A Christmas Letter… On Living the Best Days of My Life
…and then, one morning, you wake up and realize that you are living the very best days of your life. Right now. The struggle of getting this huge project of life and family off the ground has passed and we’re on to the great “what’s next.”
It feels kind of like laying on your back in a basket on the Maasai Mara, holding tight and giggling with your Mom as a massive dragon breathes heat into a gossamer balloon stretched between Yellow Acacia trees and lazy hyenas, watching. The whole project has lifted, weightlessly into the air and is floating away… each kid in their own balloon, hooting and shouting wildly with excitement as they launch on their own life adventures. Me, floating (with my mother, on this particular morning), surveying the landscape below… familiar, and yet weirdly surreal from a new vantage point. The miracle and magic of it all laid out to the curve of the horizon, with the promise of something totally unexpected beyond.
That has been my year.
A series of dawnings of consciousness that this stage, right now, with these people, is the best part. It’s passing, one breath at a time, like prayer beads on a string, through my fingers, as inevitably as every other day has. And I find myself getting better at consciously holding each one, admiring the art, carved, woven, or painted into a bead and a day.
There have been some truly fantastic moments to pass through our fingers this year. Three weeks with our wonderful daughter and her parter in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark in January. A trip back for Tony in the spring to spend six weeks living and working across the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. An epic father-daughter road trip. Guatemala twice for me. Mexico for a month with the family. Half a dozen trips back and forth to the USA for work and pleasure. The birthday party to top all birthday parties for my Dad, with the attendance of absolutely every single body on his side of the family. Europe and Africa with my mother. And then, sunset mornings on Wolfe Island with long, cooling cups of tea, music evenings with friends, long walks beneath windmills, and cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings from the local bakery. These are the highlights.
Tony’s big news of the year was the acquisition of his Permanent Residency paperwork for Canada and his official status as a provisional Canadian. We have a year or so of paperwork reprieve before he can start the process of filing for the whole enchilada and dual citizenship.
He spent the spring ripping across Europe in a rental car with Hannah, making memories, eating a wide swath, as he does in Italy, and coming home laden with large paper packages of tea that he knows I like and which can only be procured in the little fresh market outside Hannah’s door in Groningen.
More often than not, he’s on the Wolfe, holding down the fort, attending music nights with friends, wrangling Ezra’s flight schedules, sailing, and perfecting his various science experiments, mostly coffee and alcohol focused. We joke that we’ve reversed roles in the past five years. He keeps home more often than I do now, and when I get home I grumble that I can’t find things in “my kitchen,” but it’s actually mostly his kitchen now. That said, he has acquired a motorcycle, which he will take delivery of as soon as winter lifts, so perhaps next year will be different.
Hannah returned home very quietly to surprise her brothers and Gramps for his big birthday party. There was rejoicing in the land to have her back on the continent. She and Will have an apartment in Kingston where she is finishing up her last few classes at Queens and he is beginning a Business degree. She’s built her business this year, and is graduating with no need to get a job. She’s already created one. I’m proud of her intense focus and her willingness to create, out of thin air, the things that she needs and learn forward in the process.
Managing her health issues is still a daily challenge, and one that she faces with courage and her signature determination. She graduates in June, and it will be so much fun to discover what’s next for her. She’s an encouragement to me every day.
And William? Well, he still never leaves my house without doing dishes, which earns him major points. He continues to impress us with his tenacity and his focus on his greater goals. I smile over him the most when he’s got an elaborate game laid out for the young people and everyone is laying around the floor laughing and playing together. He adds much joy and richness to our family and it’s fun to see who he is becoming.
Gabriel, or Fitz, as is printed on the lapel of his uniform shirts, is in Norfolk, Virginia, at the moment, refinishing the entire interior of a 53’ yacht. A little job he picked up for himself whilst sailing south. He spent the summer working on a river cruiser, the same one my brother started his career on many years ago. As soon as that gig ended he beat it south on our boat, where he intends to continue his classes and get his first captain’s license this winter.
Fitz started his university work while crossing the Med and Atlantic under sail. That should have been my first clue that this one would do it differently. Actually, my first clues happened when he was tiny and doing stuff like pouring gasoline on my deck to see what would happen, living in a skunk skin hat and pocketed vest, cork rifle in hand, in the tipi we built for him in the front yard, and rowing his little boat on Wolfe Island on eight hour expeditions when he was just six.
It makes me immensely proud to see him charting his own course, taking charge of his own education towards a lofty goal, and diving straight into the real world with both feet. He’s become known as a capable, reliable, personable, and compassionate man in our community and I love to have people come up and say, “Oh! You’re Fitz’s mom!” Because I know that whatever they say next is going to make me either very proud or laugh very hard.
Elisha has flown the coop in earnest this year. He lived here for the first half of the year, but we barely saw him. Between beginning his college classes at Saint Lawrence, and working four jobs, his hands were mightily full. He saved every penny for months to earn his freedom and left us, from Mexico, on his gap year. He’s in Guatemala right now, working a hospitality industry internship.
