When tending to loved ones with special needs, holiday traditions can provide a stabilizing anchor. But once the anchor is hauled, ripple effects are to be expected. The following is a short excerpt from Loving Zelda.

11-28-05: Today [the Monday after Thanksgiving] the pups do frantic backflips anticipating a nice long walk, and Z meets me at the front door looking glum and stooped and drained.

“The pills have all run out and need to be refilled, but your papa says it’ll be OK to skip a day,” she announces, all the while scowling in Dad’s direction as if he were the derelict responsible for this mess.

I offer to make a pharmacy run, Dad can’t hear what Z is saying to me, and we end up talking about three different situations. Finally, Dad says, “Oh, I think I know what she’s referring to. She got up in a fog this morning and took all of her pills at once, and I said it wouldn’t hurt for just one day.”

Can I summon up a calm Mr. Spock imitation? Of course not. I have already cried out “Oh, no!” when Dad got to the part about taking a whole day’s worth of medications in one miscalculated gulp. Now Z robes herself in my flash of anxiety and wears it around the rest of the morning. Apparently, I am incapable of squelching an impulse.

When the tension ebbs, I offer Z a warmed carrot bran muffin. By the time the microwave timer goes off, she is crawling into bed again. I intercept her. Steer her back to the table to sit and eat—her wisp-thin frame like a paper boat under the direction of my guiding hand.

So we wrap up the [holiday] month with our own brand of The Usual. Dad secludes himself in his computer-illumined man cave. I pick up a stray sock here and there and some Kleenexes scattered about the hall and living room. Pulling out the couch to retrieve a [pup]-gnawed bunch of soggy tissue, I discover Dad’s lost hearing aid and become the Heroine of the Moment.

But the moment passes quickly as Zelda announces in melodramatic tones that she came upon a raw potato in the chest freezer. It must have been put there after last Saturday's shopping trip, she speculates, her expression suggesting that she rather wonders if Papa and I aren't slipping a bit.

My own irrational thoughts crouch in the shadows waiting to gang up on me at day’s end when a full night’s sleep is my sole and urgent goal. . . . Yet the fog of exhaustion that steals in at night brings no relief from insomnia. . . . I read myself to a state of grogginess, roll over, turn off the light, and snuggle hopefully into my pillow. But within seconds, like some caffeine-crazed cartoon character, I am bug-eyed awake, alert, and tingling with nervous tension.

Heavenly Father, please rescue me from this tar pit of self-absorption. I feel tired and [ineffective], and it is so easy to get stuck in the muck of self-reproach.

Not exactly prayerful language, but He always knows what I mean and what I need.