Posted by Elizabeth

Today I was supposed to lay forth the ground rules for the Technoless Challenge. I say “supposed to” because, to be honest, my heart just isn’t into it.  I realized somewhere in the last week that, when I set my mind to breaking a bad habit, I usually emerge the victor.  Remember the challenge I issued to myself last October, to break through my fitness plateau?  Once I made up my mind that it was a priority, I proceeded to hit my target weight in three months (and then I got pregnant).  And that’s how I break bad habits:  I make it a priority.  This whole Technoless Challenge is really just a reflection of the fact that I’ve never made an earnest effort to reduce my social email and networking site time.  For me, the solution is simple:  I’m going to make an effort by setting some self-imposed time limits while reducing the temptation (laptop sitting on coffee table all day = too tempting).  Period.  So for those of you who were gearing up to take the challenge with me, please accept my deepest apologies.  What can I say?  Things change.

The truth is, after the elation of spreading my good news on Friday, and a sorta disastrous Valentine’s Day, I find myself bathing in the emotional afterglow of a strange weekend.  Unlike Anne’s “Valentine’s-neutral” approach (she is so even-keeled), I have always found myself living life hanging from the highest rafters or dragging through the lowest valleys.  “Equilibrium” has never been my strong suit.  That’s why I was so proud of myself when Maikael and I decided to approach this year’s Valentine’s Day with a “no-big-deal, whatever-happens-happens” attitude.  To clarify, Valentine’s Day is not usually met with a great deal of pomp and circumstance in our household.  We usually exchange cards and go out to a nice dinner, and that’s about it.  However, we’ve been out a lot lately, and we are currently in the throes of a DIY bathroom renovation project that is taking twice as long to complete as we had originally bargained for (why does everyone delude themselves into believing that their project will be different?).  Given these circumstances, this Valentine’s Day would be met with even greater asceticism than usual.  And I was okay with that. At least, I thought was okay with that.

A good start.

On Friday night the UPS man dropped a package at my front doorstep; when I opened it, I was met with an asymmetrical, eggplant heart stuffed with truffles from the very fancy-pants Vosges chocolatier.  The weekend was off to a good start!  On Saturday we enthusiastically picked up the special-order window for our bathroom – the one we’ve been talking about installing for five years – which wasn’t what we’d envisioned.  Then, we cut a gigantic hole through the side of our house, which was higher than we’d thought it would be.  Amidst the sawing and banging I couldn’t take my customary afternoon nap – this pregnancy has left me dead-tired — so I made dinner instead, a Mexican feast, Maikael’s favorite.  The pork and potato tacos, simmering in a fiery red guajillo chile-spiked sauce, smelled delicious.  But apparently this baby does not like spicy food, and I spent the rest of the evening belching like a frat boy and trying to enjoy whatever crap we were watching as we flipped through TV channels.

Pretending to take a "shower" in our new stall. Still smiling at this point.

Sunday wasn’t much better.  After continuing to struggle with the window, we finally installed it.  Twice.  I was looking forward – with unusual enthusiasm – to watching Enchanted on USA at 6:30 that evening, but tuned in to find the credits rolling.  This was after I lost out on an eBay auction for a lamp that I had my heart set on, even though I said I didn’t have my heart set on it, in the final seconds.  And then came the leftover tacos!  Oh, and a dry cupcake for dessert.  By the time we sat down to watch Inglorious Basterds, my stomach was roaring and I wanted nothing more than to go to bed.  Which is why I thought it would be the perfect time to hop on the Internet and purchase our tickets for next weekend’s Taste of Albuquerque!  Let’s just say neither I nor the Junior League of Albuquerque is long on technology, and when you throw these two things together, utter confusion ensues.  And rather than simply hanging it up for the night, I pushed forward out of pure determination, beseeching Maikael for his sage advice as to how to make the website work.  Maikael, clearly exhausted after having spent 48 hours struggling with a bathroom window, may have snapped something about “don’t drag me into your projects.”  And then I may have snapped something about “you’re one to talk, I can’t even take a nap with all that banging.”  And then he may have said something about “spending every weekend on this project so that we can have a nice bathroom.”  And I may have said something about “what, and carrying your unborn child isn’t work?”  Or something like that.  I can’t remember the exact words, but rest assured, it was very dramatic. In any event, Valentine’s Day ended with me retreating to the bedroom and reading a chapter from Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs.  Last week’s resolution at The Happiness Project was to “fight fair,” and this week’s is “don’t expect praise or appreciation,” and I’m sorry to say I failed miserably at both.  We never even got a chance to exchange cards.

