So Begins the Search
It looks like searching for a train set, but there's more to this last-minute shopping
Hello, my friends. Christina here with some thoughts, a bit of personal story, and a writing prompt…
The Friday before Christmas and I need a Thomas the Tank Engine train set. It’s not like I haven’t had all month to find one.
But I didn’t decide until today what to get. So now we search. Procrastination is not something I do—unless there are people involved. Or maybe something as bizarre as leaving my house.
The older I get the more raging and kicking is my need to stay in my happy bubble. I defend it vehemently.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit like this is not really normal. Most people leave their house every day and go out into the world.
When I go out into the world, I find it overwhelming. My senses get clogged up with overstimulation and most of the time I just want to be back at home in my happy bubble. I feel out of place. Insufficient. Wrong.
But home is my terms. I have control. It is where I feel safe.
Very few things drive me to get out of it and go…
My trips to the chiropractor (I can’t really walk straight or hold my head up very well without them. I mean, who wants to be totally miserable in their happy bubble?)
My love for my family.
The overwhelming want for something, and if I can’t send Robbie out to get it.
Today, I go out into the world and search for a Thomas train set for my precious nephew, James, who is 2 and the spitting image of his father, my brother Kevin. Kevin the youth minister with his teacher wife. Kevin, my younger brother and twice cancer survivor. I brave the elements of the Christmas season today because I love them so much. I drew my nephew’s name for the Christmas gift exchange, so Thomas the train set it is.
It seems like such a small thing, to go to the store, get a buggy, and walk around among people, but for me, it is a big thing. An uncomfortable thing. A thing I avoid if at all possible.
Where is the person I used to be? That fierce, go-getter, hard-working single mom who fought her way through to a college degree? I think I just decided that my sanity and comfort mattered. I prioritized them so much so that I am now stuck in this safe place.
It is a strange thing to be content with your life and look at it and think “this is not normal” at the same time.
Perhaps normal is overrated.
I invite you to think about the things in your life that do not seem “normal.” Perhaps these things are those that make you unique and are to be celebrated. Maybe they are things you’d like to change in the new year. (God, I love New Years. All that introspection is like setting up candles and running a bubble bath inside my happy bubble!)
Maybe normal is just an illusion and we are meant to live our lives in whatever way seems right to us, illusions be damned.
I invite you to think on these things. If you are a writer, like me, consider this a writing prompt. If you are a New Years fanatic, like me, consider this a springboard for your resolutions and introspection.
Happy holidays to you all and wish me luck—I am getting on shoes and a jacket and stepping out my front door.
Step out the front door
like a ghost into the fog
where no one notices the contrast
of white on white.
And in between the moon and you
the angesl get a better view
of the crumbling difference
between wrong and right.—Round Here,
by my favorite band, the Counting Crows
One last thing—I shared with you yesterday The Wisdom of Trees. Today I’d like to share The Vantage Point of Stars. It is hauntingly beautiful and I hope you enjoy it!
Poetically yours,
Christina