Back in 2008, I saw Prince Caspian on a date with Kendell and our friends Paul and Becca. No one but me really loved it, and I distinctly remember Kendell and Paul being annoyed by Reepicheep. Today, when I took the kids to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I kept thinking of that post-movie discussion and, in that sense, took our friends along with me (they now live across the country from us).

I also took my childhood self along. She sat near me and reminded me of the images she loves from this story: Eustace's dragon arm bothered by the golden cuff, and the sauropods hopping in their foolishness; the feast on Aslan's table, the Midas pool, the Dawn Treader itself. Lucy wishing to be beautiful (how my childhood self wished for that spell, too) and, most strong of all, the small boat being rowed through the lilies towards Aslan's Country.

To my delight, the filmmakers included all of my favorite images. It bothers me a bit that they added the bit with the green mist and the sacrificed Narnians, but I also understand the impulse to introduce a thread of drama. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader  is, I think, a story—as with all good Odyssean tales—of the journey towards discovering oneself. Eustace figures it out ("I tried to change back on my own," he says when Edmund asks him what it felt like to be changed by Aslan back into a boy, "but I couldn't do it without Him")  and Edmund, and even Caspian. One of my favorite lines is when he says that he has been thinking too deeply about what was taken from him rather than what he has been given.

But it is Lucy's story that impacted me the most, probably because I have my own discontented Lucy-ish self inside, wanting (still) to be beautiful. Well, not only beautiful. In fact, it's not even about beauty anymore, really. Instead, it is the wanting to be successful, to feel that I have managed to become fully myself, that leaves me standing at the mirror now, looking. Wanting a spell to put things right.

I love what Aslan tells her (and I am paraphrasing): you lose who you are by focusing on who you are not; value yourself. As I watched this scene (very different from the book), with Lucy seeing herself as Susan, I kept wanting to tell her two things: that she didn't have to look like Susan to be beautiful, and that she was made the way she is for a purpose. By the end, Lucy knows this.

Ultimately, what I love about the Narnia movies is not their faithfulness to C. S. Lewis's work. (They both are and aren't faithful.) Instead, it is how they reconnect me to that younger version of myself. They bring to life the things that fed that girl's imagination, reminding me to feast on ideas that are larger than my own. They remind me to be faithful, and thoughtful, and daring; this specific one encourages me to keep moving forward in my own journey toward knowing myself.

Happy shop-the-sales week! Since several people have asked, here is my wassail recipe. It might be more properly named "spiced cider," but I like saying wassail better!

Wassail

4 cups water
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 quarts apple cider
3 cups orange juice
6 cinnamon sticks
6-8 whole cloves
6-8 allspice berries

Dissolve the sugar in the water and bring to a boil. Let simmer for about five minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and return to boiling. Let simmer again for at least one hour. Serve!

Recipe notes: I make this on Christmas Eve and let it simmer while I am doing the Christmas-Eve things. It makes the kitchen smell delicious! I turn it off when I go to bed and then just reheat it in the morning. This lets the spices have a chance to mingle. It does get thicker as it simmers; if it gets too thick just add more apple cider. If you can find it, the real pressed apple cider makes the best wassail, but a bottle of Tree Top will do!

Remember this post, when I wrote about what I really wanted for Christmas from my mom was some divinity? (Well, divinity and an impossible gift I knew I wouldn't receive.) Guess what was waiting for me when I got to her house today?

Divinity!

Some with nuts and some without, some pink and minty, some plain white. Kendell reminded me that he hates divinity and I reminded him that's good because now I don't have to share.

