The English Geek

Christmas Writing Challenge #8: on Christmas Day in the Morning

(sorta-but-not-really-very-closely-related aside: Sting's version of "I Saw Three Ships" is officially Kaleb's favorite Christmas song this year. When we get in the car, he says "sing it with me, Christmas morning song," so I turn it on and we listen to it and sing along where ever we go. I'm not sure how to explain just how cute his lispy little rendition of "on Christmas day in the mornin'" is.)

Writing Prompt: Write about your Christmas mornings. Where you early-morning openers? Did you follow a certain M.O.? Or was it something random every year? Who passed out gifts? Did you open one at a time or all at once? Did you eat before or after opening gifts? What were your Christmas-morning breakfasts like? Is there something specific or unique that stands out in your memory?

Some French literary theorist---Derrida, maybe---who I am too lazy to look up right now said that desiring a thing is better than having a thing, and that once you get the thing you want, desire goes away. Which really means: anticipation is more pleasurable than receiving. Of course, I didn't have the language to put it that way when I was seven years old, but I intuitively got it. I'd stay in my bed on Christmas morning, awake before Becky, filled with that tingly anticipation of the first sight of the tree, skirted with gifts. Once all the kids were awake, then started the long process of getting Dad out of bed. We'd beg and plead and make furtive trips to the bathroom, carefully closing our eyes so as not to even tempt a glance at the tree. Even being the snoop that I was, I never peaked into the front room where the presents from Santa waited; I wanted to savor the anticipation. Plus, Santa always left out a few unwrapped gifts, and I didn't want to spoil my pretend surprise.

I was always mystified: how was it that my mom, who passed out the gifts, always managed to have us open similar gifts at once? Even after I knew about the Santa-Clause Secret, this still baffled me. How could she remember? Of course, now that I'm playing Santa, I realize she probably  had some system, but back then, it was puzzling. I would ponder that question as I sat in front of the glittering tree, wondering which gifts were for me.

Once we finally got started, we opened gifts one at a time, so as to stretch out the anticipation. We'd admire each other's gifts before hurrying to open the next one, every so often remembering our parents in the glut and frenzy of present-opening and giving them a gift to open. We sort of had assigned seats; your gift that Santa didn't wrap was sitting on your chair, and that's where you'd sit to open gifts. Slowly through the morning, opened gifts piled up around us. Once we'd finished opening, and for a few days after Christmas, we'd all leave our new treasures on our individual chairs. It made the feeling of newness stretch out, because once you took your stuff off your chair and it was absorbed by the dressers and cupboards and closets in the house, it didn't seem new any longer.

Here I am, about five years old I think. That year I had this particular stretch of couch as my chair, and I have a vague impression that I asked Mom to take this picture of me with all my new stuff. That red-and-white tablecloth-looking thing is one of my favorite dresses; it had Holly Hobby on it, and my mom sewed it. I don't remember the doll or the doll car, but I do remember playing with that Play Doh.

Resolution: at my house, Santa wraps all the gifts, so there's no assigned seating method. But somehow, it all falls into place that the kids sit in the same spot every year, gathering their new possessions around them. This year, I'm resolving to take a photo of each of them like this one, a snapshot of everything they got.

Christmas Writing Challenge #7: Holiday Treats

The Prompt: Write about the foods you had during the holidays, growing up. You can also include recipes if you want!

The foods we make and serve during the holidays give us a visceral connection, in both senses of the word. The pulling-out of recipes we only use at Christmas is an activity that can draw us backward into memories while it pulls us forward in anticipation to the moment we finally get to sink our teeth in. Because they’re only used on special days, holiday foods are integral to making the holiday feel like the holiday.

This afternoon, a neighbor dropped off a bag of chocolate-dipped pretzels; last night, a different neighbor brought us a scrumptious cheese ball (I am so going to get the recipe). There’s a half-finished bag of caramel popcorn in the pantry and a cute package of s’mores fixin’s on the counter (the card attached reads "wish we had s’more friends like you!" how cute is that?). And even though the sharing of goodies between neighbors wasn’t something we did much of growing up, all of these treats and snacks have left me thinking about the snacks and treats my mom made sure to include in our holidays. There were only a few things that we always had, but there was always something special during Christmas.

I can confess to being one of those strange, few people who actually like fruitcake. I have a vague memory of my grandma’s fruitcake, but the clearest impression was made by our next-door neighbor, Jean’s fruitcake. I loved the rich, dense, buttery cake and the bits of chewy fruit, the fragrant spices. Sometimes she’ll still drop off a cake or two just before Christmas, and the few times I’ve tasted it again I’ve been instantly transported back to sneaking a bite or two as a girl.

