Do The Right Thing

We really hadn’t intended to be a part of a high speed police chase but somehow that’s what transpired. Because hubby had been tired at the last Thruway rest stop, I was at the wheel. We were having a really lovely chat, the kind that can materialize when darkness falls on the highway and there are no ears buckled into the back seats. We’d just dropped our oldest two boys off at the airport in New York City. They were on their way to sunny Brazil, to spend their Christmas holidays with family friends. We had about an hour to go before we could collapse into our warm beds.

Then we saw him. A white full sized car in front of us was weaving around a bit. Then a lot. He started spending more time crossing over the lines than he did driving between them. I stayed back just enough to stay out of his way, but tried not to lose him, knowing he was tragically close to striking an innocent victim.

Suddenly our casual conversation had disappeared and we were frantically wondering what we should do about our fellow driver. Should we call 911? Who has jurisdiction on the open Thruway?

Then, before we could make a move, he put on a blinker and headed for the exit. Immediately we realized we’d be able to catch his license plate as he slowed down for the toll gate. I put on my blinker and we followed him. He approached the easy pass lane and barely slowed down enough for the sensors to register. In that brief moment, we caught his plate number and wrote it down. Then we zipped through the easy pass lane after him.

If I had been alone I probably would have let it go. I would have called in the plates and turned around to make my way home. But my husband is a man who takes responsibility. For years I’ve called him our ‘undercover super hero’ because he’s always the one who steps up and does the right thing, even when it puts himself in danger. By the time we entered the dark winding roads of rural Upstate New York, my man was committed to stopping this guy, hopefully before he killed someone with his reckless driving.

For almost 20 miles, as he continued to cross the center line (causing other cars to honk as they barely missed him) and weave around the corners, we followed him. For most of that time we had the 911 operator on the phone, describing to her the landmarks we were passing, so she could send the authorities to the correct location. Around hairpin curves, at speeds higher than I was usually comfortable with, we tracked him and kept the 911 operator up to date on his status.

Finally, as we passed through a small town, we saw the fruits of our effort. Two local police cars were standing by, ready to intercept this obviously intoxicated driver. Our part of the journey was over. We hung up the phone and turned around, winding our way back to the Thruway. But as the adrenaline continued to course through our veins, we had a different discussion. This one about the senselessness of a traffic accident caused by an impaired driver.

For much of our chase we were certain we’d eventually be assisting at a crash scene. The driver of that white car was so out of control, it’s a miracle no one died that night. All of those public service announcements, preaching the dangers of drinking and driving, suddenly became very personal. We talked about the reasons a person might be stupid enough to get in a car when they’re not able to drive safely.

The holidays bring more than the usual circumstances that would lead to a person driving while impaired. It starts at the office holiday party, or a friend’s Christmas party. Everyone’s relaxed, joking around, the alcohol is flowing freely.

Then someone decides it’s time to call it a night. Everyone knows he’s had a few too many to be getting into a car. But it’s an awkward situation. No one wants to spoil the fun. No one wants to be the one who stands up and says, “Maybe you should call a cab.” It’s easy to tell yourself, ‘I don’t know that guy very well. Someone who knows him better should say it.’

Because let’s face it, it’s a hassle to call a cab. It’s a pain to have someone drive you home. There’s the expense of the cab ride, or the favor owed to the chauffer friend. And there’s logistics of getting back to the scene to pick up your car the next day. It’s so much easier to look the other way. “He’s a really good driver, he’ll be fine.” “She doesn’t live that far from here. I’m sure she’ll make it without a problem.”

This weekend, as you celebrate the ringing in of a new year, think about the choices you’re making. If you’ve ever seen a drunk driver on the road, you’ll ignore the wimpy excuses. When it seems too hard to stand up and do the right thing, imagine the innocent car that may never see that drunk driver coming. The one with toddlers buckled into car seats in the back. The one traveling to grandma’s house for the holidays. Then step up. Do the right thing.

Consider it a gift to the universe.

Consider it a gift to yourself.

Tis the season to do the right thing.

A Santa Good Bye

Disclaimer: This column contains material that might be considered adult content. Please preview before sharing with any person under the age of ten.

