Welcoming a new year

 Ah, 2022. Who has a birthday on February 2nd or February 22nd? It's a great year for you. 

For me, I hope that it will be a quieter year than 2021. Last summer was surely full of enough changes to last a couple of years. While we have a couple of graduations this spring, a First communion, and some travel (we hope), we don't have any major transitions like a son getting married, moving, and starting a new job to look forward to. 

As for those changes, they are still taking some getting used to. Our oldest and his wife were here for about a week at Christmastime. It was wonderful to have them here for an extended visit and to have the whole crew overlapping for a few days. We filled it with a trip to a light show, decorating the tree, a little shopping, a dinner out at a wellknown local restaurant, the Oasis.  The weather was mild, and we had a couple dinners on the back patio with good food and wine and laughter. The kids enjoy each other's company most of the time, which pleases my heart. Our second son who now lives in Boston was here for almost a week as well. On the eve of Christmas Eve, the kids exchanged gifts, and we gave our presents to our married children. My mother in law created a new stocking for our daughter-in-law, so we had ten to hang from the mantle. And then on Christmas Eve morning, the newlyweds flew off to see her parents. So Christmas morning was a little quieter.  Santa Claus may have been unmasked for the youngest, although she persisted in a narrative, perhaps out of the belief, as my older children admitted, that her parents were much more frugral than Santa, so he must be the one to deliver presents, even if Mom returns all of the ones that don't fit. Our first Christmas in this house in this new state of being was different, but it felt like a baptism of sorts of the new place. Chalking up the door lintel on Epiphany Sunday felt like a new start, also.  

As usual this time of year, I've been thinking about new starts and trying to break bad habits and start new ones. I've been working on the 7 hours of sleep again, although this week when school started up again, 6.5 was the average. I could tell over break that I was a much pleasanter and more productive person when I slept more, so that supposedly easy change should result in others, like biting my tongue before saying something negative. It bothers me that my children and husband accuse me of hating our new house - and of hating our old house, although I can understand why they think that. I didn't hate our old house - I hated living on a busy street. And I hated that it was an odd shade of green inside. And I didn't like dealing with the pool. But I did love the weather, the beach, the proximity of the mountains, the ease of getting around, the closeness of our friends, our parish, the library, walking everywhere.  The family thinks I hated it, as I've mentioned before, because I would often point out flaws when they talked about staying forever, because I knew we could not stay forever. Although now I question that - and that is the number one thing I have to stop doing to have any inner peace. We made a decision and now can only go forward and not back. And my tendency to question choices and experience regret is evident to the family, I'm humbled to say, so they think I hate it here, too, although again "hate" is too strong a word. I might hate driving around. I might hate how much debt we took on. But I don't hate the place or the people, the nearby parks and trails, the great sunsets, the way everything in the house works, at least mostly for now.  I don't want to be a regretter or a resenter or a hater.  So my biggest goal for this year is to work on thinking less about the past and being more grateful for the present. This attitude is a habit of mind I have been working on for years....  but I've pulled out a little journal again for writing down positive things that happen, and I'm trying to remember to stop my mind from wandering to dark places by repeating, "Jesus, I trust in you" or "have mercy on me, a miserable sinner."

Reading Edith Schaeffer's The Hidden Art of Homemaking during Advent has helped remind me of the responsibility I bear in helping my own children experience thanksgiving and joy and beauty. I long ago said I believed in spending money on beautiful things, but I have not put that into practice. Nor lately have I done a very good job of doing even small aesthetic acts, like lighting candles at dinner or keeping flowers in the house. But that is one of my goals this year also - let go of my cheapskate tendencies and get some new, clean furniture, plant more flowers, and keep the counters tidy (struggling with this one in between Christmas cards and FAFSA and tax season). Because our last three homes were places where it was difficult to buy or place new things, I didn't put much effort into decorating. Now it's time to be a grown up about housekeeping, so to speak. We left behind our worn -out couch, and I have been shopping new chairs and a new kitchen table and new patio tables. We have been lugging around a huge old kitchen table that was a hand-me-down from my roommate's parents when I was in grad school. My roommate didn't want it back when she moved out of our little apartment just before my wedding.  The kitchen chairs are from the thrift store, and the upholstered chairs are handmedowns from my grandparents and from an estate sale. I've been getting quotes for reupholstery for a couple of them - more than many new chairs, but I can't find what I love for less, so now I just need to finalize the fabric choices - a decision that is challenging me. (trying to think back to reading Don't Overthink It by Anne Bogel - another refrain I need to reiterate to myself...)  The patio tables we have now are from a Kmart closeout sale twenty years ago. I can't believe they have survived all these moves. They've come in handy when we've had parties. And because they still work, shopping for a patio table can wait, but it's on the list.

I also want to clean out the garage - even though we just moved. We didn't have time to go through the boxes of mementoes before our move, and now there are just too many of them. I need to shred some financial documents and then just reorganize so that each kid has one momento box, and that's all there is. Goodbye taxes from 2008. Goodbye sweet scribbles on copier paper that were created by who knows which child. Goodbye folders and folders of bureaucratic nonsense from my husband's old jobs. And goodbye old trailer that needs to be sold and extra bikes and box of posters from high schoolers. Someday I want to be able to park two cars in the garage. And I want to have space to make garden boxes for raised beds in the back yard. That day is coming this spring, I hope.  

Family goals? I want to get everyone out for a hike or camping trip before the heat arrives - a tough call even though we are a smaller group because of various trips - right now I'm typing in the student center at Texas A and M while I wait for my daughter to run in a two day track meet. We have a couple college visits planned with the son who is a senior. We are trying to plan a trip to Heidelberg, Germany, in February or March while our daughter is there studying abroad. She was not excited about going with Covid restrictions looming. Some of her friends cancelled, not afraid of losing a $3000 deposit. But she arrived and spent a week with my brother-in-law and his family in Nuremberg with her middle brother - whose semester abroad was supposed to happen in 2021 and didn't. They had a wonderful week just hanging out with cousins and getting to experience life in Germany. Now we're all tempted to move abroad. Or at least I am... 

Goals for Faith formation: working with the second grader on preparation for First Communion. I found my old Catholic Heritage Curriculum materials for second grade (getting recycled or passed on after this year...), and want to do some of the activities. We have done a good job of preserving read aloud time in the evenings, so I should incorporate more religious titles - the saint chapter books haven't been off the shelves for a long time. (except when they got moved this summer)

Also, I recommitted to a Bible Study for 8 weeks on the book of Exodus, and I started listening to the Bible in a year app - already a couple days behind, but trying to tune in while commuting. Returning to basics like scripture study for this year - and trying to avoid guilt inducing social media posts.

Finally, in a month or two, I'll make a decision about my own occupation for the next few years. I've really enjoyed substituting at the high school - I stepped into a long term position for five weeks and loved being around the teens. I also submitted one application to grad school - which has a very low rate of acceptance. And I start teaching ESL classes in 10 days. So by the spring I will compare all of my options - grad school likely will be eliminated - and decide whether to continue with adult ed or go back to school to get a teaching credential. 

Out of time. Posting without rereading or thinking any more about this... Reading wrap up in the next post...