St. Lucia morning

^
Carl Larsson's Lucia, 1908

Today is St. Lucia Day, a Scandinavian Christmas/winter solsticey celebration of the light returning to Scandinavia (before the switch to the Gregorian calendar, apparently St. Lucia Day fell on Winter Solstice). My mother's family did it, I did it growing up, and now my own family does it every December 13th; I love preserving that chain. Traditionally the oldest daughter in the family (my two daughters take turns and I help them get everything ready) gets up before dawn and prepares breakfast in bed for the family. Wearing a crown of candles, she goes from bed to bed, singing "Santa Lucia" and giving pastries and hot chocolate. It's one of our favorite traditions, pretty much a non-negotiable part of our Christmas season.

We don't have the girls wear the candle crowns anymore; they carry a wreath of candles on a tray. (Although, growing up I would find candle wax in my hair and scalp all day after the candle crown dripped on me on St. Lucia morning.) Now there are new-fangled battery operated St. Lucia crowns. Not as authentic or exciting but a little safer, I suppose.

This year was Maddy's turn
A little Carl Larsson-ish herself
One of these years I'll make a white robe with a red sash
for more authenticity and better photos

Thanksworthy this week...

^
Wellsville mountains in Cache Valley

1. listening to Sam try to play the Indian Song on the recorder and piano simultaneously
2. game nights with my people: my kids, husband, parents
3. sharing the exhilaration of hiking to Castle Rock (as well as the less exalted whiny moments leading up to reaching the summit)
4. mountains shrugging, surrounding this valley shoulder to shoulder
5. wooden ball and cup toys & the addictive hours of fun they provide
6. lazy days of hanging out, chatting, helping with the cooking, idly reading
7. incubating (or, sometimes, actually hatching) new ideas
8. catching up with old high school friends & picking up where we left off
9. brief, gorgeous bursts of show-off snowflakes
10. wide streets organized in grids
11. Stephen Paulus' Pilgrims' Hymn
    
12. caramel corn, chili, tortellini, and the anticipated Feast Day (oh, and Hires hamburgers when we landed in SLC...mmmmm)
    
13. laughing, really hard
14. playing flute-piano duets with Lauren
    
15. Enchanted, Dan in Real Life, Amazing Race, Bee Movie...(hopefully more to come)
16. Sam's casual, low key reporting that a crow flew down through the chimney and into the family room (good to know he's good under pressure)
    
17. Maddy picking out songs on the harp
18. reading aloud to each other
19. adding entries to the Count Your Blessings jar
20. thoughts of and long-distance thankfulness for my sibs: Matt, Nancy & Chris (we miss you!)
21. blocking out any obligations or to-do items for a few days

Have a peaceful, joyous, blessed Thanksgiving...

Always go to the funeral

Greg's grandmother passed away yesterday, the lovely matriarch of a large family. She lived a wonderful and long life and had been ill recently but you're never really prepared for that phone call, are you?

Our kids were very teary last night as we broke the news to them and told stories remembering Grandma Lee and the great memories of our visits over the years. Immediately the kids started asking, "Can we go to her funeral? Please? We have to go." We definitely feel So Far Away from the rest of our family at these times--we're the distant east coast outpost of the family and the funeral is in Idaho--and what we want most is to be with everyone else.

But it was never really a question. We're going. We've always thought it was important but a couple of years ago Greg and I heard a moving This I Believe essay on NPR and decided, right there, that we would always do everything we could to show up at times like these.

Thought I'd share it here. It's kind of long but worth it, I think. Thanks, Deirdre Sullivan, whoever you are, for articulating this in a way that has stayed with us and crystallized our priorities. I especially love this line: "In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing."

Always Go to the Funeral

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that.

The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson, my old fifth grade math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. ''Dee,'' he said, ''you're going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the family.''

So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought it would be: I was the only kid there. When the condolence line deposited me in front of Miss Emerson's shell-shocked parents, I stammered out, ''Sorry about all this,'' and stalked away. But, for that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss Emerson's mother still remembers my name and always says hello with tearing eyes.

That was the first time I went un-chaperoned, but my parents had been taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course for years. By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals. I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of free mints and my father saying on the ride home, ''You can't come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral.''

Sounds simple -- when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that.

''Always go to the funeral'' means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.

In going to funerals, I've come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life's inevitable, occasional calamity.

On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I've ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

Deirdre Sullivan grew up in Syracuse, and traveled the world working odd jobs before attending law school at Northwestern University. She’s now a freelance attorney living in Brooklyn. Sullivan says her father’s greatest gift to her and her family was how he ushered them through the process of his death.

It's official, I'm turning into a witch

Today I realized that my gradual metamorphosis to an honest-to-goodness witch is almost complete.

