Turkey

"Jooooooooeeey," Jack bellows. "Joe is eating ALL the cookies," he says.

Halfway through an elephant documentary, the nine of us lounging across the couch or spilled onto the ground ensconced in quilts and cozies, Craig raises his brow and sighs.

"Joe, how many cookies have you eaten?" he says, the side table weak legged for all the popcorn, cookies, pretzels, dips, crackers, snacks and bowls balanced and skewed over the tabletop. Joe pulls his hand from the gingersnap tin.

"Um, I don't know," he says.

"Hm," we all groan, attention pulled from the elephants to the home docudrama.

"Whelp, then go to the end of the hall," Craig says. "You're definitely in trouble if you don't even know how many you've eaten."

"Oh," he says, his face a chess move, eyes probing Craig's brow for a number.

"Want to try again?" Craig says. "How many cookies did you eat?"

"Maybe twenty?" he says.

"TWENTY?"

All notions of three or four or even ten now dwarfed, eyes ping and pong from Daddy to Joe, we blink.

"Yeah?" Joe says.

"Ok," Craig says. "Go to the end of the hall."

Twenty, just twenty.

"So Zeke and I decided to play with his mummy," Myra says. Sunday morning and we sink into the big red couch, it's wide arms a thick hug around us.

"Oh," I say, George nursing, Myra chattering, her features exaggerated femininity. "What's a mummy?" I say.

"I don't really know," she says, her forehead smooth, her cheeks round apples.

"Hmm," I say.

"It's apparently a little thing made of really special stuff that will shatter if you drop it," she says.

"Ohhhhh," I say.

"Apparently," she says, "and I don't know why, but he got it from co-op."

"Ahhhhh," I say.

And we ohh and ahh, and I listen to George coo and the morning washes over us. Elation and quiet pauses poured out in equal measure.

Gratitude:

6441. Thanksgiving comes and we celebrate with family. I bring potatoes made in the instant pot and everyone brings something and the tabletop seems to go on forever for all the delicious food.

6442. We celebrate communion as a family. Gratitude unspeakable. And yet we celebrate by going around and speaking aloud the things we are thankful for.

6443. Craig and Jane cook a turkey for us the Sunday after. For all the adventures of cooking out of a bathroom, this will live long in my memory. For all it's beautiful appearance, the turkey emerges from the barbecue raw from the waist down. Pink, just pink.

6444. So we scoop out enough drippings to make gravy and eat everything with gravy, tons of gravy. All the side dishes become entres and we eat away. By 11pm the bird is cooked down to it's tippy-tip toes, the children long in bed. So Craig and I eat a second dinner, while we debone the bird. We eat while we work. I pull the cooled gravy out of the fridge and a few potatoes. With grease dripping to our elbows, we eat.

6445. So it is gratitude finds us, the hilarity of a Thanksgiving meal without the bird but gravy filling every crack. And we all reach points of desperation, irritation, exasperation, and stupidity, but there we are all together. The gravity defying act of being all together, it fills every crack. I shake my head for the hilarious miracle and gratitude unbidden rushes in.

George Lewis

George Lewis
9 lbs. 6 oz.

Thanksgiving morning. Two and one half hours labor, and the all natural birth I'd dreamed of gave way to a beautiful baby boy. All the imagining in the world couldn't have prepared us for his resplendent face. Bliss. We raise our hearts in a song of joy, thanksgiving the air we breathe.

He eats and sleeps like a champ. The children encircle him with love and curiosity.

I take each slow moment for the gift it is. They run through our fingers like water.

Revelation

"Oswald Chanbers says that obedience is what makes scripture make sense," I say. The night cold, ink black, we drive to Grammie's house. Thanksgiving. Fog hovers around the car. And we talk.

"Yeah," Craig says.

"Chambers says sometimes you read a scripture 365 times, but it's not until that 366th time that because of some obedience in your life, the meaning unlocks, and it makes sense to you," I say.

"Sometimes it makes sense to me the first time," Jane says from the seat behind me. Rum steamer in hand she cups the mug to her mouth, sips.

"Or maybe," I say, "your conscience is so sharpened to direct you to obedience that it makes sense the first time." A tray of sweet potatoes slides on the console between Craig and me. I steady it with my hand.

