A Veritable String Of Pearls

There used to be a show on TV called Kids Say The Darndest Things and it was full of kids saying just that, the darndest things. Children are people, I know this, but they are special people, insightful, humorous, loving, not timid, and sometimes, I will admit it, even mine, crass people.

A couple of weeks ago, my twin granddaughters were telling me about their newly understood ‘special-ness’ of being twins, my head swiveling like at a tennis match.

Liza: “Everywhere we go people point”

Lorna: “their finger at us”

Lisa: “and say look”

Lorna: “Are they twins?”

Lisa: “It’s like”

Lorna: “we’re famous”

In unison: “or sumpin!” then to each other in unison “It’s crazy”

I also heard them discussing privately what would happen if they wore identical outfits… who would be able to tell them apart? They were very disappointed that we all could, but they have no idea how hard it was. Even their brother Guru said “Well I sorta knew and I was sorta guessing, but I got it right.”

My grandson Mario was talking about his relatives in another state. He described his aunt as old, then turned to me and clarified the statement “Not as old as you grandma but still REALLY old”

His sister GiGi, after being up literally until five in the morning told me”Actually Grandma, I just don’t sleep all that much” Ya’ think???

These keen observers of the human dilemma come from a long line of children who love to vocalize and therefore say fascinating things quite often. When I married my husband, my daughter Polly, then in 8th grade caught us in a simple embrace in the kitchen. “Eeewww you can’t hug each other! You’re related now!” Wow.

My son Henry, who had been upside down and backwards in the womb, was delivered by emergency C-Section. He loved to tell the story, saying he had been stepping on his “Ability cord” so they had to take him out. Another favorite Henryism came in 92 when he was still just four years old. Our house was damaged and most of our personal possessions destroyed by a tornado. We went back the following day to see if anything was salvageable. Henry, being Henry cut right to the heart of the matter. Upon seeing the wreckage of our home and those surrounding it, seeing people picking through once prized possessions, now trash, he snatched up the top half of a GI Joe figure and shouted “I’m getting my stuff and getting the hell out of here!” He was known to use the whole tornado incident to his advantage though. 3 months later sidling up to a pretty woman at a 4th of July event, saying “I am just four and a tornado hit my house, I lost everything except for half a GI Joe man.” She was appropriately saddened by this and handed over a Popsicle he had had his eye on with a “you poor baby”.

My son Peter, at age 3, batting his long lashes told a lady who commented on his lovely blonde curly hair “And I have nice eyes, too”. He once earned the ire of his big sister by telling a potential beau who called that she couldn’t come to the phone because “she was poopin’” Another day was marked by shrieks of laughter from the two littler darlings following him as he came running in to tell me that a boy his sister was “in loooooovveee with” had kissed her, hot on his heels came an extremely embarrassed and furious and recently bussed Anna swinging at him and wailing over and over, “It was a peck! It was just a peck!” (Aside: When visiting the home of your new (you can only hope) girlfriend the day after a first date to a chaperoned dance DO NOT wear a shirt that says Party Naked With Me and then kiss the girl while her mom and siblings are home)

There was the day my son came charging in, breathless and shouted “Have you done the laundry yet” I leapt up and shouted back “No” not sure what the drama was, he replied with “Whew, I forgot to take the worms outta my pockets”. Needless to say, that was the day I decided they were old enough to start doing their own laundry…

I wish I could remember more of these pearls, string them together into a necklace of funny memories to wear when I am feeling blue. I should have written them down, taken a moment to memorialize them but I didn’t for one simple reason. When life is happening it is hard to stop and say whoa, funny moment, let me grab a pencil and just jot this down. Even if I had they would have all been in my illegible hand on the back of long tossed envelopes, so I treasure these that stay embedded.

Snowpacolypse 2011

Day three draws to a close… we are all still with the living. This has been an adventure of the indoor kind.