It’s finally happened in our house. After almost two decades of welcoming the red suited guy into our home, the last of our offspring has stopped believing. It’s a milestone I never thought about until it suddenly popped up this past weekend. It's a big deal to me, because it says so much about how our household is changing, so quickly, from young kids to young adults.

I guess I’m lucky that we got to squeeze a few extra years out of the whole magical process. Our firstborn stopped believing about the time our last born was, well…born. So as one belief evaporated, a new little person began his path to embracing it. It was a good run in our family. As older ones stopped believing, they took great joy in helping little ones hold onto their faith.

It’s a magical thing, to believe in something as special as a grandfatherly man who spends his whole year thinking about your desires. Sometimes it’s hard to let go. When our number three child stretched his believing years out longer than we had ever thought possible, the only way we could comfort him, as reality became too much to ignore, was by letting him stay awake into the wee hours of Christmas morning, to be a part of the giving. Suddenly playing Santa seemed just about as fun as believing in him.

I should have known this would be the year that our Santa run would end. Our youngest is in the later elementary school years. Most of his friends have stopped believing. But he is the baby in our family, so we all did what we could to stretch out the tradition.

In the past few years he’s jumped on the assignment of writing the letter. I’ve had to be pretty sneaky to get my photocopy of said letter (for my heirloom files) before he rushed it out the door to the mailbox. But this year he’d lost his zeal.

I reminded him several times over the course of last week. He never got around to it. I assumed he was just thinking about other aspects of the holiday and distracted by studying spelling words and book report projects. But then it all came together. At one point, in the lazy part of Sunday afternoon I said, “Sam, you should go write your Santa letter now.”

He didn’t answer me. He quietly kept working on the Lego creation that was in his hand. I pulled him in close to me on the couch and whispered in his ear, “Is there a reason you don’t want to write your letter?”

He quietly mumbled back, “I just don’t feel like it.” I took his chin in my hand and turned it to face me. “Is there a reason you don’t want to write that letter?”

He grinned.

And instantly I knew.

I knew that he knew.

And I knew our Santa era was over.

Once it was out in the open we curled up on the couch and had a long conversation. The football game we’d been watching was paused as we soaked in this historic moment. His dad and I laughed and talked about how old he suddenly seemed to us. This ‘baby boy’ who would forever hold that title in our family, kept passing milestones that told us otherwise.

He had questions of his own. He ran upstairs to retrieve the ‘signature’ Santa left him last year. “So, who did this?” he asked, accusingly. Then he wanted to know logistics. Who drank the milk and ate the cookies? How did we sneak presents out in the middle of the night when he knows for a fact that we’re old and desperately need our sleep?

It was entertaining but surreal to share stories with him about trying to pull the whole thing off, right under his nose. It got especially tricky when we started visiting Grammy’s house for Christmas, after we moved to New York. That van trunk full of ‘presents’ covered by coats and blankets made more sense now.

I told him I knew his belief was slipping when he lost his excitement about the letter. I reminded him that last year he’d been diligent about getting his desires sent to the North Pole. He looked reflective for a minute, then said, “Yeah, and do you know how many hearts I put on that letter last year?!” I suspect he was in his last stages of believing when he wrote that letter, and every heart included on his wish list was a small plea for validity.

Once the questions were asked and answered, we snuggled on the couch and turned on a holiday episode of the TV show Glee. I had been protecting him from it since the story line included a teenage girl who still believed, as her friends rally up to help her hold on to the magic. It held special meaning for my boy, now that he was one of the big kids, the ones who knew the truth. Several times in the course of that show he turned to me and grinned, with that knowing grin only a non-believer can possess.

And then came the sweetest moment of the night. Just as he was headed up to bed, he gave the regular good night hugs. But before he pulled away he whispered one sentence in my ear. “Thanks for taking it so well, mom.”

I think my boy is definitely gaining maturity. Even he could see that his not believing anymore was as big a deal.

To him, but also to his sappy hearted mom.

So good-bye, jolly Santa. You will be missed. Don’t stray too far away though. Someday down the road, when grandchildren start ringing my doorbell, I’m going to be thrilled to call on your services again.

Great Characters Make Great Kids

My youngest son, Sam, has spent his lifetime trying to keep up with the three older kids in our family. He skipped the Fisher Price people and moved up to Hot Wheels as soon as he could sit up. He strapped on roller blades and skis before he started kindergarten, he was so determined to do what the big kids did.

