Christmas 2022

 

December 16, 2022

Well, we are back to a live Christmas tree this year after last year’s artifical one. The family was nostalgic to resume our tree cutting tradition, so back we went the day after Thanksgiving to wander the hills of Sandy Hollar Farm. The afternoon was temperate and overcast--romantically broody weather for the Sandy Mush Valley, one of the loveliest spots I know. Incidentally, I’ve decided that each type of Christmas tree has its charms. I’ve grown fond of the “some of both” approach to life which seems to bring both variety and peace.

This year has been full of resuming vaguely familiar pre-Covid rhythms--broader travel, more relaxed vacations, bigger gatherings, fewer masks. In some regards, the last several years brought a good dose of change to our family even before Covid. Briggs and I have become accustomed to the flux and flow of young adult children who are here and there, in and out, now you see them now you don’t. We’re learning to hold family coordination more lightly--delighted when they appear at the door but discovering our own new adventures when they don’t. 

Briggs and I are enjoying more time for each other, more time to read, linger, talk, and wonder. Out of necessity, you acclimate to “parent think” for so many years that it gradually becomes the default. And I think it’s mostly good--parenting grows you as a person and as a couple. But all the while, these little people are simultaneously busy becoming themselves--sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, but ever persistently.  So much of life seems to be a dance of such identities--growing and gaining, losing and releasing. Just when the movements become natural, the music shifts, and we all learn a new dance. This spring will usher in another such shift. In late April, Grace will have her white coat ceremony which marks the transition from her classroom to clinical OT studies. In May, Rose will graduate from high school and David from college.  April and May will be busy months of celebration here!

Grace (23)  continues to enjoy her time in Charleston. She’s excited to solidify some of her upcoming fieldwork locations and has laid the foundation for her capstone project which will begin next fall. This December she’s participating in a school trip to Trinidad to work in their local community PT/OT clinic. Admittedly less exotic but meaningful in a different way, Grace and I traveled up to Buffalo, NY this August.  I grew up in Buffalo and loved sharing some of my memories and genealogical research work with Grace. We toured the Old First Ward Irish section of Buffalo, took a boat tour up the old Buffalo River where the grain elevators loaded ships, ate fantastic local food, and spent some low-key time catching up with my sister Linda.

David (20) is winding up or down his senior year at Appalachian State, studying finance. In May he studied abroad in Angers, France with the school’s business program. They visited Paris, Normandy, and an insanely ambitious garden I long to see someday. He tried to bring me a packet of seeds home but customs decided otherwise. After getting in one night, he woke the next morning and stepped into the currents of wave-after-wave of summer camp counseling. He’s enthusiastic about his faith, loves being in community, and working with young people. Also, this spring he was chosen to be a part of their business school’s Bowden Investment Group which manages a university investment fund among other things. One of the lesser requirements of his involvement is that he wear a suit to class which cramps his longboarding lifestyle and renders him a campus curiosity. Because David can be a low-key type of guy and a minimalist with regard to extra work, it’s been fun to watch all of this grow out of him and his choices. 

Rose (18) is most thankful to leave her Covid--and soon high school--years behind her. I don’t envy these teenagers whose lives were also characterized by change before Covid. Covid was change-on-top-of-change for them. First she longed to work, but we waited because of Covid. Then she went through a series of jobs until she found her sweet spot--working as a barista at the Barnes & Noble Starbucks. After earning her CNA this summer and pondering a future in nursing, she woke one morning and told us she’s decided to pursue Economics instead. We’re thankful for all of these evolving thoughts--they mark forward progress. This semester, she hunkered down and stuck out a brutal Chem II class. And she triumphed! We are most happy for her--not about any grades--but about the lessons and character that grow from seeing through the tough and sometimes unfair aspects of life. This April, the three of us spent five days in New York City for her spring break. I was surprised by how much we all enjoyed the trip and the city--full of classic NYC bucket list items, a broadway show, and some history as well. 

