Eight Years

Tags

anniversary, depression, family, life, love

Yesterday, we were sitting around watching Stephen Fry’s Q.I. on Youtube when Perfect Husband sat up straight.

“Oh, SHIT.” He covered his mouth. “I forgot!”

“What?” I was alarmed. I wracked my brain. Were we supposed to be doing something that night? Was there something vital that I had let slip through my calendar?

“I have to call a prostitute right away! It’s my last chance for the seven year itch!” he said.

I leaned back on the couch and stuck out my tongue.

Eight years ago, we were married. 

Eight years ago, he was my rock, my prince who made me feel like the luckiest person in the world. I couldn’t believe that I was getting to spend the rest of my life with this man who worked so hard to make my life better.

He was the kind of person who cooked dinner and then washed the dishes, while insisting that I sit and rest. He was the kind of person with whom I could talk for hours and never grow bored.

The best part of it all was the fact that he thought he was the lucky one – he actually felt lucky to be with this socially anxious awkward girl with weight problems who loved to take care of pets and babies but also desperately needed to be taken care of by someone else.
Ten years ago, I started dating my best friend. I avoided it for so long, because it sounds like such a terrible idea, but within days we knew that this was it.

We knew that we would move in together. We knew that we would get married. We knew how many kids we would have and what their names would be before he even formally proposed.

Sometimes you just know.

Eleven years ago, he emerged from years of crippling depression, and I discovered that the man who had always been my best friend because even better when he was free of his chains. The man who had always been willing to talk for hours about books or argue with me about hypothetical situations, who had always been willing to give the shirt off of his back to help a friend, stepped out from under the clouds so I could really see him in his entirety. He turned out to be a sunny optimist with a can-do attitude that I found deeply attractive.

Twelve years ago I stopped him from committing suicide. Even then, I knew that I couldn’t live without him in my life. Even then, he was part of the furniture of my mind. Even then, I was willing to sacrifice his happiness to keep him alive. Even then, his pain mattered less to me than the continued beating of his kind heart.

Thirteen years ago my parents met him for the first time, and they thought, “that’s the one.”

“That boy is in love with you,” my father told me later.

“Yeah… we don’t talk about it, though,” I replied, and my parents wisely kept their mouths shut. But they told me later that they knew from the first moment that they saw us together that this would happen. That he was meant to be their son in law.

His parents have said the exact same thing.

Let’s face it, Perfect Husband has said the same thing. “I knew it was just a matter of waiting,” he said.

Show offs.

Fourteen years ago, I sang a Lorne Elliott song with one of the actors in the production of Hamlet that I was stage managing. Almost no one knows Lorne Elliott and we were both delighted to find someone else who did. Almost no one else has read Gordon Korman, but he had, and we talked about it for an hour. He liked Who Is Bugs Potter. I preferred I Want To Go Home.

Fourteen years ago, I found a new friend.

So here we are, fourteen years in, thirteen years in, twelve years in, ten years in.

Eight years in.

I don’t have a photo of us, now. He doesn’t want his picture taken. He doesn’t want to remember this.

Life is different now.

The depression is back and has been raging for years. Most days, he isn’t the sunny prince that I married, but he is still the best friend that I couldn’t live without.  I have met this side of him before and I married him knowing I would probably see it again. So it doesn’t scare me. He is still kind. He is still my best friend. He is still the man that my parents knew I would someday marry.

We have two young children that demand almost all of my time. I feel a constant gripping anxiety based on the fact that I want to work more, because we need more money, but I also want to work less, because I feel overburdened as it is, and I can’t afford to shift too much of that burden onto my husband, and I really can’t afford to pay someone else to take on some of that burden.

I struggle constantly to hide my stress because he blames himself when it emerges. A stray tear, wiped away too late, and he will be pestering me, asking what he can do, beyond the impossible. He thinks that I will blame him, or should blame him, for this.

I don’t.

