Christmas 2022

 

Maya Angelou wrote Amazing Peace nearly twenty years ago, but its refrain of a family’s journey through darkness of
despair into the light of hope rings truer to me now than ever. For our family, 2022 has been marked by strife, a war-torn country and battle-weary souls. Ukraine fights against its oppressor, fights to have peace, to have freedom, to have food and joy for its children. And we fight the scars of trauma and illness, left by a country on an innocent orphan. Trauma, like peace, cannot be contained. It spreads, it consumes, it devours. But with each battle scar, like Ukraine, we can claim a seemingly impossible victory. Ever the optimist, this year I am choosing to find peace in not giving up. Sometimes that is a victory, because unlike society’s lies, I know that success does not just mean moving forward, but acceptance of where you’re at, an understanding of possible change, and a vision of future joy. So, through heartbreaking disruption from Covid, shifting seasons of friendships, and an ever intricate but transparent spiritual walk, we settle more into ourselves, at peace with ourselves.

Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us~As we make our way to higher ground.

Hope is born again on the faces of children

Evelyn found her own bit of peace this year, as she started her high school career at Tacoma’s infamous Stadium High. Straight A’s, performing in the Fall Musical, and applying for the State Senate Page Program, she also faced disappointments from Covid and worked to build new friendships. The highlight of her summer was her community volunteer work, a continued goal for the coming year. She is on a beautiful but difficult journey of self-awareness and future plans, but she travels with grace and a good sense of humor. And always, always, ALWAYS, singing!

Cecilia found peace a little more intangible on her journey into the next phase-middle school. But after settling in and (mostly) giving up the idea of homeschooling (never, ever would happen!) she has blossomed with new friendships, is developing a strong school work ethic, and most of all, has found dance to be a safe, liberating, and phenomenal place of growth. She started the year working hard on her dancing and half way

through, a little dance switch popped on in her head and she is a sight to behold!

Hope spreads around the earth, brightening all things

Even hate, which crouches breeding in dark corridors

Max struggles to find peace, his default setting is anxiety and frustration, so as a result, we all struggle to be at peace with Max. But, like his birth country, he is David to Goliath, and we will keep going forward, even if going forward means we just haven’t stepped back. We have chosen not to tell him about the events in Ukraine, but I wanted to take a moment to let you all know how much your thoughts, prayers, and support mean to us. We continue to connect with different members of his birth family on a regular basis. They are fleeing, fighting, crying for their children, sitting in the cold darkness, and above all else, like Max, like our family, persevering. Sometimes the only peace you can cling to is the peace of holding on, however 

tenuous to what you know that can be true.

We hear a sweetness. The word is Peace.

I don’t know what I’ll think when I look back on 2023. I hope that next year when I write to you, I start our letter on a joyful note. And truthfully, we have so much to be thankful for this year. We love our new house, and I was able to return to teaching at the dance studio. The girls are excelling, and Max is getting the supports he
needs. Bard took the boat out, it broke down, he took it again, it broke down, he took it out again, and it worked! So we are grateful, while still struggling to work through heartache and tension. But one thing I do know for sure, however hilarious it sounds, the sweetest spot for all of us this year has been the sweet addition to our family, Pikalu! Because of course, no matter how sad the day, how hard the road ahead, a puppy’s love is unconditional. A love that we can all learn from, as we begin a new year.

We Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers,

Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.

Peace.

Christmas 2021

The tension of advent season perfectly captures the unresolved conflict of 2021. In our family’s faith journey, advent is waiting for the coming of Christ. Who has already come. It’s searching for a peace that has already been found, struggling to give into calm while being inundated with chaos. It is Christmas. The striking paradox of this past year is that as a country we achieved healing, while growing in ignorance based sickness. We gained justice while taking steps back toward oppression, and we achieved freedoms only to be thrown into fear. 2021, we survived, we are tired of surviving and long to thrive. But still we wait. We move toward what is coming, what has come.

Much of this year felt like moving into the unknown. Our family started the year by becoming virtual caretakers for Bard’s grandmother, and that relationship shaped us deeply, culminating in her crossover to eternity in August. We now have no remaining grandparents left, between us, and that realization has pointed me toward the past, toward appreciating family history more than ever, and to finding special ways to celebrate their legacy. We keep them alive by telling their stories in new ways and with new people, and in that way, they continue to influence who we are and who we become. This truth hit home particularly hard when we decided to sell our house of nearly 15 years and move to a new home that would allow for the growth of relationships and space as the children enter their teen years. This decision coincided with the passing of Bard’s grandma and just so happened to also run parallel to Bard starting a new position at Amazon and myself returning to the museum world after time off due to Covid. The old and the new could not be more apparent. The timing and the decisions are still reverberating through our family, but we are grateful that we can face struggle and growth together, that everything can change, and we can remain the same.

