Home for the holidays

All Is Calm, All Is Bright

At this time of year I lean in two different directions, I can be disturbed and made moody by the short cold days of December, or as hours of daylight shrink I can find wonder in the dark. This morning, December 13th, I woke in the still quiet not knowing if it was night or day yet. Slipping out of a toasty bed to quench a thirst, I saw it was seven am. I had the luxury of sleep while some of my community were making toast in their kitchens, or heating up vehicles in the dark. 

      I’ve shared complains about the dreariness of limited hours of daylight, but on this dark morning, with a slip of moon shining through the clouds, and streetlights still on and reflecting off the snow, I felt the dim light differently. Today in Calgary, Alberta where we live there will only be daylight until four-thirty pm, and even less tomorrow. So, what was it that struck me standing in my bare feet with the door open to the outside, noticing rabbit tracks across the yard in the remaining moonlight?

       My Christmas to-do list is daunting; order the turkey (darn get that turkey!), finish shopping for this gift and that one, check supply of tissue, ribbons and bows, wrap and wrap and wrap, make cranberry sauce and butter tarts and shortbread, find the perfect tree, decorate the imperfect tree we get, make guest rooms look inviting instead of like store rooms for miscellaneous, and on and on and on. Yet something switched this morning to my “there’s too much darkness, I’m swamped, and tired” psych?

         Could it possibly be the wonder of the season? I’ve recently learned of St. Lucy’s Day – a Scandinavian celebration that takes place today – Dec. 13th ,  marking the end of the longest darkest nights, bringing warmth and hope during winter. St. Lucy Day coincides with the winter solstice in the Julian calendar, and honours St. Lucia who distributed food during a great famine, and so this day celebrates light in darkness, as well as hope and charity. Friends and family gather together to joyously light candles, sing carols and relish gingerbread and saffron-flavoured buns. 

      And so, it was this morning, that I felt that shift, from dreading the long hours of darkness to anticipating the coming together of loved ones. I’m counting the days until our house will sparkle with lit up rooms, the doorway will be crowded with winter boots, and conversation and laughter will ring out around that yet to be decorated Christmas tree. This year we’ll have the gift of a new grandson coming home for relatives to adore. We’ll break bread (and butter tarts) with those we love. And in the darkness, there will be an abundance of light. 

A toast to American Thanksgiving and Kids Coming Home

In honour of American Thanksgiving I’d like to repost a blog I wrote some time ago celebrating the tradition of young adults coming home from college for the first long weekend break. In it I shared a glimpse into our household during a Canadian November reading break and my eldest returning to the noisy house of siblings she’d left behind.  So I give you this from Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest – only the nest wasn’t empty back then – just reeling from the departure of the eldest…

It went like this :

And so we had Zoë with us for her short fall reading break.  On the Friday and Saturday nights the house filled up with family and three or four of her best friends.  But Sunday, close to dusk, each of my four kids trickled back home from separate outings.   From upstairs I could hear them talking softly in the living room.  Coming down I found them in the dark – the boys showing their affection for their sisters in their odd boy way.  They had dog piled on Zoë and Lily.  It was reassuring to witness them that way, like a big pile of puppies heaped on top of each other.

One of my few friends with children older than mine had warned me that Zoë would have changed.  “I know it hasn’t been long,” she said, “but trust me, she’ll be different, more grown-up.  You’ll see.”  I had been nervous.  I didn’t want her to change, or even grow up particularly.  I would still rather spend a small part of my evenings driving her to piano lessons or to her girlfriends’ houses instead of e-mailing her in Vancouver or fighting for phone time with her long distance boyfriend.  But my friend was right.  My eldest daughter was different.  Oh, she didn’t have a total epiphany or anything.  She didn’t say, “Mommy I’ve realized how burdened you’ve been looking after us four kids.  Put your feet up and let me vacuum up the nacho crumbs before I massage your tired shoulders.”

