Home for the Holidays

I drove my three kids south in the night while we sang along to the radio. At each stop the kids exercised the puppy, whined for candy, and taught me that that you can now rent movies at the McDonalds Red Box in Kansas and return them at a McDonalds Red Box 400 miles later in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma was colder than I expected. We spent our time indoors and had a perfectly normal Christmas. We watched movies and ate and opened gifts. My son got sick on Christmas Eve while we were at church. We spent waaaaay too much time driving around town trying to find National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation on DVD. And on Christmas morning we got up, loaded the van up again, and headed North.

Mary and Frank watched a movie on the DVD player, and Anna read _A Christmas Carol_ aloud to me. I dropped the kids at their Dad's, and came home to Bill. He was mysteriously simmering multiple pans and revealed that he was making seven seafood courses - a traditional Christmas Eve dinner, but I wasn't here on Christmas Eve and we like seafood on any day, so that's how we spent Christmas night.

My stepdaughters don't come until Monday night. Their gifts sit in a pile in my living room. The ham I plan to cook for them the night we celebrate their Christmas sits in the refrigerator.

I do not have Christmas traditions, I have realized, and that is ok. I spent my Christmas Day in a van driving children and a puppy through three states. But add in that my daughter read aloud to me as we watched the soil change from red to brown? That is now my favorite version of the story.

I cling to the Christmas Season, which despite retail attempts to tell you otherwise, are the twelve days AFTER Christmas. My kids will come home, my stepdaughters will arrive, and we will merge into New Year's Eve and a visit by my inlaws. My life does not fit into one day of Christmas, so I am grateful that the season lasts longer than that.

I try to conduct myself with the dignity of a Lollipop Indian Chief. Racist? Probably. But to me he suggests humor and flexibility. He remains proud, though there are lollipops sticking out of his headdress. He's not "from" Oklahoma either, but now it's his home.

God Bless us, Everyone!