Motherhood

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Pandemic Randomosity: Equal Parts Despair and Retail Therapy Edition

Apparently day four is the day when my careful less indulgent eating meal plan falls apart and I beg my husband to pick me up a frozen pizza from Target.

Listen, it’s possible that I could have made it longer if this were a typical year. But we are right back in the thick of Pandemic Living (worst idea for a magazine ever – headlines include “The Best KN95 Masks NO ONE Knows About (Yet)!” and “7 Best Ways to Ensure You and Your Loved Ones Won’t Need to Be Seen in the Emergency Room” and “Is Eyebrow Bling the New Lipstick?”) and I am not drinking alcohol during the week (for now) and so I prescribed myself some medicinal pizza for dinner last night. And some randomosity for today.

  • We continue to be very, very lucky. The family members who have had Covid have fully recovered. The rest of us have somehow avoided it so far. Everyone is vaxxed (with the possible exception of my vaccine eligible niece but I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW) and boosted. My part of the world is fairly pro-mask, so most people in the few public places I visit are masked. I have been able to get my hands on rapid test kits and masks. My daughter’s school continues to take Covid very seriously, and has a mask mandate for everyone and a vaccine mandate for the faculty and staff. We are so, so lucky.
  • I know it’s just luck. I mean, as with a lot of “luck,” some of it is privilege. Where we live and where we send Carla to school being two stark examples. But it also seems so easy to fall into the belief that we haven’t contracted Covid because we are careful. I’m sure that’s helped, but I also know that LOTS of very careful people have been hit by Omicrom. We have either avoided it so far because we are super lucky, or it’s possible (I think) that we’ve had an asymptomatic case without knowing it.
  • Despite being SO LUCKY, I have been filled with despair all week. Early Pandemic-level despair, which I have been fortunate to avoid for many months at a time over the past yearish. The news – which I have been trying, semi-successfully to avoid (except when my husband texts me a particularly upsetting news item THANKS HUSBAND) – is so full of doom and gloom that I feel like I can sense my blood pressure shoot up with every headline. And we have been remote all week, which is a nightmare for my particular brand of child and her particular brand of mother. Plus, there has been the possibility hanging over our heads of another week of virtual learning, which is giving me a stomachache. I mean, there are LOTS OF GOOD REASONS to have virtual learning! Lots and lots! And I am grateful that I am not the one who had to make the decision, that’s for damn sure. But there are also, obviously, MANY BENEFITS to having one’s children physically in school, learning from a human instead of a screen, doing actual math instead of a video game (seriously) and interacting with friends in person. (Not to mention the benefits of in-person learning for the many, many parents who do not have the ability to work from home, or the bandwidth to work while supervising a child during remote school.)
  • We don’t know whether we will have virtual learning next week, too. I have been refreshing my email constantly. I don’t know what to hope for. That we continue to stay home and help drive down the number of Covid infections? Not that our school’s numbers were ever that high. That we return to in-person school for the sake of the children and the working parents and my own sanity? I think I will rejoice/weep at either outcome. Right now, I just want to KNOW so I can PREPARE MYSELF.
  • Possibly due to an urge to soothe the pandemic angst, or possibly this is just my typical post-holiday M.O., I have ordered a few lovely things lately. I got this gorgeous sweater from Nordstrom with a gift card. It is SO SOFT. And it’s totally different from what I normally wear – which tends toward casual and butt-covering. I recently bought a pair of these high-waisted jeans and I think the sweater would look very cute with it. But also… I can’t tell if the sleeves are TOO balloon-y? They are MUCH more balloony in real life than they are on the model. Do they emphasize my arms in a stylish way, or a cartoonish one? Do I look like Popeye after pandemic stress and despair forced him to give up his weight-lifting habit? The jury is still out. We shall see. On the Stay-at-Home Clothes front, I purchased a zip up hoodie that I’m hoping will cover my buttular region. It looks like it will cover my buttular region, based on the photo. But I share nothing in common, body-shape-wise, with the person modeling the hoodie, and I suspect my region is vaster. The hoodie hasn’t arrived yet, but it has “amazing” right in the name, so I have high expectations.