But she was different.  I noticed that the first evening she was back as we lingered around the table after dinner, bombarding her with questions. It was a look on her face, a quality it was hard to put my finger on, except to say that she had drifted away a little bit.  I had gazed around the room at the others, Cole and Hudson and Lily, and imagined us all reuniting after future ventures.  Zoë swore that she would travel to the far north someday, being captivated by the notion of a trip to Yellowknife of even Inuvik, whereas Cole insisted he was going to snowboard in the southern hemisphere in Queenstown, New Zealand.  Hudson was harder to pin down –I think he aspired to travel back and forth in time, and back then I wrongly viewed Lily as a home body.

christmas bird-1In the upcoming Christmas season I would be happy to imagine them all staying put.  I was going to pretend for the three weeks that Zoë would be home that she had never left.  We would decorate a too tall, slightly lope-sided tree together and Will would insist once more on putting up the pissed-off looking angel Zoë made in kindergarten.  I wanted it to be a holiday season full of my kids dog piling on top of one another, and watching Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, all of us singing aloud to the Sisters’ song –

‘All kinds of weatherWe stick togetherThe same in the rain or sunTwo diff’rent facesBut in tight placesWe think and we act as one‘ [1]

I intended to encourage Zoë to humor Lily and I, and come skating with us on the lake near their grandparent’s property, after which we three would go for steamers, before coming home to whip up a batch of date-filled butter tarts for Christmas Eve.  She’d be impatient to go hang with her friends, (who would happily devour the butter tarts), but I hoped I could convince her to indulge us with a skate around the lake first.  I’d ask, but I promised myself to be a grown-up about it and not harass her to join us – just to ask.  She needed time to reconnect with her same-age peers.  At ages eighteen and thirteen my daughters couldn’t really act as one, but I knew that on Christmas Eve they would raise their voices together and happily sing about it.wooden santa

You hear it both ways.  Some people say girls are easier than boys.  “Oh, no, no, no,” others will tell you, “boys are easier”.  I’m not sure what exactly easier encompasses.  Easier to get along with?  Easier to discipline?  Easier to lose your mind worrying over? I do know that when Zoë went off to study art at Emily Carr – I thought a mother must only feel this out of sorts once.  But a year later I had to launch, as they say in those swishy mother circles, her exuberant brother, Cole.  Kids being kids, no two alike, and all that, there was hardly an ounce of knowledge I could borrow from Zoë leaving our nest when Cole decided to follow suit…

Happy Thanksgiving from your Canadian friends and if you want to read more of Text Me, Love Mom and the rest of all that …please check out http://www.amazon.ca/Text-Me-Love-Mom-Girls/dp/1771800712

[1] Berlin, Irving. “Sisters.” Lyrics. White Christmas. The Movie. 1954

Life’s Funny

Life’s funny – that was something my dad said. And he’s right – life is funny. In later years he ‘d always tell us, “Thanks for the call,” after a phone conversation, making sure we knew how appreciative he was. And when we were saying goodbye after a visit, he liked to tell us, “The latch key is always out,” reminding us how welcome we were.  I can picture him saying those things while sitting in the big comfy chair that he’d made room for in their kitchen, toothpicks in his pocket, the newspaper on his lap, a cup of coffee if it was morning, tea if it was midday, at his elbow. In this image my mom is at the table counting their daily pills and vitamins into a days-of-the-week container. 

My dad has been gone three years. I wish ‘gone’ met he’d left home, maybe ran away before they had to move into a senior’s residence. But no, my dad has died. I worry my kids or grandkids will forget him if I fail to verbalize all his dad-isms, so I repeat them frequently and pray that they are listening and remembering. 

And life is funny, isn’t it? What, I wonder will they say about me – those kids and grandkids of mine? Will it be my too familiar – love the ones you’re with? (Meaning stop staring at your phone.) Mostly, I hope I’m passing on what my dad passed on, imagining I hold counsel  with much of what he believed in. He was a man of strong family values, maybe old-fashioned (he was born in 1928) but here’s hoping everything is new again. 

