The day began early at 3:30AM. For the past several years we set an alarm for the middle of the night. I started doing this when the kids were old enough to want to stay up and catch us setting out presents. It actually used to to cause me anxiety to think of sleeping through the alarm or considering the ramifications of what would happen if morning came and we hadn’t put out the presents.

I told him I didn’t think we needed an alarm. I’m typically up at some point during the night. So we didn’t set one and he woke me up around 3:30. I really considered not getting up. He’d manage fine and then I wouldn’t have to fully come out of my drowsy state. There was not a good enough reason though not to, and to stay there would’ve only been selfishness and laziness on my part.

And neither of those things are helpful in marriage. Soon I was into the normal rhythm of things. The presents were wrapped, the stockings all stuffed. All we have to do is set everything out and manage the plate of cookies they leave us. He took a bite out of each one. He offered me some but I didn’t want any. Not only do I not particularly care for sweets, but bites are less forgiving with women.

We came back to bed and he fell asleep. I tossed and turned for a while then turned on my thunderstorms. The details here are momentarily fuzzy, in that I do not know if I began talking after I had fallen back asleep or before. I started talking about regret, and feeling like I maybe hadn’t done enough when his dad was on hospice. And there’d be no way to know because no one would tell me.

I recently said it, “You have to listen for the feeling behind the words.” It’s so easy to fixate on words themselves, a surefire way to go round and round with problems. And before too long I’d spiraled into bitter nonsense and I was the one who was crying again. But this is my portion, a part I’ve seen I’m supposed to be changing. Before long we were back to where Christmas was meant to be.