As I replay these events, it’s obvious that nothing altogether wonderful or awful happened this weekend.  In a funny way, it ended up being the “Valentine-neutral” holiday that Anne described yesterday.  At the end of the day, lost eBay auctions, missed naps, and indigestion are trifles.  So why, in the heat of the moment, did it all feel so doomsday?  Obviously, there was some undercurrent of expectation that I had created for this 48 hour period, whether I was aware of it or not.  If I really examine the mental images I’ve been carrying around, they are stuffed with expectation.  I thought we’d share a lingering dinner at home – one that wasn’t punctuated with low-energy conversation after a day of hard work or capped off with monster digestion problems.   I thought there would be less doing and more talking.  More smiles and less sighs.

We are always creating expectations for ourselves, even when we think we’re not.  We talk a lot about the pitfalls of setting high expectations, but it’s just as easy to create low expectations that are equally impossible to achieve.  Saying we’re trying to keep things “low-key” or “easy-going” is in and of itself an expectation, and given the constraints of our construction project, it was unreasonable to expect that there would be anything “low key” about this weekend.  The fact is, even though I knew the reality of this two-day period going in, even when I said I didn’t have expectations, I did.  We didn’t fail; my expectations did.

Rest assured that Maikael and I mended our fences and eventually exchanged our cards.  The construction project will continue chugging forward next weekend.  And that box of chocolates will be gone before you know it.

Did anyone else have sort of a miserable Valentine’s Day?  Any horror stories to share, from the recent or not-so-recent past?  Do you suffer from setting unreasonable expectations, either too high or too low?  Anybody else out there suffer from spicy food intolerance during pregnancy (a REALLY tough thing living in New Mexico, let me tell you)?

Posted by Anne

There are people who detest Valentine’s Day—who proclaim the pointlessness of the annual “day of love”, and who boycott the Hallmark festivities.  I’m not one of those people.  There are people who adore Valentine’s Day—who devise cutesy gifts and clever outings for their loved ones.  I’m not one of those people either.  No, I’m more Valentine’s-neutral—glad it’s not a source of sadness or loneliness for me, but not eager to jump into all the February hoopla.  But no matter how you feel about it, it’s hard not to think about the L-word at least a little bit each February 14^th. 

Love.  Sometimes I wonder how many times I’ve truly been in love.  I think it’s safe to say I’m ridiculously in love with my husband, but yesterday—as I dove into the ubiquitous, cellophane-wrapped box of Russell Stovers chocolates—I thought about the other loves. The past loves.  The crushes.  And I thought about change.

You see, back when I was single, I wasn’t such a change-phobe.  Desperate (yes, desperate) to find a love of my own, I must have viewed change as a necessary cost of finding that love.  How else can I explain the multiple girlfriend identities I tried on from age 22 to age 26?  I once read a comic little book called The 10 Women You’ll Be Before You’re 35.   In it, the author reflects upon the chameleon-like quality of women as they search for love, stability, and identity in their 20’s and early 30’s.  I was no exception.  There was…

Intense-Runner-Girl
I’ll never forget the day I ran 8 miles for the first time.  Sure, I already ran pretty regularly, but only sensible distances—4 miles tops.  When my friends asked why on earth I ran 8 miles and acquired some brutal blisters, I was honest.  “A guy,” I said.  Over the next few months, I was introduced to lycra, ran a half-marathon, lost 8 pounds, and had my heart broken.  I still run.  Just not quite that much.  Some of those pounds found me again—along with my sense of self.  

Indie-Rock Girl
The ability to name-drop bands you’ve seen live.  The ability to pull off hipster clothes from Urban Outfitters. I tried both (with only marginal success on the hipster-clothing part), all for the sake a few dudes who caught my eye and strummed me some tunes on their acoustic guitars.  Man, it was cliché.  But man, I was a sucker for the dude with the guitar.  I developed quite the collection of burned cd’s from these guys—just couldn’t manage to collect a relationship. 

