I want to pause time! I can't believe that next Sunday will be Christmas Eve...and that the next day all of the lights, and giving, and music, and cheer, and red, and green, will begin to fade into January. With all due respect to Dr. King, his holiday is miserably anticlimactic on the heels of so much Christmas festivity. I don't know why I mourn the passing of the season while I should still be celebrating and anticipating, but I find myself doing that as Christmas approaches.
If I could be a "Super," (like on The Incredibles,) I would request time manipulation as my Super power and I would use it to pause time on vacations, around the Holidays, on dates with Nate, during Henry's naps, and on weekends. This was such a fun weekend for our family, I found myself wishing in more than one instant that I could press pause...or at least decelerate to slow motion. I've been dropping really obvious hints to Nate lately that I thought it would be charming and fun if one day he "surprised" Henry and I with an outing to the zoo, and he pulled through for us yesterday! He squeezed in a few early morning hours of flag football with friends, Abeezar and Shamoil, (a totally irrelevant detail, I know, but I just had to put their names in the chronicle because I thought they were so funny and great :) and then we loaded up the car and headed to the zoo.
I expected a lot of things out of our day at the zoo. I expected laughter and excitement and memories and intreague, but I didn't expect that there would be a spiritual undercurrent to the whole experience for me. I hope this doesn't get too sentimental, but the chronicle is first a family journal, and second a means of correspondence, so on occasion, I have to give place to some of my more introspective and slightly spiritual thoughts so my posterity doesn't think I was just a flighty featherbrain. As we walked from habitat to habitat and looked at all the different creatures, I had one unifying thought. The perfect geometrical pattern on the giraffe's hyde, and the scaly crisscrosses that ran up and down the snake's back, and the brilliant colors on the wings of the tropical birds all reminded me that God is an artist. I left the zoo feeling less silly about my spontaneous and impractical hankerings to make pretty things and the inexplicable desire I sometimes get to color with markers. In some ways observing caged animals is kind of depressing, but as one who believes in a Divine Creator, seeing so many "good things of the earth" up close made me understand a bit more what the Lord meant when he said that His creations were made "both to please the eye and gladden the heart." We certainly had happy eyes and hearts at the zoo! I don't know if Henry's heart was more glad about the animals we saw or the hamburger he ate at the Prime Meridian Cafe--he talked about both all afternoon!
Another exciting thing we've been talking about around here is the fact that Nate passed the first three sections of the CPA exam!!! (We're still waiting to hear back about the fourth.) He'd probably tell you very modestly that he passed, but I'm going to indulge in some really obnoxious proud-spouse bragging and tell you that he passed with flying colors! He scored 89 on the first section and in the nineties on the other two! His scores have gotten progressively better on each section, so I'm expecting him to ace the last section (*wink! *wink!) In true Nate fashion, he wants to celebrate with some delicious Mexican food--I think that can be arranged!
I was listening to a little segment on NPR this week about holiday etiquette. The radio host was interviewing someone from the Emily Post Institute of Etiquette (who knew such a place existed?) One of the things the lady from the Post Institute said, was that if people don't get Christmas cards from you, they will eventually take you off their list. Lest any of you should consider scratching our names from your lists when you discover that you didn't receive a card from us this year, please think twice! I am not sending cards this year, but plan to attach a family Christmas photo with next week's chronicle and hope that will at least be enough to hold our spots on your christmas card list until next year when I hope to have my act together.
I'm sure Emily Post would turn over in her grave if she knew I was substituting a traditional card with G.Mail greetings, (apologies Ms. Post,) but for the time being, I love this modern technology that allows me connect with so many of you--even if it does suck some of the conventional charm out of Holiday traditions like card exchanging.
I hope this week surrounds you with many moments you'd like to pause...
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