As happens every few years here in the Deep South, we have been iced in. From the view out the living room window, children sledding and pretty forest-scape, one would think that this is a lovely winter wonderland full of opportunities for rarely enjoyed activities like the afore mentioned sledding and snowball throwing and snowman building. The reality is quite different, the view is misleading. The kids aren’t sledding, they are slipping and sliding across the yards on ice, the snowballs are hard as rock and could kill a person and there are NO snowmen, anywhere around. A movie could be made-- Ice Age V (Will This Shit Ever Melt), or Super Size It II-- but neither of them would capture the drama of 72 hours in a house with NOWHERE to go and the same 3 people to look at. This is why I live in Atlanta. Once every ten years is enough. I would never last in a place where this is an annual occurrence.

Snowpacolypse –T - 24 and counting:

Thanks to some phenomenally accurate weather forecasting we knew that the ice and snow were moving towards us and roughly when it would get here. We bought groceries, we got fake logs for the fireplace, gassed the car up, checked for candles, flashlights and batteries and waited, expecting the worst. People up north like to make fun of us southerners for being so disenchanted with cold weather. They love to tell us that 23 degrees isn’t cold, they know cold, they love to tell us that we can’t drive in snow, they love to laugh at our snow forecast inspired  trips to the grocery store to get water, bread and milk. We just smile at them and go about our business. They will learn, as we all did at some point or another what happens when you aren’t ready.

Snowpacolypse-T -12 and counting:

A gorgeous snow began to fall about 7 PM (right on schedule, go Weather Channel!) Beautiful, for about an hour, then sleet, the freezing rain, then snow, then sleet, then freezing rain… you get the picture. I decide about 3 hours into it that yes, damn it, 23 is really cold and that my gas bill will be outrageous. The power flickers once or twice but stays on. This one is already shaping up to be better than the last one, spent in a freezing house with no power for 4 days running and the little old neighbor lady snuggled up on a warm chair right in front of our fireplace. By 1 AM we have settled into a steady pattern, sleet for an hour followed by one of freezing rain. Yuck.

Snowpacolypse Day 1

YAY!! A snow day!! Even most displaced Yankees are riding this one out inside their warm cozy houses. Major interstates are shut down with an inch or more of ice sheeting them and jack-knifed tractor trailers blocking all lanes. Northerners may know how to drive in snow, but no one is good at driving on ice. We watch on the news as many people try to prove themselves right about their abilities only to be found wanting, sitting in crumpled cars on the side of the road. We smile smugly, shake our heads and say ‘Dumb-asses, and they thought we were stupid.’

Left over home made beef vegetable soup simmers on the stove while we watch movies, read and nap. People keep their children indoors as freezing rain and snow flurries continue to mark the passing of time outside. Lasagna is set to bake and then devoured, the fireplace cranked up and day one slides to a sleepy close.

Snowpacolypse- Day 2

I am sick of watching pictures of people sliding all over hells half acre on the TV and my current book just isn’t doing it for me. I flip through the channels and find every old movie I am glad I never watched. All of my facebook friends are sleeping, the spam outnumbers the people on twitter, and my email holds nothing new for me. I log in some hours doing work stuff I had left unfinished on Friday, bake a batch of brownies, do some dishes and watch 25 year old episodes of Cops. The neighbors have tossed their kids out the door and they entertain themselves by hitting my car trying to knock chunks of ice off with sticks. Their parents are no doubt hiding inside just glad that the kids are burning off some energy somewhere other than in their faces. Excitement comes in the form of watching another neighbor try to get their car out of the cul-de-sac only to slide back again and again finally leaving it cockeyed in the middle of the road.  Roast beef and salad and French fries with brownies and ice cream for dessert finish the day. The cold weather has created some sort of Cro-Magnon like need for thousands of calories and the richer the food the better

