I'm away from home and out of my usual element. I'm absent from schedules and thinking time and my own bed. I miss my bed. I have a pain running between my shoulder blades, and I wonder if it's the unfamiliar mattresses or if that's where I'm carrying the weight of what's left of this year. I feel it bearing down on me, begging for one last look before the new one arrives.

These last few weeks have been busy with very little time for wonderings and wanderings. I've tried to squeeze together a few moments, but mostly it's been a holiday of here, there and everywhere. I went so far as to sit in my parked mini van while the rest of my family watched The Muppet Movie on the big screen. I had a pen, and with it I swept up the crumbs of moments and memories I wanted to keep, and placed them in a red Meade notebook. It was good, good but also impossible to place the year neat and tidy onto college ruled lines.

I think 2011 is more deserving of a collage in all of it's colorful, chaotic glory. It would look like castles against a gray sky, rolling hills and water falls, three grinning faces, and pretty words strung up in a row. It would smell like the sea and the cold mountain air that hurts going down. It would sound foreign and familiar, a symphony of laughter and tears and looks that say more than words could ever do. And it would feel like giving birth, over and over again.

Yes, that's exactly it. It felt like giving birth, like carrying the weight of something beautiful in my womb and then watching it come to life before my eyes. It wasn't without pain and more than a few sleepless nights, but the joy in watching my dreams take their first breath was worth every bit of the laboring.

Thank you for coming alongside me this year. You are midwives, each and every one. You are here when the words are birthed, and I thank you for reading and commenting and giving me the chance to practice an art I'm not always sure I possess.

I hope to meet you here for the next one.

Tell me about your year. Was it what you hoped it would be?

Today is the last link up with Emily for Tuesdays Unwrapped. I'm afraid traveling between countries and states hasn't allowed for a quiet walk, so I have something else on offer today. I've so enjoyed unwrapping the gifts of this month with all of you. Join us at Chatting at the Sky one last time?


We were 'home' a grand total of four hours before I found myself on the phone with 911. I'd had a premonition/feeling/God whisper that there might be a health issue on our trip, so I wasn't surprised to find myself standing in the kitchen giving details about shortness of breath and increased heart rate. Later, after we heard that treatment had begun and discharge the following day was likely, I mentioned to my husband that I knew something was going to happen, I just hadn't counted on it being so early in our trip. He laughed and said, 'Well, there's always a 50/50 chance around here that someone's going to the hospital.'

He's right. Some of our family members have a penchant for self diagnosis and treatment that usually ends up with me needing a glass of wine, and their taking a trip to the hospital at our insistence. We haven't decided whether to call it maddening or endearing. I'm leaning towards maddening. And that's the thing about families. They make us crazy. They make us love them. They make us want to wring our hands and fall apart and hold them together and pick up the pieces and laugh like a hyena and treat them to a coffee and thank God that He saw fit to put us in one.




I didn't need a premonition to know that my kids would be jet-lagged and waking up at four a.m. every morning. But they are and they do. For days, I've begged for the mercy of more sleep while my daughter curls into the curve of me in the bed. She wants to talk. And while I want to cry because, good gracious I'm exhausted, I bend my head into her neck and and her brown hair tickles my nose. I hold her hand in the dark, and I remember her in my womb, curling into the curve of me. I remember the call to 911, the crazy that is family, and that God saw fit to place me in this one. I lie in the dark and I unwrap each name and I call them a gift. Then I shush my girl, because if Momma doesn't get some sleep there isn't enough red wine in the world to make that look pretty.


If you have expectations for this Christmas, but find that things aren't going according to plan, you might enjoy reading this post. Have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy unwrapping your gifts this season.

Kimberly

Given our travel schedule and limited time with family, I'm likely to go a bit quiet here for the next few weeks. I'll pop in occasionally, but not very consistently. If you'd like to receive email updates, there's a little gadget at the bottom of the blog where you can sign up.

I am an anticipator. I like to anticipate. I do not like surprises (unless they sparkle and come in a little blue box). I like to plan and look ahead and imagine what the end result will be. One of the negative aspects of being an anticipator, is that the end result doesn't always live up to the imagining.

I am in the process of a tedious blog overhaul, so please excuse the weirdness that is my blog at the moment. Apparently, I have nothing better to do this time of year than make myself nuts over posting format and date placement. In the midst of the crazy that is the holiday season, I'm so happy to be joining up with Emily at Chatting at the Sky for Tuesdays Unwrapped. She encourages us to take one month, one day, one moment to stop and see. Join me there?



December days feel rushed and hurried and fuzzy around the edges. I sat and stared at my calendar today, and realized that as the days stack up so do the commitments. I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw my 'Mom's Plan It' calendar across the room. Who are these moms and why are they always planning things? I wanted to pencil in ridiculous events like 'throw hissy fit' and 'eat ungodly amounts of chocolate'. These things will probably happen anyway, but it would feel good to know that I had delivered and executed on a plan.


Most of the other things on my calendar will happen as well. I will attend a concert and watch my little snowman melt onstage. I'll do drop offs and pick ups. I'll travel miles and miles across oceans and time zones to watch my little people unwrap gifts with loved ones. I will spend lots of time and some money shopping the aisles at Target.

I am reading Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water again. This is my third time studying this book (I say studying because it's so much more than a book that one simply reads), and I can not recommend it highly enough for those of you who struggle with what it means to be a Christian and an artist. While I would love to claim the title of artist/writer, it's an area of my life that I'm still attempting to define. It feels, I don't know, presumptuous? Inflated? False?

I don't have this issue in other areas. I call myself a runner. I have the unnaturally tight hamstrings to prove it. I call myself a mom. In fact, there are three little people who also call me mom. Incessantly. I call myself a Christian, although judging from some of my behavior, this could sometimes be up for debate. But artist? Writer? Those are slippery words that I can't seem to pin down.

In her book, L'Engle quotes Jean Rhys from the Paris Review, 'All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake.'


I realized yesterday that I am nearing my 500th post. And while most of what I've done here is record rather than write, I want to believe that it's adding up to something bigger. I've written for other people's blogs, the paper, a magazine, and once a hand delivered birthday letter to Nelson Mandela. (For which my husband took credit. For which I will always be bitter. For which we need another post.) My words float here and there like the letters in a bowl of alphabet soup, and still, I struggle to own it. Perhaps if I learn to see them as drops feeding the lake, a contribution to the greater work? I am no river, no creek, no stream. I am a drop in the vast body of water that feeds souls. Might that be enough?

Are you an artist? A writer? Musician? Chef? Stylist? The next Martha Stewart? How do you claim your place in the great lake that is your art? When did you begin to think that you might, maybe, in an ideal world be an artist, and when did you truly believe it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

It's Tuesday, the day I've been looking forward to since, well, since last week. I'm joining Emily at Chatting at the Sky for Tuesdays Unwrapped. I love this practice of opening up our eyes to the gifts in the everyday. It's especially necessary this time of year, when Crazy and Nuts hijack the calendar. Join me there?


Opening weekend in the mountains has come and gone. We've been waiting weeks for rain. There isn't enough water to fill the low lying lakes or white powder to cap the mountains this year. And so the long awaited winter ski season is pushed back one week and then another. The people wait expectantly. A blue eyed boy called Pascal sells me a grey coat with a fur lined hood. He tells me to keep warm because snow is coming. 'Soon' he says, 'very soon'. I'm not sure that I believe him.

The day didn't start out well. Now that all of my children are sleeping steadily through the night without nightmares/toilet issues/scratchy throats, the dog has decided he would like his fair share of attention.