I swear, there was nothing in the egg nog. No, really!

Mom and I decided to take silly self-portraits. At first, she didn’t get the “make silly faces” memo. But, she’s a quick learner…

Mom and Dad have a “small local farm” radar, and they manage to find every place in a 75-mile radius that sells fresh eggs, milk, produce, citrus, etc. This time, they found goats Mom could pet. Happy day for Mom!

This was our 11th Christmas together. Say it with me now: Awwwww!

I finally got a shot of my parents both smiling at the same time. A Christmas miracle! (It was so cold that day that Mom and I had to wear light jackets. Oh my!)

On New Year’s, we celebrated my in-laws’ anniversary. Thirty-two years and counting. Say it with me now: Awwwww!

We host a Star Wars-themed Christmas party, and I bake and bake and bake, and our friends come over and howl with laughter over the notoriously bad Star Wars Christmas Special we torture them with. The house is full of happy sounds–talking, laughing, eating. The Christmas tree glows. Our friends compete for the title of Best Wookie Impersonator. At the end of the night, we are exhausted but happy.

The week leading up to Christmas is a blur of present wrapping and suitcase packing and house cleaning. We drive to Florida on Christmas Eve and launch ourselves immediately into present-unwrapping and eating. Lots of eating. My mom makes a chocolate-pecan pie, and I eat so much I feel sick. It’s one of the best Christmases ever. On Christmas morning, we open presents with the Bonds, and it’s the first time in years that we all wake up there on Christmas morning. We are all making the most of it. Whatever it is. We snap pictures and cuddle with the new gray cat and then we eat more.

And after Christmas, everything falls apart. We get news we didn’t want –not the worst possible news, but perhaps the second-worst. We yell and cry. We spend the rest of the week in a state of shock and confusion, going through motions. We visit a friend whose wife has left. We can’t believe it either. We celebrate New Year’s with strangers. We stare off at nothing.

But, still, we manage to find moments of lightness: eating a lovely meal for Jesse’s parents’ anniversary, walking by the river with my parents and watching a dolphin swim by, spending time with my grandmother. Already, the time has grown fuzzy, and the memories feel years old.

We come home. I am in transition, lodged between the holidays and the semester, one over and one not yet begun. My syllabi and schedules are done. The decorations are all put away, and our house feels sparse and empty–but clean. I am looking forward to the year and not looking forward to the year. It is what it is. I repeat this to myself, and–somehow–it does not feel like a lie.

In case you ever wondered how to tell whether I’m on break or not, here are some signs.

1. This weekend, I made bread. The most beautiful, glorious, lovely loaf I’ve ever made.

(Okay, fine. That was the second batch I made that day. The first batch never made it to the rising stage because of its being the most epic failure of bread making in the history of bread making. I won’t go into the story, but suffice it to say, it involves a too-large ball of dough, a mixer that was literally bouncing, and grease. Not the edible kind. Grease from the mixer–in the bread. Yeah.)

But let’s not dwell on failure, shall we? The end result was worth the trouble. The house smelled of freshly baked bread all day, and I couldn’t have been happier.

2. This week, I’ll get both cats to the vet, have a chiropractor appointment, finish my Christmas shopping, and still (in all likelihood) have time to clean house and get some reading done.

3. Speaking of which, I’ve already finished a book I’d been working my way through all semester. Now, onto a book my sister-in-law sent me a couple months ago…

4. Free time? …This feels strange.

5. The house is fairly clean.

6. The laundry’s done.

If you notice any of the signs above, I’m probably on break.

I’ll give you a quiz to make sure you’ve learned the concepts.

(Wow, if that didn’t give away my profession, I’m not sure what would.)

Ahem–ready?

I’ll give you two lunches. You identify the “break” lunch and the “during the semester” lunch.

Lunch A: fresh veggie sandwich with homemade hummus on homemade bread, followed by home-baked cookies and milk.

Lunch B: McDonald’s.

Well, were you able to correctly identify the home lunch and the school lunch? Need a hint?

I didn’t think so.

Now, I’m off to clean something or take a bath or read a book or all of the above. Ahhhh.

We’re still waiting for more specific news about Jesse’s dad, and I am trying not to wish away any time right now. We’d like answers, but they are slow coming. So, we wait. It’s amazing how quickly you can adapt to news you never expected to receive. But I’ve only adapted so far to the waiting period, and that’s okay. A cancer diagnosis makes you think about time differently. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem to make sense to always be thinking about the future, to be wishing current stages of life would hurry up and finish already, because time is much more precious a thing post-diagnosis. Perhaps this has impacted the way I’ve seen the semester, the way I’m not fully ready for it to end.