"Like if I do something wrong," Jane says, "I can't BEAR to listen to Revelation."

"Yeah," I say.

"So we should put that on every night?" Craig laughs.

"You can," Jane says. We snicker. She softens.

"That's a good thing, Jane," I say, "a very good thing."

A troubled conscience is a very good thing. How much worse to be comfortable with evil?

We read some things in the Bible three hundred and sixty-five times and they mean nothing to us, then all of a sudden we see what God means, because in some particular we have obeyed God, and instantly His nature is opened up. ~Oswald Chambers





Gratitude:

5685. We gather with family for Thanksgiving. We each labor in our arenas of responsibility. Progress by small marks takes shape, another year gone by. We each share what we are thankful for. Universes of thought unfold.

5686. We find small moments of laughter in the midst of a messy house.

5687. We share treats, desserts and hors d'oeuvres, relationships weave between shared blessings.

5688. We continue to challenge our children to show grace to each other. We continue to flesh out gravity defying grace, love totally divorced from performance. It's like walking on water.

5689. We make peppermint patties from scratch.

5670. Craig gives me a package of gourmet hot chocolate.

5671. We invent an hors d'oeuvres: sharp cheddar, mashed sweet potato, and a dilly bean stacked on a cracker.

5672. We find contentment a welcome guest sitting there on our door step, down our hallways, stretched over the walls, and beneath the rugs, slipped snug between the sheets. The more we sacrifice, the more we love each other.

5673. We nearly finish a pot of burned soup, when I relent and throw out the last bit. The new pot of chicken soup tastes sweeter and saltier and richer than ever before.

5674. We pull each of the children a little closer and enjoy their shining faces.

5675. We prepare our hearts for the Christmas season.

The Seat

"Her hand did get kind of caught in the seat," Jack says.

It's 8:45 pm, the children tumbled from dinner table to bed, toothbrushes scuttled through the nightly round.

Betsy won't nurse. She cries and cries. And cries. I think her arm feels weird.

"Did one of you try to pick Betsy up and have her get hurt?" I say. I roust children one at a time, groggy and bleary eyed.

"It was when I was folding down the seat in the car," Jack sobs. He's a cataract of tears. "I just thought she was ok," he says.

"Oh, no," I say.

Inconsolable. Jack. Betsy.

So we trounce to the ER -- nurses with kind faces, doctors with concerned eyes. We wait, and wait. And wait. Betsy gives startling and robust protest to the doctor exam. And we wait. And wait. An x-ray. And wait.

And then, nothing. There, in a black plastic chair, Betsy flaps and flaps that arm. She flaps like bird and grins. The arm is perfect. The doctor comes back.

"No fracture," she says.

"Nope," I say.

So we drive home. Home.

"I love you, Jack," I say. "Even if something terrible did happen to Betsy, I'd still. love. you."

Tears squeeze out of his eyes. He holds me in a bear hug.

"I love you no. matter. what."

Motherhood shatters in complexity. Danger and security hold hands. Immovable and moving mountains, there we stand. The universe parts around us.





Gratitude:

5674. Betsy's arm is whole and strong.

5675. Craig ferries us through the ER with the ease of a pilot.

5676. We find many of the people there go to our church.

5677. I revisit the truth: I affect nothing. God affects everything. My dependence on him nourishes me.

5678. I work to ease my ebbing stress and subsequent headache.

5679. We endure a storm with hurricane force gusts. We lose power for 18 hours, but none of our food spoils. We stay warm by the fireplace.

5680. The storm passes, and I witness the destruction. Neighbors along my morning run have left houses crushed by fallen trees. Other pines lean wildly over power lines. Some completely block roads. Traffic lights don't work.

5681. People come together. Camaraderie ensues. More than 60% of the area without power three days later, we come together. We offer and open our homes. We talk. A special bond of shared pain brings us closer than ever. Even strangers are neighbors in a new way.

5682. My in-laws come for lunch. Even though I burn the soup, everyone eats it.

5683. Even in adversity, we find hope right there beside us -- especially, in adversity.

5684. Thanksgiving awaits. A grateful heart. We make this our treasure, our goal, our reality.

The Trip

"Joey, want a gummy bear?" Jane soothes.