Briggs continues to head up a thriving business--this year he’s reached the highest level in the Edward Jones model. He’s worked hard to understand the market and all aspects of finances so that he can better help his clients.  All this said, it’s also been a draining year as a financial advisor at the helm of people’s portfolios and life plans. Although he can’t change the market, he’s done a lot of listening and been a steady guide through the financial whirlwinds. As the saying goes, “Everyone is a genius in a bull market.”  I’m thankful for all the ways he is able to use his gifts to help others in hugely meaningful ways. When we started this Edward Jones adventure ten years ago, it was crazy stressful, but looking back it’s been a privilege to watch it all grow. Lest you think he’s all work, Briggs has also been busy learning Spanish, following Clemson football, taking long cold hikes with our goofy dogs, and pulling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of ivy from our yard. Grace and Briggs share a rapt fascination with intense weeding; I suspect it’s a form of therapy for both.

With our youngest graduating from high school, will I graduate from homeschooling this year as well? I suppose technically, yes. I’ve taken the last year off from classroom teaching in the homeschool community, but I’m still involved in academic testing and some private tutoring. I’m enjoying the different rhythms and diminished paperwork, and I imagine I’ll continue to work with  young people in whatever ways and shapes arise and fit a healthy work-family balance. As I move further into my 50’s, my hope is to strike a better balance among the many things I like to pursue--some teaching, some learning. Along these lines, last January I began piano lessons, an instrument I’ve always longed to play. It’s a slow process with many lessons ahead, but even my small achievements and gradual progress has been very rewarding. It’s  fun, growing, and humbling to tackle a new skill as an adult.

We hope each of you is well.  We look forward to the hope of connecting more although we realize we continue to be in a race between good intentions and the fury of time. “Don’t blink” as they say. So, we wish you time enough--even though it is never enough---time with family and friends, time to rest, time to wonder as we enjoy the holiday lull and look with hope toward 2023.

God rest ye merry,

Elizabeth, Briggs, Grace, David & Rose

What is it with the holidays?

 Holidays are one thing for a child and quite another for adults. For children, holidays are full of breaks from school, gatherings, decorations, wishes, and surprises.  As an adult, I experience some of those things too, but they are muted, tempered by the weight of my hand in making it all happen.

For me, holidays are full of longing and laboring to make everyone have a happy holiday.  If I shared this perspective with my family, I imagine some of them would not understand it or think it was me overcomplicating things. The gap in understanding can cause conflict and strain. They don't understand what I do.  They think it just happens a certain way rather effortlessly.

And honestly, after working through so many layers of what my childhood was and was not, what my parents were and were not, what my husband is and is not, what my in-laws are and are not, I really can't say whether this is me complicating things, or a manifestation of a type of codependency, or part of being a mom.  What do I want for Christmas? Each of my family members to experience a merry Christmas.  I really think this is what I want most of all.  All the rest of whatever happens or doesn't happen, lists and requests, food and events, flows from this overarching hope.

I also know that holidays for me are full of thinking about gifts intensely--what is arriving, not arriving, what color, size, kind?  Where do I put it all?  Do I have what I need to wrap it? Am I spending too much? Not enough? What can I get that is clever, different, not the same old thing? What does my family NEED.  What will they wear or use? David thinks this is an unimaginative approach to gift gifting.  But, he speaks from the romantic headspace of a 20 year-old young man who has never had a wife or child. I would love to be romantic about the holidays--such a perspect is a gift too that is long past my age, role, and stage in life.

My husband is largely oblivious of everyone's wishes and needs.  It's not that he doesn't care--because he does. His mind just doesn't process the holidays or people in the same way mind does.  He loves and experiences differently. Thus the gifts are much more an extension of my thoughts and experiences than his. All the same, this means that I do most, if not all, of the holiday thinking whether good or bad, necessary or overkill, enough or too much.  If I try to involve him in all these details and gymjnastics, then I end up frustrated explaining my thinking or thinking over his thinking which is just MORE dang thinking in the end.

We can blame Charles Dickens or Washington Irving for this Christmas commercial build-up mess that is Christmas these days.  We can poo-poo that it's much less about celebrating Christ and much more about us and our idealized precontrived expectations.  We can drum up ways to scale back, give back, refocus, reprioritize, but in the end, there are still gifts under a tree that somehow need to happen.

