Christmas Letter 2024

Beloved friends and family,

Charlie was in Seussical the Musical this year–a show full of fun and whimsy. At one point, her character was in a bathtub imagining that the tub might be McEilligot’s pool. As her dance turned to swimming among fishes and Seuss-like under-the-sea creatures, she sweetly sang, “It’s possible. Anything’s possible.”

In fact, in children’s theater, anything is possible. During the last show, the fire curtain came down. You may never have seen a fire curtain before. Generally, it doesn’t show itself until there is a fire and it is needed to separate the fire on stage from the people in the audience until the fire department can arrive. I guess it can also come down when a kid on tech crew sees a weird pin backstage, wonders what it is, and pulls it.

During the impromptu intermission in which we waited for the fire department to put the curtain back up, a group of off-duty theater coaches and parents emerged from the audience manifesting tools and remarkable problem solving. The kids and the director got to work rearranging scenes, running props to the other side of the stage, re-considering timing of costume changes, preparing to pick up where they left off. Everything that had been so meticulously planned, rehearsed, under control, now was not.

Does that sound just like your year too? When I told Charlie that I think of that moment as emblematic of the whole year, she groaned. So embarrassing. That’s just so “Mom-ish.” Yes, well, I’m mom.

That moment didn’t scare Charlie off theater. In fact, she auditioned for and was cast in both the Fall play and the Winter play in her first year at Olympia High School. This has been a great way for her to find her crowd, and she now has a whole new cast of theater friends. Which means, I now have a whole new cast of mom friends. As I was exchanging phone numbers with one mom, she said, “Wait–I already have this number in my phone as ‘Philip’s mom.’” Ah. Yes, I also go by that.

Philip reminds me of his namesake, Grandpa Philip, more every year. He is a movie buff, and he has inherited the Jenks (hilarious!) sardonic, irreverent wit. He has developed an interest in politics and history. He loves his AP Government class, and it’s changing his idea for his future career from environmental science to environmental policy. He has been accepted into college, and is still waiting to hear from other schools and the honor’s college at his first choice school. He has his mother’s sense of impeccable timing. The night the common application was due at midnight, he came into our room at 11:45pm and announced that he had turned it in! How does he feel about just barely making the deadline? A bit regretful: “I guess I could have had 15 more minutes to work on my essay.” We are looking forward to seeing family at his high school graduation in June.

Matt turned 50 and got an electric car. We had never heard of the Kia Niro before we happened upon it at the Toyota dealership. As we were standing next to it in a light drizzle, Matt took out his phone and googled reviews of this car. He read aloud, “Great commuter car if you don’t want to go fast.” He looked up at me and said, “I don’t. I really don’t.” And so it came home with us.

This means that Philip gets to drive the Prius to take himself and his sister to school, youth group, and all the things. Those days when everyone has to be somewhere different at the same time just got a lot less impossible.

I spent much of the latter half of the year believing that we were about to elect a smart, competent woman of color to be president of the United States. Those were good days. Then the first Wednesday of November came, and I was overtaken by a sudden urge to hit things. Not people–I’m more or less a pacifist–but I need to punch something. So I started going to a boxing gym, where I get to hit stuff till I’m exhausted. (I don’t know who you imagine working out with me in the beginners class at a boxing gym, but if it’s mostly little boys, you would be right.)

It doesn’t fix anything–violence, of course, is never the answer–but I do feel better. There’s something about beating up a heavy bag and then walking outside into the crisp air to see the downtown Christmas lights twinkle and the young boxers mix with the little ballerinas coming out of the dance studio next door that reminds me: points of light are clearer in the dark, and, even now, in the darkest time of a dark year, anything is possible.