Light and Momentary

Lickety-Split Christmas Follow-up Post

• I have discovered the foolproof way to have a stressed-out Advent: plan to knit gifts for five of your children + niece/nephew, but start late and suspect that you have a repetitive strain injury. Agree to design some of the gifts, even though you do not excel at colorwork. Knit a dragon mitten which leaves people guessing "reindeer? rabbit?" when they are asked to identify the animal represented thereupon. Finish weaving in ends in the small hours of Christmas Day. My kids were all pleased with their gifts, but WOW it was not the way to spend the weeks before Christmas. Ravelry has made it possible to share links with non-Ravelers, so here are project details for anyone who's curious: flip-top dragon (not reindeer!) mitts for the 11yo, dragon hat for the 5yo, Parrotfish hat for the 8yo, Swell hat for the oldest, and a blue-eyed golden-haired doll for the blue-eyed golden-haired 2yo. Also: hats and mittens for my niece and nephew, if you really love looking at other people's knitting.
  
  
• Despite my poor planning, we had a lovely Christmas. (The picture is our Christmas pudding, aflame.) In the whirlwind of meal prep I said to my husband that I appreciated how well we worked together in our tiny kitchen -- we seem to anticipate each other and navigate the narrow space with few collisions. I felt like kind of a slacker as he put together one thing after another. That night he complimented me on the dinner and I said, "...but you cooked almost everything." "Yeah," he said, "except for the goose, and the stuffing, and the gravy...." Holiday meals used to trigger nasty arguments for us, so I am really grateful to be in a spot where we can work together well and appreciate each other's efforts.
  
  
• Speaking of grateful, I cantored at 9 on Christmas morning, and I was pretty sure I was just going to squeak through. I'd been fighting a cold all week, and I'd been up in the night for a couple of hours with Stella. (The toddler sleep thing is crushing me like an osteoporotic bug. (Bugs probably can't be osteoporotic since they don't have bones, but I don't know the exoskeleton equivalent so you'll have to bear with me. If you are reading this blog for the entomology, you're in a small minority.)) Both sickness and sleep deprivation take a toll on my singing voice, and so I fully expected it to sound thin and raggedy. Instead -- and I can't seem to say this so it doesn't sound boasty, but that's so not my intent -- I listened to myself singing "Angels We Have Heard On High" and thought, "Where did that voice come from?" It hit me, forcefully, that the moment was a gift from God. And so I gave it everything I had, singing out Glory to God in the highest, doing my best to pray it alongside the angels. That was my favorite Christmas carol as a little girl and I remembered singing it on Christmas Eve almost 35 years ago. I thought about this life God has given me: the husband who loves me and the children we love together and the opportunities to learn together about hope and redemption.
  
  And it was very good.
  
  I'm calling it a night so I can take five children to an 8am Adoration hour. Wish me luck!

Briefly--

The celery root and butternut squash are waiting to be peeled. There are meringues to make for Massacre in an Snowstorm. I need to clear the library basket and magazine rack out of the living room to make a space for the Christmas tree that my husband and three of the boys are cutting down right now. (I hope. I forgot to remind my husband to get cash, because most farmers don't take credit cards.)

I am playing Daniel Pinkham's Christmas Cantata and when it is over I will put in Carols from Trinity, to keep us company while we steep prunes and apricots in brandy (they'll go in the goose tomorrow) and make a quick batch of candy.

The dragon mitts still need to have their ends woven in, and there will be a great festival of wrapping at some point. (If you call it a festival, it feels less like drudgery.) I have certainly been more prepared for other Christmases than I am for this one. But it doesn't really matter: what matters is hope fulfilled and love incarnate, and those are independent of my degree of preparation. Merry Christmas to you!

Heaping coals of fire

If you read my brain dump last Wednesday, you might remember that there was an older lady in the Adoration chapel during my hour last week. I had to urge myself to give her the benefit of the doubt, because I was pretty sure she was shooting nasty looks in our direction.

Well. This week, in addition to the toddler, I had three of the four boys. And you know, they do the best they can, but they are not very contemplative yet. The same lady was there, and at the end of the hour she came up to me.

I was SURE, so sure, that she was going to tell me I needed to teach my children to be quieter in the chapel. Maybe she would encourage me to bring them back when they were bigger, but I was certain that some sort of rebuke was coming.

