Advent.

Advent arrived three weeks after Mother went to sleep and didn't wake up.
She'd been in a long term memory care facility for just that long.
The young women who cared for her delivered her medications that morning.
Mother said she wanted to sleep longer.
The young women returned forty-five minutes later, chatting and laying out Mother's clothing for the day.
She was dead but still warm when my father arrived.
Having been through years of hellish suffering, Mother at last went to sleep and simply didn't wake up.
We had prayed for that kind of exit from her broken body and mind.

And now, we are without her.

We have begun the first holiday season without her in our midst, shining during her favorite time of year.

I feel broken myself. Tired. Sad. Normal activity requires monumental strength. Today, home with a sick child, I am given the opportunity to reflect and rest. My boy, now eight, wraps his sweet arms around me constantly, or holds my hand, rakes fingers through my hair.... for these weeks, there has been more contact even than usual. We have given up the pretense of starting him in his own bed even.

Driving in from "town" to Papa's house the other evening, our boy asked, "Where are Diggy's ashes?" When asked by his father why he thought of that at that moment, our boy replied that we'd just passed the place in which he and I last saw her, a week before she died there.

These associations tether us to the living and to the truths of being part of something larger than ourselves. The very next morning, my husband, who'd brought fresh laundry up to the bedroom of my teen years said, "I really like our kid. I just like him so much. Somehow, folding jammies always makes me think of that."

Our boy has encouraged me to again go on a Facebook fast, as I did last Advent. "I get more time with you," he says. And so....

My sister and I created our Advent wreaths this year from cuttings from her yard, dried grape vine wreaths and candles procured by our husbands, holders lifted from Mother's considerable stash.

We are quiet. Waiting. Hopeful.

• Unexpected God, your advent alarms us. Wake us from drowsy worship, from the sleep that neglects love, and the sedative of misdirected frenzy. Awaken us now to your coming, and bend our angers into your peace. Amen.

Telling it just like you're here.

Oh, Mother. I miss you so....

I've been here in your house, staying with Daddy since the day you died.

This house we moved to thirty years ago when I was sixteen and you were younger than we children are now. You made it a home. Let me pick out curtains that Irene custom made, and we had our friends here for slumber parties and late night swimming. Remember that Jeffrey was Johnny Appleseed in his school play one of those first years, and he sang and looked so cute?

I don't even remember our writing this, do you? After freshman year of college?

Every room here, every nook, cranny and drawer, has you in it. A scarf you wore to a soccer game, or a news clipping from your service to UMW or Church Women United. We keep finding little squirreled away stashes of photographs in unexpected places from mismatched eras and your handwriting is on the backs with names and dates and sometimes captions like, "Not a very good picture of Laura." These things have kept us laughing and crying, both.

Dana and I, along with Laura, went through all your clothing. That was tough. We girls all took things of yours that we wanted and we'll be wearing them -- Dana most of all, as she was closest to your size. Jeffrey laundered and folded the clothing you most recently wore, and declined my help to fold. He has been wonderful, as you know. You raised a good boy into an excellent man, Mother.

And Dana gave a hilarious and moving eulogy at your service. Everyone laughed. Smiled. Remembered how fun you were. Eric says she captured that part of you perfectly.

Yesterday just about dark a floral delivery came from one of  Daddy's friends -- a beautiful white camelia in a basket filled with fruit. A LOT of fruit. The lady delivering the fruit told Jeff and me that you banked with her at First Tennessee for years, I remembered her face.... but that she'd been the florist owner the last year and a half, and knowing you, she overfilled the basket with good fruit for your family. She, like everyone, remembered you as gracious and always smiling. I think that's one of the words about you I have heard most often: gracious. And it's true, that was your way.

I like to think we're making you proud here. Daddy has been kind of amazing, really. Very gracious himself and kind. I keep thinking that you're just a breath away whispering, "You just be the best Joe you can be," and with your encouragement, he's doing just that. The children have been lovely and such a comfort. Every one of them adored you, and my boy told me he knows your spirit lives on inside of his heart. Audrey finds your photograph in one of your church directories and says, "THERE's my Diggy!" The big girls have been wonderful with the younger ones, and I'm glad they'll all help the new baby know you. He hasn't gotten here yet, but little Leo's arrival is imminent.

Mother, I'll admit, I have some unkind thoughts toward people. People who didn't come see you for their own reasons, or were even unkind and dishonest. But I know you, you'd have said, Love them anyway. So I've bitten my tongue, and tried to do as you would -- offered kindness and cried and fussed about it later.