So now I am eating a piece of divinity and trying to talk myself out of going to bed soon. (This Santa didn't make it to sleep until past 2:30 last night.) I'm thinking about all the ways that Christmas was exactly what I wanted this year:

• Yesterday, I needed to stop by my sister's house to pick some things up and to give her some other things. Her daughter Kayci (my oldest niece) was almost ready to leave for her drive back home to Idaho. I got to see her daughters and husband and wish them a merry Christmas and for some reason this made me cry. Only that crying that you try to keep secret, so your face just sort of looks weird? Yeah. I'm not sure why I cried except I was happy I got to see them.
• Reading the nativity story last night, with the kids in their new jammies and Kaleb clambering for me to turn to the "world pictures" (the maps in the Bible) and Jake making weird faces. Hearing the words and reading them sparks the Christmas feeling in my heart.
• Last-minute baking. Last night the kids and I made: candy-cane cookies, snowball cookies, cinnamon rolls, the Christmas-morning casserole, and a chocolate cake. Everyone helped. I insisted we listen to Christmas music and that made them grumble a bit, but it added just the right thing.
• Everyone liked their gifts. There are a few exchanges to make, and how did I manage to buy Jake size 18-20 undies for his stocking and not notice until it's too late to return them? (Because I threw away the packaging when I stuffed them in his stocking.) But for the most part: I was successful! This brings me much joy.
• Listening to a message from a friend. I didn't manage to answer her call because we were opening gifts and I had forbidden everyone from their phones during that time. But it was so good to hear her voice. Miss you, Becca!
• Wassail. OK, I make this every year, and it is a mostly-fail-proof recipe. But this year I managed to find real apple cider (not just the bottled apple juice, but the thick and delicious and apple-y cider from an apple orchard) and that made it perfect.
• Kendell's one surprise—I had a custom calendar printed for him—was the thing he said was his favorite gift when we were all listing our favorites.
• Kendell surprised me by picking up a pair of shoes I've been admiring. They're not the Dr. Marten boots I still am yearning for, but I love them anyway. I also got a new coat, since my old one was purchased when I was pregnant with Haley and was ready to be replaced, and my traditional Mary E. calendar.
• Haley bought me a scarf. With her own money! It is soft and furry and black and grey and elegant and just perfect!
• The gift I agonized over the most for Haley (at one point I had purchased six different versions of this item) was the one she loved the most.
• After we opened gifts, Nathan, Jake, and Kaleb sat in front of the Christmas tree to put Bionicles together. I'm certain that won't happen very often anymore.
• At my mom's, I escaped some of the underlying drama by sitting in the TV room and thumbing through a box of photos. Very dusty, old family photos, some I'd never seen before. I took those, along with a few others I couldn't resist and two priceless ones that will be appearing on a compare-contrast blog post in the near future.
• One of my nieces, Lindsay, surprised us all by telling us she is pregnant—she kept it a secret long enough to find out what she's having. A girl! I totally cried. This means that by the time Kaleb turns five, my seventh, eighth, and ninth great niece and-or nephews will be born. It makes me feel old to claim the "great aunt" (aren't great aunts old and don't they smell sort of funny and wear fancy suits and pearls and hair buns?) title but that feeling is overshadowed by my excitement over holding their babies.
• Seeing my kids hug my mom, especially Jake but only because their height difference is so remarkable. Honestly, aside from that little bit of drama that sent me running for seclusion (mostly because I don't want to say something I can't take back), I felt that glowy holiday love for all my extended family.

I will probably blog again about Christmas, focusing on my kids and their reactions. But I wanted a record, tonight, of the things that were, for me, exactly what I wanted, even the experiences I didn't know I wanted.

When Kaleb woke up this morning, he ran over to the advent calendar and put the 24th toy into Santa's sack. Then he came to snuggle with me and said "Mom! All the toys are in Santa's bag! That means he's ready to come tonight, right?"

Well, almost.

I'm certain you're caught up in lots of last-minute prep, too, but I thought I'd share this idea. Maybe it's something you won't use until next year, but that's OK. Here's the concept: as parents,we invest a ton of time in our kids at Christmas. The shopping, of course, and the wrapping, but there are also the activities and the traditions and the baking. Sometimes it's nice to do something for yourself.

Enter my Christmas Eve notebook. Every year after I've set out all the gifts from Santa, I take a few minutes to write. And in this notebook, I focus on myself, on what I'm feeling about the holidays, what my hopes for the day are, how I have changed since the last Christmas, what I hope the next year will bring. It gives me a moment before the drama of the day to focus my thoughts and to relax.

