This post was first published in March, 2008. I love going back and reading through old "house" posts. They give me a  chance to reclaim a lost part of myself, and my children's childhoods; plus, what better way to measure how far you've come on a journey, than by looking back at the starting point?

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Yesterday we had some friends come over for the afternoon, and they stayed for dinner. Because we went from ice and snow a week ago to 80-degree weather on Sunday, we headed out with them to a park we haven't been to in years. When we first moved to North Carolina, we rented a house for eight months in a neighborhood near the park. Those days now seem so far away, yet at the same time, close enough to touch. L. was only 13 months old when we first moved into the house--a blue two-story with cedar siding (and lots of woodpecker holes). I was a stay-at-home mom, trapped in suburbia for long, endless, often mind-numbing days without a car.

"What do you think about when you think about that old neighborhood?" my friend asked me in the car, on the way to the park.

One Saturday morning a couple of years ago, a spectacular day by all counts: cool like a March day, but with warming sunshine--summer sun, not early spring sun--I sat on the back porch with my dad and watched the kids painting. My dad brought out a few blank “canvases” for them (pieces of flat boards you can buy from Home Depot—they’re really meant to put under vinyl flooring, but my dad buys them, cuts them to canvas size, and they are perfect for painting on) and the kids were creating abstract art masterpieces. I watched L. dab on stripes of green, blue and orange paint. He gave T. an impromptu lesson on abstract art painting as he worked and she got right down to the business of creating a painting of fireworks, with one T.-turned-grown-up-woman standing in the middle of it all.

Then she changed it. It wasn’t fireworks, but a hectic and spectacular scene of her own life—projected somewhere into the future again: a life of colors, and splashes of light, and lots of sun, of course.

“And there’s me,” she said, “standing in the middle.”

“Don’t take offense, T.” L. chimed in (he used to blurt out quite bluntly just what he thought of someone’s work and we have, through lots of coaching, taught him to preface his remarks—if he must make them—with “don’t take offense but…”)

“Don’t take offense T., but I don’t see that in your picture at all.”

“That’s what makes it abstract,” I pointed out.

Last night, when I took Willa out for her after-dinner walk, I stopped at the street corner to take in the sky. I love craning my neck back to see what the tree branches look like against the sky, and whether or not I can spot any stars. We live in an older, wooded neighborhood, and the houses have large lots. As a result, the stars are often pretty visible. On a clear night I can even spot constellations and when it's warm, T. and I lie in the hammock on the back porch and count the stars together.

Last night, a movement caught my eye at the same time that Willa pulled at the leash with excitement. I turned and saw a large fox gliding soundlessly along the road right next to us. I never realized foxes glide, as if on wheels. They move low to the ground, arrow-like, in one continuous flow, like golden-brown liquid poured forth from some invisible cup. He paused and looked at us with glowing eyes, all the while still moving. I felt a flutter of momentary panic. Do foxes attack dogs? Humans? But this fox had other things on his mind, other places to go. He flowed away down the road past us, around the corner, and into the dark.

Only then did I exhale; I'd been holding my breath, and hadn't even realized it.

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When I was thirteen, I started my first paper diary. I kept one for years, until I was 31, and then I stopped. The books are kept stacked in a piece of  cupboard-like furniture in my bedroom, and from time to time I like to take a volume out--if I need to "fact-check" a memory, or merely if I am feeling nostalgic and want to reconnect with a part of my past.

A few weeks ago, my husband discovered that one of his CDs was missing. He hadn’t listened to it in awhile, but despite the fact that he has dozens and dozens of CDs, and over 1,000 record albums, and maybe 50 cassette tapes, he noticed that the CD was gone.

This led him to spend a lot of time wondering who had borrowed it, and how he could get it back. It also prompted him to think about other things he had lent out, and where they were, and how he could get them back.

Fast forward to New Year’s Day. We have a family tradition that at dinner on New Year’s Day, we take turns going around the table and sharing our resolutions. L., who is usually good for coming up with some pretty poetic and mind-blowing resolutions said, with a facetious look at all of us, that this year he “wants to spend more time on the computer.”

T.’s resolutions seemed to be all about gymnastics. She wants to be able to do a round-off, a cartwheel, and the splits. My resolution…well, I’ll get to that in a moment.

Scott’s resolution was simple: to make an effort, in 2012, to get back what he deserves.

Then we had dinner, and everything was chaotic, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the wording of my husband’s resolution. What had he meant? Did he feel he wasn’t getting what he deserved in life? Had I failed him somehow? How could I not have noticed? I thought back to the day before, when I’d been overcome with crabbiness about a number of things. Was he thinking he deserved an un-crabby wife? Was this how mid-life crises happened? I flip-flopped between feeling alarmed about my easy-going husband’s state of mind, and self-righteously angry that he felt he wasn’t getting what he deserved. Wait, I thought, maybe I need to get back what I deserve? What about me?

I've always found New Year's Day to be a bipolar sort of occasion, marked by extreme opposite ranges of emotions all crowding in for time in the spotlight. Even as a young child, I always felt both the thrill of a new year and the weight of the passage of time. I remember being awed and saddened, too, by the idea that one year was gone forever. I was often, on New Year's Eve, kept awake by the thought that a new year awaited, stretching out ahead like an empty patch of ocean, and that the familiar landscape of the poor old year, with all its bumps and glorious parts, had receded away into the distance.