It's hard though, Mother. Because you deserved the best. You didn't deserve the pain and suffering of the last few years. You were supposed to live into your nineties and go on that cruise with me and Dana and the grandkids, go to San Francisco and England and wherever else with Daddy.... I can't face the open years head on and know that you won't be there.

For now, I focus on today, and just the tiniest bit more. It's too hard to do otherwise. I miss you terribly.

Last night I was flipping through television channels and that Hallmark movie Matchmaker Santa was on; the movie that was playing on the television at the Courtyards the last day I saw you before you died a week later. I gasped. You were watching the movie with the other residents while Daddy snoozed on the couch beside you in your wheelchair when my boy and I kissed and hugged you, told you we loved you and that we'd see you soon.

I did not know the next time I'd see you you'd be dead and I'd be seeing your body all cold and stiff at the funeral home. They kept you there for me to see you before the cremation. And even though I knew it was your body, and that your spirit had gone on, I wanted to say goodbye. I left you with a fresh coat of Viva Glam on your lips and kissed you goodbye.

On Friday, I picked up your ashes, and your death certificate. I sat in my husband's car in the parking lot of the funeral home with you in a box beside me and sobbed. I didn't drive back across town until I'd worn myself out and settled into gentle tears. This grief is a real bear, Mother. It hurts so damned much.

We're all relieved, though. Relieved that you are no longer suffering. You never complained. And yet relied upon us for everything. I know that was, as you only said a few times, terrible. And then you'd apologize to us for your needing us. We'd have done anything for you. Any one of us.


And today, I'm going to leave this house and go home to Nashville to my husband and child. I'm going to rent a car and drive back across the plateau to do the next things that need doing and start a job at a new school, help my child make sense of this loss, crump up with my husband in our bed and try to sleep.

It's hard to go, though.... Hard to leave Daddy. Hard to part from this house, from you in every room, in every memory, including that we ultimately couldn't keep you here until the end, even though it broke our hearts.

I'll be back next week. For Thanksgiving. And the beginning of Advent comes just behind that -- your favorite season. I have yet to understand how we'll get through it without you.

But just for today, Mother, I'm going spend some time with Daddy and with my brother, your only son, and pack up and go home to my house for a few days. I am anxious about the drive. I pray for strength and for calm. For safety as I ferry myself from my loved ones here to those there. If you would, please whisper your encouragement. I need it today.

I love you, Mom.

Preparation.

When something, or someone, is coming, it's time to get ready.

Be it the arrival of the innocence of the Christchild, or of longer days full of light, Santa Claus, or the open ended and hopeful possibilities of the impending New Year.

Here in East Tennessee, we are readying. Mother has her first week of chemo treatment down. She and Daddy are both a year older-- we have feted and celebrated them, though Daddy has requested not to have his now traditional ice box fruitcake in honor of him. (The rest of the family is sad about this, so I may have to pull one out before we depart for the next leg of celebration northerly, where I will make it yet again.)

This will be the first time in my memory without a true Advent wreath to light at Mother and Daddy's here on Christmas Eve. We will certainly have to light a candle tonight, and it would give my heart great joy to hear our son read the birth story from his Uncle Jeffrey's childhood Bible, which lives in the room upstairs in which we sleep here.

As I write, Mother is drinking tea and eating a cookie brought us by a neighbor at home in Nashville, and a pumpkin muffin brought here by my sister in law. My Mister has helped The Boy hang his series of (eight) Santa letters -- some directive, some requesting. They are even now creating a snack for the reindeer.

Our butter is room temp for pie crusts and for our favorite holiday cookies which will be baked up this evening for Santa and the rest of us, too.

I have addressed a second raft of Christmas cards, and last night before bedtime, our Boy wrote all the letters to Santa, and today once his father arrived, we've begun to make our time honored Santa Box (in which the big man delivers presents to the La Grone children and theirs.)

The questions at bedtime included, "Do you believe in Santa? What would you ask him if you could? I'd ask him if he's real. And if he has magic dust."

I think about how sometimes we wonder are YOU real, God? Do YOU have magic dust? Is Jesus real?

I made my own peace with that some time ago, agreeing with myself to let the mystery be. I have tried to impart this open hearted belief in believing to my child. The willingness to allow ourselves to be steeped in a love even bigger than Van Morrison's love that loves to love that loves to love.... The ability to say, "What?!" and then create a stronger purpose for holding on another year when a friend says "Santa's not real, my parents TOLD me."

