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Every Winter evening I mourn the passing of the sun. I stand at my window to pull the last of the light into my eyes, as if I could hoard it until morning. Dawn is so far off on a midwinter night. Even when day comes, the light is a poor, pale cousin of what it was months ago. I know that the world will spin through space, bringing me back close to the sun. Then the rays will be so hot, they can burn. This does not help me now, when it is dark and cold. Time stretches out ahead of me.

Most years the lights and sounds of the holiday season keep the impending darkness at bay. Sparkle, and glitter, and cheer, they dazzle my eyes and give me warmth. Not so this year. This year bleakness loomed large. I could see it over and around the shining tree.

But I have a secret. Sheltered safe in my house where Winter can not come, I have a lily in bloom. I turn from the darkened window and step close to the vibrant green plant. I lean even closer. My face is so near the white blossoms that sometimes petals brush against my face. For a moment I admire the delicate, translucent shimmer of the petals. Then I close my eyes and inhale.

Esters from the blossom ride air into my nose and fill my head with springtime. My shoulders drop as the muscles in my back relax from a tension I did not realize they carried. It is as if my whole self was curled inward to defend against the cold season, but now I can unfold myself like the flower whose scent gave me this moment of Spring. Behind my eyelids half-formed memories dance with flashes of spring and summer. I breathe deep the knowledge that “not here” does not mean “gone forever.”

Eventually I must exhale and open my eyes. It is still Winter and will be for weeks to come. But a little piece of Spring is no further away than my lily in bloom. When my lily finishes blooming the amaryllis, gifted by a friend, will be just starting. Then there will be a hyacinth. Each potted flower is placed where the scent of Spring can waft through the house and surprise me unaware. “Spring is coming” the scent whispers to me and my heart lifts with hope for a moment.

The Winter is cold, and dark, and hard, but it is not unending. Beyond it there is Spring.

I write at the close of a perfect Christmas day. A fresh carpet of snow fell over night so that when the sun rose the sky was brilliant blue and the world sparkled. We were, of course, awake before the sun rose. Gleek climbed into bed with us at 5 am claiming it was morning. I snuggled her close and she fell back asleep until around 6:30 when Kiki came in and announced that all the kids were awake and would we please get up now? It made me think back to all those years when I was the child waiting in the hallway with a row of siblings waiting anxiously for 6 am so we could wake our parents. I went downstairs to take the photos as the kids entered the room. Howard lined them all up so that they could march in youngest first. The array of Christmas morning surprises was small. A new wii controller and game, a couple of board games, some books. These are the gifts that are for everyone to share. Individual gifts are wrapped under the tree.

As soon as the new things were examined and the stockings emptied, the kids began angling for present opening. Howard and I began the time-honored parental tradition of stalling and dawdling. We know that once the presents are opened the excitement of possibility is over. We made them all eat a good breakfast. Then everyone had to get dressed. Then we had to clean up the mess from the surprises. Then the stack of presents had to be moved from under the tree to the family room. The presents must be sorted according to who is giving the present. This way the giver can carefully hand the gift to the recipient. We take turns opening gifts to slow the process down and savor it. As it was, we were still completely done by 9 am. Once again the vigor of the children wins over the dawdling of the parents.

I’m not going to complain though. The kids were all just as happy to give as they were to receive. Each of us got gifts we were excited to have. And the gift exchange lasted long enough that it didn’t feel too short, but ended long before gift receiving burnout. The rest of the day went to happy play. There have been upsets here and there, but mostly we’ve all been enjoying our new things and enjoying being together outside our daily routine.

We had a Christmas dinner. It wasn’t a feast, just a meal, but I did pullout the tablecloth and napkins. We all sat down together at the table and I realized that we need to sit down that way more often. Sunday dinner would be a good thing to put back into our lives for 2008. Next on the agenda is curling up with the kids to watch Rattatoie and then bed.

Quote of the day:
At breakfast Howard was attempting to get Gleek to eat a few more bites of breakfast. He began to tell her that she would be a much happier girl if she had enough breakfast. He got as far as “You’ll be much happier today if you have–” when Patches interrupted “Presents!” We all laughed and admitted that presents would indeed make today happy.

We decided to liven up our Christmas Eve with a visit to the urgent care to check for strep throat. The good news is that no one has it. The bad news is that this tidbit of information cost $100 and two hours of time. But at least we didn’t leave empty handed. We determined that all the kids have normal blood pressure after they all begged for the nurse to use the cool cuff machine on them. And I got a fistful of just-in-case antibiotic prescriptions, which I will now file against future weekend or holiday antibiotic needs. If my kids get sick on weekdays I’m happy to take them to the doctor, but I’d rather give someone unnecessary antibiotics than spend $400 in emergency room fees to get a prescription.

The call to take everyone in to be checked was mine. I’m usually a better judge than this. But I didn’t want to be kicking myself on Christmas day wishing that I’d gotten the sore throats checked today. The trip was actually a cheerful one. Kiki grabbed the pair of Nintendo DS and I brought the wonderful mini DVD player that we were given last year. We managed to all stay occupied and cheerful throughout the visit. I’m counting it as family time.

Later tonight we’ll have our more traditional Christmas Eve events.