I was there, you see. I saw how he couldn’t make himself wake up and go to class. I saw how he sometimes backed out of plans because he couldn’t face a social scene. I knew him. I married him.

Yes, I miss the man who pampered me and spoiled me. Yes, I miss feeling like he was someone that I could lean on. Yes, I miss feeling that he was someone I could come to with my problems, instead of someone that I needed to shield from them. Yes, I sometimes feel envy when I meet people who can just get their husbands to take the kids at a moment’s notice, no problem, or who can go out with their friends or on date nights on a regular basis.

Then again I know people who have husbands that are perfectly well and are just giant dicks, and then I feel very grateful. He may be asleep a lot, but he’s not a dick.

Besides, I knew he was sick, and what that meant, and I said the words, “in sickness and in health”, and I knew what I was saying when I said them.

“You could still run away, you know,” he whispered before the vows started. “Now’s your chance. Look, there’s a door just there.”

I looked out of the side door near the altar. It was open to let in cool breezes. The dandelions swayed in the old cemetery where couple after couple lay side by side. Then I looked back at him and shook my head, “no.”

“Now is YOUR chance,” I told him.

Sometimes I think he should have run. He isn’t equipped to handle the stress of caring for small children. I see how just our presence in the household raises his stress levels. I think about how much  of his time is spent on blaming himself for my own stress and misery.

Sometimes I feel like we are Albatrosses around his neck.

And I know he feels like an Albatross on mine.

We keep telling each other that we have no regrets. We keep telling each other that we prefer this to the alternative.

Maybe one day, we’ll finally believe one another.

Because let’s face it: If there is such a thing as fate, we are it.

So let it be. If we are lucky, we’ll have another thirty or forty years together. And I can’t speak for him, but I would still sign up for that in a heartbeat.

The Time Draws Nigh (In Which I Agonize About Going Back To Work And Am Both Successful And In Deep Trouble Simultaneously)

Tags

anxiety, depression, dog training, maternity leave, parenthood, Perfect Husband, work, working mother

How has it been nearly a year since Fritter was born? Where did the time go?

  
I have spent the last month or two slowly gearing back up to work mode, because in a month I am going to have to go back into the world of unmet expectations and absolutely no down time which is the life of the working mother.

I don’t wanna.

I don’t want my cuddly baby to get bigger.

I don’t want to leave her at daycare because she has some stranger issues (which I will discuss at some point).

I don’t want the stress of having to meet people’s expectations, avoid judgement, etc.

I don’t want to lose the hour and a half of down time I get every day during Fritter’s morning nap while Owl is at school.

I don’t want any of it. I LIKE maternity leave.

 
But, since it isn’t a choice, what I really want is to get my dog training business going, and going HARD. Because training dogs pays between 40 and 70 dollars an hour and working at the vet clinic… doesn’t. Also because it’s one of my life dreams, along with being an author.

The Cancer Principle: Depression is Okay, Abuse Is Not

Tags

abuse, bipolar disorder, depression, marriage, mental illness, relationships, suicide

I joined a support group online for people with depressed or bipolar spouses. I expected to find other people who know what it is like to sit downstairs alone in the evenings imagining life after their husband’s suicide.

What I didn’t expect was to end up becoming a relationship counsellor.

Some people are angry and impatient with their spouse’s depressive symptoms. They use words like “lazy” and “can’t be bothered” and “selfish”. I have to remind them that depression is a disease and should be treated as such. They shouldn’t go around getting angry at someone for being sick.

There’s a difference between “won’t” and “can’t”. People with depression often CAN’T get out of bed, CAN’T interact positively and CAN’T pull it together for important family events.

Others are putting up with horrific levels of verbal and emotional and occasionally physical abuse, and blaming it on the depression/mania/addiction. They talk about how their husband tried to choke them and threatened to kill them and say “I had to call the cops. I felt so guilty, I really hate this illness. I know he won’t understand why I did it, either. He’ll think I am against him.”