Does it matter if you call your belief Santa or God or Christchild or New Season?

I am not sure it does, to be honest.

I choose to believe. I choose to hold onto faith, to expect Light. To await the miracle of the Christchild with wonder and with reverence. I choose to believe that chemotherapy may help my sweet mother by shrinking her brain tumor. I choose to delight in cookies and ice box fruit cake, letters to Santa and wrapping bits and bobs like books and lipsticks and handmade treats in colorful paper, with, I have to believe, all the love and wonder of the three kings with their gifts of frankincense, gold and myrh.

I KNOW they came to see Jesus as a toddler. That they didn't actually appear at a manger bed while cattle were lowing and angels hollered, "Hark!"

The timing on this is immaterial to me, because I have chosen preparation. I have chosen the kind of love that can not be explained, but can be felt right here among the ones I cherish, the ones close to birth, and the ones closer still to death.

We are waiting. We await. We stretch our hearts larger yet again, and walk into darkness unafraid, expecting Light.

Season of Light.

The days are long. The years are short.
Sunrise, sunset....


I spend most of my waking hours away from home, away from my child. Away from my mate, my dog, my family of origin.

Like so many others, I spend an awful lot of time in the car, criss crossing town between my child's school and my own, to and from home, and so on.

Evenings spent coming home like this:

Make these moments all the more precious:

After supper (take out pizza) we went into the yard to look for meteor showers. The city lights make it difficult to see them. We saw blinking planes, believing at first they were meteors, adjusted, watched, waited, foggy wisps of breath issuing from our mouths. Craning our necks back, upward starting into the vast sky.

"Space HAS no end," said our son when his father attempted to explain how to look into where you couldn't see the space anymore.

"Will the meteor rocks hit our house?" he asked.

"How can we see the meteors if the rocks break into something small as a grain or rice or sand, Dad?"



And then the tromp back into the house, the unplugging of the Christmas tree lights, the readying and cozying into flannel sheets, the Mister's voice reading aloud from the seventh book of the Harry Potter series.

I drifted off. Surrounded by the people I love, in the kind of moment we live for.


Light. Yes, it can be both wave and particle, but too, it can be:  Home. Hope. Hello.


Or even the road toward it.

Many things have happened since....

our lives went ass over tea kettle.


 In short list form:


 * My brother Jeff and I stayed with our mother during her most recent MRI, earplugs in tight. We got lost in the drone. I laid hands on Mother. I prayed over and over in my head, "Help. Give her peace." Not very eloquent, instead practical, urgent, even desperate. Jeff checked her eyes to see if she was sleeping or awake.

 * My son has now had several sleep overs with his girl cousins and loves his Aunt Dana ferociously. At last, he has made up to her all the early years of snubbing her (and most everyone else) for yours truly. 

* I have attended, with a caravan of co-workers, the pre-funeral visitation for one of the mothers of children at our school. She was struck by a car very near school, and died. We are all deeply saddened keeping watch over the children by day in our hallways and classrooms.

 * As my fast talking three on the Enneagram friend Jo Ellen says -- I expected my job as a schoolteacher in an urban inner city school to be difficult -- Kingdom work. Goodness, love, mercy. Daily, I struggle and fall short of the peace inside I strive toward. I question myself and my abilities in a way that hurts. Still, I show up every single day and give the best I've got.

 * I missed the Holiday Luncheon at my boy's school. Again. Forgot that it was happening. Forgot to send funds. The boy reduced to puddles of tears on the second night in a row I came home late.... sometimes I get home after he is in bed, leave before he's out of it.

 * I am thankful for Katherine and Karen, mothers who mother my boy in my absence. Mothers who show up for the Parents Visit Music Class Day and make our boy feel just as special as their boy and girl, respectively, by loving him up and sending pictures and videos to my phone to include me on his experience. Blessings, they are, these other mothers so full of joy and love and heart-full friendship.

 * My husband, my friend, my man, my love, my partner. My Beloved Mister. With the time in, we're a better team then ever. I tell him that my siblings are concerned about my scatteredness, my repetition in telling the same things. He wisely reminds me that my talking about something is like most people thinking about something. It's how I process. And now that I've given up the Facebook time suck, which in many ways was a way for me to empty my brain, my verbal tics, such as they are, are all the more apparent. We have all had a good laugh over that.

