Jittery

I woke up today with an odd feeling. Not a feeling of dread or of fear or of anything dark, but just a feeling of jittery anticipation of ... something. One of those feelings that are just so impossible to explain.

Tomorrow my mom finds out the results of her MRI, to see if her liver is OK. I have been stuffing those feelings deep in the farthest recesses of my brain this past week. I was sick; I was dealing with two sick kids. I didn't have time to worry, which is a good thing, really. If I added worry to my week, I would have collapsed into some kind of coma. Waiting is horrendous; "life" keeps you preoccupied.

Tomorrow morning I have a job interview ... imagine that! More on that later. I am not prepared. I am not excited about it. I actually keep forgetting about it. I haven't even printed out my resumé or writing samples yet.

Sometime later this week I have another "interview" of sorts, meeting with a woman to establish myself as her "cleaning lady." I have worked in our nation's capitol. I have a brain that God has seen fit to create in a way that is very sharp and bright. I have gone to college, I have overcome fears and obstacles and shortcomings, I have commuted on subways and worn sneakers with my business suit, I have done things and accomplished things that I never dreamed I could. This week, I might become someone's "cleaning lady," as she keeps referring to me. I need the money; our family cannot makes ends meet in its current state. I will clean toilets and scrub floors. I don't mean for this to come off sounding like awful snobbery; I detest snobbery. This is just me, trying to adjust, trying to reconcile some of my puzzle pieces.

I just found out yesterday that a Christmas tradition in our family is coming to an end this year. Every Christmas Day, since before I was born, my family and the family of my mother's only sister-sibling got together. My mother and her sister are very, very close; my aunt's only child -- a daughter, my cousin -- was like the sister I never had; we live one block away from each other. Having Christmas together was obvious, inevitable, wanted. My cousin and her family are coming home this year, and we were all so excited about getting together, grown-up cousins laughing and talking, the little cousins all re-connecting and getting to know each other better. This year, my aunt and uncle made the decision that this is not going to happen. They want to be alone this year, just their own family, a mere block away. First the first time in many, many decades my mother and her sister will not be together; the grown-up cousins will not be together; the children -- our next generation -- will not be together. The tradition ends this year. Maybe it's because I tend to cling very, very tightly to family. Maybe it's because I cherish traditions and foster them as much as I can. Maybe it's because my mom has been through hell this year with her health and I want to stress the importance of our family and our support of each other. Maybe it's because my own life has felt like it has fallen apart this past year and I am desperate for something familiar, something comforting, a tradition that I love. Maybe that's why I took this news so hard. There's been too many changes. Too much sadness. Why mess with Christmas traditions too?

It's cold outside. 34 degrees and a wintry mix are in the proverbial cards for today. Chilly. Jittery. I feel it. That dark, steely sky has been oozing its way into my spirit this morning. Chilly. Jittery. I have to be thankful. I have to somehow pierce it with light. OK, Miss Suze-Ormond-Lookalike-Arkansas-Speaker-Who-Keeps-A-Gratitude-Journal, here's my discipline for today:

1. I am grateful that my kids are finally healed! After more than a week of illness, both kids are on the mend, with Grace clearly bouncing back much more quickly than her brother. The proof is in the proverbial pudding: they were scrapping majestically this morning. Grace woke up at 6:30 a.m. and was playing beautifully by the dim, colorful lights of the Christmas tree. An hour later, Aidan came out of their bedroom. Within minutes the scrapping began. Grace had been playing with a hard plastic Sesame Street themed purse, filled with the necessary accessories. Why on my earth my son felt the need to play with a giant plastic lipstick is beyond me, but the fighting ensued. Lovely. My kids are healed. Life can now resume.

2. I am grateful for my dog Jack, for his intense need to be loved, and to love in return. He's a beagle, which means he's fiercely, religiously, obsessively pack-oriented. I think whoever coined the phrase "Man's Best Friend" had a beagle in mind. He is ours; we are his. He is heart-broken if we go anywhere without him; he is personally affronted if we leave him out of our activities. But when we are home, when we are together, he is completely fulfilled. At night, I am grateful for his need to sleep with us, performing the same ritual, the same routine. I get in bed, he jumps up after me and waits until I settle in under the covers, propped up on the pillows, book in hand. When he sees that I am in place, he walks up to me, tail wagging, and licks my nose. He nuzzles me a bit, getting the rub that he's looking for, an acknowledgment that he is loved and wanted and cherished. I lift up the covers and he ducks under, making his way down into the cozy depths. He must touch some part of my leg; he must -- whether it's my knee, my thigh, or curled up between the tops of my feet and my shins, there must be skin-on-fur contact. And that, for me, is the warmest spot on my body, and soon that warmth spreads until I fall asleep. I am grateful for my dog, for his intense need to be loved, for his warm fur, for his expressions of his devotion to me.

3. I am grateful for things that only children can do to make me laugh ... For Grace, who decided to jazz up the dixie cup of raisins I had given her. Dixie cups aren't good enough, apparently ... raisins taste much better in another receptacle. I am thankful for the sight of my sweet girl, walking around with a pink plastic bed pan (or vomit pan -- whatever that lima bean-shaped pan is for) from her toy doctor kit, filled to the brim with raisins, snacking heartily as only a two-year-old could do.

4. I am grateful for a darling habit of Grace's, which I know I will rue in later years, but for now it's the sweetest sight -- how she sucks her thumb. We have come to identify what sets it off -- usually distress of some kind -- and we have come to recognize that different levels of that distress result in different methods of thumb-sucking. The most serious of all distresses -- and what I have seen a great deal of this week as she struggled with her all-consuming sickness -- results in a multi-fingered act. Her left thumb goes into her mouth, her left forefinger points upward, searching for its mate, as the right forefinger comes up, tenting, tiny fingertips tapping together. I have never seen anything like it. It's beautiful sweetness indicates to me that something is very wrong, and I love her all the more.

5. I am grateful for the opportunity to read to my kids in our nightly ritual. Aidan selected "The Twelve Days of Christmas" which we half-read, half-sang last night, all three of us cuddled on my bed. Aidan memorized the song in school, so he took the lead. Grace "laa-laa'd" along, popping in the few words she either understood or could utter herself. The sweetness occurred at the end of each verse, when Aidan wrapped up, "And a partridge in a pear tree!" Grace immediately followed with those three little ending notes: "do-do-do" -- all on her own, unbidden. I had no idea she even knew that part of it, from some CD she must have heard. It was beyond adorable, her little mouth puckering into a tight little "O," her big brother laughing and hugging her each time, "Gracie-girl, you are so cute. I love you."

I am grateful.
I will get through this week.