I have to remind them that depression or bipolar disorder is not a get-out-of-abuse-free card that gives someone carte blanche to emotionally damage their loved ones, particularly their children. You shouldn’t stay with someone who abuses you or puts your children at risk physically or emotionally just because the person is ill, especially when that person keeps insisting that this is all somehow your fault.

But how, people are always asking, do you know what is okay and what is not? Why is okay for my wife to sleep through our daughter’s birthday party, but it isn’t okay for her husband to swear in front of the kids?

So I have developed a litmus test to tell what should, and what should not, be tolerated from a spouse.

The Cancer Principle

Since depression is a deadly disease which causes a wide range of known physical symptoms, I find that cancer makes a good analog because it is a deadly disease without the stigma that comes with mental illnesses. Depression is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Like cancer, some cases are worse than others, and some kinds are more curable than others.

Really, though, you could use any illness that is serious enough to put someone in the hospital. The point is to consider it from the point of view of “my spouse has a serious disease” and not “my spouse is abnormal”.

So, when your depressed husband or wife does something that makes you angry (and they will – it’s hard NOT to be angry when they suddenly sleep through an important event, or leave you scrambling for child care at the last minute, or snap at you for no good reason), ask yourself this:

Would this be considered acceptable if they had cancer?

For example – I go out for a walk with Owl and Perfect Husband is perfectly fine, watching football. I come back and discover that he has crashed in the hour that we have been gone. He is now in the throes of a suicidal misery. He snaps at me twice, then removes himself to the bedroom because he realises that he is growling like an injured bear.

Would this be considered acceptable if he had cancer?

I conclude that the answer is yes – if he had cancer and he suddenly started to feel sick or his pain medications wore off and he became very painful, it is understandable that he would become snappy and then retreat to the bedroom to be alone.

On the other hand, if he had gone onto a verbally abusive tirade calling me a “selfish whore” and threatened to hit Owl, that would NOT have been okay, no matter how much pain he was in.

For example – Perfect Husband agrees to watch the baby while I go to train a puppy. When the day arrives, he has been unconscious for two days and is clearly going to sleep through today as well. I have to cancel the appointment and reschedule it with apologies.

Would this be considered acceptable if he had cancer?

Yes! He was feeling better and thought he could handle it, but then he had a relapse and had to take medications which made him very sleepy and unable to take care of his child. If that was due to cancer, that would be totally understandable.

So I was not angry with him.

On the other hand, if he had agreed to watch the baby and then went out partying with friends and didn’t come back until 5 am, only to fall on the bed dead-drunk, that would not have been okay whether or not he had cancer, so I would have had the right to be angry with him about it.

For example- I watch Breaking Bad. Walter White’s wife discovers that her husband is manufacturing and selling meth, and his contacts with the drug underworld is putting himself and her family in serious danger. He has cancer. Does that make his behaviour okay?

No!

The Cancer Principle. It works every time.

Once someone argued with me, saying “I think there’s a caveat – if they aren’t seeking treatment. My husband sleeps all day and snaps at all of us and he won’t get help and that’s not okay.”

Okay, so then you ask yourself, if he had cancer, and it was making him sick and miserable and yet he refused to seek treatment for his cancer (not even palliative/symptomatic treatment), would that be okay?

No!

The Cancer Principle, man. It WORKS.

Thank You, 2015

Tags

depression, family, life, maternity leave, new years, parenthood, parents, pregnancy

I have mixed feelings about the passing of 2015.

Some parts of 2015 really sucked. My husband nearly killed himself, I ended up heavily pregnant, with a bacterial infection, working and caring for our four year old who also had a bacterial infection, while he was stuck in the hospital and unable to help.

My father broke his hip and overall has deteriorated markedly in his health.

My relationship with my son deteriorated, as my capacity to tolerate his extroverted highjinks hit a new low.

