Late at Night, Mid-Hibernation

Wondering where I've been?

Hibernating.

And for the record, I am so good at it.

Today I played Super Mario Brothers with Caleb and Ethan for about six hours.  My thumbs are sore, but I'm improving.  Well, no pain, no gain.  We've made it to secret Level 9...not so secret any more.

We broke for a late lunch and then David and I sorted out the final Christmas spending for a bit.  Which was eye-opening.  (I told him I prefer ignorance.)  We always stay right on budget until about the 22nd and then it's just a free-for-all.  Oh well.

An important part of any hibernation is sleep, so then I went back to bed for a long winter's nap.  I was still in my pajamas so it was easy to do.

I woke up in time for a shower before I made dinner (you have to keep up your strength for hibernation)and we played games for a couple hours before we went to a late movie.  For a really good hibernation I recommend only going out at night...makes you forget that there is anything at all "important" to do and like the whole world is abed for two straight weeks.

And now we are back in bed.  David is asking me if I'm going to post my Christmas letter.  I told him I thought it was too late now.  He disagreed and kissed me into publishing it...much more effective than talking me into it.  I can't resist.  My apologies to those of you who've already read it.

There will be more hibernating tomorrow as well, though David may have to go out for milk and bread and salsa.

But I will be staying in.

The world can wait.

 

And now, our Christmas letter...  

Dear Loved Ones,

David wants you to know that the picture on the front of this card was taken on one of the greatest days of our whole year on a lovely strip of beach on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.  Knowing his penchant for details, I am sure he would also want you to know that this particular spot of paradise, where we discovered the Pacific Ocean and the magic of wet suits, is near a little surfing town called Tofino.  And if he had his way there might be a map insert as well. 

As for me, I only want to point out that since this picture was taken, Caleb has grown taller than me.

It has been a year of changes.  They have been at once subtle and life-altering.  On a Monday morning this August, the children woke up early.  They dressed in their new clothes, and tied closed-toed shoes onto their feet even though it would be nearly 110 degrees that day.  We gathered in a circle for prayer and scriptures just like every day, and then unlike any other day ever before, they all kissed me, and they all left for school.  Every one of them.   The shock of that moment left me stunned and sore for months. 

One Sunday evening this fall I sat with Olivia on the loveseat in our bedroom.  I told her about the miracle of life.  As I carefully explained about her own body and how it was already prepared to create life and love, I thought about how she had just gotten here herself.  I thought about how she was just placed in my arms and here I was telling her how her own babies would someday make their way into hers.  I was overwhelmed by the staggering brevity of my time with her.  When I finished she was crying.  Overwhelmed, she said, that she would have to grow up whether she wanted to or not.  I thought, “Think how I feel.”

This year Caleb turned twelve.  I can see the hair on his arms.  When he sits on the couch in his pajamas I don’t recognize his feet.  In October David took him to his first Priesthood session of General Conference in Salt Lake City.  On the way home, they had a long heart-to-heart talk about growing up. David looked over to see him crying.  Makes you wonder if we’re leaving out the good parts, doesn’t it?  When David asked if he was okay, Caleb replied that he liked things just as they are.  Well.  Think how I feel.

I am dizzy with the turning of the earth.  Some days it feels like I’ve got my head out a car window, and my eyes are burning and streaming as my life flashes by.  It is so brief, I would protest if I could catch my breath.  In two weeks, three of my children will be wearing braces, the first tiny little railroad tracks that lead out of my home and into homes of their own.  Ethan and I now wear the smallest shoes in the house, and even he is walking around in pants that are two inches too short.  I have to put my foot down somewhere, see?  

This year I noticed something as I reread Luke’s story of the Savior’s birth.  In the very same chapter of that story, just twenty verses later, Luke tells about a time when Mary and Joseph couldn’t find their son.  He had stayed at the temple to teach and they were frantic and sick with worry, “sorrowing” as Mary says, for three days before they found him.  Jesus was astonished at their worry.  Because didn’t they know he wasn’t really theirs?

I know it too.  Inside.  I really do.  I know my children came for a bigger purpose than to entertain me around the dinner table, that they have their own measure of creation to fulfill.  But somehow in the feeding and clothing and tutoring and kissing better, the lines have blurred a bit.  They feel like mine.  It’s easy to forget they aren’t.  And I wonder if that wasn’t how Mary felt as well.  Born to her, but born for all of us.  From the very beginning she had angels and prophets telling her, reminding her, that he wasn’t really hers. 

For unto Us a son is born, unto Us a son is given.

After this year, it tears my heartstrings to think of it.  Because I know it wasn’t given easily.  One morning as I sobbed my sorrows out on my knees I felt a voice from heaven gently say:  Yes, I know.  Think how I feel.