There are still moments, though, of negativity. At the Christmas party at Jesse’s work, there was a time set aside for people to share “milestones” of the year. Most of the milestones were about babies being born. I just sat back, knowing this time wasn’t for us. We had no babies this year. We made no major changes. We had no breakthroughs. I’m not saying the year was a wash, or that there weren’t moments of brightness (July comes to mind, certainly), but when I think milestones of 2011, of course the first thing that comes to mind is cancer. It’s the dropped bomb. It demands attention. And it’s not something you stand up and talk about at a Christmas party. So, we shared nothing, and I felt the weight of why we were silent.

Even so, I think we are both in some ways enjoying the season more than usual. I think we are appreciating the “little things,” the cheesy movies and the decorating and the hot cocoa, even more than we would in a normal year. In the waiting phase, we can do this, because anything is possible, really. We are in suspension.

But there are worse things than waiting, and so we love what we have, while we still have it.

We’ve been powering through the Christmas movies, too. We’ve made it through Elf, A Muppet Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Santa Clause, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the second Prep and Landing. The movies are even more fun to watch now that the tree is up.

Ah, yes, pictures–

Before…

After…

Putting Up the Tree – November 29th, 2008 from Erin Bond on Vimeo.

We spent this Thanksgiving with Jesse’s family in Florida. We’d originally planned to be in Charlotte with my family but after getting Jesse’s dad’s diagnosis, we quickly changed our plans. But even though we wished we were there under different circumstances, we did enjoy ourselves quite a bit. Thanksgiving day was spent at Jesse’s aunt’s house–a lovely country place with a barn and an orange grove and a couple horses and a veritable flock of chickens. The dinner was almost derailed by a local fire that took out the power in the area–with the turkey half-done in the oven–but fortunately the power came back on just in time to finish everything. The meal was wonderful.

Throughout the day, the family played cornhole, watched football, watched the sun set over the orchard, fed the horses. We ate pie and drank coffee. A few folks played guitar and sang everything from Jimmy Buffet to Oasis. The kids played hide and seek outside. We thumbed through Black Friday ads.

We also took our family Christmas photo. Here we are on our best behavior:

But if you know us, you know we’re rarely this well behaved. Here’s a slightly more realistic/silly portrayal of Jesse and his family:

And here’s the real story:

The definition of family: people you can be yourself around without worrying about it. And people who forgive you when you post embarrassing photos of them online.

Last year, when I missed another reunion, I was sad, but this year I’m more nostalgic, happy to have the memories of past reunions, happy to imagine my parents on the lake with my father’s sisters, and I imagine the weather is perfect, and I imagine that even though the trees are falling, there is still the sunlight, and the leaves are still lovely around that house, and it’s okay–somehow–that things do not last forever.

A couple emails and a phone call revealed the sender to be my mom, who extolled the benefits of essential oils and explained that she thought it would take the order longer to get to me, which would allow her time to let me know it was on its way.

After I hung up the phone, I went to the company’s website to learn more about the oils she had sent me. One of the bottles was labeled “Balance,” and is, apparently, for:

• anxiety
• nervousness
• hyperactivity
• attention deficit

…

Mom, are you trying to tell me something?

(Okay, fine, you nailed it. Using the oils now. Love you!)

Disney…

Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, and Epcot in one day--crazy? Yes. A ton of fun? Yup!

Presents…

Oliver inspected each box.

Strange, old records in thrift stores…

Don't ask me!

Nature…

Breathtaking

Canaveral National Seashore

A pelican dives for lunch.

An alligator takes a nap. (We hoped.)

My grandmother…

Ninety-one and counting...I hope I got her genetics!

My mom…

She likes to make funny faces while cooking.

My dad…

He always gives up his seat on the couch.

My dad catching an armadillo…

Don't worry, we let it go right after taking this picture.

Jesse’s family…

Ein (brother-in-law), Becki (sister), and Vicki (mom)...not pictured: Tom (dad) who decided that running around multiple Disney parks on a cold and foggy Sunday wasn't his cup of tea.

Holiday decorations…

Christmas morning.

And lots and lots of food…

Making Christmas breakfast.

What a lovely holiday.