I spent a significant amount of this year coughing, exhausted, diabetic, extremely stressed, half-expecting to become a widow at any moment, researching the potential cost of burying my husband, and wearing Depends because I kept wetting myself.

On the other hand…

This year also brought me the generosity and love of the friends and relations who came streaming in to help during these difficult times. There were friends who picked Owl up at daycare when I was stuck at the hospital, and friends who brought Chinese food so that I wouldn’t have to cook, or took Owl for play dates so I could nap.

There was my mother in law, who is terrified of flying and financially limited, flying in TWICE to spend a grand total of three months sleeping on our couch, just to help.

On the first visit she made me diabetes-friendly meals and arranged snacks for me at a time when I was working and exhausted and could never have kept up the dietary management that was expected of me on my own. She put my son to bed at night and made him breakfast in the morning, she read to him and joked with him and brought some humor and pleasantry to a home that was seething in stress.

On her return she cooked and cleaned, entertained Owl and then held the baby so I could shower, get dressed, eat meals, and spend some quality time with my son.

And in between those visits, my parents flew in for four months. They took money from their nest egg to rent a place nearby, and my mother drove back and forth making meals and snacks, cleaning, and reading Owl bedtime stories.

Not only did it bring me much needed aid, but I got to spend time with my father while he still knows who I am.

And this year brought me Fritter, who made a safe landing on the shores of time and gave us the gift of a colic-free fourth trimester. She brings me joy every day with her grins and chortles, and I wouldn’t change a thing about her.

And with all of those months of support from our family, PH was able to retreat and rest and begin healing. While he is still very ill, I have seen more of the old Perfect Husband in the last three months than I have in the past two years. There are mornings when I come downstairs to find breakfast laid out for me, afternoons when he greets me at the door to take my coat and offer me a drink, and evenings when he rubs my feet and offers to run me a bath.

Whenever he has a good day, I feel like I could suffer another two years just for a chance at more days like that.

I feel like I could kiss 2015 for bringing me even one day like that, let alone as many as I have been gifted with these last few months.

2015 also brought me maternity leave, which I love because I am a lazy slob. I love being home with my baby and watching The Walking Dead or writing during her naps. It’s way better than working. I’m sad that there are only a few more months left. I have a lot of writing to get down in that time.

Yes, over all I am very grateful to 2015. I feel like it got handed a terrible set of cards but it played them all right.

2015 for me was a year of defeat and renewal, of family and love.

We survived it, and maybe it has made us stronger.

If 2016 can keep up with this upward trend, I think I can look forward to the coming year.

And if it can’t… well… Bring it, 2016.

Thankful Enough. I Think.

Tags

depression, gratitude, laughter, parenthood, Thanksgiving

It’s Canadian thanksgiving, so we cooked a turkey and were all thankful and stuff.

I’m thankful for a lot.

In fact, I think thankfulness has replaced other positive emotions, like joy or pleasure, in my life.

I’m thankful that my husband is still alive. I’m thankful for the fact that most days, lately, he has been able to help significantly around the house, cooking dinner and or doing laundry and such. Once or twice lately he has even extended signs of affection to me and I get extra thankful about things like that.

I’m thankful that my baby is alive and healthy and that I have bonded strongly with her. I’m thankful for her chubby little cheeks and her goofy chortle when I snorgle her. I’m thankful that my son is so bright and curious and so loving to his sister.

I’m thankful for my immense support network, for all the friends who helped me when things were in crisis, and that so many of my friends have kids Owl’s age.

I’m thankful that Owl loves school.

I’m thankful for the mountains and the incredible views that I get to enjoy every day taking Owl to school and back.

I’m so thankful for everything that I’m just bleeding out with it.

That’s right. I’m ungrateful about gratitude.

It’s odd. I’m not depressed. But I’m somehow… jaded. I feel like my sense of humor has deteriorated. I always used to be looking for the funny side of things.

