psyching myself in

Last summer at a writers' conference I happened to meet two missionary kids, a brother and sister who grew up in Grenada.

M., the sister, and I have kept in touch and started a Meetup group for third culture kids in the area. We had our first meeting last Thursday and it wasn't super well-attended but we had one new person that none of us personally invited! I consider that a success.

I'm not usually the first person to show up anywhere, but that's one of the things I'm working on... Even if it means setting a start time half and hour beforehand and being 20 minutes late. (Which is what happened last Thursday.) All that to say, I found myself at the coffee shop alone when the only person I didn't know on the RSVP list showed up.

I used to feel like I was an extrovert; in college, I was engaging, and I could hold a conversation with anybody -- I could hold court. Since moving here and starting my job, I've felt a bit out of my depth. I'm the quiet one again, like I was in elementary school. And lately, I've been feeling pretty stressed out when there's pressure to start conversations with people I don't know very well, or at all.

But in this case, when the only person on the RSVP list I didn't know showed up, I started asking questions and getting to know him, and it was great. I felt, if not entirely comfortable, as though I had something to offer that was of value.

* * * * *
This brings me to a few points:

1. J is always telling me he doesn't get why I'm so self-conscious talking about my personal history and my travels -- 'where I'm from.' I just don't ever want to be that person who talks and talks and talks about all the cool places I've visited, all the while stomping down the people around me. But sometimes it turns into me devaluing my experiences and/or psyching myself out about having a conversation with anyone.
2. Psyching myself out is a very real stumbling block. Most of the time I don't even catch myself doing it, but one of my colleagues once said something about 'listening to the words as they're coming out of my mouth' and I realize I am guilty of doing that: worrying so much about my phrasings and nuances that I lose touch with the actual conversation I'm having and my core message.

Step one is always recognizing the problem. Once I realized I psyched myself out, I put a little bit of energy into psyching myself back in. Focus on listening to the other side of the conversation, not what's coming out of my mouth. Find a core commonality, even if it's something as simple as standing in the same square yard of space. In the case of the TCK group, it's the shared difficulty in answering the question, "Where are you from?"

It's not easy, but I'm learning to 'turn it on' when I need to be engaging, and to push my insecurities to the side. I might not say it right 100% of the time, but who does? We're all human -- and I'm beginning to realize that most people, no matter how old they are, or how apparently charismatic, have some insecurity about starting a conversation with an unknown person, or about holding court in a crowd. Our success at doing so has something to do with training, little to do with personality, but mostly to do with giving it a shot in the first place.

the mission: ceramics 101

"Are you the Swansons?" - our ceramics teacher as we rolled into class 5 minutes late. (Not bad...) "Are you a band? You sound like a band."

Now that's a new one. But it's particularly funny right now since our running joke for the summer is that we're going to start a family a cappella group a la Von Trapp Family Singers. We opted not to share that joke with out new classmates and teacher; best not to get their hopes up.

"Trapp Family Singers 1941" by Trapp Family Singers
Metropolitan Music Bureau, New York. Photo by Larry Gordon.

We went around the room and introduced ourselves: the high school English teacher trying ceramics out for fun; three women who took the class before and got addicted; Thom, doing this to hang out with the siblings; me, who made some pinch pots back in first grade and hung out with potters in college; Maria, the music person whose idea it was to take the class in the first place ("so when we all hate it we know who to blame!"); and Asha, who of course got the hang of the clay long before the rest of us could even put two pinch pots together and keep them inflated.

By the end of the three hours, Asha had a lion head ready to be fired; Maria made an abstract "war bird"; I had a lumpy eggplant that stands on end and Thomas created and collapsed a pineapple. ("I don't really need a bunch of clay pineapples collecting dust.") After 8 weeks, we're all hoping to have a mug to show for ourselves.

This is what my siblings and I do for fun. The other day J and I showed up for dinner and my dad was tiling the upstairs bathroom, Asha was picking up rocks from the creek to line flower beds, Maria was stitching a T-shirt quilt and Thomas had plans for his latest project laid out in graph paper all over the living room. "Now you know why I get so irritated when the TV's on all the time," I said to J.

One summer, we scripted, set, and produced an adventure movie filmed across four cities in Northern India. The final product was 20 minutes long, with complicated character relationships and a cast of six.

my inspiration: pottery from friends

I value that creative outlet, and the creative community in growing up that way. It's a hunger I carry with me everywhere I go, even now... Even though I dedicate so little time to creative endeavors these days. I envy people who do art professionally, like my full-time writer friends here in Delaware and my college friends now doing MFAs, publishing chapbooks, selling handmade jewelry or bowls or clothes in towns around the country. I envy people who have the energy after work to do anything more than throw together a (roughly) balanced dinner and maybe a fancy cocktail - my art of choice these days.

