Heritage

I recently played a concert where we were asked to wear clothing that represented our culture or heritage, and in lieu of that, concert black or something colorful. This was a Juneteenth concert, so I understood the sentiment.

However, in my case, I genuinely didn't know what to do with that.

What am I?

I am half Jewish, but not in a way that plays out beyond attending weddings and funerals. It's out there, but it's not mine. There's Hungarian and Latvian stuff in my family tree, but not taught to me by anyone I know. There's German heritage on my mom's side that includes my great-great-grandparents here in Milwaukee coming from Germany, but I can't tell you specifics. I know when Ian and I visited Berlin, we were amused to find the food in the hostel to be essentially the same thing we'd get served at my grandma's. Occasionally when we eat a standard looking dinner with meat, potatoes, and a vegetable we'll now call it ethnic food. 

There is nothing in that mix that seems appropriate to don as "my heritage." I certainly wasn't going to show up to the concert in a dirndl.

Culturally, I'm just an American. More specifically, a Midwesterner. Which means whatever I'm wearing on any given day counts as cultural attire. That's only (potentially) interesting if I'm somewhere other than the Midwest. I look a bit out of place in New York. I know I stood out in India. But in Milwaukee? Being American in America is just the air we breathe. Not much to see.

There are different ways to approach heritage. For me, it's only of interest if it's directly personal. I love telling my kids stories about my parents and grandparents, and sharing any stories they passed down to me about people they were related to. I'm curious about connections that feel alive. Tracing back family trees beyond a point where no one has stories to share doesn't generally hold my attention.

My husband is someone who does genealogical research and has traced back his family tree pretty thoroughly. He's stopped at graveyards to locate ancestors, and looked through census records. His heritage includes Germans on one side, and Native Americans on another. When people ask where he's from, he usually says the West Coast, and if they press it, he claims to be ethnically Californian, and if they push it further he can trace family back to Oklahoma from the Trail of Tears. Does he consider this his heritage in the sense that he's been handed down traditions or lore? No. He grew up in Oregon, but he's lived in the Midwest at this point longer than he was there. Researching his family tree has more to do with his appreciation of history in general, and he wants to share with our kids their place in it.

I understand that on one level, but for myself, once you search back enough distance that it's reduced to data rather than stories, it doesn't belong to me more than to anyone else. 

I also believe we shouldn't be chained to people in the past by accident of birth. I happen to have a lovely family that I enjoy being connected to. But I don't get to claim credit for any of their accomplishments merely by association. Just as I don't have to feel guilt for things my ancestors did. It would be really cool if I came from a family of luthiers that went back generations, and I could trace my skills to specific people in the past, but I would still have to make my own mark. And if someone in my family tree was awful, that's not on me. I have a responsibility to do the right thing now, regardless of the past or where I came from.

I'm sure I would find it distressing if I found out I had ancestors that owned slaves, but primarily because the concept itself is horrible overall. My husband did find slaveholders in his family tree, but those particular relatives were Native American. That one is complicated to process. 

In my home growing up, we had rather loose traditions. There was just stuff we did, but it wasn't imbued with any sense of obligation to the past. We had a secular kind of Christmas because Christmas is fun. I know my dad was never comfortable with a Christmas tree in the house, but he understood why that was a nice thing for his children. I asked him once why he still referred to himself as Jewish since he wasn't practicing, and he said you can't be the first person to turn your back on thousands of years of an unbroken lineage without feeling the weight of it behind you.

Ian and I have raised our children in the same general way we knew growing up. We do things that have become part of the American landscape like secular Christmas and Easter. We love costumes at Halloween. We like repeating the same menu every Thanksgiving and crossing our fingers over whether or not the orange jello will set or be served as goo. But many of those activities that we consider traditional are evolving as our kids have become adults. I like that we do things because we choose to.

In my mind, having those moments be chosen rather than dictated by a particular heritage makes them more special, not less. I remember several years ago when I was suffering through something complicated, and told my family that we could forego anything to do with Mother's Day that year. It wasn't worth the hassle and I didn't feel particularly deserving. But then that Sunday morning rolled around, and there was Quinn at the end of my bed with a breakfast tray and the annual small bouquet of lilacs. I expressed surprise since I had said it wasn't necessary, and she told me it "felt important." I still tear up when I think about that.