Nine hours into an eleven hour drive, Joe wails from the back seat. He wails and blubbers. "Turn the light on," he howls. "I have to go poop," he moans. "I don't know where blankie is," he bawls and bays.

"Joe-Joe, want a gummy bear?" Jane strokes him with her words. "Here." She passes a gummy bear over the back seat. He grubs it into his mouth, settles. We hunker down.

We listen to wide swathes of adventure on audio book and glide into the home stretch. We're home before we realize he really did poop his pants.





Gratitude:

5554. We celebrate Thanksgiving at the ocean. Family. Memories unfold before our eyes. We laugh until we cry. We ponder and discuss. We compete and work puzzles. At the end we load up to leave and find ourselves more whole and full than when we came.

Sleep

Photo courtesy of Urban Rose.

"Joey, are you just scared?" Lu peeks into his bedroom. Joe quiets, lulls between wailing snuffles. I proctor the nightly wail from the far end of the hallway.

"Yeah," Joe says, a reflexive 1-2-3-snuff stifled into his blankie-boy. Lu leans in. I pad down the hallway in wool socks, lean past her.

"Joe," I say, "do you want Lucy to sleep on the top bunk with you?"

Photo courtesy of Urban Rose.

"Yeah." Draped sideways over the body pillow, he nods still snuffling in time to the 1-2-3-snuff. He pulls blankie-boy over his nose.

"I will," Lu says. She slip-slides footie jammies to her room and returns with a quilt and red-carpet-blankie.

She lays down, no gush or chatter, just a quiet presence. Sleep enfolds them.

Photo courtesy of Urban Rose.

Gratitude:

5545. Kari makes gingersnaps for our small group. We all make it.

5546. The Tuesday girls make knitting plans, trade patterns, and start the seasonal blitz of knitting. Even Cerissa makes the leap to knitting.

5547. Pizza night with apple crisp.

Photo courtesy of Urban Rose.

5548. Ham bone soup. We make another whole week of meals out of the spiral ham.

5549. I fight off three migraines.

5550. Jane decides to take up knitting again. She buys two balls of yarn with her own money and knits 20 row right off the bat.

Photo courtesy of Urban Rose.

5551. The kids lose most of the socks from last year. After six weeks of wearing ankle socks in rain boots they decide to buy wool socks with their own money.

5552. Craig takes me on a date running errands.

5553. We plan for Thanksgiving. We work as a team more than we ever have before.

Photo courtesy of Urban Rose.

All The Time

"How do you accidentally knock them off, Jack?" I frown at the 200 cookie avalanche. Danish butter cookies.

Jack's shoulders slump. Eyes round and ocean blue, a meniscus of tears, he blinks. "I, I," he stammers, all that cerulean love crestfallen down his cheeks.

"It's ok," I say, try to rewind, "stuff like this happens all the time." I speak and something like hope buoys us, something like walking on water. He grabs me around the waist, wipes tears on my sweater.

We eat the cookies.

And we read about the martyrs, the early church. Then on to chores, I wrestle the gangly landscape of a quilt through my machine.

"I might want to bring this with me if I can," Lucy says. I look up from the sewing machine. She tucks a mint green primer into her elbow, pats it. We Learn About God it says across the top.

"Where?" I say my shoulder pressed into the heaving heft of that quilt.

"Into jail." She nods, serious, cheerful.

"Oh." All that panorama of quilt and all I can see is her oval face, pleasant, purposed.

"So I can tell them about Adam and Eve and God if I can," she says. I feel it, the gathering of strength, the tracing of courage, the audacity of meekness.

I smile into the nucleus of her eyes, nod.

A rehearsal. She's planning the future.

That huge quilt sprawled over the dining room table, and still, I stare at that little girl.

Stuff like this happens all the time. My words come back to me. All the time, just below the surface, something strong and beautiful holds us.

Gratitude:

5019. Our thirteen year old popcorn maker falls apart. Craig brings us a new one.

5020. Mom helps me pin the layers of my quilt into place. We eat peppermint bark popcorn, sip coffee, let the afternoon drape over the folds of the quilt. It's the one I started when Jane was a baby.