Do you know what she said?

I'm a little embarrassed to tell you what she said, because it could not have been any nicer. She said I had a beautiful family. She said I was doing a great job with them. She said it so kindly and so earnestly that I started to cry.

In fact I have tears in my eyes again, remembering. I am feeling like kind of a jerk about the way I misjudged her last week.

In which I grumble

Oh, internet, I'm really ticked off. Remember that email I sent last night to my sleepless son's teacher? The movie in question was The Watcher in the Woods. I remember seeing previews for it on HBO in the early 80s and hoping to heaven that I was never in a situation (slumber party, etc.) where I had to watch it. Alexa Flotsam wrote about it recently here, if you don't have similar memories of your own. I politely requested that he be allowed to complete an alternate activity.

So I got an email back, along with a PACKET from the teacher. She said she was surprised that my son was frightened. After all, he's reading Eragon, in which people get decapitated. She's using the movie to teach literature, so she'd like us to choose an appropriate book for him and he can complete the packet over Christmas break.

Did I mention that I'm ticked? Is it really so surprising that a kid would be more comfortable with a book, which he can put down if it gets too intense, and which has no pictures and no scary soundtrack and which is, let's not forget, fantasy, than with a movie designed to be suspenseful?

And teaching literature? Come on. It's December 16 and everybody wants a break, kids and teachers alike. Don't tell me it's about literature. And don't even THINK about giving my son (and only my son) homework over Christmas break, a packet full of character maps and examples of foreshadowing and symbolism charts. (Apparently they are spending a little time on the packet in class but it's pretty informal.)

And ALSO?? Don't send my kid off to write about worms by himself for an hour when everybody else is relaxing in a big gaggle. Couldn't he just go to the library? That sounds more like punishment for my (perceived, not intended) arrogance in requesting an alternate activity than anything else.

One of his brothers is on the case. He thinks the solution is to do that packet up right. They are kicking around book ideas, trying to come up with one destined to create a character chart to remember. War and Peace! Decline and Fall! That book about a day in the life of that guy in Dublin!

Reading Ulysses was not on my list of things to do over Christmas break.

PS Did I mention that my third-grader was required to write a letter to Santa Claus? I don't know what these teachers are smoking.

Today I

• made it through my Adoration hour with Stella in tow (my college student babysitter is gone for break)
• gave the lady in the next pew the benefit of the doubt when I suspected she was looking daggers at us
• got through Stella's two-year well-child exam
• along with the lead test blood draw (the down side of a 1923 frame house)
• picked up supplies for tonight's festival of baking
• wove in ends, wrapped up gifts, taped up packages for goddaughter/nieces/nephew
• mailed off parcels with nary a peep from the sling-riding toddler
• bought the easy part of a fun gift for my husband
• took four children to the fabric store
• and for ice cream
• and got the middle boys to their games club so close to on time that I won't even berate myself a little
• rediscovered how woefully embarrassingly bad I am at Photoshop
• by making my husband look like an alien in our family picture
• got one Snapfish calendar ordered anyway
• made 7 dozen cookies while settling a creeped-out boy and his fussy sister
• emailed the creeped-out boy's teacher to suggest that she pick a more appropriate movie for next year
• wrote a kind of lame blog post
• thought pained thoughts about the quantity of dishes generated by baking 7 dozen cookies and cooking for a family of 7
• decided to do 15 minutes' worth of them and call it a night

Oh, dear

The boy for whom I made the dragon scarf and the dragon hat requested a pair of dragon mitts for Christmas. I have just produced the most anatomically improbable dragon you ever saw. It has teeny tiny vestigial wings, like a T. rex's useless front limbs transposed to the scapulae. Perhaps it can use them for knitting -- they are sure to be useless for flying -- since I may be deposed as the knitter-in-chief around here.

I was watching the mitt take shape and trying to cheer myself up: Embroidery! We can outline those wings with silver thread and they'll be just the thing! It doesn't matter that his lower jaw looks like he was mutilated by a oral surgeon who'd been hitting the Fentanyl!We'll just embroider some teeth in there. Silver teeth will be awesome!