This year I needed a new notebook, so I made one. You can see it here, at the Write Click Scrapbook blog. But it doesn't really matter what you write in. It can be just an ordinary, $1.00 spiral bound notebook you bought at Target. The important thing is that you write.

Merry Christmas!

During the years between finishing my Associates and starting to work on my Bachelors, I was determined to keep on learning about literature. I read every book at the library about writing, critical theory, understanding novels, and anything else that seemed English-major-ish. There weren't a lot of choices (it's a public library, after all, not a university one), but we do have several collections of feminist essays, and feminism is the approach I wanted to focus on. During those years I might have been the only person checking out these books, but I would take one home every three weeks or so. One of my favorites is Language in her Eye, a set of essays by Canadian women writers subtitled "writing and gender." Perfect! There are many things I could say about how much I love this book, but today I just wanted to share a poem I found in it. I probably first read it in 1992 or 1993 but I continue to be haunted by it.

"Magi"
~Mary di Michele

At sixteen she would be old,
in another culture. She feels
old, unwrapping another gift
in the blanched light of the bay
window. Winter light, no warmth in it.

She takes the bow off the package
sticks it on the window instead
of the paper plate with ribbons
she is meant to decorate and wear.
A small unconventional act.
As if to decline the crown.

A bow bright as the spot of blood
she prayed for. A bow the red
of poinsettia. (How they simulate flesh!
How they burn in the treetops of Mexico
like the campfires of primates!)

Her belly, full and elliptical,
moves as if with sudden light.
Unexpected connections. Her eyes
strain to see the star predicted
mathematically.

The boy she hardly saw, the apparition,
so thin. Stroking his back, she sensed
through the sharpness of his shoulder blades
the stumps of wings.

She pulls out, as if
dreading, perhaps, the nip
of something feathered, something furred,
simple garments: a sweater and cap
knitted in a knobby weave
as if in braille.

Her fingers sniff for the scent of the child
about to be found. To discover
the arm in the shape of a sleeve.

This poem taught me something about what poetry is (that complicated definition) and what it can do. Mary at a baby shower, with a sort of contemporary feel—like an unwed mother, full of uncertainty about her choices. It is a Christmas poem in perhaps the loosest sense of the concept, but it is still my favorite one because of all the unexpected connections it makes for me. It is a sort of a gift, one I return to (I eventually bought the book) over and over.

Sure, the actual Christmas day is wonderful and amazing and huge. The day all children look forward to all year. But I think the little moments are equally as sweet, perhaps more so because they just happen, without all the planning and stress. Like right now:

A heavy snow is almost finished falling. I'm having banana bread and hot chocolate for breakfast; Kendell is shoveling, Kaleb is coloring and everyone else is still asleep. I've got a very definite list of things to accomplish today: the last bit of sewing, the last few things to mail, some fudge and caramel-making, the last shopping trip for just a few things. My neighbors are laughing outside, and there is the faint buzz of someone's snow blower. Life is good.

Watch for your own little moments!

Yesterday, trying to find my Christmas-card address list, I stumbled upon an old file I'd saved years ago, full of holiday poems. Holiday poems with the qualities I admire in poetry, that is. (You'll not find forced rhymes and maudlin sentiment, for example.) I think I will share one for the next few days, just because I think they are beautiful. This one I first read during my university days, and it continues to stick with me. Why does the story never grow old? Because it is, I think, like the silver light from the star, ultimately about hope, which our hungry hearts are hungry for.

STAR-SILVER
      ~Carl Sandburg

The silver of one star
plays cross-lights against pine-green
And the play of this silver cross-wise against the green is an old story.
Thousands of years.

And sheep grazers on the hills by night
watching the woolly four-footed ramblers
watching a single silver star.
Why does this story never wear out?

And a baby, slung in a feed box back in a barn in a Bethlehem slum
A baby's first cry,
mixing with the crunch of a mule's teeth on Bethlehem Christmas corn
Baby fists, softer than snowflakes of Norway

The vagabond mother of Christ
and the vagabond men of wisdom
all in a barn on a winter night
and a baby there in swaddling clothes on hay
Why does this story never wear out?

