These Are a Few of My Favorite Things (In Marriage and Christmas)

I like getting up at the same time every morning. Six o’clock (or six thirty by the time we push the snooze two or three times), every morning, steady as the granola we eat for breakfast. I like the sureness of this simple routine. 

Growing up, I woke when I wanted to. I also slept when I wanted to, sometimes creeping downstairs long after midnight to use the bathroom, trying to look sleepy in case I met Mom or Dad on one of their nighttime trips. My younger brothers often stayed up playing late into the night while Mom and Dad went to bed, their only restriction being to scale back the noise. They fell asleep when they were ready, maybe in their beds, maybe on the living room floor. 

I loved the freedom of us, felt sorry for the children who grew up locked in by rules and routines. Ivan, however, has risen at nearly the same time every morning for thirty plus years, ever since he started helping with chores when he was ten. Since we are married, I am trying his routine on for size and find that I like it. I was always making myself schedules and failing to follow them, anyway. Stepping into an already-made routine is easy and gives my whole day something to pivot around, like a wheel turning on its axle. 

Another of my favorite things about my life since marriage is the countryside surrounding my new home. I didn’t realize how much of a world is created, not by people, but by setting. 

Last year, I moved to Boston to start college. I thought it would be easy, that I would love the bright city, the people breaking in waves around me, the richness of cultural opportunities. And I did love those things, but life in the city was harder than I thought it would be. I stayed in a dorm with two other young women, and there was no window free for me to sit beside when I had my devotions. I walked through the Boston Common every morning on the way to school and saw grass and trees and snow–but the green things were planted, the snow lined with sidewalks, all of it traversed by pumps and sneakers. When I wanted to be alone in nature–which is not true aloneness but connection with something greater–I crossed the street to the Charles River Esplanade and sat on a cement post overlooking a smaller river, a walkway, and the Charles. People passed on the two walkways–the one in front of me and one behind. Skyscrapers rose across the currents. I pretended to be alone and knew I was not.

This year, I am married. One would think marriage a much bigger adjustment than going to college, but so far, it hasn’t been. In my home in Oakland, I have windows–lots of them–to look out of. Any moment of any day, I can step out my door and run, boots squishing into soft ground, to the field behind the barn. There, I am perfectly free to stand alone under sky and billowing clouds, to cast my eyes over wide-open grassy spaces, over trees, over the windmills that line the hills on the edge of our valley. All of it belongs to me. My spirit touches God’s.

“I feel a lot like I moved home,” I told someone recently.

Speaking of home, we did go home for Christmas. (My old home. I feel justified in saying this since I remember, through many years of my childhood, my own father talking about going “home” to Goshen, Indiana.)

Here, marked by photos, are a few of my favorite memories from the season:

Below, Morgan pulls the lid of a homemade Jack-in-the-box designed by my dad, her grandpa, and watches Piglet spring from a Pirouette can.

Christmas morning, these boxes lined the living room windowsill, one for each woman and girl in our clan.

Inside each box was a miniature chair made from a walnut, with a small doll (not pictured) sitting in the chair. My dad (you can see a blurry image of him in the background) made the chairs simply by slicing a walnut with his scroll saw, picking out the nut meats, and gluing the walnut slices together to form a chair. Each chair was unique because every walnut was different.

Grandpa and Grandma Martin joined us on Christmas day. I used to take them for granted; they were just the grandpa and grandma who lived up the road. Now, every year, I appreciate more their godliness, their kindness, and, most of all, their prayers.

Mom set out benches of Play-Do for the grandchildren.

They had a high old time making themselves masks and other creative ventures.

Love this mother-daughter photo of my sister Jennie and niece Madison. We were playing “Pick One,” a game in which one makes words from Scrabble tiles.

The Friday after Christmas, Ivan and I visited my good friend Deqo and her children. Here, Nora tries on my covering. :)

Ivan will make a good dad someday if God gives us children. Don’t you think?