Today I did no business tasks. Instead I spent all day cleaning house, being with kids, cooking meals, planning ways to spend less money, and sewing. These things used to take up all of my time and attention. Lately they’ve only occupied a small fraction. Today I got an up close look at the results of this neglect. Nothing is disastrous, but I can see where I need to be doing better. I’m already planning goals for next year. I’ll make better ones if I look carefully at the things around here that need to be fixed.

Upcoming on this holiday season I was stressed and busy. I planned and orchestrated the necessary holiday chores right along with the business chores. The holiday was another thing to get done. So I accumulated gifts for the kids to give to one another. I then let the kids “go shopping” in the piles of stuff for their siblings. This accomplished the task of putting presents under the tree. Unfortunately it completely failed to teach the kids anything about giving. If you ask Link, Gleek, or Patches what they are giving to others, they can’t remember. They have no emotional connection to what they are giving. The point of Christmas is giving. In my hurry to put gifts under the tree most conveniently, I’ve robbed my children of the heart of the holiday. I’ve robbed them of the chance to hold a gift that they have carefully planned and watch someone else open it with delight. (Kiki is the exception to this. She selected and purchased all of her gifts with her own money and time.) It is too late to fix this Christmas. I think it will still turn out okay, but I want to make sure I do better with this. We have a year’s worth of birthdays coming. This time I will focus my organization energies on assisting my children to plan rather than on acquiring and planning for them.

I spent most of yesterday cleaning and mopping the kitchen. I realized as I wiped down chairs that I was cleaning up pumpkin spatter left over from Halloween. Today I assisted my children in cleaning their rooms. Among the bag of garbage I hauled out were piles of Halloween candy wrappers. I am dismayed that I’ve paid so little attention to cleanliness for almost two months. I am dismayed that at the end of two full days of cleaning there is still so much work to do. I am frightened to think what I’ll discover when I start scouring the bathrooms. I’ve been letting other things slide into the time that is supposed to be devoted to caring for my house. Rather than letting my time and attention be slurped into unnecessary internet surfing, I need to spend them on cleaning and requiring the kids to clean. Today was a much happier day because my kids had two extra rooms with play space in them.

Today I pulled out my big Tightwad Gazette book. Reading it helps me get back into the mindset of making my pennies stretch. I’ve spent the last two months focused on helping to bring in money. I’ll do that some more in the next months. But I’ve been neglecting efforts to make the money last. We have enough to get us through the next book release, but I’d much rather arrive at the next book release with money to spare. I want to pay down our debt on the house. If we can eliminate all the debt, we’ll have so much more freedom. I want to reach a point where I can loan large sums of money to people in need. I want to be able to do it on short notice and not care if I ever get the money back. I can’t count the number of times this year where I knew people in need and wished I had money to spare.

I need to put scripture study back into my days. I need to make my prayers less perfunctory. When I take the time to practice these things that I believe in, the rest of my life is far more balanced and happy. I need to share these things with my children as well, so that they can also benefit from the peace and focus it brings. A small investment of time in this area always makes a huge difference in how I feel about everything else.

The next three days have been declared business free. Hopefully by the end of them I’ll have rebalanced some of these things that have been out of order. Then perhaps I can pick up the business duties again with a better rhythm between the things I need to get done.

I don’t spend much time or energy anticipating the regular mail. It is delivered once per day, so once per day I go collect it and spend a couple minutes sorting the pile. Email is different. It is delivered as often as it is sent. I constantly wonder if something new has arrived in my mailbox, so I take a minute to click and check. Sometimes I do this even if I checked my mailbox only minutes ago. Any time I wander near my computer, I check email. Sometimes when I’m nowhere near my computer I wonder if new email has arrived and so I run and check. This means I’m checking email a number of times per day that is firmly in the double digit range. Most of the time the checking is pointless because nothing new has arrived, but while I’m clicking things anyway I’ll check livejournal and a couple of forums, neither of which have anything new either because I checked them the last time I checked email too. All the clicking results in the loss of 15-20 minutes that could have been spent on something useful.

So yesterday I tried an experiment. During the times of day when I’m supposed to be focused on house and kids, I turned my computer off completely. This way I could not fool myself into believing that it would only take a few seconds to glance at email. I got a lot more stuff done around the house than I have in recent weeks. And when I came back to the computer I found a batch of email that I could manage effectively in a little block of time. Amazingly, my email does not go bad if it sits unnoticed for an extra hour or two. I’m going to be turning my computer off much more frequently for the next few weeks. The kids are home and they need a mommy who will read stories and make cookies.

Today Link’s class had a talent show. There were the requisite short piano pieces and songs. There were, naturally a couple of kids with enough trophies to make the whole class jealous. There was even a girl in full jazz costume who could do backflips. There were also kids who showed card collections or simple drawings on binder paper. One kid demonstrated a card trick, but his need for a flat surface meant that all the audience could see was his back. Link decided that for his talent he was going to demonstrate the milk carton catapult he built in cub scouts. He stood up there and told about it. The looks of polite interest disappeared once Link started flinging marshmallows into the audience. The audience surged to their feet waving arms and shouting “Over here!” Link’s was the only talent where everyone stood up and cheered.

Link sat back down, grinning from ear to ear. I’m so glad he got the chance to be really cool.