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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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Thanksgiving Blasphemy

Since our big meal is Saturday for us this year, and since our tradition of putting up the tree the day-after-Thanksgiving is out the window thanks to the blessing of 3rd round of playoffs, I’ve done something I swore I’d never do. I’ve decorated BEFORE Thanksgiving.

And y’all, it may be blasphemy, but I’m a big convert. Huge. Obsessed.

And I keep looking at insta for new inspo. It’s a dangerous habit.

I’m officially hooked on retro Christmas. I initially couldn’t decide if I wanted midcentury, maximalist, or Christmas Carol quaint. If I should dry orange slices, add old-fashioned tinsel to the tree, sling in some beads, add ribbons and bows..

So I decided to just do it all.

Over the course of the last three days, our house has become a veritable cornucopia of Christmas.

In the kitchen nook, the Canes tree celebrates the season, plus there’s a new, white beauty with my grandmother’s Shiny Brites (salvaged from her basement straight out of the 1950s), and a few beloved ornaments gifted me by my girls.

In the library, there’s the boys’ tree, featuring both homemade and Bug and Bear themed ornaments, all tied together with paper garland.

In the living room, stands the largest and proudest tree of all, with an eclectic mix of blown glass, and this year, vintage bulbs in all their technicolor glory. And yes, I got tinsel!!!! — I love how it shimmies with the least little draft.)

And in the dining room, no tree, but Thanksgiving Boxes stacked to heaven and waiting on my precious loves, and a mixed metal centerpiece with matching chandelier.

Close by, on the mantel, my dearest Aunt Ann’s hand-sculpted A Christmas Carol dolls that she made for me my first year of teaching, and which my beloved Aunt Jan outfitted to perfection.

The porch got a tree too, of course, along with our snowman blow mold.

And the oranges?  Well, I’m still figuring out where those will go, but they’re dried, folks, they’re dried.

In the meantime, dawn has draped ribbons of sun and cloud through my backyard pines. She, too, has decorated early.  

Soon, laughter and conversation will percolate – a masterpiece of memories in the making – but for now, there is only my coffee and twinkling lights while my favorite ghosts of Thanksgivings past occupy my mind while I bask in the abundance of this Thanksgiving present and praise Him for whom all blessings in the future will surely flow.

Happy Thanksgiving and God bless us, every one.

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I love December for…

her rosy-nosed crispness, her cold velvet touch, 

her lace on the windshield, her flakes on my cuffs,

her jolly-hued sweaters with seasonal quips,

her Santas and snowmen and icicle drips,

her snuggly soft slippers and warm cozy throws,

her cinnamon coffees; her ribbons and bows,

her gingerbread cookies, her oh holy nights,

her crusty-white windshields, her frosty-toothed bites,

her poinsettia flowers, amaryllis shoots

her cranberries, citrus, and other tart fruits,

But mostly I love her for gifting me you 

that icy midwinter from out of the blue,

the city-born guy to the small-town dark horse —

Hallmark Christmas worthy — my happiest verse.

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Making Spirits Bright

The house, cozy at dawn, and me in my bathrobe and soft Santa socks, Christmas lights glowing, playlist carols going… sipping my coffee and sorting my thoughts, 

How lucky am I, I think — no,  I know. How blessed to be snuggled beneath a warm velvet throw in the crook of a sectional with my laptop and nowhere to go while watching the sky shift to silver at dawn.

How simple, how sumptuous — an extravagance, bar none –that not everyone has. To have a sanguine soul in a world that exsanguinates souls. My gratitude is great. My cup overflows.

My sons are nestled all snug in their beds and my girls grown and glowing in orbits they threaded and hung on their own, weaving constellations that tell their tales, cast shimmering trails of goodness and grace.

While the boys, on the cusp of their own greatness, silver their way toward their own dawns, stars blooming bright on their baby cheeks and burgeoning lives, and the sky’s (no the universe) is their limit too, destinies unspooling just like their sisters’,, but entirely their own. 

I celebrate all their stories, all their tangled strands of light unwound from my body, ever unwinding and widening, bright and brighter still, stringing their gifts like drops of Jupiter, like sun-wrangled, star-spangled miracle-bringers of goodwill and good trouble in this dark world.

There is no greater joy, no greater comfort for a mother’s heart than to see the babies she brought into this world out there in it, slaying and making spirits bright — hers most especially.


			


		
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A Thousand Twinkling Sparks
			

									
									
							
 
		
			

				

 





I’ve always loved starlight. 





