Posted by Elizabeth

Dear You,

How are you?  Can you hear me alright?  I know my voice probably sounds a little muffled, but I have some important words I want to share with you; words that I hope you’ll always remember.

It’s hard to believe that, just mere weeks ago, you were but a glimmer in my consciousness.  But even in that short amount of time you’ve already changed my life.  It’s hard to believe that I was so ambivalent about your existence for nearly 32 years, and that in 12 short weeks you’ve wiped away the slate of doubts.  Before you came along, I wondered what you’d take away from my comfortable life, if the trade off could possibly be worth it.  But I took the plunge, the ultimate leap of faith, reasoning that I had accomplished the big things I wanted to in my life.  I earned my graduate degree, and traveled around the world, and have had plenty of fun and adventure along the way.  It dawned on me one day last fall that you wouldn’t be keeping me from doing anything I couldn’t do with you in tow.  Although having you was never a foregone conclusion — many will undoubtedly be shocked by the news of your arrival — now that it’s happening I can’t imagine it being any other way.  I’ve surprised myself by how quickly I’ve embraced this change, how excited I am for your arrival.  Even though I wasn’t completely sure when I made that great dive down the rabbit hole, I guess I really was ready for you.

Sometimes I lie in bed and wonder what you look like, what you are like.  Are you a boy or a girl (we already have a name picked for you if you’re a girl, but if you’re a boy we’ve got some work to do)?  Do you have your dad’s brown eyes or my blue eyes?  Do you have my thin lips or your dad’s full ones?  My little nose or your dad’s proud one?  Do you lean towards math and science, like him, or English and the arts, like me?  Do you hate olives and seafood and pickles as much as I do?  Do you share your dad’s penchant for spicy foods (after eating that roasted pepper pasta dish a few weeks ago, I don’t think so)?  Are you even-keeled and quiet like your dad, or fiery and impatient like me?  Most likely, you are some of these things…and none of these things.  You are your own person.

We have a lot to learn about one another, and before we get too far, here’s what you should know about me and the life you’re about to be born into.  I love change, a good life project, being goofy, and telling stories, so I think you’ll like me when you’re little.  As you climb into your teen years, though, I suspect your dad might be better at this parenting thing.  I’m more of a morning person than your dad, so go easy on him in that department:  I’ll be up at the crack of dawn with you, but if you’re looking for a night owl, he’s your man.  I tend to worry a lot; in fact, I’ve already done my fair share of worrying about you.  I even worry about worrying about you too much.  It’s just that I don’t want you to grow up to be anxious and neurotic like I am.  When you get older, I know you will roll your eyes and tell me to stop worrying so much.  And I’ll try; I really will.  But just know I worry because I love you.

I love to spend time in the kitchen, and already have dreams of us cooking alongside one another, so I hope you like that, too.  Your dad and I both love to read The New York Times on Sunday mornings, but I have a sneaking suspicion that those days are about to come to a close for awhile (although, if you, too, are a fan, let me know and I won’t cancel the subscription).  We enjoy eating out, and if you’re good, I promise we’ll take you out a lot.  Oh, and we love to travel, and plan to take you everywhere with us.  In fact, you’ve already been to Mexico (weren’t those carnitas from the market fabulous?), and before you’re born you’ll add three more stamps to your passport.

I know it won’t always be easy.  I know our life is in for a monumental change, and that you’ll be at the center of the whirlwind.  I know there will be times when you’ll drive me crazy, when I’ll plead with you to stop crying, when I’ll wonder why you did this or didn’t do that.  I know you’ll probably feel equally frustrated with me, too, wondering why I simply can’t understand.  But through it all, I know that we’ll love each other.

When it’s finally time for you to be born, will you make me a promise?  Will you try to work with me?  Know that I’ll be doing my best, but I’ll need your help, too.  In return, I promise that I’ll do my best to help you to grow into the person you were born to be, not the person I’d like you to be.  Because maybe you’ll prefer playing soccer to being my sous chef.  I’d like to believe that I’ll be always be an open and accepting mother, no matter the circumstance, but the reality is that at times this will hard for me.  In fact, it might be the hardest lesson I have yet to learn in life.

Baby, your dad and I can’t wait to meet you on August 31^st (give or take a few days).  We’ve got a lot to do to get ready for you – turns out, you need a lot of stuff – but we’ll be prepared.  Or, at least as prepared as we can be.    Until then, keep growing healthy and strong, and I’ll do my part to make sure you have everything you need to do just that.  Even though we’ve never met, I already love you.

Love,

Your Mom

PS: Thanks for not making me sick.  I really appreciate it.  I’m sure you’ll think of some way that I can repay you in the near future.

Although I hate to insult the intelligence of our bright readership, in the off chance that you didn’t catch on, The Waiting Game is over!  For those of you who suspected this (and I know there are many of you in this category), I am happy to confirm that I am indeed pregnant, due August 31.  Do you know what a hard secret this has been to keep from you all?  I have been busting at the seams to share the good news with you!  While I’ll strive not to bore you with the details, I hope this new life adventure can provide excellent fodder and many life lessons for all of us who are better trying to live our lives “in pencil.”