My dad believed in taking the family on a summer camping holiday every year. He believed in Sunday dinner and especially Sunday drives. Until he gave up his license at age eighty-six, he would help my mom into the car and together they’d do a thirty-mile circle from their city through the town he grew up in, stopping for egg rolls or ice cream as they drove through the rolling foothills.

He believed in a seafood feast on Christmas Eve and buying gifts, never gift certificates, though he’d cajole my sisters and I into shopping for our mom, on his behalf. He believed in going out for coffee in coffee shops, if not with our mom, then with his brothers. He had strong feelings about how kids should learn to skate and ride bikes, and as a frustrated non-swimmer he made sure all of his five kids were at least semi-accomplished aquanauts.

He believed in a beer with cheese and crackers before dinner, and tea and dessert afterwards. I remember that even on those camping trips in the woods, while mom prepared dinner on a coalman stove, he’d serve up our appetizers of sharp cheddar and crackers. Their after dinner campsite tea would be accompanied by a tin of something sweet from home. He always said chocolate cake should be served with red jello and a bit of whipped cream. 

My dad believed in picnics in the mountains as a weekend treat. We started the same tradition when our kids were babies. It never failed that they would fall sound asleep on the way and be left to dream, while my husband and I enjoyed the peace and our packed lunch. My dad believed you cover a sleeping person with a blanket, even in warm weather. It’s hard for me to resist copying that bit of coziness. 

Have I adopted all of his tenets to pass along? He believed in real cloth handkerchiefs and always had one in his pocket (yuk), and also carried wooden toothpicks. I prefer the plastic variety. He believed in connecting with the person serving you a coffee with a sampling of his wry humor. I’m not nearly as funny as he was, but I do try to get a smile. Who could argue with his stanch believe that family should come home for Christmas. We gathered around a table laden with baked salmon, a still icy shrimp ring, and fried oysters. My mom’s background was Ukrainian and so we dined on perogies, cabbage rolls and garlic sausage at Easter time, but on Christmas Eve my dad crushed crackers with a big glass rolling pin and us kids helped roll the oysters in the crumbs for her to crispy fry for our feast. 

Oddly, my kids don’t care for oysters, at least not cracker coated and fried, but I do them up every December 24thanyway, and talk about my dad and how the family feast meant the world to him.

It’s impossible to celebrate without invoking my dad’s memory and sharing his beliefs with those gathered around. My mom was his north star and his biggest belief was in his love for her. She gifted me with another set of values – the wonders of what she held to be true. Let me tell you about those in my next blog. And remember – do love the ones you’re with. 

I’ll Be Home For Christmas

As I hustle and bustle and get ready for three of my grown and flown kids to return for Christmas,  and dream of a little bit of snow, I thought I’d post my reader’s favorite holiday blog.

“I’ll be home for Christmas; you can count on me” … such simple words, but where is home? – I suppose my immediate answer is where my mom and dad are.  I did spend all my Christmas’s with my folks until I became a parent myself – I recall the bustle of Christmas Eve, so pleasurably and wildly chaotic with five siblings and later  girlfriends and boyfriends and always so much to do, the early dusk arriving and still wrapping perfume sets, or walkie talkies  and macramé plant hangers, someone calling out for tape, or shouting for their turn in the shower, or sneaking into the once-a-year-special marshmallow peanut butter squares, too sugary delicious to wait for, then curling our hair for church and marching through snow drifts to get to the car.

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“Please have snow and mistletoe And presents under the tree” … And suddenly there was a transition.  I was married with our first little baby and though my parent’s house was just a ten minute drive away – home had shifted.  I wanted to leave the jumble of family at my parents and wake up with my tiny girl and husband to share something sweet together around our first tippy decorated tree.  Since all those years ago we’ve usually managed a crazy mix of several homes, my parent’s, mine and my in-law’s  -except the two years that we brought home our wee baby boys, both born weeks before the holiday.  Those years we stayed put on the coast where my husband was in law school, more for the baby’s sake and mine.  On each of those home came to us – our parents or siblings arriving with tiny outfits and trinkets to fill the stockings of bright new Christmas babies.