In January he heads to the UK to take a month’s long chef certificate course at Ashburton School of Cookery. Then, he’ll be off to France to work at a horse farm… I think? If we’re lucky, we will see him for a minute this summer while he’s home to work and save more money for fall. He’s applying to George Brown, in Toronto, to a degree program in Culinary Management. Just like he said when he worked his first shift at Grandma’s pizza shop in Indiana, at about 10 years old, he is going to be a chef.
I’m proud of his work ethic and the way he’s taken the reins of his own adventures in hand so capably. For a kid who is only 18, he’s got it pretty well together.
Last week I got a note of Facebook from another traveler who said, “Hey, we just saw your kid in San Pedro… he’s still alive!” And I laughed, because he’s got friends all over the world, and they check in on his behalf. And of course he’s still alive. You almost never die.
Ezra might be last on every Christmas list, but this kid, from birth, has been determined not to be left behind. When he was two, he used to stand at our glass sliding door wearing someone else’s too-big rubber boots and SCREAM to be allowed outside to run with the big kids. Now, he’s the big kid in every room.
This year has seen Ezra blossom into an amazing, responsible, kind-hearted, considerate, and hard working young man. Yesterday morning, while his friend was here for a sleep over, I found him sweeping my living room, watering the Christmas tree, and tidying up, without being asked. The kid who was my biggest challenge to “house break” is now the most amazingly domestic dude. He blesses me every day and he is a joy to live with. He says to tell you that being the only kid at home is, “Great! Because I only have to clean up my messes… and sometimes Dad’s!”
I’m tangibly aware that, at best, I’ve got a year and a half left with a “child” in my house, and he’s evaporating before my eyes. He’s the best end to the long parade of childhood that has partied through this house like a Dr. Seuss band with horns, bangers, and muddy feet, that any mama could ask for.
This year he took his first solo trip to Germany and back to hang with his bestie, Libby, who happens to be William’s little sister. Ez plays guitar for hours a day, is a hilarious comedian, and draws beautifully, but his real accomplishment of this year is… flying planes. He’s sure this is a career path and is studying at it with commensurate intensity. Everyone laughs that he’s flown planes before he was allowed to drive the car, but it’s as natural as breathing for him, and I’m quite sure that he’s on the right path. “Did you look up at 2:45 when you heard the buzzing, Mom? I flew over the house… you were there… I saw the car!” To think, this is the kid I feared letting out of my sight for a moment because he was always up to some shenanigan.
These young people are a wonder to me.
It’s such a joy to see your first major life project leap off a cliff, wobble on new wings, dip just out of sight, hold your breath, and then watch them rise on the updraft of young adulthood.
I feel, often, like I’m standing on the cliff with my hands cupped around my mouth shouting last steadying advice and jumping up and down screaming in excitement for them. YES!!!! THEY DID IT!!!! THEY ARE DOING IT!! Each and every one of them takes my breath away in their own ways and they are all, every single one, fantastic, delightful, hilarious, creative, strong, determined, capable, and all around good humans. This is the best stage of parenthood yet.
And me… well… I landed in that balloon on the Maasai Mara, scattering a pride of lions in our wake (yes, really), sipped a glass of champagne with my mom. Ate breakfast under an acacia tree, hopped back into the truck and went in search of the next adventure. As is my way.
It’s been an interesting and adventurous year. A 17 country year. I celebrated my 44th birthday with a cupcake on a beach in Oregon and motorcycle gang to sing to me. Then I wrecked a car like I’d been studying to do the best job possible, and had my whole worldview recalibrated in about six seconds. A concussion is annoying. And sobering. And annoying.
“You don’t have a concussion, sister,” my Dad said, in his good humored way, “You’re just prematurely seventy!” Excellent. Which brings me back to my initial assertion, that I’m living the very best days of my life right now, and I’m working to appreciate every moment of it.
Work is great. I love it. It’s not interesting enough for a Christmas letter. I travel a lot. Sometimes for work. Sometimes for fun. Often for both. I’m enjoying being “home” on the island, when I’m here. It’s a very special thing to get to come full circle. To live seven minutes from my parents. To stop in and have no one be surprised to see you, and have your dad make you tea. That is particularly precious to me.
Traveling with my mom was a six week lump in my throat. She’s amazing. My heroine. All the best things I aspire to. And she is such an adventurer!! She ran me into the ground most days! “I’m such an old stick in the mud!” She giggled, in the shadow of Acro Corinth, which we had just climbed the heights of (in the rain), while ordering something neither of us could pronounce off of an only Greek menu, half way across the world. Apparently this is being a “stick in the mud” in my gene pool. I aspire to the mud on her boots.
And if you think that’s cool, you should have seen her hiking some of the toughest mountains I have EVER encountered, in Uganda, to get to the gorillas… and then dancing at the bottom with the ladies who greeted us off the hill. Amazing.
And so, here we are… on the cusp of a new year and new adventures.
It is my sincere hope that this finds you and your family well and happy, sucking the marrow from every day you have. That’s the one tiny piece of perspective I’ve gleaned this year… that every moment is so danged precious. We can’t get ’em back, and we’d better not waste a one.
You are loved, and you are welcome on the Wolfe any time the fancy strikes you. Just give us a little notice to make sure someone is here. We’re a flighty bunch.
Merry Everything, and the Happiest of New Years.
Want more?
Want to have tea with me every week? Talk about stuff? Laugh?