For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son.

This year David and I learned just a little bit more about the cost of that gift and the depth of that love.  That before the Cross and the Garden, he was a baby gazing up from her breast, a round-cheeked toddler who gave open-mouthed kisses, a boy all arms and elbows and unruly cowlicks telling jokes at the dinner table.  His parents, both heavenly and earthly, watched his legs lengthen, his shoulders broaden, the moment of sacrifice surely coming.  All the while knowing he wasn’t really theirs.  In the tiniest way we know that grief.  This Christmas season and always we worship the boy who was born King and God and Sacrifice.  And the Father who loved us enough to let Him be just that for each of us.  We worship the Lord of all creation.  Because of Him, our own sweet creations, these four madly growing children, will be ours forever.  Oh how we love Him.

With love and joy and growing pains,

David, April, Caleb, Olivia, Savannah and Ethan 

Technically

This morning at breakfast Ethan told me, "Technically, there are seven more days until Christmas."

Well, technically I'm running out of days.

Yesterday morning David asked me how the Christmas cards were coming.

I made a sound like a trapped animal.  (At that point there was technically still a swear word right in the middle of them...)

I asked him how the service project was coming.

He changed the subject.  (At this point he still hadn't technically come up with an idea yet...)

But in much better news, technically today was the last day of school for the year.  Our holiday has technically and officially begun.  (And not a moment too soon.)  Let the wild rumpus start.

(Video courtesy of my clever brother and his gorgeous wife, who are technically so on the ball that they not only have time to complete their own Christmas lists, but to make charming holiday movies of other people's children.)

Five Posts in One

I've done all my recent writing in my head.  Which is fun for me, and not as much fun for you.  Anyway, the posts are starting to stack up.  In their entireties they were both clever and profound (you would have liked them), but for the sake of time and in consideration of all the people around here clamoring for clean underwear (the nerve!), you are getting the Reader's Digest version.  (Did I ever tell you the story of how I was actually published in the Reader's Digest and lied about my name?  True story.)

And so, Post One:

On Thursday night I took the girls to see Little House on the Prairie, The Musical at Gammage.  It was just marvelous, and it is quite possible that I cried through half of it.  At one point Olivia looked at me with tears in her own eyes and nodded compassionately.

I sat there in the auditorium with my own Mary and Laura and thought about love and sisters and sacrifice and hard work and faith and building a life for your family and long winters and what we would do to keep warm if we lived in the Dakota territory before insulation and central heating and indoor plumbing.  I thought about what it means to live in a happy family and over and over again I told myself, "This is now, this is now," just like Laura did in Little House in the Big Woods.

When it was all over we went to the talk-back where Olivia raised her hand and asked the cast if they had all read the books, and then with my girls clutching their own treasured books we waited outside the stage door for autographs.  

And on the way home, over the Christmas music, I could hear the girls talking about their favorite parts, and how it is so sad to read such good books when you are young because you might never find as good books the rest of your life.  I smiled at that and secretly agreed.  And as I drove home through the dark streets and listened to their voices in the back seat and heard Savannah ask Olivia why she was crying at that one part, I was grateful that they each have a sister.  And that in the long, cold winters of their lives, they will always have each other.

 

Post Two:

 The makings of 23 centerpieces.

If you've been reading this blog for a bit, it becomes fairly obvious, fairly quickly, that I married better than I deserve.

What can I say?  It is an indisputable fact that I have excellent taste in men.

This week offered more evidence of this. 

David and I were supposed to put on the ward Christmas party on Saturday night.  Food and seating and entertainment and Christmas cheer for two hundred.  Saturday was also the day of a one-day quilt retreat with my family in Park City, Utah, about 700 miles from here.  I hemmed and hawed about going.  I tried to change the date of the ward party.  I decided not to go to the quilt retreat.  Then I hemmed and hawed some more.  Finally David said, "Let's just buy you a ticket.  I can feed two hundred people by myself."  Unbelievably I said, "Okay."

And that it just what he did.  The party was a roaring success.  Last night in bed he told me in complete honesty that he thinks it was the best ward Christmas party he's ever been to.

I am not a bit surprised.

After all, I have excellent taste in men. 

 

Post Three:

We finally had a cold snap.

Cold enough to wear beanies and knit gloves with our jackets in the mornings.

Did you know it only takes about one day for children to lose one or both of their gloves?

Lucky for us, the cold snaps around here only last about two weeks.  I don't know how all you real-winter folks do it.  My entire month's budget would be spent on gloves.  30 days, 4 pairs of gloves per day...it adds up.