Oh, and for those of you who are curious, pictured above is my first ultrasound, taken at about 8 weeks.  Apparently, I am giving birth to The Blob.

This post was written as part of Momalom’s Love It Up Challenge, where bloggers are encouraged to write a “love letter” to someone or something.  I thought this was the perfect way to share the news with you all (and, I hope, will be a happy memento for the baby book).

Posted by Anne

Next to my bed sits a jumble of written words.  Some of them were written by me.  Most of them were not.  This ever-growing stack of volumes on my bedside table is where I keep notebooks, journals, and the 4 or so books I’m reading at any given time.  I love this untidy pile; I love going to sleep with books and words by my side.  But there’s a downside to this pile…I tend to forget what’s at the bottom.  But last weekend, I was reminded of my pile’s contents when I dusted said bedside table.  And this time, I decided to actually take the extra 30 seconds and remove all the items from the surface of the table, instead of lazily snaking my way around picture frames and tubes of chapstick with a cloth.

In my burst of cleanliness, I made a discovery.  Sitting at the bottom of my signature pile was a journal.  There are actually a few journals in my pile, but I’d forgotten I had this one.  I was eager to dive in, curious as to what I’d find in its messy pages.  You see, my journals aren’t really journals.  For as much as I like to write, I’ve never quite latched onto the concept of a diary.  So my journals tend to be highly random, and highly disorganized.  They’re more like receptacles for ideas, thoughts, and beginnings.  In my journals, you’ll find the typical descriptions of events and heartbreak, as well as random quotes I’ve picked up, song lyrics I’ve printed and stuck in-between pages, cards given to me by dear friends, rough character sketches for novels I haven’t written, and journal entries written on the pages of church bulletins and airline magazine pages that I’ve hastily torn out and thrown in between the blank pages.

But this journal I found…it was different.  It was orderly.  It had dates.  Sure, when I opened it, there was the usual cascade of loose paper and cards.  But there was a structure to the entries of this journal.  They began in January of 2000—winter of my sophomore year of college.  Looking now, I see two headings on each page…two little phrases.  The first is “In my prayers…”  For each entry, there is the name of someone I’d been thinking about, or worrying about.  The second heading reads “Grateful for…”  And there I recorded someone I felt particularly grateful for on the day I actually wrote in the journal.  Nice, huh?  Here’s a little sampling…

In My Prayers…
“My sister, as she waits to find out what she’ll be doing post-graduation.  I hope everything turns out as it should.”

Grateful For…
“My parents, and how they never get tired of hearing from me while I’m at school.  I value their friendship so much.”

Reading the entries now, I’m struck by how simple this action was, yet totally heartfelt.  It couldn’t have taken much time—10 minutes tops.  That’s why it saddens me to see how long this routine lasted.  16 entries.  That’s it.  The other pages remain blank.  I’m not shocked—but I’m curious as to why I couldn’t have held on longer. Needless to say, life got in the way of my daily reflection.

These days, I’m no better.  Often, I talk to the people I’m thinking about, or I might say a private prayer when I think of it.  And those thoughts and prayers don’t mean any less than they did when they were carefully recorded in my blue, linen-covered journal.  But sometimes I lose track.  I become preoccupied with myself, my blog, my life.  So looking back on that journal—I believe there was something really beautiful about giving my time (brief though it was) to do nothing but think of someone else, and write it down.  That time was dedicated—special—even if it lasted for a mere 16 days.

I wonder if I could move my little journal to the top of the pile for awhile, and see how long I can take time—just two little phrases and a little bit of time each day—to write something nobody else will read.  To dedicate my time to thoughts of someone else.

Posted by Elizabeth

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Families change.  No matter how good, bad, or average your own family is, the one thing you can count on is that, over time, family dynamics will shift.  Deaths and births bring families together, and tear them apart.  Marriages and divorces change the players and alter the rules by which our families operate. Perhaps it’s because I just spent 10 days with my family – the one I have by both biology and marriage – but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how my own family has been erased and rewritten by the hands of time.  I’m only 31, but my family – the faces, the routines, the traditions – looks nothing like it did just 10 years ago.  A large branch of my family tree snapped clean off when my mother died, the ragged remains resting limply on the ground for a number of years.  But from those remains grew a tender sapling, the family I married into, and I am grateful to have that appendage back.  Still, living thousands of miles from my relatives – our collective nuclear family is spread over three states and three countries – I rarely participate in family gatherings.  Any of the traditions that defined my growing up years are nonexistent.  And sometimes, especially around the holidays, that feeling is disconcerting.