I couldn't quite push back this discouraging thought: hands come in twos. I have to make another one of these things. He asked about them last night when we were talking about patterns on Ravelry. "When you make my dragon gloves, will they be an original?"

It is probably safe to say that these will be the only vestigial-wing-drooping-jaw-fat-tail dragon mitts on Ravelry. OH I hope he is not disappointed.

Can you tell me what you think about one thing? I am riffing on these flip-top mittens and the instructions say to attach the flip top to the palm side. Wouldn't it make more sense to attach it to the upper side of the mitten? Don't you usually use your fingers and thumb together, so you'd want the mitten top to be out of the way, flipped toward the back of your hand instead of bunching up in the palm while you try to tie your shoes? Or am I overlooking something important, with the result that I am making these mitts both ugly AND impractical? Please advise.

Cause of our joy

What does the food court in a Canadian mall have to do with the Immaculate Conception? Everything. [I was writing this post yesterday and didn't get it finished.]

A couple of weeks ago a Canadian pal sent a link to this video:

I have watched it a dozen times now and still it leaves me with tears streaming down my face. One reason is that it is December and anything can make me weep in December.

A bigger reason is that I am particularly sentimental about the Messiah. I was 12 years old, living in the cultural wasteland that was early 80s small-town southern West Virginia, when my church's choir director invited me to join the community chorus. "We have a lot of fun," she said. It wasn't fun for me, exactly, because I had never seen such challenging vocal music. It was a fantastic experience, though, and that music, along with those words full of grace and truth, is etched into my soul now. Nothing says Christmas to me like the Messiah.

But I think the most important reason is that the video is an emblem of a fundamental truth all too easy to overlook: the kingdom of God is among you. The kingdom of this world -- with all its excess, deep-fried TBHQ-laden breaded chicken, lookalike ugly purses, heinous fluorescent lighting, and heartbreak and deception and failure ("Gosh, Jamie," you are probably thinking, "you must really hate the mall." --and you are right!) -- the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

I look at the choir with its lovely young women and its grizzled old men, making beautiful music together, and I think about redemption for "every tribe and tongue." I especially love the part where the guy waves the "Caution: wet floor" sign like a banner, the most mundane of items giving exuberant voice to his joy. I watch this video and I remember that while we trudge through our dreary Decembers, eyes focused narrowly on our to-do lists and their attendant headaches, the enduring reality is that angels and archangels are singing "Hallelujah!" for the Word made flesh.

What does this have to do with the Immaculate Conception? St. Anselm said it better than I can. (Scroll down to the second reading to see what I mean.) The Immaculate Conception tells us that God has the desire to free us from sin, and the power to free us from sin, and it gives us a glimpse of the beauty there can be in a world redeemed.

And that is enough to make this overtired, overcaffeinated, rather bedraggled  mama say "Hallelujah!"

Ouchie ouchie ouch and the speediest of strategizing

Why am I saying ouch? Because I am being stabbed in the behind with figurative knitting needles. I am so behind on Christmas knitting that I should not do anything with my fingers after the kids' bedtime except knit like fury.

I told the boys they could each pick out something and I'd knit it for Christmas, but I hurt my arm somehow and it just hasn't been getting better. Remember when I was doing that 100 push-ups thing over the summer? I think I hurt a tendon or something, and then it flared up when I was doing all that stupid twisted rib. It's been weeks since I could lift my arm above shoulder height comfortably. I stopped knitting for a while to see if that seemed to change things. Maybe, sort of, it might have helped a little bit? But not very much, and now Christmas is coming at me like a freight train.

If I had planned to knit teacher gifts or something, I would be crossing them off off my list faster than you could say "possible repetitive strain injury." But instead I told my CHILDREN that I would YES INDEED make them something especially for Christmas. Good thing Christmas is twelve days long or I'd be in a heap of trouble.

Briefly briefly I am harnessing the magic get-things-done power of the internet to say that I have Plans for work this week. (1) My co-author gave me the green light to submit our manuscript, and I am BY GOLLY pushing the button this week, just as soon as I stop obsessing about its little imperfections. Also on the docket: (2) more stats, (3) more training students in morphology analysis, (4) generating more results for my nifty vocab tool. Not on the list: knitting during work hours. Ahem.

