Transition Time

Over this holiday season, I've been conscious of experiencing many lasts as I contemplate the twins heading off to college next year--the last time I'll slip an ornament, a clementine, and chocolate into each shoe hastily placed before the wood stove on St. Nicholas Eve, the last time we'll trek into the woods as a family to find the perfect Christmas tree, the last time we'll fashion a Yule log menorah from a piece of firewood and invite friends over for latkes and dreidel. While all three kids will likely come home for some period of time around Christmas for many years to come, we'll no doubt let go of most of the small celebrations I've built in over the years to extend the holiday season, dissipate some of the anticipatory build-up of pressure around one big day of greed and gluttony, and focus on non-consumeristic, non-obligatory, non-performative ways of enjoying this time of year. Some of those rites have already gone by the wayside: the boys outgrew the Christmas Book Countdown years ago; they lost interest in the 12 Days of Christmas calendar a while back; and this year I had a book event on the Solstice, so we didn't have our traditional hike and small fire by the river.

It's a funny thing about parenting, how we anticipate, make note of, and remember each first--first clap, first word, first time riding a bike without training wheels--but lasts slip by without notice. Sometimes we don't even realize it was a last until weeks or months or years have passed. When was the last time he said 'vigenar" or "skabetti"? When was the last time I tied his shoes for him? When was the last time I could pick him up? So being aware of lasts as they happen is a strange feeling. It's tinged with both nostalgia and relief--nostalgia for the sweet time in my kids' lives when the holidays were full of magic and relief that I will soon be freed of the effort of keeping that magic alive.

People have been asking me for a while now if it isn't going to be hard to let my youngest two kids go when they head off to college next year, if I dread facing the empty nest. Of course I'll miss my kids, and I'm sure people mean well, but I have to admit to taking umbrage at the question. First, this was the goal of the whole project: to raise competent humans who can launch themselves out of the nest and live their own lives. I'm thrilled for them, and excited to see what this next phase brings. Second, the idea that something essential will be missing from my life with my kids away fails to account for the immense amount of self-sacrifice and physical and emotional labor I put into raising them or consider that maybe I'm exhausted by the effort and due for a break. Finally, the question implies that I *am* my kids, that I don't have an identity outside of "mother" and won't have a raison d'être once they're gone. So forgive me if I respond with a glib statement about being well shot of them as I dust my hands together.

While the time when I get to (more) fully inhabit myself as an individual human being is months in the future, I've been getting a preview of what it will be like to extract myself from the mother identity this week as I've begun recording my dreams and goals for 2023 and beyond. I still have to account for them and their not inconsiderable needs over the next nine months of getting them into and off to college, but after that there's a bit of a blank slate. Thinking about extracting me from them feels a bit like trying to take off a snug jacket with the zipper jammed in the up position. For so many years my goals have had to be either expanded to encompass a family or truncated by the limitations imposed by family life. I'm not sure I even know how to dream big anymore, or what my life will look and feel like next September. I had thought, at one time, that I'd drop the twins off at college and then keep on driving, west in a camper van, to explore deserts and mountains and rivers. But as the time draws nearer, I see that's not an entirely realistic plan. For one thing, I don't even have a camper van. 

2023 will be punctuated, no doubt, by many lasts, many moments of nostalgia and relief, as all three of my kids make big steps toward being their own adult selves. For me, I hope it will be marked by a few firsts, as I fiddle that jammed zipper loose, try new things, and learn to inhabit the post-mom me.

A version of this post went out recently to subscribers of my newsletter, along with some bonus material. Subscribe here and receive a free PDF of my illustrated short essay "Eleven Ways to Raise a Wild Child."

The Holiday Squeeze

I had to make some adjustments as I figured out—or relearned—how to Christmas while working full time.



We had the added complication this year of M's weekend work and play practice schedule.



Plus the plays and music concerts and other performances to attend ourselves.



We worked around, cut back, and made-do. I let some things drop—St. Nicholas Day, St. Lucia Day, the Winter Solstice hike and fire in the woods.



No one seemed to miss the missing celebrations, and I'm not sure how to take that—be happy that my kids are easy to please or disappointed that our traditions over the years didn't make more of an impression.



We DID host our traditional Hanukkah feast with friends, on the same afternoon we brought in our tree.



C and the boys took charge of decorating said tree, while I prepared latkes, and festooned it with miles of yarn garland from E and Z's finger-knitting days.



It took me until two days before Christmas to finish hanging all our ornaments, the same day I spun like a whirlwind, baking three kinds of cookies and my first-ever yule log cake (Black Forest flavor).



And we went on a traditional family Christmas Eve hike to the river with our guests.



Followed by family and feasting and, of course, round after round of gift-opening.



The greatest gift I received was five full days off to spend doing all of that baking and decorating, and a little last-minute shopping, and, of course, doing what I love best on Christmas: hanging out at home with my kids, watching them enjoy their gifts, nibbling all day on cookies and crackers and cheese, and just being for a little while, with nowhere to go and absolutely nothing we have to do.

I hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday season, too.

