December 2009

Danielle’s beautiful post makes my heart overflow with love and gratitude for my dear female friends. And with admiration for the ways that women can honor and support each other.

I have a powerful series of experiences of Christmas and Advent, both alone and with my children. Certain hymns embed themselves in my thoughts for days, my children ask questions about divinity and holiness, and the presence of something sublime visits me as I sit in silence with my Christmas lights.

Grace and I start reading Harry Potter, finish the first book, and watch the movie.

My town is hit by its first blizzard of the winter.

Our Christmas celebrations are small and lovely, with just my family (my parents and my sister, her husband, and two girls) at my house. On Christmas Eve we see some of the children that my sister and I grew up with (some of whom have their own children now). That reunion is wonderful.

My goddaughter turns one on the day my grandfather would have turned ninety. The universe spins inexorably forward.

We have a great Christmas celebration with “the stool” – the two other families who are our family’s dearest friends. The eight children run around madly, enjoying each others’ company. The adults marvel at having gone from 0 to 8 children in 7 years.

I feel ponderously, occasionally paralyzingly aware of the turn of the decade, of the uncertainty ahead and the regret behind.