So when my fourth grader came home from school one day and announced he wanted to read a book called Hatchet, which is a book most kids read ‘for school’ in the fifth grade, I was not surprised.

He plowed through the first chapter and realized it might be an easier read if mom helped him out. So for the next few weeks Sam and I went on an adventure together. Every night at 8:30 we snuggled in my bed and found out ‘what happened next’. The book is about a young boy who gets stranded in the woods by himself, in a remote area of Canada. He has no supplies (except a hatchet) and has to figure out how to survive. The draw was obvious for my adventure loving/woods loving boy.

As the character discovered new ways to find food and provide shelter for himself, Sam and I went along for the ride. As he had set backs and frustrations, Sam and I sympathized, and soon felt like he was a friend of ours, stuck in a bad situation. Sam saw him as a kid he might definitely be friends with and my protective mommy heart craved a chance to save him.

Soon it was time to do the monthly book report project and Sam was determined to use this book. It was imperative that we finish it up so he could dive into his project. We met on the couch on a Sunday evening, knowing we had to read until the end.

The story picks up a lot in the last chapters. The tension builds as the boy tries, almost in vain, to retrieve an emergency supplies kit from the crashed plane that put him in the situation in the first place.

Finally, finally he gets his hands on it. After two months of figuring out life in the wild, and setting up a pretty logical and productive system for survival, the boy is suddenly surrounded by simple supplies that can mean the world to a person, if your only possession is a hatchet.

Pots and pans.

Fishing line.

A small gun that could replace his crudely built bow and arrow.

And dozens of packets of real food.

Sam and I had become so involved with this boy’s plight, that as we read the list of supplies he’d found, we were giddy for him, like it was Christmas morning.

These items that are so accessible to us in our daily life, were so priceless to this boy who was lost in the woods.

I paused my reading and we sat for a minute, just looking at each other, in awe.

Sam had been literally bouncing up and down on the couch next to me as I’d read the list of supplies, he was so excited. As we got to the part where the boy is setting up his first real meal, a bowl of hot beef stew, boiled in his precious new pot, and realizing his long term survival seems even more likely, we were both struck with gratitude.

You can imagine how excited we got then, when just a few pages later, a plane touches down to rescue this long forgotten boy. Talk about cheering and high fiving; we were ecstatic.

We did finish the book that night. Then we ran off to tell Daddy about how it all had ended. It somehow felt like this boy was our friend and we were ready to call the papers to announce his rescue, but telling Daddy had to do.

As I laid in bed that night, trying to go to sleep, I realized something. Through the gift of that well written book I learned a few things. I became more educated on wilderness survival for sure.

But I was also reminded of the value of character dense books. That kind of story that makes you feel like you are a part of the character’s life, and have a vested interest in the resolution to his problem. The kind of book you don’t want to end because it means saying good bye to a new friend.

And I realized that with child number four I’d become lazy. It was too easy to set him up with books that were easy reads. The kind of books I’d call fluff books. Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Captain Underpants. Goosebumps. He can read through those quickly and feel good that he’s finished another book. Those books are fine every once in a while. But it’s important I give him a steady diet of meatier books too.

They might take longer to read, and sometimes he might need me to encourage him to tackle those harder books, but they have such value. He gains so much by seeing how more literary books are written and naturally falling in love with their characters.

He sees how other people live and react to life, outside of his own experiences. It makes him a better writer, having read deeper books, but I think it also makes him a better citizen of the planet.

I know the books I’m going to encourage him to read. I made his siblings read them when they were his age. I’d just forgotten how important it was to make sure my last little guy had good literature in his hands too.

It took a very special evening on the couch, cheering together for a good solid character, to remind me to pay attention.

Big City Holiday

One of the reasons we were drawn to the Albany area a handful of years ago was its proximity to some pretty fun places. Boston’s just a couple of hours away. Scenic drives in Vermont are even closer than that. Montreal is a nice weekend trip. And New York City is a very doable day trip. The big city is especially fun this time of the year.

