(The "it" could be one of two things: my copy of Stacy Julian's new book or Christmas, and since I'm slowly reading and thoroughly savoring Stacy's book, I can't write about it yet, so this thread must be about Christmas!)

What makes me know for certain that it's here, when I don't have a stitch of Christmas decorations up and am right now mortified to realize that I have visitors coming tomorrow morning and my house is still decorated with Thanksgiving turkeys and harvest scarecrows (o! the humiliation!)? Well, right as I type, I'm eating a dish of peppermint ice cream with a little chocolate sauce drizzled on top. And suddenly I'm feeling it, that tingly, something-really-great's-on-its-way feeling. So I'm going to celebrate my Christmas-is-here tingles by responding to Sophia's Challenge.

Early Childhood Christmas Memory

When I was really little, we'd go to my grandma Kay's apartment for Christmas Eve dinner. I know that several years' worth of memories of that event are now one conglomerate, but it's a favorite memory anyway. The memory starts with my three sisters and me playing in the bedroom; Michele's at the add-em-up machine (one of those old till machines my grandpa had), Suzette's on the floor, and Becky and I are each sprawled across one of the beds. I've just returned from standing in the tiny hall, trying to eavesdrop (I always was the snoop), and now Suzette is mercilessly hounding me: "Jeans! Did they say anything about getting me jeans?" and I'm sad to report that they were speaking their secret language that I didn't understand. (My mom and her parents really did have a secret language that they'd use when they wanted us---or maybe just The Snoop---not to hear.) Next, we are eating, roast beef, mashed potatoes, my grandma's gravy that is browned until it's nearly bitter. The adults have wine and we have milk. We're eating on Grandma's special table, the one that most days is a respectable sofa table but tonight is showing its secret depth, as it unfolds into a dining room table. After dinner, there are candy-cane cookies and peppermint ice cream, and then we open a present: nightgowns. Then, finally, we are going outside, on our way home. My dad is carrying me; I'm in my new nightgown and it is snowing, and the six of us all stand still and listen to Santa's sleigh bells. To this day I don't know how that magic happened, who rang the bells. Maybe it was Grandpa from his second-story apartment. But it sounded to my childish ears like each snowflake was a tiny bell, and all together they made a chorus that I return to every time I hear a bell, even now.

Adolescent Christmas Memory

The summer I was fifteen, I discovered the group Alphaville and was forever, eternally, and completely addicted to alternative music. I'd not discovered that an alternative music station actually existed (if you're cool and you're from Utah then you totally get what "KJQ" means), so I kept a top-forty station on continually, trying to hear "Big in Japan" just one more time. So you can imagine how absolutely thrilled I was to find an Alphaville record under the tree that Christmas! That record and the first two Clan of The Cave Bear books are the only gifts I remember from that year. Once the day was nearly over, and we were all back home from the festivities, Dad lit a fire. I think Becky was also downstairs. I put my Alphaville record on Dad's stereo, the one with enormous speakers that boyfriends would later admire me for, sat by the fire, and read my new book. European alt pop and blond cave girls are now inextricably intertwined in my memory with the simple happiness of hanging out and reading with my dad. This is one of the memories I wish my dad wouldn't lose.

Christmas with Kids --- I have to share two!

1.  Three years ago, Nathan and Jake both begged me for light sabers.  B.E.G.G.E.D. As in, that is all they talked about. Well, I'm more than a little anti-the-whole-weapon-arsenal thing, so I think they were unsure as to whether or not it'd actually happen.  It only DID happen because Kendell won that particular showdown at Toys R Us (what mother can argue skillfully about violent toys when standing in a three-hour line at 5:30 in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving?). So, we go through the whole present-opening thing. I saved the light sabers for last because I knew  once they saw them, that'd be it. And it was---they opened their light sabers and Nathan had the magical look on his face, the one that says "this is it. My every wish is fulfilled. Magic is real, Santa is real, and life is sweet." The one that makes all the Christmas effort worth it. I looked at the rest of their pile of presents and realized: the boys who say they want a light saber for Christmas only really want a light saber for Christmas!

