A third holiday season has come and gone in our new formation of what is now the Sullivan/Backstrom family. I tried to rally us all out the door at a NYE party last night as the Backstroms and caught myself quick. I liked that, for years I knew that I had no problem changing my name when I got married because I liked the idea of a tribe. I had never really had one growing up. So we would be the Backstroms and just that alone would be enough. It would get us through dark times and it would identify us out in the world. There they are, those whacky Backstroms. We're not the Backstroms anymore. I mean, some of us are not. When I go over there to visit or pick children up  (those people who are now bigger than me and still I call them little children) these people are the Backstroms. Maybe like the Backstroms minus one. Jeremiah and I are the Sullivans. Maybe like the Swinging Sullivans or the Sullivans Two, but it is just us in that mix.


I ran into an old girlfriend in Target who I have chatted with a few times since my exit from the Gloucester life, my divorce, but never at length. She told me she'd love to sit and talk sometime, she never really understood what went wrong in my marriage. And there it was just like that, this feeling like no one on this earth knew me at all for so many years and all the waves that fall after that summation, the realization, the emotion and the lonliness. Today I swim in honesty for the most part. I talk about my struggles and I catch myself when I aim to play perfect. It's a hard game to surrender to when the entire world is yelling at me in advertisements, TV shows and Facebook posts. Look at me, look at me, look at me. I don't want to be looked at anymore. I want to be seen.


And so it is my New Years resolution to write more and here I sit, up in our bedroom while the girls slumber in the living room having spent the majority of the night up talking with their friend who rang in the New Year with us. While Jonah somehow manages to sleep with the music still beating through his radio all night long. And while Jay takes his coffee down to the basement to watch the football recaps begrudgingly, already thinking about the overtime he has this week. I work out my week in my head and I am fairly pleased with the results. The kids seemed to have a good week and usually if they are good, I am good. Gary and I took the kids to Christmas Eve mass as we have done every year for 18 years. I don't remember how we decided that we would do this but there was something so sacred about Christmas Eve for both he and I, that it called for the Backstroms to get the band back together again. Mostly we all enjoy the singing and seeing people we haven't seen all year long. Maybe I enjoy people bearing witness that "Look, I didn't ruin our family after all! Dammit." Hopefully it is more of a caring gesture. I hate leaving Jay though. And I hope that next year brings a woman for Gary.
Jonah whispered to me as we were leaving the Church, " I like that you and Daddy still like each other so much." And all the planets and elements in my celestial universe aligned. It's the thing I remember most about the week.


My family is not perfect. And neither am I. Weight and food still daunt me like an old cranky neighbor, throwing glances over at me every morning because my lawn's a mess. I still have that incessant monkey on my back reminding me of the more I need to get done that day, and the less I somehow am. The voice is a little quieter today. I am trying to cut sugar and food that acts like poison out of my life for today and to sit with myself a little more. Sometimes that works. And when it doesn't, it doesn't.
I can hear Jonah opening the cage of his new guinea pigs and I know my day is beginning. My children are not perfect either. I hope they know all the things I know. I hope that their bodies are filled up with some sort of feeling of God or faith or peacefulness. I hope they only carry the jiggling jello like insanity of worry around with them for little bits of time and that when they do they know they can certainly come to me. Loving children is a constant heartache because its the kind of love that would break the most sturdy of buildings and tear down the great pyramids in one moment.


At the end of today I will be here again, with him. My life with him is not perfect too! It is the kind of love that everyone should have at least once in their lifetime. It's honest and enduring and real. It's amazing and fun and difficult and dark. I remember when I first fell in love with Jeremiah, telling my friend Chris that I had met someone who was the male version of me. There's nothing I've told Jeremiah that he doesn't already know, of the world, of me and of himself. And he still continues to text me that he misses me from the basement while I write this. And I miss him too. So we'll end the holiday week like we started, just the two of us trying to stay awake past nine, talking to the dog and waking up throughout the night to see if it was all real.