When I flip through friend’s family photos, especially friends in my peer group, I am often struck by how unchanged their families are.  And I can’t help but feel a little envious when I see such cohesiveness incarnate.  There are rules, established at marriage, regarding where Christmases and Thanksgivings will be spent each year, from here to eternity.  Their family traditions are played upon the same stage year after year:  the cast, the costumes, and the sets largely unaltered.  Everyone memorized their script long ago and has polished their roles; they execute their parts effortlessly.  There are none of the frantic dress rehearsals, forgotten lines, or bouts of stage fright that I feel every year, as I madly dash around learning a new character for a new play, my life a seemingly endless series of limited engagements.  How, I wonder, will I ever learn my part if the script keeps changing?

But that is part of thrill, I suppose, of being a part of a family whose dynamics are not fixed.  There is no type casting because we all play a wide variety of roles from year to year.  If we didn’t like last year’s script then we throw it out and write a new one the next year.  And that script, I’ve learned, isn’t something that’s been written and handed to us; each year, we write the script as we go.  There are a lot of leaps of faith – without a prescribed plot, we often don’t know where the story is going until we get to the end, and that uncertainty from year to year sometimes creates panic, or at least a sense of disequilibrium.  For years I’ve been trying to carefully edit this messy script to create a sense of order.  For years I wanted nothing more than to create a series of rules and traditions that we would agree to adhere to from year to year, allowing each of us the opportunity to hone the roles we were cast in.  But you know what?  This year, I finally understood for the first time that that wouldn’t work for a family like ours.  It’s impossible to create a fixed game plan when the rules keep changing.  And rather than fighting it, I’m making a choice to embrace the uncertainty.  While I may never know a set series of time-honored traditions, I know I’ve been allowed to grow into whatever role I choose.

Which kind of family are you a part of?  Do you enact the same play year after year, or create a new one?  Which do you prefer?

Posted by Elizabeth

I am on a plane back to Albuquerque today, left pondering the events of the past week of my Christmas in Mexico.  But the things that stand out to me aren’t events at all.  They are moments – simple moments, that have been forever etched into my mind.

One night we played poker with my mother-in-law, Cecilia’s, poker buddies, a group of women from all corners of the globe who come together to drink tequila, eat good food, and take one another for a few pesos every Thursday.  Cecilia’s friend, Pilar, told me, “Jueves son sagrados.”  Thursdays are sacred.  I had never played poker, nevertheless a game conducted in Spanish, and I was nervous.  Nervous to be out of my comfort zone.  Nervous to be out of control. But I soon learned the names of the different cards, how to pass, how to call, how to raise, and how to begin having fun. Regardless of barriers of age and language, we were soon a well-oiled machine in sync, collectively ooing when the right combination of cards was placed on the table, and sighing in disappointment when they weren’t.  My dad, who speaks very little Spanish, was soon raking in the chips and sharing telling glances with me to help my game along.  I squealed and clapped my hands when I won my first round, and when we settled our bets at the end of the night I came out money ahead, and wondered what I had been so nervous about in the first place.  Years from now, I’m not sure I’ll remember how many rounds I won, but I think I’ll remember a night where everyone had an equally good time.

A few nights later, Cecilia and I took over the kitchen to prepare classic American dishes for a very Mexican Christmas.  Cooking has never been an activity that we’ve shared, and we’d never spent so many hours in the kitchen together.  But we successfully bobbed and weaved our way through her tiny kitchen, finding ourselves clueless in the middle of making marshmallows, furiously spreading the quickly-cooling confection on a greasy cookie sheet, while strings of white sugar spun around us.  Halfway through our cooking extravaganza, when Maikael and my dad went out to run an errand, she paused and took out a bottle of Bailey’s from the pantry.  “You want some?” she asked.  I’d never had Bailey’s, but I found myself quickly accepting.  With the heavy, milky liquid swimming around the ice cubes, we silently clinked our glasses together and shared a quiet moment, pausing just for a moment in the eye of the storm.  Years from now, I’m not sure that I’ll remember what we made that night, but I think I’ll remember the sound the ice cubes made as they swirled around the glass.

Maikael and my dad, Senor Fogonero

On Christmas Eve we made our way over to Pilar’s house, where we were amongst the first guests to arrive.  Someone was trying – unsuccessfully – to get a fire started, and before he knew it, my dad was suckered into keeping the fire going all night.  He hopped up every so often to tend to the fire, poking gingerly at the simmering logs and politely declining the suggestions to use candles and canola oil to keep it going.  By the end of the night, he was officially known as Senor Fogonero, the man who shovels coal into a steam-powered locomotive.  Years from now, I’m not sure I’ll remember who was at that party, but I think I’ll remember that, for a brief moment in time, my dad was The King of the Fire.

Later that evening we made our way downstairs to Pilar’s driveway, where a Nativity scene draped in psychedelic flashing lights stood.  The party gathered in a semicircle around the manger, our coats gathered tightly around us, nimbly holding oversized candles.  Pilar’s granddaughters each held a side of a scarf, where baby Jesus was carefully placed between the two corners.  Then, they began gently rocking him as the group started singing Las Posadas. We didn’t know the words, but we peered at the lyrics over someone’s shoulder, humming along, the soft glow of the candlelight illuminating our faces.  Before he was placed in the manger, Pilar passed around the figurine of baby Jesus, and we each kissed him.  Years from now, I’m not sure I’ll remember the words to the song, but I think I’ll remember huddling in the cold and, for a fleeting moment, truly experiencing the spirit of the holidays.