  • Retail therapy is fun even when the purchases aren’t for me. I also ordered this napping kittens calendar for Carla. We’d scrolled through many, many options and this was her favorite and she was obviously correct. I also got my husband another Magic Puzzle puzzle; I’d given him one called The Happy Isles for Christmas, and he loved it. I don’t even LIKE or DO puzzles and I loved it. My husband wouldn’t even let me help (my version of helping with a puzzle is finding one piece and then leaving), and I loved it. It is seriously so adorable, with a million fun things to look at, and even a list of things to find, like in a Where’s Waldo? book. Plus, there’s the “magic” aspect of the puzzle, which was really cool (but I can’t reveal that part because it is magic). If you are a puzzle lover or know one, this MUST be on your puzzle purchase list.
  • Did I tell you about my new salt and pepper shakers? It’s not a new purchase, but looking for those links reminded me that I got them in early December. We had been using one of those Costco pepper grinders for all our peppering needs, but the Costco salt grinders have never worked well for us… so for the last Costco-sized-salt-container-amount-of-time, we’d been salting our food with a Costco-sized salt container. Ridiculous. My husband’s family aren’t a salt and pepper on the table family, but even so, when they were here so often this past fall, I kept feeling so awkward about not having a proper set of shakers for the table. And my family ARE big salt and pepper at the table people, so I was feeling really anxious about it in advance of their visit. My neuroses are many and varied. The result is that I finally persuaded my non-salt-or-pepperer husband that I NEEDED these and I love them. (He does not love them. He only ever uses salt, and the salt grinder grinds crystals of salt that are, to be fair, bigger than your average engagement ring diamond. But it does not seem that you can buy a matching set of pre-ground salt and grindable pepper shakers. And they always [right?] come in a set.)
Looks like we need to get ANOTHER giant salt container.
  • My computer is driving me crazy. the keyboard is not working correctly, and when i try to capitalize things, it either doesn’t work or it WORKS TOO MUCH. As when i am trying to emphasize VIa CApitalization, when the shift key gets over-enthusiastic and capitalizes two letters in a row. I have left the capitalization in this bullet as my computer wants it, for an example. It is Very ANnoying. YOu wouldnt believe how often i have to delete and retype. BLARGH.
  • Speaking of calendars, which we were, a few bullet points ago: if you use a physical calendar, what kinds of things do you fill it with? I do NOT use a physical calendar, even though I love calendars. I have tried many times in the past, and somewhere around February I forget about it and then don’t look at it again until June, when I make a renewed effort to use it… and then forget about it completely until I see Swistle’s annual calendar post and start drooling over all the fun and beautiful options out there. If you think I could resolve this issue with a daily calendar rather than a monthly one, you would be incorrect because I forget about those too. If I didn’t know this about myself, I would own Benjamin Dreyer’s day-to-day grammar and style version. What was the point of this bullet? Oh, right.
  • Speaking of calendars, again, still, I want to populate Carla’s calendar with important things, but I’m not sure what those THINGS should be. Obviously, I will add the birthdays of family members. And I think I can safely add the first day of spring break, the last day of school, maybe even the first day of school for next year if the school has posted that information already. But… what else? Do I add weekly things, like swimming lessons (which we are resuming this month yay/eek)? I WANT to add upcoming trips, of which we have two planned. I WANT to add summer camp (which we had to register for in early December do NOT get me started). But in Year Three of the Covid-19 Pandemic (I started to type “of the Current Pandemic” but that sounded much too bleak), I am wary. So wary. Do I put them on the calendar anyway, as a nod to hope and optimism?

  • Ah, hope. I have an aerogarden in my dining room, and I have been growing a tomato plant for many months. It has been disappointing, to say the least. I think we have harvested maybe six tomatoes total. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Some of the leaves are yellow; I go in and trim, but branches keep dying. Even so, the plant keeps growing, and keeps putting out these little hopeful blossoms… and once in a while, a baby tomato emerges like a promise kept. I kneel on the floor every morning to inspect the plant, to remove dead leaves, to whisper words of encouragement to the blooms. Many of them spread their petals into a bright reassuring star, only to disappear during the night. It is so discouraging, and it all feels like a metaphor.