• Behold my frequent black apparel (minus pointy hat). I also like green.
  
• My laugh turns heads. Often people tell me "I knew you were here when I heard your laugh." My kids have been known to shush me. It's not necessarily a cackle but it might as well be, given my kids' reaction.
  
• I have dark brooding eyebrows. I'm one of those people whose eyebrows are way darker than my hair (even not counting the highlights), making me quite witchy-poo (remember HR Puffenstuff anyone?)
  
• I am turning into a night owl (okay, that's probably more vampirish...). I'm less and less of a morning person with each passing day. We host early morning seminary here at 6 a.m. (for Lauren and others but I'm not the teacher) and at first I was up and showered. Then I was up but not showered. Next I slipped to staying in bed just a little bit longer until it was time to wake up Maddy. Then Maddy started setting her own alarm. Now I'm still in bed when Lauren comes in to say goodbye at 7. This is not good since the rest of the kids and I typically leave at 7:30. Similar slippage is happening on the night end of my day, where I keep staying up later and later. Pasty skin and bloodshot eyes cannot be far behind.
• I have moments where I'm sure my grumpiness would grant me automatic admission into the International Witches Consortium...no other portfolio or application necessary. To their credit, my kids have never actually said I was a witch in these moments but they might be thinking it, I know I am.
  
• You know how witches in good standing have that one rogue hair growing out of the mole on their nose or chin? I have that, or at least I did {horror shiver}. This is not acceptable. One day I was driving and glanced in the rear view mirror. The light was hitting my face just perfectly to spotlight a long, eyelashlike hair coming out of my chin. Seriously? No one thought to say "um, there's a big long hair growing from your face"? This was not a look I was going for. Consider this permission to tell me, world. Also? I'm way too young to have this happen...it can only be my burgeoning witchhood, right?

~In other breaking Halloween news~

Tonight we finally carved pumpkins.
**
Lauren won a prize for her queen costume
at a stake dance last weekend
(hadn't they ever seen a Target costume before?)
***
We got ghosted twice on one night
{before we could put up the ghost on our door}
I have to admit we only ghosted
two families instead of four
We are the broken link
for one of the ghosty chains.

Happy Haunting tomorrow!

Sweet Caroline & Carolyn Suite

If you've ever attended a Red Sox game, you know that Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline is one of Fenway Park's anthems. You sing along at the top of your lungs and then, when you get to the "good times never felt so good" part, you scream-echo "so good! so good! so good!" raising an arm each time for emphasis. Good times. I can't do it without a huge grin on my face, intoxicated by the campiness and comaraderie. ("Hands touching hands, touching me, touching you" have to be among the corniest lyrics ever.) This afternoon on the way home from Lauren's flute lesson, Sweet Caroline came on the radio and we had an impromptu mini-Fenway rally session, music loud, windows down, voices up.

Which reminds me.
Let's all raise a "Sweet Caroline" for my mom, Carolyn, whose birthday it is today.

^
mom and me in NYC
(same day as this? )
isn't she stylish?

My mom is one of those people with a knack for nurturing and tending relationships; she essentially collects people. {And I'm positive that every one of them feels like a favorite.} Her own children, of course, and extended family members. But also neighbors, friends (of all ages...red hats and young rebels), students (she plays the harp and teaches a full studio of students) and, especially, souls who need an openhearted, accepting person in their lives.

She's a beauty. I grew up hearing "wow, your mom is so pretty" and they were right. {Recently someone in my ward followed that up with the interesting question "So who do you take after?" which doesn't feel nearly as nice. Really, I knew what they meant, but still.}

She's a passionate movie lover and has been known to dress up in red-carpet-worthy finery for annual Oscar award gatherings. She loves a good Pepsi with crushed ice but can make one bottle last, kept in the door of her fridge, for days on end alongside the rewrapped bars of dark chocolate with one square missing. She throws an exceptional party and makes holidays magical. She loves Jon Stewart and compiles eclectic videotaped snippets of hilarious moments on several shows. Also I don't think she would turn down a dinner date with Hugh Laurie.

^
Mom, me, and brother Matt
very Audrey Hepburnesque, no?

I think before Greg knew he wanted to marry me he knew he wanted to be her son-in-law (they sat next to each other in the symphony, Greg on the bass, Mom on the harp). She kept my relationship with Greg alive when I was in London studying abroad by dropping by the store where he worked and even taking a class with him at USU, part shadchan, part undercover agent. {Thanks Mom!}

When I grow up, I want to be her. Maybe with fewer boxes in the storage room, I think (all those magical holiday fixings have to be stored somewhere, though).

In addition to all this, PLUS she generously shared her birthday with her wedding day, meaning she has forever been cheated either out of part of her birthday or part of her anniversary. Happy 40th anniversary you two!