Senora Claus

We went upstairs for dinner at 11 pm, a multicourse affair with a steaming terrine of potato leek soup, that famous salted cod dish, pork loin dusted with chile powder, pork loin baked with white wine and dried fruits, and a true buffet of desserts, from rum cake to German stolen.  We laughed and ate and talked, covering topics as diverse as bad jokes and the persistent drug problems that plague Mexico.  Just before dinner was served, Pilar’s granddaughter, Natalia, shimmied her way out of the bedroom in a Santa Claus sleeper.  “Senora Claus is here!” someone shouted, before Natalia ate a piece of grasshopper pie and promptly fell asleep on the couch, her red suit peeking out from underneath the blanket.  Years from now, I’m not sure I’ll remember everything we ate that night, but I think I’ll remember the feeling of being warmly brought into the fold as a foreigner on Christmas Eve.

Life is a series of moments.  And yet, these moments are alarmingly fleeting:  they are so easy to pass by that we often forget them before we even have a chance to remember.  It’s a bit like lucid dreaming, where we must train ourselves to memorize these moments while they’re happening, without trying so hard that we’re pulled out of the moment altogether.  This is a delicate balance, and our difficulty in achieving this balance might explain why we insist on treating life as a series of events, even when we know that it’s the moments that matter most:  the crash and bang of events is simply easier to inscribe on our memories than the whisper of moments.  But it’s those whispers that have the most to teach about better living a life in pencil: lessons about losing control, being quiet, having a small but special place in the world, shifting our focus away from “things,” and being made to feel a part of something.  Although the lessons are quiet, they resound louder than most events ever will.

What small, but special, moments will you hold near and dear to your heart from this holiday season?

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

Christmas Eve in Mexico is so different than the December 24ths of my childhood.  There were never any hard and fast traditions growing up; rather, each phase of life offered a different touchstone.  When I was very young we spent the evening with my dad’s family, opening gifts in my grandparents’ musty basement, passing through a curtain of vintage beads to get to the Christmas tree.  On those evenings, my dad would point to the blinking lights in the sky – my grandparents lived directly in the flight path of the nearby airport – and would wonder aloud if Rudolph was one of them.  When I got a little older, Christmas Eve was spent at my aunt and uncle’s house, which always boasted – and still does – an enormous tree with outdoor lights slung to and fro on the branches.  There we maintained the Christmas tradition of English crackers, popping the tissue-wrapped cylinder open in a noisy flourish to reveal a paper crown, a charm, and a really terrible joke that no one was smart enough to decipher.   And when I got older still, we fled the suburbs to the comforts of the city, taking in A Christmas Carol at one of the downtown theatres, until my mom decided she couldn’t take one more year of Scrooge.   In those years, I remember dreamy driving tours of West Seattle’s grandest homes, boasting magnificent light displays, and ending the evening over flaky fish and chips at Spud’s – the only fish and chips I’d eat.  Every year was different and, unlike some families who open gifts or go to evening church services, the 24^th always played second fiddle to the main event the next day.

The streets of San Miguel de Allende on Christmas Eve, 2007

In Mexico, Christmas Eve is called Nochebuena; literally, “good night,” a term I’ve always been fond of.  In Mexico, Christmas Eve isn’t just a big deal; it’s the main event.  And when we celebrate tonight, we’ll be following in the footsteps of the generations who have passed before us, because December 24 in Mexico is soaked in ritual and tradition.  First, there will be a posada. In the nine days leading up to Nochebuena, communities throughout Mexico gather to reenact the Holy Family’s search for lodging in Bethlehem.  While public posadas are held, we’re lucky enough to have been invited to a private posada at Pilar’s house, a friend of my mother-in-law’s.  Here, the room will be divided into two groups, each engaging in a “call and response” song, one group asking and the other group denying, over and over again, a room at the inn.  Finally, the Holy Family is granted permission, everyone is joyous, and ponche, a spicy holiday beverage, is served.  I do not know the song Las Posadas, I have absolutely no idea how this will go, but I’m okay with the ambiguity, safe in the arms of tradition.

The last Christmas feast in Mexico did not involve salted cod...which is why I undoubtedly have a big smile on my face.

Afterwards, we’ll eat a traditional Nochebuena feast, the centerpiece a dried salted cod called bacalao, an unfortunate import from Spain.  I can’t say that I’m thrilled about supping on dried salted cod — I would prefer a sweet honey-glazed ham – but I will cheerily eat the cod because I know that, across Mexico, everyone will be sitting down to a version of the same meal, and sometimes it’s more important to be part of something bigger than oneself than to be gastronomically satisfied.

A real nacimiento. You'll notice that "el diablo" is always lurking somewhere in the scene.

