Holiday Greetings from Sarah, Glenn, Linnaea and Baby Jordy! by Tina Kelley

I've always wanted to write a real-life holiday letter. No embellishments. Life as it is lived. But what would the neighbors say? 

Well we hope this year has been full of new insights and growth for you and your loved ones. As for us, we’ve had our share!

This spring Linnaea came home with news of a classmate’s mother who taught her parrot to say “I couldn’t love you more if I hatched you myself” (!) This spurred thought-provoking family dinner talk about pets and owners and where to draw the line. Linnaea loves the bird, isn’t so sure about the mom.

She also added clouds to the pictures she draws, right after fingers, eyebrows, hair, freckles, and eyelashes, in that order. She says she wants a red car, “Because it would look like smooth fire.” But her most frequent request is “Make the baby cry, Ma,” when Ma’s greatest efforts all year long, all night long, have gone to making him stop. Sigh.

Sarah dreams that Jordy falls down an escalator, she’s a floor lower, and she can’t get to the baby, can can’t scream or even talk. Why, if they’re our own dreams, she wonders, are we so powerless?

At a baby shower for our friend Rosie, we got annoyed by the single women who kept talking about their own babyhoods, instead of babies. So we went to work, and played matchmaker, rather successfully, we think. The love growing between Sarah’s college roommate and Glen’s golf partner is a bit puzzling, we must say. Tired of too many “you said”/“no, you misheard me”s with their last loves, they decided to broadcast the entire relationship, live, on the web, each wearing a little video camera all day and all night long. At least she will know if he tries to fool around like the last one did.

Glenn’s ex-wife called in May with news that she’d been addicted to pain-killers during their seven-year marriage, and he had never suspected, Wow-ee! Here he had thought, as a shrink and all, he was so good at reading people. Guess you never know, do you? But it was a cordial conversation, they got caught up on old news, and he spent the next month re-telling the story of the divorce to himself, to make the pieces fit together again. And forgive.

In June the “Check Engine” light came on in the Subaru and made us think of all 257 annoying things in our daily lives, the baby pooping in the tub with the preschooler, the light bulbs popping when the stepladder is lost behind the accumulating recycling in the garage, the baby dropping the cellphone in the dogwater, or dialing 9-1-1, or hiding a $50 bill under the rug for five months, and you forget you’re the Helping Parent at the cooperative preschool, the big kid skim-coated in yogurt, the baby smelling rolled-in-Roquefort during the fourth stomach virus, and you check voicemail from the shore, and book club is at your house tonight, and both the dishwasher and sink are full, and oh how I’d miss these complications if I were about to die.

Must say, you know you’re outnumbered by your kids when you enjoy the peace and quiet of a good oil change or dentist appointment!

In September we took a family hike deep into the park where Sarah played as a kid. We followed the paths straight back and ended up on a road we’d never seen before, by a lake and another park. It was magical to think we knew where we were, near the end of Alden Road, but to be so very far off. Had to backtrack home and look on a map, to see a new childhood geography.

The following month we had to put our golden Golden Retriever to sleep, after 12 years of unconditional love in both directions. We were reminded how, immediately after a death, one starts confusing one name with those of the other dead souls. Now her name is just a password at the bank, not a call to food or walk or Cheerios on the floor or come get hugged. How tough to mourn during a cross-examination by a four-year-old! Does Santa still watch over Agatha now that she’s dead? Does Agatha miss us from heaven? If she’s there, and we miss her, of course she misses us, and what good is a heaven where the guest of honor is sad? Help!

One project for next year is to redo the attic. Ah, the potential of the house. The attic sold Sarah on the place, there is marvelous feng shui in the window facing the street. She needs a beanbag chair, and a book shelf, and some shoji screens, and floor and heat, and what writing she will do. What a rare and tangible future!

Glenn starred in a dinner theater production of a new drama about a couple and their relationship over the years. It was a thrill! But due to technical difficulties, the houselights never went down in the second act. We talked about how naked one feels, how lost perhaps, all the eyes right there, staring.

On our annual December hike up his hometown trout stream, we saw how the rapids uphill couldn’t be interpreted as anything other than joyful, could they, the backlit splashes, the rhythm of them? Even in mourning, or under exhaustion, no question about the fitting emotional response to lights miles deep, flying up, rejoining.

May this year bring you all blessings. If you have to change your passwords, may it be for a new love, not the death of an old one. May you answer a resounding "yes" when asked if you’d like to switch childhoods with your kids, and be parented by your wise, kind self.

May old friends search you out, may you find many coins, one after another, by your door, and may your questions engage you, past answers.