I find other people's dedication to heritage anywhere from charming to perplexing. I understand why if a person had a religious or cultural tradition that they loved and was handed down over generations why they would continue it. I also appreciate wanting to feel a connection to places and cultures that were stolen from someone. Things that provide inspiration and comfort are important. But tradition isn't synonymous with good, and I can think of many examples of groups or rituals that don't add to the betterment of the world. When I see people clinging to symbols of the Civil War and defending it as heritage, while willfully ignoring vile parts of that history, I am anywhere from confused to appalled.

Weddings are a big moment for heritage. I remember planning my wedding and expressing to my dad that I wasn't sure what to draw on, since we didn't have anything we followed that came with a particular set of expectations. He said I had all of human history and culture to choose from and to pick what appealed to me, but that's not really true. I don't remember public discussions about cultural appropriation back in the 90s, but even then I knew not to "jump a broom" at my wedding just because I thought it looked neat. Traditions are supposed to mean something, and treating other people's heritage like a grab bag is disrespectful.

When my brother married a woman from India, they had wedding ceremonies in both Ohio and Calcutta. It was amusing to see my sister-in-law express a fascination with whatever was traditional to do here, and enthusiasm to do any of it, but my brother preferred to be different since few of those traditions meant anything to him. Then in India, I watched the reverse, where my sister-in-law rolled her eyes at many elements expected of her at a traditional ceremony and my brother was all in. 

Other people's heritage always looks more interesting. When I lived in Mexico for a summer back in college, I loved the culture there. And one of the teachers at the language school I was attending told me that Americans were the most interesting of all the international students to ask where they were from, because there was always more than one answer. Only the Americans consistently claimed multiple sets of heritage. When asked where they were from, they always said "America" first, and immediately followed it up with whatever ancestry they knew, such as German or Jamaican or Korean.

Ultimately, I think people should feel free to drop whatever traditions from their heritage that don't serve them well in this time and place, and to embrace whatever parts give them security and purpose.

I asked my youngest daughter during the intermission of that Juneteenth concert what she felt about the question of heritage as it relates to our family. She agreed that identifying as anything much beyond being an American or a Midwesterner was a stretch. She liked that we can be creative about what we call tradition in our home. She feels loved and supported and doesn't need to look to the past for that. What we've made for ourselves is enough.

So what did I finally choose to wear? A top handed down from my mom that she made decades ago. It's fun, it's colorful, it's unique, and my mom made it. Since she also made me, I can't think of a better way to represent my heritage than that.

Holiday Shift

A couple of weeks ago, I dropped my son off at the mall to see a movie with friends. I arrived a bit early to pick him up afterward, and as I was wandering about and looking at the different shops, I was surprised to see a long line outside of a jewelry store. It was a small shop with Covid protocols in place, which meant a limited number of people inside at a time, but still, why would there be a line at a jewelry store half an hour before closing?

But then I remembered the next day was Valentine's Day. Last minute jewelry purchases suddenly made more sense.

When I mentioned my initial puzzlement about the jewelry store line to my daughter later, she said, "Oh yeah, Valentine's Day. I still kind of think about that as something to be excited for, but I guess that was a long time ago."

The last real time she would have done anything interesting for Valentine's Day would have been in sixth grade, so half a dozen years back. She used to make amazing Valentines for the kids in her class. My favorite was the year of the "pocket mice" which were all little pink and red sculptures made from colored duct tape. All my kids made their own Valentines to hand out at school, which meant when all three kids were in elementary school there was a lot of cutting and pasting going on at our dining room table for over a week every February.

But now Valentine's Day barely registers. We get a lovely box from my mom every year, and that we still look forward to. The box always contains some lovely handmade cards made specially for each of us, shortbread heart cookies, and surprises. This year there was a lot of much appreciated homemade jam.

Aside from my mom's box, there is no Valentine's Day at our house at this point.

In fact, I'm starting to realize how much of a shift all the holidays have taken now that we are transitioning from having a home full of kids, to a home with just adults. 

My oldest is away at college. My middle kid graduated high school early and is doing classes mostly online at a local college. She's home, but is separated from what the rest of the house is doing much of the time. My youngest is in high school, and tends to go along with whatever is happening, rather than make suggestions or instigate anything.

