White Christmas

It felt like an epic journey, through the mountains, under steely gray skies, into the wintry mix of Michigan. We made it safely to Detroit on Monday, and watched it snow all day Tuesday. Seth and I both ventured out for morning runs on Tuesday, an exercise in absurdity as we slipped and slid and jogged at a pace so slow we probably could have walked faster. But it was still a work out, and it did feel good to be out in a cold unlike what we experience most of the time in NC. We weren't sure if we would make it to Hemlock on Christmas Eve for Christmas with my mom's side of the family. Turned out the roads were okay, although some of the snow banks in Hemlock towered over our car. (By okay, I mean they were drivable by Michigan standards...had they been that slick on the mountain roads in NC, folks would have locked themselves indoors.)

I think I mentioned in the Thanksgiving post that my family rents a church hall for Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. We're too big to all fit in my grandparents' (pictured above) farm house that my mom grew up in, and the hall works very well for our potluck meal and the crop of great grandkids running wild. This year, my cousin's wife managed to get us started on a new family tradition, a white elephant Christmas exchange, only with gifts someone might actually want. It was much more interactive than the old days of everyone opening their gifts at once in a mad flurry of wrapping paper and exclamations. Thank you, Deja! Myles had a fabulous time and because he ate well (more meatballs than I care to count) he got to have that piece of pumpkin pie he's been coveting since Thanksgiving. My nephew Cullen ate more green-frosted Christmas cookies than you could fit on a plate, and ran around with a green mouth and contented smile.

That afternoon we piled back into the car with my mom and headed west to my dad's mom's house. Again, we were nervous about the weather, and it was bad but driveable. It was a packed house with my Aunt Barb living there temporarily as she sells her house and looks for a new one, but my grandma always makes us feel so welcome and loved. On Christmas, my cousin's family came over (see Myles enjoying Kameron's new ipod above). There were some tears, which was a good thing. I needed some tears this Christmas, and my grandma always helps in that department! My mom gave her the gift of my dad's caring bridge book, and it is quite a volume with so many incredible guest entries and some beautiful pictures.

On Friday we headed back to Detroit for one more night, then we set sail for Knoxville on Saturday, though I have to admit I was totally disgusted and dismayed by the news of the coal ash spill in Kingston, less than an hour from my mom's house. (Here's my editorial: Clean coal? Are they crazy? First they blow up mountains to get the coal, then dump the slag waste into miles of streams and rivers, then they store the sludge in leaky conatiners, and now the ash that they prevent from going into the air, to make it "clean coal," spills a billion gallons all over people's homes, farm lands, and they are still saying it's safe to drink the water...folks, there's no such thing as clean coal.)

On Sunday, we returned home. Ah, home. We picked up Juniper from the pet vet, where she received the comment "does not play well with others" on her report. We've left her there way too much in the last six months. Our season of heavy traveling is coming to a close, and we hope to spend a lot more time in Asheville in the coming year.

This morning, Santa came. Myles doesn't really get Santa, but he sure did get it that someone brought him a new "bike" (actually it's a Radio Flyer trike with a parental steering tool on the back). All I heard all day was "bike," and we got out twice into the good weather to make use of it. We learned the hard way that it's absoulte foolishness to not pre-assemble the kid's toys...lesson learned.

Christmas was much better for me than Thanksgiving. I guess it was a busy trip, and though I did have time for thought and reflection, it really felt this year like I just needed to get through it. And we did. I miss my dad. We all missed him this year. Some of us are better able to express that loneliness with tears or words, but we all felt it, this huge hole where his spirit would have been, an aching gap that's impossible to fill. My sister's birthday was yesterday and my mom's is new year's day, and those are difficult days to mark without my dad. Seth and I were able to visit his grave on our way out of Knoxville, but I don't feel his presence there either. It's a place for me to go, but he's not there.

There was one moment when I was driving back through the mountains into Knoxville and the sun was setting that I felt my sorrow turn ever so slightly into gratitude. I miss my dad so much because he was such an incredible father and person. I have many moments and memories to be thankful for, the depth of sorrow is the inverse of the joy that I had in all those years he was alive...a strange equation to be sure.

There are a thousand noteworthy things that Myles has done in the last few weeks that I've meant to record in this blog, and it seems they always slip away when I try to sum up our weeks. He's saying all kinds of words. We got to peek at our next door neighbor's great grand-daughter (8 days old) on Sunday and when we left the house, Myles said "Baby cry." He looked so big compared to her 7 lb frame. Tonight after our dinner prayer, he said "more!" It doesn't get any better than that. Well, that's it for tonight. Thanks for tuning in...