Snowpacolypse- Day 3

Day three arrives with some sunshine (YAY) cold temps (BOO) news that highways are at least passable in one lane (YAY) but neighborhoods will not be salted for a few more days (BOO). I have slept 10 hours, which probably hasn’t happened since the last ice storm, my butt feels two sizes larger, my head hurts and I am bored to death. The office is still closed so I have no new work to do. The dishes are done in two minutes and even making a pot of chili takes no more than 30. While my son bundles up to face the great outdoors and an 8 mile walk to the store for smokes and thrills, driven by the same cabin fever as I, my husband knocks ice off the front walk and I trudge upstairs with iPod and headphones to log in some miles and burn some calories on the treadmill. If possible, the shows on the TV are even worse than the day before. Even the reporters are sick of standing outside, freezing their collective patooties off and saying look, there goes someone else sliding into the same ditch where five others car-carcasses are resting. Bright sunshine slowly warms up the surfaces and despite 27 degree temperatures the ice melts a bit, allowing cars to slowly skitter and slide out of the middle of the road and kids to once again attack the ice boogers on my car.

Tomorrow roads will be a bit better, offices will open even if a few hours late, some new man-made tragedy or natural phenomenon will take the place of sledders in Piedmont Park at 2 AM or jack-knifed trucks causing a snow-jam twenty miles long. I will be glad this is finished on one hand, I miss the normal, but saddened by it too. Adventures are best shared and this has been a good one.

Lunchtime In China

One of the things I like about the new “social networks” is that I am  reminded that other people are out there, living there lives, doing different things than I in a different place and probably in a different way than I would.

It is so easy to get caught up in our own day to day dramas that we (or at least I) do tend to get a sort of tunnel vision. I, or my family members are, seemingly the only ones I can picture leading a life of any intensity. It is not that I don’t care about others. It is just that for me, out of sight is sometimes out of mind, and that is a shame.

While I am sitting up at midnight listening to the sleet hit the chimney top my cousin is in China on his lunch break the following day. While I have been cozy in my living room watching the drama of the ice storm on television both my sister-in-law and my son-in-law have been slogging their way through city streets and country roads trying to get home to their families before the only way available is two days later in a tow truck. Another sister-in-law, in Kentucky is saddened that they just have a minor dusting while Atlanta is expecting 6 or more inches of snow and ice. My friends in Minnesota or Brussels Belgium are probably amused by our consternation caused by the small amounts of snow without considering that a city in the Deep South is not nearly as well equipped for this as a city in the north. I have a friend talking about being on the beach in Hawaii (how unfair is that?) while I hunt down a second pair of socks. Gumbo is cooking in Louisiana while friends ten miles away are building a snowman in their front yard.

These aren’t events of a world shattering nature. God knows there are enough of those covered ad infinitum by every professional and hack journalistic enterprise in the country. These aren’t events that change lives like births and deaths and marriages. I would hear about those anyway, with a phone call or a card in the mail. These are just the day to day, a slice of life, a picture offered to me with short, often humorous, descriptions and a few photos of other people’s existence. People are eating and joking and fighting and playing and relaxing all over the world. These are the tidbits that remind me that I am not alone, that my small life is not so trivial after all.

Lips Like Strawberry Twizzlers

I have been faced with a lot of poetry lately, watching it fly by on twitter at 140 characters max. Some of it is lovely, some of it is unfathomable, and some I am sorry to say is just terrible.

I know I am not a poet. My most famous line was probably go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little baby repeated over and over again while I banged my head (quietly) into the mattress at four in the morning. Dr. Seuss is the only poet I can quote (i.e. would you, could you, in a box? Would you, could you, with a fox?). Even as a child, I was pulled more toward the mystery, the suspense that is Are You My Mother? than the lyrical yet epic saga Horton Hears A Who (now a major motion picture).

Every ten years or so I decide to give poetry one more try. I have lived a full emotional life, have loved and lost and loved some more, I am tuned into nature and spirituality and I am good at finding words that rhyme so why not? I will start with loss, always a good basis for wrenching words torn from ones very soul. I think, I think, I think, and all I can come up with is “I wasn’t done with you yet you asshole! Cool sunset, thanks. I love you” Somehow I don’t see that being quoted on the evening news when someone leaves this world too early.

