Missing Out and Opting In
We’re heading into the holidays, which means a significant amount of my free time is beginning to be spent on creating magical moments for my kids. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love this part of my life, even the really annoying parts like running out to the store for more tape at ten o’clock at night. Part of the reason I love it is because it’s all really fun. I like having a decorated house and baking and crafts and all the little traditions we have created in our family.
The second, bigger, part of the reason I love the holidays is because I opt out on a lot of it. Not in a general sense, since we do all the big Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas-y things. (Except for Elf on the Shelf. Props to all of you who move that little gremlin every day, but no thank you. I don’t need that creepy doll staring at me all month.) But I personally opt out on a fair amount of our family’s festivities. I get it all set up, everyone ready to go, and then I wave goodbye to them as I savor my cup of tea.
I told a friend last week that I was not planning on going out trick or treating with my kids. I do all the school parties and all the costume procurement and then, when the big moment arrives, I sit at home and fold laundry. She was aghast. “After all that work, how could you miss out on the good part?” My response: “With pleasure.”
There’s a part of all of these holidays where my whole family disappears for awhile and I get to stay back and enjoy the quiet and get the house back into some semblance of order and most of all get my own self back into some semblance of order. I am missing out. I’m missing out on feeling unappreciated and overwhelmed, on being disconnected and frazzled. I’m missing out on losing my temper and then feeling like I ruined everything.
But by missing out, I’m opting in to a lot of things. I’m opting in to the moment when my kids walk back in, excited to tell me all the things they saw and did while I was being boring and mom-like. I’m opting in to being able to help them with their mittens for the seventeenth time because I know that in a moment, I’ll be able to rest. I’m opting in to them being able to have fun with Forrest and their friends and building a world that doesn’t have me at its center.
This way isn’t for everyone. There are people for whom being in the middle of the party is the only place to be. Where the holiday wouldn’t feel like a holiday if they missed out. I live in awe and envy of them. I wish I could live, buoyed on Christmas spirit, from event to event to event, with a final New Year’s Eve hurrah.
Instead, this is the person I am. I can fight against it (and have), or I can shrug my shoulders and accept that my need for rest is not a flaw to be fixed but rather a reality to navigate. My experience of the holidays is supposed to be good too, right? And for me, that occasionally means missing out.