2.  Haley was SO into Barbies when she was little. (You have to know how Barbies grate on my feminist perspective. One day I'll share a poem to make my point, but suddenly I'm realizing that this post makes me sound like THE LAMEST MOM EVER!) This was great---except when I was little, I was so not into Barbies. I was into baby dolls and blankets and strollers and high chairs (and even newborn nightgowns, even then). Barbies were my little sister Becky's department. So, it's Christmas, Haley is three and she's been dying for the Barbie horse, the Barbie corral, the Barbie who rides the horse, the comb that brushes the horse that Barbie rides. I bought it for her, of course, but was just SO not looking forward to putting the whole thing together. Well, not twenty minutes after we finished unwrapping gifts, who should show up but my sister Becky, Barbie Lover Extraordinaire! In two seconds she was sitting down with Haley and they were doing the Barbie thing, and my daughter was so, so, so happy to have her cool Aunt Becky playing Barbies with her. And I was so, so, so happy that I had my cool little sister to play Barbies with my daughter!

(And, yep, I really DO sound like a lame mom now!)

Someone somewhere in her blog recommended the Barenaked Ladies Christmas CD. I'd wanted a new Christmas CD anyway, so someone recommending it was just the kick I needed! My kids and I both love their version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings, and I've been singing it all night. I just love the funky and boisterous approach they take with this song. It's very pomo. That, and Chris's blog entry have got me thinking about the holidays.

I've got about half of my shopping done. I'm making quilts for each of my kids, and I'm finished with the quilt tops but still need to do the actual quilting (this will be straight rows, by the way, because I am all about straight rows, meaning that is all I'm barely capable of on my sewing machine!). I know what to get Kendell, which is a huge accomplishment in itself---when he needs something he buys it, and he really isn't the kind of guy who wants a lot of things anyway, so he's hard to shop for. I'm feeling moderately in control of this whole Christmas experience this year.

But I want more than being in control. I want to savor each and every second of this holiday season. So I'm following Chris's advice---I'm focusing on the simple things and I'm giving myself time, every day. Every Christmas Eve, once the wrapping and the playing Santa is done, I always give myself half an hour of sitting in front of the tree and writing. This year when I do that, I want to look back on the month of December and find little sweet bits scattered throughout the days, like spilled sugar. The sewing and the wrapping and the shopping are part of the experience. But it's also the quiet moments in front of the tree, or that endless hour of stirring when you make the Christmas caramel, or the quiet walk we take some December night to deliver little gifts to the neighbors. I'm making a list of the experiences that are absolutely essential for me to feel the Christmas spirit. I'm dropping everything else!

My friend Kelly said in her blog last night that today should be a holiday in its own right---just like Christmas Eve. I couldn't agree more. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, because it's not about candy or costumes or gifts or baskets; it's not about getting anything. Instead, it's this woven thing: a thread from Grandma's rolls, from Mom's pie crust, from a good friend's cranberry mousse and my mother-in-law's dill dip with vegetables; a warp of good, trustworthy smells and a weft of friendly, ghostly memories of past Thanksgivings and people who are gone now. I miss my grandma most on Thanksgiving but I also feel the closest to her then, like she's in the warm kitchen with me, her hands a hidden expert on the texture of dough or the thickness of an apple slice.

