10 Favorite days:

• My reunion with E.
• Taking Jake to see The Martian. He and I had both read and loved the book, so I wanted to see it with him. He, Kendell, my sister-in-law Cindy, and I went to see it together, after getting dinner at Pork Belly’s.
• The day we made jam. The day before we left for southern Utah this summer, my friend Evelyn gave me two enormous bags of plums from her tree. I ran to Target for containers while I had Jake and Nathan pit the plums. When I got home, it looked like someone had been murdered in my kitchen—plum sprays everywhere! But they pitted them all, and I made jam. It is by far the best jam I’ve ever made. Those plums were exquisite.
• This summer, Haley did pharmacy shifts at different Smith’s throughout Utah. One day she worked in Salt Lake, and we had to run up there too, so when she got off we met her and took her to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory at Trolley Square. We parked on the top of the parking garage and the city looked so pretty, all lit up, and that’s my favorite Spaghetti Factory because it’s the one we went to when I was a kid. So I remembered, and we talked, and it was just a good, fun night.
• The restaurant Jake (and Nathan!) works for is called Pizza Pie Café. He’s become an expert pizza-dough tosser (last year for his birthday, his gift was a piece of fake pizza dough, to use for practicing!), and when the Summerfest parade needed entries, PPC got involved. Jake walked the parade route with his work friends, tossing dough. I loved seeing him! (I love parades in general. Cheesy, but true.)
• Our day at Lagoon. That’s an amusement park in Utah. We haven’t been in four or five years, but Kendell’s work got us tickets, so we all went. (Haley met us there.) It was so much fun! Kaleb was finally tall enough to ride everything, and we got to ride the newest ride, Cannibal, three times, despite the long line. (We just managed to hit it at all the right times.)
• The day this fall when Becky called me and said “do you want to run 8 miles with me this morning?” and I said “yes!” and then we met at the Jordan River Trail and ran 8 miles together.
• The day this summer when Kaleb was bored, so I took him to a new park in Springville that has a pond, and we went swimming together and I taught him how to swim on his back.
• Shopping at Nordstrom this December with my friend Chris. Every December they have a special night of shopping that you have to be invited to. The store is closed unless you have a ticket, and there is food and hot beverages and champagne. We didn’t cross many things off our shopping list but we had a ball together. We laughed, we joked, we tried on clothes, we resisted the champagne. I love our friendship!
• The night this December when I came out late from work. It was snowing, and the light from the parking lights made the snow sparkle, and off in the distance I could see my van—cleared of snow! Nathan and Kendell had driven by to pick up pizza and noticed the snow. So on their way home, they stopped and cleared off my car. It was such a sweet feeling to discover it!

9 things that made me happy:

• Nathan’s basketball success. He played on his junior high team and then made the sophomore team at his high school.
• Jake’s hard work paying off in his ACT score. He took an ACT prep and then did extra studying in the summer. He pulled off a 30!
• New tulips & daffodils. Last October I planted a bunch of new bulbs. It was so fun to see them come up this spring.
• I hiked the Y nearly every Wednesday this summer. It’s the most crowded trail in Utah County, so I felt pretty safe doing it on my own, even though I always headed up into the canyon past the Y. There’s a cliff there that I would climb up on, to drink some water and maybe eat a snack and meditate a little bit.
• I mowed the lawn almost every Monday. I think Jake mowed it once, Nathan twice, Kendell once, and I did it all the other times. I love mowing the lawn.
• I found a new place to try that does myofascial massage. Throughout January, February, and March, my legs looked like someone had beat me up, but by the beginning of March my hamstring pain was almost gone.
• One of the fourth-grade projects at Kaleb’s school is to build a castle for Medieval Days. Using four empty Pringles cans, an old shoe box, and lots of glue & grey paint, we made an awesome one! (Not quite so successful were his Utah History and Environmental Science dioramas. Sort of ran out of steam and creative energy for those.)
• The next best thing to having a cat of our own: Aunt Cindy’s cat had five kittens. Kaleb tried to go to their house as much as possible, to hang out with kitties. It was pretty much the best thing ever.
• We saw Haley a lot more this year. Especially this summer, when she was working at so many different pharmacies. She even spent a couple of nights at my sister’s house and it gave me a very specific happy feeling to know they were together.

8 songs/CDs that will always remind me of 2015:

• How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence + the Machine (training for my half marathon)
• My Favourite Faded Fantasy by Damien Rice (driving to the U of U hospital after my mom’s spinal fusion surgery)
• 25 by Adele (cooking on Thanksgiving eve & morning with Haley)
• “Wonderful” by Adam Ant (our day at Lagoon)
• “Hold Back the River” by James Bay (our hiking trip in Southern Utah)
• “Renegades” by X Ambassadors (running in the summer mornings)
• “Till it’s Gone” by YelaWolf (I sung this to myself whenever I needed courage with teenagers)
• "First" by Cold War Kids (the day Becky & I went hiking)

