Home for the Holidays

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I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season. I loved traveling home, seeing friends and family, and, despite the intensity of a short visit where we packed in seeing many, many different people, it was lovely to spend time with those I love this holiday season.

Some of my favorite moments:

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Holiday meals: Be it brunch, lunch, or dinner, it was great to spend time with family over delicious food...

Seeing friends from high school and being there to see their reactions to some exciting news shared by another friend via speaker phone!

Getting crafty on Christmas Eve: Inspired by Pinterest, we made coasters using inexpensive tiles purchased at Home Depot, glossy modge podge, and some favorite photographs.

Exchanging gifts Christmas morning...While gifts are not the most important things by any stretch of the imagination, it is still fun to receive thoughtful gifts; among my favorites, a new comforter to keep cozy on cold winter nights, a favorite Christmas movie, The Holiday, and an adorable hedge hog measuring cup series!

Strolling around Mystic, CT to see M's dad's amazing city planning project come to life through the streetscapes of Mystic and enjoying a lovely meal and drinks afterwards at a local restaurant.

Manicures with my sister; nothing like the perfect holiday red to spice up the holidays!

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The candlelight service Christmas Eve: I always love the closing moment to the service when the congregation sings the various verses of "Silent Night" while lighting neighbor's candles until the entire church is illuminated with the light of individual candles.

A gorgeous snowstorm that left the world a soft, wintery, white...a lovely end to a wonderful week!

Mourning for My Home State

As a teacher, and as someone originally from Connecticut, Friday's tragic elementary school shooting felt far too close to home. For the past couple days, I have found myself suspended in a strange place in which I cannot seem to tear myself away from the news while all at once having a desperate need to avert my eyes from a situation so painful I cannot look. My weekend transpired much in the same way; a mixture of the usual normalities and trivial weekend enjoyments punctuated by tears I could not hold back as my Facebook newsfeed filled with comments from too many friends who knew the victims of this tragedy, or I heard the names read on the television, or I saw a family walk by with a child who looked to be six-years-old. 

While people on both sides of the vitriolic gun control debate or the when-is-it-an-appropriate-time-to-talk-about-gun-control-debate have voiced their opinions, it remains to be seen how a country in mourning will proceed in ensuring that a tragedy of this magnitude does not happen again. In haste, I have heard people say everything from: we need metal detectors in schools (I currently work in a school with metal detectors following a deadly school shooting before I worked there in 2005) to a completely crazy remark that had the teachers been armed this would not have happened. While like everyone else, I have strong opinions on this argument, I think that, just for right now, all I really want to say is that I mourn for those parents, I grieve for that community, I revere those educators, and I hold our nation's community in my thoughts as we try to make sense of something so senseless.  

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about time. Perhaps it is with the talk of New Years or with the changing landscape of my life, but it seems like the passage of time feels somehow more present lately.


Sometimes my brooding on the passage of time is more obvious, like this weekend when my friend's husband dressed up as "Father Time" at their annual "Hideous Holiday Sweater Party." This year, I didn't make the mistake I made last year when I misread the comma as a Hideous Holiday--Sweater Party and came as Columbus Day complete with a sweater depicting the rape and murder of North America's indigenous population. Yeah, that didn't go over so well in a sea of red and green, snowmen and reindeers, Santas and sleigh bells.

The party was comprised of people I have known since college and, at the end of the night as we chatted about New Years, we looked through old pictures of New Years from long ago. We laughed as we remember one particular New Years Eve when we went out in the "city" near my hometown and my parents dropped us off and picked us up at the bar. I still burst out laughing when I think about the image of all of us barreling into my mom's station wagon at the end of the night. We have since moved out of the house and as we looked at those pictures and saw a youthful fullness in our faces we laughed about how long ago that seemed and how different our lives are now from then.

While some of my thoughts on the passage of time have been humorous reminders of how far we've come, others have been more bittersweet. M. and I got our Christmas tree and, as we decorated it, I realized many of the ornaments came from a couple of my favorite people: My Nana and Poppop. Though my Poppop passed away a few years ago now, I think of him often and during the holiday season I always feel his loss more acutely. My favorite ornament is one that came from my Nana and Poppop; it is a beautiful glass bulb and it is so fragile that it has a special velvety box in which it is stored each year until it is placed in its rightful place on the top of the tree. Hand painted doves flutter across the ornament; a sign of peace, which is such a relevant reminder of my Poppop for so many reasons. Sometimes I feel sad when I think about the fact that if I have children they will never know my Poppop, but then I remember that, as cliche as it sounds, he really does live on in memory and in moments--like when I put that beautiful, fragile glass bulb on the tree each year. A reminder that life and love are fragile and precious, but they are also powerful like the memories that flood over me each year.

After we decorated the tree, we went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art at night to see their tree and walk around in the crowd-free, peaceful museum setting. It is difficult not to think about the passage of time when you walk around a museum and look upon all of the antiquities that were so alive and real during their time and are now merely relegated to artifacts for people to look upon and try to make sense of.

So, for me the "ghosts of Christmas past" have loomed large this week and I just want to take a moment and appreciate the past since it has help to make my present so rich and full of wonder. Since I know that one day these moments too will be merely memories, I hope to make them powerful and important ones.

Winter Warming the Swedish Way with Vinglogg and Pepparkakor

A few years ago when teaching in Cambodia, I was fortunate to meet a group of Swedish women with whom I traveled after teaching and came to become great friends with. In the years that followed, we have met in Spain to travel and they have visited New York City on several occasions  This week, one of my lovely Swedish friend's boyfriends was lecturing at Columbia University on Scandinavian crime fiction, so they came to stay with us in New York City. It has been wonderful to spend the week with them and catch up over dinners and drinks!

I always love our comparative discussions on the culture of The United States and Sweden. While usually our conversations revolve around politics or the politics of education, this week, with the Christmas season rapidly approaching, we also talked about Christmas traditions in Sweden and in the United States. As a thank you for letting us stay gift, Janna and Jonas (can you get anymore Swedish!?) brought us a typical Advent treat which was fun to hear about and sample!

In Sweden during the Advent season (those weeks leading up to Christmas), which is also a cold, blustery time in those northern reaches of Scandinavia, one common household tradition is to eat what is essentially gingerbread and buns with mulled wine. As a child, I remember lighting candles on Sunday evening to represent each week of Advent and I also remember opening little paper windows to reveal a chocolate treat for each day of Advent. It was fun to add a more adult interpretation of the holiday into my repertoire!

I definitely need to make this the year that I visit Sweden. Can't wait to begin planning that trip, but, in the meantime, I will indulge in some pepparkakor and vinglogg!