobbies, professionally.  We have been eyewateringly busy.  So busy that sometimes it’s felt as if our little world-unit is all going to wobble off course; as if one misplaced step will send us all hurtling, screaming, into the abyss.

Now it’s nearly New Year, and for me there is the end of year accounting to be made – are we okay, have we thrived or just managed, will we be entering the new year in good shape or bad.

I do know that we have all held it together, relationships are sound and more than that – when I allow myself time like this to reflect in something like silence, without the cloud of panic that sometimes engulfs me – we have actually all moved forward in extremely positive ways often with limited time to devote to things and with many competing priorities.  At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark greeting card – I think we’ve all managed as well as we have because of the family unit, the (usually) deep joy we all feel at being together: watching movies on a Saturday night; sitting down and having dinner together; driving to school; travelling to tennis comps; supporting music recitals; planning and enjoying our holiday.  It’s as if these simple things have provided the fundamental glue that has bound everything else together.

It’s more than that in fact, it’s as of the hurly-burly of the outside world and our places in it, not only makes the calm of evenings spent at home together more important, but also more enjoyable.  A wise friend of mine once said that in order to truly enjoy something, we have to feel as if we are “entitled” to it – either that we’ve worked for it or that we’ve suffered for it.  And that can apply to little things as well as big things: a cold drink after a hot day working in the garden, an evening spent in front of the TV watching DVDs at the end of a busy week, the moment you walk in the front door of your home after a hectic day at work.  

And now I think of a time, not that many years ago, writing x-mas cards when I still DID write them) and remarking that the foregoing year had been “steady as she goes”.  Unlike this year, that year has felt extremely calm and ordered, as if the family had reached some sort of resting point, like the ark settling into the silt of receding water, too heavy and too stuck to consider we might have to face another deluge.  And yet I also remember that, despite that year presenting no real challenges, it wasn’t that it was necessarily a particularly happy one for me either.

And that’s probably been the difference this year, and the reason why my end of year accounting is going to balance out more positive than negative – despite the often fatigue, the sometimes frustration, the having to negotiate a number of paths that haven’t been easy – there have been a huge number of accomplishments, a real joy in those and, possibly more importantly, a sense of having earned every damn one of the down moments we’ve been able to snatch and enjoy.