Twelfth Night - January 6, 2009

I both dread and anticipate Twelfth Night and the end of another Christmas Season. I love Christmas but tomorrow we will pack up all the Christmas decorations, and the memories, and wait for another year. I love the traditions - especially the Santa Bears (all 15 of them) who come out of their special hiding place and line the hallway on the Feast of St. Nicholas (December 6) That's N''s patron saint's feast day and we have always celebrated by filling the girls' shoes with treats and surprising them with the return of the Santa Bears. Silly maybe, but always fun for me to thnk of little gifts. I remember the year C wanted an expensive red bra from Victoria Secret (why a teenager would want that, I don't know...) but I bought it and put it on one of the Santa Bears!

And I recall how N, as a little girl was always fearful at Christmastime - she just didn't like the idea of someone watching her, as in "he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows if you're awake." This whole idea really freaked her out. She was terrified by the sleigh bells J used to shake when he put the gifts under the tree. (Usually she was in the bath tub and of course that's when Santa came...)

So I tear up and smile at these traditions and memories and was pleased this year to hear N ask if she could have the Swedish figurines some day. J and I have collected them through the years, since we brought the first one home from our trip to Scandinavia in 1976.

And then there are the creches! Two now - the beautiful Hummels, a gift from my parents once my mother collected more pieces than she had room to safely set out. And this year she and dad gave me a new set - bread dough figurines, no less. We saw them at a local craft/art center in Austin and I fell in love with the set. The detail is incredible ands they are shellaced so thoroughly that they should last for years.

Let me introduce myself - not that I can imagine now who will ever read these ramblings. I am a 62 year old retired librarian, married for 40 years to J my retired high school principal husband ( and high school sweetheart) We have two daughters; N who is married to JN and lives in Chicago where she works for a major University and he works for a digital mapping company; C, second daughter is a RN at a local hospital. She has a boyfriend (JI)who spent the first year of their "relationship" with the National Guard in Kosovo and is now finishing his undergraduate degree.

 

I have been thinking of starting to journal and a blog seemed like a more modern approach. I haven't done this sort of thing since my high school and college "dear diary" days so it should be interesting. I have been reading a few blogs lately but my biggest inspiration is Lemmondrops - a young mother who blogged at this site and recently lost her brief struggle with cancer. I never met her, never even commented on her blog but I was so moved by her life. To me she was a modern-day saint although I am sure hearng that would make her uncomfortable. But she touched my life in a special way - most certainly because I had cancer too as a young person but lived to raise my two daughters and experience life in all the ways she never got to. Her life, and death, remind me of "what matters."