The dusty sprinkle of the Milky Way,





the brittle glitter of constellations,





the renaissance glow of old and new,





of reds and golds and faintest blues.





 





And the flames of candles, too.





The shimmering flicker of a haloed wick,





the undulating liquid light that peaks 





and flattens, fizzes and flares, 





always moving, yet still so still. 





 





So, of course I love Christmas — 





the dotted-light stitch of houses 





and trees. The starry-night feel 





of them, as if we’d dredged the 





heavens with a honey wand and 





 





pulled its sweetness down to our





hearths and homes, our hearts and 





bones kindled with a thousand twinkling 





kindnesses, a thousand twinkling well 





wishes, a thousand sparks of love





of comfort. 





of joy.





 






			


		
	
	

		
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Christmas Books Our Family Loves
			

									
									
							
 
		
			

				

The boys are growing up (fast!) and for the first time, we’re including a chapter book on our list of snuggle-up, read-aloud Christmas books. It’s only been recently published, but it’s already a family favorite. 





But first, the annual tried and trues:





Red and Lulu, written and illustrated by Matt Tavares





If you love Christmas trees and love stories — especially the larger-than-life trees and love stories that come with Rockefeller Center during Yuletide, you’ll love Red and Lulu. It’s the picture book equivalent of a Hallmark movie, but with birds. And not just any birds — Cardinals, the most festive and Christmas-y birds of all.





The illustrations are as beautiful as the storyline. Red and Lulu live their best lives in a big, beautiful evergreen… until one day, when the tree is loaded up and transported to NYC, with Lulu still inside its branches. And so begins Red’s quest to find and reunite with his one true love. 










Next up…





The Broken Ornament, written and illustrated by Toni DiTerlizzi





The first time we read this book, I thought it was all sentimental fluff and stuff. The second time, though, it won me over. This story matters. When you have twin boys, accidents happen (hopefully not to cherished ornaments, but still). 





In this cautionary tale, young Jack wants more and more and more festive decorations to attract Santa’s attention. But when he breaks an ornament he’s not supposed to touch — an ornament passed down from his mother’s grandmother — he learns that Christmas magic can’t mend everything, but it can definitely point you in the right direction.










And finally…





The Christmas Pig, written by J.K. Rowling, illustrated by Jim Field





Like I mentioned before, we’ve added our first chapter book to our family’s Christmas book tradition. We’ve been reading quite a few since January: three Harry Potters and the first four Chronicles of Narnia. (Side note, those Chronicles are getting a bit — dare I say it? — weak and boring. Not quite sure why they’re so highly recommended…) 





But we are LOVING The Christmas Pig!! We bought a physical copy as well as an Audible download, so we’re listening AND reading along.  (By the way, the Audible version comes with sound effects — a BIG PLUS in Parker’s opinion.) 





The Christmas Pig features yet another Christmas quest — this one to find and rescue (yet another) Jack’s most-loved stuffed pig from the Land of the Lost and the soul-crushing monster known as Loser. Jack’s new “replacement pig” plays the part of his guide through this dark underworld. 





Part Velveteen Rabbit, part Dante’s Inferno, this book is both simple and complex, and the young and old alike will enjoy it.  Do yourself a favor and buy it AND the Audible version and enjoy some quality snuggles with your little ones every night between now and Christmas. 





We know we will. 






			


		
	
	

		
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I Wish You a Merry, Mid Century Modern, Swivel-Chaired Christmas
			

									
									
							
 
		
			

				
peterschristmasThat old holiday standby – “I’ll be Home for Christmas” — there’s a reason it’s a favorite. Nearly all of us yearn for those Christmas card kinda holidays — those Currier & Ives, picture perfect Christmases from our childhoods. The ones with lights twinkling, presents waiting, family hugging, baking, laughing, snuggling. Those are the ones we remember with fondness.


And as we get older, those kinds get harder and harder to recreate. In part, it’s because families get scattered to the four winds and coming home for the holidays takes a major Christmas miracle.


Take my family, for instance. I have a sibling in Phoenix, a daughter in Dallas, another in Knoxville, aunts and uncles scattered across the Southeast, in-laws in Detroit, and grandparents in Heaven. Only one of the afore-mentioned family members is home  – and it’s the first time for her in five years. So yes, distance makes family reunions impossible.


But I also think it’s because those past Christmases probably weren’t as consummately classic as our memories tend to make them. Pretty sure my grandmother’s house was more Clark Griswold than Norman Rockwell. Regardless, it is what I miss the most at Christmas.


