ALL SUGARPLUMS & SANTA CLAUSE: get real

Article by Heather Land

We all experience them. Those moments that come out of the clear blue and leave us feeling like the sleigh is in a downhill spiral because everyone has stopped believing. 

I’d been tending the fire all evening, the embers seemingly fluorescent when the girls walked through the door. We were supposed to shoot for the Christmas issue – this issue. 

While it was to be posed for the purpose of shooting, it’s story was authentic. The girls are the ones who coined “Family Friday” for this clan. They are the ones who continue to guard it and honor it – even at 15 and 13. It would be nothing out of the ordinary for us to sit around the fire and roast marshmallows or string garland and chat all things Christmas. Together. 

They’d just come in from being with friends and were warming up by the fire roaring with fresh logs as though it had anticipated their chills. Perhaps, even now, maybe it was me who flicked the first ember that caused the blaze; I did interrupt the chatty details of the night with “Did you hear our conversation yesterday? I would like for you…” 15 and 13. 

Do you know the scene in the movie “Brave” where mother and daughter are at an empasse, and Merida, the daughter, slashes the tapestry of her family that her mother had been carefully weaving since she was born. This is that scene. You don’t even need to see the movie to imagine that one. Tale as old as time. Conflict of parent and child.

Now, I sit here, pondering how it is that I will be able to teach them all that I need to before the world eats them alive or at least tries. A world that is seemingly splitting in two. I am in a race with Father Time even though I know he need not participate to win. I am a mere mortal – a modern day mother trying to hold fast the truths while simultaneously delicately unraveling the lies of the world – all the while juggling my dignity and their respect on the toes of the one foot balancing on solid foundation. If this all sounds immaculately dramatic, you must either not have kids, have not reached teenage years or have not had conversations with your teenagers. Or,  perhaps you have existed under a rock. We have all been the teenager – paradoxically all knowing and knowing nothing at all. Pair that with the last few years of the Conjuring and you have yourself a mighty fine doomsday cocktail. 

My girls, they are independent – both by nature and my doing. I gave them permission years ago to respectfully call me out and debate should they feel me to be out of line. This has proven very humbling to say the least. As much as I would like to regret it, I see it’s benefit tenfold. Debate is not for the faint of heart. It can certainly make a brave man cower and a passionate woman unleash. For a teenager and their parent, it can drive a wedge. 

It can throw a dust storm in our faces and sling rocks at our hearts. It is where we go from there, though, that counts. 

Enter the Mediator. The Peacemaker. The First Born. The Sister. She is there to tell me to take a breath. She is there to tell me she hears and sees me and even agrees with me – “like, for real.” She is also there to tell me she hears and sees her sister – who is young and still trying to form her own opinions and needs me to give her space to do that so she can, in fact, come to the podium with a shred of confidence. 

And in that moment, I know she is the one that has it right. Each of us was actually debating our insecurities and fears under the guise of the true issue now buried under rubble. 

Crystal clear. I felt a giant smile taking hold of me (even though pride still had its hand on my strings) and I wrapped my arms around her – “You are going to be alright.” To that she responded with confidence, “I know. And I also know that I am not going to even try to talk to her about any more of this tonight, and neither should you, but don’t worry, she will come around, just give her space.” 

What of the rest? Left to her own space, my previous “opponent” came to me shortly after, herself as humbled as I, sat on the foot of my bed, and we conversed. There was emotion and there were hugs. me: “I am terrified of turning around and you are too far for me to reach. I am your mother.”

Her: “I feel like you say your frustrations are not aimed at me but it certainly feels like they are. I don’t disagree with you. It’s that I don’t care about all of these issues right now. I am 13. I don’t want to have to.” 

  Aaaaawwwwwwlllllllll that for a simple Truth, you ask? Yes. Every. Single. Time. 

`“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and 

devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”

“Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.” 

Merry Christmas to you,  readers, and may even the hardest conversations be worthy of a good fire.