I caught up with a friend last week who just left her job in preparation for moving and starting grad school over the next few months. She said, "Now that I'm not working, the TV is hardly ever on. I just find a lot of other things to do."

Out of desperation, I added that it serves its purpose; it's an easy way to get a story fix at the end of a full day.

As a kid, I watched only PBS until I aged out around 10. Sesame Street taught me how to read, and Wishbone taught me how to love it; Mr. Rogers taught me imagination. When we had filled our TV quota for the day, we would run downstairs and build a "magic Barney bag" full of scavenged craft materials, or put on a sock puppet show, or set up our own mini-Olympics in the living room. We built tiny towns of mud-and-twig huts in the backyard, elaborate Lego cities for our plastic animal figurines, box and blanket forts for ourselves. Whatever we saw on TV, we replicated in real life. After a movie, when the credit music came on, we all leaped up from the couch and started dancing. When I read a great book, I started writing what I hoped would turn into a great book.

That is the luxury of childhood, and now I see it as such. When I have kids, I hope I can pass that on to them... but in the meantime I'm on a mission to find creativity in the adult world.

Readers: let me know where you all find your creativity, and how you make time and space for it!

graduating adults?

I was talking with some college classmates recently when one of them said, "Guys-- we're seniors of adulthood!"

Sadly, it's not the kind of senior that gets us discounted admission to movies and festivals (in fact, now that our student IDs have worn off we're just getting used to paying full admission for the first time). It is to say, if we had started undergrad the year we finished it, we would be "commencing" right about now.

If you ask me, we're still commencing. I'm still learning how to handle myself, and life throws new things at me all the time. I'm always starting something new: moving to new digs, starting work for a new client or in a different position, making new friends, taking ceramics (starting in about two weeks), visiting new places, getting married in the fall... And I know my classmates are moving, having babies, starting new jobs, getting married, starting masters and doctorate degree programs, finishing med school... The range of experiences we've tried our hand at is astonishing. And we have become all too familiar with the flip sides of these things: breaking up, quitting jobs, leaving our home cities.

I'm glad for that; I tend to get bored easily if nothing changes. Comfort is my nemesis. I'm the kind of person that frantically creates tasks when the end of my to-do list comes into view. (I'm working on that...)

What makes it hard to deal with sometimes is that these "new things" I'm taking on seem so ordinary. Like I shouldn't struggle so much to get a handle on them: new work in my same company; a new name for the same relationship. I guess I had hoped, a quarter of the way through my life, to have figured more of this stuff out by now.

That said, my latest task? Give myself a break sometimes!

When friends come to me struggling through a degree, or a rough breakup, or a new job, I don't say, "Stop crying, we've been through this before. You should have this down pat by now." 

So why would I hold myself to that unrealistic, harsh, and unhelpful standard? It takes the joy out of the "figuring out," and devalues the amazing progress I have made and what I have accomplished.

Besides that, we can't compare ourselves to each other. We are all different, and wonderfully so. When someone posts an engagement on Facebook, we don't see the mundane aspects of the relationship (i.e. all day, every day), or the relationships that have ended so this one could begin. When someone posts a graduation photo, we don't see the all-nighters and exams; nor do we see the celebratory drinks. And why should we feel worse about ourselves for not finishing med school if we never even wanted to be doctors?

Perhaps hardest for me to face, but most powerful, is that I will make mistakes. Not every life lesson ends with an achievement; many of them are learned by screwing up, by getting lost or, unfortunately, by causing pain to myself or others. It sounds cliche, but I am now learning the reality of this fact more tangibly than ever before.

And it's freeing! Hopefully, the risks we take are calculated, so the messes we make are the kind that can be cleaned up. But if we are always afraid to make them, we will never move from this place, this moment, this state of mind.

It's inevitable: the world changes; we change; relationships and situations change. The years pass, and we move and we learn and we come and go from each other's lives, and maybe come back again... 

I, for one, am always working toward something, always building something. I am writing again because those "baby steps" never get bigger. Every day is another set of (sometimes frustratingly tiny, sometimes victorious) baby steps. It's a theme and a mantra in so many areas of my life, and I need the reminder to find joy in the figuring-out. I don't want to take these steps in isolation. I want to document them, work through them, share them.