Love, love is grand! I can do love, surely? Love is wonderful, Love is good, thank you God, for our food. Yikes, I know that is paraphrasing bordering on plagiarism as well as blasphemy and I apologize for that, but how can one expect to capture all the ‘oomph’ of a really great love? How can someone plumb the depths of this most unwieldy of emotions when true love just keeps getting deeper? Higher than the mountains, deeper than the sea… it has all been said and people are still trying to capture the essence of oneness that is love.

Poets tend to do better at describing people that they love than love itself. Countless artists have lyricised the beauty they behold, beautiful dreamer, stardust in your eyes of blue, she’s got legs, hot for teacher… (Hey, don’t blame me, I didn’t write them). Poets have waxed… um… poetic for centuries. Shelley said “Art thou pale for weariness “, which I find terribly touching, and Masefield wrote “But the loveliest things of beauty God ever has showed to me Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her lips” which I think about sums it all up nice and neatly.

I tried to write a romantic poetic homily to my beloved once, but lips like strawberry Twizzlers and eyes like limpid pools of rich chocolate melting over the low heat of our eternal passion just reminded me that I was hungry so I made a really delicious cake instead.

That said, I have decided that writing (or even reading most) poetry is not for me. I can pour all that emotion into a really great soup or luscious cookies, or enjoy the act of bringing a cup of coffee to my dear heart in the morning when it is dark and cold and 5:30 AM. I can rhyme with Dr. Seuss while my sweet young progeny snuggle on the couch with me. We can all be poets, maybe not that of the written word, but poets of the soul, poets of life and, yes, poets of love.

Good Bye and Good Riddance, We’ll Miss You

Today is once again New Year’s Eve and, once again, I find myself wishing that midnight would hurry up and come on already. 2010 is pretty much used up and wrung dry in my opinion. Like every year that came before it by December 31^st it is a shriveled, worn and de-juiced version of what it was on January 1^st!

When I was much younger, I saw the celebration accompanying this date as a welcoming ceremony, a ritual devoted to ushering in all that was new and shiny and clean and full of promise. We were throwing open the doors on our hearts and minds and shouting ‘Come On In! Make yourself at home, stay a while!’ We would wake on the first and do everything possible to please our lovely new year. Just as with a new lover, we dieted, we colored our hair, we worked out and cooked fancy meals. We bought new towels for the guest room and new sheets for the beds. We vowed to give up smoking, at least in the house, for real this time. In general we were our best, most energetic, happy, intelligent and beautiful selves. January goes by in a blur of rapture and conviction.

February comes skipping up next, full of romance and emotion, ready to join the fun. Most of the grandiose plans made New Year’s Eve while gently buzzed are still in play. The hair cut still looks nice and the roots aren’t too obvious yet. While a few pounds came creeping back during those short cold days the gym is still on our GPS, the sheets still feel crisp and only one or two of the now not so new towels have been used to soak up spilled beer or dry snowy pets come in from the cold. Just when you think this winter is really rocking and you don’t know why you said you hated the season Valentine’s Day pops up right in the middle and slaps us back to reality. Like the new lover not wanting to have to buy you a present, Valentine’s Day drops you on your ass. If you are not alone and neglected you feel that way. Luckily, so does everyone else so you can generally prop yourself up enough to limp through to the end of the month. At least you weren’t dumped, even if your special someone didn’t get you anything, at least this stupid card is better than nothing, at least I got flowers and / or chocolate with my stupid card, at least I got some jewelry (even if it is costume) with these stupid flowers, at least I got a promise ring (too cheap to spring for an engagement ring or does he just not want to commit?) that’s not zirconium, my engagement ring might not be a carat but it is better than the one my friend got with a mere chip…

We eat the chocolates, relish the putrid odor of the dying flowers, throw darts at the card and let the dog chew on the stuffed animals. Screw the gym, screw the laundry and screw yo… WAIT! It’s March! While February may have disappointed us, shown us the cracks in the once shiny new façade of the year March takes our minds and just plain blows them. Tornados, blizzards, torrential rains and hard, hard freezes make March a month to reckon with. The weather is wild and it makes us feel a little wild too. We hate all our winter clothes and the sound of the heater cranking up drives us mad. There are no holidays, the ski slopes are slushy, ads for tax attorneys and accountants fill the television schedule. Just when we can’t stand it another minute April knocks gently on our door.