I suppose no age embodies that principle more than becoming a teenager, so Evelyn’s turning 13 this year was perfect! As she enters her last year of middle school, she sings with the choir, dances onstage, matures as a piano player and does it all with humble leadership while laughing, getting food stuck in her braces, and caring for her sister and brother with a gentle (and only sometimes whiny) fierceness. Oh, did I mention she’s on ASB and helped with three political campaigns? Evelyn for president, 2044! 

Cici is not shying away from milestones either and will soon finish off her elementary school years, much to her mother’s dismay! She dove back into dance this year with impressive determination. With 8 classes a week and counting, she had to step down from piano, but did so with a (sometimes whiny) maturity and continues to face life with timid shyness and loud laughs. She grew friendships and read 3 million books. And for the third year in a row, she is intent on becoming a veterinarian.

And Max. I never know what to write about this kid. We fought for Max again, and again he fought us. Our relationship, in every way, is defined by perseverance. Even in 2021, people with disabilities live an invisible life and I will fight with everything I have to make sure he is seen and heard. Meanwhile, he makes himself seen and heard by flooding our bathroom to play sink or float, taking us on 6am walks around the neighborhood, and reminding us that change is hard, but inclusion is beautiful. Max has to work harder than anyone else, which makes even small victories big, another lesson for all of us. 

 In many ways, this has been a dark year for our family and advent marks the darkest time of year, physically, spiritually. But the tension is that it is also the most joyful time of year: darkness points us toward Light. So we wait, we move toward deliverance, if we can’t hope, we just keep going, and that, for now, is hope enough. I have learned so much this year about the despairing cycles of mental illness and the sacrificial calling to serve family and I’ve learned that love can be ugly, painful, and invisible. But as we near the end of 2021, and I look back, I can see a thread of grace. My hope is that our experiences are woven into a restorative tapestry, that this year our family gains an unshakeable truth that we can be broken but thrive, sorrow points us to joy, death begats life. And we begin again.

Christmas 2020

 

I’d heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord~But you don’t really care for music do you?

Leonard Cohen wrote Hallelujah as a secular hymn, a tongue in cheek conversation with God that tumbles through humor, disappointment, success, all while singing Hallelujah-a Hebrew concept that tells us to sing to God. Relentlessly.

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth~The minor fall, the major lift~The baffled king composing “Hallelujah”

He strips his art to its most basic musical elements and describes David as an unknowing artist.

                             

Hallelujah.

I first resonated with this song after the 2016 election. Watching Kate McKinnon sing it felt both hopelessly tragic and somehow cathartic.

                                    Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Each verse contains struggle, darkness, failings. But each chorus sings Hallelujah. Always pointing us back to God, turning away from temporal loss and toward eternal strength. I could     write of the grief of 2020, the lost jobs, the sacrifices, the disappointment in my children’s eyes.

There’s a blaze of light in every word~It doesn’t matter which you heard~The holy or the broken hallelujah

And therein lies the crux of this year. Holding both sorrow and joy in the same hand, loosely, equally. Our family has changed this year. My job is gone, the kids haven’t been to school since March 17^th, we cancelled family trips and birthday parties, simple family moments were stolen away by ignorance and fear.

And even though it all went wrong~I’ll stand before the lord of song~With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.

Our family has been changed by this year. Bard has his job and received a promotion. Through three separate trips to the ER, we are somehow still healthy. We’ve sailed the Sound, marched for Black Lives, hosted countless virtual book clubs, and made connection an unshakeable priority for our family. We’ve lived generously, safely, and together. But most of all, we’ve watched the entire world take a collective breath and rise up with the unmatched creativity of the human spirit to say, “We’ve got this.” From museums creating virtual exhibits, to online bookstores offering free subscriptions, the world told my children it was going to be okay. From porch drop offs to streaming dance classes to mutual aid to a map of houses with candy chutes for Halloween, Tacoma told my children it was going to be okay.

I don’t know what next year holds. I could never have predicted the battle we have faced for this year. As Evelyn fights to become a teenager, while separated from all that should entail-friends, parties, and simple physical distance from family. She overcomes with music, with prayer, with theatre (zoom) performances, and with tears. Cecilia fights her emotions; her anger and her fear, fights to make friends in a school that is still new, while her microphone continues to quit working, fights to say kind words and to grow as a dancer. And Max. Max gives in to the lessening of stimulation due to the shutdown. He thrives and then we go continue the war to ensure he has the services he needs for his education and the environment he needs for peace. And then we lay down the fight and go for a bike ride. We sit in the sunroom listening to the silence. We plant a garden and we go for a swim. We rest in the unchangeable. Because.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Leonard Cohen said, “Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion.” Which is true, because Hallelujah has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with Truth. Joy found in sorrow. Love. Beauty out of ashes. Hallelujah.