AND THAT'S A WRAP...

I've been reading year-end lists and "year in review" articles all day.  I realize that so much happens, from the ridiculous to the sublime, to the tragic and the mundane, that for me it all often melds into an "I don't quite recall" mishmash of memory fragments.

So, I decided to go through my old-school Day Planner (I refuse to give those up!) where I can see a Month-At-A-Glance notes and entries, picking out those events that most impacted my 2018.  I wonder if anyone else does the same.  Do any of these resonate with you?

(Most of these highlights ended up in blog posts so look back in the archives for more detail.)

January:  Women's March 2.0 -- A disappointment for me.  There will never, ever, be another day like the first Women's March in 2017; life highlight.

February:  Sitting at Dairy Queen scarfing down a self-celebratory hot fudge sundae on Valentine's Day when the restaurant TV suddenly showed "Breaking News" and the Parkland shooting and it's aftermath was released upon us.  Unfortunately I've been as emotionally devastated with each mass shooting; that wasn't new.  But those Parkland teens and how they rose up in activism inspiring a nation (or at least a part of it) to action still gives me the most hope I've had for the future.  I hope I live long enough to vote for one of those 'kids'.

March:  Hamilton!  Lin-Manuel Miranda,  you are a god.  Gratitude to Son Two and his fiancé for the tix so I could be "in the room where it happened."
Also the "March for our Lives" national event on TV and marching in the local event -- see Parkland above.

April:  Annual trip to Kauai.  Surf, sun, aloha.

May:  Wellness.  Started Weight Watchers and committed to a vigorous and varied schedule of physical fitness activities.  Made progress.

June:  Dove into working on I-1631, the Washington State Clean Air/Clean Energy initiative and working with Common Purpose to register voters with an eye to the mid-terms.  Challenging, inspiring, exhausting.

July:  Stunning health diagnosis and scare for Hub.  Threw us both off kilter and focused us on what needed to be done; all else seemed superfluous.  As usual his calm kept me from completely losing it. (Also I hold the image of our family gathered at the hospital on the day of a procedure Hub had to have, love and support palpable.)  Incredibly grateful for modern medicine, sophisticated testing, smart, skilled doctors, and a diagnosis we can deal with.
Also July --  a Jackson Browne concert; also meeting and attending a workshop with John Pavlovitz, Resistance Hero and true Christian.

August/Sept/October:  Staring August 30 and continuing until October 4 our big trip to Great Britain -- our first to Europe -- on back to back Rick Steves tours.  We were gone for 5 weeks, but the pre-trip prep and post-trip recovery seemed to make for about a 3-month commitment! Amazing, frustrating, awesome, exhausting.
Also October -- Son Two and his gal officially got engaged!

November:  The long-anticipated mid-term elections.  Blue Tsunami in the House of Representatives!  A win for Progressives, diversity, women.  Finally we will have some oversight into all of the crazy, illegal, immoral shenanigans of the current president and administration.

December:  Here we are -- a month of festivities with family and friends; another birthday for me; and deep, deep gratitude for my health, my home, my life, and everyone in it.  My family is the through-line in all of this, the reason for most of what I choose to do.

I am grateful to end this year with a feeling of anticipation and optimism, curious to see where this blog goes in 2019, and hoping you'll be along for the ride.

At least, that's the view from here... ©

CHRISTMAS HITS & MISSES

I have joked for years that my favorite day of the holiday season is December 26th.

I'm not a huge fan of the Christmas Season with it's ever-expanding to-do lists, forced socializing, and excesses of planning, decorating, buying, entertaining, cooking, baking, SUGAR eating....  Even though I've scaled all that back dramatically in recent years (except the sugar binges), it seems there are still moments when I'm  overwhelmed/over-stimulated and just want it all to STOP!  I hit a low point on Saturday 12/22, just prior to leaving for a Winter Solstice Party with friends, but about a quarter of the way into the evening, I rallied and enjoyed walking the traditional spiral path, singing holiday songs and carols, and spending time with my Tribe.

My second wind ended up with us adding to the family plans by buying lights to set up our own backyard spiral for walking on Christmas Eve, which we thought was very beautiful and meaningful, but which was met with what I'd say was tolerance at best by our sons and their people. The grand girls seemed to find it a fine and novel activity, but others were mute about their experience of it.  I guess it's too late to add another "tradition" to the already well-established Christmas Eve family festivities.