Halloween was the first holiday I noticed slip away back in 2020. The pandemic killed that prematurely. I really enjoyed putting together costumes for my kids. Quinn was interested in dressing up as at least one of various categories of animal over his trick-or-treating years--and I think 2020 he was due to be an amphibian--but no trick-or-treat, no school dance, no costumes. That's done.

Halloween was a big deal for so long! It was several weeks of planning and work and the excitement of the reveal. Now we hand out candy, which is okay, but comparatively dull. Maybe we can become one of those houses that builds something cool? Bay View has several spots that put together amazing displays that people come from all around to see. Going forward, if we want to still experience Halloween as an event, we may have to do something like that. But the era of my kids doing trick-or-treat in costumes is over. If I still want to do Halloween, it will have to be in some other way.

Christmas has shifted in a more subtle manner. The logistics of it haven't changed: We unwrap presents at home in the morning, and then drive to Detroit to have Christmas dinner with my mom. There was a bit of a pause in that in the beginning of the pandemic, but we returned to it. The kids are still allowed to empty their stockings before the "grown-ups" come downstairs. Once everyone is up, we start unwrapping things from under the tree. It's still fun. I usually manage to find things the kids all like. But my kids commented this year that it's not the same as when they were little. The anticipation is different. The excitement is replaced with a level of appreciation that is nice, but not the same.

Fourth of July we started skipping even before the pandemic shut it down. The parade is very different from a child's eye view, and my kids stopped seeing it as something worth the effort of getting up early for. In a normal year, Milwaukee has a lot of fireworks. As my kids got older and we asked if they wanted to go watch the fireworks in the park, or by the lake, they shrugged it off as something they could do later. Fourth of July has become just a lot of noise.

Easter, strangely enough, has stuck around. We used to travel to see relatives for Easter, and hunt eggs in New York, or Ohio, or once at the cottage in Michigan. In 2020, in order to keep all the days from blurring completely together, Ian and I hid more than 80 plastic eggs all over the house. Because we didn't have to worry about making things too hard for small children, we got to be incredibly wicked with our egg hiding, which was fun. But Aden won't be here for Easter this year. I don't know if I can convince the remaining kids to hunt for eggs without her. Maybe? I hope so.

The only holidays I can think of that are improved by my kids getting older are New Year's Eve (simply because staying awake until midnight is no longer a problem) and Thanksgiving. When they were small, my kids were not interested in eating the food (aside from the rolls and pie), and there's not much to Thanksgiving if you don't want to eat. But now they all contribute to the meal and it's really great. Mona's good at mashed potatoes, Aden makes pies, Quinn starts the orange jello days ahead in the hopes it will gel, and they all help with setting the table and making cool place markers and centerpieces. They're also old enough to take pleasure in sitting at the table afterward and partaking in conversation with the visiting relatives, which was once the most boring thing imaginable. And we play games, which I enjoy better now that we don't have to make concessions for their ages.

We're not quite empty nesters, however it's getting easier to imagine. There are certainly still ways we are involved as parents, but the hands-on elements are fading fast. It's strange now to remember my kids once needed me for everything from bathing to getting dressed to crossing the street. Quinn may be here for another few years, but he does his own laundry and can cook for himself, and aside from needing a ride once in a while when the bus doesn't show, he functions independently from us.

We spent years building up all manner of holiday traditions, and most of them are now obsolete. Ian and I will have to start deciding where to put our holiday energy going forward. Life with Ian is fun, so I'm not worried we won't find things to do, but it will be like starting from scratch.

What did we do before we had kids? Hard to remember. But I'm starting to understand all those parents who clamor for grandchildren. I'm not in any hurry to be anyone's grandmother, but I see the appeal. In the meantime, I'm thinking about how we replace all the cute parts of various holidays with things we can be excited about in new ways. (I'm thinking travel....)

The Other Mothers

I've always been irritated with people who are quick to dismiss Mother's Day as a greeting card holiday.  Holidays are what you choose to make them.  The commercialization of certain holidays can indeed get out of hand to the point where the real sentiments get lost, but that's the fault of capitalism and the juvenile insistence of the average person in this country that everything be fun or dramatic rather than meaningful.