There were uncles and cousins times twenty. There was turkey and stuffing and more. You want jingle and nog? We had plenty, but who cares? No big deal, we had more….


I wanna be back where my people are…


I wanna see, wanna see them dancing – my uncle the hambone, my Grandma the Charleston — while cousin Teresa pounds out carols on the old, rattletrap pump organ and the rest of us cousins twirl endlessly on the mid century modern swivel chair with winged backrest and threadbare upholstery.


This chair was an arm-less dame with a generous lap and endless patience, and we stacked ourselves up and spun round and round till our stomachs – or a cousin — flipped. And then we started all over again.


And while we tripped the chair fantastic, an ancient miniature schnauzer with rotting teeth nibbled hard boiled eggs at the fireplace hearth, and our aunts and mothers baked up a holiday feast worthy of Rockwell legend.


And when we  finally all sat down to eat – all those Southeast-scattered aunts and uncles, and the entire eight cousins, along with the dog, and the grandest dame of them all, our Charleston-dancing, snuff-sniffing, Melungeon-made matriarch — the table absolutely did NOT look like that iconic Saturday Evening Post holiday spread. There was no silver service, no matching white china, no apron-wearing, gray-haired grandparents delivering the glistening turkey to the masses. (My grandfather died when I was scarcely two, and my grandma never basted a butterball in her life – not to mention her hair was a deeply dyed, bitumen-black bob.)


No, our table looked more like the Grinch-down-in-Whoville’s final dinner scene. Our spread was scattered across a hodge podge of card tables and end tables linked together in a rickety centipede’s spine. No turned-mahogany matched seating for us. Instead we all bellied up to the banquet in random ladder-back and fold up and no-backed seating and heaped up our plates with turkey and pork tenderloin and cranberries and asparagus casserole and stuffing and dressing for miles.


Elbows rode tables, laughter rode faces, and our family spun straw into gold.


I miss those days and those sounds and those people so, so much.


We have a new matriarch now. And the eight cousins have doubled and quadrupled and scattered to horizons far, far away. And not a one of us is getting any younger. And some of us are nearly as old as our bitumen-bobbed matriarch was way back in those Christmases past.


Which means not many of us are able to gather round rickety card table banquets to rehash the hilarity. But I can still hold out hope. Hope that some time, very, very soon, we can get all the extended Peters back together once again to recapture the merry, mid- century modern, swivel-chaired holidays of our youth.


That is tops – absolute tops — on my grown-up Christmas list.


(Perhaps a Christmas in July this year, Santa? Whaddaya say?)


 


 


 

			


		
	
	

		
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’tis the season, a very hard season
			

									
									
							
 
		
			

				

’tis the season — for mankind and for football. It’s Christmastime and the playoff season. The Sunday of the semifinals and the final week of school before winter break. 





And I have so much I want to do. Like to do. Am struggling to do. All the baking and buying of gifts, the playoff chili cooking and cheering for my student athletes and football family. I want to do all the things I usually love so much about this most glorious of seasons. 





But then, my body rejects that desire. It shudders. And shutters itself inside a husk of general malaise. And I cannot.





My joy has been ransacked. I find tinges of it — glimmers of it shining in the rubble. Like broken glass or teardrops caught by glancing blows of brightness and light. Fleeting.





This morning, I watched the sun climb stair-steps of cloud over the river, the shelves of them distinct and layered like a smog and smoke parfait. It was haunting, the way it cast shadows over a split rail fence in the distance, a long, lean checkerboard where crows, not ridged game pieces, hopped the squares. 





Their tinier siblings were there too, a carpet of blackbirds, rolling in low-slung, oily black clouds from yard to yard, scavenging in swirling, lifting tornados to light in naked trees, filling them with feathered foliage. 





The King of the Crows, a giant among the blackbirds, scared them away and perched himself at the top of a wobbly, half-dead fruit tree in our backyard. He teetered from his own weight, wings outstretched for balance, a pendulum in chaotic motion, a blunderbuss of blackened breastbone searching for balast. He gave up and flew away.





Death never feels like balance. I’ve learned it topples you, leaves you yearning — for joy, for love, for the person you’ve lost. Everything feels off kilter. Out of balance.





But the experts tell us Death is the ultimate balance of Life. The two bookends. lMaybe so, but it never feels right for those left behind. I swear, my father’s book wasn’t finished.





