My "Christmas" cards should arrive in local mailboxes today. And while I often find myself chasing the sleigh, this year I didn't so much as chase it as let it whiz right by me, on purpose. In fact, I designed this year's card purposely omitting any reference specific to the holiday season. Last year, I was overly ambitious with a large Merry Christmas knowing the risk I was taking (and if I am really honest, it was more push back against the PC "Happy Holidays").
It's not that I can't get to the mailbox or make the card. What trips me up is writing the yearly missive that, as is true with most things, I will blame on my mother. It's something that I feel is part of the whole card sending thing. She did it, so I do it. Call it tradition or call it fodder for stand up comedy and newspaper columns, but 99.9% of the time, if I don't write a letter, it's an "off year" where I will send nothing at all.
I am clearly not one of those folks who hates a holiday letter. In fact, over the course of nest emptying and spending less and less time at the schools for whatever program, performance, teacher's conference, meeting, presentation and committee work happening that week, I just don't run into people to catch up as I used to. From this perspective, it's actually very nice to hear what other families are up to. I knew some of their kids extremely well and a lot of them spent a great deal of time at my house! I liked many of them a great deal and truly want life's best for them. And let's face it, in the absence of their parental truth, you're mostly just dealing with hearsay or rumor and gossip, the latter of which is rarely ever good. As a somewhat seasoned parent of missteps and sidesteps, I believe life is very much about the journey.
Maybe it's the case, I really don't get out enough or make enough effort to get together with great people who I used to get together with by happenstance. Whatever the case, the point remains: I like Christmas newsletters.
Personally, I try to keep to rules of one page. In the past, my efforts there made for some pretty small fonts, which in aging I now feel apology is in order. There is something unsettling by wanting a large magnifying glass this time of year, something I currently don't own. So now it's a one-page rule with readable font, but my margins are often really tight. And this is just the who, what, where and how! There are no juicy stories of foibles and folly - which frankly, is a lot of the joy of having kids. Plus, without some degree of funny, the nod to my hero of a humor writer, Erma Bombeck is completely missing. Of course, all of this was much easier to get away with when the offspring were younger and didn't have any veto power over what was written in the annual letter!
But whether anyone else cares to read these letters I write, I've come to see them as tiny time capsules, which was proven further this past year as I organized the house for sale and went through boxes and boxes of pictures to help our youngest, Bailey, put together a slide show for the wedding. I would come across old letters and find myself reading.... and remembering. Of course, I had the same idea I have every year about how I should make an album of all the letters and the card of the year. While I've come closer this year more so than most because I did take the time to at least put the copies I stumbled upon (in the wrapping paper box, a shoebox filled with old Christmas cards from other people, a file folder or two) all in one place. So there's hope.
Anyway, this year was likely the biggest we've had in quite some time, and as I began writing the letter, I found myself stumped at how to fit in Charlie's graduation weekend when he hadn't even considered he was actually leaving town at the end of it! Nor could I fit even a mention of Megapalooza - Meghan's weekend combination of Wedding Shower/College graduation, to say nothing of my impressions of the parent side of DI lacrosse, the refilling of the previously mentioned empty nest, selling a house, AND some very learned advice if you're ever planning a wedding. There's also the story about how the new owners behind us cut down an entire stand of evergreens changing my view considerably! I'm exercising my civic duty by taking it to the city since the trees were supposedly protected by ordinance!
Look, I know it's not like I think people need (or want) to read these things, but I like to write them, which my husband thinks is clearly an over-share in a Christmas letter, which I am pretty sure he's right about. I'm not sure how he'll feel about blogging about it all, but this is also the same guy who insists his yearly mention be limited to "yes, he still has a job" and he likes to play golf, if he's mentioned at all.
I edited what I sent out with the Christmas card into one page of mostly just the facts, but I couldn't just toss the true gems of who my children were this year into the garbage can found in the corner of my screen. So, I am taking the oldest advice I was ever given as a writer: Write what you know (or at least think you do) and write every day. I think now is a very good place to start.
With a little nudging (and requests for forgotten passwords), I've awakened the blog I stopped writing two years ago. So what comes before this entry is pretty old news, except for the part about having three siblings who live fabulous lives and mine being mostly about laundry. We'll see where this goes....
