Its nearly Christmas and it doesn't seem that many years since Small Sprog was buzzing about with excitement singing wall to wall Christmas jingles and having asthma attacks!
So where is he today, I hear you ask (if anyone's still there?!) Well he's online - he had a good role model in me but he takes it to the limit! The songs are gone and Christmas may have lost it's sparkle - it's difficult to tell with a teenager- but I can see 'my boy' in there and I love him to bits! His voice has 3 different variants; screechy, normal and 'big man'. When the 'big man' voice comes out Tall Girl and I, for a split second, assume a stranger has entered the house! It's a great voice, I love it, I just wish he could do it all of the time! The screechy voice of past Christmas excitement is on it's way out and although I mourn it's passing, it's also a blessing - it always gave me a headache!
It is our last Christmas here in suburbia- in this house. And as I say it I worry that I may jinx something and that all our plans may fall away and I will be left with nothing but dreams. Oddly Facebook reminds me how things change in ways we rarely expect - memories pop up to haunt me there, both mine and my partners daughters. Today she had a memory from 5 years ago; a picture of her and her sister, 5 years younger, the age our youngest are now. Then another photo from 3 years ago when they were in NY - before I even knew they existed - spending Christmas abroad because it was there first without their mother. My own memories are lame in comparison but remind me that when I moved in here, things were very different and you never can know the future.
This year has been amazing - I am getting married on Valentines weekend - yet the lows have been very low, I lost my job, and it's been difficult to write here for sometime. What a year, and that's what I mean, who would have thought, this time last year, that all that would have happened?
In my head I worry that I will lose the ones I love before I have time to enjoy them to the full. Perhaps you have the same thoughts?
Yesterday we 'did Christmas' with Mum. As we arrived she was decorating the Christmas cake, I made her a cup of tea, she had a sherry in one hand and insisted on trying Small Sprogs cider in the other - somethings always make me smile! Surprisingly the cake came out ok and we had a good time there despite it being a week early. We have had an uneasy relationship this year, Mum and I, culminating with me having 'the conversation' with her about my abusive step father (with help from my counsellor) the conversation I never thought I'd be able to have, and it's brought things to the fore for her. I don't regret it but I wish we could change things - yet you can never change the past - we can only look to the future and hope...