7 Medical conditions:

• Shingles (Nathan…when I called the pediatrician and said “I think my 15-year-old has shingles” they said “We don’t believe you” but my diagnosis was right, unusual as it is for a teenager)
• Sliced-open finger (Amy…I should’ve had it stitched but it happened about twelve hours before we left for Disneyland and I didn’t have time, so I carried Bandaids in my backpack and changed it about 27 times a day)
• Bruised meniscus (Nathan…we are hoping it really is just bruised and not torn, or that he can get through the basketball season before needing surgery. The doc drained about 60cc’s of swelling off it and that helped immensely, along with an awesome PT)
• Capsulitis (Amy…2^nd toe on the left. It’s still not better. I don’t want surgery. But I might not be able to avoid it. I’ll get my bunion fixed at the same time if I have to.)
• No one had the stomach flu. That is a Sorensen Family Miracle.
• Dermatological issues: Haley and Nathan started doing acne treatments, Jake had two moles removed, Haley had one mole removed, Nathan had four warts removed, Kaleb had one wart removed.
• Open heart surgery: Kendell. (This is listed last because it was, obviously, the biggest, hardest medical thing we had. To do it once is one thing; to do it again, entirely another. He is a trooper.)

6 Interesting facts (one about each of us)

• Kendell: made a ton of progress on his degree and will graduate in the spring.
• Amy: I got a new responsibility at work; I get to buy all of the poetry and essay books.
• Haley: Ended up taking the same Spanish class as her cousin Hilary. They are both minoring in el Espanol.
• Jake: Went to Disneyland with his Parli team.
• Nathan: Learned how to drive.
• Kaleb: Fell in love with scary movies.

5 Favorite family photos (of some configuration or another)

Easter 2015

The kids at Kaleb's 10th birthday dinner

The boys on Father's Day

Kendell and Amy at Calf Creek Falls (this is pure romance for us!)

Our family on Thanksgiving, courtesy of the timer on my camera. I wanted this to be our Christmas card pic, but I'm out of focus and so is Nathan (although, the one I used is not much better).

4 New things we got:

• A new set of pans. (I got rid of almost all of my non-stick, except for a little frying pan, because who can make eggs on a stainless steel pan? Not me!)
• Couches for the basement. Our old couch was seriously old and ugly and broken, thanks to rambunctious teenagers & their boyfriends (who shall remain nameless).
• Tile in our master bathroom shower. It’s pretty again, but even better is how easy it is to clean.
• Paint, crown molding, and shutters in our bedroom. Honestly…I don’t love the shutters as now the room is dark all the time. But I love the paint, which is     a pale grey.

3 Places we went:

• Disneyland (Amy & Kaleb in February)
• Southern Utah (Jake to Lake Powell and Nathan to Zion in the summer)
• Southern Utah (Kendell & Amy—Canyonlands, Arches, & Bryce Canyon National Parks)

2 Discoveries:

• Thai Village (their curry is the best! Kendell and I always knew this, but Jake and Nathan have discovered it as well)
• School lunch (Kaleb discovered he could eat lunch from the cafeteria; this is the first year he hasn’t eaten lunch from home, so mornings are a little bit smoother!)

1 Summary for the year:

• Unexpected changes brought us both struggles and surprises; I think we understand each other a little bit better and feel stronger for surviving.

One of my favorite moments this Christmas was watching old Christmas videos with the kids. We always videotape Christmas mornings, but we haven’t watched them for ages—some, we haven’t ever watched. We picked them at random, one when Kaleb was a baby, the year we gave the Bigs DSs. I told Kendell he should find a really old one, so he put in the tape from Christmas 2001. This was a hard Christmas for us. Kendell had been unemployed for a year, and that month he had spent two weeks working in New York on computers damaged in the 9-11 attacks. Our Christmas was entirely provided by a secret Santa (who was my sister-in-law, I’m 99% certain), and while that act brought me much peace (not for the gifts themselves, but for the fact that it made me feel seen, even though the seeing itself couldn’t save us), it didn’t erase the deep fear that always ran through me. What would happen to us?

But as I watched that video, I didn’t remember my sadness and fear. What I remembered was how that felt, loving those three sweet little ones. Haley, at six, was a miniature version of who she is now, loving her brothers but also slightly bossy. Every single gift of Nathan’s (who was barely two) was opened by Haley, part way, and then he cheerfully took it from her and finished. Nathan, too, seemed like a tinier copy of himself, cheerful and bubbly.

But Jake.

Oh my little Jakey. I had forgotten how…Jake he was. At very nearly four years old. I don’t have a word for it—I’ve never had a word for it. For his essential Jacob self, which was kind and helpful and sweet and good.

At the start of the video, the kids are standing at the end of the hall, lined up like turtles, waiting to go into the front room to see if Santa came. Jake is whispering let us see, let us see, and the excitement emanating from him is almost palapable.

He was so happy. So happy.

It wasn’t just Christmas-day happiness. I looked back at pictures today, on his 18^th birthday, and I remembered: part of his essential Jakey self was his happiness.

I saw it in that video. I see it in the photos. I have it in my memory.

