The tension of advent season perfectly captures the unresolved conflict of 2021. In our family’s faith journey, advent is waiting for the coming of Christ. Who has already come. It’s searching for a peace that has already been found, struggling to give into calm while being inundated with chaos. It is Christmas. The striking paradox of this past year is that as a country we achieved healing, while growing in ignorance based sickness. We gained justice while taking steps back toward oppression, and we achieved freedoms only to be thrown into fear. 2021, we survived, we are tired of surviving and long to thrive. But still we wait. We move toward what is coming, what has come.
Much of this year felt like moving into the unknown. Our family started the year by becoming virtual caretakers for Bard’s grandmother, and that relationship shaped us deeply, culminating in her crossover to eternity in August. We now have no remaining grandparents left, between us, and that realization has pointed me toward the past, toward appreciating family history more than ever, and to finding special ways to celebrate their legacy. We keep them alive by telling their stories in new ways and with new people, and in that way, they continue to influence who we are and who we become. This truth hit home particularly hard when we decided to sell our house of nearly 15 years and move to a new home that would allow for the growth of relationships and space as the children enter their teen years. This decision coincided with the passing of Bard’s grandma and just so happened to also run parallel to Bard starting a new position at Amazon and myself returning to the museum world after time off due to Covid. The old and the new could not be more apparent. The timing and the decisions are still reverberating through our family, but we are grateful that we can face struggle and growth together, that everything can change, and we can remain the same.
I suppose no age embodies that principle more than becoming a teenager, so Evelyn’s turning 13 this year was perfect! As she enters her last year of middle school, she sings with the choir, dances onstage, matures as a piano player and does it all with humble leadership while laughing, getting food stuck in her braces, and caring for her sister and brother with a gentle (and only sometimes whiny) fierceness. Oh, did I mention she’s on ASB and helped with three political campaigns? Evelyn for president, 2044!
Cici is not shying away from milestones either and will soon finish off her elementary school years, much to her mother’s dismay! She dove back into dance this year with impressive determination. With 8 classes a week and counting, she had to step down from piano, but did so with a (sometimes whiny) maturity and continues to face life with timid shyness and loud laughs. She grew friendships and read 3 million books. And for the third year in a row, she is intent on becoming a veterinarian.
And Max. I never know what to write about this kid. We fought for Max again, and again he fought us. Our relationship, in every way, is defined by perseverance. Even in 2021, people with disabilities live an invisible life and I will fight with everything I have to make sure he is seen and heard. Meanwhile, he makes himself seen and heard by flooding our bathroom to play sink or float, taking us on 6am walks around the neighborhood, and reminding us that change is hard, but inclusion is beautiful. Max has to work harder than anyone else, which makes even small victories big, another lesson for all of us.
In many ways, this has been a dark year for our family and advent marks the darkest time of year, physically, spiritually. But the tension is that it is also the most joyful time of year: darkness points us toward Light. So we wait, we move toward deliverance, if we can’t hope, we just keep going, and that, for now, is hope enough. I have learned so much this year about the despairing cycles of mental illness and the sacrificial calling to serve family and I’ve learned that love can be ugly, painful, and invisible. But as we near the end of 2021, and I look back, I can see a thread of grace. My hope is that our experiences are woven into a restorative tapestry, that this year our family gains an unshakeable truth that we can be broken but thrive, sorrow points us to joy, death begats life. And we begin again.