Thank God for April! Pretty pastels come out of storerooms, bunnies and little chicks and lambs decorate every surface. We see light in the morning when we go to work and light in the evening when we come home. We make plans for our tax refunds, dream of vacations and the possibility of romance once again right around the next corner. Skin that has been covered in ten layers of woolens for months comes creeping out bit by bit, exposing itself to the sun shine and temperate breezes, it sickly white hue shocking in its intensity. We work on our better selves, planting gardens to nourish the body and soul, sweeping out cobwebs and emptying closets in to bags marked Goodwill.

May brings a new intensity to the exercise of living. We rue the day we quit going to the gym and vow to go twice as often and work out twice as hard. We get pedicures and hair removal procedures and tummy tucks and Botox.  We spend a fortune on a too small swimsuit (it will motivate us to work out more) so that we can look like we are all natural, a goddess washed up from the sea. The entire purpose of the month of May is just to get ready for the month of June.

June is a wild rush to do everything that we couldn’t do in the previous five months. We parade around in next to nothing, sucking in bellies and artfully wrapping sarongs or adjusting our board shorts on our hips just so. The summer lies stretched out before us like a shiny sand littered path into the sea with nothing but hedonistic adventure to distract us. We offer ourselves up to the sun as if it will cleanse us, make us new again. We drink too much, bronze too much, and laugh too hard and too loud.

July comes in with a bang, quite literally. Right when we feel the best about ourselves we are encouraged to feel the best about where our bodies reside. Uncle Sam, apple pie and the American flag are everywhere. Patriotic hymns disguised as pop or country or rock and roll are played on the airwaves ad nauseum. Suddenly everyone looks great in red white and blue. Lakes are as busy as the interstate with speed boats and jet skis creating waves in the roped off swimming areas for the little children to bob in. The bigger the roller coaster, the steeper the water slides, the larger the crowd and the longer the fireworks display the better. We are indestructible, we are healthy and happy and we are American, dammit!

August comes in with a blast of heat decorated with school sale flyers drifting aimlessly in the stilted breezes. Pictures of children in incredibly hip and expensive jeans, sweaters and boots belie the 95 degree temperatures. We grind down the gears. Time to get serious, time to pay attention, time to start getting prepared like the little ant in the Aesop’s fable. We take a few moments to squeeze in one last swim, one last picnic, one last bonfire on the beach but we all know it is for naught.

September once again inspires us with the thought of something new to look forward too. Cool weather in the evenings inspire husbandry in the daytime. Yards are fed and mulched and put to bed for the winter, roses are pruned and fall color planted. Everything apple is new again and in rural areas the sweet, sickly smell of them rotting on the ground is the perfume of the season to come. Into October, we nest, putting up storm windows and cleaning out gutters and painting shutters. Men winterize and women redecorate with russets and oranges and umbers. The days are shorter, the light is sharper, we all… slow….. down.

November calls us to start gearing up yet again but we just don’t have the energy we did the last three times. Thanksgiving seems to leap out of nowhere and threatens to launch us into the deep end of the year’s frivolity without a chance to take a deep breath first. While we attempt to gaily go about the business of celebrating for six weeks straight we do everything possible to sabotage ourselves. We find ourselves once again eating and drinking too much but this time without the benefit of sun and sea to keep us moving. Instead of long walks on the beach, or hours raking in the yard we find ourselves battling crowds in the mall and moving at a snails pace. While our circadian rhythms are telling us to go to sleep at 8 we are just putting on the final touches to race out the door to yet another gala. When we do have a chance to slow down we wonder why? Why aren’t we invited to more parties?  Why aren’t we getting everything done in time? Why are other, better, people out making the most of this glorious time while we are inside eating fruit cake and watching 12 straight hours of Christmas miracles on Lifetime TV? The only thing in the world that makes the stress and strain of the season on our bodies and minds worthwhile is the single day it is all designed around.

