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Wigilia 2024

Tuesday 24 December 2024 | 0 Comments

Going into Wigilia sick is no fun. K was ill during the 2011 Wigilia, and I had to make the barszcz as a result. It was probably not as good as K's.

Still worse than heading into Wigilia sick is going into it after an operation. The Girl's last Wigilia here as a full-time resident of our house and it was a struggle for her -- the whole day.

She stayed in her room for most of the day. "I'm saving my energy for tonight," she explained.

Evening came and she put some nice clothes on, came down stairs, and had dinner with us. After soup, she took a break in the living room, but she came back for the fish.

When it came time for the gifts, she lay on the couch and smiled as E passed out all the gifts she'd bought for everyone.

That was a bit of a role change: she's always been so thrilled to get the gifts (what kid isn't?), but tonight, she was more enjoying watching everyone else open her gifts.

The Girl is growing up. In fact, how long can we continue calling her "the Girl"? Isn't she legally an adult now? A woman?

But some things never change. Wigilia never changes. The same food every year. Perhaps a different fish -- trout this year. Or did we have trout last year as well?

And the same faces around the table, with one exception -- a new guest this year.

So if some things don't always change, if some things just stay the same seemingly forever, I guess the Girl can remain the Girl in our eyes indefinitely.

And what of the Boy this year? He retained his role as the gift distributor, but his voice is a little deeper now when he hands someone a gift.

But some things with the Boy don't change: he's still the most grateful gift-receiver.

Everyone, happy with their gifts, discussed whether to go to Mass tonight or tomorrow. They all decided on tomorrow, so we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. The girls' pick. I hadn't seen it since I watched it in the theater, I don't think.

I checked the release date of the film: 1989. I was two years younger than the Girl is now. And like that, those thirty-five years disappeared.

The movie ended, and like that, yet another Wigilia was over. Everyone slowly went their own ways.

Another Wigilia.

Another little bit of perfection.

Wigilia Preparation 2024

Monday 23 December 2024 | 0 Comments

Getting ready for Wigilia is a multi-day affair. We actually began a couple of weeks ago by preparing an absolute truckload of pierogi and uszki for the dinner as well as the zakwas for the barszcz This morning K put the dried mushrooms to soak just before she began the vegetable stock for the barszcz (carrots, parsnips, celery, a couple of turnips, some prunes and an apple) and the beets themselves were roasting in the oven. As I was grating the roasted beets, she was preparing the crust for the cygan.As I cleaned up the mess we’d made, K was chopping the massive amount of dried fruit (mainly prunes, dried apricots, and raisins) cygan requires. As K was melting the butter, chocolate, and sugar to mix in with the dried fruit, I looked for recipes for spanakopita. A bit of a mixed morning.

In the afternoon? I’m sure K finished the cygan, and she was going to make a rolada, one of the Girl’s favorite desserts, for L. That was the plan. I’ve no pictures of that process, though, because I was with the Girl in the hospital. We arrived at twelve as instructed. At 3:30, the surgeon still hadn’t met with us.

“Things are running behind,” the nurse said. “That happens.”

True enough. Medicine, though, is the only industry for which we have this kind of patience. Everywhere else, we would have long ago gotten up and left. “We’ll take our business elsewhere.” Not such an option for surgery.

Finally, a little before four, they wheel the Girl back for her minor procedure: a deviated septum which has contributed to never ending sinus problems for our poor girl. The day before Wigilia is hardly the best time for surgery, but we have to fit it in wherever we can between volleyball, winter/indoor track, work, school, and everything else that crowds the Girl’s calendar. After waiting over three hours in preop, the Girl gets wheeled to the OR, and I head to the waiting room for more waiting.

It seems somehow appropriate that the last Wigilia that L is living at home is so wonky. It gets us thinking about how it’s so different from every other Wigilia and so similar at the same time. We spent the day not preparing as a family, and we go into Wigilia not even knowing how L will feel a day after surgery -- will she even want to sit at the table? (Not really a serious worry.) And yet Wigilia will be the same as it always is, as is my post about it: the timelessness of tradition in the midst of an ever-changing world for our family. Next Wigilia, L will be coming home from college, probably with a big list of foods she wants K to prepare and a big bag of laundry. It’s always been this way: all the same, never the same.

Smoking Day 2024

Sunday 22 December 2024 | 0 Comments

Exactly one year earlier, it was a smoking day as well.

