I was really feeling the Christmas spirit the other day. You know how people just seem to be in a good mood when things get Christmasy? And things that might usually annoy them can sometimes just be brushed aside? I was feeling that!
Before I tell you about it, though, I need to tell you one of my dark secrets: I’ve held a deep grudge against a certain gentleman for about five years. I don’t even know his name — not that I would tell you if I did — but five years ago I was doing one of my many back-and-forths through our beautiful city on my school pick-up runs and my youngest was a newborn. When he was a newborn, he hated being in the van. Hated it! He cried and cried and cried the whole time, which would make me sweat with anxiety. Literally sweat. I’d be soaked when I got home. The only thing that would take the edge of his crying — the tiniest edge — was forward motion, so I dreaded stop signs and stop lights. As long as we kept driving, there was the possibility of a moment of peace here and there for him and me and anyone else in the van. But this gentleman, on official business, chose my van to be the first vehicle in a line of cars that he needed to stop for a few minutes.
That was it! That is the big reason there’s been a shadow over this man in my mind for these five years! A man who was doing his job, who had no reason to know I was losing my mind with a screaming baby, who had no reason to know that him stopping the traffic made my life so very much harder in those few minutes. I’ve thought of him and this ridiculous grudge of mine many times over the last few years and wished I could have a softer heart toward him. And the other day, it happened! I saw him doing his job — the same job he was doing when I had that incident five years ago — and I didn’t feel angry! I was sure it was the magic of Christmas!
I had another memory the other day of another man who made me angry, right around the same time as the traffic one. This was one of the boys’ coaches — I won’t tell you which boy or which sport, and certainly not which coach — but he was a coach that would regularly keep my son and his team extra long at the end of practice. This would often mean I’d be waiting in the van for fifteen or twenty minutes past the time that practice was supposed to be over. I would absolutely lose my mind over this! Back then, I was still deep in “schedule mode”: everything ran more smoothly at home and everyone was happier (especially me) when feedings and naps happened when they were supposed to.
But my older boys were old enough at this point that they had things going on that interfered with the schedules. My mental peace took a real hit if the baby’s nap had to be cut short, or if he screamed more than usual when out and about because of being tired, or if he fell asleep in the van while we were doing all the driving around, which would inevitably happen just before we got home, and then he’d wake up when I tried to transition him into the house without waking him. It was the absolute worst. So when we were sitting in the van waiting for my son to be done with practice, and it was going far past the time that I had used to make new schedule calculations, I felt like screaming, or making my son quit the team, or marching up to the coach myself — in the middle of the players — and telling him what’s what. That my son would die of embarrassment was only a small deterrent; the bigger one was that I couldn’t march over to the coach because I couldn’t leave everyone alone in the van, and the idea of getting them all out of the van was a far more painful proposition than sitting in the driver’s seat and fuming.
I’ll tell you, though — I was waiting to pick up a son at a practice that ran long the other day, and I didn’t feel like screaming! Or pulling my son from the team! Or marching over to the coach! In fact, sitting there in the quiet van while everyone else was home (because I can do that now! I have big boys who can watch little boys and I can pop out to get someone from practice without getting everyone dressed and out the door!) was so pleasant. I had my phone to noodle around on and Christmas songs on the radio. No one was crying or ruining their bedtime with an off-schedule nap. I was not stressed! It was that Christmas spirit again!
Probably at this point you’re realizing what took me a bit to realize, which is that while, yes, the Christmas spirit really does work miracles sometimes, the only miracle at play in my two stories is that I no longer have very tiny children. Now I’m just normal-annoyed if I get held up in traffic, and if I want to go tell the coach that my son needs to come with me now, I’ll just do it, no big deal, and I honest-to-goodness won’t even be angry. It’s so funny to me when I have these realizations — life was one way for so long, and now it’s another! I miss those days of tiny boys, but memories like these remind me there’s a time and a season for everything.
I’d still like to think of it as Christmas spirit, though! A very merry Christmas to you all!
Kate and her husband have seven sons ages 19, 17, 15, 13, 11, 9, and 5. Email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