But I don’t see it much in the Jake I know now
.

Unlike Haley and Nathan, he has changed—in his deepest, essential self. He has lost that happiness that used to surround him like a halo. I have worried and ached and despaired and prayed—over my sweet Jake. Seeing that video, I could finally see it clearly. Why I am in the same room with him but miss him: his happiness, the unique, undefinable quality that defined him, is missing.

Today he turns 18. Life is waiting for him. He has a scholar­ship and another scholarship. He can be anything he want. I’m excited to see what he does with his potential. Who he becomes.

But more than anything, I want to help him find his happiness again. I want him to have the grown-up version of that joy he used to carry. I always worried the world would strip it from him (it is one of the abiding themes of all my journal entries about him), that I wouldn’t be mother enough to save it. Who has happiness in this world? Jake did, though. I don’t know—is it just adolescence? Or is it more?

In the video from 14 years ago, Jake hugs me after he opens a gift. It was a Rescue Hero (remember those?) but it doesn’t matter what it was. What matters, now, was him hugging me. Was being reminded of who he was and what he lost and how he’s changed. I want him to find it again, that happiness. I want him to be who he is.

I don’t quite know how to help him yet. But at least now I can see we need to start.

Back in November, when I was trying to come to grips with the fact that Christmas would, indeed, come again, I started trying to think of what I could change within myself to help Christmas go more smoothly than it did last year. I made a list: let go of trying to make things perfect, enjoy the good moments as they come, get enough sleep, let go of what isn’t essential, live in the present instead of pining for the days of little ones, enjoy my memories from Christmas when I was a kid.

But even as I worked on these things, I continued to have a very specific prompting: study Mary.

Study Mary.

(My favorite painting of the birth of Christ, Brian Kershisnk's "Nativity.")

It never stopped tickling my conscious until I decided to do it. So, for the past six weeks or so, I have been studying Mary, the mother of Christ. This isn’t the first time I’ve pondered on Mary—remember my broken Mary? Every year when I pack her away with the rest of my Christmas things, I almost decide to leave her out all year because she reminds me that as mothers we continue to press on, to do our work, even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard.

But I haven’t ever thoroughly studied her.

This month, I have delved into the scriptures to learn about Mary, reading all of the parts of the New Testament (not just the Christmas story) that mention her. I went into my studies thinking of Mary with preconceived ideas, especially that she was meek and mild. But after reading so much about her, I have decided that while perhaps she was humble—certainly her socioeconomic level was—I don’t think she was either of those things.

Consider all of the difficult things she experienced:

• Carrying a child which her society most likely believed was illegitimate.
• Having to tell her betrothed of her experience with the angel.
• Traveling to Juda to see Elizabeth, to Bethlehem to deliver her baby, to Egypt to save him, to Cana for the wedding, to Jerusalem when Christ was crucified. Traveling during her lifetime must have been an exhausting experience.
• Hearing the prophecy of Simeon and knowing, for her entire experience of mothering Christ, that she would experience great sorrow.
• Being poor. One of the proofs of Mary and Joseph not being wealthy is that, when they brought Christ to the temple for purification after his birth, they brought a pair of doves instead of a yearling lamb and a dove; this was a far less costly option.
• Having to share her son with the world. “Who is my mother, or my brethren?”
• Witnessing her son be crucified.

Meek suggests submissive, yielding, compliant, deferential. In my mind, Mary is none of these things. She is involved, actively, in the processes around her. For example, when the angel comes to her, Mary is not passive or silent. She first thinks about the angel’s words, and then she asks him a question. It’s only after the angel has explained things to her that she says “behold the handmaiden of the Lord.” To me, this means she didn’t just do whatever the angel told her to do. She listens to him, she asks questions, and then, in the gap between Luke 1:37 and 38, she chooses.

She wasn’t acted upon, but acted.

I think it’s an important distinction, her choosing. It says something about her character—that she was brave, thoughtful, and faithful, certainly, but also that she was confident and self-assured. It reminds me that we always have a choice, even when the decision feels impossible to make. Even when choosing what God wants you to do seems like the hardest thing you can imagine. And that her choice comes after the angel reminds her (and in my imagination, it is a gentle reminder) that with God all things are possible. I think she would need that knowledge throughout her entire life.

Mary is also unafraid to voice her testimony. Think of her in her cousin Elizabeth’s house, delivering her magnificat. She isn’t quiet and her words are not demure; they are full of praise and joy and exuberance. These aren’t words to be whispered, but shared with the world. She didn’t ask Zacharias for his testimony, didn’t defer to the priest in the house, but shared her own.

Those travels of hers, too, are inspiring to me. Difficult, yes, but I love that her world wasn’t as narrow as her own small town. I would like to know her stories, of what she saw in Egypt, of how she felt traveling to Bethlehem so very pregnant, of what she thought of the land and the landscapes. She went out into the world, she walked and ran and hiked mountains and crossed valleys. To me, a meek woman would rather stay at home.

