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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

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I want to say it started the day E got home from college, but the truth is, it began somewhere back in October. I’m a stocking-stuffer fiend, to say the least. I start collecting things early – a small face mask someone said they loved, an ornament that will encapsulate the achievements of the last year, a pair of fuzzy socks just perfect for lounging. There are not many things that give me more of a jolt of joy than finding a tiny trinket that I can tuck away for Christmas for my girls.

Over the years, I’ve collected other kids, too. My daughters’ friends who hang out at the kitchen counter and snack, do homework, play games – I listen to their stories and sometimes when I’m out wandering, I find something small that will give them a laugh or let them know I’m happy to have them in my life by extension.

Those kitchen-counter gatherings happened less this fall while E was far away at school, so when she came back in mid-December, the volume of extra teenagers in the house more than doubled. Having more mouths to feed, more laughter, and more noise in my house is bliss. I don’t even have to adjust the amount of food I cook, because thanks to my great-grandmother, I am incapable of cooking for less than five or six people at a time, anyway. There are just fewer leftovers and more midnight raids on the fridge, more smiles and a few more dishes and a lot more glee in my life.

By the time the solstice rolled around, my heart was full. And even though the girls had gone with their dad for a few days, I had a lunch date with good friends and had prepared myself for the long, dark night and the letting go that comes with the winter solstice. I knew exactly what I wanted to release and I needed the dark and the quiet and the stillness to crystallize my thoughts and intentions. I lit candles, breathed deeply, formed pictures in my mind of just what it would mean to help myself be lighter. I imagined the weight and heft and color of the burden I’ve been carrying, nurturing, feeding, and by the time midnight rolled around, I had it cornered in my body and knew just how much space it inhabited. I blew out the candles and let go, seeing it disperse in to a million tiny fragments as though propelled with a giant wave rippling out, out, out. I’ll never be free of it, but having the bits and pieces spread throughout my body lessens the weight and impact. Instead of feeling it tight and heavy in my chest, I can let each of the bits be part of something larger in their own way. I woke up feeling lighter, free.

Over the following days, I spent time with dear friends and family. I saw my mom, my best friend, my brother and sister, an old friend who has known me since seventh grade whose history is both intertwined with mine and divergent. I was blessed with open arms and love and amazingly easy travel conditions. There were hugs and sweet moments of recognition as precious gifts were exchanged. Tears of joy and connection as we looked at each other and knew; we are holding each other, we see each other, we honor each other.

The date, the day of the week – it never mattered. Was it Christmas Eve or Christmas Day? I still struggle to place myself in a calendar because there are still gifts to be opened in the living room, the fridge is full of delicious food, there are forthcoming plans with friends over the next few days. My house and heart will continue to be filled up with conversation and laughter.

Even as I prepared for the ritual of the solstice, I wasn’t sure it would work. I didn’t know if I could let go of something that I know will continue to trigger me for a long time to come. And in the days following, when I was, indeed, triggered, I braced myself even as I realized I was doing better. The blow didn’t come as hard, sink as deep, or leave a bruise that my mind and heart worried over in the hours following. Letting go had worked. Somehow, I was able to use the darkness to align my heart and my head with my values and intentions and it feels as though the light hours – even though they are shorter – have more room for love and laughter. And I’m using every last second to soak up my girls and their friends and the moments with loved ones. It truly does feel like the most wonderful time of the year.

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News Flash: I Don’t Have All the Answers. No, Really, I Don’t

I finished my Christmas shopping yesterday.  And before you stop reading and curse me, letting phrases like, “F*&^ you!” and “well, la tee dah” fly, I want to take you on a thought journey.  Please. Indulge me.

It all began with an afternoon latte and a friend who was talking about a business class she once took. Never mind that the entire notion of her taking a business class shook me nearly out of my seat – she was a theater arts major with a beautiful singing voice and I have known her for more than half our lives. I didn’t have the presence of mind to stop her narrative to ask, WTF? You? Took a business class?  She is a fast talker – my father used to call those of us who love to talk ‘motormouth’ – and she blithely continued on before I could stop her. Good thing. Because she started talking about something called manageable chunks. Not prioritizing or triaging or anything that places importance on one set of tasks or ideas over another, but manageable chunks. And it occurred to me that this is a vanilla enough phrase that it can mean many things to many different people.  And that is precisely why I liked it.