At some point during the evening, Baby Jesus will be placed in the household nacimiento, or Nativity.  In Mexico, a Nativity scene – not a Christmas tree – created from clay or plaster figurines, heno (Spanish moss), and other natural elements, is the centerpiece of holiday decorating.  Entire market stalls are devoted to nacimiento supplies, and individual displays can be quite elaborate, ranging from tabletop displays to room-sized affairs.  Jesus’s crib is left empty until Nochebuena, when he is carefully placed in the bed of straw.  In San Miguel de Allende, the community nacimiento fills the central plaza, and when people exit midnight mass from the grand cathedral, a tangled nest of pink spires, they emerge to find Jesus in the manger surrounded by a menagerie of live animals.

In San Miguel's live Nativity!

Christmas Eve lasts well into the wee hours of Christmas morning, the solemnity of what is truly a religious holiday punctuated by celebration.  And it is this tension that makes Christmas in Mexico so dynamic, the hoards of church-goers mingling with bursts of fireworks, posada songs with live burros, nacimientos with roving bands of barking dogs.  The last time we were in Mexico, I don’t remember sleeping a great deal on Christmas Eve, and when I finally drifted off, the roosters began crowing.  It is not a quiet affair, but it is an oddly peaceful one, not defined by gift-giving — which doesn’t happen until Epiphany, in January — but by tradition.

Although I don’t know for sure, I suspect there isn’t a lot of the “doing your own thing” that characterized the Christmas Eves of my youth.  We talk a great deal in our culture about creating our own memories and traditions, and I think that’s important – sometimes for our sanity, if nothing else.  But I think there’s also something to be said for embracing ritual, taking part in the way things have always been done.  Maybe it’s because I don’t have any Christmas traditions that have carried me through the entirety of my life.  Maybe it’s because I wish Christmas Eve represented something more, something magical. Maybe, even in Mexico, that isn’t a realistic thing to wish for.  Maybe I’m being sappy and sentimental and completely unreasonable.  But it’s Christmas, right?  If there’s a time to be sappy and sentimental and unreasonable, it’s today, the good night.

However you spend your Nochebuena, I hope it is a “good night.”  Feliz Navidad!

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

Last December I was sitting at an Internet café on Easter Island, one of the most remote locations on Earth, trying to make a phone call to my local Walgreens in Albuquerque over a spotty Skype connection.  With the headset pressed tightly against my ear, my mind drifted as I listened to the drone of hold music and watched bizarre compilations of old Phil Collins videos on the screen overhead.  Then, like coming back into myself after an out-of-body experience, the familiar strains of a song – some song – jarred me back into reality.

I saw mama kissin’ Santa Claus
Underneath the mistletoe last night

The only sign of the holidays at a supermarket on Easter Island last December.

It was sweet little Michael Jackson, singing this song – this song. This Christmas song.  And why was a Christmas song playing at Walgreens in the middle of….oh right.  December.  It was Christmas.  But being on Easter Island, those giant stone heads staring me down at every turn while the sun scorched the back of my neck…well, in that moment, Christmas seemed light years away.  And that’s the essence of skipping Christmas, as I’ve done every year for the past three years.  And I don’t mean skipping Christmas in any sort of “bah Humbug” way.  I mean skipping Christmas in a not-doing-the-normal-Christmas-thing way – whatever normal means to you.  Except that, for me, skipping Christmas is starting to become normal.

If you are exhibiting any of the following signs or symptoms, ask your doctor about Skipping Christmas-itis.  It is a rare but serious condition, one which can be treated by simply staying home:

1)       When the calendar flips to September, you begin scouting airline deals and feeding complex information into Orbitz’s “Deal Detector.”

2)      Before a gift is purchased, it is first vetted against its size, breakability, and current TSA security requirements.

3) You haven’t bought wrapping paper in 10 years because you haven’t needed to:  wrapped gifts are subject to search.  Duh.

4)      But that doesn’t matter, because you’ve stopped buying gifts altogether, knowing full well that the Orbitz Deal Detector will NEVER come up with your target price, and you really can’t afford gifts anyway.

5)      You begin to think of salted cod as standard Christmas fare, and wonder if you’ll ever eat ham again during the holidays.

6)      You forget what your Christmas ornaments looks like because you haven’t put up a full-sized Christmas tree in years.

7)      When you run into your neighbors, they say, “I thought you moved?” because they haven’t seen you at the annual Christmas party….uh, ever.

8)      You curse all of your friends for not sending you holiday cards, and then silently apologize to them when a cascade of at least 54 red envelopes spills out of your mailbox when you return home in late December.

9)      The New York Times’ Delivery Suspension is a regular bookmark on your computer.

10)   You promise you will never skip Christmas again – until next September rolls around…

As you read these words, I am currently skipping Christmas – once again – in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico!  And if you’re looking for a fun book to read this holiday season, I highly recommend John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas.

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Anne

Next year for Christmas, I was planning to ask Santa for some elves.  I think they’d be handy.  They could sing carols to keep me energized, and run all manner of unappealing holiday errands.  And if they’re anything like Will Ferrell in Elf, they’d pump me with sugar and make me laugh.  Actually, I think we all need elves—or at least one or two.  Because in case you haven’t noticed, the holidays can produce quite the work-load.  (At least if you celebrate them a certain way, which I do.)