But I'm not giving up entirely.  I think I'll move it to my birthday, which is only a couple days before the Solstice.  Plus, I can demand anything on my birthday and get no complaints.  We'll add a bonfire with BD S'mores  and all will be happy.

Many of our friends report that they've passed the baton on holidays to their grown children who now host the big holiday gatherings in their homes instead of at Mom and Dad's.  We still host here because we have a big house, which neither of our sons do, and because it's the old family home that holds all the memories.  I actually love that they come here.  I just don't want to cook for them.

It's well known that cooking and baking are not my thing, and it's a big chore for me.  Over the past few years more and more I've been grateful for sharing this part of the holiday as the youngers bring dishes to share.  The feast they put together for our Christmas Eve buffet this year was a wonder to behold!  Son Two took on the majority of the Christmas Day dinner too.  I felt like a guest in my own home.  A lovely gift to me.

Speaking of gifts.  A few years ago we decided to exchange names amongst the six adults to have only one to buy for. All of us get things for the little girls.  We don't reveal who we have until Christmas Day gift exchange time and it's fun to find out who our Secret Santa was.  The odds of getting the same person, of course, are pretty great since there are so few of us.  I've gotten Son One three years in a row.

Something I appreciate about our family, even the little kids, is how much we love giving gifts -- even more than getting them.   Son One has a particular knack for paying attention all year to the likes and wants of family members and comes up with something that fits that person to a "T".  Since he's helping the girls buy things for the grown ups, his choices are on display in their gifts.  I just love seeing what he comes up with for everyone.

Christmas is renewed through the eyes of children and our grand girls of course are full of anticipation and excitement and thankfully, gratitude, for the whole enterprise from start to finish.  They are catching on to the family traditions around stockings, foods, candles, books, puzzles, games, gifts, etc. and it heartens me to see our holiday rituals taking root in a new generation.

So how am I doing this December 26th?  Less exhausted than usual.  More appreciative.  Not depressed.

 And almost obsessed with being so OVER Christmas that if Hub wasn't standing in my way, all the red and green and Santa-themed decorations would be put away by this afternoon.  I don't mind the "winter" decor with some snow and sparkle, but the obvious Christmas stuff is annoying me now.  As for the tree and outdoor garlands?   I will leave those aglow until New Years, but January 2nd will be a busy day of packing it all away.

The time seems to fly by so quickly that it will all barely be stowed in the attic than it will be time to drag it all out again.  And in spite of my December 26th vows to leave most of it in bins and boxes next year, I'll again get caught in the spirit and out it will come to brighten our home and welcome our family and friends back into the fold of Christmas Magic 2019.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Tired Santa Photo Credit:  www.pixabay.com

THE STOCKINGS WERE HUNG BY THE CHIMNEY WITH CARE....

I was a new mom in 1985 and a bit of an over-achiever type when it came to creating family holiday rituals, so naturally I decided to make hand-sewn Christmas stockings for Hub, our new Baby Boy, and myself.  Hub created a pattern and  I got out my mom's old sewing machine that had been passed along to me and went to town on churning out those three stockings.  In 1987 I added another for Baby Boy #2.

I'm trying to recall if I did much sewing after that.  The sewing machine ended up in the attic and I finally gave it away after years of neglect.

Then along came that first son's fiance and it was time to add another stocking to the growing family of stockings. Exciting!   So several years ago I asked for a portable sewing machine for my birthday (with some vague notion of taking up sewing again).  Making this stocking, however, was not easy since I had no idea how to actually re-create what we did in the mid-80's.  But I just looked at the old ones and was able, with some trial and error, to get another one made.  It has flaws.

I do not believe I've had the machine out of the closet since, so when I recently decided to crank out another stocking for Son Two's fiancé I was looking forward to it, but  soon I found myself staring at the sewing machine with some  trepidation.  I had to get the instructions out to figure out how to thread it.  Then I had to get my bifocals on, then the magnifying glass (!) to get the thread through the needle.  Some things change over the years.  Hmpf.

I had a heck of a time figuring out the pattern this time too.  I am not good at precision projects nor with spatial relationships.  Measuring and cutting fabric and figuring out how it all goes together is a bit of a challenge.  If you show me a diagram of a box flattened out and I'm supposed to pick the next diagram of the box assembled, I have no idea...none.  My brain doesn't work like that. This is why standardized testing and I never got along and why I have to physically move my living room furniture around to see how it will look; cannot visualize the change without actually making the change.