Best of the Blog ~ Holiday Traditions

Traditions give a comforting sense of rhythm and repetition to days and years. They give us things to look forward to, trigger memories, and are measuring sticks by which we chart our family's changes over the years. They can also be repetitive, rote, and boring. Do we have to do that again? I'm feeling a bit of the latter this year, which either means it's time for these kids to grow up and move out already, or it's time to mix things up and try something new. Before I figure out what that will be, here's a little stroll down some of our favorite holiday traditions.

Christmas Book Countdown

With much bigger boys, this will be the first December in many years that we don't count down the days to Christmas by unwrapping and reading a holiday book (or two or three) each evening before bed. But for all the years it lasted, the Christmas Book Countdown was one of our favorite traditions. (This post tells gives the low-down on the tradition and also includes links to the creation of the book crate and some of our seasonal favorite reads).

Getting the Tree

Setting off into the woods to search for and cut the perfect tree is one of my favorite parts of the holiday. We've gotten a tree out of the woods near our house every year since M was a baby and I've been documenting those tree hunts here since 2009. That year, I shared some history on that tradition.  Some years we collected our tree from snowless woods. Then there was the year we came home from picking out a tree from the woods and decided to instead use the tree that had fallen down in our front yard months earlier. Some years, we've had to squeeze getting the tree in between all the other things we have going on; make that many years. And last year, the year we got our 16th tree off this land, I revisited some of those past tree-gettings.

Christmas Cookies

Making—and eating—cookies is, of course, a favorite tradition of everyone around here. I've honed cookie-making to a science, mixing all the dough in one mega-mixing session, and putting it in the fridge or freezer for later cutting. This saves me from having to wash all of the measuring and mixing implements more than once. To avoid contamination, I start with the white dough of sugar cookies, followed by light brown Spekulatius, and finish with the much darker chocolate gingerbread. Sometimes I add other cookies into the mix, like two kinds of shortbread I tried last year. Different candies make appearances now and then, including the perennial and always improving peppermint bark,

Little Holidays
My favorite part of the Christmas season is not Christmas at all, but the other holidays we celebrate in a small way in the weeks leading up. These are low-stress, high reward events, completely divorced from wantiness, greed, and unrealistic expectations.

On December 6, we celebrate St. Nikolaus Day, with a few treats placed in shoes left out the night before: an ornament for the tree, a chocolate, and a clementine. On or around December 13, we celebrate St. Lucia Day with saffron buns.

Sometime during the eight days of Hanukkah, we get together with friends for latkes, applesauce, a few rounds of dreidel, and our traditional Yule log menorah. A few days ago, M said "Did you know most Christian families don't celebrate Hanukkah?" It was a funny statement, but also a perfectly reasonable thing to be surprised by for a kid growing up in an atheist-but-open-minded-and-slightly-pagan household. We don't mind coopting religious celebrations that aren't our own, especially if they involve really good food. And I'd rather have a latke with sour cream than turkey or ham (or whatever the traditional American Christmas dinner is these days) any day.

For the solstice, we decorate our front yard spruce tree with yummy treats for the birds and, weather permitting, go out for a nighttime trek to the river, where we build a small fire and enjoy being outside at night in winter—a rare event.

Twelve Days of Christmas

Several years ago, I started combatting the day-after-Christmas letdown by keeping the festivities going for twelve more days. Our celebrations are simple: A Twelve Days of Christmas calendar (kind of the anti-Advent calendar); a ring of twelve candles which we light each night while we sing a holiday carol or two, removing one candle each night as we count down to twelve; and one final gift dropped in shoes placed by the fire on the last night of Christmas.

After all that celebrating (not to mention actual Christmas, which involves a lot of contortions with C's extended family plus long-distance Christmasing with my family in Colorado), we are usually ready to settle into a long, quiet winter.

Weekend Things ~ Christmukkah

First: More pictures of my new kitchen shelves. I was finally home when the lovely afternoon light was shining on them this weekend and I had to take more pictures. What can I say? I'm in love.

(And I'm extra in love with this totally adorable little strawberry pitcher.)

Okay, onto the weekend. We had a very busy Christmas activity-filled weekend, starting with a performance of Annie at M's high school Friday night and wrapping up with The Nutcracker Sunday afternoon. In-between we got our Christmas tree.

At around 55 degrees F, it was very much not Christmas-tree-getting weather. We've had a few snowless tree-getting expeditions, but never one so warm as this.

I found myself wandering around, taking pictures,

And forgetting what our mission was.

But C kept us on track and found us this nice little tree.

We said our traditional words of thanks, sang "O Christmas Tree," and the boys took turns sawing through the trunk.

When we got home, C and I partially decorated it while the boys played outside for hours--such a treat this time of year. Then we set aside the Christmas decorating and prepared latkes and gingered beets and fresh, hot applesauce for a Hanukkah dinner with friends. We started celebrating Hanukkah a few years ago because I wanted to introduce my kids to different cultures (and because latkes), and it's turned into one of my favorite events of the season--an evening spent with good friends around good food with absolutely no expectations, no giving or getting of gifts, no baggage of Christmas past. No need to worry that the tree is half-decorated, the cookie dough is half-mixed in the fridge, the presents are 1/4 purchased and 0% wrapped. C made our traditional Yule log menorah (this year he found a great branch with a natural hump in the middle), we spun some dreidel, ate some gelt, listened to klezmer music and Adam Sandler, and just generally enjoyed ourselves.