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“Christmas Eve will find me, Where the love light gleams”…   My four kids are grown and have almost always come home for Christmas.  I’ve felt the exhilaration of them returning from university with plane loads of students, most thrilled to be away leaving independent lives, but back in parents arms at the airport you can hear the audible sigh of home. The first year that one of our four didn’t join us for the big unwrap fest and Christmas morning wife saver egg strata with o.j and champaign, all three of the females in the family hid our weepy tears. Our eldest son was gainfully employed working through the holiday season as a liftie on the slopes of Whistler resort, and the rest of us couldn’t have been more conscious of the miles and miles between him and home as we steamed the Christmas pudding, carved turkey and settled in around the table.

“I’ll be home for Christmas….” Of course, home is here now in this house where I raised my kids. I’m cooking today for Christmas Eve. In the wee hours I searched through recipes for something new, thinking that perhaps I’d switch it up, try a fish pie or seafood casserole, but sometimes you just want the same in this life.  Like the year I finally got too embarrassed of the poorly stitched oddly shaped stockings I’d made when the kids were small.  I bought lovely, bright, too big felt ones – who knew that my four darlings were quite attached to my sloppy efforts from years past?  I imagine they’ll be looking for the same old-same old Christmas Eve fare – cracker crumb fried oysters, rice pilaf and rich butter tarts.

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It’s quiet in the house this morning. Snow is falling in the backyard, covering the urban rabbit tracks.  The peace will change soon with adult kids home for the holidays, coming and going, calling out to each other. Tape will be missing again and showers coveted.  But that same son, who left us for Whistler years back, had a rare chance to go travelling.  We’ll try to be more grown up about it.  He’s in Thailand where I imagine on the eve of the 24th in a quiet moment it’ll be odd for him, too.  He’ll imagine us gathered around the tree or the table and maybe, despite his exotic location, he’ll close his eyes and for a few moments – our boy be home for Christmas, if only in his dreams…

You can still purchase Text Me, Love Mom tales for a mom on your list (or a feel-good gift for yourself) online and in print at  http://www.amazon.com/Text-Me-Love-Mom-Girls/dp/1771800712 

A toast to American Thanksgiving and Kids Coming Home

In honour of American Thanksgiving and the tradition of young adults coming home for the first long weekend from college, I wanted to share a glimpse into our household during the Canadian November reading break and the first time my eldest returned to the noisy house of siblings she’d left behind.  So I give you this from Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest – only the nest wasn’t empty yet – just reeling from the departure of the eldest…

And so we had Zoë with us for her short fall reading break.  On the Friday and Saturday nights the house filled up with family and three or four of her best friends.  But Sunday, close to dusk, each of my four kids trickled back home from separate outings.   From upstairs I could hear them talking softly in the living room.  Coming down I found them in the dark – the boys showing their affection for their sisters in their odd boy way.  They had dog piled on Zoë and Lily.  It was reassuring to witness them that way, like a big pile of puppies heaped on top of each other.

One of my few friends with children older than mine had warned me that Zoë would have changed.  “I know it hasn’t been long,” she said, “but trust me, she’ll be different, more grown-up.  You’ll see.”  I had been nervous.  I didn’t want her to change, or even grow up particularly.  I would still rather spend a small part of my evenings driving her to piano lessons or to her girlfriends’ houses instead of e-mailing her in Vancouver or fighting for phone time with her long distance boyfriend.  But my friend was right.  My eldest daughter was different.  Oh, she didn’t have a total epiphany or anything.  She didn’t say, “Mommy I’ve realized how burdened you’ve been looking after us four kids.  Put your feet up and let me vacuum up the nacho crumbs before I massage your tired shoulders.”