Major Christian holidays in this country get a lot of attention, and I know members of minority faiths who resent how little the mainstream knows about other holidays when they come around, but I've often felt they should be a bit grateful that the relative obscurity shields them from some of the nonsense, and they don't see important traditions reduced to another excuse to buy unnecessary things.  My kids were surprised to learn Easter was a religious holiday at all, because they've only known it as egg hunts and candy.  For us that works, again, because we can make holidays what we like, and for some of them that means making them silly.

But even secular holidays aren't immune from further secularization.  Mother's Day in this country was eventually denounced by its creator who found its reduction from something meaningful to something used as a marketing ploy to be deplorable.  However, we can pick what we like and reject the rest, just as we can on any other day.  The tricky part is navigating the larger context and being prepared for the various meanings any holiday has for others.  We can't assume it's the same for everyone.

Mother's Day can be complicated because mothers are complicated.

Riddle Me This

Let's just start off by agreeing that I am, and always have been, an excellent big sister.  I have a good memory, so no point in challenging me on this.  (Anything you hear to the contrary is Lies All Lies.)

Many years ago, back when our house in Pleasant Ridge, Michigan was green, Marathon Bars were plentiful at the local pool in the summer, and bicentennial quarters were new and shiny, my brother owned a Riddler doll.  It looked a lot like this:

(They don't make villains like that anymore.  Probably for good reason.)

Anywho, to make a long story (the way my brother tells it, anyway) short, I pitched the Riddler out the second story bathroom window.

When Valentine's Day sneaks up on you (Babble)

I’ve always liked Valentine’s Day, even though it usually meant finding out no one in my class at school could spell my name correctly.  I loved handing out little cards, and when I had time, making them myself.  Valentines are simple and nice and it’s one of those rare times when you can hand anyone you like a note.  During years when I was too swamped with a newborn around the holidays at the end of the year to bother with Christmas cards, I waited until Valentine’s day to send everyone a letter.  My mom always sends us a Valentine’s box with homemade treats and surprising things.  It’s a tradition I hope to keep up with my own kids when they eventually move away.  (Not that they say they are ever moving–according to them they will live with me forever and ever.)

Normally I help the kids make their own cards.  This is Mona last year at the violin store in Valentine production mode:

Usually we start talking about Valentines the week before so if there is anything complicated or unusual about what they want to do I can have some time figure out how to make it work.  Last year Aden made pop-up cards all on her own that were pretty cool.

But this year Valentine’s Day kind of took us by surprise.  I was associating it with next week on my calendar because it falls on a Sunday this year.  Then I realized the kids probably would have their Valentine’s party on Friday.  Then I found out there is no school on Friday–so the Valentines had to be done last night.  This did not fit in with my work schedule at all, so we ended up eating at Target an hour before bedtime and shopping for cards and pencils.

Of course, my kids can’t pick out easy cards that you just sign and are done with.  Aden wanted to continue her pop-up theme, and found something with dogs that you had to punch out and fold and attach to the main card.  Those took her over an hour before she ever got to signing anything.  Mona chose something with a rainforest theme that came with little play tattoos that were too hard to attach to the cards herself.  So we all sat together at the dining room table cranking out cards, and it took us well past bedtime but it was nice.

The biggest surprise to me was Quinn, because we set aside cards for their cousin, and when I gave him one to fill out, he correctly printed her name.  I know he’s been working on writing some numbers and letters, but I’d never seen him try something as complicated as an upper case E or an R and he did them really well for age three.  He will love being able to pass out his own Valentines at school next year.

I will admit that Valentine’s Day is one of the holidays where I miss Ian more than usual.  It’s hard having him so far away, and all his stories when I hear from him make me nervous.  I don’t like picturing him with a gun or in dangerous situations.  He seems fine and it sounds like he’s accomplishing a lot of positive things in Iraq, but not being able to give your main squeeze an actual squeeze on Valentine’s Day is lonely.