I often feel this way come December 20^th-ish.  This is when my festive holiday spirit begins to wane, and I’m ready for the finish line of the marathon otherwise known as “December”.  I’m just ready to have Christmas. I’m ready for the quiet, the joy, and rockin’ around the Christmas tree, but it’s not here yet.  Instead there are grocery lists, unvacuumed floors, and unmade beds.  This is how I felt this past Saturday afternoon.  There I sat, on our living room floor, surrounded by packages and rolls of wrapping paper.  Generally speaking, I do like to wrap gifts.  But my back hurt, and my tea was cold.  And that’s when my highly relaxed husband—half-asleep on the sofa—asked me, “Isn’t it nice, every so often, to just be sedentary?”  I looked up at him (armed with scissors…and tape) and retorted with an acid, “I wouldn’t know.”

In that moment, I realized how easy it is, especially as a woman, to bear the holiday load.  Or to believe you’re shouldering all the festive burdens.  But in so many ways, I realize how much of this holiday cacophony I create myself.  In my desire to make things beautiful, I make things complicated.  It’s a choice, and it’s a holiday of my own doing.  I wouldn’t change it, but I’m surprised how quickly I forget the roles everyone else plays when I’m focused on my own martyrdom.

Doesn't she look helpful?

You see, I do have an elf.  And it’s the same husband who made that “isn’t lethargy wonderful?” proclamation less than two days ago.  He may not understand my need for a last-minute mission to acquire festive place settings for the holiday meal.  He may not be able to take credit for the decorations.  But he’s an elf.  He tackles the dishes, takes care of his own laundry, and does a nice job with the vacuum.  And perhaps most importantly, he’s the person that asked me to forego our usual weekend workout.  Instead, in the fading daylight of a hectic Saturday, he drove me to a small mountain on the outskirts of town, and hiked with me to the top.  He was an elf, and his gift to me was balance.  And in my flurry of red, gold, and green ribbon—I had taken his role for granted.

Whether or not you celebrate the holidays in the traditional sense, we all have elves.  Maybe it’s a spouse or partner who hangs lights, or does all the shopping.  Maybe it’s a spouse or partner who supports you through the decision to try a different way of celebrating the holidays.  Maybe it’s the sister or best friend who helps you bake cookies.  Maybe it’s the mother who walks you through hosting your first big holiday. The brother who makes you laugh during a lonely holiday season, or an awkward family gathering.

For every Santa there’s a Mrs. Claus.  For every Mrs. Claus there’s an elf.  Thanks to all my elves.  Who’s yours?

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Anne

I never used to wonder what Christmas Day would bring.  Throughout my childhood and early adulthood, it was easy to predict.  But with marriages and babies and cross-country moves, Christmas Day has seen a few transformations.   Some years have been stylish city affairs, and other years were pure countryside solitude.  And yet every Christmas has carried a festive spirit, leaving me to wonder what I might want my “own” Christmas someday to resemble.  As I think ahead to Christmas Day this year—the first one I’ll spend in my own town without my parents—I reflect on the things I loved about the Christmases of my past.

I loved the years we spent Christmas in my sister’s city.  It’s an old city, with stately homes elegantly decorated with dazzling lights and classy wreaths.  I loved winding through town on the way to my sister’s house, ogling the lights, and waiting for her sisterly embrace.  I loved the year we had afternoon tea in the lobby of a fancy hotel, and the hours spent in the kitchen with my sister and Mom, laughing and bossing one another around playfully.

I loved the years we spent Christmas in the comfort of my suburban hometown.  I’d awaken in the familiarity of my childhood home, eat from the same dishes, and open gifts from the same plaid chair in the living room.  We’d take long walks with the dogs, along streets that were suddenly empty.  I loved the quiet that would wash over our neighborhood, and the sounds and smells of my parents’ home.

I loved the years we spent Christmas in the country.   Those years, I could feel my head clear and my heart grow peaceful when we made our way up the long gravel driveway on Christmas Eve.  I’d see the house highlighted with the glow of a single strand of lights my Dad had hung—simple and colorful, set against the blackest sky and the brightest starts you can imagine.  Those Christmases, we cozied by the fireplace, ate soup, munched on cheese and crackers, and told stories.  Gifts happened slowly, and gave way to leisurely afternoons of books, movies, and very quiet walks.

But those are the ghosts of Christmases past.  There is a Christmas Day yet-to-come.  This year, I will begin creating a Christmas Day that belongs to my husband and me.  Christmas Eve will be filled with his family, time in the kitchen, and an adorable niece and nephew.  But Christmas Day?  I have no idea what this year will bring.  The choices belong to us…nobody else to set an agenda or a mealtime.  And so I wonder what this Christmas of “just us” will look like.  Will I make gourmet waffles, or just toast and coffee?  Will we open all our presents at once, or savor them all through the day?  How much wrapping paper will we let our dogs eat?  When my parents call from my sister’s home, will I feel homesick?  When my sister puts my nephew on the phone, will I smile, or cry, or both?  Will my husband and I cuddle on the sofa, or go for a long walk in the bracing cold?

