December Baby

 

There is a moment in November every year when my diary gives up the ghost. I then have to gently coax it to the completion of the December examination marking session and then the poor exhausted thing bleeds ink rivers into my handbag, drowning in old lists and rehearsal schedules. It almost bursts with the realisation that another year has passed and it's spine barely held it together.

Right now I am that diary.

This year I have the overwhelming sense that I’m not the only one who would choose a broken, exhausted diary as a metaphor for their lives. If some people were to look at the dates that made up the past year in their diaries the list of unspeakable trauma and loss would just be too much for the pages to hold. In fact almost everyone I know has at least one new date in their diaries that speaks of the day when their lives changed profoundly. It is a day whose anniversary they will dread for the rest of their lives. I also know that many of the people I love are just very relieved to have survived the heaviness of Christmas Day. 

Too many dates of loss, too many quarantines, too many nose rapes (how my mate so aptly describes covid tests) to many emigrations, too many cancelled flights, too many farewells. Not enough weddings, birthdays, play dates, coffee catch ups, reasons to wear makeup. 

If I think of this particular time - the time when the gammon hangover morphs into a New Years party hangover - it is always cause for quite a lot of underlying anxiety in me. First of all I don’t ever know what day of the week it is, let alone what the date is. I’ve also got a bit of PPD (post production depression) because Christmas is over and the great care Stephen and I spent deciding on Christmas presents and general Christmas planing is over. I’m also always full of apprehension about what the new year will bring - and let’s be honest for the last two years all New Years Eve brought with it was an enormous bitch slap. It’s not my best time. My siblings and I also all have babies who were born in January so it means that for three of the past five years there was one poor monolith waddling her way into new year with her legs firmly ‘knyped’ in order to have the bright, voor op die wa January baby as opposed to the behind the curve December baby. I am, by the way, a behind the curve December baby. And it’s not a wives tale. 

As the year is old, tired and ready to be done along comes a bright new shiny December baby. It’s like arriving late to the birthday party and all that is left are the liquorice jelly beans and a few half chewed cheese curls. December babies arrive late and for the first part of their lives feel like they never quite catch up. 

Right now I feel like I haven’t caught up. I feel like I’m  just going to roll the fatigue from one year into the next and that I’m just going to continue treading water. Maybe that is the general state of parenthood but I feel it is more pronounced in humanity en masse at the moment where everyone feels like they’re a December baby. Too many of us are on the brink - of burn out, depression, anxiety, a sense of hopelessness. 

And it makes me sad. For both myself and others. Although completely inaccurate in its actual scientific dating and also completely a commercial sell out, Christmas is supposed to be about a fresh beginning. It’s supposed to be about the end of anxiety and burn out and a sense of hopelessness. It’s actually about a December baby who started a new curve, who set a precedent for a new world that was to come. 

In diary terms Jesus is the new 2022 diary. He is the clean start, the blank pages, the promise of newness.  The assurance that no matter what dates are going to fill our diaries for next year - both good and bad - He will be present in them. 

I’ll be honest and say I’m battling to summon any great gusto for anything other than the thought that hopefully my kids will sleep through tonight and I will get a full night of sleep. I can’t even begin to try and consider the start of a new shiny voor op die wa January. I’m currently skulking in my December baby status. But this I do know - Jesus got tired, and sick, and sad, and lonely, and tempted, and burnt out, and disappointed. He came to show us that not only does God know that we all feel like December babies sometimes but He also became human to be a December baby with us and to show us that there is a way forward. Sometimes our diaries for a new year are blank and open and scary and we don’t know what to anticipate. I have my shiny new one waiting at my desk. What I do know is that if I turn to any random white page in my 2022 diary God will be present with me in that day and that is all I need to know. 

May you, dear reader, be reminded that God will be with you in the year that is to come. 

Love,

Emily