The sheen of it all—is a star, silver and a pine, green
For the heart of a child asking a story
The red and hungry, red and hankering heart
Calling for cross-lights of silver and green.

You know how, when it's about right now, the last day you can order anything on line and still get it before Christmas, the day the pressure starts to feel unbearable and the weight of your to-do list impossible, and you have a little argument with your husband before he leaves for work wherein you must oh-so-gently remind him that santa claus is not real and that none of the "magic" happens magically and that yes, you haven't folded laundry in a week, we've been living on tacos for a week, and the vacuum itself could use a good vacuuming it's that dusty from not being used but there are other things taking up your time because you're only one person and, unfortunately, out of magic fairy powder, and then your 5-year-old decides he's adding hash browns  to the list of foods he doesn't like (AFTER spitting a mouthful of said hash browns back into his bowl, gross, I was going to eat those if you didn't), and your 11-year-old complains because you didn't manage to find a store-bought treat to share with his class for his Christmas country report (it really is too bad that I'm not one of those fabulous moms like that; maybe if I were cooler I could have just hopped a quick plane to Russia for some STORE BOUGHT Russian holiday treat of some sort), and you remember you haven't called your mother back to give her some gift ideas for your kids like she requested mostly because you don't have any (ideas...you have lots of kids anyone want one?), and your daughter was snarky this morning, and your twelve-year-old did a great big laundry stir this morning so now the at-least-semi-organized clean piles are now just a great big mess, and the only bright spot is a cup of Mormon mocha and the fact that you managed to not say almost all of the mean and sarcastic thoughts in your head? (All of them except the dig about Santa not being real. I mean...husbands! They're, like, all grown up. And they haven't figured out yet that Christmas takes work. Oh! AND it takes money! What is up with that?)

"Fail" about sums it up.

So, only to make myself feel better, I am writing a list of what I HAVE accomplished. Just to, you know, prevent myself from slitting my wrists in the shower.

1. Decorating. To borrow something a friend said: it looks like a Hallmark bomb has exploded in here. But...it's all very festive and spirit-lifting and all that.
2. Wrapping. Everything I've bought so far is wrapped and gift-tagged.
3. Shopping. OK, I still have quite a bit left to do, but I have done a lot.
4. Sewing. 12 out of the 20 things I am sewing are finished.
5. Photographing. The family Christmas photo shoot was survived. Barely, as always. I keep thinking this will get easier, but someone always ends up crying, and someone else shouts, and I start getting annoyed and frustrated and why can't everyone just look at the friggin' camera already? SMILE! Now! ;)
6. Present making. I "made" a gift for Kendell yesterday. It took me three hours longer than I expected but I am excited to give it to him.
7. Card making. I am only doing a few handmade cards, but I finished them last night while Kendell talked his mom down from the ledge. (She is having a hard adjustment to life as a widow.)
8. List making. I just finished writing down everything I have left to do. Making a list is an accomplishment in itself by this point. There's still a lot left but...I will conquer!

How is YOUR overwhelming list coming along?

One day this past spring, I looked at the window ledges in my kitchen and had an epiphany: I could put stuff on them! My sink is in the corner, so I have a little triangle of counter space behind it, and the two ledges. I have a little floral thing going on there for most of the year, but right now it looks like this:

(well, the west ledge does. The north ledge has the wise angels on it.)

I love this little angel. She's so glittery and elegant and feminine. The kitchen window ledge is the perfect spot for something little you love—do you decorate yours? And are there any other common household spots I'm overlooking that are perfect for some small decoration? 

This December has found me pondering the Magi. Even though I have been Officially Forbidden from buying anymore decorations, I couldn't resist these angels, who are really ornaments but I snipped their ribbons off and set them on my kitchen window ledge:

In case you can't read them, the words on their dresses come from the New Testament, some of the spots that reference the wise men. Their faces make dishes less onerous. I think of them as the wise angels.