  • My husband and I just finished all the Succession there is to watch. It is SUCH a good show, and i spend every episode marveling at how I can be invested in so many people I find abhorrent. We are looking for our next TV show to watch together. I think the two we are deciding between are The OA and Sex Education. I feel like we have watched EVERYTHING, but of course that isn’t true. If you have suggestions, new or old, I am waiting eagerly to hear them.
  • My husband and I have started, but not completed, two satisfying projects. The first is, of course, the basement craft room makeover, which has been paused during the work week. The second, which we did on a whim, was to cull (most of) bookshelves. My husband and I are both avid readers and, perhaps more so, avid book buyers. We also both believe in owning books, which has its benefits and disadvantages. This means that we tend toward keeping every book we buy, when not every book is one we NEED to own. It makes me sad to get rid of books, but really: if I read a book and didn’t love it, and my husband isn’t going to read it, and it isn’t autographed, and it wasn’t a Special Gift from a dear friend or family member… then I think it would be better off going to the library, where they can sell it to someone who really wants to read it. I am very pleased by the stack of books we were able to cull (and the number of spaces we have opened up for NEW BOOKS). Now I just need the libraries to re-open so I can donate them and get them out of my office!
  • Our library system, by the way, is pretty awesome. Even though the branches are currently closed to visitors, you can still order books and pick them up at the drive-up window. Plus, they often give away free rapid test kits. Carla and I went to the library to drop off a stack of books the other day and there was a police car parked at one end next to a sign that said “enter only.” I kept driving to the other end, which is where I usually turn into the library parking lot, but it was blocked by another police car and a sign that said “exit only.” I had to turn around to get back to the new entrance, and then followed a winding path through the parking lot, demarcated by construction cones. At the other end of the parking lot were two people standing next to big stacks of boxes. They seemed to be stopping each car that drove through the lot, so I rolled down my window to find out what was going on. One of the people asked how many members are in my family, and when I said “three,” he handed me three Covid test kits. I took them, because you don’t look a test kit horse in the mouth, and then I dropped off our library books in the drive-through lane. Then I texted everyone I knew that the library had a supply of test kits to give away. One friend replied that she would head to the library immediately, and then she noted that her new supply of Kn95 masks had arrived. I cheered and told her I was excited for the new masks I’d ordered to arrive… and immediately felt a sense of dissociation. THIS is what we text each other about now? THIS is cause for excitement? Free Covid tests and mask delivery? Eeeesh. Welcome to the new world, I guess.

  • These are the masks I got for Carla, by the way. We got a small package, just to try. They are quite expensive, but I saw them listed on a bunch of “best masks for kids” articles and I have some friends who use them and like them. (I have a referral code that can get you $5 off, if you want to try them. It’s not much, but it covers shipping and a teensy bit extra.) They shipped very quickly, and should be here Monday. I hope they fit and that Carla likes them.
  • On the way home from the library, I asked Carla what she thought she would remember about this time, when she is a grown up. She said she thinks her kids will probably think we mean party masks when we talk about masks. (I think she is thinking of the kind of masks that people wear to masquerades.) I laughed and agreed, and oh how I hope that’s true. I hope that masks (and rapid tests and virtual school) aren’t a necessary and regular part of life from this moment on. I hope that she can look back on these pandemic years with a veil of fog, because it was such a small, insignificant part of her childhood. I hope the next pandemic isn’t worse. I hope she grows up. I hope she has kids.
This is the bleakest photo I have on my camera roll. But it’s hopeful too. Those black, empty branches are part of a living tree. Someday soon they will have buds, then blossoms, then leaves.
  • Life is so up and down. It’s always like that, always will be. But the downs – right now – seem so much deeper. I don’t know what I thought, back in 2020. That the pandemic would be temporary? That we’d wear masks for a year, deal with Covid for a year, then be done with it forever? I feel like I always knew it would be a longer-term thing. But thinking something, knowing something, are different than believing them. And maybe I didn’t believe that this would be our way of life for many years, possibly forever. It’s a hard thing, to come around to the truth.

  • We just got an email from Carla’s school. They are back in person as of Monday. Cue the relief. Cue the anxiety. I think I’ll go have some leftover medicinal pizza.
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Nearly Eight and a Half

Carla is being so utterly charming these days that I figured I better write it down, for posterity. As my mother-in-law keeps reminding me when I am experiencing frustration/difficulty with my child, often frustration/difficulty precipitated by said child trying to entertain her grandparents rather than doing what I have asked her to do and aggravated by my reluctance to raise my voice in front of my in-laws, I will yearn for these days when she is a teenager and think longingly of these frustrations/difficulties because they will pale in comparison to the frustrations/difficulties of the teen years. 

BE THAT AS IT MAY, the current frustrations/difficulties are no less frustrating/difficult in comparison to a future I have not yet experienced.