And I miss the conversations that have sprung up around this space over the years. I write for myself, but I also write for us, for the world. Always moving, always turning.

I hope you'll join me for another set.

<3

an interview about the second set of baby steps

Three or four months ago my friend Marina and I recorded an audio interview about the blog. Marina studied business and political journalism in Moscow, and hosted a radio interview show when she interned in broadcast media. When she said she wanted to think about starting a podcast, and asked if she could interview me about second set of baby steps, something stirred in me.

A flashback to the KSTO days, maybe, or to conducting interviews for research projects; a chance to collaborate on a creative project; an opportunity for some guided reflection on my blogging experience, just as I was starting to think about wrapping it up.

We got sidetracked in the middle and started talking about gender roles, and the changing experience of gender from our grandmothers' time through our mothers' to ours; because this is a relevant and ever-present element of adult life. But we got back to the blog topic at the end.

I remember driving home, feeling energized by the creativity and interactivity of the process and focused in where the blog was headed in the last few months, in how I wanted to approach it. I really believe that evening was a turning point in this project, and it started to take on a different life for me from that point forward.


So I am glad, now, at this final moment, on the second-to-last week of the second set of baby steps, to be able to share it with you. A big thanks to Marina for questioning me (constantly, off and on the air, even when I don't exactly welcome it) and for recording and editing our audio to be posted here.

And who would DREAM of letting newborn babies go out into the big scary world?! Or 7-year-olds, 18-year-olds, 20-year-olds, and 22-year-olds, for that matter...

IV.

Growing Out

The original title of this post was some variation on "parting of ways." But of course I have come up with a way to spin even goodbyes into an upward twist.

It's not really spin, though. We're not outgrowing home or the family. The cool thing about family (and homes, the way we tend to conceptualize them) is that it grows with us. Unlike clothes; unlike childhood, for the most part. We're expanding our worldviews, but we're not ever going to lose the seeds that planted us in the world, and the world in us, in the first place.

As I am about to learn from the peaches and figs in the new "backyard," things that are planted require special tending and care. And, if properly cared for, they drop juicy, delicious fruit right into our baskets. And every season they drop fruit, and every season their roots reach out a little farther underground. The roots might crowd each other out (or crowd out the crepe myrtle) or they might fill up the garden box and start breaking through the soil and the walls that hold it in.

But instead of leaving destruction in their wake, they bring fruit outside the walls of the box, and they expand the box itself to include parts of the world that were previously excluded.

Everything we are doing is just part of the equation, another leg of our quest for the Giant Ring of Grown-Up Keys, each one of which opens another door and expands the world again. Everything that happens creates new reality, and the infinite new possibilities that come with it. Everything we do and everywhere we go and everyone we meet becomes a part of us, and we grow out and our family grows out and we are all the richer for it.


***
Speaking of people we meet becoming a part of us, and of heartbreak, we also found out yesterday afternoon about the devastating loss of a family friend. Please direct your thoughts and prayers, dear readers, to this family, that they may find love, comfort, and support now, and strength through pain in the days ahead.

cover art

I was browsing the stacks at Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago, pulling out a book here or there to look at more closely.  Now, we all know how much I love metaphors, and I wish I intended to use this image as set-up for some profound revelation.  But, perhaps also in line with some literary affection, I am going to stick to a skin-deep, felt-up cliche.

And now, as the Great Professor Williamson so wisely suggests, I will stop telling you what I am going to do and just do it.

The thought that came to me suddenly in a fit of passion was the proverbial warning: Thou shalt not judge a book by its cover.

In all honesty, I have no passion for this proverb.

Not true.  (I lied to myself before, unintentionally.  I never intend to mislead you, dear readers.)  I do have passion for this proverb.  But in no universe would I hold it as any realistic standard.  Because, come on, what else are we supposed to judge a book on, but its cover?  A decent number of people are paid a decent living to create book covers that consumers will judge favorably enough to pick up, and exchange cash (or the theoretical equivalent), and take home.  And then the really good covers will be spotted casually perched upon a coffee table by the consumer's friends, who will say, "Well doesn't that look interesting," and the friends will go out to their preferred book vendor in search of a copy all their own.

I know what you're thinking: "Clara, for someone who professes such great love for metaphor, you have altogether missed the point!"  So, I will humor you and take this into the real world (because who really reads anymore, anyway?  Raise your hand if you just collect e-books on your Kindle).

The number of people who are paid an [in]decent living to create metaphorical book covers that fall favorably upon consumers of all types of goods is even greater than the literal cover designers.  And even those of us who are not paid to create an appealing product strive to create an appealing product every day.

