When (xxxxx) ruins Christmas

Growing up, I had many wonderful Christmases. Unfortunately, the one I remember the most is when my father ruined Christmas by getting drunk and mean. All the glorious anticipation, preparation, money spent, cooking and baking was for naught that year. Daddy ruined Christmas. 

It was a horrible holiday, absolutely traumatic. I was in 5th grade. I have long since forgiven him, but unfortunately it isn't the sort of thing one forgets. Human beings being what they are, trauma sticks. 

So, if you ruined your children or grandchildren's Christmas this year, please get help. You can't change what happened, or wipe it from their memories.  However, you still have time to redeem yourself by getting help with whatever your problem is. Make it your problem to resolve, not their problem to endure.

Christmas Eve Memories

Christmas Eve was the high point in my youth. My large family exchanged presents from siblings on the night before Christmas. We would have a casual but special meal and all the cookies would come out of hiding. We walked in the dark to our parish church for midnight mass. There would be flowers, incense, and angels singing Latin from the choir. Christmas Eve was a celebration of the senses. 

My paternal grandmother came to our house early in the evening with her profound love, mystical kindness, homemade divinity candy, and peanut butter fudge (for crying out loud!). It was exciting to have her in our house. I can still hear her sweet, Tennessee drawl. I continue to feel her steadfast love. I'm not sure a better person ever walked this earth.

Grandpa wouldn't always come with her. Sadly, as he got older he became a cranky old misery guts. Oh well. Somebody's gotta play Scrooge.

She had just walked in.  I didn't even let her take off her coat before I took her picture.

Our first great grandchild

Our new (and first!) great-grandbaby was born a few days ago. All went well, and she is home now. She lives far from us, in the frozen northlands. However, her mother and grandmother keep us posted with photos and videos. I don't think she could be more beautiful, by the way. We fell in love with her long before she was born.

I'm happy to live in the modern world, where photos and videos are quick and easy to share. This beautiful child is in my husband's genealogical line, so I've been busy the last few days going through old photos of his family as far back as I can find. Most roads lead back to Ireland, the UK, and Germany in my husband's family.

I have to wonder about the ancestors who endured their children moving to the U.S. How hard it must have been to wonder and wait long months for a letter informing one that new grandchildren and great grandchildren arrived. 

Here is an article about her 5th great grandmother,     Teresa (Solomon) Enders.  She was born in Deggendorf, Germany in 1825. Although she died in 1910, this article using her photo was published in 1927. 

That lovely boy!

Grandson N (7) is crazy about Monopoly, so we play it often. He wheels and deals with abandon. I fear he’s a natural capitalist, although he is somewhat of a bleeding heart liberal when it comes to his old Grandma. He insists on being the banker, and he WILL slip me money when I start to run out. On the down low, of course. I try VERY hard not to accept his largesse. 

When he and I play alone together, we go by N's rules. He brilliantly proposed that we each start out with a monopoly over one neighborhood on the board so we can immediately start buying houses. It speeds the game up considerably.

We can’t let Grandpa know, because he would disapprove of altering the rules. N refers to Grandpa as “Mr. Play-By-The-Rules Pants.”  N and Grandma disdain “the rules.”

We play on a 40 year-old board.  The same one we played on with his mother.

Walking towards the future

I went to the surgeon the other day.  He told me I could stop using the leg brace.  I'm hobbling around a bit, because so many of those muscles haven't been used in months, and my knee is still a bit wonky.  I'm walking unassisted, though!

We had a good Thanksgiving. Here's a picture of flowers I picked from various places in our yard for the centerpiece.  Life is beautiful right now.  

Yes, I realize the linen tablecloth is wrinkled, but we're all just going to have to get over that.

Roses, dwarf poinciana, a type of impatiens

Thanksgiving 2019

I'm trying to get excited about Thanksgiving. It's a lovely holiday and deserves some of my time and attention. Other people's Thanksgiving posts have helped - many thanks for that. 

I need to break out of this bland and soothing convalescence and start feeling excitement and joy again. What is really motivating me is the realization that Thanksgiving memories at Grandma and Grandpa's for our two youngest grandchildren are up to us, since it is usually at our house. So, I will garner the courage to limp into the garage and unpack the good dishes. Why not?