My husband and I both had some business down in the City this past weekend so we rounded up a few of our kids and headed down the great Thruway. I’d highly recommend the places we were able to hit, all in a single day, so I’ll share them with you. Disclaimer: There are ten kazillion other fun things to do in NYC this time of year, but this little list contains the handful of things we picked to explore this time around. Next year I'll probably give you a whole different list.

We parked in a parking garage near the lower southeast side of Central Park (great coupons online for the Icon Parking Garages). As we walked out of the garage we could see the giant Menorah at the edge of the park. Just around the corner we passed by the Apple store. If you’ve never seen a picture of it, look it up online. It’s a massive glass box, sitting in the middle of a huge sidewalk. A spiral staircase inside takes you to the actual store, which is full of electronic holiday treasures.

Just behind the Apple store is the world famous FAO Schwartz. It’s as amazing as you would imagine, which is why it is featured in so many famous movies, but to get in the door (past the fully believable live nutcracker people) there’s a waiting line that circles the block. Either come early to this one, or wait until February, when the toys inside are just as fun and there’s not usually a line just to enter.

Then across the street from FAO Schwartz you’ll find Bergdorf Goodman’s. Unless you’re in the market for five thousand dollar suits you may not choose to shop there, but do check out their windows. People around the world know about the inspiring holiday window displays that many major department stores in New York City host every year. Bergdorf’s windows are usually on the short list of ‘the best’. This year we were not disappointed.

Just a few blocks from there you’ll find the department store called Barney’s. Their theme this year was food and famous chefs. The windows were full of whimsical scenes, putting some favorite celebrity food masters in silly scenes with amazingly realistic looking food. Even my boys enjoyed these windows.

Head a few blocks east and you’ll find Dylan’s Candy Bar. In our family it’s known as the “Willy Wonka store”. There are three levels of everything related to candy. The wallpaper is dotted with scattered candies, the lighted steps to each level have candy imbedded in them. Some of your old favorites will make you say, “I remember those!” and the assortment of novelty candy products will make you start to think you need one of each. This year there was a huge chocolate fountain set up, and for a small fee you could buy a chunk of rice crispy treat, or a marshmallow, and take a dip.

Don’t leave that sugared wonderland without going to the top floor and trying out one of their delicious candy packed ice cream sundaes, while you’re perched on a candy swirl stool. The four of us shared one sundae and regrettably had to leave some behind, it was just too big for us.

If the weather is good and you don’t mind passing by handfuls of other tempting shopping opportunities, you can head south a few blocks and see all the sites at Rockefeller Center. The tree is the main highlight but the skating rink is also a lot of fun. Be forewarned that if you want to skate, you’ll stand in line for a bit, since they only allow 150 people on the rink at a time, for quality control. And if you want a picture of your kid in front of the giant tree, just know he’ll be surrounded by four to five hundred other tourists because that area of the plaza is very popular.

I accidentally discovered that one of the best places to take a picture of the rink, the tree, the gold statue and the plaza itself is the second floor of the new Lego store. Of course we had to go check it out and while hubby and the boys wandered through the inspiring displays I tucked myself in near a window, trying not to be run over by package stuffed strollers. The second I turned around I knew I’d found a great hidden secret to getting some pretty good shots for the scrapbook, at this crazy time of year.

The last spot to round out our list this year was Grand Central Station. Head a couple of blocks southeast from Rockefeller Center and you’ll find this gorgeous historic building. In years past they’ve had light shows that rivaled any I’ve seen at planetariums, the moving lights and scenes circling the great domed central hall. We were saddened to hear there wasn’t funding this year for a light show (but maybe next year?) so we settled for wandering through an amazing holiday fair that was set up just off the main hall. Live holiday music set the scene and unique gifts in row after row of booths definitely made it feel like Christmas.

So think about making time to head to NYC this December, or maybe in a year or two. It's a treasure that’s worth a look, every month of the year, but especially during the holiday season.

Love in a Box

When I was a child I had many ideas about what it would be like to be a mom. I loved babies and actually enjoyed babysitting the neighbor’s children, even if there weren’t any good snacks in their cupboards. I assumed being a mom would be a lot like those long summer afternoons of being in charge of other people’s children. Needless to say, I was wrong.

