we did it.
it came. it hung around and ate and ate and ate. it did a dance to bing crosby. it talked about politics and gave simple gifts.
it snowed, for crying out loud.
michael and i went on a walk this afternoon, after my dad's new england breakfast of biscuits and sour cream with maple syrup. just the two of us, since mozie and ruah could hang with my mom and levi. we were laughing and doing weird chicken struts down francis when out of nowhere, God smiled a cheesy and wonderful grin and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
we walked through creston park, and i swear it looked like england, or cleveland.
our little ghetto neighborhood absolutely looks like cleveland when it snows (or england, depending on your mood). not that i've ever seen cleveland, but i have an intuitive nudge of what cleveland is and am positive that this intuition is based in some reality.
when i think of cleveland, i think working class roseannes, simple and pabst-infused. i think nine-to-fives and greasy, home-cooked meals with ugly kids in old houses and big trees out front, yelling and throwing brown snowballs.
and whether this is accurate or not, it feels comforting to me, for no apparent reason.
every year when it snows in portland i say to michael:
"God, this feels like cleveland. it's so amazing."
michael gave me a wrapped up library book for christmas that he picked up for me last week. the flannery o'connor short stories i put on hold a month ago. what a beautiful, simple gift.
and what a relief, because i'm about to quit on anne lamott. the prelude to "grace (eventually)" is such a trick--it's about 8 million times better than the ensuing chapters. i get to the end of her essays and think, "is that it? is that all you're going to say? and, moreover, is that really what you think? do you actually think Jesus had to learn to like the gentiles? that's not just wrong, it's demented."
and perhaps worse than demented, it feels shallow.
i'm sad. i miss her. i remember the greivous let-down i experienced when i heard patty griffin's last album. where is sweet loraine? where have all the brilliant lyrics gone? long time passing and several cds ago.
i miss travelling mercies. i thought anne might be super-human, but it turns out she's a dork like the rest of us.
michael, on the other hand, is taking it personally. i read him a chapter the other night in bed, and he said: "i'm just annoyed with her."
mozea and ruah had a sweet christmas. we delivered peanut butter balls to our neighbors yesterday, and mozie, in her giant puffy pink coat would shout out from the abyss of her hood: "merry christmas!" after giving a very puzzled look to each neighbor. i know she was thinking: "why in the world are we giving our peanut butter balls away? this makes no sense." i know this because after we'd walk down from someone's house, she'd have a meltdown on the sidewalk that sounded mostly like screaching and wincing, with a few suggestive phrases about her peanut butter balls and when could she eat one.
we give gifts to our drug-dealing neighbors every year. they are actually some of my favorite people on the block. while we waited for them to answer their door yesterday, i snooped in their kitchen window and saw a little calendar on the table with Scripture on it: "even though i fear evil, the Lord is always with me."
we are going to be absolutely shocked to the core about who's who in the heavenly realms.
i have no idea what that calendar means to them. maybe it's a joke. or something to write mean notes on or grocery lists that request items like syringes or small mirrors and razor blades. i don't know, but i will say, i'd rather spend eternity with my drug-dealing neighbors than some other heaven-bound folk i've known.
Lord have mercy.
so our family Christmas ended with a hilarious meal. we made a million really hard side dishes and topped it off with a giant slab of salmon. it was a total fiasco. mozea ran around in her undies and cowboy boots, and dodged the blazing hot oven each time she ran past. ruah zel is sick, so even though she's the light of the world, aside from Christ and mozea, she coughed and cried through most of the prep. three hours after the side dishes were done, the fish came out of the oven, a little black and bruised from the hard and tragic work of being cooked by the havens' fam.
if this fish still had its head when it came to the table, it would have rolled its eyes and called us losers.
mozea prayed for the meal, thanking God that nana could come to the birthday party, referencing the happy birthday she sang to Jesus and the candle she blew outlast night when we ate our christmas eve mexican lentil soup.
i took ruah to bed just after the smoking salmon made his/her appearance, and
mozie said: "goodnight, sissy! thanks for coming!"
yes, indeed, thank you for coming.
thank you everyone for coming--thank you Jesus for coming. thank you for coming to me, to michael, to this house, to this world. thank you, mom and levi, for coming to portland this year and being so enjoyable and fun to spend our christmas with. thank you, mozie and ruah, for coming to us, for being born and created and saying "yes" to the One who sent you, when that One asked you to be in our crazy havenator clan.
i do remember anne lamott writing something beautiful about thankyous in one of her books.
she said something about standing in the street, looking up at the sky and for all of the things everywhere that had ever been good, saying: "thank you, thank you, thank you."