Somehow I have lost that. You notice that I’m posting less? It’s because I have fewer funny stories. It can’t be that less funny stuff is happening. I’m just not seeing the humor.

When Owl tries to dick around with his general five year old silliness, I’m more likely to shut him down than join in. When I try to make jokes it feels forced and stupid. I’m like a cranky old lady.

I don’t like it.

But I don’t know where my sense of humor has gone. I want to see the funny side of things again.

I think PH has noticed. He keeps telling me bad jokes. “What does a pirate octogenarian say?” “I’m eighty.”

But in the meantime, there is turkey. I love turkey dinner, it’s my favourite thing, and when I smell the good turkey dinner smells and listen to the sounds of music from our ipod playing in the kitchen, football whistles from the living room, and cuddle my snuggly six month old, and enjoy the peace that comes from Owl being invited out by a friend on a playdate, I feel content and very grateful.

So why do I still feel like there’s something wrong?

General Life Update Featuring A Lot of Urine, Some Unfounded Fretting, and Wood Pulp

Tags

cardboard, cravings, depression, help, incontinence, liver pain, parents, pica, pregnancy, third trimester

Well, it’s been long enough since I posted about my life that I’m now in an awkward position because I can’t post about my current life because you wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about. So I need to clear up some of the backlog.

I know some of you are wondering how PH is doing.

He’s alive.

Generally, he is closer to staying alive than he was a couple of months ago.

But we aren’t out of the woods yet. No miracles.

If you asked me how I was doing, I could say “that DEPENDS”.

Depends, get it? No of course you don’t.

But you will.

Does Not Happen

Tags

antidepressants, depression, husband, spouse, suicide

‘Not this one, Mau thought, as loudly as he could. Not now. No one goes alive into the dark. I served you, Locaha. I walked in your steps. You should owe me this one. One life, back from the dark!

And a voice came back from the gloom: I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no ‘should’.

[….]

Does not happen, he thought, and the words became a declaration of triumph and defiance. ‘Does not happen,’ he said, and the words got bigger and dragged him to his feet, and ‘Does not happen!’ he shouted at the sky. ‘DOES NOT HAPPEN!'” – Terry Pratchett, Nation.

This is me, standing in front of my husband, refusing to let him die.

When he tells me to stand aside, because he does not want to hurt me, but he can’t take the pain any more.

When I think about telling our little son that his Daddy is dead.

When I think about telling my mother in law that she will never see her son again.

When I think of a life spent next to an empty space in the bed, a ring on my finger with no match to it, a daughter who doesn’t remember ever having a father, a son who grows up wondering why his father left him behind.

Does not happen.

So I stand outside in my bath robe, leaning on the car door, calmly telling him that I will crush his fingers if he tries to pry it open again. He will have to hurt me. He will have to push his pregnant wife to the ground, knock me unconscious maybe, because I can not stand aside.

Sucking It Up Starts Now. Right After I Whine For A Bit.

Tags

depression, determination, love, the second shift, tiredness, whining, work

So, PH has been worrying lately about my mental health, probably understandably.

I’m not particularly depressed PER SE. My self esteem is okay right now – could be better, but I’m not suffering the crippling shame that I had back in the crash of ’09.

I’m just… beat.

Part of this is because I’m a spoiled Princess. PH has known from day one (hell, from day -730, because he knew me when I was in another relationship and he could tell even then) that I am what you might call “high maintenance”. I like to be cared for. I don’t like too many responsibilities. I love to have things to care for – pets and children – but I need someone doing the same for me.

But now I have all the responsibility.

From the moment I get up almost until the moment I go to bed, I am needed by someone for something. Owl needs me in the morning to dress him and get him breakfast and then force him into the car to go to daycare.