I am getting off track. What I want to say is that just-shy-of-eight-and-a-half, while far from perfect, is in general a wonderful, charming, delightful age. 

The first thing that comes to mind is the clothing, possibly because Carla’s ensemble this morning is fresh on my mind. She was wearing a normal shirt and pants, but had rediscovered a leopard print hat with cat (leopard?) ears and was wearing that, to breakfast. She had also unearthed a pair of dangly black and red clip-on earrings and was wearing those. 

She has very distinct ideas about clothing, is what I’m saying. And I’m Here For It. All of it. Like how she recently learned about complementary colors in school and so prefers to wear complementary colors when possible. Purple pants and a yellow shirt. Green dress and red leggings. Maroon skirt and pale green shirt. It’s a whole look. 

Speaking of things Carla has learned in school: I guess they have been talking about homonyms? Or homophones? I don’t want to look up the difference between them. I know that homophones are words that sound the same, but may have different spelling/meaning (except/accept, write/right, ring/wring, etc.)… so maybe homonyms are words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciation (tear/tear, bass/bass, bow/bow, close/close )? When I was a kid, I learned that those were homographs, because they look identical, but someone told me homographs aren’t a thing anymore, and that stuck with me. Okay, I have looked it up: homonyms are words that can be spelled OR pronounced the same way, but have different meanings; it’s a blanket term that encompasses both homophone and homographs.

What I was TRYING to tell you, before I got all caught up in elementary school language specifications, was that Carla and I have been having a lot of fun lately thinking of homonyms together. I don’t know why I find this so delightful, but it is. Partly is that I love our language and its quirks and intricacies, and so I enjoy someone else actively enjoying those things. Partly is that it feels like a game, and there are so SO many examples to share. I was filling my car up with gas the other day and got back in, and Carla said, “Bear and bare, mommy!!!!” She’ll just announce a pair of homonyms randomly throughout the day and I’m loving it.

A less-but-not-UN-delightful thing about Carla is that she is Always Right. Now, this is not always true, technically. She is always confident, but occasionally her facts/reasoning will be wrong. But I swear, if you tell this child a fact even in passing, she will remember it for the rest of her days. Her grandmother showed her a video of a red-headed woodpecker on a tree in her backyard, and Carla said, “That’s not a red-headed woodpecker, that’s a pileated woodpecker.” And then she went to her room, retrieved her bird book, and proceeded to walk her poor grandmother through every single woodpecker in the book, and then compare the pileated example to the one from the video. (Carla was right, although, to be fair, a pileated woodpecker 100% looks like it would be called a red-headed woodpecker.) (That’ll teach her grandmother to try to share something interesting with her grandkid!) (Carla’s affection for facts comes across in a very didactic and “well, actually” kind of manner, but also I find it rather pleasing. We are working on the delivery of this kind of knowledge, but I appreciate the knowledge itself.) (While I am parenthesizing, I will say that the red-bellied woodpecker is very inaptly named. Whoever decided which woodpecker was which seems like they went about it in a very slap-dash and poorly thought way. “Eh? Another woodpecker with a red head? Let’s just pretend its pale white belly is red instead.”)

This is also the year when Carla is really starting to get into reading. I feel as though I have claimed that in the past, but it seems to be ramping up now. She’s certainly interested in books; whenever we go to the library, she will search through the shelves, peeking at tables of contents and flipping through the pages before handing me the book to add to a stack, and we will check out a dozen at a time. She has even discovered the joy of asking a librarian for help, and has marched up to the help desk for advice on a) books that feature animals (we got a HUGE stack that time) and b) a specific book she’d heard about in school. The thing was that she would check out this huge pile and then never read any of the books. Over the summer, my husband and I tried to bribe her to read: $15 per chapter book she finishes by herself. We paid her $0 over the summer, so I thought it was a wash. But NOW she has been bringing home library books from school and reading them in their entirety in an afternoon! This is unheard of! And I mentioned to her the other day that I wished she would READ the books she checked out from our local library, and she said she feels like she never has time to read, so I suggested that she devote fifteen minutes to reading right when she gets home from school and SHE HAS DONE THAT EVER SINCE. She finished a whole chapter book by herself and, of course, remembered that we’d once promised to pay her for reading, so I am out $15. Listen, when my husband and I came up with the bribe we were imagining her reading The Magic Treehouse books or Charlotte’s Web or something, and the book she read had more pictures interspersed throughout, but I don’t care. BEST $15 EVER SPENT. I will gladly reimburse her for reading. She still adores Shel Silverstein poetry, but she has also become fond of the Bad Kittybooks. Otherwise, she kind of dabbles in whatever appeals to her from the shelves. 