You see, for me, editing my latest book review was not manageable yesterday. Neither was phoning my naturopath’s bookkeeper and then the insurance company and then the administrator of my HSA to talk about why my deductible has not yet been met even though it is nearly the end of the year.  Even less manageable for me would have been sitting down to crunch numbers on the landscape project Bubba and I are toying with doing.  Manageable? Shopping. Driving to some cute local stores to look at stocking stuffers and purchase a book or two to round out my holiday gift lists.  Coming home and hauling all of the wrapping paper and ribbons out of storage and staging a Santa’s elves helper area for the girls to fully immerse themselves in – that was manageable. Yesterday. I’m not saying it would be next Tuesday.  Or any other day. But yesterday, that was the one piece of my To-Do List that I felt I could tackle with the mindset, energy and ability I had.

And then, as the girls and I sat swapping scissors for tape for ribbon and doing our best to make all of the packages pretty despite the black fur that was sticking to everything (we were wrapping in front of the fireplace which is where the dog and the cat do most of their lounging), I saw it on the news.  A lone, masked man entered a busy shopping mall in Portland, Oregon yesterday and began shooting randomly, killing two people and wounding a 15-year old girl before killing himself.  I have been in that mall many times.  My sister used to work there.  My friend Carrie took her son to see Santa there 24 hours prior to this horrible incident.  I was struck still.  No thoughts, very little breath, no movement.  No emotion, even, for a moment in the beginning.  And then I was sad and then grateful that more people weren’t injured. And then I wondered who this poor man was and why he felt as though he had to do something like this. And then I was still again because I have no answers. And that is where I stayed (mentally) until now.

Logically, I know I don’t have all the answers. Viscerally, I disagree entirely.  Logically, I don’t even want to have all the answers. God forbid someone call me up one day and say, “Kari? Good, you’re there. I’m taking a break for a bit and I need you to mind the Universe until I come back, okay? Thanks.”  I would wet myself.  I would stutter and sputter and perhaps vomit.  Because that, my friends, is a lot of responsibility.

But sometimes I fantasize that whomever that person is that is in charge will call and ask me for one piece of the puzzle.  That I can eloquently and articulately present my argument for, say, organic foods or holistic health care or safer environmental practices and leave them saying, “Damn! You’re good! Of course we will implement that right away. We are so glad we asked you. Can we keep your number in case we have other questions?”

Often I rail at the powers-that-be who must surely possess the wisdom that I have and, yet, are not doing a damn thing about it to change some of the major things that bother me: poverty, environmental degradation, and human rights abuses, to name a few.

And before you think you know where I’m going with this (manageable chunks) I will throw you for a bit of a loop.  Because it occurred to me that every moment of every day there are things being done.  Things that I don’t even know about or understand and didn’t set in motion.  And while they may not entirely cancel out or eradicate the things that make me gnash my teeth in anger or frustration, they constitute motion.  It occurred to me that, even as I notice a new crack in my index finger – a result of the eczema I deal with every year at this time – my body is working to repair some other damage or create some new cell somewhere else that I can’t see.  So maybe I can give my finger a leg up by slathering some cream on it and trying to keep it out of hot water and mitigate some of the work my body has to do so it can use it elsewhere.

I am surely part of the solution, but only part.  And I can only operate within the boundaries of what I know as Truth (remember this post?) and do the rest of the Universe the enormous favor of not challenging every damn little thing it says or does.  Because I don’t have all the answers. And I can’t see the whole picture, but I do know that everywhere, simultaneously, throughout this vast wondrous place we live in, healing is happening at the same time as harm.  And I believe with a very strong conviction that as long as I stick to my manageable chunks, progress is being made.

Ironically, admitting that I don’t have the answers is a little, teensy bit freeing.  While the Teacher’s Pet in me is right now kicking my shins furiously and sticking out her tongue, it is a huge load off to accept the fact that perhaps I don’t have to go out there and fix things all the time.  And it is an even bigger revelation that part of the reason I have avoided certain people and situations in my life is because I felt as though I was expected to provide some solution that I honestly did not have in me.  While I generally chalked those avoidances up to less enlightened things like, “She’s a total freaking mess and it’s not my responsibility” or simply, “He’s an ass,” it turns out that what I was really avoiding was the fear of acknowledging the simple truth that I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO IN THIS INSTANCE.  Once I face that fear and shove it out of the way, there is room for compassion – both for myself in all my ignorance and for the other person who must be feeling really shitty right now.  Having spent most of my life trying to convince everyone that I was mature/intelligent/capable enough to handle anything, it’s a little bit of a turnaround to suddenly realize I’m not any of those things.  I suspect it will take practice. Lots of practice.  And faith that somewhere, someone has a few of the answers I don’t have and still others have their particular pieces of the puzzle, and me? I have my manageable chunks and my not-so-manageable chunks and I have a few answers. Just not all of ’em.