Any mom would be able to tell you all the ways being the one in charge all the time is very different from being in charge for minor snippets of a child’s life. The day in and day out responsibility can wear you down. Keeping them in clean clothes and shoes. Making sure they have the right enrichment opportunities, even if that means a yearly trip to the local zoo. And then there’s the issue of food.

It’s hard to admit this, but sometimes I feel like the only mom who doesn’t like to cook. On every TV commercial and sit-com the mom is the one who creates amazing meals, day after day, with a smile on her face. That mom is not me. I’ve always said that if my kids didn’t need food to survive, we wouldn’t even need a kitchen in our house.

A couple of times a year I can get into making a nice meal. But that’s the problem. When you’re the mom, kids assume you are going to feed them on a daily basis. Sometimes even a few times a day. That takes a lot of planning, a lot of grocery list making, a lot of hauling bags from the store to the kitchen cabinets, a lot of forethought to thaw and brown and mince things. It’s a lot of work and it’s required just about every single day.

One of the perks of moving to New York was being close enough to my mother-in-law (an amazing cook) to never worry about making another holiday meal. She loves the planning and cooking and baking and is really good at it. I’m happy to offer extra hugs and do my part to deposit a van full of grandkids on her doorstep every time a holiday rolls around. But this year we were on our own.

Because of work obligations we couldn’t get to New Hampshire to sit at her table. And because of their local obligations, they couldn’t come join us. So it looked like that big turkey spread, always packed full of everyone’s personal favorites, was going to fall on my shoulders. Then the phone call came, with a unique proposal.

Instead of a gift card or a wrapped box for my birthday this year, my mother-in-law offered to buy us a premade meal, from the grocery store down the street. Now some women would be offended by such an offer. It would cramp their Martha Stewart style and insult their abilities. I was more than thrilled to accept it, and bowed down in gratitude to this woman who knew me so well she knew I’d love it.

So on the weekend before Thanksgiving I was not hunched over a store freezer, trying to figure out which sized bird I should buy. And for the days before the holiday I didn’t have to re-arrange my fridge to accommodate a thawing turkey. And the morning of the big day I wasn’t tearing the plastic off the beast and wondering if it were indeed thawed enough to be able to cook in time for the perfectly timed meal.

It happened to be our wedding anniversary on Thanksgiving day this year, so my hubby and I slept in a bit, then made it a date, to head down the street to pick up our box full of food. We wandered the aisles and got a few extras - drinks for the kids, pretty paper plates for the rest of the weekend, some fresh whipped cream for the pumpkin pie that was included in our meal. There was no rush. The work was already done. All we had to do was take our magic box home and heat up the food. By transferring it into my own serving dishes, our feast looked exactly like the ones from years past, the ones that had been a whole lot more work.

We hung out on the couch with our kids, watching the parade, then football. We stuck candy onto graham crackers and made gingerbread houses. And when it was time to eat, the mood in the house was relaxed and peaceful, just as it should be on a holiday that’s all about giving thanks. The food was tasty. The variety was perfect. All in all, I think it might have been one of the best birthday presents I’ve ever received, the gift of enjoying my kids instead of being isolated from them in the kitchen all morning.

We were amazed at the price of our box of food. I know that if I went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for a big holiday meal, the total would be over a hundred bucks. Our magic box of food was half that price. Considering the price of ingredients, the value of my time not spent in the kitchen, and the lack of hassle all week, I think this may be a tradition we follow in years to come.

Any time trusty Grammy is not available to pull it all together, I’m more than thankful to let the wizards at our local grocery store do the honors for me.

Crying Over Ovens

The day started in one of my favorite ways. Half asleep, curled up in a warm bed with the man I love, watching one of our favorite home improvement shows. It’s something we bond over, watching other people tear down and build up their own homes. But this day it bothered me.

The husband in the show was working hard to build the couple’s dream home, doing most of the labor himself, while the wife’s job was to hang out with a decorator, picking out furniture and appliances. Maybe it’s because I enjoy the activities the husband had on his list much more than the wife, but it didn’t take long before I was totally fed up with the wife and her decorator friend.

I know it was probably creative editing on the part of producers, but the wife came off as a whiny crybaby. She wanted the best of everything and thought nothing of ordering items that continued to blow their budget. The scene that made me physically get up and walk away from the show involved tears. After ordering restaurant quality appliances for their kitchen, her husband had finally stood up to her and changed the order to regular, good enough appliances. And his wife turned on the water works.