The week after Christmas is filled with work you can’t get done because everyone is still on holiday. It is filled with leftovers, carbs, carbs and more carbs. It is filled with half done house work and reruns and pants with elastic waists and retrospectives to remind you of every terrible thing that happened in the world in the last twelve months. The only bright light is New Year’s Eve. Next year you can do it better, you can work out more, and get the house fixed up and call that person you have had a crush on but weren’t going to call because you put on twelve pounds in two months.  This week is shot to hell, but come January first….

A Rose By Any Other Name…

In writing these essays I find myself often wanting to mention my family members specifically. I am sure they dread this. What is a mother’s job but to embarrass her children after all? We apparently start when they turn eight or so and get steadily more embarrassing as time goes on until they are in their late teens and we cannot even be seen with them in public without eliciting groans, shrugs and elaborate methods of disguise on their part and murmurs of commiseration on that of their peers.

Usually this is not done deliberately. While my oldest daughter was enthralled at and the envy of her friends for being picked up in the dead of winter in a car with no windshield driven by her boyfriend (he was older and had a CAR, OH MY GOD) she was furious at me for embarrassing her by wearing my Sears Associate name tag to the high school for 9^th grade orientation.

I am sure my son was mortified when we returned home from a shopping expedition to find him holding court in the basement with 20 of his closest friends. When we smelled cigarette smoke my husband tracked down the offenders and asked to see their IDs to verify they were of legal age. Why is it cool to entertain in your room, which is an unfinished space in the basement delineated by hanging blankets (the younger neighborhood kids called it the dungeon) but not cool for your parents to make sure they did not get any obnoxious, pissed off parent’s calls by checking rotten little smokers’ ages?

I will admit I am usually the first one to say or do something embarrassing, but luckily I can usually blame it on my vision and most of the time it is a valid excuse. I do love them though, and do not want them to be hurt or afraid to look at this so I have decided to give them pseudonyms. I realize that for those of you who know us this will do no good at all, but it may spare them future anguish and even if it doesn’t I have had fun figuring out which names suit them best.

For my oldest daughter, my first born and the one who keeps me humble… I like FiFi, which is short for fille fille which is a play on her name (not going to write her name, no way) and it is what we called her when she was just a tot because it means girl girl in French, which we spoke and which she was and still is. I don’t think she will like that though, or my second choice, EnemI (think about it, you will get it). I will call her Anna, which is a nod to my mother and a terrible pun when put with her maiden name, and a strong name for a strong woman.

For my son (who is the most embarrassing person I know when he puts his mind to it) I will use the name he gave himself, Peter. (AKA Petah Petahson) I apologize to anyone who actually has that name in advance if I ever use it in a way not kind or gentlemanly, but this is my son, one of my kids, and sometimes we are known to get a little… rambunctious and may not behave in a perfectly acceptable manner.

For my sweet baby girl who has a temper like nobodies business and a huge, huge heart I choose the name Polly. Why? Polly goes so well with Peter. They harmonize. My Polly and Peter go together like that, flashing quick wit or quick anger, harmonizing with each other in a lovely way that makes my heart sing along with joy. Also, just an aside, the lovely actress Jennifer Aniston was a looker and a charmer and a unique individual in ‘Along Came Polly’ and my daughter is all of those things. Plus, she would probably have a stupid ferret.