Always the two words are paired: meek and mild. As if they are synonyms, almost, but they aren’t. Mild suggests gentle and tenderhearted, but also calm and good-hearted and easygoing. I wish we knew more stories about her raising Christ, about what it was really like. But I wonder (both with Mary and with my own mothering): where do children get their characteristics? Is it only nature, only nurture, or some of both? Those characteristics of mildness can also be used to describe Christ, and yet He was also (in my mind) passionate and unafraid to say the truth. I think Mary’s mildness comes in how she raised Christ, and while He was undoubtedly brimming with good qualities, he also learned them from His mother.  I doubt that mildness is the only quality her example provided. She was the mother of Christ. She taught him the things of this world, and I think to teach Him to be brave and outspoken and wise and kind and passionate and loving, she also embodied them.

I have learned so much from my study of Mary. Knowledge that helped me this Christmas—to remember what is important, to be both gentle and brave, to grasp the experiences that life brings me—but which will continue to help me. Mary might’ve been both meek and mild, but she was certainly other things. She was fierce, she was determined, she was brave. She spoke her mind, she experienced her world, she did everything she could to raise her son well. What she teaches me is twofold. One, what the true meaning of a blessed life is. (Because, remember: Gabriel says she is blessed, and then Elizabeth says she is blessed, and Mary herself acknowledges that she is blessed.)  It isn’t a life without trials and troubles, but one lived in the presence of the sacred. Mary’s example reminds me to find peace and joy in what is good in my life, no matter what is hard.

Second is what lingers from my favorite scripture about Mary: Luke 2:19.

To me, this means Mary continued to act. She continued to think about and find meaning in her experiences. She knew that what her life contained was larger than just herself, and that her choices influenced more than only her own life. This is true for my life, too. It reminds me that while I’ve been accused of overthinking and putting too much meaning into things, pondering and coming to understand “these things” in our lives is not a bad thing or a worthless use of time. It is essential—to ponder and to understand.

Studying Mary during the Christmas season helped me in many ways. It brought me a sense of peace that I have never felt. It helped me remember what is important. It guided me in seeking out the sacred in my own life. It helped me to be bold in stating what I felt passionate about. It kept me actively choosing—to be present, to be joyful or sorrowful as my experiences asked, to act swiftly upon promptings. And while (until I have a safe high shelf to display it on) I will still bubble wrap and pack away my broken Mary with the rest of Christmas, I will keep this new understanding of Mary with me all year.

Write about your stockings. What did they look like? What did they feel like? Where did you hang them, what did you find inside them?

Yesterday, I wrote about how I wish I had a photograph of our Christmas stockings. Unless some previously-undiscovered package of pictures is found, I believe I'll have to live my life without one. Words will have to do.

Unsurprisingly, our stockings were made by my mom. They were made of red velvet—a thick, luxurious velvet—with lace and ribbons sewn onto five of the six. The sixth one was just plain, not because it was my dad's and thus more masculine, but because mom ran out of ribbon and lace, or maybe time. Then she just didn't ever get around to doing it the next year. (As I have several partly-finished Christmas quilts that each year I am finally going to finish—but never do—I have only empathy for her.) Each of the beribboned stockings was different, and we didn't have the same one each year—it was totally random who got which one.

Oddly enough, I don't remember anything about what was in the stockings. At least, nothing specific. Candy, oranges, jewelry, makeup when we got older. A year with peanuts and peppermint candy, an odd flavor combination that nevertheless evokes Christmas in my heart. What I remember most fondly is hanging up the stockings. We had a fireplace in our basement, with six nails in the stone mantle where we hung the stockings. I loved the fireplace; I loved having a fire, especially at Christmas. And hanging the stockings on the mantel over the fireplace: somehow it made me feel like we were a family. I mean: of course, we were a family. But the stockings over the fire sparked my affection. It made me love everyone.

That I don't remember what was in the stockings tells me something about memory. I think that I remember best what had an emotional impact upon me. Opening the stockings wasn't as big of a deal as it is in my house (it is my kids' favorite part), so what was inside has been lost. But that feeling—the red stockings, with their ribbon and lace and the very faint reflection of light on the velvet—all six of them across the mantel? It's sort of a visual synecdoche. The stockings = my family, with all our quirkiness, our failures but also our successes, our flair for the girly side. Our togetherness: that's what struck my heart, and that is what stays with me.

Photo challenge: Snap some pics of your empty stockings where they hang waiting to be filled.

When I first started this writing challenge, it grew out of a bunch of pictures I found at my mom's of our childhood Christmases. I remembered some of the pictures, but some I had entirely forgotten or never even seen. When I found the albums, I had a memory of some of the pictures, and my memory was definitely better, in most cases, than the pictures themselves. In my head, the photos were sharply focused and well composed, but in real life, not so much. And I found myself wishing I could time travel, to actually take some pictures I wish we had.

If I could time travel, some of the photos I would take are pictures of the ornaments on our tree and of our stockings. I remember how instantly swamped with the Christmas spirit I was, as a kid, when we got out our ornaments for the "cute tree," which was the tree we had downstairs by the fireplace. I wish I had a photo or two or ten, maybe one of the entire tree but most of them zoomed in close to the individuals ornaments.