“Really?”, I said to my purely innocent husband, who only wanted to watch some entertaining TV before he got out of bed on a weekend morning. “She’s going to cry over appliances? After ordering high end sofas and twelve dollar a foot wood floors, she’s going to cry about a stove?”

As I stormed out of the room I was mumbling to myself, “Heaven forbid she gets a call next week saying her kid has cancer. Let’s see how important having the perfect stove is then…”

It’s something I fight a lot. This constant dialogue that runs through my brain, reminding me that there is always someone worse off than I am. I know, it sounds bleak and fatalist. Some might call it pessimism. But it’s something other than that. Generally I’m a pretty happy, content person. I would definitely fall into the glass-half-full crowd. But somewhere, deep in my psyche, ungrateful people annoy me.

Maybe it’s because I was raised in a large foster family and just having my own bike was a big deal. Maybe it’s because I saw the terrible family situations I could have been born into, but was instead blessed with parents who had such big hearts they took in other people’s kids. Or maybe it’s because I saw firsthand, when I was a teen, the poverty in Haiti, and how the basics of clean water and daily food should never be taken for granted. Somewhere deep in my brain there is a default setting that is constantly set on ‘at least you don’t have to deal with…”

Later the same day I was puttering around the house, cleaning up a bit before the weekend was over, and I couldn’t stop wondering why the woman on TV bothered me on such a deep level. It was just a show. Just a woman I’ll never meet. Possibly a perfectly lovely woman who was severely misrepresented. I think maybe it’s because I know some people like her and I know those attitudes and values exist in our country.

In this place where many families are losing jobs, losing homes, losing careers early when companies choose to force retirements, there are still people who will complain that the parking lot has no close parking spots left. This year, as food banks can’t keep up with the new crowds of hungry families who stream through their doors, there will be people complaining about the fifteen minutes extra they have to stand in line at an understaffed grocery store. Having the money to pay for their cart full of groceries should be enough to draw up some patience.

We have friends who have lost children to cancer, had diagnosis of autism, and been crushed by the anguish of infertility. Today, as I write this, a friend sits in a recovery unit with her teenage son, assisting him as he slowly recovers from a brain injury. It doesn’t seem right to complain that I have too many things on my to do list, especially when the list mostly includes caring for the happy, healthy people in my life.

I have to remind myself that it’s okay to be annoyed sometimes, when my quality of life dips a bit. That silly clock above the TV refuses to keep accurate time and I end up racing around so I’m not late to work. No one, and I mean no one else, in this house understands that picking up the bathmat and hanging it over the tub after a shower will extend its life and mom’s sanity. The dog’s nails bleed (again!) when I try to trim them and I spend more time than I’d like trying to get the stains out of the living room carpet. These are the things that can drive this mom crazy.

Even in our cushy life as Americans things aren’t perfect. And I’m the first to admit I’ll grumble a bit when the little things in my day backfire. But down deep I’m always aware of how good I’ve got it. When I realize I’m having that nothing-seems-to-go-right day I take a deep breath and give myself a pep talk, reminding myself of the things that aren’t going wrong. I don’t think it’s fatalistic. I think it’s realistic.

Most of us have more blessings than we can count, if we take the time to do the math.

This is the holiday when thankfulness is celebrated. Maybe we can capture a bit of it and stretch it out for the months to come.

Maybe it’s time to turn this holiday into a lifestyle.

Ryan's Lesson

I see it coming. That nutty season that’s packed full of holidays. It’s flipping calendar pages like crazy and will be here in the blink of an eye. I think every person feels it at a different time. Some start the holiday shopping in August. I could never dig up enough holiday spirit to do that. Plus I’m not organized enough to find the gifts, six months later, when it’s time to put them under a tree.

Some feel it in mid October, when the red and green merchandise starts nudging at the Halloween decorations. I do my best to ignore the retail push and pretend I don’t see the inflatable snowmen and Santas dancing on the sidewalk outside our local Kmart. Let me buy my discount candy first, then we can move on to those winter time celebrations.