I wish Death had failed to light that November night. I wish the balance had been off. The pendulum too chaotic, the ballast not there — not quite right for the Harbinger Crow. I wish that Newton’s Law had kept my father’s heart in motion. 





I’m sure, somewhere on this earth, there was an equal and opposite reaction. The moment my father’s heartbeat ceased, some new one began. Beauty birthed in pain. Darkness and sorrow begat magic and light. So the pendulum swings. 





I see both. I feel both — but the light side, the bright side, it comes only in flashes right now. Flashes of comfort and joy: cuddles with my twin boys at bedtime, curled like squirrels against my side while we read our bedtime books; Friday night’s quarter-finals game, stadium pulsing with our come-from-behind win; trips to the mailbox to find cards with well-wishes and Christmas greetings.





But then I swing back to the grayness and fog and numbness, and on into darkness and pain and mourning. And back again. 





’tis the season. A very, very hard season.





Still, I am here to bear witness. To feel it. To live it — in all its shifting shades and sensations. The wildly-careening spectrum of color and composition that makes and brings the beauty AND sorrow. 





The wins and losses. The memories and their making. The rise and fall. All the majesty and magic and quagmires and pain of Life. Without it all, we would be so flat and empty. 





So I’m taking these broken wings and learning to fly again. Into the depths and heights of the pendulum swings. Into the light of a dark black night.





”tis that season for me.

			


		
	
	

		
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Trying to be a Good Steward This Gathering Season
			

									
									
							
 
		
			

				

It’s no secret, this is my favorite time of year. Everything about October through December fills me with joy. The autumn leaves, the pumpkin spices, the snack-size candies, my football-coaching husband climbing to the press box with clipboard and khakis.





I don’t know what I love most. (Well my husband, obviously.) But the softer, cooler weather is pretty sexy too. The fog settling like cashmere over tree limbs at sunrise. The sky sparkling like jewels in the heavens at sunset. The porches peppered in  mums of russet, paprika, persimmon and plum. The woodsmoke perfuming the air. 





And then, there’s all the seasonal fashions and accessories that emerge: chunky sweaters, glittering helmets, plastic jack-o-lantern totes. From stadium to city sidewalk, to hearth and home, earth and sky… all bursting to celebrate the gatherings of fall.





But this year things are so different. So full of cautions and fears.





Football stadiums are limiting fans. Trick or treat is banned in some places. Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations are enough to give this mama of extended family traveling from multiple states a panic attack. 





Y’all. I love trick-or-treat tykes. And turkey and pecan pie. And stockings hung by the fireside with care. And twinkle lights and Christmas ornaments. (God, how I love a decked-out evergreen.) But most of all, I love all the cheesy customs of a crowded living room full of family singing carols and sipping cocoa and making memories to last a lifetime. 





But I worry so much about my mid-to-late seventies parents joining my thirty-something girls and our first-grade boys and and my high-school-teaching self and football-coaching husband. I worry about how much their risk of contracting a potentially-deadly virus could exponentially increase if we all get together. I worry about losing time with them if we spend time with them during the holidays. 





But then, I know the value of those memories, the necessity of connection,  the loneliness of isolation, need for family love. Their fear of missing out on valuable time with their grandkids vs my fear of my kids missing out on valuable years with their grandparents. 





Which is more beneficial? Which is less? The weight of weighing this cost/benefit analysis is unbearable. 





We all feel so burdened. All of us. We’ve spent seven full months carrying this pandemic weight. None of us has gone unscathed, although some of us have suffered far more than others.





Surely this final trimester will bring this baby full term. Surely we will leave Hell behind and find a bright, shiny, newborn New Year in its place come January. I know it’s not a rational thought — but it is a deeply-rooted one, full of hope and desire and fueled with prayer. 





In the meanwhile, I desperately want to see those I love most in the world during this season I love most in the world. So we will be as responsible as humanly possible. We will be social — at a social distance. We will wear our masks, and sing our songs six feet apart, and sip our alcohol while we use our alcohol wipes. 





Our lives are short enough as it is. And God told us to be good stewards of  them. So as for me and mine, we will balance family and safety in this season the best way we know how. We will make carefully-measured memories with the carefully-measured time God has given us. We will be good stewards as we gather together.  





Happy Gathering Season, y’all. Be cotton-headed, but not a Ninny Muggins. Wear a Mask. 