So this year I appointed Mona my Valentine’s date.  As the middle child I find she’s the hardest one to make time alone with.  I see Quinn alone all the time, and somehow I get moments alone with Aden, but Mona is always along for the ride with someone and private moments are rare.  I told her I would hire a babysitter for her brother and sister, and the two of us would go out to eat and do something special.  That something special will probably turn into a trip to Home Depot for something we need for the new house, but alone with Mona it will be special.  She’s really excited and keeps asking me, “Am I still going to be your Valentine this year, Mama?”  The only tricky thing is to not make Aden and Quinn feel slighted, so I’m trying to find someone to watch them that will feel more like a play date.  In any case, I’m looking forward to Valentine’s Day, even though it feels like my heart is overseas.

I remember talking to Ian about holidays during the last deployment, and he said they were no different from any other days, which in a war is understandable.  He barely noticed it was Christmas and forgot about Easter and Valentine’s Day and our anniversary.  I get that and it’s fine.  But it’s another way in which our experiences while apart diverge.  For us holidays are among the clearer moments when we know exactly what we’re missing.  We get used to the day to day life without Ian here and we miss him in a general sort of way. 

But when a day is marked and set apart we all look around and notice his absence in a way that doesn’t happen normally.  When I started talking to Aden about what kinds of Valentines she wanted to pass out this year, she got excited about it, and then got very quiet.  “I miss daddy.”  I told her I know, and I did too, and that maybe the box we sent with his Valentines in it would arrive on time.

If it makes his time in Iraq a little better to remember we’re doing Valentine’s things this time of year, then I hope he remembers.  If it makes his time harder, I hope it slips by unnoticed.

Either way, I have a date.  She’s short and missing a couple of teeth, but in lieu of my husband it’s hard to think of a sweeter Valentine to spend my day with.

All Kinds of Hectic (Babble)

In our home most of the Christmas activity happens after the 25th.  We’re not attached to any particular date, so it helps that different members of the family can spend Christmas day wherever they need to, and then everyone can gather here for a big event.  Right now in my house I have seven people staying with us (I think–it’s easy to lose track), plus a few more visitors who prefer the privacy of a hotel while they are in town.  It’s crazy and pretty great.

The most satisfying thing is seeing how happy the kids are.  Aden is the ring leader, and we can hear all the little footsteps following her about the house.  There are serious and exciting games involving tiny bobble head toys and insect trivia happening all the time, and lots of jokes that don’t make any sense.  (Quinn botched one the other day at dinner by doing a knock knock joke about a banana, and the punchline was something like, “Banana I had an orange for you?  The banana?”  He’s cute enough it still gets a laugh.)

The best holiday present I get every year is that my mom cooks all the dinners.  She plans out elaborate and tasty meals that will satisfy the vegetarians among us as well as the omnivores.  (Tonight’s dinner was a wild rice/mushroom/dried cherry thing served in a half a squash with toasted almonds on top, and salmon with capers and olives and other good things that I didn’t recognize chopped up, and bread from the local bakery and salad….  I’m not always sure exactly what I’m eating but it’s always amazing.)  The kids never eat much more than a little bread when the food looks too interesting, but I’ve been pleased this year that they sit politely at the table and try a few bites and eventually ask to be excused without complaining.  Tonight they just scrounged some yogurt from the fridge on their own when they got hungry later and that’s fine with me.  As long as they aren’t rude to the cook and eat something at some point I’m happy.  It’s an incredible amount of expense and work for my mom to prepare a week’s worth of meals for so many people.  Makes me feel extra guilty for how unpleasant I was to live with from ages two through twelve, but I certainly appreciate my mother now.  If I can manage to be half the mom she is I will be very proud.


My favorite event so far has been all the children teaming up for a surprise party for my brothers.  Barrett told them about Arno having a birthday and Aden got to work with streamers and gifts, and then I mentioned that it was her Uncle Barrett’s birthday, too.  I don’t know what they think the word ‘twins’ means, but that bit of information took them completely by surprise.  They got up very early to start work with the Easy Bake Oven.  They made the world’s smallest cake and covered it with every candle they could find.  It looked like a festive baby porcupine set on fire.

We’ve had a creative limbo competition, Santa/Barrett made a wacky appearance, the kids have taken a hike to the North Pole (which looked strangely like our back yard) and we’re still hoping for a trip to the aquarium and sledding in the park in the next couple of days.  This is the kind of hectic I llke.  Mix and match fun with relatives, where any way people get paired up is a good time, and there is a ton of activity in every corner and late into the night.