Then work needs me for 8 hours straight with no lunch break – chatting with clients, getting patient histories, wrestling dogs, cleaning up poop, and trying to squeeze in 10 hours of extra job responsiblities in between appointments. If someone schedules appointments poorly, I get in trouble for it. If someone’s estimate is higher than was quoted, then I have to deal with that. If we have fewer new clients this week than last week, then that is SOMETHING I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR.

Then Owl needs me again  – bring him home from daycare, play with him, put him to bed.

“Play with me? Play with me, Mommy!” is a constant refrain whenever I try to sit down, from the moment I get in the car with him until his second trip to the potty at night.

Except on the nights when I train dogs, when I bring him home from daycare, play with him, and then go and talk and yell things like “YAAAAY PUPPEEEE!” for an hour and a half straight.

Once Owl is asleep, I get some time to collapse. But this is basically my only chance to interact with PH who seems to, you know, want to interact with his wife occasionally.

I avoid going to bed, because the time when PH is asleep and so is Owl is basically the only time I can get true solitude – something that I desperately need to recharge.

It’s not enough. I’m not recharging.

I’m in constant energy-saving mode. I’m not washing dishes any more. I’m not cleaning the bathroom, or sweeping the floors.

I’m not really even interacting with poor PH any more, who clearly misses his wife. I’m having trouble keeping from snapping at people at work. I AM snapping at poor Owl, who is the most innocent party in all of this.

I find myself obsessively fantasizing about being locked alone in a white room with a window.

And PH sees it, and it makes him feel bad. He blames himself for putting such a load on me. He feels guilty, which he shouldn’t, because he’s not well.

But the problem is, he’s better than he was.

When he was in crisis, it was obvious to both of us that I needed to take on as much of the load as possible. I was wage earner – working two jobs – primary child caregiver, dish washer and garbage emptier.

But now he’s a bit better – not well, but not in as much crisis – and he feels like he should be able to do more. He IS doing more, in fact, but that gives us both the illusion that he actually is better. So he takes on more, and I expect him to continue taking on more. But he isn’t all better, so when I forget and lean on him, half the time he falls over, which does neither of us much good.

He told me today that basically, my own exhaustion/near-tears aura of defeat is probably one of the most significant contributions to his current level of depression.

He told me this not in a way to induce guilt, but simply to be honest about his level of concern for me.

His wife is falling apart, and that makes him feel terrible. 

The problem is, I’m falling apart because he can’t reliably take on more of the load. He can’t commit to putting Owl to bed every night, so that I can rest on the evenings when I’m not training dogs.

He can’t even commit to HELPING put Owl down on the days when I’m not out training dogs. He can manage Owl the couple of nights a week that I’m out training. Anything more is asking too much.

I know, because I asked.

So, this puts us at what Terry Pratchett would call a Klatchian Standoff.

His depression is made worse by his awareness that I’m sinking. He can’t stop me from sinking because his depression prevents him from taking on as much of the load as I need him to take on.

So. Three options exist.

Either I push him to do more than either of us feel he can really do, and take the risk of him going back to crisis mode… or we stand there and hug each other while we sink like Atryu and Artax in the Swamp of Sadness….

…Or I suck it up.

I’m not depressed. Not really.

I’m just really, really, really tired. Tired of being the responsible one. Tired of having everything be my job by default. Tired of knowing that there’s no one to help if I sink.

But my life is not THAT bad.

There are tons of single mothers out there who work two jobs and have to do everything. I’m better off than they are because really, PH still does a decent amount. He handles laundry, and he can cook most days, and he plays with Owl when he can.

Hell, he took Owl for most of this morning, just so I could get a good sleep in.

I don’t do everything. I just do a lot more than he does. Because he’s sick.

So it’s not THAT bad. I’m just being a wuss. I just got tired of being brave. I just started to feel like PH should be able to help again, because he’s clearly doing better.

But when I asked him about committing to helping put Owl to bed every night, I saw the look on his face.

And I knew that he is not as much better as we pretend he is.