While I'm at it, maybe I'll make the Christmas fruitcake this weekend.   

I'm thankful for the joy this holiday forces me to remember.  It feels good.

 

Our youngest grandson's "grateful plate" he made at school last year

Thirty percent and counting

I went to the surgeon yesterday for another post-op checkup, and all is going well. He adjusted my brace so I can practice bending my leg by 30%. I can sleep with out the brace, and I can take it off when I’m on the couch, but I still have to wear it when I walk. He wants me to start walking without the walker!!!  Yahoo.

He’s given me new exercises to do, and wants me back in 2 weeks so he can adjust the brace to 60% mobility (or possibly 90% depending on how I do in the meantime.) He expects a full recovery within 6 to 8 months.

I’m so freakin' happy.

Encased but still energized.

It might be a mistake to binge watch The Great British Baking Show during this period of enforced torpidity. It is the only thing I want to watch, and I'm very near the end. It makes me want to eat cake. I'm also dreaming of meat, potato, onions and root veg encased in a hot water, hand raised pastry crust. What an inspired carbohydrate jackpot.

The good news is my husband took me for a walk at a nearby nature preserve yesterday. It's a lovely forest walk on an elevated boardwalk. The preserve borders a large lake, so the walkway keeps one safe from alligators and snakes while still allowing one to experience a bit of the real Florida. The sky was overcast, a rare treat in the Sunshine State. Being there made me insanely happy to be out in the world.

My right foot

Bedpan Politics

Lest you mistake me for a good person, let me confess a sin.

I did something that might be a wrong, or at least not politically right-on. It has to do with hospital bed pan politics. I found the bedpan experience humiliating while I was in the hospital. The nurse who helped me the first time was wonderful, and she joked me through it.

The second time I had to "go" she was off duty and a young male nurse came to help me. I kindly told him I wanted a female nurse to help me with the bedpan. He seemed fine with that, but the female nurse who came in gently scolded me, saying that the male nurse was fully trained and could do these things. I imagine she didn't appreciate the extra work, and I can understand that. However, I tend to think anything that involves another person's involvement with my body is about me, first and foremost.  

Of course he could do that task. He was extremely competent, and very kind. But his technical ability was not the issue, was it? I'm an older woman who has been pricked, prodded, and poked by strange medical men my entire life. I draw the line at going to the bathroom.

Later I apologized to him, and attempted to let him know it wasn't a judgment about his abilities, it was about my still having a choice in a very intimate and private experience. I don't think he was buying it. He was thinking about himself.  I was thinking about myself. Oh well, as long as I am able to speak up for myself, I win.

I'm quite sure I would do the same thing again. I wish I was more open and accepting of these things, but I am not. And for crying out loud, this was about me exerting some semblance of control over my broken body.

If you think I was wrong in doing this, I hope you will feel comfortable telling me in the comments. I don't mind being wrong, and I can take a punch. More than anything, I want to know right from wrong.

How am I doing?

How am I doing?  ("How am I doing?" I quietly mutter and muse to myself.) I am damaged goods, but wasn't I always? The difference is now people can see my brokenness at a glance.

In addition to the patella break, I damaged muscles. They restrung bits in that area to accomplish the repairs. It's complicated; however, not impossible.

I fell September 7th. For repairs to heal properly I won't start physical therapy until early November. I wear a brace and have been admonished not to bend my knee because the healing muscles are the ones that allow me to walk. 

PT will last 6 weeks. The first two they'll try to bend my knee 30%. The second two weeks will hopefully bring it to 60%. The last two shoot for 90%. Then I go back to my surgeon's office where they will do x-rays and "see" if all is well.

I also tore upper arm muscles when my right arm took one for the team to heroically break the fall. I ache on occasion.

Emotionally, I'm adapting and enduring. It's only been 4 weeks. It appears I still have 10 weeks of cruel convalescence to contend with. We'll see if the good Colette can keep the bad Colette in check for that long. I'm giving it the old college "try." No promises.

In summary, I have three modes during this recuperation. 

• I lay on the couch with my right leg extended.  (lay, lie? Come on Robbie, help me out here).  
• I hobble hither and thither with my walker.
• I sit up in my rented wheelchair with the leg extender

My grandson and husband decorated my walker for me.