Granola Girl
Yeah, I pretty much tried on this phase whenever introduced to a messy-looking cutie wearing a fleece and khakis of questionable cleanliness.  Meet a guy who camps regularly and loves his trees?  Find an environment science major?  Enter “granola Anne”—sort of an oxy-moron really.  Sure, I’m on the earthy side, but hippie I’m not.  Fortunately, this phase was useful in preparing me for a future life in the Northwest.  Bonus! 

Okay, so I exaggerate a little.  In actuality, I’ve always been someone to maintain a pretty solid sense of self. And when I think about it, those three personas weren’t all that far out in left field.  I do love music.  But I liked many kinds of music—not just indie rock.  And I do like being active.  But I love many forms of activity—not just running my guts out.  And I do love trees and fleece—but I love silk and pearls as well.  In short, I’m like any woman—multidimensional.  So maybe…I wasn’t changing myself for each prospective suitor.  No, I was just limiting myself.  Making myself one-dimensional, when all I needed was someone to appreciate my natural complexity.   

I believe that one reason my current relationship works is because it allows my dimensions.  It allows me to move from hiking boots to sundresses, from hip bands to not-so-hip opera.  It allows the healthy kind of change.   The kind of change I like. The kind that doesn’t box me in to one hobby or one wardrobe.  It allows me just to be.

I hope you had a great weekend, whether you celebrated Valentine’s or not…and that you spent it with people who let you change—or who let you stay the same—who let you just be.  

Did you ever adopt a phase or identity for the sake of potential love?  Anyone do anything fun for Valentine’s?  Or do you sorta ignore the holiday? 

Posted by Elizabeth

In case you forgot, today is Groundhog Day, the day when we discover if we’re in for an early spring or doomed to suffer the slings and arrows of a late winter.  I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Groundhog Day, maybe because it reminds me of that insufferable movie circa 1993 starring Andie McDowell and Bill Murray, where a weatherman is doomed to repeat the same day over and over (and over) again, which, as a change-a-holic, is pretty much my worst nightmare.  Truth be told, I never understood what those two things – repeating a day and a traditional rodent – had much to do with one another, but, now that I think of it, Groundhog Day does seem particularly suited to people who appreciate comfortable routine.  I mean, is it me or does Puxatony Phil seem to see his shadow, sending him racing back into his hidey hole, more often than not?

Phil has always struck me as somewhat of a scaredy cat – maybe someone who’s a little afraid of change?  Rather than bravely facing the daylight and the possibility of a new season, he often retreats to the comfort of his warm, safe burrow, prolonging the inevitable.  How many of us are like Phil, clinging to the changing seasons of our life with a death grip, trying our hardest to hang onto the shut-in nature of winter when spring, with its new life and beginnings, is at our doorstep?  How many of us hold onto a season past its prime, rather than face the turn of the calendar with grace?  Given Phil’s propensity for dodging the new season, Groundhog Day seems perfectly crafted for the world’s change-phobes, wanting to hang on to the comfortable, old way just a little bit longer.

This winter has felt especially interminable; I don’t think I’ve ever been more ready for a spring in my entire life.  I was delighted to receive a seed catalog in the mail last week whose pages were splashed with colorful photos of heirloom vegetables, the first tender sign of spring.  As someone who is always chomping at the bit for the next new thing, I sincerely hope Phil doesn’t see his shadow.  Although I can’t help but wonder, in my fervent desire to cut winter short and push through to the next season, if I am any better than Phil, who insists on hanging onto winter?  Maybe, rather than preparing to banish or cling to a season, we need a day to remember what’s good about this time of year — even if it’s sometimes hard to see — to remind us to be in the moment?

Are you a fan of Groundhog Day (the movie or the holiday)?  Do you root for Phil for see his shadow or not?  Am I crazy, or does Groundhog Day seem uniquely suited to the world’s change-phobes?

I have to mention – because when else am I going to mention this? – that I have a friend whose mother loves Groundhog Day so much that she throws a party every year.  I have always wondered if she’s able to find Phil-themed paper products.

UPDATE:  Once again, that scaredy cat Phil saw his shadow; six more weeks of winter in 2010 folks.

