No one grows up for free

The last breaking day of 2017. 

Once, because I am an introvert, I felt that the only thing worse than not being invited to a large, important event full of strangers was attending one. 

Because, small talk. I don't know what to say or ask, I screw up anecdotes, and my timing is bad.

My attitude changed when I grew up, became a writer, and realized that conversations are my classroom.

  

A full year of conversations has come to a close and my bag is packed for 2018. 

For many I know and love, it has been a year of major decisions around all the big stuff – parenting, career moves, relationship shifts, having children, moving, marriage and divorce – and the risk, regret, relief and reward of making those decisions have been significant.

I know someone who left a relationship and someone else who would like to start one. I know someone who wants to make a different career choice and someone who gambled big on a business idea. I know others who wonder if they blew it as a parent.

Issues of regret touch me the most because I am, as my son would say, a "stud" at handling this in my own life. And so on this last day of 2017, I'm going to share some thoughts on the subject of mistakes and regret and the parting gift we are handed as we leave mistakes behind:  new wisdom. 

First, we are, every one of us, every day, as long as we're alive and have a past, still growing up.

Second, no one grows up for free.  

There are only two ways to go when we think back on a bad decision:  Mire in it, loathe yourself for it, and refuse to trust your instincts going forward.

Or, realize that at any point on the continuum, you can't know more than you do. You can't factor in maturity that hasn't arrived yet. You can't factor in the age and wisdom that you haven't earned yet. You can't factor in consequences that will punish your impulses, or outcomes that will reward your intuition because those things are like grades on an exam that you'll get when you get.    

I've learned that all you can do with every decision, even the risky ones, even the big or costly ones, is take a chance on your instincts because instincts, like children, need to be field-tested to work right.

I've learned that all you can do with every decision, is know that in the process of recovering from a misstep, you will have learned something about your decision making that you needed to know.

This is important for people who are considering new jobs, new homes, new love, and new lives, with or without someone they hoped would be at their side.

This is important for people who have ventured into unknowns and stumbled, sometimes badly. It's important for those who regret a thing they've said, or done, or caused. 

You will do it again. 

You have to. 

Because the alternative is to live so cautiously you'll run out of things to think about and eventually won't bother to dream. 

I've learned that wisdom can come from things you've done right, but it usually comes from the things you've done wrong first. And while the parting gift of new wisdom isn't glamorous, it is your co-pilot, and it is your therapist.

Once, I believed that life should be lived with some imagination of how we want to look back on it. I've learned that this is false. To believe we have any control over a future memory at all is to believe we will still be ruled by the moods and moments and motives of today.

We won't be.

Next year, when you do brood over your flaws or mistakes or poor planning or bad decisions, remember this:  You are, thankfully, flawed,  which will instantly improve your likability because no one likes a flawless person. 

Whether we are teens, or college graduates, or newly married, or empty-nesters, or facing retirement, we are always growing up. 

It isn't free.

If you're doing it right.

Pencils down.

"And how was your day?" said Abby
to her friend, Tree. 
(quote credit: Courtney Bonifant)

A little arrow of joy sailed into my heart this morning to realize it is the twentieth of December. 

Because.

When you are in the twenty-somethingth of December, you are not close, but really close to Christmas. And, in my blue exam book, this means pencils down. 

This means it's time to do stuff that matters. If you're a list and task freak, all stressed out over what you have to do, it's time to realize that a lot of stuff is more important than finding holiday plates and napkins that don't have Rudolph and snowmen on them.

Ever since I was a wee me, there has been something magical about December 20. 

Back then, it meant the start of classroom parties and school vacation and the long awaited (single showing) of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which was punctuated every four minutes with commercials about Norelco shavers. 

Afternoons turned dark before the bus finished dropping us off, and little homes with candles in the windows made even the crappy neighborhoods look like they could be featured in a snow globe.  

For me, December 20 starts a short stretch that is not about undone tasks on the list, but stuff that doesn't make the list because if it did, the list would look like this:

Replace candles

Thank someone for making a difference in your life

Pick up sugar cookie mix

Check beer and tortilla chips
Say something encouraging to a stranger. 

For me, in these last days, have-to's become hope-to's until all that's really important are the want-to's which tend to arrive late. 

I was hoping to receive and wrap the balance of gifts I've ordered by now. I was hoping I'd find a new centerpiece for the Christmas Eve table. It would have been nice to replace some of the linen and towels before everyone arrives. I should buy new candles. 

But it is December 20 now and my "want to's" are here.

Handwritten cards - meaningful ones - will be composed  for best friends and others.

Comfort foods that my children love and request every year, even though they would never order them in a restaurant, will be waiting.

There will be a date with my husband in a quiet place where we will likely have a conversation about life; how it changes, how it doesn't, and how it should, if we want to embrace memories in the future rather than dodge them.  

There will be an airport reunion  with the daughter who moved to California two months ago and wasn't planning on coming home for the holidays until two weeks ago, when she changed her mind. I will cry before I see her, to know I'll see her.

There will be more than one meaningful conversation with another daughter and her husband about career dreams and marriage and life goals and raising children and other relationships, because they are artists, and artists are bad at talk that isn't about stuff that matters.

There will be attempts on the part of both of my sons to teach me about football again. It will start with the annual, remedial explanation of downs and yards which I will forget. It will end with diagrams on post-its of tiny figures and directional arrows which I will not understand but will save anyway to put with the others in a box near my bookcase.

And as this day fades into tomorrow, marking exactly one month since my father's death, I will focus on a memory I've gone back to a few times over the last four weeks. 

It was Dad's last Christmas Eve with us, his nineteenth.  At the end of the night, he said the same thing he said every year. "This was the best one ever. I don't think you can top it, next year."

In a few days, when Christmas is finally here and we raise a glass, I will think about that and offer a special toast to Dad, the best one ever. 

Happiest of holidays to you. Make them the best ever, surrounded by people who matter the most. 

Love,

Susan