A Long December
I just caught myself crying for the second time this morning.
I don’t know why. Yesterday I passed my third course in medical school. My husband and I have two weeks off school. We’re slowly making good friends here. The bump on our daughter’s head turned out to be an epidermoid cyst – not a sarcoma like her brother had. A spot opened up in a fully inclusive pre-K4 near our house; we’re contemplating sending Four, since their careful safety measures have resulted in zero COVID cases in two years. My sister is visiting and brought our Christmas tree from storage. There’s a sprinkle of snow outside that just enough to stick and be pretty, but not enough to interfere with driving.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here. And I think it was the small stack of Christmas cards that did it.
Six little reminders of what life used to look like. Before big moves, family estrangements, sick kids (any kids?), cross-country moves. Before the absolutely unbelievable rigor of medical school. Before COVID and all the terror it injects into the foreground and background of our lives. Before never getting even one evening’s break from responsibilities. Before growing up meant feeling old.
I’m not afraid of change, but I’m grieving what used to be. Today, with no lecture to attend five minutes late and no antibiotics to memorize, it’s all catching up to me. I miss my old life. Not enough to go back, even if that was possible; the whole point of growth is that you reach for the sun and not the dirt you emerged from. But there’s a reason that going back to your basics is called “grounding,” too. You can’t grow without that foundation beneath you.
It’s not homesickness, though I miss Washington. It’s more of a longing for some kind of by-gone comfort. I’m betting the Germans or Swedes have some word for it. But it’s the feeling that makes “Long December” by Counting Crows feel like ironic taunting this year, instead of the hopeful reflection it used to elicit.
Maybe this year, the reflection isn’t in the line “A long December, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.” Maybe’s this year’s lyric is “I can’t remember all the times I try to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass.”
A malcontent with a heart of gold, Tierra is a first-year medical student, former high school teacher and history PhD candidate, plus mom to four of Bebe’s baddest kids. She curses a lot. Tierra is a DC native but lives in southwest Michigan and will happily exchange writing (hers) for cash (yours).