But she was different.  I noticed that the first evening she was back as we lingered around the table after dinner, bombarding her with questions. It was a look on her face, a quality it was hard to put my finger on, except to say that she had drifted away a little bit.  I had gazed around the room at the others, Cole and Hudson and Lily, and imagined us all reuniting after future ventures.  Zoë swore that she would travel to the far north someday, being captivated by the notion of a trip to Yellowknife of even Inuvik, whereas Cole insisted he was going to snowboard in the southern hemisphere in Queenstown, New Zealand.  Hudson was harder to pin down –I think he aspired to travel back and forth in time, and back then I wrongly viewed Lily as a home body.

christmas bird-1In the upcoming Christmas season I would be happy to imagine them all staying put.  I was going to pretend for the three weeks that Zoë would be home that she had never left.  We would decorate a too tall, slightly lope-sided tree together and Will would insist once more on putting up the pissed-off looking angel Zoë made in kindergarten.  I wanted it to be a holiday season full of my kids dog piling on top of one another, and watching Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, all of us singing aloud to the Sisters’ song –

‘All kinds of weatherWe stick togetherThe same in the rain or sunTwo diff’rent facesBut in tight placesWe think and we act as one‘ [1]

I intended to encourage Zoë to humor Lily and I, and come skating with us on the lake near their grandparent’s property, after which we three would go for steamers, before coming home to whip up a batch of date-filled butter tarts for Christmas Eve.  She’d be impatient to go hang with her friends, (who would happily devour the butter tarts), but I hoped I could convince her to indulge us with a skate around the lake first.  I’d ask, but I promised myself to be a grown-up about it and not harass her to join us – just to ask.  She needed time to reconnect with her same-age peers.  At ages eighteen and thirteen my daughters couldn’t really act as one, but I knew that on Christmas Eve they would raise their voices together and happily sing about it.wooden santa

You hear it both ways.  Some people say girls are easier than boys.  “Oh, no, no, no,” others will tell you, “boys are easier”.  I’m not sure what exactly easier encompasses.  Easier to get along with?  Easier to discipline?  Easier to lose your mind worrying over? I do know that when Zoë went off to study art at Emily Carr – I thought a mother must only feel this out of sorts once.  But a year later I had to launch, as they say in those swishy mother circles, her exuberant brother, Cole.  Kids being kids, no two alike, and all that, there was hardly an ounce of knowledge I could borrow from Zoë leaving our nest when Cole decided to follow suit…

Happy Thanksgiving from your Canadian friends and if you want to read more of Text Me, Love Mom and the rest of all that …please check out http://www.amazon.ca/Text-Me-Love-Mom-Girls/dp/1771800712

[1] Berlin, Irving. “Sisters.” Lyrics. White Christmas. The Movie. 1954

A Spoonful of Christmas Sugar

I have to stop, take a break and realize ….I’m stressed – but I’m happy. Happy that I have almost all of my family home.  We’ve marked another year – Christmas to Christmas.  I sprung out of bed in the dim morning light– with visions of butter tarts, not sugar plums, in my spinning Christmas Eve head.

The house was peaceful and silent while I whipped egg whites and chopped dates for the buttery tarts, everyone else still dreaming of a white Christmas – but the household is hopping now.  My husband just rushed out for some mysterious last minute shopping.  Cole, our eldest son has had to make his morning green smoothie amongst my cooking mess, and then he flew off to replace a left-behind cord for his camera to enable him to record all aspects of the planned Christmas Eve merry, merry merry-making.  His brother, Hudson, slept later, not at all panicked about gifts he still has to find with so many males of the same ilk, who will flock to the malls.

Lily, our youngest daughter has found the two of us the Mary Poppins movie on the kitchen television and is going to wrap, tape and festoon her carefully selected gifts with bows, while I try to focus on the next special dessert – and we both sing along to Chim Chim Cherrie and A Spoonful of Sugar.

mary poppins  I’m scattered, getting out the fancy dishes one minute, mashing potatoes for the Romanoff the next, only to be interrupted by a call for more tape, and then seeing the tree needs to be watered, before locating the chocolate mint pie recipe and texting hubby to remember the whip cream.