  





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Of Carols and Cookies and Christmastime Craziness
			

									
									
							
 
		
			

				

Christmas is my favorite. I love spending the hustle and bustle of the holidays with family. Even when it gets hectic and stressful (and with my crew, it’s guaranteed) there’s nothing that fills my soul more than copping a squat on the living room floor because every chair and sofa space is packed to the gills with girls (and the random trapped husband) and listening to the jabberwocky of a room full of relatives. 





I come from a big family of women. A bodacious beehive of queen bees. So when we get together, we get loud. And we do goofy things. 





Like gather up all the hats and scarves in the house and go caroling… whether the neighbors are amenable or not. And a good many may not have been. They either weren’t home or they hid from the colorfully clad mishmash of merrymakers on their front lawns. I know I would have — at least until I heard the first few notes of a christmas song. Then I would’ve thrown my doors open wide.





“Everybody loves Christmas carols. Santa, especially,” Tate says. And he’s right. Or at least everybody in my family, plus Santa. That’s why we go caroling and harass the neighbors. 





And I’m thinking that must not be something normal people do because I can honestly say I’ve never had somebody ring my doorbell just so they can belt out “O Holy Night” in a light drizzle. But we do. And we did.










This past week, I was talking to family and friends about some of their favorite Christmas memories and traditions.





One friend made peanut butter balls with her mom every year, to pass out to all male relatives over 21. She didn’t know why they had to be 21 and male. It was just tradition. 





But tradition’s like that. The method to the madness is often lost in the translation, but the joy translates, regardless. Bringing so much joy to the world.





My sister and her family whip up their annual joy with homemade five-star meals for Christmas dinner. Beef Wellington is her son’s favorite — and he himself is a mini master chef, baking up the most glorious, puff-pastried, steak-filled centerpiece of a Christmas feast you ever did see.





From five-star to the star of Bethlehem, my husband’s favorite tradition was attending midnight mass and singing “Silent Night,” the melody lifting the congregation in the most sacred of stillness. 





Another friend of mine talked about how her family never had much growing up, but they always had Christmas. She remembers one year where her father sold his truck so they would have gifts under the tree. She wonders to this day how he made it to work the coming year.





My girls and I, we always made Christmas cookies. The boys and I have added gingerbread to the memory mix. This weekend was a cluttered cluster of memories in the making. Chilled dough. Dusted rolling pin.  Cookie cutters and powdered sugar. Red, green, blue food coloring. Blue and green and white crystal sprinkles.  














Cheeks and fingers were stained and there’s sanding sugar scattered clear to the floor joists, I’m sure. The kitchen is a wreck, but the cookies and houses are a wonder. They aren’t pretty, but they’re pretty delicious. And so are the memories.





And then there are my memories of Christmases past —  my cousin at the pump organ, clomping out “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” the rest of us singing along. My aunts and mother in the kitchen scraping a year’s worth of hamburger grease off the stovetop and cabinets so they could cook up the roast beast. (Grandma lived on fried patties 364 days out of the year.)





My uncles and father gathered ’round the coffee table sketching out physics problems, each bringing their gifts to the table, in a pedagogical parody of the three wise men. 





And finally, there’s my grandmother in her recliner, beaming through her bifocals and bragging on her grandchildren to anybody and everybody she could capture in her thick-rimmed line of sight. The lights from the Christmas tree reflected brightly in her split lenses, turning her chocolate brown eyes into a kaleidoscope of green and amber and red and royal blue. 





Somewhere behind me stands her Christmas tree, the beginning of my fascination with Christmas trees, its branches dripping in silver tinsel and Shiny Brite ornaments. I wish I knew where those ornaments were today.





My mother further fueled my passion for Christmas trees. She has eight. Yes. Eight. Most of them, themed. One is a nutcracker tree. Another is chockfull of Wizard of Oz ornaments. A third houses all the homemade ones we four kiddos created from decades of Christmases past. Then there’s the bird tree in the bathroom and the tabletop tree in the bedroom. It’s a habit. And it’s genetic.





But my habit is sort of under control. I only have two — one full of collectible blown glass; the second, full of felted ones, less fragile, more fun.  














Yes, Christmas is my favorite. 





I love the memories made and the memories in the making. I love the family, the fun, and the frenzy — every last fiber of frenzy. My husband — not so much. He prefers to maintain every last fiber of sanity. But then, he’s all”Silent Night,” Bing Crosby style, and I’m all Mannheim Steamroller “Carol of the Bells.” 





But maybe he’ll keep me anyways. Because he was my absolute best Christmas gift of all time, thirteen years ago this past weekend. 





Yep, Christmas is my favorite.

			


		
	
	

		
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