I need to blog
Can I get away with just posting a winter-scene photo again? Dave likes my photos, anyhow.
2-8-08. Finally finished this.
1-15-08 Hey, this isn't finished ... but I need to post it anyhow. Begun on 1-9.
Hard to believe this was just a week ago, even though this was in Kalamazoo, where I'm guessing close to a foot of snow fell while we were there over New Year's. Temperatures rose to 65 degrees here on Monday and the snow is completely gone.
The Holidays passed better than usual for me. Odd, too, because it was the first Christmas without Dad ... Mom stayed with us from Dec. 21 until after the New Year, although she did make the trip - Grandy in tow - to Monroe for a couple of days at the end of the week.
I think what made it better in some ways was that I had to rise to the occasion and try to be a better Christmas person - something I've not been so good at for several years now.
First of all, we had to figure out some way to get most of the family together for the holiday. Thanksgiving, in many minds, had not been ideal. Each sister (there are four of us) pretty much did her own thing: Nance had Mom over for dinner; we went to Monroe to see Margie and Mat and family (first time in all the years they've lived there!) and Loraine and family celebrated at home and in Muskegon with Jeff's family. My in-laws gathered with Clay's mom's family. In years past ALL these people have gathered together - close to 30 people in some years - and this, the first Thanksgiving after my Dad's passing, was not considered an ideal situation in most peoples' minds, although at the time we were planning things, this did not occur to most of us - or to me, anyway.
After nearly a month of mostly unsuccessful planning using a Google Group, it was decreed (by me, because I set up the group, which left me also guiding what little planning/conversation there was) that the clan would gather at our house for Christmas on the Saturday prior. So Mom arrived on the 21st to stay through the holidays, Meagan was released from school on the same day and came home with suitcases full of laundry, and we planned an as informal, inexpensive get-together as we could.
I just asked people to bring their favorite Christmas 'treat,' whether an hors d'ouevre, candy, cookie, or what have you. And everyone had to bring a $5 'fun gift' for a person of their same sex. We hosted about 20 people and had plenty to nosh on. Of course the highlight was the gift to Mom from Loraine and family of that darn cute little dog. And I think everyone thought the gift exchange - new for us - was fun. So even though Joe and Erin arrived very late (she had to work; they got lost) and Drew's girlfriend had to leave early (she got the showiest gift - a photo frame from Susan) and Margie and Mat weren't there (but they usually aren't), this felt like an adequate solution to the "what do we do for family Christmas now?) dilemma.
Then came Christmas eve - Mom hasn't been to church in years on that night, and last year, we didn't go either. But Meagan and I both wanted to sing in the reunion choir, where the college kids always come back to sing with the remnant adult choir. We always sing "And the Glory of Lord" and "Halleluiah" from Handel's Messiah, and since I've been almost two years out of choir now, I really wanted to sing. So Clay, Mom, Susan and Amberly went to the service, while Meagan and I sat in the loft and sang. After the service we drove home looking at all the holiday lights, as has been a tradition since my own childhood and one we've carried out with our own family. It was pretty much all that Christmas eve is supposed to be.
Christmas Day was a little strange, but it was also best of all. I had asked Drew more than a week before how he wanted to handle the morning. This is his second Christmas living on his own, and last year I picked him up at his place early and brought him here for our usual gift opening and big, special breakfast of egg casserole and cheesy potatoes (his favorite). This year he an Michelle are together and I wanted him to be sure about his Christmas morning plans. Would she come over with him? Would she go to her own family? Would she stay at their place by herself? He told me he'd come over by himself. We said, OK.
Christmas morning when I called him, he said, "There's been a change of plans. I'm bringing Michelle with me." All kinds of thoughts ran through my mind at once: first - how would the girls feel about an "intrusion" on their family Christmas morning? What would Mom think? Then, the really big consideration - in all the Christmas preparations, I had not once thought to buy a gift for Michelle (this is a brand new relationship). So shame on me. I paused only a few seconds and bought some time with, "will she feel comfortable?" trying to appeal his sense of the potential awkwardness of the situation (mostly with his sisters, but I couldn't bring myself to say that). By not expressing this directly enough, I got nowhere, of course. "She won't feel weird," he insisted (Michelle is VERY outgoing). "I can't leave her here alone," he said. And of course he was right.