Unfortunately, there has been a bit of hectic on the other end of the spectrum as well (including the untimely destruction of the new mirror ball, which was sad but not unpredictable).  I’ve had to juggle a lot of unexpected things since Ian left right after Christmas, but I think I’ve got it under control.  It’s helped to have family here for some of that.  It makes all the difference in the world to be loved, and I am the most fortunate person I know to be loved by so many remarkable people.  I hope my husband finds support where he is.  He’s kind enough to always say I have the harder job, but I have my family with me, so I have it better by far.  It pains me to imagine him alone while I’m surrounded by so many people we care about.  I wish I could bottle the hilarity of the limbo contest and send it to him.  I took a bunch of video, so I’m hoping that will help a little at some point.

I was thinking about how having a hectic week full of relatives would be such a nice distraction for my kids, but I overlooked how much I would need it myself.  As I sit here quietly in my room, away briefly from my houseful of guests, I’m struck by how powerfully I miss my husband.  I wish he didn’t have to go.  I don’t know when I’ll see him next.  I don’t think I’ve ever missed him more than at this moment.  I think I’d better go join the pleasant mayhem again or I might cry.  (Off to find a limbo stick and a kid to hug….)

Traditions and Ruts (Babble)

There are traditions, there are ruts, and then there are just unfortunate patterns that repeat themselves by no one’s choice at all.

The lovely thing about traditions is that they provide us with a familiar framework for an event that grounds us in the present while connecting us to both the past and the future.  I’m fortunate that in both violin making and playing music I feel part of some level of tradition every day.  It gives meaning to my life that I appreciate deeply.  This is not to say traditions by definition are good.  I had an argument once in college with a roommate who believed such a thing, and I told her I was sure the KKK had loads of traditions to pass on, but that didn’t make them good or worth continuing. 

Traditions can be comforting and fun, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be reexamined periodically, and there should always be room for something new.  I love handing down recipes and stories to my kids that I had as a child, but I’m just as excited about the addition of new things unique to my family.  For instance, as of this year, our family apparently needs a mirror ball in the kitchen as part of our celebration.  I’m hoping one day to see my great-grandchildren reverently unpack the family disco ball as a necessary part of the season.

Ruts are habits people get into that feel like traditions, but are really just things nobody thought enough of to change.  We have ornaments on our tree that have stories attached that we stop and admire every year, and hanging those is a tradition.  Then there are other goofy things that no one cares about, but they keep ending up in the box and they just wind up on the tree.  Those are the rut ornaments.  A few of those have managed to move up in status as the kids single them out for attention and assign meaning to them purely because they remember seeing them the year before.  Good enough for me. 

Other ruts in our season include using the same weird blanket that doubles as a painting drop cloth under the tree just because I never remember to find something nice until it’s too late, wrapping things badly because I lose patience with it, and sending cards to some people I never see or hear from because I can’t think of a good reason not to.

Then there are the unfortunate patterns.  When I was a child we drove from Detroit to Columbus, Ohio every Christmas.  The time spent with grandma and grandpa in their home, eating spritz cookies and stollen was a tradition.  The four hours of driving on dark, icy roads on Christmas Eve was just an unfortunate byproduct of that, and now I always associate the holidays a little with motion sickness.  Not my own–I don’t have that problem–but both my brothers used to rock back and forth the whole ride saying they didn’t feel good.  (Actually, one would rock and chant, and then the other would throw up.  Probably a less glamorous twin thing.)  We have been fortunate that for as long as we’ve been in our house that all the relatives have come to us, so my kids don’t associate Christmas with travel.  (That’s for Easter when we go to New York.)

My kids enjoy several unique holiday traditions (including my brother making casts of their feet every year) and some basic ones such as getting excited about Santa.  There are a lot of opinions out there about how parents deal with the Santa Claus question–whether it’s right to lie to kids, or if since it’s all in fun it’s okay.  I find it interesting because it’s not much of an issue for us.  Aden asks if Santa is real, and I tell her it’s a story some people believe and some people don’t, and she can do with it what she likes.  I don’t know if she really believes there’s a Santa, but she likes the stories and she leaves him healthy snacks (explaining he’s probably sick of cookies by the time he gets to us).  She said she saw the real Santa at a concert she went to with her class the other day, and Mona was jealous. 

