Little Snippets

Saturday morning at 9 am, we are all 5 piling into the brown van and heading for Christmas. Well, actually, we are heading for North Carolina, right about here, after a quick overnight stay in NY with family. We will spend Christmas in NC, on the beach, with a 24 inch fake tree lit by multicolored prestrung lights. With good luck, we will also decorate the tree with whatever shells and rocks we find intrigueing.

All three kids are wildly excited - it's been a rough few months with Chick starting her senior year but playing catch up with credits, Buddy starting middle school and getting used to changing classes, finding his locker, and actually turning in homework, and Bear adjusting to her new class accomodations and sped classes. The hubs and I have had our hands full with all three of them, plus the occassional foster baby and while he is mostly looking forward to doing nothing but sightseeing and relaxing, I have to admit to pining for my meme... grief takes time. The soft ocean waves and the warm sand hopefully will be healing.

On our way back home from NC, we plan to stop in DC and meet up for the very first time with another blogger. My dear friend Ladybug, whom I admire greatly for her sense of family and her obvious dedication to her children, husband, and parents, will be taking time out of her holiday plans to drive an hour out of her way to meet us. I am soooo nervous, but also very excited. It's been a dream to meet another blogger and now that I have the chance, I'm thrilled to meet one that has proven to be a friend to me and my family over the past years.

You know how your small toddlers and preschoolers mispronounce cute words like "cimmamin" and "pasgetti"? My oh so grown up 17 and 11 year olds have recently come upon some hilarious translations that keep me chuckling long into the night. Chick was, admittedly this was last summer, purchasing some very special chocolate milk from a vendor at a farmers market. When confronted with a choice of sizes, she opted for a "pin-t" instead of a "pine-t". We've chuckled over that for quite some time but recently our Buddy confessed that whenever he reads the word "lasagne" in his Garfield comic books, the voice in his head pronounces it "lisgweenie" and therefore whenever he goes to actually say the word lasagne, it comes out "lisgweenie". Last night we took the kids to a texmex joint for dinner and Buddy was reading aloud from the menu. "mom? whats a fah-jeet-ah?" he asked, with such total sincerity that we all busted up laughing. Good sport that he is, he learned how to say "fajita" but went on to try and conquer "Kew-way-so" (queso) and had us rolling and wiping away the tears of laughter. We left the texmex joint randomly yelling out "Guacamole!" in as much of an accent as a bunch of middle class white bread honkies can manage. "WahcaMOLEayyy!"

Tonight I wanted to scoop up my Buddy in my arms, the way I used to do when he was a tantruming toddler. I wanted to scoop him up and hold him tight against me where his own wild heart beat would slow down in measure with mine, where his tears would soak into my shoulder and my own breath would breathe deep into his hair and my words of love would soothe his soul. But my Buddy is nearly my height, his feet are like long flat clown feet, a joke almost, and his long gangly arms seem at odds with his large man-hands. His hair, which I used to run my fingers through in it's silky fine-ness, is now bushy and shaggy and always in his eyes. Tonight my heart was softened by the struggle of a little boy-pre-teen as he tried not to cry, tried to be a tough guy, tried to be strong. Oh Buddy. All I could do was hold his hand, bigger than mine, and rub his back and murmur encouragement. Later as I sat in our old blue recliner, he came to squish in next to me, half on my lap and half in the tiny wedge of space available to him. He laid his head back against my chest and I buried my nose in his freshly washed hair. The scent of a manly deoderant wafted from him even as he wore his fuzzy jammie pants and his fleece bathrobe. I wrapped my arms around him and we rocked gently, gaining strength from each other. If I could, I would scoop him up like a lost little boy, hold him tight to me and protect him from this cold world. But instead, I rock him, rub his back, inhale his scent as surely as he inhales mine, and I pray.

I'm off now, to be with my family, to walk on the long stretches of beach in search of wild horses and the one perfect seashell, to fly kites and sip hot cocoa and soak in a hot tub on the deck as we watch the moon over the ocean. We plan on making Christmas cookies, a prime rib dinner, and attending services at a local church in between watching old movies and playing new boardgames. Merry Christmas to you all... Rejoice, Rejoice, our King has come.

Blessings to you all...

D and family