So once November hits, I feel like it’s time. Time to get my act together and start making some plans. Or at least time to move into pre-panic mode. I send out the postcards to family members, letting everyone know who drew whose name in our long distance gift giving ritual. I start cruising through and bookmarking pages of gift ideas online so when I finally get around to ordering the gifts I’ll have all my ideas in one place.

We start talking about travel plans. Will we go to New Hampshire again this year, or will grandma and grandpa come here? What about that December holiday just three weeks later? If we don’t go there, we don’t see the handfuls of cousins, but if we don’t stay here, we miss seeing high school friends who graduated last year and disappeared off to college in August. In a house full of six people, there are a lot of needs and opinions to weigh in the decisions.

I start to wonder how in the world I’m going to find time to dig the holiday decorations out of the storage area in the basement, much less put them up, in the midst of keeping the regular household chaos afloat. This year we’re sending two of our teens to Brazil to visit family friends. At some point I need to dig out their summer clothes (Brazil spends their Christmas holiday in the middle of summer, a hard concept for me to process). Then possibly find a place to buy the items that are missing (swim trunks? flip flops?), in my local store that is stocked with snow suits and scarves.

It’s only the second week of November and I already feel a bit behind. It can be enough to keep me up at nights, scrolling through lists in my head…until I come back to reality and remind myself about what’s important.

One week ago one of our favorite families in Utah got that dreaded call. Their seventeen year old son had been in a bike accident and was in critical condition with a severe brain injury. His older brother posted on his facebook page, “waiting for Ryan to wake up.” Now if that’s not enough to make your frantic holiday list seem insignificant, nothing will.

Just writing those words brings tears to my eyes. I race around each day, trying to keep all the balls juggled - the dirty dishes loaded, the clean dishes unloaded, the dirty clothes washed, the clean clothes folded, the chicken thawed, the hamburger browned….all while a precious family in Utah, good people who have raised really good kids, waits for Ryan to wake up. It’s so much more than humbling.

That’s not to say my daily tasks don’t matter. It’s important for my family to have a routine of activity, a few healthy meals in a day, a scolding or two along the way. But I am reminded where it all fits and why it all counts. I begin to see the interruption of my son as I’m trying to get writing deadlines done as a blessing, not an annoyance. He’s a healthy, strong boy who actually cares what his mom thinks about his latest Lego creation. I choose to be honored by the disruption to my busy day.

We end up on the couch one night, surrounded by three of our four children, who all happened to ‘be in’ that night, and instead of rushing off to make a list or fold a basket of clothes, I stay put. I snuggle in, under a blanket that envelopes three of our bodies, and willingly watch the movie we’ve all miraculously agreed on. And I think of Ryan, who has finally woken up, and am thankful that we are now crowded on a couch instead of in a hospital room.

So my prayers and wishes for this holiday season have been readjusted by my friend Ryan and his family. On the top of my list is the wish for a full recovery and the return of that mischievous boy with the bright smile. If I get nothing else on my wish list, I pray I get that one.

Next up is a peaceful season, that my children will remember in a good way. No frantic mom with a pointless agenda. Instead, a mom who finds joy in the process - the hanging of stockings that will, by golly, be unearthed in the basement, the buying of meaningful gifts for people who will appreciate them, the chance to catch up with a neighbor as I stand in line at the post office. That’s the mom I pray I can be in the six weeks that are racing my way.

There’s still time. Time to get done all that really and truly needs to be done. I just need to make sure my list is relevant and truly reflects what I want to see out of another upcoming holiday season. And take the time to treasure the steps along the way.

Update:
It is with great joy that I post an update to this essay. Ryan indeed woke up. He slowly healed and miraculously, he graduated with his high school class that next May. Last weekend I got to hug Ryan for the first time since his injury. His silly, bright smile was so familiar and I fought back tears as I stood in the shadow of that tall, healthy boy. Here is a picture of him, with two of my boys and my hubby:

Don't you love the spirit that boy has? In the past few months he's jumped through all the grown up hoops to open his own shaved ice stand, called The Shack. Each of us gratefully slurped down a sample of his product. Blue Raspberry never tasted so good. I'll wrap this post up with my favorite picture of the weekend. This is Ryan, healthy, healed Ryan, in the window of his shaved ice shack.