However they think of it is fun for them and they don’t need me pretending to make reindeer sounds on the roof, so I leave it to them.  We don’t have specific gifts from Santa or anything along those lines, just lots of fun stuff already piled up under the tree.  We don’t put anything in their stockings until Christmas morning, so maybe they think those things are from Santa.  I don’t tell them anything one way or another and they seem fine with that.  My brother, Barrett, always dresses up at least once during the holidays in a nasty old Santa suit he got for free when he was living in the Ozarks for awhile, and it’s pretty hilarious, but the kids know it’s their uncle and he’s just being funny.  I think Aden plays along with the idea because it’s fun, but I don’t think she would be crushed if anyone told her it wasn’t true. 

There are Webkinz toys (that they’ve been looking at longingly for months in the store) for them to unwrap in the morning and modeling clay and markers and ‘jewels’ in their stockings that I know will make them happy.  The rest of the time will be about including their cousin in their endless pretend games all over the house and putting on an elaborate puppet show for everyone.  I’m hoping to make my grandmother’s spritz cookies by the light of the mirror ball.  Those are traditions Santa can’t really improve upon, so we don’t worry about him.

I’ve been reflecting on these ideas more than usual this holiday because things are in flux.  Our offer was accepted on the house across the street (YAY!), so we are on track to move in February.  (Coming soon will be the true test for those who have said, “If there is anything you need….”)  It makes saying goodbye to Ian this time that much harder, not just because I fear for him in Iraq, but because it’s the last Christmas with him in this home.  It’s also been a difficult holiday because Ian’s mother was in the hospital in a different state and he struggled with whether or not he should cut his time short with us to be with her.  After much consideration and hours on the phone arranging for appropirate care it was determined he didn’t need to fly out there, but contemplating the mortality of a parent is troubling.

For myself I would say this has been my most emotional holiday season, except I have a pretty good memory so I know better.  The Christmas during the last deployment was much harder.  In December 2006 Ian was in Iraq and we knew we wouldn’t see him again until at least August.  Quinn was just over a month old on Christmas morning and I was sleep fatigued and nursing.  The girls had just turned three and five.  One of my brothers was in the initial stages of a divorce.  My grandma was visiting for what we all suspected would be the last time before she moved into an assisted living apartment.  There were disturbing rifts within the extended family that were making us all sad. 

Yet, I always love time with my parents and my brothers and uncles and aunts and cousins even when things are not simply happy.  I think back with a strange fondness on the night my parents watched all my kids and I took a long midnight walk in the cold with both my brothers as we discussed sad, important things.  My brothers are the reason I wanted more than one child, because I can’t imagine navigating the world without siblings.

This year, aside from the worry over Ian’s mom, things are okay.  Ian will get to see his kids unwrap their gifts, both my brothers are the happiest I’ve known them in years, and I’ll have relatives to laugh with in the house all the way up to New Year’s.  The rifts within the extended family we are still sad about, but the pain associated with them have dulled a bit with time.  A cousin promised to deliver our gifts to my grandma at the nursing home on Christmas Day.  I miss my grandma.

It’s been so deliciously normal to have my husband home for a little while.  Not everything was perfect, and we did have an embarrassing failure in communication that resulted in neither of us picking up the girls after school one day (we got a call from the office, but Mona loves being there for some reason so I don’t feel too terrible), but overall it was a marvelous holiday treat to be a whole family again. 

And if Ian has to leave I think it will be good timing for him to go when he does because the kids will be distracted for a week before his absence is truly noticable.  By the time their uncles and aunt and cousin and grandparents all head back to their own states, the girls will be returning to school and jumping back into our no-daddy routine, so this transition is about as easy as I think we can make it.  But I’m hoping this whole ‘daddy in Iraq’ thing does not remain one of our recurring holiday themes.  War is a pretty lousy rut; this one has been going on for the entire time my children have been alive.  They deserve better traditions than that.

Merry Everything!  Thank you for checking in.  I am really enjoying writing this blog and feel so fortunate to have made connections to so many thoughtful people through it.  I wish you all great joy in 2010.