Believe me, I commoditize self-presentation here with the utmost critical respect.  I am the Queen of Internal Battles Over Self-Presentation, that is, I care altogether too much what people think.  Or I strive simultaneously to blend in and to be unforgettable.  Anyone would tell you that this level of contradiction can only portend failure on all counts.  But I understand how important it can be to appear a certain way, to conduct oneself in a certain way, and oftentimes it is beneficial to follow the rules to get what I want.  On the other hand, one who only roams within the parameters of the game can only ever hope to achieve the average payoff of the game.  (Here comes my inner economist.  Quick, out the side door!)

The side door being, in this case, a brief foray into creepiness.  Senior year of high school the guys I hung out with had read whatever it was that talked about having a "woman-suit," and their way of processing this misogyny was to make fun of it -- ironically at the expense of their female friends.  I won't go into details, but today the word popped into my head under a totally different connotation, in a liquor store, of all places.

I stopped in to pick up a 6-pack of beer because I'm almost out, and because we were having company for dinner tonight and I thought it might be good to have some beer around just in case our guest wanted some.  I learned long ago that the best way to avoid questions is a confident sense of direction (which in my case is usually a complete facade) so I walked in, greeted the proprietors, and made a beeline for the beer cooler.

I set my choice on the counter with a smile, and the clerk snapped, "ID!"  Still smiling, I pulled it out with no particular urgency, so the two of them (husband and wife, a pleasant-looking Indian couple) could pore over it in search of my DOB, inspect my face for lies and wrinkles, and tilt the license to see the watermarks.  Finally, finding nothing to suggest I was duping them, the man handed the card back and with those eternally unnerving green Indian eyes, smiled weakly and apologetically.  "You look very young, ma'am."

I laughed.  "I know.  Everyone says that."  This is true.  People are constantly failing to hide their surprise when I tell them that Maria and Asha are 4 and 6 years younger than me, respectively.  They look less shocked if they happen to run into me in my work clothes.  I try to make them feel less awkward by joking that I can only hope I still look young when I'm 40, 50, and so on, but I doubt if any of them ever fully believes that I'm not 17.  The other day I was exchanging ages with someone and his response to my youth was, "You look young, but you act much older.  Women are like that, though."

I of course gave him a hard time for implying that I am just another average woman, and he weaseled out of the chokehold with a very meta rendition of the "unique-snowflake-just-like-everybody-else" joke.  And since I love meta at least as much as I love metaphors, I let it slide.

So all of these instances, far from making me feel insecure about my green-dom, have done more to force me to wear in my "woman-suit" of sorts.  I am learning to carry myself more like a woman, less like a college girl.  More importantly, I am learning how to navigate my own personal carriage without wobbling, faltering, or turning over in a ditch.  Knock on wood -- because we all know that overconfident drivers are at greater risk of accidents.  (Don't quote me on that, though.  It's mostly circumstantial.)

This is progress, and I am starting to feel more comfortable than ever in my very own skin.  How very refreshing.  (Also in my very own family...  But that is perhaps a story for another day.)

OK, not a story for another day.  I'm just going to say yet again that I love them, and I could not be happier to be spending this time with them.  This afternoon my sisters and I and our dinner guest laughed so hard for so many hours that Maria's and my throats hurt by the end of the evening.  Good times.  Remember what I said about how crucial hilarity is...

Now, speaking of being of legal drinking age, and being comfortable in my own skin, and laughing a lot, and judging books by their covers, for that matter...  I am coming to terms with my indecisiveness surrounding beer lists.  I have a few "favorite" beers (New Glarus Totally Naked, Old Dominion Oak Barrel Stout, Mudpuppy something-or-other -- if only on Wisconsin mornings) but I don't really do the go-to thing.  Maybe I just haven't found it yet, but I like to try new things.  I like to judge a new beer by its label, or by its name, more like.  I like to weigh reputation, context, recommendation, and creativity of presentation, and then top it off with a flourish of impulse, and get something I sometimes can't even pronounce.

Saturday night at the Homegrown I further solidified my unexpected growing infatuation with interesting stouts, by haphazardly ordering a bottle of North Coast Brewing Co.'s Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout.  My companion fortunately warned me of its high (9%) alcohol content and predicted that it might be too heavy for me, but I actually really liked it.  Partially because of the creepy picture of the creepy dude on the bottle, partially because I actually love that deep stout color, partially because it was full and good.  This stout wasn't very bitter, and I found it warm and almost sweet.  A very pleasant drinking experience.