Posted by Anne

Have you ever had to fight for something?  Have you ever had to convince people, persuade people, and attempt to mold their very ideology?  I haven’t.  This question occurs to me every Martin Luther King, Jr Day.  I ask myself:  When was the last time there was a cause…intimately connected to my OWN freedoms and liberties (not just someone else’s)…that I had to fight for?  And every year, I have to go with “never”. Some people are just darn privileged.  I am one of those people.

Every January, I wake up on MLK Day, delighted to have a day off from my job.  The job I’m fortunate to have.  I brew my expensive coffee, and flip the channel on my television so I can watch Matt and Meredith in high def.  I hear clips of that speech—the first few sentences we know by heart—about dreams, and about equality.  I am always moved.  And I am always struck with the fact that people are still fighting for these words to be truly realized.  There will always be people who have to fight.

Here’s what I can say: I know how to work hard.  As a Presbyterian-raised child reared on the Protestant work ethic, this has been ingrained into every fiber of my privileged self.  I’ve slogged through tough jobs, emotionally challenging relationships, insecurity, and doubt.  I work hard.  And I’m proud of the work I’ve done in this world of mine.  But no, it’s never been a fight.

I don’t envy these fights.  Who would?  But there may come a day when I have to fight.  I know many people—privileged like myself—who wake up one day and find the rules have changed.  Their child is sick.  They are sick. Their marriage is suffering.  And all of a sudden…they have to fight.  They have to fight for their health, their life, their marriage.

We can’t predict the direction our lives will take.  I’m learning that.  There will be battles I never truly have to fight…at least not for myself.  I can fight them on behalf of others.  But someday, maybe I’ll have to fight a battle of my own.  Until then, I’m thankful for the people who know how to fight.  I’m thankful for the people who know how to fight the battles worth fighting.  I’m thankful for MLK, and the people I’ll never know who live by his words.

There are good fights.  Necessary fights.  And I hope that someday…if I have to fight…someone will show me how.

Have you ever had to fight for something?  With your words?  Your actions?  Your emotions?

Posted by Elizabeth

Here at Life in Pencil, where we talk about change every day, the dawn of a new year – and, in this case, a new decade – is an exciting time.  New Year’s Day is, quite simply, a change-a-holic’s dream.  It’s the one day of the year when even the most diehard change-phobes come over to my camp for a spell, allowing themselves to feel the tingle of anticipation that comes with the possibility of new beginnings.  It’s a day for wiping the slate clean and starting over, my favorite activity.  It should come as no surprise, then, that I am an enthusiastic proponent of New Year’s resolutions.  At one New Year’s Eve party a few years ago, I famously invented the “New Year’s Resolution Game,” which involved writing five resolutions on different slips of paper, throwing them into a hat, drawing said resolution, and trying to guess which resolution belonged to which party guest.  In a group of engineers, it was pretty easy to guess who had resolved to “learn more about lasers in 2006.”

What struck me about this game was that I had no trouble coming up with five resolutions, when most of the guests struggled to come up with one or two.  I noticed that I set weighty and ambitious resolutions – I believe, at that time, there may have been a slip of paper that read “I resolve to spend at least three hours a day writing” during a time in my life when I was working 40+ hours a week – whereas most of my fellow partygoers set modest goals that had a reasonable chance of being attained.  When I set my resolutions, I think I knew from the get-go that many of those resolutions would never be achieved in their entirety, if at all.  But I seem to suffer from a delusion that, as the old saying goes, “if you shoot for the moon and miss you’ll still be amongst the stars.”

That’s why I was so excited to read Ari Herzog’s Resolve to Fail in 2010, a brief meditation on the importance of setting overly ambitious New Year’s resolutions, ones that you will likely never accomplish.  Essentially, Herzog says if you never fail then you can never succeed, because failure is an integral part of the process of being successful.  And to fail means to take a risk.  Herzog says, “The moment you divert from the path most traveled is the moment you can make a difference.”  I’d like to think this is what Life in Pencil is all about:  taking a risk on the unknown, trying something new, behaving outside the bounds of the ordinary.

So today, as you contemplate what the next year will bring, I encourage you to resolve to fail.  Amongst your more manageable resolutions, create one – just one – that you are likely to fail at.  And perhaps, over the next 12 months, that failure will lead to your eventual success.

