Ridgefield Crossings: It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, burnt orange leaves glisten with gemstone rain drops outside my office window, framed by streaks of blue, grey and white sky and our daughter is off to her new volunteer job. Hurrah. Fingers crossed, the senior, the cat and the daughter get along. Is the moon still full? According to the Clark Planetarium website, it is a “Waxing Gibbous Moon.” May it wax positively in our daughter’s direction.

Holiday Pressure: With the holiday season upon us, an atmosphere, starting with her birthday, that triggers our daughter’s acquisitive instincts to the exclusion of much else, I can not be certain where our daughter’s focus will be today. Visiting her local library yesterday, she stumbled upon the DVD collection for the HBO series “The Pacific” and became obsessed with owning a copy. This lead to a series of texts all evening, resumed promptly at 7 a.m. this morning, requesting that we buy the $44.99 collection from Amazon. I read in her texts the urgency and pressure she is feeling; “I must have this now.” and it fills me with anxiety. I know this script. We finally resolved the written conversation at 8:15 a.m. with her compliance to wait for Christmas and in the meantime, borrow the collection from the library (she is afraid she won’t be able to finish it by the due date, though she is told that she can renew.) This isn’t about reason. This is about a search for some kind of satisfaction, some inner longing that only a specific object can satisfy and it use to run our lives.

ROAR Confirmed:  Yes indeed, she is scheduled to show up at ROAR with her vocational staff at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning to begin the long sort for volunteer opportunity. She has waited years for this, since she chose animal care as her focus at Riverview’s post secondary Grow program in conjunction with Cape Cod Community College. Will her focus be on how many days until Christmas, (that was the text question this morning) or will the four-legged clients move her to alternative sources of satisfaction, other than the lust and longing for material goods.

Fingers Crossed: May the lure of the animal kingdom triumph over the siren call of the holiday season. Fingers crossed.

©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011