We’re moving up — literally. This year was the first year we put up lights around the house.
It was easier than I was expecting, just a matter of up and down and up and down the ladder.
And the realization that what comes up before Christmas must come down shortly thereafter.
Still, to sit in the living room is a double pleasure now.
When Christmas Eve dinner includes two soups, multiple courses, and more desserts than one can possibly imagine, it’s a good idea to get started a little earlier.
Ten days ought to do.
And so last night we began by preparing the cabbage/mushroom filling for the dumplings. It’s neither a long nor a labor-intensive process, but when there will be cakes to bake and soups to season during the days before Christmas, it puts things into a little different perspective.
So last night we cooked the sourkraut, sauted the onions, ground them to a literal pulp, mixed a sprinkle of bread crumbs and called it a night.
Tonight, stuffing and fast-freeze.
L and I are playing Candy Land. It’s a dry, boring game, to be honest, but I’m not doing it for my own entertainment: that comes from watching her.
Still, I’ve been trying lately to make it a learning experience, as a way to help her deal with her frustration. It’s a simple premise: stack the deck occasionally, placing the Candy Cane Forest card for the next drawing when she’s seventy-five percent complete.
“Oh, rats!” she declares, retreating almost to the beginning of the game board.
I try to make it a little more frustrating, dropping the ice cream cone card into place for my next drawing. Will she get frustrated that she “obviously” has no chance to win? Will she want to stop? Will she complain?
No — nothing but a laugh.
There’s only one thing left to do: make sure she gets a few doubles to catch up — not win, but catch up.
The game takes longer than it would have if we’d just drawn and let chance decide the winner. But the girl has uncanny luck and wins more often than not. A loss or two does the spirit good.
It’s difficult to find a place, to find your place.
We sit in the living room, K writing Christmas cards, L drawing on them. I alternate between reading student journals and whatever book my eye falls on — skimming books of my past and those I still haven’t made it to (Berger, Weil, Schleiermacher, Smart), all within reach of my chair.
The tree is done; the mess cleaned up. It sits glowing in the corner. Were there a fireplace in the living room, it would probably be snapping and crackling now.
Shawn Colvin’s Holiday Songs and Lullabies finishes, setting the mood.
There’s tea steeping in the kitchen (a rooibus that L chose), and it’s actually cold outside.
We switch to Polish carols and dream of snow.
Time is a relative thing. Scientists tell us that we can travel so fast that time slows. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII convinced the whole western world to skip ten days.
Yet it’s the smaller moments that have the true significance.
It’s the smaller moments that see a devoted mother spending an entire Friday afternoon baking a cake for a little girl and her guests.
It’s the sweeter moments that see the welcoming of a beloved friend with mutual squeals of joy and anticipation.
It’s the moment less than the flickering of a candle that we all remember, the moment that a little girl has been excited about for days.
It’s the moments that finds us surrounded by friends,
friends who have taken a few minutes out of their lives to come celebrate with us.
Within these series of moments, I catch a glimpse of the future. It happens every now and then: a pose, an expression, a gesture, and suddenly I see what our sweet daughter will look like in five, ten, fifteen years. A birthday celebration offers a hint of birthdays to come, and the bitter-sweet realization that these present moments are disappearing all too quickly.
The pony rides will disappear. “Oh, Tata — I’m not interested in ponies anymore.” It’s bearing down on us, this reality, and I both dread and eagerly look forward to it.
In the meantime, we — family and friends — enjoy the moments of helping and hugging, the moments of screams of laughter often followed too shortly by cries of frustration. There’s a big girl inside our L, but she’s still a little girl. Almost one year older now, but a little girl all the same.
“Technically, it’s not your birthday,” I try explain to her.
“You mean I don’t have my birthday party?” she replies, in a panic.
“No, you’re having your party today, but your birthday is Thursday.”
“But Mama said today is my birthday. Today is my party!” There’s a certain panic in her voice that tells me that time is such a relative, elastic thing — after all, in Asian cultures, children are born one year old — that I can shift time and calm a panicking daughter with few repercusions.
“Well, Mama was right,” I relent.
“You were just joking,” L giggles.
Perhaps, but not about this: happy early-birthday, our sweet daughter. May all your birthdays be raspberry-covered and laughter-filled.
On the way, we stopped to tank up. Fortunately, I thought to take off my gloves: who wants the smell of gasoline on one’s gloves?
Once we got back home, a new odor permeated everything.
Moving provides the great disadvantage of distanced friendships. Folks we used to see on a regular basis become rare visitors, and vice versa. (The road to Asheville is, after all, two-way.) Still, the advantage of that is the pleasure of spending time with “old” friends.
Time passes so quickly that it’s difficult to know when someone goes from “friend” to “old friend.” How long do we have to know each other? How quickly can time disappear? Those questions seem somehow connected.
“How long has it been since we last spent time together?” we were trying to decide last night.
Long enough that are children are no longer the children of our memories. L now talks and runs and schemes: a far cry from the toddler our friends last saw. And their son: in my mind, he’s still L’s age, and then he walks in the door.
He’s a school boy now, with new interests and new abilities.
“He wants to learn the guitar,” his mother says. We get L’s little guitar out and he strums a bit, fingering a note or two, though not quite sure where. At some point, hopefully, L will develop an interest in learning some instrument: hopefully not tuba or drums.
The interest in billiards already exists, but I suspect (from personal longing) that it exists in all children.
There’s something almost intoxicating about sixteen fast-moving balls in an enclosed space.
Visiting with children has its risks, though. We let them stay up beyond their bedtimes, knowing that once they go to bed, we’ll stay up for another hour or three. The hope is the vain hope of all parents: that by putting off bedtime by an hour and a half, we’re somehow magically putting of the wakeup time by the same amount. It never works, and yet we’re hopeful each and every time.
And it’s a trying situation, no matter which side of the guest/host relationship you’re on: if you’re the host, you don’t want your daughter yelling at a little past seven waking up your guests when everyone has only been in bed a few hours. If you’re the guest, you don’t want your daughter yelling at a little past seven waking up your hosts when everyone has only been in bed a few hours.
But if you’re L, you wake up when you wake up, and a ritual is sacred: there must be chocolate soy milk, warmed in the microwave for thirty seconds, and stirred with a specific spoon. Etiquette has no place in a thirsty girl’s thinking.