Alas, no such photos exist.

But then last week, when I started working on these prompts again, I looked closer at the photos, and while I still haven't found a picture of the ornaments on the "pretty tree" (the one we had upstairs by the big window, always a fresh flocked tree), which is really what I wish I had the most because of the story behind it, I noticed something in this picture:

I scanned this one, even though the subject is obviously blurred, because I wanted to remind myself to write the story of those nightgowns. But what I noticed (finally!) is that the tree is the thing that is in focus...and there they are: the ornaments on the cute tree!

Which is, I confess, quite a long introduction to today's writing prompt:

Find a photo from your childhood Christmas and look at the background. What memory sparks do you find there? Write about that—about what you find in whatever is behind or around the photo's main subject.

Since noticing the tree detail, I've put together a list of eight memory sparks to write about, just based on the background details in pictures. (I still, alas, have not found an image with our stockings in it.) But since I started with the tree, the ornaments are what I'm going to write about today.

We always had two Christmas trees at our house, the pretty tree upstairs and the cute tree downstairs. Some years, Santa brought presents upstairs and sometimes down. The cute tree had wooden, painted ornaments in traditional Christmas colors. I don't remember all of the ornaments on the cute tree, but here are the ones I do:

• ​the toy soldier. He had a little gold gun slung over his shoulder. Why are toy soldiers also Christmas-y? I don't know.
• the nutcrackers. Three or four little nutcrackers, with a handle that moved their jaws up and down. We went to see The Nutcracker a couple of times when I was a kid (as most of us were dancers at some time or another in our childhoods, that was nearly a prerequisite to existence!) and even now, a nutcracker soldier is a requirement for Christmas.
• the rag dolls. They had red hair, but otherwise they were so much like my favorite dolls.
• the rocking horse. I think it had a fur-covered body.
• the books. There were four of them: The Night Before Christmas, a fairy tale of some sort, a retelling of The Nutcracker, and one other I can't recall. Leather cover, colored illustrations, gilt edges, the text in minuscule print: these were just like regular books, except tiny and with a gold cord that turned them into ornaments. These were my very favorite ornaments on our tree and I have fantasies, every December, of finding something similar for my own tree. I did find the Moore one at Mom's during one of our clean-out-the-basement trips, but the cord is broken and the binding torn, so I don't hang it up.
• the balls. Not glass, but the foam kind covered in red satin. Sometimes the satin would come unraveled and I was always tempted to pick at those unraveling ones, which annoyed my mom.
• the tinsel. Instead of a traditional string, the tinsel on the cute tree was made of round tinsel links, strung together. Like a countdown-to-Christmas paper chain, except sparkly. I loved that tinsel.

I'm cutting it close, but as promised, here is the first of the last four of my Christmas writing prompts. Stay tuned for a new one each day until Christmas. Read about the first 8 here.

Writing Prompt: Write about an object of any kind that you associate strongly with the holidays.

Maybe it’s a holiday decoration of some sort—but maybe not. What object plays strongly in your memories of Christmas? How was it involved in Christmas? What does your connection to the object reveal about your life or holiday celebrations?

There are many things I could write about for this prompt. My mom’s nativity, the ornaments, the large glass tree my mom filled with candy and then left on the coffee table in the front room. But this December I’ve been thinking about something else: the golden stool.

Every Christmas, after we’d opened presents, had breakfast, admired our gifts, and gotten ready for the day, we’d go to my grandma Elsie’s house for dinner. My dad’s two brothers and our cousins would all be there. Even though we all lived within three miles of each other, we almost never saw our cousins. Sometimes for birthday parties, and when we were older we also started having a family Christmas party, but when we were young, it was just once a year.

Grandma Elsie—my dad’s mom—was…well, I don’t have just one word to describe her. I very nearly want to write “cold.” A cold woman, detached and unemotional. But I think, looking back on her now as an adult, she was a lot like me. She was a reader; she loved cats and literature and photography. She liked moving outside and went for a walk almost every day of her life. (I like to think that, were she an adult now, she’d also be a runner.)

Her marriage was an unhappy one and I wonder if it felt like a relief to her when her husband died at 48. She supported herself as a widow by working for AT&T as a switchboard operator. She kept every calendar she ever had, all of them featuring cats, so when she died her kitchen was plastered with cat images; all of the calendars were turned to the correct month. She was a fascinating woman—but my feelings for her are complicated. She wasn’t very affectionate and didn’t try very hard to build a strong relationship with us. In that family, my sisters and I were the children of the least- favorite son, the youngest who wasted his potential as a baseball star and ended up being the least successful. I often overheard my mom talking about her dislike for Elsie and the obvious ways she loved the other cousins better.

I had such a strong and vital relationship with my other grandma that I don’t know that this bothered me terribly as a kid. But it bothers me now. I wish I could know more about what Grandma Elsie was like, without the filter of my parents. I wish I could know—even if it was only to have my ugliest fears confirmed—how she really felt about us as opposed to how my mom thought she felt about us.