So I get Kelly's idea about the pre-Thanksgiving-holiday holiday. For me, the celebrations do begin the day before, in the preparing of the food. Thanksgiving's always started at 10:00 on Wednesday night, when the kids and Kendell are asleep and the house is dark, quiet. That's when it starts, over the pan of bubbling whole-berry cranberry sauce and the frothy cup of rising yeast. But this year it started even earlier

When I woke up this morning, I discovered that my slumbering psyche had decided to make Sophia's Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. She warned me it would make a big batch, and I even cut the proportions down by a quarter because I only had two cans of pumpkin and needed the other one for pies. Still---I ended up with 72 muffins. And although I could have eaten all of them---they are that good! I substituted those new Nestle swirls chips, the chocolate and caramel ones, for the milk chocolate chips, and OH.MY.GOSH these are good!---I decided to share them with neighbors. So I bundled my kids up and sent them to three different houses, bearing warm pumpkin muffins and a "Happy Thanksgiving."

When they were finished, Jake came into the kitchen and helped me wash the pans. As we talked, he said "Mom, this was good.  I think this should be our new tradition." When I asked him what "this" was, he said "the delivering muffin part. It felt really, really Thanksgivingingish." Ah, my little tenderheart-disguised-as-a-tough-boy! This is how to kick off the holiday festivities! He made me remember what I'm truly, truly grateful for.  He made me want to hug him right then and there, hands covered with dishwater be damned! And he made me wonder if I had just created a ghostly memory for him, something he'll remember in thirty years at his adult Thanksgivings?

I just got home from walking Nathan across the street to my neighbor's house for his kindergarten before-school play date. She was in tears when she answered the door and told me that one of the women in our neighborhood had died this morning. Dorothy Grob...after her divorce she went back to school for a Master's in psychology.  Her son is a famous professional skater and her daughter is an amazing creature---athletic, confident, kind. I taught her daughter in church when she was still in high school and every Sunday I felt grateful to have her in my class. I didn't know Dorothy very well, other than by her reputation: kind, helpful, intelligent, diligent. She exuded this warm, capable, motherly aura, as if she'd be the one to confide your troubles in because she knew what to do. She'd been battling cancer for two years.

As I took this news in, as I looked at my neighbor's tear-filled eyes and felt my own well up, I thought of the word "keen." I thought of how I didn't know this woman very well, but yet her death made me want to make some sound, to give grief a voice. I thought of her daughter, now in college, and wondered how she would cope. And I thought of Dorothy herself, who has now done the thing I most fear: left life before it was finished. I bet she wanted to live for one more Thanksgiving. I bet she wanted one more spring bursting with daffodils, one more blue-orange Utah October. I bet she wanted to live to see her daughter's wedding, to hold her grandbabies. I wondered if she knew what kind of impact she had on even the people who didn't know her well.

So today I am thinking about my own life. I am reminding myself that although it seems unimaginable, one day death will come to me. And I am questioning: What will I have done with my life? So far I've done some things: won second place at gymnastics regionals (many, many years ago, but I still dream of it), graduated from college, ran two half marathons. I tried to teach 300+ teenagers the pleasure of a well-constructed sentence written by their own hand. I grew babies with my body and nurtured trees and flowers. I've written a few real poems. I had my heart broken and I was loved obsessively, but I don't think I ever broke anyone's heart. I have made friends and lost them, loved my sisters, breathed in the smell of baby, and tried to be a good mother. I've broken my toes and a bone in my foot, sprained my ankle, and punctured my knee.

But I am not done. There is so much I want to do before I follow in Dorothy's wake. So today I'm thinking. A poem by Mary Oliver is repeating itself in my head (you can read it if you scroll down further). I am promising myself that I will pray by praying, but also by raising my own amazing children, by strengthening my friendships, by mowing my own lawn and pruning my own rosebushes, by writing and reading and running outside. Thanks, Dorothy, for the reminder.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
---Mary Oliver

When my three oldest kids were really little, I was the model Perfect Birthday Mother. I made custom birthday cakes that I then decorated with homemade decorator frosting, the kind that takes 82 ingredients to make, none of them available at Target. I made the invitations---stamped, colored, addressed---and mailed them exactly one week from the date of the party. I had matching gift bags or baskets filled to the brim with individual gifts. There was a balloon for each child in his or her favorite color. There was a paper tablecloth and matching plates and cups. And always at least three ice cream flavors to choose from.