It didn't help matters that this New Year's Eve, L. slept with a heavy pipe wrench in his bed, to ward off maruaders. He's been worried about all the 2012 end-of-the-world business for quite some time, and was in an anxious panic.

One of the rooms I always miss the most when we travel away from home is my kitchen. I miss the space of it, and the light coming in through the windows in the morning; I miss how I feel when I'm in the kitchen, cooking up food for my family, or making myself the first pot of coffee in the morning. At our house the kitchen is very much the heart of the home. I felt this the minute we first saw the house. I didn't care that the walls were covered in 1960s flowery wallpaper, or that we'd have to replace the appliances immediately, they were that bad, or that there were brass knobs on the cabinets. I loved the space, and the light, and the sense that this was a place where good things could happen, and where everyone would want to be.

And everyone does, most of the time. You can run through our kitchen, as the kids do constantly, from the dining room and into the hall and around again, in a loop. T. likes to sit at the kitchen table and color or draw, or she'll sit on the end of the counter and help me cook.

It's outdated, our kitchen, but I love it. It's the heart of it that matters, anyway, and its heart is sound and good.

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When the kids tumbled out of the van and into my parents' house, with the usual chaos and excitement and pent-up energy after 6 + hours in the van (I think this was the first roadtrip in many that passed so peacefully--no bickering, no meltdowns from L.!), they converged around the Christmas tree, as they do every year, soaking up the look of it, and lifting the lids of cookie and candy tins, just as they do every year. I love watching my kids rediscover all the things they savor about Christmas at my parents' house--this is the best part of the trip for me. L. especially appreciates the now-routine rhythms of the holiday around here--the predictability of what he will find. He gets his own room at my parents' house and it's an added bonus that the same room houses my mom's iMac computer, and plenty of space to spread out his visual dictionaries. 

Scott and I have been working away at a long to-do list this week. We made the most of the three days the kids were still in school to do lots of wrapping, and last-minute gift buying, and organizing the odds and ends that always go along with Christmas. On Thursday we were all home together, and I had cookie baking on my to-do list. Cookie baking--at long last! What I did not have on my list was taking both kids in to the pediatrician. L. has been complaining of a sore throat for a couple fo days now, and T.'s sinus infection, which clearly didn't clear up after the first round of antibiotics (that terrible round that resulted in her allergic reaction--she still has some residual hives from that!), has come back in full swing. Since we are traveling for Christmas, the thought of hitting the road with sickies in tow just wasn't at all appealing. Plus we were worried about spreading any serious germs to our family members--especially to my baby nephew. Luckily, both kids have only non-contagious sinus infections, so we'll be packing antibiotics with us and they should be feeling back to themselves by the weekend.

Once we had crossed the pediatrician off our list, T. and I turned to cookie making. One of our favorite cookies to bake at Christmas are stained glass cookies.

I veganized the recipe and used Ener-G egg replacer and Earth Balance, and the dough came out perfectly fine. I chilled it overnight, brought it to room temperature in the morning (while we were at the pediatrician) and working it with my hands a bit before rolling helped.

Before you start baking, put the hard candy in ziploc bags, cover with a dish towel (place on a wooden cutting board, too), and turn your older child loose with a hammer.

I had such a good time cooking and baking for our Christmas party this past weekend. I tried some recipes I've been wanting to for awhile, like this one for sugared cranberries:

They were so addictively delicious, the way they popped in my mouth with a sweet-tart burst of juice! I might have eaten away at the entire bowl if I hadn't been so busy.

I love tempeh, but it has to be doctored up, in my opinion, to bring out the best of the flavors. I made my own honey-sesame glazed tempeh (mixed about a 1/2 cup of soy sauce with a 1/2 cup of honey and sesame oil and tossed the tempeh in a pan until the glaze coated. Then I sprinkled sesame seeds on top) and topped a fresh salad with the tempeh:

I made a tahini-lemon dressing from this site (scroll down for the dressing recipe) and it was the perfect addition to the salad and melded so well with the tempeh.

I left the house with L. yesterday at 7:00 a.m, and around the corner to our street we could see the rhythmic rotating smudge of red ambulance lights, breaking the gray morning. My heart fell to think why they might be there--some older neighbor, perhaps in that yellow house on the corner, stricken in the night?

"Maybe someone died," L. said, in that abrupt, realistic way 11-year old boys sometimes have of talking. 

"Oh no," I said emphatically. "Maybe someone fell and got hurt." I said it because I wanted it to be true--it's too close to Christmas for more sad things, I thought. But really, there is no "right" time for sad things. For some reason they hurt more keenly at the holidays; we rush to rewrite endings, hoping for a happy one.

The morning was icy-cold, and had brought a thick layer of frost that coated eveything, even my windshield. Only the night before our house had been filled with family and good, warm food, and a fire in the fireplace. Our Christmas tree, which I imagine must ache each year when we leave, like empty arms do to contain, stood tall over gifts wrapped in bright Christmas wrapping and ribbons. That was the night before; on Monday morning it was back-to-school again. Christmas parties are difficult to let go of, when you have to get up the next day and slip back into the real world again.

Because Scott's Nana wasn't here with us this year, I thought a lot about the hole the death of a loved one leaves in a family. And as I watched the kids play, I saw how pure and happy their excitement is over the things we grown-ups take for granted. I also thought about that special power children have to mend those holes; they are the thread that pulls closed the gaps, the promise of new memories and experiences, the bearers of past stories into the future.