Smoking Day

Hometown Fire

Saturday 21 December 2024 | 0 Comments

Virginia Intermont College has long been something of a central element of Bristol. Sitting high on a hill, the 19th-century buildings were a focal point of the city.

Early this morning, it burned down. Completely.

The historic James Tecumseh Preston house burned down two days ago.

There is one main theory about who's responsible...

Left Behind III: Cause of Disappearance

Friday 20 December 2024 | 0 Comments

One of the most interesting elements of the first Left Behind book is its necessity to create some kind of imagined explanation that the non-Christians would come up with to explain the disappearance of so many people. This is what the authors come up with:

The world has been stockpiling nuclear weapons for innumerable years. Since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 and the Soviet Union first detonated its own devices September 23, 1949, the world has been at risk of nuclear holocaust. Dr. Rosenzweig and his team of renowned scholars is close to the discovery of an atmospheric phenomenon that may have caused the vanishing of so many people instantaneously.”

“Dr. Rosenzweig believes that some confluence of electromagnetism in the atmosphere, combined with as yet unknown or unexplained atomic ionization from the nuclear power and weaponry throughout the world, could have been ignited or triggered-perhaps by a natural cause like lightning, or even by an intelligent lifeform that discovered this possibility before we did—and caused this instant action throughout the world.”

“Sort of like someone striking a match in a room full of gasoline vapors?” a journalist suggested.

This Dr. Rosenzweig character is, in fact, a botanist, and his theory becomes the prevailing explanation among non-believers. In the Left Behind authors' world, there are no skeptics saying, "Now, wait a minute. We stopped testing nuclear weapons decades ago. Even if your idea of 'some confluence of electromagnetism in the atmosphere, combined with as yet unknown or unexplained atomic ionization from the nuclear power and weaponry throughout the world' itself weren't completely bonkers, there simply wouldn't be any remnants decades later. The whole idea is ludicrous."

This lack of skeptical characters is hardly surprising. The Evangelical authors don't even understand current skepticism toward their faith. Any time any idea comes close to their religious beliefs, skepticism disappears.

Opłatek 2024

Thursday 19 December 2024 | 0 Comments

9 Years Ago

Wednesday 18 December 2024 | 0 Comments

Probably my favorite video with the Boy...

Tenderfoot

Tuesday 17 December 2024 | 0 Comments

Eighteen Years Old

Monday 16 December 2024 | 0 Comments

Eighteen years ago, the Girl was just that -- a newborn treasure, a gift we were to cherish, a future wrapped in a little bundle. That day, she couldn't open her eyes yet; today, she couldn't drive to school because her car was in the shop. How things have changed.

That day, my mother and father became Nana and Papa. Their first grandchild had just entered our world, and they were thrilled, ready to laugh at the slightest thing, unwilling to let L out of their sight. Now Nana and Papa are no more, unable to see the strong, intelligent, and beautiful woman the Girl has become.

That day, her future was unclear but promising. Today, there is more clarity, there is more promise, but still more mystery.

Jasełka 2024

Sunday 15 December 2024 | 0 Comments

Every year for as long as I can remember there being an active Polish community in a local parish, the Poles have gathered for a Christmas potluck. Everyone shares the opłatek tradition, sings carols, and simply spends time together. Before all this, though, is the jasełka performance.

We've been doing it for so long that the kids who participated in it when we first began fifteen years ago are now done with college. Every year, though, a group of kids would put on the Christmas play. Every new a few faces disappeared and a couple of new faces made appearances.

It was truly a labor of love, cliche though that might be. Parents brought their kids for rehearsals, helped the kids learn their lines, created costumes and a set. Someone would have to find a script online. Someone would have to arrange for space for rehearsal. It took weeks to get everything together.

One year L was Mary. Another year the Boy was the baby Jesus. And once, in a pinch, L was Mary. That might have been the year E was Jesus. Or maybe not. Fifteen years of performances have all run together into a blur.

This year was the first year there was no jasełka. At all. But there were carols. There was a meal. There were opłateki. And there was, as always, a special moment for everyone to thank Father Theo, the parish's head priest. He's a gentle man from Columbia who took over celebrating the Polish Mass when no Polish priests could. He's gradually added to the portion of the ceremony more and more Polish, and now, he celebrates almost the entire Mass in Polish.

"I love Polish!" he said this evening. "All that sh sh ch sh sh sh!"

The whole afternoon/early evening is a microcosm of all my little obsessions: the passage of time, the loveliness of tradition, the importance of family, the importance of culture, the love of good food.