A few days ago I opened and read our Christmas cards from 2018.
I wish that were a typo. It’s not. I also opened and read the cards sent to us in 2019.
It’s not like the cards were lost. I knew exactly where they were: on the dining room table. Or, as it is affectionately known, the Bermuda Dining Table. They were all together in a plastic box from one of the many times where I tried to organize all the papers piled up there. I set them aside to read all at once, and then… what? Walked away? Forgot? I don’t know. When I finally went through the box, I was shocked to see just how long the cards had been sitting there.
The shock was one thing. The news contained in those envelopes was another. I learned that one of my father’s cousins, a dear woman who came to my wedding and who has sent me Christmas cards for years, was put into a nursing home when her husband could no longer care for her. She has Alzheimer’s. Or is it had? I have no idea whether she’s still alive. Her husband sent the news, and I never responded. I don’t know how to respond now.
Then there was the beauty of the cards themselves. Take, for example, the handmade mixed-media card that my cousin Pamela sent. On the plus side, I got to see a “new” piece of art by her when I opened the envelope. On the minus side, something precious sat in a box, ignored for two years, while other papers and cards and miscellaneous craft supplies piled up around it.
In general, I have a bad case of FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. Sometimes I don’t pay attention to the things right in front of me because I’m so afraid of missing out on the things that are not. If I’m honest, it’s more often than sometimes. And looking at the beautiful owl that Pam sent, I realize I’m suffering something worse than FOMO: AMO. Actual Missing Out.
At the beginning of 2020, I made a list of things that I wanted to do and create in the following twelve months. Looking at the list now I see that I completed one item, maybe two. I did some things that I couldn’t have envisioned a year ago, like making two animated short films; but for the most part, I didn’t stay focussed on the things right in front of me. I let my life pile up around me, like a psychic version of the Bermuda Dining Table. And no, I don’t think I can blame the pandemic. I got in my own way, and missed out.
I want to get clean again. That’s the word that keeps running through my head: clean. I am weighed down by physical, mental, and emotional clutter, with quicksand sucking at my feet. I want to shed the encumbrances so I can learn and grow and experience and live.
I’m tired of missing out. I’m so tired.
Artwork used by kind permission of its creator, Pamela Bayley Kaufmann.
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Absolutely well-spoken! This gives me much to think about, I think we all have a Bermuda table of Our Own.