To all these questions, I have no answer.  And for some reason, I don’t mind.  I will let Christmas Day unfold—for what it is, what’s it’s been, and what it will be.

Do you remember when the holidays began to change—when you had to start creating your own rituals?  Was it hard, or refreshing?

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

“This year, appreciation may be the best gift of all.”  Or at least that’s the case according to a new Hallmark commercial.

According to yesterday’s New York Times article, “Fewer Gifts and Frills Are Expected in a Rough Economy,” people are giving less this year, and the gifts they are giving are decidedly simpler, drawing on homemade goodies or gifts to be enjoyed at home, where we’re apparently spending more time than ever these days.  Some are forgoing gift-giving altogether, sending greeting cards instead.  While many are touting this “return to simplicity” as the new normal, most are dubious that, once the economic situation rebounds, this more conscious consumerism will quickly fall by the wayside.  And that is a shame, because, as the article states, “while all that cutting back is good for consumers’ bank accounts, many insist it is even better for their souls.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been a big gift giver, and my reasons aren’t grounded in any sort of moral or financial reasoning.  Rather, the act of heaping on gifts doesn’t feed my soul.  I find that I – and the receiver – am generally happier with one well-selected gift, a gift that, I hope, is a reflection of that person.  Our mothers told us, “It’s the thought that counts.”  But we’ve all been in a situation where we’ve held a gift in our hands and thought, “This person doesn’t know me at all.  There was no thought or care put into this.”  I’m not concerned with whether a gift is homemade or store-bought, simple or extravagant – only that it be soulful, that it stirs something in me, no matter how small.

I’m not going to tell you a sob story about how I never had any cheery packages under the Christmas tree, or how I search the world over for the perfect gift whose every detail must be imbued with meaning, because none of those things would be true.  I will say, however, that opening gifts on Christmas morning was an exceedingly long-winded affair in my family.  Not because there were so many people (there were only three of us), or because there were mountains of gifts (I’d estimate our household was pretty average).  It was because my parents insisted that we pay attention to the process of gift opening, that we be conscious of what we were receiving.

We opened one gift at a time.  Before the paper was even torn, there was a great deal of speculation as to the contents of the package.  Boxes were tumbled in our hands, testing for weight, a sophisticated mental cross-check occurring between the physical specimen and the gift list.  When the paper was touched – exuberant ripping for me, careful unfolding for my dad – and the box finally revealed, there was a great debate.  Do you think it’s what the box really says it is, or something else? Finally, the gift was unveiled.  That’s when the admiration began.  Oh wow, this is just what I wanted.  You remembered!  You know what I’m going to use this for? Once the gift had been given sufficient attention, two words were required before moving onto the next:  Thank you.

Of course, sometimes this process became a bit much.  My dad was notorious for reading the barcode on the packages, which caused me to roll my eyes and shriek, “Just open it, Dad!”  And every year my father picked up the smallest package under the tree, shook it lightly, held it to his forehead a la Johnny Carson’s The Great Karnak, and declared, “These must be the keys to my new motorboat.”  My dad made this same joke every year.  We all knew there would never be a motorboat – in fact, there would never be anything that extravagant under the Christmas tree, because that’s just not how gift-giving went in our family.  As an adult, I am grateful to have been taught this lesson about gratitude and appreciation.  No matter who I receive a gift from, I find myself going through a truncated version of this process that was passed down to me from my parents.  I’ll never forget the first Christmas I spent with Maikael’s family, where the gifts were devoured with the ferocity of a whirling dervish, the fun over in a matter of minutes.  The next year, I insisted we take turns.

For the first time, I made the vast majority of my Christmas gifts this year.  I created my own festive gift baskets with items I canned from the fruits of my garden this past summer.  Some people received jewel-like jars of organic tomato sauce, nestled in curls of paper with a rustic clutch of spaghetti and a bottle of favored wine, a homey dinner for two.  (There is nothing more soulless, in my mind, than a pre-packaged gift basket, convenient but utterly lacking in charm and personality.)  Others received jars of green tomato-orange jam, a sweet-tart marmalade that my friend, Atarah, gave me the recipe to when I was up to my ears in green tomatoes this fall.  They are simple gifts, not at all extravagant, but I felt a stirring in my soul when I handed over the baskets to the people on my gift list.  And I hope they felt that, too.

Have you cut down your gift list this year?  Are the types of gifts you’re giving different than the past?  How does the opening of gifts go in your house?