We left after just one, though, because I had to drive home before the cows beat me to it, and walked around the UD campus a little.  It was really cold, but I love campus greens (the quad, to all ye Oles) and clear skies at night between those classic buildings pillared and painted for academia.  Also, the green was still strangely green, even in the dark, and even in January.  It was a lovely night.

The beer I chose today was from Dogfish Head, a Delaware brewing company located down in Dover.  Their big thing is pale ale, at least that's the impression I get, and that might be a seasonal technicality.  Whatever the case, their motto is "off-centered stuff for off-centered people," and most of what I've tasted from them makes me want to err on the side of normal and centered.  But, I really want to like some of these beers since they are local.  (Oh no, here comes my hipster ego!  Quick, out the side door!)

So, I'm still trying.  I chose a mahogany ale because I love the color and concept of mahogany, and because the brew is called Raison D'Etre.  Too good.  Dogfish Head caps come in a gorgeous golden-bronzey color, with a sharky fish silhouette, so this is also exciting.  It should provide fodder for some jewelry for my beer-loving 'Sconnie mates.  As for the drink itself, it looked beautiful in my clear-bottomed mug, swirling with foam and those mahogany tones I like to see in people's eyes.  It was a bit too heavy for my tastes, and Maria commented on its strong winey smell.  But I enjoyed it well enough.  I might have to invite a friend or two over to help me finish it, and I really need to hold myself to the task of not buying 6-packs of ale.

Every day I learn something new, and while covers and labels and titles are there to help us navigate our lives, I do need to remember that sometimes the best books come in an understated cover; sometimes, they come highly recommended but you would have never picked them up on your own.  The best beers taste even better when you have someone to share them with, and some beers just taste bad regardless.  I don't have to like all of them.  The best me, though, likes myself and doesn't drive into a ditch.  She holds her carriage steady and walks around the green while the tipsy wears off.  She arrives home safely and sleeps comfortably knowing that, when it comes down to it, there is nothing worth worrying so hard about that time stops.

scenes from a holiday home video

The International Commission of Tooth Fairies, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus has issued a spoiler alert on this post.  Not for children under 12 years of age.

Today as I handed over yet another thing I'd picked up for somebody's stocking, my mom asked me, half kidding--maybe--"So are you going to be an adult this year and help stuff the stockings?"  The question stopped me in my tracks, which was bad since I was on my way to Job #2.  She laughed, "I have some things I want to surprise you with, though!"

I asked, although it probably didn't help my case, if she manages to surprise Papa with his stocking every year. "Oh, I usually manage to sneak one thing in there...  And he usually surprises me."  (First of all, this is adorable. Secondly, I am reminded of one Christmas when she had been complaining about not having a Scrabble game for months...  So for Christmas, my parents bought them for each other.  After we spent the whole holiday laughing over the "strange coincidence," they started negotiations for who had to return the game, and whether that person had to come up with something new.  In my family, this sounded something like, "No, I'll turn mine back and get you something else...  No, no, I don't want another present!"  So cute.)

Back to the weird part of this story: "Are you going to be an adult this year?"

The obvious answer is, duh, yes, I am a grown-ass woman.  But what's the fun in that at Christmas time?  I read the blogs and look at Facebook albums of newlyweds and I'm mildly jealous of their mushy-gushy "first Christmas tree... first Christmas card... first Christmas cookies I baked that our first Christmas dog ate off the countertop while we were smooching under the mistletoe..."  And so on and so forth.  I also don't have any bitter single friends around here who will go to bars with me and get drunk off eggnog while bemoaning our impending spinsterhood.

So the only thing that remains is, stay a kid through the holiday season!

This task shouldn't be too hard, because as the oldest child I am used to clinging to my nonexistent childhood.  I had to spend a greater proportion of my life watching PG-rated Christmas movies, being the designated wrapping-collector or present-deliverer, and believing in Santa Claus than my younger siblings.  The irony here is that this obligatory childhood-clinging is a weighty responsibility, so I hypothesize that it actually made me grow up faster.

But, whether or not I physically stuff the stockings this year, I have joined the growing ranks of Household Santa Clauses.  I did my time as a Little Match Girl, spent my first two college Christmases in guest bedrooms on opposite edges of North America.  Third year, I carted sacks and sacks of Christmas gifts halfway around the world in my non-reindeer-powered suitcase, half-pretending to be surprised at what emerged from the wrapping paper.  Last year, my brother and I slept in a creaky pop-up camper in Gramma & Grampa's semi-insulated garage for 2 weeks.  Fortunately, after the first week, I discovered that wearing a hat to bed kept me from waking up with brain freeze.