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Post-Holiday Stream of Consciousness

I guess, technically, it’s pre-holiday, too, considering that Christmas is coming up, but Thanksgiving and Christmas always sort of lump together in my mind and heart like one long slow hill up to the top of this rickety roller coaster that dumps me down a thrilling dive to Christmas, up another little dip and down again on New Year’s.  I wonder when or if I will ever see these holidays as different.  My image of them has been shaped by the school calendar, anticipating the break from routine just as much as the actual decorating and annual Nutcracker viewing and rip-and-tear on the morning of the 25th.

I had my annual physical today and was grateful for so many things.  The doctor who comes in and doesn’t touch me for at least 20 minutes as she asks me how I’m doing and what’s going on in my life. The fact that she remembers the stories I told her of stress and my husband’s health history and my writing three months ago when I was there.  The enormous, green vein nestled in the crook of my left elbow (antecubital fossa – that’s forever my favorite anatomy term) that is easily visible to any lab tech and gives up blood without rolling or closing down or even making a squeak.  I was enormously grateful to Bubba for being in town to get the girls ready and off to school so I could schedule my physical first thing in the morning and not have to go without coffee or food for too long.  Tremendously grateful for health insurance that allows me to make this annual pilgrimage to keep tabs on my health.

I am having so much fun shopping for the kids in the family this year. I always do, but forget about it throughout the year. Even if some of them won’t be with me when they open them, I delight in finding goofy little things that conjure up memories or that one special item I know they can’t get where they are. I used to start shopping in August because I thought I was supposed to get a jump on the holidays, but I always ended up with a closet full of gifts, too many to give each person, embarrassed by the amount of money I had spent.  I shifted to making lists  of possible ideas starting in August, but quickly realized that stressed me out more than anything – making sure the items would still be available when I was ready to buy them. When we shifted to drawing names for adults so that each of us only bought for one other person, I began to get back into the joy of finding that one special gift.  We still buy gifts for all the kids, though, and that is my favorite part.  Like most things, I’m much more sanguine about that these days, picking up things as I come across them in my daily errands or leafing through catalogs in the evenings.

A few years ago I started making anti-gift lists for Eve and Lola in an effort to avoid the things we either had too many of or simply didn’t want in the house. Barbie dolls, Polly Pocket, anything pink (in Lola’s case)….I may have added a few things to that list that weren’t preapproved by the girls but I figure that’s my prerogative as the mom.  This year, I happened to mention to my sister-in-law that if she got Eve gift cards to either Hollister or Abercrombie (which she put high on her list of desires), she could get me a corresponding gift by offering to take her shopping there for me.  I hate both of those stores for so many reasons.  I have a girlfriend who calls them both “the naked boy store” because the shopping bags have black and white photos of half-naked boy-men on them with their jeans pulled down to show their hip bones.  There are posters of these boys throughout the store – not that you can see them very well because the stores are so dimly lit that I have been known to mortify Eve by pulling out my phone to shine it on a price tag or two.  There is an overwhelming stench of perfume, so much so that within five minutes of being inside, I can taste it in the back of my throat and begin hacking like a cat with a hairball.  There is never anyone at the locked dressing rooms which means someone has to go hunting for help. At first, I offered to stand in line while Eve went, but that generally resulted in her becoming distracted by other items she wanted to try on and inevitably I stood there for 15 minutes before she finally came back and said she was too shy to ask anyone.  There is only ever one person behind the checkout counter, with five or six other employees scattered throughout the store folding clothes and putting them back on racks.  This means that I stand in line while Eve wanders to look for other things and then I have to step out of line while she goes to try “just one more thing” on. I may have spewed all of this frustration to my SIL. I may have been a little vehement about it.  I may have just put the kibosh on any gift cards from either of those stores. Depends on how badly she wants to be the celebrity aunt. Or how much wine she has before shopping…

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A New Perspective on the Holiday


Five days until Christmas day. The kitchen is silent but for the sighs of the dog splayed out on the floor next to me. Eve and Lola are upstairs, straightening up their rooms so that they can find a place for each and every new treasure they receive on Christmas Day. Eve cleans while belting out popular songs with no pretense. Lola stops every few items to crouch on the floor and read a few pages of a Calvin and Hobbes book.