I really want him to be better. I’m afraid to push him, afraid he’ll go into crisis mode, afraid that if he pushes himself, he’ll go off the edge entirely and Owl will grow up without a father.

And then I’d REALLY have no one to help  – I would really learn what being on my own would mean then.

I won’t let that happen.

So I need to stop thinking that he’s better. I need to stop waiting for someone to step in and save us.

I need to find a whole new battery pack.

And I’m going to do it.

Because I don’t want to see that look on his face again. I don’t want to feel disappointed like that again. I want to shut up the voice in my head that keeps waiting for things to be “fair”. Because life isn’t fair. My husband is sick. I need to work more than him, carry more load than him.

This is PH we’re talking about. That man wouldn’t ask me to work harder than him. That man wouldn’t expect me to work a full day and then pull the second shift unless he physically had no choice.

When he’s well enough, he won’t be asking me what he can do, only to tell me that I’ve asked too much.

When he’s well again, he’ll just do it.

And until then, I can do this.

F*** You, 2013

Tags

2013, 2014, depression, miscarriage, new year

Good riddance, you sucked.

Were there good moments in 2013?

Sure.

Peak of the year – February 2013

Our trip to Disneyland was unbelievably awesome.

That was in February. It’s all been downhill since then.

I remember feeling so very lucky when I was pregnant. I remember how PH trawled three supermarkets to find the fixings to a chicken club wrap when I was craving them.  I felt so lucky that I had such a great husband, that I was pregnant with my second child, that I had been voted Employee of the Year, that I had gotten a trip to Disneyland.

I didn’t take it for granted.

I felt blessed.

Then it all fell apart.

I lost the pregnancy, and then I lost my husband to depression – hopefully temporarily.

I lost my patience with Owl.

I lost my interest in my job.

I lost the energy to train dogs.

I lost the will to care.

I lost hope in conceiving again.

I’m just lost.

Although I did gain ONE thing – weight!

So I kept my resolution.

I’m hoping that passing an arbitrary point around the sun will somehow turn the luck around.

Welcome, 2014.

Please give me my life back.

Even If It Doesn’t Fit The Modern Spirit

Tags

Charlie Brown Tree, Christmas, Commercialism, Decoration, depression, Ornaments, Wish Lists

Despite my lack of Christmas Spirit, there is one thing I did this year that I am please about, decorating-wise.

Word got around my workplace that London Drugs was selling a full size replica of the iconic Charlie Brown Christmas Tree for a very affordable price.

So one day, after picking Owl up from school, I swung by London Drugs.

“Sorry I’m late, I wanted to buy an artificial tree,” I said.

PH squinted at me. He’s met me, and he knows how violently against artificial trees I am.

“I don’t BELIEVE you,” he said.

“No, really!” I held out the box.

PH looked at it for a moment.

“I accept this,” he said simply. “How much did you have to pay?”

“Fifteen bucks.”

“…really?”

“Yup.”

“I accept this.”

It has the place of honour on our dining room table.

Yes, I am aware of the irony of BUYING a REPLICA of something which represents the rejection of commercialization in Christmas in general, and artificial trees in particular.

But you know what? It’s FRIGGING ADORABLE.

It reminds me of PH and me. Weighed down, but still standing, still good. We just need a little love and care.

And every time I look at it, I am reminded of what Christmas is really all about.

My house is messy, and undecorated, and I haven’t sent any cards.

But you know what?

My son asked for a candy cane, a tea set, and Hungry Hungry Hippos for Christmas. That’s it. That’s all he wanted (well, and something else called “the game with the dots that go down the hole”* but we’ll never figure that one out). And honestly, I think the only thing he had his heart set on is the candy cane.

It could be worse.

Christmas doesn’t come from a store.

…So the beautiful decorations on Pinterest can go f*&# themselves.

*ETA: he asked for the same thing the next year. We asked him to show it to us. It was a crokinole board.