Favorite Christmas Memories

In order of appearance:

Buying our tree, hauling it into the house, and smelling its piney goodness

Talking to my new sister-in-law about the birth of her children at the baby shower they held for us

Hearing from my new brother-in-law about how he got his baby to sleep through the night on her own

My mother-in-law coming into the family room, sitting herself down, and announcing that she was just waiting for the men to leave on their errands so she could tell me what it was like to be married to one of them

Waking up on Christmas morning (always a favorite moment)

Driving back from Cincinnati, where we spent Christmas Eve with Sam's family, to meet up at our new house with my parents on Christmas day

My mom peeling the potatoes so I could take a shower before Christmas dinner

Sitting down to Christmas dinner with Sam, my parents, and our friends Andrew & Noel

Opening the little pregnant Willow Tree figure and books my sister sent (addressed to my belly from Aunt Juli)

Putting on the Christmas nightgown from my mom and dad and the robe from Sam

Setting out the nativity set my parents gave me

Lounging around in our pajamas the day after Christmas, reading, watching movies, and eating tons of leftover goodies . . . ahhh . . .

Coming back from crib-shopping with my mom and seeing the work my dad and Sam finished on the house (actually finished!)

Getting a call from my friend Jen that Noel (our Christmas dinner guest) had gone into labor the day after Christmas and had her baby

Baby Talk

I commented not too long ago on Kate's blog that for me, pregnancy, particularly very early on, felt like this intense combination of overwhelming responsibility and total helplessness--not wanting to do anything wrong, and knowing that if something did go wrong, there'd be almost nothing I could do about it. This combination produces anxieties about all kinds of things I never would have worried about before--like whether it really was okay to eat brie at the Christmas party yesterday (really, what are the odds that our school's food services actually served imported, unpasteurized cheese?). So it always gives me a special little high to go to the doctor, as I did today, and hear the baby's heartbeat and know that everything's officially copacetic as of now.

Of course, it's much better in recent weeks because she's moving around constantly (and big enough for me to feel it), even on her slower days. Like yesterday, she was a little quiet.

"Are you okay in there?" I asked.

"Oh yeah," she said, yawning her teeny mouth, not bothering to open her eyes. "But with all the holiday running around we've been doing, I just needed to take a day for myself. You know, relax, kick back."

Apparently, babies actually dream before they are born. What does she dream, I wonder? That I've eaten a big meal? That my stomach is rumbling or my heart is pounding or I'm standing in front of the bright worklight? That all the poking will stop?

Ahh . . .

Grades are in, and most semester stuff is finished. I *think* yesterday I finished off responses to students beseeching, whining, whimpering, or "just asking" about grades--and their parents, believe it or not. As in, "Please contact me on my cell phone at your earliest convenience regarding my child's grade in your course . . ." Uh--no. Maybe I should set up an auto-response email. The end of the semester feels really good except for the parent-email buzz-kill.

Apart from that, things are turning festive around the old (new) homestead. We put our tree up, and it sat naked and unadorned in the sunken room for a few days, until it got dressed in a cute little corduroy skirt yesterday. Beads and dangly stuff hopefully tonight. I've been baking lots of cookies in between grading and unpacking and sorting stuff.

There's still lots to do:
Get food ready for Christmas
Finish shopping (almost done . . .)
Wrap gifts
Send off Christmas cards--eek!
Finish clearing space in basement for Christmas guests :)
Clean basement
Set up guest bed
Replace toilet in guest bath & clean
Paint baby's room
Repaint dresser
Refinish trunk
Finish book review
Send in notes from research trip
Continue endless unpacking and sorting and cleaning . . .

Of course, the toilet project is pretty much all Sam. My job will be to try not to hover and look concerned when things crash and bang, and noxious gases and curses escape. But it all feels much more leisurely and relaxed--we have faculty meetings, etc., tomorrow, but today it's bright and the sun is shining down on the snow and later we're going Christmas shopping.

Almost a Form Letter

This time around, I decided to play my response with sheer incredulity. You probably don't even need to see this student's email to understand what he's asking for, or why he wants it.

Dear ___,

Hmm . . . are you asking me to just change your grade--simply because you'd like a higher one? No, I can't do that. It would be wrong, I think, to raise students' grades so that they can make the Dean's list--after all, that is an honor, and it is supposed to signal what students have *earned*, so doing so would defeat the purpose!