The day outside is grey and misty and I’m determined to avoid the reality of winter in the Northwest by only gazing at the 4×4 photo of Dad sitting on the front porch with the girls as babies, squinting in the sunshine, his freckled legs showing in a rare moment when he wore shorts outside of the gym.
I feel as though I ought to be rushing around completing last-minute tasks, but all but one gift is wrapped and under the tree and I’m not baking any treats this year. We have deliberately scaled back gift-exchanges over the years in deference both to those who have more stuff than they know what to do with as well as those whose needs run to the more serious – like groceries and money to pay the heating bill. We still spoil the children and delight in odd gifts for each other here and there, but I’m thrilled to be part of the older generation now, my true delight in watching the children’s eyes as they rip the glossy paper off of their presents.
More than anything I look forward to the gathering. The unexpected history shared after a few glasses of wine that sets everyone to hysterical laughter. The moment where the youngest child discovers the piano in the living room and the magical sounds it makes. The stolen moments on the couch where I pretend to be asleep and hear philosophical conversations between adolescents. For all of the hoopla around Christmas cookies and intricate wrapping methods and hours spent in the kitchen preparing the roast, I look to the next five days for rest and quiet spaces and spontaneous bursts of joy. For this, I wish Christmas came more than once a year.
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Lola’s Holiday Heartbreak (and Recovery)


Let me start by saying that Lola, my nine-year-old, has a heart of gold. A heart the size of Texas that is solid gold. She is very emotionally sensitive and idealistic and sometimes this means her heart gets broken. It’s hard to watch. It is even harder to watch when I know it’s my fault (or Bubba’s – in this case, it was Bubba’s fault).

Lola has always believed in Santa Claus. Even after discovering that her older cousins and her older sister thought it was all a hoax, Lola maintained that they were crazy. From time to time she would come to me and ask how to counter their arguments (or taunting), and I could see that she so desperately wanted to believe in Santa that I would help her out. And maybe I was setting her up. But there is something magical about the notion that there exists someone out there in the world who loves you just because you are a kid. Someone that doesn’t have to love you (they aren’t your family, after all), but who, once a year, acknowledges the mystery and wonder that is you and surprises you with some of your heart’s desires. Just because. And when you put it in that context, who wouldn’t want to believe in that?
Bubba and I played our part – wrapping gifts from Santa in special wrapping paper that didn’t match our family gifts and using our left hands to write out the names in case the kids scrutinized the handwriting. We even colluded with our extended family to share wrapping paper and buy the same kinds of treats for the stockings when we were planning on sharing Christmas morning with them. I will admit that we indulged a bit in the coercion of “Santa is watching” for the last few weeks before the holidays, but it was mostly joking. Or so I thought. But it’s tricky to know how kids interpret things unless they talk about it. Or write to Santa.
Lola’s letter to St. Nick last year went something like this:
“Dear Santa,
I do not think I deserve any presents this year. I’ve tried to be nice this year. But I
can’t do it. But if you think I deserve it, I want a Zune.
Love, Lola
P.S. Never quit your job.”
I started out chuckling when I read this letter, but quickly got a lump in my throat. Poor dear. Bubba was also charmed by the note and decided that we ought to keep this letter indefinitely. Even if we never showed it to her, it was a priceless keepsake. So it remained tucked in his desk, safely inside the envelope addressed by Lola herself, until Lola discovered it this July.
Catastrophe.
I never would have imagined how betrayed she would feel. She was mortified, both because she felt duped by her own parents (and stupid in the face of her cousins’ teasing the last two years), and because of the implication. No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.
Bubba and I felt horrible. She cried for a long time and my only consolation was that it was the middle of summer and Santa’s demise wasn’t associated with Christmas.
Fast forward to December and I began wondering how she would handle the notion as the holiday approached. When I picked her up from school last Wednesday and inquired about her day, she told me her teachers had asked her to write a Christmas story to share with the younger kids in class. (Lola attends a mixed-age Montessori school and her classroom has kids in grades 1-4. She is the oldest.)
“So I wrote this story about this kid who asked for a toy boat and a scooter from Santa Claus and, since her parents didn’t believe in Santa, they bought the things for her. But when Christmas morning came, the little girl got two boats and two scooters. The parents got into a fight later because they each accused the other one of buying the gifts but it turns out Santa did it. They still didn’t believe it, but their daughter decided to give one boat and one scooter to the homeless shelter and she felt great. The next year, the same thing happened and the girl got two of what she asked for and gave half away. The next year, the parents both stayed up to spy on each other and catch the other one in the act, but they caught Santa instead. They were surprised and talked about not getting the little girl something from then on, but finally decided she had so much fun giving away half of her presents that they would just keep doing it. And Santa was happy, too.”
Huh. I think she’s recovered the spirit of the holiday. Something tells me she’ll be just fine. Santa lives on in Lola’s spirit, believe it or not.
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Holiday Musings