Nearly eight-and-a-half is an age of great independence and confidence. Carla still loves to ride her bike around our neighborhood, and has befriended all our neighbors – especially, as you can imagine, those with dogs. She is so friendly and cheerful to them all, and I love how outgoing she is despite her parents’ tendencies toward introversion. 

She is also at an age where she is beginning to like to discuss and analyze various topics. I remember Swistle writing about this, as her older kids moved out of the elementary school years, and I feel like we are just at the beginning of this phase and I already like it (even if I am not as thorough or patient a thinker as Swistle is). The other day, for instance, I mentioned to Carla that we might be driving a friend of hers to Girl Scouts, depending on a possible conflict the friend’s mother had. I stressed the might, because I didn’t want Carla to get her hopes too far up. She was very excited about the prospect of spending extra time with her friend (and in the car! for some reason being in the car together (masks on and/or windows wide open) is thrilling to the third grade set). After her initial delight, she asked, “Can’t we drive her ANYWAY? Even if her mom doesn’t have the conflict?” She persuaded me to text the friend’s mom, and I did so. But it was a long text. I said something like, “We’d love to drive your kid no matter what happens with your conflict” but then I went on to hedge a little bit, just in case: no pressure, if it doesn’t work out, we understand. (Maybe the mom really wants to attend Girl Scouts [in which case she can go in my place], or maybe they have a family commitment right afterward, or maybe she only wants her kid to ride in someone else’s car if it is truly unavoidable; I don’t know.) 

Carla read my text over my shoulder and said, “Send it!” when it was done. But then she wanted to know why I didn’t simply say, “Please let us drive the friend even if you have no conflict.” I explained to her that sometimes there is this invisible pressure that people feel to do what others request, even if they don’t want to. And she agreed, she understood; sometimes she will be playing in a small group of girls on the playground, and another friend will ask to join, and she will feel pressured to agree even if the game they were playing won’t accommodate another child. So we talked a little bit about how that may be a good type of pressure to feel, because you don’t want to exclude friends if you don’t have to, and you don’t want friends to feel left out. We talked about how to handle such a situation: you can be honest about how the current game won’t work with another person, but maybe you could play something else or maybe you could play together a different time. That was a nice conversation. 

Then I told Carla that sometimes with grown-ups, there is a slightly different kind of pressure – a pressure not to offend, a pressure to be easy-going, a pressure to make things happen even if it’s difficult or not exactly what you want – and that I am susceptible to that kind of pressure, and so I try not to make others feel that way. Plus, in this case, there was a potential additional sort of pressure that the mother might be feeling, to not be imposing on us to take her child. So I wanted to be CLEAR, in my text to the friend’s mom, that we wouldn’t be at all upset if it didn’t work out, but that we sincerely would love to take her child with us. Carla seemed to understand the nuances of this thought process, and I liked being able to discuss it with her. This makes me think that perhaps my sister-in-law was speaking directly to me when she mentioned recently that she has explored, in therapy, the effect of her mother’s anxiety on her, and how she can work to keep her own anxiety from affecting her own child.

She still occasionally breaks into an accent. Sometimes a really odd Cockney/British mashup, sometimes more of a pseudo-Australian sort of thing. 

Her vocabulary is enormous and delights me. It tickles me when she uses a word or phrase that strikes me as particularly grown-up. For instance, sometimes she will leave a room – a room still occupied by a person – and accidentally shut of the light. She invariably says, “Whoops! Force of habit.” I don’t know what it is about that phrasing that cracks me up, but it does. 

Carla is also getting to an age where she is REALLY interested in makeup. She is always pawing through my collection of eye shadows and lipsticks (I wear eyeshadow once or twice a year and lipstick never) and asking me what things are and what they do and wondering if she can try them or at least unscrew the lid to see them in greater detail. While I maintain that she cannot wear makeup until she is sixteen, I love this stage. I never in my life pictured having a daughter, and this is one of those overwhelmingly delightful aspects of having this particular daughter that feel so fun and exciting to share. She did, however, “borrow” my tweezers, which I did not love. I loved even less the possibility that she may or may not have been using the tweezers to remove dead skin from her feet. I think I will be gifting Carla with my tweezers and finding myself a new pair. 