But family tensions aside, we got together every Christmas afternoon until I was a teenager.

(I think this was the Christmas I was five. Can you guess which decade this was?)

Grandma Elsie had what felt like, to my young eyes, the world’s largest and most elegant front room. The carpet was pale, the furniture cream-colored or gold. And a fireplace with a mantel! I always thought the room was so pretty. The crowning glory, to all of the cousins, was the golden stool. It had a gold crushed velvet cushion and an intricate metal back, also painted gold. It stayed in the corner most of the time, until everyone was there and we needed every chair possible pulled up to the dinner table.

Each Christmas, it was one cousin’s turn to sit on the golden stool during dinner.

Counting my family, there were twelve cousins. So it was, for some of us, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, sitting on the golden stool. (Although I suspected that my cousins, who went to my grandma's house for dinner far more often than we did, got to sit on it all the time.)

I remember the year my cousin Jamie got to sit on the stool. She is three or four years older than me, but that day she seemed so grown up. So lucky! And so beautiful, with her jet-black hair and confident smile. I watched how she laughed with the older cousins and felt myself seem more and more babyish. (I couldn’t put it into words then, but that was how my cousins made me feel: like a baby. Too silly and immature for their attention. If I am honest, that is how they still make me feel.)

A couple of years later—or maybe the very next year?—it was my turn to sit on the golden stool. I thought I’d feel the way Jamie looked, confident and happy. I ran my hands back and forth across the velvet cushion. I leaned against the golden wrought iron. I kicked my feet, sitting taller than I was used to.

I felt exactly the same as I always had.

I still couldn’t laugh and talk to the grown-up cousins. I still felt like a baby. I still felt homely and shy and awkward. I was sitting on the golden stool and yet Grandma didn’t look at me or talk to me any more than she had before.

Plus that stool was uncomfortable. The cushion was worn down to stuffing and the back was too short to lean against. A high stool pulled up to a dining table meant I could barely fit my legs underneath, so I spilled gravy on my new outfit.

The strangest part to me about this experience is how much I cherish it. Even though I was miserable, the Christmas I sat on the golden stool, I still love the memory of it. Maybe because it is a true memory, unembellished by nostalgia or fond emotions. It is one of the earliest times in my life I felt bitterness, but when I look back on it, it is a key (or one of them) to understanding some of my adult traits. It teaches me many things about the type of grandmother I hope to be one day, both how I want to create traditions for my grandchildren but also how I want them to go through their lives never, ever questioning whether or not I loved them. In the end, the golden stool is the perfect representation of the second half of our Christmas day: seemingly beautiful, but complicated and uncomfortable when you looked up close.

Photo Challenge: What object triggers emotion for you during the holidays now? Photograph it!

Making breakfast—eggs, hash browns, and toast—with Nathan and Kaleb this morning while a thin, wet snow fell (sometimes more rain than snow), laughing with them and remembering my grandma making dippy eggs and buttery toast for me when I was a kid.

Orange juice and milk poured into Christmas mugs.

Making a list of last-minute gifts to buy while I ate my breakfast (left over pumpkin curry from last night’s date).

The lights from the little tree in the front room while I read for a few minutes.

Twisted peppermint body wash.

The reminder and prompting in church: Christ is what matters. Everything else is noise.

Walking in to the kitchen after church just as Haley did a run-and-slide-in-her-socks down the hall. She slid right into a hug from me!

Paying attention, while cooking dinner, to how pleasant it is to cook in my kitchen when it’s decorated for Christmas. I always love my kitchen, but it is especially cozy during the holidays.

The scents of pine, gingerbread cookies, and hot potpourri.

Hearing Haley pray—something I haven’t heard for years.

Kids downstairs laughing and watching TV while I cooked dinner.

All six of us eating dinner together.

Driving through the dark with a fast snow falling, talking to Kendell about our children.

Taking time to snap a few pictures of images that resonated with me in some way.

my kitchen window ledge has angels on it. When I take my rings off while I'm cooking, I always drop them at this angel's feet.

Haley's boots, Jake's shoes, Nathan's Docs, my Docs. (Plus some of my other boots and a pair of heels in the background.) Everyone's home!

This is what I meant—what I told myself to do this December. Slow down. Find the happy moments and savor them. Remember that Christmas doesn’t only happen on December 25, and it isn’t only about presents. Mostly it is about this feeling, which I have found in bits and pieces, scattered like glitter.

(Not a good photo by any definition of "good photo," but I still love this for what it captures. I remember this very moment, in fact, the way my grandma's apron was scratchy and smelled like her house, and knowing she was only teasing and would give my doll back to me soon, she just wanted to hold it because she loved babies so much, and the ringlets which I detested and that bathrobe which I loved, and Suzette's glasses and Michele's young face.)