A lot has changed since then. Being a working mom changed my perspective from everything has to be perfect to good enough will be wonderful. Why? Because I had to make do with "good enough" in order to survive. I had to let go of a lot of my wanting-to-be-perfect issues because I just didn't have the time or the emotional energy for it anymore. Being forced to just be "good enough" made me realize that the kids don't really care what their party is like. They just care that they get to have one, that kids come and there is cake to eat and presents to open.

Today was Nathan's sixth birthday---a birthday eagerly looked forward to because it was the year for a party (I only do a kid party every other year). We passed out Star Wars themed invitations on Saturday (yep, two days before the party, and made by Hallmark, not by me) and so went with a star theme. I made star-shaped cupcakes with a cake mix (lemon) and frosted them with Betty Crocker frosting (because her white-and-fluffy frosting is first off far fluffier than I can ever get mine to be and far whiter, unless I ran another errand to the candy store). To entertain the eight 5- and 6-year-old kids that came to our house, we decorated treasure boxes---cute little cardboard boxes that I painted blue (one of the only times you'll ever see me painting anything!). The kids decorated them with foam star-shaped stickers and, voila!, instant goodie "bags." Haley filled the boxes with candy and a Star Wars tattoo while the little party-goers ate cake and opened gifts. Ninty minutes later, I sent everyone home.

And now Nathan's sitting downstairs in the toyroom, playing with one of his new toys, happy as pie. Didn't matter that the party wasn't perfect---he's good with good enough. And while I'm fairly exhausted after a day of party planning, the hangover's not too bad. Mostly because I know it could be worse!

Today I baked a cake for Haley to take to her daddy/daughter church activity. She asked me to make my "famous and delicious" cake (her words), and who can resist such a sweet request? I am sort of known for this cake, just because it's usually what I bring to potluck dinners, neighborhood barbeques, or new-baby meals. It's just the right richness of chocolate, moist and not too sweet. Plus, it actually turns out well when I bake it!  (I seem to have a knack for making cakes that fall, but this one never falls.) I bake it in a bundt pan and then frost it with icing made from a bit of butter-flavor shortening, some chocolate chips, half and half, and vanilla. It's the sort of frosting you cook and then pour over the cake. It was an enormous hit at her activity and she was happy.

I've set myself a goal of not going to bed before the dishes are finished. I know that's fairly basic for most accomplished stay-at-home moms, but I have to say:  I am NOT an accomplished stay-at-home mom. My pantry is a mess right now, my spice cabinet should be condemned, and my refrigerator has far too many good intentions gone bad (in the form of bell peppers melting into black stuff, for example...I really did intend to actually cook something with them).  But I got the kitchen clean. The only thing I didn't want to do was clean the pan with the frosting. There was a good quarter inch of frosting left in the bottom of the pan and I just didn't want to deal with it. So, I did my I-don't-want-to-scrub-this-pan trick, which is filling a pan full of water, bringing it to a boil, then letting it simmer for awhile---ten or 15 minutes or so usually does the trick. Put the lid on the pan and in the morning, viola! all I-don't-want-to-clean-this residue is gone.

HOWEVER---this doesn't work so well when you start the water boiling and then forget about it. I let that pan boil for a good hour. Not the water---the pan. Halfway through Grey's Anatomy (thank you, dvr!), I started smelling something that made me think "self, it sort of smells like burning chocolate," a wiggling little thought that popped up now and then, until it really started to smell like burning chocolate and my psyche hit me over the head with the memory of that boiling water. I raced into the kitchen, turned the burner off, and stuck the pan under the tap. Left it to sit again while we finished the tv show (a girl's gotta have her priorities, right?).