On Friday we went to our annual neighborhood Christmas party. One of the games we played was a sort of quiz about Christmas songs—funny little plays on words. My favorite question: What size were the three kings? It took us awhile to figure out the answer: small. Wee, in fact! ("We Three Kings of Orient Are".) I have continued to giggle about this, but it has also resonated in a level beyond laughter, as I've been thinking quite often about the three wise men.

Yet another carol has inspired my thoughts of the wise men. I am still loving the Annie Lennox Christmas album. It only contains carols (no songs about Santa Claus or shopping or Frosty the Snowman); I turn the music up loud and sing along. Is it strange to rock out to "O Little Town of Bethlehem?" No matter; I have done so quite often. Another thing I love is that she sings all the verses to the carols, not only the first and second well-known ones. Most of these later verses are only vaguely familiar to me, and I am learning as I go. This one from "The First Noel" has fed my ponderings:

And by the light of that same star
Three Wise men came from country far
To seek for a King was their intent
And to follow the star wherever it went.

The wise men, traveling from their far-away country, are not new to me, of course. My childhood nativity has them with bejeweled, mysterious faces and gilded containers; these were deeply thrilling to me. The idea of wise and powerful men coming to witness and to worship is somehow more inspiring than almost any of the other figures in the nativity. My connection to the magi is also wrapped in T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Journey of the Magi," which forces a thought and a decision: what does all of this mean, anyway? The magus in the poem isn't sure. Has he witnessed a birth? or a death? Or perhaps both? How do we know what Christ is to each of us? How can we let the old life die and then be born in Him?

But the last line of the carol—to follow the star wherever it went—is something more than the myths, legends, vague references and even poems that create a nativity with wise men in it. (They did not see Christ until he was a small child.) Something deeper, built on a knowledge I cannot exactly say. Not only a literal thing, the star is a symbol for Christ. (See Peter 2 1:19, for example.) By following the star, the wise men weren't only fulfilling the prophecies and following Herod's orders. They were also walking by faith. In that sense we are all, following the star, Magi. The ones in the carol would go wherever Christ led them.

Do I? Do I follow the star? Do I go where ever it leads me? Not, always, willingly. Quite often I feel as if I have come from a far country, that I am a stranger here in the land of the righteous. This isn't new. I might feel this way forever. I am mostly fine with feeling foreign, because when I consider my past and the distances I have travelled, the way I had resolutely turned my back to the star, how slowly I turned around, how I started to walk toward it, I think perhaps I am doing well. But I also know this: my movement, my following, is full of falls and missteps and injuries. Much as I want to, I don't move toward the star smoothly.

I often drop my gifts.

When I do arrive at the place the star points to, I imagine I will be exhausted. Battered and bruised and bloody-kneed. My robes will be torn and my crown dented. Because here's the thing: I fail. And my failures are seen by many. There've been three or four pointed comments I've received lately (real-life comments, not bloggy ones) that have made sure I know  that the people around me know I am failing. To which I say: I never claimed I didn't fail. I'm the first to point out my own imperfections. I watch you in your journeys, too, you know. I see how smooth your gait is, how naturally the following goes. I wish I could be like you, full of light. But I am not. You are right: I amhorrible at Scouts. I'm late to church more often than not. My records for FHE and family scripture reading and going to the temple as often as I should are spotty at best. I don't love tithing settlement and sometimes I would like to throw down my Sunday School manual and just talk to my students instead. I swear when I can't bite it back and I don't want to read LDS novels and I wear short shorts when I run.

I know: in these ways and many others, my following of the star is spasmodic and unpredictable, a rough trail, a pathetic journey.

But I also know the country I came from. I know the other side, the dark side I turned my back to. I know it because I lived there, and you did not. I sometimes feel its shadow will always darken my corners; sometimes it feels I have not journeyed far beyond it. I also know that I am, in my clumsy, awkward way, still following the star. Still journeying; still turning my face to the light. And I have also learned: my journey is my own. I am seeking for the King, not for your approval. I know my falls are shocking; I know they offend. But you are not who I am following. I am following Christ, and His judgements are the ones that matter; I am still seeking him, bruises and wisdom growing together.