Anyway, I'm embarrassed to tell you how many mistakes I made and how many stitches I had to rip out and do over.  At one point I ended up with something that looked like a hat rather than a stocking.  Not sure how that happened.

As I ripped out yet another seam, I recalled that Son Two told me his future mother-in-law does intricate cross-stitch stockings for everyone in her extended family, each of which she works on all year long.  Of course she does.  Some women are good at the womanly arts of 'fancywork', as my grandma called her stellar detailed embroidery.  I would never adventure into that territory.  I just bought some pre-quilted fabric and pretty trim and tried to put it together into something resembling a Christmas stocking.  Still, what would have taken my crackerjack  seamstress mother about 45 minutes to make took me over 2 hours.  But I persevered.

I decided these things are only out of the box for about two weeks once a year and if anyone wants to inspect my work, they miss the point.  These goofy stockings are all about a tradition that started with a little baby joining our family 33 years ago and everyone who's come along since gets to be officially welcomed with their own version of the originals, except my granddaughters who preferred to choose their own stockings with snowmen on them.  Maybe one day they will request a "grown up" stocking, but they'd better hurry, because I may not remember anything about making the damn things at some point.

Well, the stocking are all hung now and from afar they look pretty nice.  My one regret is that our original pattern may be way too big!  The challenge each year is to fill them up.  I go for bulky stocking stuffers.  Fortunately, all the grown-ups like wine.

At least, that's the view from here...©

REFLECTIONS

I feel an urge, an obligation really, to finish up the posts about our Great Britain trip before the end of December.  I turn these blog posts into  physical book form, a sort of memoir, of each year.  I don't know who will ever read them; for now they line my bookshelf. I fantasize my grandchildren might one day find them after I am gone and will learn something about Grandma and her life.  Or they may get tossed away in the grand 'cleaning out' that inevitably happens at the old family home at some point.  At any rate, I forge ahead and  I want to get the trip documentation in under the 2018 deadline.  

The problem is I'm still having a hard time processing the whole thing.  I have snippets of memories and tons of digital photos I've skimmed through, but find the task of studying them and organizing them rather daunting.  I want to create a slide show as well as a hardbound photo book.  I wonder when that will happen?  Procrastination has been my go-to decision lately.  So until then I find the details of the trip hard to tease out of the impressions of the whole.

Still, as Christmas approaches I find myself conjuring images of Britain as the quintessential Christmas scene -- the winding narrow cobblestone streets of Scotland's Edinburgh and Oban, Wales' Conwy, and England's Bath and York, lined with shops, restaurants, pubs, and inns.  (Every one of which had advertisements about booking holiday meals and  get-aways even when we were there in September.)  I can imagine the sparkling lights, Christmas trees, and festive decor.  I see the soaring cathedrals, robed priests, angelic choirs -- all of which I am sure are now adorned for and anticipating Christmas worship.  I see the hustle and bustle international hub of London brightly lit and busy as ever as a meeting place of cultures and languages and religions gathered in one place, creating a holiday season of rich diversity.  I imagine all those places colder, wetter, and less crowded when we were there; more true to themselves.

I wrote about the trip immediately upon returning home with less than stellar reviews of my experience.  With time I have mellowed and have started to find more and more access to what I loved about it.  I recall the experience now with fondness and with rich, happy memories.  I never negate the challenges life throws at me, but I almost always (eventually) find a way to embrace those aspects of any situation that help me to grow, learn, and find joy in the experience too.

Hub and I were watching a Rick Steves "Christmas in Europe" special the other night and I even allowed as to how I might actually entertain another Rick Steves tour.   Hub was shocked.  I told him this time I would know exactly what to expect, how to navigate the rough spots, and to focus more on the positives than the negatives, knowing the negatives will pass and the positives will prevail in memory.

For now, we are content with planning some in-country travel in 2019, but flirting with the idea of doing one of those Viking River cruises, that I see on PBS, in 2020.   To even find myself at the point of not only considering this, but feeling not even a hint of anxiety about actually doing it, demonstrates my Britain trip this year was a huge success.  I've turned a corner.  I still may not be a world adventurer, but at least I'm willing to leave the confines of the county -- and country -- with my travel anxiety mostly in the rearview mirror.  Bon Voyage!

At least, that's the view from here...©
(I think you can click on the photos to get a larger image.
TOP to BOTTOM: 1. Edinburgh, 2. The Sheep's Heid Inn (Duddingston,Scotland),  3.Bath, 4. York, 5. Wells Cathedral, 6. Conwy (Wales), 7. Trifalger Square, London