ghosts of christmas past

When I was a kid, bullies adored me. A single menacing look, and I would cower. In third grade, the head bully used to wait behind a tree, jump out and knock down my books, just to watch me cry and hyperventilate. Once in kindergarten, three classmates chased me for six city blocks on their Big Wheels. Do you know how easy it should be to outrun a kid pedaling that low to the ground? But it didn’t matter; I was terrified, and it showed. Haunted houses? Forget it. A snarl or a rattle of the cage was all it took. Those masked monsters saw me coming from the front door. After my first trip or two, I never went back.

Why am I telling you this? Because an old friend kicked my ass the other day, and I sat still and took it. I took it because life, at the moment, is baring its fangs at me in the worst kind of way, and I needed to be slapped from my panic. What she did was a little bullying for the bright side. Because the sad truth is, you can try to run and hide all you want; but sooner or later, life will bully you into a corner regardless. It will shake your cage, it will rattle your nerves, it will grab you by the shirt and growl full in your face -- and sometimes, it will hit, bite, and leave quite a mark. And it feels like there is nothing you can do. Except thanks to my friend’s tough love, I realize maybe there is. Because you can step up and refuse to back down. You can say I’m making a shift, I’m claiming this moment, and also claiming the one after that, for as long as the clock winds down. You can look around and be grateful, instead of looking ahead and being afraid.

My friend calls this her “coins in the jar” paradigm. We all have a certain number of coins in our jars, she says. And we can try to build moments and memories that add to that collection … or we can succumb to fear and drain coins away. And in my friend’s view, you want to increase that treasure trove as much as you can … so you’ll have something to draw on when times get tough.

She also challenged me to build the most ridiculous holiday gingerbread house I can imagine this year, using graham crackers and gum drops. Roof askew, windows crooked. But sweet, silly, solid. Sort of a symbolic rebuilding that flies in the face of Life the Ultimate Bully. Deck the halls with boughs of holly …

Clink.