For only the second time ever in thirty years our kids will not all be present – but our eldest, Zoe, is bound to have a jolly holly time with her husband and sweet small daughters – who will share their excitement for the Big Guy in the red suit’s arrival with their other grandparents in a cozy cottage in the mountains.  So I tell my other grown kids, who feel a little blue about missing their big sister – we need to share her, and we’re sharing her with good people. All truly is fine.

I am the mom.  And I do ‘manage’ Christmas in the house like so, so many moms.  And I see that the clock is ticking and the iconic wife saver (egg strata) for tomorrow’s breakfast isn’t made, the crackers for tonight’s oysters must be crushed, the salmon dressed, and the cream whipped and the stockings found and the punch stirred, and the chaos tidied, and on and on and on.

But I’ll slow my thoughts, concentrate on the melting butter on the stove and my daughter humming along to ‘A Spoon Full of Sugar’ with Mary Poppins and having my big family in the same house (almost) and let peace and joy settle over me. And I wish that for you, too – in this holiday season and throughout the year. xo

May Your Hearts Be Merry and Light

Two of our four children were born at Christmas time.  Despite the deep fatigue and life changing chaos, those were extra special holidays – with sweet teeny babes in floppy elf sleepers, snuggled in a grandparent’s eager arms while tree lights twinkled in the background. Eighteen years after those births, when our first ‘child’ had been away for the first time to university for three long months of not-enough-communication, those holidays times were extra special again.

elf baby

I remember so clearly the anticipation of Zoë coming home to sleep in her bed again at the close of first term and how giddy that made the rest of the household as we searched for the tree stand and the rice krispee roll recipe. I wrote about that in my book Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest – and I’d like to share a snippet of that here in a holiday blog.

“Zoë was different after being at university.  I noticed that the first evening she was back as we lingered around the table after dinner, bombarding her with questions. It was a look on her face, a quality it was hard to put my finger on, except to say that she had drifted away a little bit.  I had gazed around the room at her siblings, her brothers Cole and Hudson, and her little sister Lily, and imagined us all reuniting after future ventures.  Zoë swore that she would travel to the far north someday, being captivated by the notion of a trip to Yellowknife or even Inuvik.  Cole insisted he was going to snowboard in the southern hemisphere.  Hudson was harder to pin down –I think he aspired to travel back and forth in time, and back then I wrongly viewed our youngest,  Lily, as a home body.

paper angel

During the holiday season I would be happy to imagine them all simply staying put.  I was going to pretend for the three weeks that Zoë would be home that she had never left.  We would decorate a too tall, slightly lope-sided tree together and my husband would insist once more on putting up the goofy looking angel Zoë made in kindergarten.  I wanted it to be a holiday season full of my kids dog piling on top of one another, and watching Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, all of us singing aloud to the Sisters’ song –

‘All kinds of weather

We stick together 

The same in the rain or sun 

Two diff’rent faces

 But in tight places

 We think and we act as one‘ [1]

I intended to encourage Zoë to humor Lily and I, and come skating with us on the lake near their grandparent’s property, after which we three would go for lattés, before coming home to whip up a batch of butter tarts for Christmas Eve.  I knew Zoë would be impatient to go hang with her friends, but I hoped to convince her to indulge us with a skate around the lake first.  I’d ask, but I promised to be a grown-up about it myself and not harass her to join us – just to ask.

shea skating

She needed time to reconnect with her same-age peers.  At ages eighteen and thirteen my daughters couldn’t really act as one, but I knew that on Christmas Eve they would raise their voices with Bing Crosby’s and happily sing about it.”

New babies and growing up children – both added loveliness to the holidays.  May this season bring tranquility to you and yours.

christmas bird-1

[1] Berlin, Irving. “Sisters.” Lyrics. White Christmas. The Movie. 1954