Last year's Christmas was a rough one. There was a lot of conflict, fueled partly by our current stage of life—negotiating what our family will be like as the kids grow up and leave home—and partly by my own need (no, it is more of a drive or maybe even a compulsion) to make Christmas as perfect as possible. That desire for a peaceful, joyful, perfectly perfect Christmas pushes me, but it also creates unnecessary tension.

So this year, I resolved to look at Christmas in a different light. To let myself let go of the idea of perfect and instead to embrace whatever I find. Because even with last year's difficult moments, there were also some fairly magical ones, and most of them just happened. I am letting myself know that while my efforts to make Christmas magical help make it magical, the best moments are the organic ones that spring, fully formed, from whatever force is bigger than me, the one that really makes the magic. I am watching for those. I am taking things slowly and savoring what I love. I am buying fewer gifts for my kids. I am paying attention to how I feel every day, and then changing what I can to help rid myself of anxieties.

I am finding more peace within myself.

And I am remembering that Christmas isn't only about my kids feeling the magic. I can still feel it, too. We moms are so busy at Christmas, so busy making the experience magical for our kids. It's easy to forget that we don't only get to make the magic. We can feel it, too. We deserve to feel it! So I have been surrendering myself to experiences. Taking forever to decorate, for example, because I enjoy it and because so many sweet memories are tied to most of my decorations. I've been worrying less about shopping (although, I really do have to buy some gifts here at some point!) and searching out good deals and finding the. exactly. perfect everything for everyone. The gifts I have bought so far have been things I have found by serendipity and can't wait to give. I have been trying to reconnect, too, with how it felt to be a kid at Christmas, remembering my own childhood experiences and looking at pictures. 

And I've been wanting to write down more of those memories.

Eight years ago (how can it be eight years ago?) I wrote a series of eight journaling prompts, designed to help you (and me) get at the heart of some Christmas memories of your own. My original goal was to write twelve prompts, but that year I only wrote eight. So this year, in the spirit of making Christmas magical (but not perfectly magical) I'm going to write four more, so you'll have twelve different possible entry points into your own memories.

Pick one, pick three, pick all of them. Write about it in your journal or blog or on your Facebook page. Or make a scrapbook layout if you want! The point is twofold: put the memory down somewhere permanent, and re-experience the memory as you write about it. It doesn't matter if you have a picture to go with the story. Just write it.

Here's a list of the first eight I wrote (click on any of the items in the list to see the journaling prompt and what I wrote about) :

1. A Wished-For Photo
2. Your Most Vivid Christmas Memory
3. The Guy in the Big Red Suit
4.  December Activities
5. Traditional Gifts
6. An Overdue Letter
7.  Holiday Treats
8. Christmas Mornings

And stay tuned for four other journaling prompts before Christmas. (Also, my thoughts about Mary, some new Christmas treat recipes, a few ideas for books to give, and hopefully some wisdom I have gained this holiday season.) If you respond to any of the prompts in a public way, make sure to let me know!

Happy writing!

Prompts added in 2015:

9.    An Object that Triggers Emotion
10. The Background of Photos
11. The Stockings

I used to make the best pie crust ever. It was easy to work with and baked up perfectly flaky and crisp.

And then, a few years ago, I decided to take hydrogenated oils out of our diet completely. This has been a mostly-easy process because most of the things with HVO are garbage we shouldn’t be eating anyway. (Except for that big bag of meatballs they sell at Costco. Why do they need to imbue meat with HVO? I’m still missing those.)

Easy except for pie. Because that pie crust I’d perfected? It was effortlessly flaky because of shortening. I thought it would be as simple as replacing the shortening with butter, but a light, flaky, just-right all-butter crust has mostly eluded me. Some of my crusts have had the texture of cardboard. Some have just been OK. None of them has been perfectly delicious.

More than anything, though, what has made me crazy about it was just how hard it is to work with butter. (Maybe it would be easier if I bought a food processor…but I don’t want to buy one just to make crust. And part of me thinks I should be able to do it with the tools I already have.) The butter has to be cold to end up with flaky crust, but cutting in cold (or frozen) butter is a miserable experience. It takes forever. And the dough seemed impossible to roll out. One time I nearly started weeping, I was so frustrated with rolling out my crust.

But I persevered. This fall, I resolved to figure out this issue once and for all, so that I could bring some perfect pies to Thanksgiving and put to rest my mother’s doubt that an all-butter pie crust could ever be good. I am the Dessert Aunt, after all. I won’t allow pie crust to be my kryptonite. (That would be cheesecake, which I also think I mastered recently.)

As I also have had problems getting my berry pies to thicken properly, I put that on my list of November projects.