We also usually had cookies. My favorites were the candy cane cookies and the peanut butter ones. The candy cane cookies were made with a batch of dough, half colored pink, the other half left dough-colored (it’s not exactly white, right?). I clearly remember rolling out pink ropes of dough, then wrapping them around the white ropes and forming a cane shape. Somewhere along the line, my mom has misplaced the recipe. I’ve tried a few variations, but none of them have been the candy-cane cookie recipe. I look nearly ever year for one. (If you have a good one, please share!) The magic of the peanut-butter cookie came in the hands-on approach you took with the dough. There was something so fun in pressing the balls of dough with a fork, two times crossways to form a grid pattern, but the best part was sinking the Hershey’s kiss into the center of the just-baked cookie. Writing about these, I am realizing that my memories don’t really focus on the eating of the cookies—instead, they’re devoted to the making of them.

Of course, there were years of random treats. One year, my mom learned how to make home made suckers. That year, she built a tree out of square dowels, arranged in a concentric pattern to make the "tree" shape, drilled down the length with holes. Then she filled the holes in with suckers. There must have been two dozen or more homemade suckers. (If you look very closely, you can see the very edge of the sucker tree in that photo of us in our nightgowns a few posts further down.) And of course, who could forget the year of the gingerbread house? After Christmas it stayed downstairs, getting staler and staler in the basement, nibbled on every once in awhile by a child desperate for some kind of candy, even eight-months-old M&Ms.

But the thread that runs through all of our holiday treats is made of two things: caramel and fudge. Every year, they would be there, as much a part of Christmas as the tree or Santa Claus. Sometimes my mom would fill a tiered plate with hunks of them. I remember one year, she made the caramel too soft, so we dipped it in chocolate—even better! I’m not going to share the caramel recipe, because even though it makes a delicious caramel, it’s one of those tetchy recipes, the kind that require you to "cook until done" and you don’t know what "done" looks like until you’ve cooked it five or six times, and I wouldn’t want to add to any holiday frustration you might be feeling. But I will share the recipe for PERFECT fudge. It is creamy and rich and never grainy. Just smooth and delicious. If you make it, be sure to post!

Perfect Fudge 1 can evaporated milk 4 cups sugar 24 ounces chocolate (a mix of dark and milk is best) 2 squares very soft (but not melted) butter (1 cup) 1 tsp vanilla 1/2 cup nuts (pecans, walnuts, or almonds) (optional) Pour the evaporated milk into a large sauce pan; add the sugar and stir till dissolved. Bring to a gentle boil, then boil for exactly 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a large bowl, break the chocolate into pieces. Cut the butter into chunks, and put into the bowl with the chocolate. When the milk/sugar combo has boiled for ten minutes, pour it over the chocolate and butter. Working quickly, stir until smooth, adding the vanilla once the chocolate is melted. Pour into a buttered 8x11" pan. Allow to cool completely before serving. If using nuts, you can either stir them in just before pouring the fudge in the pan, or sprinkle over the top after the fudge is in the pan.

Christmas Writing Challenge #6: An Overdue Thank-You Letter

(I’m sorry to have vanished from my writing prompts. Life got in the way for awhile! I’ve been feeling way too stressed; this writing prompt is a way of making myself feel better. It’s a strange thing, but writing a thank-you letter gives me a very welcome sense of peacefulness.)

Writing Prompt: Write a letter to someone who made one, a few, or all of your childhood Christmases special, thanking them for what they did.

During last week, which was insanely busy, crowded with a bunch of last-minute gift decisions and on-line orders, three church activities, one baby shower, one family party, plenty of food preparations, and other small crises, I found myself thinking about my mom, and about the grown-up Haley in the future, when she’s the mom and feeling overwhelmed. I had this idea, that when she’s grown up she’ll realize all the effort I put into the holidays, and feel grateful, and then I thought—maybe my mother thought the same thing, and here I am, The Mom of this family, overstressed and wishing someone would just acknowledge something, and realizing that my mom must have felt the same way. Only I’ve never told her I am grateful for it. So, this is me, thanking my mom.

Dear Mom:

Today, standing at my kitchen sink washing pans, a mental to-do list repeating itself over and over in my head while the scent of pine tree brought an edge of anxiety to my heartbeat, I thought of how many times you must have stood in these very same shoes (or battered, pink, fuzzy slippers, the left one stained with a smear of homemade fudge, as the case may be), your mind whirring with the complicated processes of being the Christmas magician. I’m certain Dad didn’t help you much, and you carried, too, this whole burden: the shopping and the searching and the deciding about gifts, the wrapping, the hiding, the finding; the meals and snacks; the fun activities, the family parties, the mandatory school choirs; even the self-imposed Extra Credit stress (sewing pajamas and dresses instead of buying them, the unrelenting imperative that everything must be perfect). You even flocked your own tree. Maybe you, too, comforted yourself, like I did today, by thinking of your children in the future, at the moment we would realize all the stuff you did for us.