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

One Christmas morning, when I was a teenager, I crept downstairs to begin the revelry of gift-opening, ready to embrace the energy and excitement that a household of new things brings.  Freshly-brewed coffee, mixed with the lingering scent of Lark cigarettes and the yeasty smell of sweet rolls, filled the air; I knew my mom was up, too.  As I tiptoed into the kitchen I found her standing at the sink, holding a teacup in one hand and a dishrag in the other, her cheap Sony radio softly humming, tears streaming down her cheeks.  She was not a person prone to emotion – I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen her cry – which caused me to be worried and immediately ask, “What’s wrong?”  She turned to me and smiled wanly.  “Nothing,” she said.  “I’m just listening to this story on the radio.  It’s so beautiful, so sad.”

I took a seat at the kitchen table and listened to the end of The Christmas Story, John Henry Faulk’s short essay that NPR airs at least once a season.   It didn’t strike me as particularly beautiful or sad: a raggedy boy meets the author on a country lane and relays his story of an unexpected Christmas.  When the story was over, my mom snapped off the radio and we returned to our suburban Christmas, the story quickly forgotten.  At least for me.  Looking back, I suspect that story played at the corners of my mother’s mind all day, rewinding the details as we tore into shiny paper, turned boxes over and over in our hands, and cut into roast beef with real silver.

Years passed before I thought of the story again, my mom long gone when I happened to hear it aired one cold December day.  It had been so long that I only vaguely recalled the story, the mention of a simple orange and stripety candy gently shaking my memory awake.  The story had left little impression on me as a self-centered teenager (is there any other kind?), but as an adult I found myself wiping away tears with back of my palm, just as my mother had.  Here are the opening lines:

The day after Christmas a number of years ago, I was driving down a country road in Texas. And it was a bitter cold, cold morning. And walking ahead of me on the gravel road was a little bare-footed boy with non-descript ragged overalls and a makeshift sleeved sweater tied around his little ears. I stopped and picked him up. Looked like he was about 12 years old and his little feet were blue with the cold. He was carrying an orange.

And he got in and had the brightest blue eyes one ever saw. And he turned a bright smile on my face and says, “I’m-a going down the road about two miles to my cousins. I want to show him my orange old Santa Claus brought me.” But I wasn’t going to mention Christmas to him because I figured he came from a family — the kind that don’t have Christmas. But he brought it up himself. He said, “Did old Santa Claus come to see you, Mister?” And I said, “Yes. We had a real nice Christmas at our house and I hope you had the same.” He paused for a moment, looked at me. And then with all the sincerity in the world said, “Mister, we had the wonderfulest Christmas in the United States down to our place.

As it turns out, the story is both beautiful and sad.  Santa Claus arrives in the form of a social worker who delivers packages of everyday items that most of us would easily pass over, but are untold treasures to this impoverished rural community:  real coffee, exotic nuts (“not just peanuts”), fresh chickens, oranges.  The Christmas table, laden with their bounty, is fashioned from a board slung over two saw horses and dressed with a sheet.  In every detail of this story, Christmas is the unbridled expression of life’s simplest pleasures.  Despite being faced with abject poverty, the story sighs with gratitude.  Sam Jackson, the boy’s neighbor, says grace by uttering heavenward, “”Lord, I hope you having as nice a Christmas up there with your angels as we’re having down here because it sure is Christmastime down here. And I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to you, Lord.”  Is there anything more sad – and more beautiful – than saying “thanks” when life’s circumstances feel the furthest thing from something worthy of gratitude?

We all know that doing without helps us to appreciate what we have; it’s why the little boy in the story clutches his humble orange so fiercely.  But how do we invite gratitude into our lives when we are fortunate enough to not have to do without?   How do we dig down deep into that soul-place where thankfulness lives?  How do we truly access authentic appreciation?  I don’t have any easy answers, but I suspect it has something to do with having less, thereby allowing us to focus more intently on what little is left over; that’s when the orange takes on special meaning.  And that is the rub of living with less when we have so much at our disposal: it becomes a conscious choice, not one of necessity, and that’s not an easy choice to make.  But in a season when my best intentions to live simply are distracted by twinkly lights that hypnotize me into a retail coma, when the “you need these” nip furiously at my heels, when the things I can easily say “no” to the rest of the year suddenly feel like life’s greatest necessity, I am reminded of this:  the luxury of an orange, the decadence of stripety candy, and the pleasure of a fresh chicken.

I’ll never know why that story affected my mother so.  Perhaps it reminded her of her own raggedy roots, a grandmother who struggled out of poverty in rural Kentucky, a life from which she was far removed and yet so close.  Maybe she was feeling like I am:  so full and so empty, having so much and yet so little.  Or maybe it reminded her that life’s simple pleasures are right at our fingertips, perhaps even more so this time of year, if we amble down the right country lane.

If you want to reconnect with the beautiful simplicity of the season, I encourage you to listen to John Henry Faulk’s The Christmas Story here.  It’s only 10 minutes long.  But first, grab a box of Kleenex.

And if you’re looking for a laugh, my personal favorite seasonal NPR airing is David Sedaris’ Santaland Diaries, which you can listen to here.  If you’ve never heard Sedaris’ reading of his experience as a Macy’s Santaland Elf, the story that shot him to fame, you’ll need that box of Kleenex again, but this time for tears of laughter.