*kendraspondence*

It was the eve before Thanksgiving, and all through the condo,
Loverpants and I were rummaging around for winter woolies
to wear for our Turkey trot in the morning.
We were all manner of PUMPED for our 5 mi and 2 mi races respectively,
and Loverpants was all poised to push the pram (with baby bundled warmly within, natch).

But he and I were both snarfing away through congested noses.
And making coughing noises, throwing our whole bodies into it
like Muppets with emphysema.
I don’t know why I’m writing this in poetic verse.
It’s really just a silly narrative about how Loverpants got paged and only got a few hours of sleep and I was snarfing away all night and resigned to Nyquilling myself at about midnight, so we both woke up with hangovers, he with a Worked All Night hangover, and I with a Nyquil hangover.
So we didn’t race afterall. Instead we sort of tended to the babe in shifts. Loverpants and Baby Girl read books, played with blocks, talked a lot of smack about the Turkey Trot next year. Mama napped. Mama gets up. Feeds Baby Girl, read books, played with blocks, spit some verse about the awesomeness of Thanksgiving carbs.

All the while Loverpants was preparing a luscious bird per usual. I am really proud of him, he is a really talented cook. We went over to some dear friends’ for supper and everyone was back home and nestled in their beds by a decent hour. How blessed and how stuffed we are!

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P.S. Did you know that it’s a wonderful life?

Scan the picture with the bell shape and see what it reveals…

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My parents separated a few weeks before Thanksgiving. November 1997. Harsh though it may be, the Fall is an appropriate time to end a marriage, when all signs of life start to wither and surrender to the frost. Symbolism aside, though, it is never ever a good time to end a marriage, never a blessed time to divide a family, never an auspicious morning to wake up on Thanksgiving when your father is dropping off your brother like a newspaper delivery, and you realize that the family togetherness that everyone bemoans around the holidays is the thing which you are most aching for, and will continue to ache for throughout your entire adult life.

When a relative passes away, it is appropriate for family to take note come the holidays. Auntie is not here this year. We miss Grandpa. It’s just not the same without Uncle. But when your parents divorce, the absence of a parent is surely felt, although rarely acknowledged, and the verse “We’ll just have to muddle through” from “Merry Little Christmas” rings true. And while some holidays are merrier than others, I have often wondered when I would stop muddling through, when I could stop muddling through because all I felt was gutted, and just…so sad.
The answer that I have found is to avoid the situation almost summarily. It is much easier to experience the holidays removed from your family when you are a child of divorce. Especially if your memory of happier times is still intact. I have successfully done so for the majority of Thanksgivings since the split, which is self-preserving, childish, and convenient. But now that I am a parent, I have a different perspective. I am charged with both the opportunity and the privilege to create new traditions, traditions full of joy and mirth, memories that will sustain my daughter when she is pushing through a mid-term in college, memories that will sustain me when I am homesick for the Thanksgiving of my youth.

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I really hope each and every one of you enjoys a portion of peace, a slice of comfort, and a heaping helping of blessings this Thanksgiving. I know there are so many out there who go without, who will endure the cold and hunger, who are estranged, addicted, desperate. Let us not forget our blessings, although we carry ache and fear, perhaps this year more deeply than in the past, and please know how thankful I am for each one of you that reads this.  You enrich my life.  Thank you.  God bless.

Hey, where did you get this thing? It’s called a box you say?

Why, it’s kind of cozy…

But I think I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.

AAHHHHHH

Hey, this thing is pretty cool, too?

It’s a hard-sided basket?

It’s getting a little tight in here….

I think I’ll just….

If I’m relying on stats from “Rent,” and there really are 525,600 minutes in a year, then I can say with some measure of confidence that at least 99% of those minutes in the last year have been well-spent. I think a lot of people view time differently once they become parents, and in a really morbid sense, I imagine it is a lot like experiencing grave illness. You just don’t know how much time you’ve got left…and so you savor the moments you’re given, you take a picture with your Canon or with your mind’s eye, and all the things that once vexed you seem frivolous and you see as a complete interruption of the time you would rather be spending in front of a highchair with a sucktopus reluctantly strapped in, the tray laden with Eggo waffle crumbs and a sticky larvae of grape jelly and cornflakes, and you are trying mightily to recall the verse to “My mother gave me a penny…to go and buy a (?) uh…a henny (?) but I didn’t buy a henny…” because these theatrics are what magically make the food go down, and you ARE Mary Freaking Poppins. And it is amazing.

Too bad these moments can’t be bottled and stored on a shelf for twelve years until the person sitting across from you at dinner is no longer in a high chair but is maintaining what appears to be the third day of a solo campaign for the Advancement of Silence as a reaction to you for having the audacity to come inside the school gym WEARING WINDPANTS to find her after coming to pick her up and waiting twenty minutes in the parking lot.

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She’s such a good little helper now…

Soon ::sniff:: she’ll be off and running away from me, though….

Yesterday I was in Babies R Expensive with Baby Girl when a store clerk prowled cat-on-a-hit-tin-roof up to us and waved at the baby and told me she was so cute. The next thing I know, I am wheeling Baby Girl in the shopping cart which is empty of the things we are here for, over to the kiddie portrait corral for our complimentary session. Another name for “complimentary session” in baby consumerism land is called “Making a sucker out of parents who might also believe that Chia Pets can fly if you tell them their kid is super cute.”

Now, if you’ve kept up with this website, it is clear that this baby’s life does not lack for photos. It is possible that she will suffer the residual effects of Flashy Spot in her vision’s peripheral if I keep up shutterbugging her grimace with the frequency and gusto that I have to date.

But somehow, I just can’t have enough.

And what amazes me is that she was in her pajamas yesterday.

With spaghetti stains around her face and up near her eyebrows and possibly in her hair.

And the photo clerk pulled down this snowy backdrop with a big Christmas tree.

She was probably expecting my child to lay down all cherubic, like a docile Christ child in a manger, the glint from the flash captured like stars in her eyes.

And quickly it became clear that the clerk had picked the wrong kid. And by wrong kid, she could clearly surmise that my child was a little less “The Little Match Girl”, a little more “The Worst Christmas Pageant Ever.”

Because my babeh don’t stay still.

She doesn’t have a still bone in her. In fact, she has a bright future as a hockey goalie, so flailing are her arms, so vigilant her eyes, so ready to dive off a photo platform for a soaring puck at any time.

But as I watched Baby Girl get into it, work it work it love it…

The thought occurred to me.

Baby Girl has never experienced Christmas.

She doesn’t know the baby in a manger, the little drummer boy. She doesn’t even know what a Chia Pet is.

But something must have clicked.

I mean…it just must have!

Because yesterday, we stuck her on a photo platform with a Christmassy background.

And something registered.

Santa!!

Not the Santa who texts on his Blackberry, but the Santa who waves.

Waves a lot.

Waves cheerfully.

I know this because of what happened when we poised that little trollop in front of the camera and said “Christmas photo” and flashed some lights–

I’ll tell you what happened.

Actually?

Why don’t I just show you?

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My child is a genius.