I officially broke the seal on Christmas last Friday and purchased the first holiday gift of the season. I didn’t really mean to, but this particular item struck me as something Bubba and the girls would get a huge kick out of. So I got it and brought it home. It is sitting in my underwear drawer, buried beneath a pile of boot socks and in order to diminish the paranoia that someone will find it, I suppose later today I’ll go dig out the wrapping paper and ribbons and Christmas labels and camouflage it for real.

And once the holiday wrap is out, it’s all over. I will begin accumulating gifts and wrapping them as they show up on my doorstep (I do 99% of my gift-buying online – I hate shopping except for groceries and love that I can click a few buttons and have things show up on the porch for days afterward).
I have favorite sites for books, weird stocking stuffers, and lovely gifts for friends. Before kids, I loved to browse through craft stores and small, independent clothing or book stores, selecting just the right gift for everyone on my list. Inevitably, I would over-purchase, forgetting that I had Gift A at home in the closet for Susan and buy Gift B for her because it struck me as the perfect thing. As our family grew, both with our children and our siblings’ children, Bubba and I realized that the expense was getting out of control. Not to mention the fact that our kids (and everyone else’s) had one of everything and didn’t need a dang thing.
A few years ago, we agreed (through much angst and negotiation) to draw names for the adults in the family on both sides and just buy for the children. In doing so, I also made my plea for minimal gifts for the kids. A science kit or craft kit, perhaps. Maybe one article of clothing and a nice book instead of an entire outfit and a series of books. Outings are nice – tickets to a play or an IOU for a pedicure with Grandma don’t clutter up the closet and are fun to look forward to. I was cast as the Grinch in some instances.
It’s not that I don’t want my kids to have a lovely holiday. It’s that I don’t think they need stuff to make it lovely. And I know that Bubba’s parents and mine waited a long time for grandchildren and they see it as their Universe-given right to spoil them, but I think we’re sending the wrong message. Here we are three days before Thanksgiving and instead of seeing messages about gratitude and communities coming together, the media is trumpeting Black Friday Sales and economic forecasts for the holiday season. I love giving gifts as much as the next person, but I seem to be the one in the family who keeps trying to come up with ways to minimize the consumerism every year.
Eve had to do a project for school this week that highlighted a cultural difference between a South American country and the U.S. She chose to interview a family friend from Argentina about the way they celebrate holidays. In the beginning, it was fun to think about the fact that Christmas happens in the middle of summer for them and she had to remind herself that Argentineans have no reason to celebrate Thanksgiving. As the interview went on, however, it became clear that the differences run deeper than that. Leandro spoke about the importance of family gatherings on Christmas, New Year’s and Easter and the way that they are centered around togetherness and food. Yes, the Easter Bunny has made it’s way to South America, but thus far, he plays a fairly minimal part in their celebration of the holiday itself. It reminded me of my childhood Christmases as we traveled to Southern California to be with my mother’s family. My mom’s parents and her four siblings lived in Santa Barbara and there were four cousins for the four of us kids to play with. I don’t honestly remember how they managed gift-giving. I do recall my mom sewing matching dresses for the girl cousins one year, but other than that, I have no clue whether she and her siblings exchanged gifts or not. For me, the memories revolve around going to the beach and playing hide-and-seek in my Aunt Barb’s huge house. The gifts were those moments spent with my cousins.
So while Bubba and I continue to seek out ways to connect with our families over the upcoming holidays, I struggle to find ways to divert my girls’ attention from the fanfare of gift-giving (or, to be honest, gift-getting) in favor of those spontaneous moments that are generally more rewarding in the long run. I’m not sure what they are yet, but here’s hoping we can continue to emphasize the less tangible aspects of the holiday.
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