Merry Christmas!

This has been a crazy year, but I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas from my family to yours.

Last night, my kids and I had a quiet dinner together. Usually, we have a nice Christmas dinner of quiche and salad and dessert and wine with family and friends, but this year it was just us. The kids picked what they wanted to eat, and we had takeout Chinese. While I'm not a superstitious sort, I do always enjoy the fortune cookies at the end of the meal. We have a tradition that whenever we get fortune cookies, we each read our fortunes out loud, and my kids save the ones they like on the fridge.

I don't usually save a fortune, but I got one last night that I felt was worth saving. It said, "As one grows to understand life less and less, one learns to live it more and more."

I feel that this is true. I don't have any great understanding of life after this past year of the 3 P's: pandemic, politics, and protest. Whatever side of the divide you fall on, America has more problems than answers right now, and it's hard to imagine what's on the horizon.

However, because of the pandemic, I've had to scale back my work. I'm homeschooling my kids. And a year that might have passed in a blur of work and events and lessons and always rushing, rushing, rushing, has slowed down. It's become a time that I will look back upon as the year that I learned how to live day by day and learned what it truly means to appreciate the strange journey of life.

 May you have a healthy and safe end to the year, and a bright and peaceful New Year.