Our Christmas Card: letter and pictures, including sentiment.

A Merry, Merry Christmas

from our yard to yours—

This post brought to you by the Fabulous Web Tools written by Murphy Randle and given to his mother for Christmas.

WHAT A GUY!! (And how will I live without him?) I DON’T KNOW.

 

For your enjoyment—a small vacation in peace and hope:

My niece, Elise, and her BYU a cappella group.

Just click on the play arrow—

[audio:elise.mp3]

Now: the card:

 

 

On the day after our first serious snowfall—

Slept all night in socks. Purpose of socks: to reinforce effects of Vicks Vaporub applied to the feet. Purpose of Vaporub? Cough suppressant. Some people swear by this, so we tried it. Worked two hours. After that? Well, my coughs love me.

It snowed on December first. After long years of nearly frost-bitten hands, I have learned to put Christmas lights up in the weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving. This year, though, it seems like everything I’ve learned has gotten lost in the database. We have built on the studio, Char and I have written a book together,Murphy is up to his lovely lashes in university, and we have been working our heads off in the studio. A whirl. Head in a.

Somehow, we have pulled the greatest holiday into order. Admittedly, some things, long time honored, have gone by the wayside—for instance, I no longer make cookies. I am of mixed mind about this; cookies are so tied up with memories of being a kid and having kids, they are hard to let go of. My darling mom used to make four kinds of cookies: Nellie’s thin, crisp sugar cookies, light as air, cut into trees and bells and stars and sprinkled with colored sugar and tiny sugar balls. Mom had those biggish tiny silver balls, too—the ones that came in a little plastic bottle that said, “not edible” on it. Like, you sell cookie decorations that people aren’t supposed to eat? (Char brags that she’s eaten thousands of those things—but the brag seems to assume that she’s presently in perfect health. Who knows—maybe that’s what makes her hair curl when it snows?) I see in my mind all of my children crowded around the table, hands full of cookie cutters (we had more than three), rolling out lumps of dough—green, yellow, red, sometimes blue—cookie sheets to the side full of shapes, waiting to be sugared. “The Holly and the Ivy” playing in the background—always that album, Tab Choir from way back.

Mom (and by that, I mean my mother, and by extension, me) did these almond flavored candy cane cookies—two sets of dough, red and white, twisted together and shaped into the cane, sprinkled with crushed peppermint. I think about that now, how odd about the almond flavor—but they’re good. Really good. And I always looked for the ones that had gotten just a little too sprinkled, the ones with the thin shell of melted peppermint caught in the crook.

And what my dad called reindeer drops; formally known as Russian Tea Cakes. Also almond. Tiny, dry, sugarless (but oh-so-shorteninged and nutted) balls rolled in powdered sugar. And stained glass window cookies, the kind you make and shape into rolls, refrigerated till they could be cut into coins. These were a brown sugar kind of dough, as I recall, studded with gum drop slices.

I used to be religious about making these things. Dining room table, for a week dusted with flour. Kids, for a week dusted with flour. Bits of very sticky gum drops all over the place. Cookie sheets on permanent release from storage. House smelling like heaven.

But all that was in the days before we discovered that hips and diabetes were running rampant in the world.

Now, it’s can’t eat ‘em, won’t make ‘em.

The only sin I am now willing to commit in that wise has to involve chocolate. Dark chocolate. And mint. And if not those, then brittle—often cashew—always, now, made beautifully in the microwave, and only one batch. My sis-in-law tells me that the best way of melting chocolate is to leave it in the oven with the light on—no other heat. Takes an over-night commitment, but anything that promises to do the work for me is worth trying.

And I am giving up Christmas Cards. I never loved doing them—although I do love the art and/or sentiment you get with really good cards. And I dearly love the feeling of connecting with folks you don’t see often, don’t know so well anymore but still feel a connection to (up with which I will not put?) But stress? Take the picture, get the film developed, take it home and decide which one is THE one, take it back to the printer, get dozens—then write the letter (one page, one side, brilliant, witty, loving, informative—no pressure), then decorate the letter, print the letter, fold the letter, stuff the envelopes, print the labels (and already, I was moving a step away from “personal” with those dang labels –which I had to re-learn how, exactly, to print every darn year all over again), affix charming postage, mail. Then collect returned letters, edit database.

My mom had this really weird copy-making set up. The reality of it is relegated only to the fringes of memory, it was at once so strange and so mysterious. She had this little box of gel stuff, shallow and paper-sized. And she’d type up a letter, the stick it face down on that gel. Somehow, the ink would migrate into the gel, and then she could make copies by putting paper down on the gel. I don’t know. I remember mom and dad both hunched over that thing. And I also remember that when you tried to read the copies, you felt suspiciously like you must not have had enough sleep—

To think that I even consider giving all that up. Tsk. No, again, gotta admit, love this (wish there was another word) blog thing. I love the number of pictures I can stick up here – in color, any size, the equivalent of dozens of prints (many of which from past years are now artifacts, still stuffed into various boxes in various cabinets all over the house). I can write thirty pages if I want. I can offer news, or philosophy or simply say: read the year’s collected essays for the larger portrait. Or the people who I love, to whom I am heart connected— people I wish to hug long distance can simply scroll through the pictures without the pain of wading through my words.

And I still have the benefit of getting returned mail and editing databases. With the chance that maybe somebody who gets the card will say “Hi and Merry” back again, which is all the more fun.I am certain to disappoint some folks with this. And I am truly sorry about that. But as life goes on, I guess I do, too—so this is pretty much my plan now.

So much of our tradition goes untouched—the garland bows hung, the tree—now semi-perma-lit—over-burdened with memories, hand-made or other-wise. We sing. We sneak around. We open the big attic boxes to find jolts of memory in ever nook—long-time decorations, bits of past wrapping paper, forgotten delights all made new in the crisp light of winter and the renewed sharp scent of pine and peppermint.

Of course, I push to the background the fact that the most important parts are starting to go missing: Ginna in Missouri, Murphy some time very soon to some unknown quarter of the world, Charlotte soon enough to Japan or somewhere. Cam and Lorri will probably stay close, as their living and home-choice dictates. But they are their own family now, and we will do more going calling than simply calling from the bottom of the stairs.

I guess, then, that it is only in the way of things that I change these little parts of our traditions, a sort of pre-curser for years to come, when there will be new small faces to fill with wonder and chase from over-laden trees, when our rituals expand into new rooms of new houses, and Guy and I will have only each other to wake to on Christmas morning. I still find mortal life puzzling. Just when I get used to it, just when I grow up enough to really enjoy something, it somehow grows past me. But I guess that’s what makes life so terribly sweet—the fact of each moment’s rarity.

The Family Christmas Picture

Gin’s husband Kris, and Cam’s Lorri were both off on matters of business when we shot this—

 

at the last minute, of course, and just before Gin was going to leave.

They are also adored.

I always end with a wish for those I love. This year my wish is, as I think it really always is, that our every coming moment be a good investment, that time, effort, craft, artistry, ritual – all of these things be put in their proper places—that love will swell and grow to fill all spaces, usurp all tasks, burst all business and leave us with great, gashing leaps of heart joy. Something that will last. Something that can be passed down from mother to mother to mother—from sister to brother to nephew to daughter—never palling.

May you have the Merriest, and most meaningful of Christmases.

God bless us, please—

each and every one.

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