The other day I was at Target for a completely different reason and saw that they had their gloves on sale, 2 pairs for $1.50 in all kinds of cute colors.  I thought, "Sold."  I bought everyone two pairs of gloves.  This morning the girls were both down to one pair and Ethan couldn't find any.  He finally ended up wearing mine.  I suspect I will never see them again.  Oh well.  It will likely be summer weather again by the end of the week.

 

Post Four:

Remember that post about wanting to be snowed in somewhere?

On Sunday morning after a delightful quilt retreat, we were in Park City preparing to leave.  The man who plows the driveways in the neighborhood came by and laughed at us and told us we weren't going anywhere.  It had snowed 25 inches in less than 12 hours.

We went back inside and considered staying another day and I called David and told him I thought we might be snowed in and he said the roads looked fine from here.  If we could just get down off the mountain he thought the highway would be passable.  It was, but just barely.

As we were white-knuckle crawling our way down the mountain I thought about how when my romantic notions actually come to pass in real life, they are not nearly as romantic as I thought they would be.

My readers in Wisconsin and Michigan and Massachusetts have my apologies.

 

Post Five:

My Christmas cards are still sitting neatly in their boxes. 

I have threatened several times that they are going to end up in the recycling bin. 

David just nods.

He's been through this before.

And now every time someone else's Christmas card arrives in the mail, a little trickle of ice-cold panic sluices through me.

But still they sit.

I am waiting for inspiration. 

I am waiting for Christmas spirit.

I am waiting to figure out just what it is I learned this year.

The writer in me is still sorting.  Sorting the lessons from the regrets, the gold from the sand, the moving from the mundane.  There is something there, the water just hasn't cleared enough for me to see it yet.

I hope it clears by Christmas.  If not, I have given myself permission to fill the recycling bin.

And David will just nod.  (See Post Two.  I told you.)

December Seventh and Ninth

First, the seventh: 

Ethan awoke on Monday morning in tears.  I had let him sleep in and so he had to eat breakfast alone.  Lonely pancakes would make anyone cry.  But this was only the beginning.  He cried about getting his shirt over his head.  He cried about not being able to get his feet in his shoes.  He cried about his itchy socks.  He cried because his thumb was sore and how was he going to write and paste with a sore thumb.  Through his sobs he told me there is lots of pasting in kindergarten. 

I suggested he stay home to let his thumb rest.

I called the school and told them he was sick.

Sick of school.  Sick of the pressures of pasting and cutting.  Sick of the stress of counting and reading and the letter G.  Damn letter G.  Graceful and gregarious, yes, but also grim and grueling, to say nothing of grinding.

The other kids were just as sick, but their thumbs were not as sore as Ethan's and so I made them dress for school.  I gathered them in a circle for prayer and gave a bolstering pep talk where I said things like, "it's just ten more days" and "we can do anything for ten days" and "come on, you'll feel better once you're out the door."

But I knew exactly how they felt.  By that night I told David that I would not be able to go on without some serious incentive.  Which always involves some serious necking.

He listened to me cry about my inadequacies and the unrelenting grip of entropy (both of which would make anyone cry) and my ever-growing list and my broken kitchen faucet and my itchy socks and my sore thumb.  He tried a bolstering talk but I wasn't buying it.  I interrupted him and asked if we could just skip to the kissing. 

And while he was kissing me I listened to the pouring rain outside and wished for a snow day.  Wished I lived in Wisconsin or Michigan or Massachusetts and we were bracing for a big winter storm.  Wished to be socked in, snowed in, with no school and no work and no lists, just a fire and grilled cheese sandwiches and board games all day long.  Just ten more days I told myself.  You can do anything for ten more days. 

And it was enough light and love and resurrection morning to get me through another day.

And now to the ninth:

Today is my mom's birthday.  Even heaven remembered and sent a glorious sunrise.  When I saw it I immediately recognized it as a birthday banner.  And I could see my grandmother's hand in it.  She still has impeccable taste.

We celebrated early this year, as all my brothers and sisters were in town for the Thanksgiving holiday.  We had a surprise party at a restaurant that is really a cooking school and we all cooked dinner together and I learned the proper way to cut up an onion. 

I am posting these pictures as a birthday banner of my own to the woman who taught me everything except how to cut up an onion.   Love you, Mom.

 

 

  

[Editor's note:  We missed Emily and Anthony who had to go back north for finals and reading week.  And my camera lens jammed before I got a proper picture of Lisa or Christian or David (I think the back of your heads are lovely by the way) and before I got to take a picture of the end results.  They were delicious.  After dessert I declared I had never eaten a better cookie and we had a thorough "discussion" about the merits of the chocolate chip cookie versus the mexican wedding cookie, which until that evening I was completely unaware had any merits at all.

Whatever.  I'm still thinking about that little bite of powdered sugar heaven.]