5021. I join the ranks of women who have machine quilted a king size quilt. I even sewed a binding.

5022. To my radiant wife, the note begins. I find it on my coffeemaker when I awake.

5023. "Mom," Myra announces, "when you warm the butter up in your bread, pretty soon it will get really juicy. Last time I did it, and it was really juicy."

5024. My mom and her sister meet at Grampa's to decorate for Christmas.

5025. I get Jeremy and Kimberly Sorensen's Christmas Album.

5026. I catch a Friday morning coffee with a dear, dear friend. We spur each other on. Encouragement abounds.

5027. Our Christmas tree dies. Craig gets us a new one.

5028. Jane and I sneak away to buy gifts.

5029. We get our family pictures from Miss Rose Emily. Love!

5030. We hang the prints as part of Christmas decorating.

5031. We listen to A Christmas Carol unabridged while we decorate.

5032. We listen to A Pilgrim's Progress. I didn't know it was written from prison.

5033. Jane braids a necklace for me, a tiny butterfly at the bottom.

5034. I make two gallons of spaghetti sauce. For all the joy of eating spaghetti on the coast, I want it again. I haven't made it in ten years.

5035. We skim into the crest of a new week, expectant, content.

Soda Water

"What's soda water?" Jane chirps from the backseat.

"It's water that's fizzy," I say, "with no flavor. Doesn't that just sound like something I would like?" Marooned at a red, white, and blue gas station, the fifth or sixth so far, Craig runs in. Soda water, he's looking for soda water. We stay buckled in.

"One time I had Sprite," Jane says. I feel her lean forward. "Oh, this is a memory that I'm not gonna get out a my mind," she titters. "We were at Rocky Rococo's, and Daddy gave me a glass I thought was WATER, and I DRANK it and was like..." She trails into gurgles. They erupts into chortles.

"What's SPRITE?" Jack demands.

"It's a type," Jane recovers, "of SODA." She straightens, nods, anchored with importance.

And we wait. All strapped in and eager, we wait. The sun crystalline, the sky azure, we wait, momentum gathered and silent.

"Your daddy is so patient with me," I say. Elbow wheedled against passenger window, I stare at the sky, summer blue in November, the hush of the trip bonded between us.

"Oh," Jane says.

"You know, for about three years before he met me, he prayed for patience," I say. "The Lord gave him many difficult things to grow patience in him." I lean an elbow over my seat, the sun scattered across my face. "And it was one of the sweetest gifts he's ever given me," I say.

"Oh," Jack says. The windows portals of light, we stare at the sharp cityscape around oil stained lot.

"Ya know," I say, "the gifts that you can't wrap up and put a bow on, end up being the ones you treasure for a lifetime."

"Yep," Jane says.

Craig, lithe over the dingy blacktop lopes to the car. He strides, optimism like diesel.

"Did you find it?"

"Nope," he says. "Not yet." He turns the key, swivels the steering wheel, propels us to the next stop. Six, eight, nine, I don't know how many. I just know we left with soda water. And love.

Gratitude:

5009. "Ok, let's start this trip off RIGHT," Craig tackles Jack.

5010. We take a trip to the beach. A whole clutch of family gathers, prepares Thanksgiving, gives thanksgiving, lingers in the bond of family.

5011. My aunt and uncle have us all, all 21 of us, for a week of celebration. So accommodating, so gracious, so high class and hospitable, the weekend unfolds like a symphony.

5012. We feel it again: blood is thicker than water. Cousins play. Adults linger late into the night over board games and Canasta. Parents and children slow to look each other full in the face.

5013.  We collect agates, bags of them.

5014. We thrift shop in droves.

5015. And I run with my dad. We run and talk. It's the best. All that wisdom and life tied up in someone I respect so much, someone I just plain like. We run nine minute miles. I can hardly believe it. The time with Dad is such a highlight.

5016. Craig drives the whole journey there and back. We listen to This Present Darkness on audiobook and hang on every word.

5017. Craig teaches the kids how to play Settlers of Catan, and we spend a whole morning playing together.

5018. We unpack and reassemble the house. We settle into the folds of a new week.