It came to me last Tuesday night – a full week into January – that I was finally on Christmas Break. I was sitting on my sofa reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas with my niece before bedtime, and it hit me: I was on vacation.
Here’s how it came to be that I had an unplanned five-day winter vacation last week with my son and my niece: It snowed. A lot.
It all started back on Christmas Eve when we had a joyous white Christmas. The snow stopped after dumping a nice amount. New Year’s rolled around after a week of “holiday decorations on sale” at stuff and loads of paperwork to finalize for year end. It was very cold, and snow was still on the ground. New Year’s Day found Casey and me working at the store while it was closed and quiet.
Then Casey left on a vacation to the tropics and I got my best belated gift – my niece for a week. Casey had it all planned out on paper – where I was to have her and when, who I was to call for emergencies, what I still needed to set in place with her teachers and the school so that her school life fit my work schedule, and when to give her her medicine. I was going to miss a few work hours while she was with us, but I had it all planned out on my own pieces of paper and in my head. Perfectly planned and flawless on paper, I was going to be a mother of two for a week.
Monday, my first full day of mommy-for-two duty, was the last day of the children’s winter break, and I had taken the day off from work. We played, ate French toast late in the morning, baked cookies, and colored with crayons. The kitchen table was our playground.
On Tuesday, they both went to school as pre-ordained on the aforementioned papers while I went to work. We had dinner as a family. My son did a “first day back at school” load of homework, we had baths and accomplished all the other various bedtime routines, and we were all put to bed at a decent time.
When the phone rang in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the message informed us that snow was coming; school was canceled for the day and they would see us on Thursday. And then it started to snow and didn’t stop for over 24 hours. A gorgeous snow that caused another snow day, so the children and I were at home again on Thursday. Then phone rang again on Thursday night, and the recorded voice of our dear head-of-school told us to stay home on Friday as well and that, after a nice extended weekend, she would have the school ready for us all on Monday.
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We live in a hundred-year-old historic home. All homes can be drafty, but older homes can be gusty. When the temperature drops into the single digits, as it has this past week in Kansas City, you find yourself hunkering down into several rooms. We chose the kitchen, and all magic was made from this room and transported to others. The dining room was our art gallery after we had completed our masterworks in the kitchen studio. The living room, where the TV is, was our movie theater, and we dressed warmly to “go the the movies,” covering ourselves with blankets when we got there. The kitchen table held all the daily detritus from killer games of Go Fish and lengthy village building sessions with Lego. The great outdoors is where we ventured when cabin fever hit record highs or when the dog needed walking. We ate grilled cheese sandwiches, baked cookies, shoveled snow occasionally, sang songs, and laughed, and we were always a little sad when the sun started to go down. Several days were so cold that I boiled water in a big stock pot for moist heat, and, on the one day my husband joined us in the kitchen, he turned on the ovens and opened their doors.
The house was cold in places, the snow deeply covered everything outside, our beds were piled high and warm, our hearts were happy, our tummies were full, and Christmas was still with us in the form of new toys and the remaining decorations. I left the Christmas tree up way past New Year’s Day and turned its lights on daily.
Dr. Seuss was right. My Christmas wasn’t about the actual day and all its trappings at all. Christmas means a little bit more – in my case a very late Christmas break in my own kitchen with two children I love.
Happy New Year. Stay warm.
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