So I broke the news to the girls, who, as I'd guessed were not very amenable to having this relative stranger here in the midst of our family traditions. "It's what Christmas is about," I reminded them and now I was sure of it myself. Michelle would be here with Drew and she'd be welcome, by god.
Then the mad scramble began. What to give her? Clay suggested my last bottle of wine. Great idea! I knew Michelle liked it, because we served it at dinner when she was here after Thanksgiving and she raved over it. I rummaged through the gift wrap trappings in the basement and came up with a wine bag and tag: "To Michelle." Inspired, I thought, "What else?" "She's got to have a stocking. Give her mine," Mom offered, getting into the spirit.
So, wine, check. Stocking with candy cane and chocolate (most notably a big bar of noir 60% cacao - yum!). I was getting into this! What else can we give?
Then, a final thought. In our room I had, wrapped, my gift for our god-daughter and niece Lauren. I had the same gift under the tree for Meagan and for Susan: a cozy pair of "pink-ribbon" ankle socks and a silver bracelet from the Breast Cancer site. We wouldn't see Lauren until New Years - plenty of time to find another gift for her that would be just as meaningful. The socks and bracelet would be Michelle's. And easy and right-feeling decision.
I'm sure Michelle didn't expect anything from us, but you can't have people as guests on Christmas without giving gifts! It's what the season is about, for heaven's sake. And so Susan went to pick up her brother and his girl and our morning began. I don't know what she really thought about us, or our gifts, or the traditions of loud, slow gift opening, lots of attention to dog gifts and cat gifts, plus long exclaiming over everything. But she seemed pleased - genuinely surprised, too - at being included. Michelle is anything but shy, and she joined in and fit into the morning chaos like she was one of us.
Breakfast was a joyous sort of tragedy - for the first time ever, the egg casserole didn't set up in the hour allotted it in the oven, so we drank juice and coffee and ate crockpot cheesy potatoes, banana bread and clementines while we waited for the casserole to finish up in the microwave. Any other Christmas morning this would have sent me into a pouting quiet, but this year I just said, "oh well," and we laughed and chatted while we waited - and ate the eggs, ugly now, but still tasty, when they were cooked through.
So let me finish this up.
Since the kids were born, we've always spent Christmas afternoon and evening in Muskegon - afternoon at the VanderVeldes and evening at the McBrides. In the early years we spent the night - Meagan and Susan at my folks and Drew, Clay and I at Clay's. In the past couple of years, we "adults" have had things to get back to Grand Rapids for, so we haven't stayed over. Meagan and Susan however, continued their tradition of spending the quiet calm hours of Christmas night with my folks.
Of course this year had to be different. Mom was staying with us, and Michelle was with Drew. Clay's folks, early on in the season, had made it very clear that they expected Mom to come with us to their house on Christmas day. Bless those special, loving people. Especially after we called Christmas morning and told them Michelle would be coming with us too!
Christmas day at the VanderVeldes is always special. Her house is always carefully and exquisitely decorated for Christmas. A beautiful, perfect, white-lighted tree with a satiny skirt. Lighted villages on the bay window sill, Hummels and Santas everywhere, greenery on the mantle, the tiny foil pond with skaters on the low table near the sofa that have been there every Christmas that I can remember. Not garish or overdone, but tasteful, joyful, quiet, lovely. My mom was welcomed with love, gentleness and kindness of old friends - who know and understand the losses people their age experience.
Obviously I didn't start out to recount details of this special Christmas with this post. I just needed to write! But now, more than six weeks later, here you have it. I haven't really captured the the sad sweet joyful melancholy of it all. New relationships, loss, enduring love - So much of what Christmas, and life are about.
