Third Time's a Charm?

This year is our third year to participate in the 31 for 21 challenge (see the blurb in the sidebar).  The first year, it was kind of a whim.  I figured it might help our families see that we were doing fine, despite the news of Lincoln’s diagnosis.  To my surprise, people actually did read it, and some of them sent it to their friends to read, too.  The second year, I figured I would give it one more year, then give it up for sure.  It can be quite a lot of work to write something every day, and October is a busy month for us as it is.

But this year, instead of dreading the work and asking myself if it’s worth it to invest the time and energy, I started to get excited about it in the first few days of September.  I guess I like having a month dedicated to taking stock, a time of looking back at the year that was and unraveling those sticky thoughts that can get wedged into a tight little ball of anxiety in your mind if you don’t air them out occasionally.  I really don’t dwell on this stuff year round.  I save it up for October when I can pull it out like some boxed up artifact, retrieved once a year in a kind of ceremonial unwrapping, dusted off and examined for wear,  set it in the window to be displayed for a few weeks, then packed away again. It’s not that I can’t stand to think of it other times, just that I don’t need to think about it all the time like I did in the beginning.  The blog lets me work through the unresolved issues so that the rest of the year, I can just live.  October is an emotional month in that way, but I suspect it would have been for us anyway.

The airing out seems to help us keep perspective overall.  It allows us to vent, yes, but also to record our celebrations, which often seem to evaporate so much more quickly than the worries and problems.  I like that I get to be our little family’s scribe for one month a year, and in the end we have a written record of all of the little joys that make up perhaps our most festive and abundant month of the year.

So, happy reading as well, if you decide to follow the month-long chronicle of life as parent of a child with Down syndrome.  We’ll try to be honest, but not gloomy, about the path.  It’s not that we feel compelled to paint some rosy picture; it’s just that it’s a pretty rosy life, all in all.