Well, I just finished cleaning this pan. I absolutely thought it would be ruined. Which really made me sad because it's a nice pan. Kendell bought me a new set of Circulon pans about a year ago and so far I've managed to not ruin any---and tonight, no exception! That burnt chocolate made a scab across the bottom, true. But I simply peeled it back with a soft spatula (honestly, it was nearly as good as peeling a fingernail...oh my, I am pathetic!) and the burnt stuff came off completely intact. Ran it down the garbage disposal and said a little prayer of gratitude that I didn't ruin my pan!

I ran to the mall today to get my watch battery replaced. Maybe it's wrong, but I love my watch. I received it during one of the lowest times of my life; Kendell had been out of work for over a year and we had no idea what would happen next. A friend gave Kendell a gift card with far too much money on it for a local department store. We protested; he insisted. So, a few days after Christmas, Kendell took me shopping for a new watch. Right then, the concept of time itself was painful, all the long years of my life stretching out in a landscape covered in clouds. What would happen to us in the next week, month, year? We were both so uncertain.

When I first put my watch on---I wore it, like a little girl with new pink shoes, out of the store---I thought of that saying "only time will tell" and I wondered what experiences my new watch would tell the time for. Would it count seconds on my wrist while we lost everything we'd worked so hard for? Would it hover over my pulse if my desperately-hoped for, seemingly impossible pregnancy ever happened? What experiences would my watch keep time for?

Nearly four years later, I know. At least, I know some of the things it's counted down: my long year of teacher education, the even longer ten weeks of student teaching. My free summer. I had the watch on when the principal of Lehi High called to offer me a job, and I wore it every day I taught. I wore it to my daughter's baptism, to nieces' graduations and weddings; through family dinners, holidays, hikes in the woods. I did get to wear it through one more pregnancy and sometimes thought of it like a third pulse, counting down those nine months.

Today, after the guy at the watch shop in the mall had cleaned my watch and changed the battery, he handed it back to me with a compliment: that's a beautiful watch.  A Seiko will last a long time. Later, I sat in my van, feeding Kaleb and looking at my watch. I wonder what the next four or five years will bring, what else this watch will measure time for?

This morning I ran to the mall, to visit Hallmark. Every year, my kids receive a Christmas tree ornament in their stocking, and since it was their open house this weekend, there were drawings and free wrapping paper and free gifts, so I rushed in. I got all the ornaments but Haley's---the one I wanted for her was out of stock, which means I'll have to start scouring other Hallmarks to find it---and the big beanie babies for the kids (which has also become a tradition...Haley gets a kitty, Jake gets a bear, Nathan gets a dog; I got a little blue puppy for Kaleb since I"m not sure what his animal will be). The sales girl gave me a lovely big bag of free goodies: a boxed ornament, a silver ornament, some cards, and a gift certificate for a pedicure. I'm not sure why she gave me that gift, but I'll go with it.

The last drawing of the day was at 1:00, so I lingered around the mall for an extra 30 minutes just to see if I would win.  I had a good, good feeling that I might. When you entered the drawing, you wrote down something from the store that cost $100 that you wanted, and if they drew your name, it was yours. I wrote the Willow Tree nativity down on my little ticket...I think it's beautiful and I have a thing for nativities. By 12:55, the store was full of anxious women checking their watches. Someone finally asked the sales girl to do the drawing, and she said "no, I have to wait until exactly 1:00, just in case, at my watch says 12:57."  While I waited, I discovered another nativity I'm dying to own, the Mary Englebreight one.

They finally did the drawing but, alas, my name wasn't drawn, although the person who won had the same intials as me. I left the mall both dejected (for losing) and excited (for getting something off my list AND for getting free stuff). I love the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping, and this year I'm determined to get finished early, rather than having a last-minute, day-before-Christmas rush. We've already bought most of the kids' Christmas toys. I'm just starting a sewing project for Christmas---I'm making quilts for the kids, and the big kids' Christmas PJs.  There are gifts tucked away here and there and I'm feeling...content, well-organized, and full of surprises!

