It's Almost Christmas

It's Sunday morning and Christmas Eve. I am here in my attic bedroom instead of heading out the door to church. My head is stuffy and my body aches. I am hoping an abundance of fluids and a bit of quiet will help with a miraculous recovery. In the meantime, I will be thankful for the gift of discomfort that provides a bit of understanding for terribly cranky, runny-nosed babies and small children at work who are unable to explain why all they want is to cry and be cuddled.

It another different kind of Christmas. I am not at "home" and yet I am... I spent all my childhood Christmases here. The walls reverberate with memories, and the falling snow transports me quickly and quietly back in time to days of Mom baking cookies in the little galley kitchen, Dad leafing through Ideal magazines while he sips coffee in his corner rocking chair, and my sisters and I playing in the presents underneath the Christmas tree. The snow drifts down in fat, fluffy flakes and we are safe and warm...

Tomorrow, sick or not, I will travel through the snow to spend Christmas Day in my "other home," the one my kids now call "Dad's house." My heart will swell and ache as I sift through memories and emotions. I may come home sad and confused, or perhaps God will grant me the gift of clearer understanding as to where I am headed.

I've missed baking Christmas cookies, assembling graham crackers houses, and trimming the family tree this year, but it's been a season full of blessings. My heart may ache, but it is full as well. My son met me at the Christmas Eve Eve service last night. He has a new job he loves and I am one blessed mom. What better Christmas gift is there than knowing your child is happy and encouraged?

Bits and Pieces

* Our Minnesota family packed up and headed back toward home this evening. It's always hard to say goodbye, but it was a good visit. Austin is full of cuteness. Yesterday his mommy told him he was a little stinker and he replied, "I'm a lil dinker and you're a lil dinker. We ken be lil dinkers togedder." This afternoon he had fun playing rough and tumble with Uncle Ben even hiding Ben's hat under a couch pillow so he wouldn't be able to leave.

* Naughty One is ailing again. He's got a spot on his leg that is healing nicely, and a lump on his head, right between his eyes. It's looking frighteningly like an abscess. I'm not sure what happened, but he does occasionally like to scare the chickens... and he was outside with them just Sunday afternoon when I first noticed a sore by his right eye. I'm afraid a trip to the vet is in our future. I sure hope one day he learns to leave those chickens alone.

* Santa Claus made good on a 46 year old promise this week and delivered a gift that never arrived in 1970. I am now the proud owner of a brand new still-in-the-box Bedsie Beans. (Actually, I am the proud owner of two (so far) Bedsie Beans dolls as another one arrived outside of the original packaging as well. It's almost more fun getting one all these years later than it would have been when I was six or seven. (Thanks, Santa Claus, and your little elf too.)

Baby Beans

I don't recall which one was the Year of Baby Beans, but I do recall the silly little bean filled dolls with smiling faces and bright colored pajamas. My sisters each found one under the Christmas tree that year, as did my five Plotzker cousins. Eight little girls and seven Baby Beans.

On our holiday visit to Aunt Barb's house, all eight of us girls lined the stairway to the upstairs bedrooms and the Baby Beans slid down the railing one after another while we handed them back up to the top fire brigade style, over and over again. It was a simple, yet wonderful, laughter-filled game.

When my sisters tore the wrapping paper off their Baby Beans gifts on Christmas Eve, it hadn't occurred to me that perhaps there should have been a similar package for me. I didn't feel left out until I found that every one of my cousins had also received one of the floppy little dolls. I was the only one without. Later Mom explained that they had ordered a doll for me too, a sleepy, yawning, orange clad baby, but the company had run out and mine never arrived. I think she felt bad, but needn't have. I managed okay and learned that I didn't have to have everything the others had in order to have fun.

I took it well as a child and only missed my nonexistent doll during our stairway game. As an adult I find myself looking him up on ebay after watching The Santa Claus 2 where Santa pulls all kinds of vintage gifts from his bag, and I smile at the memory of childhood games with my passel of girl cousins.