Sometimes all of this spills out into gusts of emotions--mine, my children's my husband's.  Sometimes it's the perfect awful storm. This build up of holiday expectations and preparations--the gifts, the relationships, the weight placed on a handful of days at the end of the year when light is scarce and the New Year is pressing at our door.  It all becomes too too much, like that ginormous bucket of water towering over a water park--filling to the brim then there's nothing to do but brace myself for the weight of the deluge.

If I could take or leave what I appreciate about the holidays. Here's what I would take and keep. I love cooking good food for people, wrapping presents with care, the cheer of our Christmas lights and snowman family that pierce the darkness of cold and dreary winter days.  I would hang up string after string of bright white lights and remember the year that I never did make that happen for my acutely sick father for his final Christmas with us here.

I would keep the mulled cider, the hot chocolate with marshmallows, the Hershy kisses, the dancing candles, the breathing coals of a mature fire, the delicate unexpected snowfalls that soften the dirt edges of life for a moment.  The clean bright slate of such snow.

I would keep the Christmas morning gathering in our family room---one of the few times in the year when all of us sit down for an extended period of time, look at each other, and appreciate the value in being together, giving things to each other that we hope each will like or delight in. 

I would leave the over-purchases that just happen along the way, the mismatched gift expectations, the trips to stores that do not have what I need or want, the traffic, the cognitive dissonance that comes when I try to find my place in the visible church, the fatigue of cooking so many dishes at once in a home that doesn't have a good layout for a communal kitchen, the tiny-let down that comes when all the gifts are unwrapped, we have eaten good food, and ask "what next?"

In the end, my holiday experience seems bound by the truth that I am a very practical person that wants others to be happy.  Everything else comes out of this for better or worse.   

Ten Things

Here are ten things I've been thinking about in 2014:

1. As children get older, they become more themselves.  As my aunt once said "you won't be able to shape your children as much as you'd like."  Each child has a natural bend in personality and inclination.  Parents can shape the bend, but we have to work with the inherent form.

2. Raising older children is as challenging as raising younger children.  Somehow I thought there would be a break in there.  Yes, I can grocery shop these days without incident, but our children require more emotionally and spiritually than ever.  The dialogues become trickier, the situations more complex.

3. Our public lives are over-valued and our private lives under-rated. 

4.  God answers our prayers in a number of ways--however, His preference is not typically for the  dramatic or immediate.

5. Educators, in all areas of their work, are under-valued and under-paid.  

6. People are exhausting.  I could be a happy hermit under different circumstances.

7.  I understand now why older women typically prefer not to cook except for special occasions.

8.  I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook, which I am not sure is a reflection of a problem in me or a problem in other people, or a problem in all of us.  I am thankful for the occasional glimpses into the life of others, but dislike the endless pre-generated inspirational quotes, campy news stories, and "being proud of" every accomplishment in their child's life.  It all smacks of narcissism at times. 

9. The end of a matter is usually more complicated than its beginning.

10.  People don't take the time to read much of anything carefully these days.

Ornaments and Death

It seems we are always trying to remember someone or something, to freeze time. We do this in different ways. Sometimes we put prayer cards in our wallets for decades. Sometimes we hang a dog collar on our Christmas tree. Sometimes we let our minds linger despite the hurt.

Grace named Cookie.  I wanted to name her Saluda because that's where she came from.  I recall piling three young kids in our van one day, a spontaneous whim, "Let's go see these puppies, but no promises." In a double-wide in Saluda, we met her parents, Daisy and Spud. Who leaves without a puppy?

We thought we wanted a boy, but the boy was uninspiring. Instead, out of a pack of girl puppies, one with a clean white stripe up her forehead wiggled out and laid her chin on my knee. Done.

I  think horoscopes are stupid, but I definitely believe in the providence of God.

Grace is right and better than me with words.  The last week she was a Pac-Man ghost who followed the borders of our rooms mindlessly each night. Twitching and jerking.  Clearly lost. Excruciating painful. Time to go.

Our family mascot. Jealous. Loyal. Joker-faced lover of our family.