Delayed

It's going to be a Monday Night Strategizing kind of week, because St. Nicholas has some stockings to stuff tonight. I was cranking right along on my list -- all I had to finish up today was Snapfish calendars and package prep. And then...

I made my niece and nephew hats and mittens for Christmas, see. After months of understanding that Mama's knitting is off-limits, my daughter has recently decided that Mama might like some knitting help. She "helped" with my niece's hat by yanking out the needle, causing a bunch of dropped stitches, which subsequently sat on the needle in an irksomely catawampus fashion. No problem, I said to myself; I'm sure that catawamposity will totally block out.

I did not know that I was using superwash wool. (It was a gift.) I also did not know that superwash wool has a tendency to grow when washed. I swished gently in sudsy water and then swished again to rinse. I blotted up all the moisture I could, and unrolled a hat that would fit, like, a Peanuts character. Actually, you know those pictures of the Headless Horseman where he's carrying a giant jack-o-lantern for a head? I have just the pink and yellow striped hat for him.

All along I've been having my 5yo try on the hat and mittens, because he's just about the same size as my niece. This morning it was a cute little close-fitting hat with a rolled brim. Now it's something else entirely. A tea cozy. No, a pasta pot cozy. Heck, with a little tugging it could be a hippopotamus cozy.

If the academic thing doesn't work out, perhaps I will open an Etsy shop. Hippopotamus cozies for all!

Tomorrow when I am feeling a little braver, I am going to put it in the dryer. Wish me luck.

 

Say It With Suet

I steamed our Christmas pudding on Tuesday, which meant that all afternoon I was listening to the happy hissing of my biggest pot. I tweeted about it: "Nothing says 'Welcome, Jesus!' like suet."

Christmas pudding is a little weird. The grocery store checkout girl asked me about the suet and I tried to explain: dried fruit! more dried fruit! suet! hours of steaming! stash it in a closet and feed it with brandy! then set it on fire!

I don't think she's going to race home and make one herself. We're not so keen on the dried fruit desserts here in the US of A, where fruitcake is more of a joke than a treat. Still, ever since we moved back from the UK I make some sort of dessert based on dried fruit for our Christmas table. Sometimes it's little mince tartlets; sometimes it's a British Christmas cake. This year it's Christmas pudding.

In Britain you just couldn't have a Christmas dinner without one of those things. It'd be like inviting people over for Thanksgiving and serving them raw okra with canned water chestnuts. My great-great-greats mostly came from the British Isles, and that's part of what caught my fancy about these desserts: the near certainty that my way-back g'g'g'g'g'great-grandmothers stirred up something very similar in their own kitchens, all those generations ago.

Michael Pollan writes in The Botany of Desire about how the availability of white sugar has changed our perception of sweetness. Imagine a world in which the only concentrated sweetener was one you had to negotiate with hacked-off bees to obtain. Imagine, too, a world in which Chilean raspberries stayed in Chile and there were no aisles full of frozen food: if you wanted a December dessert, you had to plan ahead. It's a luxury for us to be able to say, "Oh, I hate raisins." (I used to complain vociferously about raisins.) Christmas pudding reminds me to appreciate sweetness wherever I find it.

It is not by any means a penitential dessert, though. I soaked dried fruit and candied peel overnight in brandy, to plump them up and enhance their flavor. I mixed up just enough of a batter to hold the drained fruit together, and stirred in grated apple and grated suet. (More about suet here, and a little more here. I might be the Midwest's leading suet blogger, you think? Everybody needs a niche.)

I asked my 11yo which kind of dessert I should make this year and he said, "Pudding. Definitely pudding. Isn't that the one we set on fire?" (That's one of my favorite memories of Christmas 2002, his puzzled little 3yo voice saying, "Why we are setting the dessert on fire?") I'm not much for kitchen theatrics but it's awfully fun to bring a flaming pudding to the table in a dark room. I think, too, of all those generations before electricity, when Christmas dinners must have been dimly lit affairs -- punctuated by those flames.

At Christmas we celebrate the Light of the world bursting forth; we honor the Word who is sweeter than honey to our lips. We've learned how to make both artificial light and artificial sweetness. Christmas pudding is a reminder for me -- a delicious reminder! -- of how long people have been hungry for the real thing.