And after several delicious experiments, here’s a list of all the pie secrets I have learned:

1. Make your crust in a dry kitchen. If you’re doing anything that makes steam—boiling potatoes, running the dishwasher, hanging out while someone handwashes the pans—it’s harder to get the moisture content right. No steam!
2. Make a double recipe. If you’re going to the effort of making pie crust, double the recipe. If you don’t need all four, freeze two. Your future self will be grateful to have two prepared crusts. But: don’t try to roll out frozen pie crust. It will only make you cry.
3. Nearly every pie crust recipe is the same. What changes is mostly technique and liquid. I haven’t tried the vodka recipe so I can’t speak to it, but otherwise the basic recipe is nearly always:

2 ½ cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 T sugar
1 cup butter (purists will say only use non-salted, but purists are fancier than I; I use salted butter)
¾ cup (about) some liquid—water, eggs, vinegar, vodka

4. Fewer eggs, but still: eggs. The recipe I started with (the one with shortening) has one egg for a double crust. I doubled everything (to make 4 crusts) except the eggs. After trying one with eggs and one without, I think the egg makes the crust tenderer and more flavorful, but two eggs made it harder to roll out. So if you’re just making one batch, use ½ of a beaten egg.
5. Grate the frozen butter. I do this with my Bosch, but if you have a box grater that will work, too. It will just take a little bit longer. Use the big grate side. I mix all of the dry ingredients, then pour half into the bottom of the bowl. Grate the butter on top of the flour, then pour it all back into the bowl with the rest of the dry ingredients. Then, use your pastry cutter to mix everything together. You don’t technically cut it in; mostly you’re just mixing to make sure all of the butter is coated with flour.
6. Don’t be afraid of the liquid. Even though that really is the frustrating part about making pie crust: the right amount of liquid makes or breaks it. Too little and it won’t stick together, too much and you lose the flakiness. But no one will stick to an exact amount. You just have to try until you get it right. Make sure the liquid is as cold as possible. I fill up a 2-cup glass measure with ice, water, and 2 T of vinegar, and then I put it in the freezer while I do the flour/butter part. You have to get your hands involved with this part of the process. Pour in some liquid and start stirring it in with a rubber spatula—it’s sort of a folding action. Fold, spin the bowl, fold. Add some more water and repeat. Then, when you think it’s ready, start using your hands instead of the spatula. Add a little and see if the whole mass will stick together, by trying to form it into a ball. If it crumbles when you squeeze it together, it needs more water. Add it slowly at this point. You might be able to start making balls in layers—the top might come together but then bottom might still need more water.
7. You have to chill the dough. I already knew this, but I did try once to roll it out right after I made it. It was an impossible sticky mess. Squish each ball into a disk, and then cover each piece with plastic wrap. Put all four into a Ziplock bag, and squeeze out as much air as you can.
8. Speaking of rolling out: go read this post at Smitten Kitchen right now. My mom taught me that you should use the least amount of flour possible when you’re rolling out your crust, to prevent too much flour getting in and making the crust dry. But I decided to try this method of rolling out, and OMG. It took three minutes to roll out a crust. Fewer than three minutes. It was so easy. And the crust was still delicious.
9. The secret to making non-runny berry pies: cook some of the berries. For a raspberry pie in a regular (non-deep-dish) pie pan, do this:

3 pounds berries (this is 4 of the containers from Costco)
1 cup sugar
2 T Minute tapioca
dash cinnamon
2 T corn starch
1/3 cup cran-raspberry juice
juice of ½ lemon

Wash the berries. In a big bowl, mix the sugar, tapioca, and cinnamon. Stir in the berries and let sit for about an hour. Position a sieve or strainer over a saucepan; pour the (now juicy) berries into the strainer so that the juice drains out. Ad the cran-raspberry juice, the lemon juice, and the corn starch. Stir until smooth. Add about 1 cup berries. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened. Pour over the remaining berries and stir to combine. Then pour them over the bottom crust in your pie pan. Top with remaining crust. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes and then 350 for about another half hour.

10. Buy the right amount of apples. I like to make a deep dish apple pie, but I am never sure how many apples to buy. This year I paid attention: 8 normal-sized apples. (Not the small ones, in other words.) Some of my other apple pie secrets:

• After you peel, core, and dice the apples, toss them with some lemon juice and a capful of vanilla. It adds a warmth to the apples.
• Cinnamon is not the only spice! I put nutmeg, ginger, and cloves in my apple pie. This might offend an apple pie purist, but who cares?
• Use a combination of white sugar and brown. It helps the filling set up better.

11. Glaze the pie! I’ve always skipped this step as just seemed unnecessary. This year I glazed both pies with egg mixed with cream. They were much prettier than any other year!
12. Reheat the pie. I’ve never quite been able to get the timing right on Thanksgiving pies. When do you bake them while your oven is so busy, so that they’re hot when you’re ready to eat? In theory I guess you could bake them while you’re eating dinner, but then you’d have to make them just before dinner (because filling sitting on that uncooked bottom crust will make it soggy). Instead, bake the pie in the morning, and then put the pie, covered loosely with tinfoil, into a 300-degree oven for about 20 minutes. The tin foil will help it not to burn, and it will be nicely warmed. (This is how to reheat a slice of pie for breakfast the next day—or the rest of the weekend, depending on how much leftover pie you have—except just put the slice in the toaster oven. If you reheat your pie in the microwave, I’m not sure we can still be friends!)

So! Those are all of the pie secrets I know. Do you know any I missed?