The next morning I snuck out of bed early and put some saffron buns in the oven for St. Lucia Day and we finished decorating the tree.

It's a spindly guy, I suppose, compared to farm-raised trees.

But we managed to fit most of our ornaments onto it, even some glass balls that I don't usually bother with.

Weekend Things--Winter Things

This weekend involved a lot of kitchen time.

A few times a year, I take all the dishes down off the open shelves and wash away the months of accumulated dust. Christmastime seems like a good time to do that.

When I put them back, I arranged all the reds and greens on the big center shelves for a festive look. None of the menfolk in my house were impressed. 

Z and I made some concoctions for Christmas presents.

And E helped cut out cookies.

Saturday afternoon we headed over to the pond down the road to skate before the snow came.

About two inches of dry, powdery snow covered most of the pond, which made it kind of easy to skate on (or at least easy to not fall down on).

But the boys preferred racing around a little rink of bare ice at one end.

Sunday morning, the real snow came.

Lucia buns for breakfast.

And fondue for lunch (because Catherine Newman).

E and Z made sled runs and dug tunnels, and in the afternoon, we drove through the snow to The Nutcracker. I read Harry Potter out loud on the drive, both ways, pausing only to look up so I could backseat drive and keep C on the road.

We've had some early and fierce cold already. It's amazing how cold becomes relative. A couple of weeks ago, 27 degrees felt unbearable, but today 15 felt downright balmy after yesterday's negative 13.9.

Also this:

I finally, finally finished my thesis. One-hundred-fifty pages: nine stories and a preface, plus my 90-page third-semester project. Very exciting to see it all printed up and fancy. I haven't mailed it yet because I was still waiting for one last piece, but it should be in the post tomorrow morning and then I will sigh a big sigh of relief.

(Also, I was looking to see if I'd ever posted the Lucia bun recipe I use before, and I found this post from one year ago today, about living life to the fullest because of, well, all the crap that goes on in this world. It's nice to be reminded of this (and not so nice to need to be reminded so often).

Winter is Short

You wake Saturday to learn that the unimaginable has happened—again—and you wonder what kind of world you live in. You imagine mothers and fathers opening closets and drawers and cupboards, seeing the gifts they had carefully selected and hidden away over the last weeks and months, now with no one to receive them, and you try to imagine what that vast emptiness feels like (your imagination fails) and, because you are a selfish creature, you wonder what you can do to make your children safe (you think moving to a country that does not worship firearms would be a good place to start).

And then you turn off NPR and put on Christmas records—John Denver, Willie Nelson, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Nutcracker—and place freshly-baked saffron buns and fruit salad on the table, along with a makeshift Lucia crown of fir tips and four white candles.

Making occupies your day—knitting and gluing and tying and cooking—and you go out in search of a pie and come home empty-handed. You clear away the red and green and temporarily replace them with blue. You take a few moments outside, to check out the frozen pond and find the perfect stick for the Menorah Yule Log, and brag to anyone who will listen that Martha stole your idea in this month’s issue.

You gather your loved ones around the table and feast on golden latkes with warm applesauce, yogurt, pickled beets and spinach (because you’re trying to introduce more veggies into your meals) with doughnuts for dessert (alas the pie), plus red wine and grape kid wine. 

You put on the new Klezmatics CD you finally got to accompany the feast, then the dreidle spins and Hanukkah gelt changes hands and no one cries this year. Afterward, everyone marches around the living room, singing, “Light the candle…spin the dreidle…dance the Horah…Hanukkah is here! Hey!” with much banging of tambourines and shouting and hilarity.

Sunday morning, you find three children on the couch, all knitting, and it’s like a reverse-mastery class, with the youngest helping the middle one with his needle-knitting and the middle one showing the oldest how to finger-knit with four fingers. Of course, as soon as the camera comes out, they hide.

You feel the clock ticking, and hastily complete projects, while the boys attend a dog funeral at their grandfather’s house, and then everyone gets wedged into dress clothes (i.e., pants that don’t have holes in the knees, shirts that don’t have skateboards or spiders on them) and you go see the Nutcracker, this year watching from right behind the “orchestra” pit (although there is no orchestra) and though you can’t see the dancers’ feet, no one has to strain to see over the head of the person sitting in front of them. You go out for Mexican food that isn’t very good, but it is cheap and then read “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with everyone singing along, off-key and off-tempo, but with as much enthusiasm as it’s possible to muster on a Sunday night, and you kind of feel something squeeze inside your chest at the magic of these little beings (who often drive you crazy).

You don’t realize that you’re nervous about sending your kids to school, until you feel the relief that floods through you when the automated call comes at five in the morning that school is cancelled due to the snow. The boys pull their snowsuits on top of their pajamas and you watch them out the window, trying to sled down the hill on three inches of wet, sticky snow, and you realize they already know the lesson you learn anew every time something terrible happens—winter is short, sled when the snow falls.