Completely off topic: I've just spent about two hours working on cleaning out my sent box, and I came across the link to this website that I'd forwarded to friends nearly a year ago.  If you need a laugh, read this. It is hilarious!

Yesterday you could get 30% off your total purchase at Gymboree (well, you can today and tomorrow, too, if you have the email coupon which I'd happy email to anyone who wants it). Since I'd been thinking about getting Christmas jammies for Kaleb---everyone is is getting, gulp, sewed-by-me flannels---I decided to take a quick jaunt to the store.

OH.MY.GOSH.  Apparently I've never just stopped by a Gymboree during the 30%-off madness. You know those commercials where the two women are fighting over the one item that's left on the sale table?  Well, multiply that by ten. Then throw those fighting women into an overcrowded, too-small-for-easy-stroller-manouvering-on-a-good-day, stifling hot store and you can see how ugly it was. There were a total of five jammies left---FIVE. And the line for buying your stuff was out the door. Not wanting to waste my waiting time on only one little pair of pajamas (how lucky am I that out of the five pair that were left, one was Kaleb's size?), so I did a little more shopping. As one woman pointed out while we were standing in line, when you buy at the 30%-off sale, it's cheaper than buying at Walmart.  Since I don't usually buy clothes at Walmart, for me it was just cheaper!

But as I waited for my turn to "rev up my Visa" (as my husband likes to call it), I started thinking: just what is it that drives me (and apparenly half of the city I live in) to need to buy cute clothes for my kids? If they were dressed in old, stained, and ugly clothes, I wouldn't love them any less. But I'm willing to stand in line for thirty minutes (not to mention hope and actually come close to praying that the woman holding the red-and-white stripy jammies, size 6-12 months, will put them down, and then doing a little mental dance when she does---I could spot that indecision through the hazy, smelly air!) for a cute outfit. Why is that? Partly it's a quality issue. Kaleb has worn clothes that both Jake and Nathan wore, and I have three neutral outfits that all four of my kids wore as babies (yay Baby Gap!).  But I think it goes a bit deeper.  First off, it's the picture issue. I want my kids to look presentable when I take their picture, even if it's just a random snapshot. And that ties right into the issue at hand..."look."  Appearance.  I give a lot of lip service to the idea that external doesn't matter. But I spend a lot of money (but not too much...I ADORE getting a good deal!) to say just the opposite. Because, maybe, I'm hoping that if my kids' clothes look perfect, then maybe I'll succeed in being perfect---perfect family doing exactly the right things. Parents always on top of it and never yelling or losing their tempers. Perfectly clean home and a tidy sum in the bank. Can all of that be made evident by a Gymboree T and some Gap jeans?  Of course not. But I think I wish it could.

Eight years ago, we planted two sycamore trees in our front yard. I've loved these trees. Sycamores grow quickly---one was Kendell's height when we planted it and now it is twice as tall as our house.  On summer afternoons, you'll  find three or four neighborhood kids enjoying the shade cast by these trees. In winter, I always take at least one or two photos of the trees' seedpods, which are prickly little balls that hang on to the bare branches, nature's version of the strobe light brightening winter days.  The soft, fuzzy newborn leaves in early April are secrets spring tells itself.

But---the sycamores have always disappointed me in the fall. I imagined, when we planted them, that I'd have a bright display of red, yellow, or orange. Instead, the leaves turn quickly, from green to brown, like a thin paper bag. I've sometimes tried to spin it and tell myself the leaves were a lovely, bronzy color. But honest, there's no way around it: they're just plain, boring brown.

Except for this year. Maybe it's been the long, warm fall we've had. Maybe I somehow managed to get exactly enough water to the trees. Maybe it's because they're older. But this year, my sycamores are gorgeous. They're subtle, not the showy gold of my now-naked maple tree, or the bright pink-red of the oaks on the mountain. But they're glowing, half green, half gold. On days when the sun shines through them I can't stop looking. So, just because I love my sycamores even more, here's a photo. There might possibly be another one tomorrow!