She is constantly thinking of creative pursuits. She can turn anything into a project, and squirrels away dead glow sticks, cardboard boxes, sheets of bubble wrap, tiny plastic containers, beads, string, wire, pinecones, rocks. Anything and everything can be reused or repurposed to turn into something wonderful.

At nearly eight-and-a-half, Carla still wakes up singing. I love to hear her muted songs through the bedroom wall. It is such a happy morning sound. Will she still do it when she’s thirteen? I hope so. 

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For the Memory Archives

First of all, does my daughter have too many stuffed animals, Y/N?

Don’t breathe or the whole stack will collapse. Somehow I am only JUST NOW noticing what a hideous color the carpet is.

Are you sure?

Why is that narwhal so creepy? He’s the only one who looks cheerful — everyone else looks Deeply Concerned.

To be FAIR, they are normally divided between two spots, on top of her dresser like so and also on top of her bookcase. We squashed them all together so we could set up her little Christmas tree on the bookcase. When you have two large piles instead of one enormous pile, it still feels like an infestation, but it’s less alarming.

I wonder what the collective noun is for stuffies? A fluff? A cuddle? A suffocation? Yes, that last one seems most apt right now (for all I know, Carla could be under that pile somewhere): a suffocation of stuffies.

Okay, enough about the Stuffed Animal Addiction which I have fully enabled in my household.

What I ACTUALLY want to talk about today is a Very Great Experience that I just have to record for Future Me. 

Carla and I have been diligently reading through the books suggested on her reading countdown calendar. This week, we got to the one about reading a 12 Days of Christmas book.

In anticipation of this day, I had ordered this book from the library:

A very good book, with beautiful illustrations and, at the end, a nice tidy explanation of what the 12 days of Christmas means that also addresses whether or not someone would have REALLY given all these birds and people as gifts.

After school was done, and we’d each bathed (what? we are stuck at home and you expect me to shower in the MORNING?), we turned on the lamp in the living room to stave off the gathering shadows and sat down on the couch to read. Really cuddled up in there, because our couch makes an L shape and both Carla and I have a Strong Preference for the space where the strokes of the L join. Instead of taking turns or finding an alternative location, we simply squeeze in there together as tight as possible. I’ll be honest. Sometimes elbows are involved. Snuggling now also has a practical component, because our furnace is having Troubles. It is set for 71 degrees, which, when achieved, feels like being on the surface of the sun. But at all other times, the temperature of our house sinks into the mid-60s which doesn’t SOUND cold but somehow is Very Very Cold Indeed.

Back to the memories I WANT to preserve!

I opened the book and asked her if we should read the book or sing it. And I discovered that she had never heard the 12 Days of Christmas! So we sang it together. Which was just the most delightful experience.

She didn’t know the tune, but she gamely sang along until she picked it up. We stopped several times to discuss the oddness of the choices of gifts. So many birds! And then people?! We had to talk about whether the gold rings should be gold-en, because gold-en made much more sense with the rhythm. (This particular book says GOLD.) And we had a brief conflict of opinion when we came to eight maids a-milking, because she felt SURE that the gift was COWS. I mean, why not, right? Makes more sense than giving your true love MILKMAIDS. I mean, what if you didn’t even HAVE cows to milk and now you have eight unemployed women milling around awkwardly?

We also talked a lot about the rhythmic addition of “a” to so many of the lines: a-laying, a-swimming, a-leaping. Carla seemed to understand why it was there, but I think she’s still a little suspicious.

And then, finally, we reached the glorious last page, with alllllllll the gifts sung one after another. By then Carla had a good grasp of the tune and the rhythms and we sang it with gusto. 

It was just… wonderful. The holiday spirit swept me right up and made the gloomy near-dusk all golden at the edges. 

It’s not even a song I typically like! I mean, I enjoy belting out “five gold rings” as much as the next guy; I’m not made of stone. But this book and this reading experience may have changed that. And now I look forward to hearing it on the radio (that sounds so old-fashioned but I can’t bring myself to say “hearing it on the Apple music holiday playlist”) so that we can sing it together! And I hope every time I hear it, from this moment on, that the words are gilded with the joy of sitting with my daughter on a winter afternoon and singing at the top of our lungs. 

I want to remember it always.