From Under the Christmas Tree: Sadder But Wiser

I am not a person who can really sit around and think about regrets, because from every bad experience that you have, there is something weirdly good that comes from it.  (Winona Ryder)

”There’s a pony in here somewhere,” said the little boy shoveling      horse poop.

Yesterday my husband and I spent much of the day trying to put together a rather complicated outdoor structure purchased from a big box store.  After hours of attempting to understand directions obviously written for someone who had not spent much of their lives trying to earn a PhD, we got to Step #6, (of at least 20 —I had been afraid to look) only to find that we had done Step #1 WRONG.  I should have known, as each step had been accompanied by the cryptic little warning “do not tighten screws yet.”  Arugghhhh.  In the process, I missed two events to which I had hoped to go, a community Winter Fest, and a hymn sing at a nearby church.

I went to bed feeling out of sorts and defeated, knowing that the next day (as in today, oh woe), each one of those #@<x! screws was gonna have to be removed and we were gonna have to do it all over again.  And although I wasn’t sure HOW, I knew it was ALL my husband’s fault, especially the part about my being disappointed about missing my two looked-forward-to events —- much more satisfying than acknowledging that at any point I could have set aside my compulsive need to find where THAT particular screw fit, and walked away to eat cotton candy and sing hymns.

And this morning, I awoke with a disturbing and sad little dream of having forgotten a small girl’s name, knowing it would have meant so much to her if I could have remembered it.  One more reminder that “Helen, you’re gonna have to do something about that annoying obsessive persistence of yours,” knowing that it was of course my own doing that caused me to miss my looked-forward-to events and disappoint that part of me that is Child.   And I also have learned over the years of dreaming, that when that part of me that is child is disappointed, I will either pay for it, or perhaps more unfortunately, make someone else pay for it.

And so this morning I sit here in the dark under the Christmas tree feeling even more defeated, especially now that I have been reminded by The Dreammaker that I was gonna have to take responsibility for my own actions rather than having the satisfying experience of blaming my husband.  Enough to make one do a little teeth-gnashing.

But, y’know, I also feel freer.  Because if it’s about ME, I can choose to do something different.  And somehow, that’s gonna make it easier to go out on that back porch and start all over again assembling that big box store monstrosity.