Holiday Home

A good friend of mine is homeless this Christmas - not in a living-in-your-car kind of way, but displaced nonetheless.  It’s a time when hundreds are placing the Christmas tree in a new corner and feeling the sting as they hang the mistletoe in a different doorway, and it illustrates how closely we tie Holidays to Home.  My friend relocated to a new city and state, and though that move has been impacted by the poor housing market, she and her family are fine and expect to be settled soon.  But for now, home is an apartment about the size of a hotel room and she is adjusting to her husband’s long commute and her own endless, uneventful days.  I love her ability to look at the bright side – how she can make a day-long trip out of buying one sweater (she moved from south to north) or stretch a trip to the post office into an “event.”  She has approached settling into her new tiny home with a unique sense of adventure that never disappoints. 

She greeted her new neighbors with a sunny smile, anxious to connect.  But doing so had odd pitfalls.  Suddenly the quirky lady next door considers her to be her BFF and waits by the elevator to complain that her brother never visits.  My friend held the door for a nice middle-aged man who stared at her frankly and said, “You’re cute!  Are you married?”  Her sons visited the apartment building over Thanksgiving and decided to go back to college sooner than expected.  She recently walked across the quaint town square with her husband to apply for a card at the public library.  The librarian, noting their address knitted her eyebrow.  “It’s in the city limits,” my friend ventured, worried that her displaced status might even ban her from the library.  “No, that’s not it,” the librarian answered.  “But isn’t that building a group home?”  A library helper said, “Recently converted.”  Long looks passed between my friend and her husband.  “That explains a lot,” she whispered. 

So this Christmas my friend is stringing a few lights across the windows of the newly converted group home and shopping for two pull-out chairs that fit college boys.  If I know her, the tiny place will still sparkle, her Swedish Christmas cookies will still melt in your mouth and she will find much to laugh about over the holidays.  Like many people this year, it’s not where she thought she’d be this Christmas, but for now it’s home.  And hey, she is cute!   

Launching

“Launch” is a word I’ve been thinking a lot about, with its unique ability to capture excitement and terror in one simple syllable. It was a blink ago when I prepped to launch our first-born into kindergarten, stacking #2 pencils in a Batman backpack and printing “I love you!” on a lunchbox napkin. Now I’m stashing towels in a dorm-sized fridge and stuffing in rolls of quarters with the hope that he will actually do laundry. But little had changed when I showed him the camouflage Band-aids I bought for his First Aid Box and he said, “Those are kinda cool.” His kindergarten-self would have agreed.

Thirteen years later, the launch, for me, is just as hard. Will he find good friends who like his quick smile and appreciate his ability to play a plunger on his stomach? Will he find kind teachers who will help him navigate the new hallways and show him where to get hot lunch? Will someone be there when he faces his first agonizing disappointment, like discovering he was doomed to a future of lining up in “ABC order” and his initials were ZW? Thirteen years ago, I dropped him off at Mrs. MacIntire’s class with a bright smile and a gentle shove. I was able to make it to the corner bathroom (with the shockingly tiny toilets) before starting to cry. This year I told him my going-away gift will be a tearless parting. He laughed, bent his 6’4’” frame around my shoulders in a big hug and said, “Yeah, right.”  Which made me cry.

I’m launching this blog at the same time, with the same mixture of excitement and terror. Sharing and promoting my writing, especially the recent release of my first novel, has been exciting. Sharing myself is a bit terrifying. So here is my first post on my new blog on my newborn website, because any good launch requires a brave first step - as any kindergartener and college kid knows.