Annus Mirabilis

So, it was a year ago today that I got an email from a colleague asking me if I would have dinner with him to discuss his flexible spending account for the coming year; the deadline for our H.R. office was coming up in just a few days, and he needed to decide what to do about his form. And that, my friends, is the beginning of my life's great love story. ;)


The flexible spending account was, my friends all agreed, a flimsy excuse, but as Sam points out, it worked marvelously, transparent or not, so who cares? We got together that same night for dinner, and when he dropped me off, he came in to chat. At the end, he got what he says he was sure was "the friendship hug of dismissal."


But as things unfolded, it felt like when someone puts a hand out, asks you to dance, and gently pulls you toward him, and you are happy to go. Or like the slight suspense--perhaps it is actually the relief of suspense?--that you feel when you turn a combination lock slowly toward the last . . . right . . . number . . . and as the tumblers click into place with that special tension, you know it's about to open in your hand.


We were married within six months. I realize now that it probably seemed imprudently fast--but it didn't feel fast. It felt like it was making things right; somehow it felt like we weren't supposed to not be married anymore. And so that's how we got here: one year later, married six months and a few weeks, and shocked to find ourselves six months pregnant (that part did feel fast--there's no getting around that).

But mostly, I think what we are these days is this: humbled, astonished, blessed by the grace of this past year.

Shoppers' Advisory

Along with her talent as a literary historian, my friend Maura is also gifted at crafts--her work is real art, made using all kinds of traditional techniques. If you're looking for unique and interesting handmade gifts, check out her online shop at http://paperbluebird.etsy.com/.

Meeting Notes

To Have and To Have Not

First, let me say that I'm really glad I married Sam and that I couldn't be more grateful to be having this baby. My feelings about these life changes are unambivalently positive--especially since the morning sickness has worn off. But what's been harder to adjust to is my new "membership" in the two different "clubs" of marriage and (prospective) parenthood. Not because I have anything against married people--hey, some of my best friends are married! Nor because I have anything against parents--I have two of them, and they're great!

But when Sam and I got engaged, one of my friends startled me by saying, "Now you can join the married club!" (Years before, she had told me after she got married that once you are married, you aren't really interested in your single friends anymore.) The thing about this person is that she's so innocent and goodhearted that she meant that earlier comment entirely inoffensively, and she was only expressing her happiness for me in the more recent conversation.

So why do comments like this bug me SO much? And why does it make me crazy when, in discussing whether the other faculty in my department has been supportive of my taking leave in the spring, a colleague (from another department) says "Well, they don't have children . . ." and shrugs, like "How could they possibly understand what we know?"

I think it's this: Yes, marriage is definitely changing me, and yes, I'm learning things as a result of it that I never learned before in my life and would not have learned without the influence of a roommate, male no less, that I'm bound for the rest of my life to love, honor, cherish, and submit to (Heaven help us with fulfilling that last-minute addition to both of our wedding vows). But I'm not sure that any of those lessons are the distinctive property of marriage per se.

That is, I've also learned a lot from my friendship with JS, which has become, to both of our surprise, another lifelong bond--of the sort (like marriage) that means that when the going gets tough, you might as well make the best of it because there is no escape clause. Real friendships are like that. And more years of experience living in the world as a single person would also have taught me other lessons, about loyalty and commitment and trust--some of which might overlap with marriage, and others of which might not.

In the same way, having children doesn't seem to me to impart some kind of absolute wisdom or understanding of life, the universe, etc. Expecting this baby does give my life, as they say, a sense of purpose--but what's important, I think, is that it's not the ONLY sense of purpose I've ever had. . . just a new and different one. One that I suspect could be intoxicating in its specificity and comprehensiveness, except that I cannot forget that I had a sense of purpose before I got pregnant too. Even now, as I can feel my priorities irresistibly and irreversibly resetting themselves around this tiny being, and even as I recognize that perhaps the most important specific charge given to me at present is to protect and love her--even now, all I can say is that it's the most important charge for me now, but not the most important one in life for everybody.

To suggest otherwise somehow seems to dishonor the work of God in all of our lives, unmarried people and people without children--like Jesus, anyone?--along with married people and parents. Membership may have its privileges, but I don't think that self-importance, or mindlessness of the value of each life God blesses in any number of ways, should be one of them.