Our Honest Holiday Letter

We got a new stove last week.

Two men arrived to install it. One was slight with dark hair. The other was grumpy. 

The stove didn’t fit. Despite sending someone to measure weeks earlier, the dimensions were wrong.

The grumpy one huffed. The slender one apologized. They carted it off to the garage, where it sat for over a week.

Every time I walked by it, I thought of my children.

You wouldn’t think a kitchen appliance could hold so many memories. Yet it does.

Mornings when I stood there scrambling eggs, surrounded by outstretched palms and tiny voices. 

Evenings when I was annoyed because my husband Joe was late from work by perhaps five minutes. I’d flip pork chops on the pan, all straight back and tall spine.

Afternoons making dinner while they did homework at the counter. 

Grilled cheese and on snow days.

Chicken noodle soup on sick days.

The time my oldest burned his thumb on the flame.

You may remember our second son Jack has autism. He started a college program last year. 

Dropping him off was perhaps the hardest moment of my life. 

Beneath a lemon sky, I watched as he turned and walked away. I ached for the boy who held my hand in the parking lot, who helped me plan dinner, who settled into bed with six pillows every night.

His is a story of small triumphs.

And yet he seems a little stuck—as if autism were an elevator and he never made it further than a few stops past the ground floor.

He still talks about which soda is better, Pepsi or Coke. 

We had to adjust his medication to help stop intrusive thoughts.

Once home, he seemed to want to be anywhere but here. 

He didn’t want to stay longer than two days. He insisted on taking the bus back. Dropping him off, I felt the familiar ache beneath another lemon yellow sky. It was though he shrugged us off like an old sweater.

I built my life around him.

I built my life around all of them.

And now, they are beginning to fly.

It’s what we wanted. It’s what we hoped for all these years.

Like the push-pull of the ocean’s tide, life is full of contradiction.

What if we could have only the good parts, like the first bite of pizza or a pretty snowfall without the blizzard?

What if we could take the sullenness, the despair, the heartbreak, the small irritations like wet towels and dirty cups out of it all?

Like a child sifting sand at the beach, what if we were left with only glittery pink seashells?

We can’t. Which is stupid but it’s true. I resent this more than you can know.

The truth is, we can’t recognize glitter if we don’t first know dirty snow.

How else will we remember that when things get dark and cold, we turn to our old sweaters for warmth?

This is motherhood.

It is thousand mistakes measured against small moments of joy.

it is about broken dreams, and the end of childhood, and hope, and forgiveness. 

In the middle of the loudness, you see every face you’ve ever known.

Tender infants, mischievous toddlers, awkward middle-schoolers. 

Time stands still for exactly one flicker of the candle, and you smile for the loveliness of it all.

Some nights, it’s just Joe and I.

Now we sit on the couch, trading reading glasses.

At last, I feel I know him. 

Why did it take so long?

Too often, we don’t honor the most important moments because we’re too busy taking care of life.

We don’t honor the eggs, the bowl of soup for a sore throat, the band-aid fetched from the cabinet.

The man who dragged the new stove in from the garage, took out his tools, and installed it himself.

We miss their voices.

A special kind of music.

We miss their tiny hands.

They were shaped like stars. 

Wishing you a magical holiday, and a New Year full of light and song.