The grandkids are easy. For Anna’s (see how smooth that was?) I am going with Mario because he is a well known Wii addict and he would not like to be immortalized as boo-stinky, his current pet name. For her older daughter GiGi because it is her initials and a fancy name for a fancy girl and last but certainly not least comes Star, because that mighty might is a star and paratrooper-baby-girl just doesn’t sound right.

For Peter’s kids we have Olive, like the Oyl, tall thin, beautiful, smart (smart-alecky on occasion), and Guru because he will be a computer guru if he keeps going at the current rate. The twins were much harder. They both could be called Dimples, but Dimples-one and Dimples-two lack panache. Mary Kate and Ashley are so obvious, and blonde, they would never work. I decided on Lorna and Liza, as they have gorgeous huge dark eyes and, as mentioned, those huge dimples.

For Polly’s lovely girls we will go with Zoey, but only because Elmo is definitely a boy and I do want to pay homage to her love for all things red and fuzzy, and Smiley, because gosh darn it she just is.

It isn’t often a mother gets to name her children twice. I hope they like the names I have chosen for them. This gives them plausible deniability (wow, I never thought I would be able to use that in a sentence!) and worst case scenario, something new, from me, to be embarrassed about.

The Exhilarating And Exhausting Celebration That Is Christmas

The kids are all gone home, tucked into their own warm beds with their children entrapped in the fatigue and sugar induced coma of the perfectly innocent at the end of the exhilarating and exhausting celebration that is Christmas. My house is trashed, my dishwasher is working over time and the cat will be terrified for the next month and a half. Bits of colored paper and ribbon, silver candy wrappings and toy packaging twist ties litter every corner, debris from the tornado of gaiety and abandon which tore through these rooms several hours ago.  I am sitting alone with a hot cup of coffee, sweet and thick with cream and sugar, surveying the mess, bone tired but not wanting to let this day go.

Just as every year I can remember before it, it was the best Christmas ever and the worst Christmas ever all rolled into one and stuck together with curling ribbon and cake crumbs. I am happy with the gifts we had for the family because they all seemed to go over so well. One of my granddaughters put on her new pajamas at two in the afternoon because she loved them that much, marching around playing her pink guitar for us all, secure in the knowledge, as she put it, that Santa comes even if you are bad. The babies both sat in the floor and played with their little people putting them in and out and in and out and in and out of their house and barn. My husband, AKA Grandpa, and my grandson both played with their helicopters, buzzing the cat and exciting the little ones who were as enthralled by an airplane in the house as they were by the gifts and the tree.

The food was abundant and delicious and even the children, full of treats from their stockings and bowls of chocolate on every counter, ate a bit too much, groaning but not leaving the room or saying No Thank You when the birthday cake for Jesus came out.  Swollen with good food and better company people sprawled about the living room watching the toddlers in action and feeling the dinner settle firmly on their hips. Snow fell in the Deep South, blanketing our state with a beauty and a quiet calm not seen on Christmas here in over one hundred years. These are the things that made it the best Christmas ever.

I look over at a picture of my youngest son with his arm around my mother, both gone from my life and oh so terribly missed. I say a little prayer to God on this, His son’s birthday, and ask him to watch over them for me, to remind them that I love them. I look at presents still under the tree, waiting for the grandchildren that couldn’t come and ask God to keep them safe and warm, to help them stay balanced and happy until I see them again. I think of their father having Christmas without them and ask the same for him. The one gift I would love to give him is the one I absolutely can’t and it infuriates me even after all these years to know mothers do not have the power to stop their child from hurting. These are the things that make it the worst Christmas ever.

The more people you have around you that allow you to love them, to pour your energy and affection freely upon their heads and hearts, the more keenly one feels the holes, the great yawning chasms where absent loved ones should be. The more keenly these losses are felt the more abundant the amount of love available to pour into those that are there waiting for it, asking for it. You cannot truly love until you have lost and yet, you cannot truly lose something that is not loved to distraction.. All of this is so clear on this one day, this one moment when we celebrate a life given with pure love. God has blessed us, every one.