 * Too, I have laughed (again, at my expense, but why not?) about my traveling road show. My cobalt blue station wagon crammed full of hiking boots, apples and clementines and thermoses of water, a box of clothing outgrown as a pass along for a friend's son, glass baby food jars for science projects at school, books and Legos and far too many fast food straw wrappers, extra coats and sweaters and random things piled or chucked in at the last minute on my daily commute, or the longer weekend version across the plateau and down into the valley and back..... My father says, "Hell, you could throw a pumpkin in the back of her car and she'd not realize it until the vine starts growing out the windows!"



Oh, oh. The mistletoe. The cancer. The lack of kid toothpaste in the house. The overdue library books and friends I don't deserve. Merry Happy Wonder.

Help. Give us Peace.

Our Quaker Oats Star, fashioned by me in the first year of our marriage, covered with aluminum foil and  painted with spirals, makes an appearance this year in its naked state..... at the boy's request. 

Merry Happy Wonder: 2011 version.

Our boy was the first child to visit with Santa at Wednesday night's Cub Scout Pack holiday banquet, as he had rushed forward when the youngest den of the pack (Tigers) was called. (Bold, our boy.)

This was the calm before the storm, as moments later, he had Public Meltdown of the Year over a broken candy cane (Santa had given it to him.) I ended up literally having to carry our boy out of the sweet little neighborhood church that hosted the banquet with him kicking, screaming and crying. When he nearly flung both me and him down the stairs, his father took him and I took over the Fiesta platter on which we'd brought brownies. 

My Mister ended up putting him in the car where he cried more, thrashed, kicked the doors and dashboard..... until a good while later, he calmed, and I was able to climb into the backseat to monitor him while his daddy drove us slowly home with a steady hand on the wheel. 

Having had virtually no experience with this when he'd been working away from home seven days a week, this was a first for my Mister to experience this full on and IN THE WORLD of other people. I felt as though I'd been transported back to the first four years of my child's life and it could have been any day of the week: on a trip to the public library, at a park, in the grocery store or the KMart or the Target, or in the bank parking lot on Charlotte Avenue near the Nations section of town (you know -- the one with the gold dome....) It could have been during or after a presentation I was giving for Mothers Acting Up or during the time I was trying to write a grant or a web recipe for community action. It might have been over brushing teeth or putting shoes on, a trash can that was rolled on its side or any other item that was out of place and therefore disturbing. 

To my dear child's credit, he has weathered rather a lot. In recent months he has seen his beloved Diggy grow incredibly ill. He has been away from his mother while she worked fulltime away from home, finished grad school, graded papers in the evenings and in the wee morning farmer's hours... He has lived through having had a father work away from home seven days a week during near the entirty of his life until just last year, when grad school took over, and then this semester become the more available parent at home. He has been toted to and from two different preschools, weathered his mother's lay offs and job searches and a flooded out home and a move. 

He has begun elementary school, learned to read (very well,) participated in extracurriculars, and this year has enjoyed before and aftercare at our wonderful PTO run school care program. (Can I just say? we are soooooooooo fortunate with our boy's school and his teacher who is extraordinary! and the before and aftercare program which is stellar!!)

Our boy is also a bit high spirited, and strung tight. A lot like his mother, AND his father, too. (One of us is a stealth high maintenance person, one not so much.) 

And so, I fault him hardly at all for the upset. For the getting overstimulated on holiday treats and decorations and Santa and all three of us out at an evening activity on a school-night (exceptionally rare!) and the remaining hour plus crying in mama's arms over all the things listed above. "I hope you DON'T go back to that school!! You never play with me. You only do homework and grade papers and you don't love me!"

This boy, he is our emotional barometer and our angel. He is profane AND sacred. 

He is the manifestation of the purest love we have for each other, and the hope we hold for the world, and the faith we have in the Universe and in God and in each other. 

But even more than any of that: our boy is just a six year old boy with boogers and a sassy mouth and a love of Harry Potter and rock music and his dog. He's a kid who likes to climb trees, run with packs of wildly laughing children, eat crisp apples, dig in the dirt, kick soccer balls, earn Cub Scout badges and beads and belt loops. 

And it's all OK. 

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. 

We're the Babcocks. 