This year, I handed over a few perfect stocking stuffers to my mom and apologized, "I thought about getting some for everyone but it just didn't work out."  She dismissed my worry with a wave.  "I've got enough special things for people it shouldn't matter."

This was also weird to me, because I remember the days where each stocking had to be the same exact size on Christmas morning, with the same exact number of the same exact items inside of it, or the apartment would turn into a deadly war zone.  As it was, my brother and I were known to say things like, "His chocolate orange is bigger than mine!"  Or try to trick the babies into trading, or giving up, their allegedly superior stocking stuffers.

I guess by now we've each got our own interests and we're not in as much competition.  As a matter of fact, Asha has a role in her school's Robin Hood play, which premieres this weekend.  Theater is something that none of the rest of us have ever gotten into.  (I almost said drama, but that's not quite as true...)

We also get each other cooler presents now, just in time for us to care less about the materialistic side of the holiday and more about hanging out together.  Thomas and I remember getting gifts like a neon-colored foam sailboat model from the Dollar Store, and handmade cardboard picture frames with hand-drawn pictures and touching captions scribbled on them.

You might remember from my first Christmas post that I spent Christmas break in the hospital with chicken pox back in '96.  That Christmas my dad was so happy to have me back home that he borrowed a video camera (remember what those looked like back in 1996?) from a guy downstairs and videotaped most of Christmas afternoon in our two-bedroom apartment.  I was still not feeling up to speed, and I wanted to keep my pock-scarred face out of the video.  The video mostly consisted of Maria going back and forth to the fridge pouring herself glasses of chocolate milk, Thomas jumping up and down in front of the camera saying, "Papa, Papa, look what I drew!" and Asha watching everything with wide blue eyes and a look of drooly awe on her still-hairless face.

Swanson family c. Christmas 1996

I'm not sure if it was the same year, but there was one Christmas when all the chocolate from the Advent calendar disappeared and I was convinced that evil elves had broken into our apartment, climbed on top of the refrigerator, carefully popped each individual chocolate nativity figure out of its flap, and ATE THEM ALL!  A terrifying thought indeed.

Another year, or maybe it was the same one, my dad, who had grown up in a big lovely house with a big lovely fireplace, was lamenting the fact that his poor deprived children might never get to hang their stockings on an actual mantel.  So, since we lived in seminary housing in St. Paul, he bought a roll of mural paper and carefully sketched out a line drawing of a brick fireplace.  Then he brought out the tempera paint and had all of us kids go to work making the biggest, reddest, happiest fake fireplace you ever saw.  We stuck our stockings in the right spot with tacks into the wall (I presume) and they all hung in a perfect little row.

That was the year I'd been holding my breath for a hot pink makeup kit that I wasn't allowed to have until I was in kindergarten, and then until I turned all of 5 years old, which happened exactly one month before Christmas 1994.  I found it in my stocking nailed to the wall and I'm sure everyone looked very beautiful for the rest of the day that Christmas.

I also remember my dad carefully filling in the holes in the wall with wood putty in January when we took the fireplace down.

But now my parents own our house and we have a real fireplace (although we can't burn anything in it right now).  We have a real Christmas tree.  I contributed the Christmas lights to it, and all the old Christmas ornaments are out.  My favorites are the little Buckingham guards made out of old-fashioned clothespins.  I hung them on the bottom branches, perfectly positioned to guard the presents.

Speaking of presence, my brother is about to come home from school for the holiday, any minute now, actually.  Last year he got two weeks off for Christmas and I was complaining about only having 10 days.  This is why I can't cling to my childhood anymore: I only get 2 workdays off for Christmas this year.  I've done most of my Christmas shopping online, and I'm the only one I can see so far who's managed to wrap my presents and put them under the tree.  (Ha!)  I used to write poetry on brown paper bags to wrap my presents with, but I got lazy this year.  So I guess I should be careful about my gloating.

Next Christmas break, Thomas will turn 21!  Now that is weird.  I wonder if, as we become more and more a family of adult children, if the Santa Claus ranks will continue to grow...

I could see it becoming a game of stealth, with several rounds of Santas trying to stuff stockings without running into the other Santas, and trying to make sure everyone is totally surprised in the morning when we unload the goods.  Christmas Eve has never been so complicated.

Genre: Family/Drama/Action/Comedy.