I know I did it!

 

I know I did it!

How sure we are of what we have said or done. Our conviction is unmoveable, our belief unassailable.

Recently, I packaged a couple of Advent calendars for my two youngest grandchildren and sent them to my daughter. Speaking to her a few days later, she thanked me for ‘it.’

I said, ‘There were two in the parcel, one for each of the boys.’ She said she’d go and check the package, as maybe she’d thrown one out, though that didn’t seem very likely.

I was cross, very cross. I would have stood in a court of law, under oath, and sworn I had sent her two calendars. I could visualise myself wrapping them.

A day later, Barry came out of the dining room with an Advent calendar in his hand. It had been on the table under one of his coats. (We don’t just have coat hooks and wardrobes – we have chairdrobes and tabledrobes, sofadrobes and top-of-the-dog-cratedrobes, and sometimes, floordrobes. If you have OCD, steer clear of our house!)

 I could have wept! I was upset that only one calendar had been delivered, and worried that I was losing my mind. After all, I haven’t much to occupy it these days, not like when I was working full-time, with a husband often far away on business, four children, elderly parents, and umpteen animals.

Life should be a doddle, and mostly it is, but somehow the Season of Lights and Advertisements and Pleas for Donations, combined with darker days and longer nights, make ordinary things extraordinary. Every year, I declare that Christmas will be welcomed calmly in a well-ordered house. Every year, it isn’t!

The end-of-term three-week headache is absent now, but the simplicity of ordering maybe a little more than usual develops into a marathon of wondering if x, y, and z have been accomplished. In my saner moments, I realise that the smaller details don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.