goodness and light

dear family and friends,

i am not sending a christmas card this year. as far as holiday greetings go, this post is all i’m planning on doing, and if you want to send us any cards, you’ll need to email me for our po box. it’s like we’re in witness protection. i’m planning on sending out cards after we’ve moved permanently, whenever that day comes, but that’s still out on the horizon.

quinn is so big now that he remembers the words from christmas songs he learned last year, and has been breaking into song whenever the mood strikes. he’s starting to hit more of the notes, which warms my heart, though i love to listen to his cute off-key voice. i have had my harry simeone chorale pandora station playing the christmas music i grew up with (it used to come from a reel-to-reel tape, not a smart phone). i shipped out some used books to my nephews, along with some homemade pinecone ornaments that quinn and i put together for our family members. as we worked side by side, wielding scissors and hot glue gun, we sang together, “do you hear what i hear? a song, a song, high above the trees, with a voice as big as the sea…” until we had it re-emblazoned in our hearts. “the child, the child, sleeping in the night, he will bring us goodness and light, he will bring us goodness and light.” these words are pleasingly ambiguous (to those of us with issues) about just which child will bring goodness and light, and really, to what child anywhere, sleeping in the night, does it not apply? they are all so full of goodness and light, at least when they are asleep. (wink)

goodness and light

last night rich and i stood against the wall of the jam-packed gym at quinn’s school and listened to him and his cohort belt out the penguin polka and santa is my buddy. plenty of goodness and light emanating from the kids. it was fun to have them all file in past me (because of our awesome “seats”; thank goodness for my zoom lens) and have all his classmates say hi to me by name, or exclaim, “hey, look! it’s quinn’s mom!”

he bops and sways to the music. love him so much.

all of our christmas things are in our storage unit, because in june when we were packing it all, we just knew we would have everything out again and moved into our new home long before christmas. thanksgiving was going to be the drop dead latest. we were sure we’d be setting up a tree right about now, in that new home, figuring out where the decorations fit into the new space.

said decorations are not just in the storage unit, they are in the far back right-hand corner of the 10 x 26 storage unit, at the bottom, 26 feet deep behind layers of boxes and all of our furniture. there will be no access to any of the christmas items, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. it really clued me in to what the most important necessities are, and makes me thankful for friends and family who are sharing, and especially my mom, who whipped up some loaner stockings for us to use for this year. (this is why she hangs onto extended family members’ ex-boyfriend’s stockings, just yank out their names and embroider a q on it!) quinn’s got a different advent calendar this year, but the lad (a known creature of habit with strong resistance to change) seems to be managing okay since it has a lego star wars theme. next year he’ll have two advent calendars, lucky guy, when the playmobil one resurfaces. we will have to wrap presents in dollar store paper this year, because all of the cloth bags from my mom are buried, and we will have to borrow a copy of the grinch from the library.

so we’re letting go of many things, and it just seemed fitting to let the christmas cards go this year, and keep it really simple. we’re still on vacation, after all.

speaking of letting go, that new house we had our hearts set on is the latest thing we have let go. we spent months waiting for approval to go forward with the short sale, and finally on friday, november the 13^th, we received the approval. then we spent until yesterday not progressing any further, because of one reason and another put in front of us by the people handling it all, and now a full month of frustrating dilemmas has passed us by. rich said it best, “it just feels like it has to be so forced, and makes it seem like we shouldn’t go that way.” i’m paraphrasing him because my brain goes a little fuzzy when he talks to me with that honey voice of his, and he looks at me with those gorgeous brown eyes (with or without reading glasses). let’s not even talk about his sexy beard. actually, we can’t help but talk about it, it compels people to talk about it. people stand around discussing whether he actually dyed it to look so badass. nah, he’s just a natural. so what i’m saying is, we’re still in perfect alignment, as we have been every step of the way.

(those long legs help provide surface area for both kitties to rest on. the eye is also drawn to the flexed biceps while he holds my smart phone to look at sports highlights, which he now operates like a champ! goodness! and light!)

so instead of dwelling on the house, i’m going to refer back to a lesson i was working on learning in the early part of 2015, and not work harder on it than the other interested parties are working. moving forward in our search for dragon house 2.0, i want to continue to bear that in mind. we will continue to do our parts, and trust that the right house is going to be ready for us at just the right moment, without any forcing. from my yoga background, i am reminded of sukham, the balance point between effort and surrender that one seeks in each pose, the place where you find the ease. i think we both feel we’ve come to a point where the effort-to-surrender ratio was getting much too high.

speaking of yoga, this time of year will always be special to me, thinking of the dimly lit partner-pose yoga classes leading up to our first date, the fourth anniversary of which we will celebrate next tuesday. i am sure i will have more good mushy stuff to say about him/us closer to that day, but it’s not too early to start celebrating/being mushy. besides, tomorrow is the anniversary of when i asked him out in the laundromat.

“can we go to a date?” ~brick (i didn’t take this picture… credit to anchorman 2)

wishing you a holiday season filled with the ease of sukham, the gift of music, children nestled all snug in their beds, humor, and an abundance of goodness and light.

love, mb