You may consider this our holiday card for 2011 as to be frank about it, making a holiday card and sending it out has been last on my list of priorities this month what with finishing my degree, winding down teaching this semester and trying to renegotiate my interim contract (still not sure if I return in January or if I need to find a new job.) It's the first year we've ever NOT had a tree, have forgone putting up the full on decorations, and certainly you will find no elf on the shelf here. 

The bits of idle time at my hands have been wasted here and here, as the laughs have been needed a great deal. Laughter and prayer are close to the same for me. And as my friend Jay says, "Laughter is my religion." Er, for me, it's a spiritual expression, and keeps me going like nothing else. Laughing is being in communion with God and with humanity.

So ho ho ho!! And ha ha ha. 

With lots of love from here to wherever this may find you, 

XXX

peo

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles.

My boy decided he wanted to make his favorite cookie over the weekend. He made a list of each teacher on "my big hallway at school," and we made the cookies. We bagged a single one for each of the teachers on his list, and he asked me to type out the recipe, which I happily did. This afternoon, we'll staple the recipe, along with a note of cheer to each baggie.

Oh, I love my boy's heart.



 Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

Makes 2 dozen Cookies 

A beautiful crackle topped chocolate cookie with a spicy cayenne kick and a sugary cinnamon coating.

For the topping: 
1/3 cup sugar 
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

For the cookies: 
1/2 cup canola oil 
1 cup sugar 
1/4 cup pure maple syrup 
3 tablespoons almond milk (Or your preferred non-dairy milk) 
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
1 teaspoon chocolate extract (or more vanilla extract if you have no chocolate) 
1 2/3 cups flour 
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 

1 teaspoon baking soda 
1/4 teaspoon salt 
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 
1/2 teaspoon cayenne 

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. 

Mix the topping ingredients together on a flat plate. Set aside. 

In a medium mixing bowl, use a fork to vigorously mix together oil, sugar, syrup, and milk. Mix in extracts. 

Sift in remaining ingredients, stirring as you add them. Once all ingredients are added mix until you’ve got a pliable dough. 

Roll dough into walnut sized balls. Pat into the sugar topping to flatten into roughly 2 inch discs. Transfer to baking sheet, sugar side up, at least 2 inches apart (they do spread). This should be easy as the the bottom of the cookies should just stick to your fingers so you can just flip them over onto the baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, they should be a bit spread and crackly on top. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar  By Isa Chandra Mowskowitz

Mystical mythical.

Thanksgiving 2010

This morning the Boy has awakened with one thing on his mind.


"Is the Book Fair still open?" 


"No, babe, it closed last week." 


Pause and pout.... "But...." 


"What did you need or want, babe?" 


"I wanted Ninjago with the Lego set! But the Book Fair was out of them last week...." 


"Well, I guess you'll have to put it on your Christmas wish list. Maybe Santa or someone will get it for you." 


"Well, I don't think that Santa's elves make that. So HE can't get it for me...." 


"Hm. You know, I have heard -- now I don't know for sure -- but I have heard that Santa sometimes sends his elves to the store." 


"Really? Where did you hear that?" 


"I don't know. From a kid, maybe?" 


"So you don't know if it's true!" 


"No, I don't. There are so many rumors about Santa, I kind of just roll with it." 


"Well I don't." 





Belief. Disbelief.

Shared history.

 

The pink tree and village are from our first married Christmas -- we found them at the Otsego Antique Mall in southwestern Michigan, a place we visit nearly each trip to the Mister's hometown. He wore a jacket from there for our wedding.

The Santa is from our second married Christmas, and comes from a little antique shop in Clinton, Tennessee. On the trip we also procured a lovely old standing lamp (very fragile and unweildy, given away when the boy began to crawl,) vintage choir boy ornaments that to this day hang from our tree, and a wind up rooster alarm clock from the late forties or early fifties. 

Our boy refers to any ornaments (and there are still a handful or two left: balls adorned with roses, green foiled pinecones, some spiral decorated balls, and a single precious acorn ornament...) we got for our first shared tree as our "wedding ornaments." Very sweet. 

The longer we are wed, the longer we are a family, the more history we share. The better we get at it all, and the more we're able to incorporate the multiple facets of who we are. 

Happy Christmas, my dear ones.

Traditions.

 
 We all have them. Traditions.



Especially this time of year. That's what I'm blogging about over at Nashville Parent Magazine's site, so check out this first in a series of holiday Tradition! posts.

Of Ceramic Donkeys and Gratitude.