What’s my impossible goal for 2010?  I want to write a book.  And sell it.

Now, what’s your resolution to fail?

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 Anne

Another December come and gone.  (Almost.)  This is always an interesting time of the year for me…when I pack away the remnants of another holiday season, and begin looking ahead.  I heard someone say on TV the other day that the New Year is all about “starting fresh”, and wiping away the follies and mistakes of the year that’s becoming past tense.  Truth be told, this philosophical nugget came from a perky FoodTV host, and probably had more to do with calorie consumption than existential goal-setting.  But regardless of the source, the sentence resonated with me.  And that’s because I just love a “fresh start”. 

I’ve always been this way.  “Fresh starts” are the reason I love buying a new day-planner each January, and why I literally adore the idea of “spring cleaning”.  Starting fresh is perfect for a change-phobe like myself—it’s a transition that doesn’t constitute drastic change per se—just a new attitude, a new lease on life, and a more organized garage.  And so, each January, I’m usually ready for life to resume its normal rhythm.  I’m ready for routines, to-do-lists that don’t require trips to the post office, and grocery lists that don’t involve cranberries or canned pumpkin.  I’m ready for…normal.  But I’m ready for a new normal.  A “fresh” normal. 

For some reason, this year has been different.  This weekend, my yearly ritual of packing up the holiday decor—which I usually find cleansing—felt somehow hollow.  This year, it was not so cleansing…and not so fresh.  It felt premature and hurried.  And I have no idea why.  I have no idea, because for the first time since I was a freshman in college, I spent the holiday season in one place.  No travel.  No hectic family visits.  Very little “rushing around”.  December progressed right here, in my home.  And December felt longer than it ever has before.  But still…

The literal end of our Christmas...right before bed.

Packing away our tree, the nativity, and the lights—it all felt a little gloomy this year.  When my husband and I dumped our tree at the local tree recycling center, I felt a pang of…something.  When I placed the holy family in their styrofoam packing material, I felt…something.   It’s odd, isn’t it?  When you’re happy—genuinely happy—but something inside you wants for something else.  Even odder when you can’t define it. 

I’m still unsure why the end of the holidays affected me.  All I know is that I wanted to bask in the ending of the season.  I wasn’t ready for the disappearance of pine needles, or to load up the box labeled “Christmas” that sits patiently in storage for 11 months of the year.  I wasn’t ready for the “fresh start” I usually anticipate.           

As a planning addict, this was a new emotion for me.  I’m unaccustomed to this desire to prolong, rather than move ahead.  But finally, I found comfort.  And I found it Sunday morning.  Ryan had to work (the reason for us staying put this year), so as he trudged off to the hospital, I trudged off to Church.  When I arrived, I was relieved to see the Christmas decorations still in their place.  Red and pink poinsettias still graced the front of the sanctuary.  Hanging stars adorned with hand-written prayers hung above my head and danced in the quiet breeze.  The sanctuary—usually full—was thinner, and mostly filled with older couples.  I sat alone, and felt relieved.  I sang the hymns and carols.  And for one more hour, I thought about the season.  It was quiet, personal, and necessary.  For that hour, I stopped moving forward and gave myself what I needed—a goodbye to the season. 

And now I’m ready.  I’m ready to welcome 2010.  I’m ready for my fresh start.  So bring on the New Year!

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?

Posted by Anne

Well, today marks the end of the Life in Pencil Holiday Season Extravaganza.  We hope you’ve enjoyed our thoughts on the season.  It was a joy to be able to ponder and then write about all the activities, emotions, and FOOD that makes a holiday.  However you’re spending today, we hope it’s peaceful, simple, fun, or some combination of the three.

A few images to celebrate the day.   Wherever you are, I hope it’s a good one.

One from Elizabeth–this is from her neighborhood park.  She tells me that someone decorates the trees each year with vintage ornaments.

And another…Elizabeth’s personal favorite…

And from my neck of the woods…

Our tree–ornaments on the bottom half were quickly repositioned after our shih tzu sampled one.

Christmas Eve, and my very focused nephew…

…and our equally focused pups.

Sweet and thoughtful cards, from sweet and thoughtful family and friends…

A favorite story…

And a favorite image. 

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

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!