This past Sunday, the Second Sunday of Advent, Ziggy carried a ceramic donkey through the sanctuary to place it with the creche by the altar table. His friend carried a shepherd. They were so proud and careful, soberly coming down the aisle as the handbells chimed from the balconies surrounding us.

Ziggy then tucked into the pew beside us, and proceeded to do a sight word search in the bulletin insert through the service, choosing to remain with us to "work" and to take communion rather than exiting for the children's worship hour. This does not, of course, mitigate the fact that he lay beneath the pew in front of us on the floor, or that in a loud stage whisper he called to his adult prayer friend who was kneeling at the altar after taking communion. Church with our boy is always a spirited experience, his father's jaw clenching, me smiling at other parents with other young wildlings in nearby pews.


I wept through the service.

Members of the Homeplace community, a home for developmentally disabled adults, played a significant role in the morning's worship. Ruby, who helps in the three year old Sunday School class and therefore has been known to us since first we began to attend Belmont, was both baptised and received as a member of the congregation in an official capacity. It was so incredibly moving and beautiful. I am thankful to Sarah, a lovely high school senior who sat with her parents in front of us, for providing me with a much needed tissue to dawb at my eyes and runny nose. Hamilton read scripture about John the Baptist and both tickled and delighted me with his pauses to be sure we were all listening, and that he was taking his role very seriously.

Our worship leaders were so loving and sensitive and patient. None more so than the remarkable Lanecia, she of the beautiful countenance and face, with a hipster twist. Watching her walk Ruby through serving communion was a wondrous thing. 

Too, I wept, because my husband and I had had words that morning, and because Ziggy threw things at me as I drove to church through the snow flurries, the last straw that caused me to pull off the road and have a bit of a come apart. And because I was feeling sick and congested and raspy in earnest. And remorseful that my come apart had frightened my child, albeit momentarily.

When evening came, I took him to the craft night at the church's community center. "Can you just drop me off, please?" he asked.

###

I've had the crud for days, though I seem-- at last-- about to round the corner. My voice is still a scratchy rasp, though the congestion is greatly diminished. I think that my family may be glad of my inability to speak much or well.

So what to do? Neti pot. Drink water. Extra rest. Walk with the dog, have sex with my husband (both boost the immune system.)

And for tonight's supper: sweet potato chicken soup with garlic and dill (yum!!) and a pan of Almost Zona's Drop Biscuits.

###

We're on a spending freeze. Being between jobs and at the end of the year has killed our budget dead. I'll start working for pay again next month, and there'll be student loan money, too. Thank goodness.

###

I hung the stockings on the banister. "We don't have a fireplace! How will Santa get in?" Ziggy wants to know.

###

I've yet to write our year end letter, and wonder if I'll really get it done this year. I give myself permission to let it be if I choose....

###

Another reason for the aforementioned spending freeze is the fact that my debit card has been compromised by someone who has made bogus purchases. Which leads to the cancellation of the card, a filed dispute and a few weeks to get things cleared up and the monies refunded to our account.

If it's not an essential purchase, we shall not be making it. If I haven't already purchased it, if I can't make it or borrow it or trade for it, or somehow pull it together from things already in stock, I won't be getting it for you for Christmas. Or your birthday. Or whatever.

Every once in a bit, it's not bad to simplify. To cut the fat. And to recognize that we have what we need, and much of what we want. And in comparison to much of the world, we are very wealthy indeed.

###

I have completed my first full semester as a graduate student. Yay, me! Classes attended, projects churned out and turned in. Graded, all but one.

###

I am thankful. For all of the above.

I pray for patience. For the willingness to forgive where forgiveness is sought. Including that of self. For the presence of mind and body and heart to be with those I love as fully as possible. To lean into now. To be grateful for blessings both small and large.

I am thankful, not just this Thursday, but always.

Annual letter work up.

I'm helping my mother cull and insert the edits into the long standing annual La Grone family Christmas letter. Some of us are more particular than others about which photographs and descriptions and activities are included. You know how this goes.


Too, I'm reviewing my own last year's letter which was loooooooooooong. And preparing a shortie from the Nashville Babcocks for this year.

I asked Ziggy to help me write it, telling him I'd come up with topics and he could tell me anything about them that he wanted, but beyond School: "It's great. No. Awesome. I'm in kindergarten," and The Flood: "Our old house flooded and it was bad and made really gross mold that made us sick," he is uninterested.
"Write it yourself," he tells me.

So I'm left on my own to chronicle our year.

Do YOU do an annual letter or list of some sort?