So—today I’m here thanking you. Thank you for the home-sewn pajamas and for the years you bought them. Thank you for always preparing an enormous meal for us, for working hard to be the kind of mom who always tried for extraordinary food. Thank you for letting us have two trees—I will never forget the two distinct emotions of standing before the "pretty tree" upstairs and then in front of the "kids’ tree" downstairs. My memories of both of our trees still make me tingle with anticipation. Thank you for all your late nights, spent on wrapping, cooking, sewing, planning, and probably worrying. Thank you for the hours of shopping and fighting crowds. Thank you for the years you got the perfect gifts, like the year you got me a Cabbage Patch doll even though I thought I was too old, and for knowing she had to have red hair and green eyes. Thank you for always including your parents in our celebrations, so that my memories are made all the richer. Thank you for feeding my love of books by making sure I owned my own. Thank you for candy cane cookies and peanut-butter cookies (with a Hershey’s kiss pressed on top), for homemade fudge and caramel, for roasted turkey and brussels-sprout casserole. Thank you for surviving my adolescent Christmases and for playing Santa up until I got married and moved out. Thank you for giving me a watch, that year I was about what—nine or ten? Do you know, I still have that watch, even though it no longer tells time and the band is mostly worn away; it is a sort of treasure to me because it reminds me of being young and innocent and not yet jaded. Thank you for the beautiful picture of J. Thank you for all the things I’ve forgotten, too. I’m certain I wasn’t as appreciative as I should have been, but now you know: I was grateful then and I am grateful now, for all the work you put into making our Christmases magical.

PS—I have mostly forgiven you for the ringlets.

PPS: I wish I had a picture of you and me on a Christmas morning!

A Little Bonus Challenge: If you can, let the person you wrote the letter to read it---either on your blog or by printing and sending the letter to them.

Christmas Writing Challenge #5: Traditional Gifts

Writing Prompt: What traditional gifts---things you received every year---did you get? Out of those traditional gifts, which individual one stands out the most in your memory?

Traditions give a personal shape to our holiday experiences. It seems like each family develops its own, unique spin on more universal traditions. Traditional gifts are important, I think, because they are a combination of knowledge (you know you're getting something from that category) and surprise (you don't know what specific thing it'll be). These are the gifts that, if they were missing, the holidays wouldn't feel right.

In our family, we had several traditional gifts:

Dolls
Playing with baby dolls was one of my favorite things to do as a child, and we received a new one every year. They'd come in boxes, usually, with accessories like little combs and brushes, different clothes, tiny dishes. Those baby dolls sparked my innate love of babies, I think; even now, when I happen to catch the plastic smell of a new baby doll, I am flooded with the feeling of anticipating being a mother that I felt even as a three-year-old.

(Becky and me holding our new baby dolls; I think I was six and she was three here.) There isn't a picture of my favorite dolls. These were rag dolls, a boy and a girl, with yellow yarn hair. I got them when I was in second grade, and my best friend Amy and I spent many, many hours dressing them with the baby clothes I found (no doubt snooping!) one day.

Books
My mom isn't a reader like the rest of us are. But I am certain she knew how important reading and books were to her daughters, because every Christmas we received at least one new book. My clearest memory of Christmas books is of the Christmas I was 15. My parents had given me Jean Auel's books, Clan of the Cave Bear etc, and when I found myself with an empty hour that afternoon, I dove into my new books. My dad was reading something downstairs by the tree, with a fire roaring in the fireplace, so I sat down there with him (after putting my new record, Forever Young by Alphaville, on the record player) and started reading. That is an indelible memory for me: fire, music, lights on the tree, a good new book, all in the silent company of my dad.

New Outfit
It wouldn't be Christmas without something new to wear. Finding boots, shirts, dresses, or jeans in your pile of gifts was always thrilling. Once I was a little bit older, I would shop with my mom so she knew exactly what I wanted to have for my new Christmas clothes, but when I was younger, I always loved what she gave me. Check out this outfit, circa 1979; I remember opening those boots and just loving them:

Christmas-Eve PJs
Because you have to look good in the Christmas-morning pictures! Many years, my mom sewed our Christmas-Eve PJs. I SO wish this picture was in focus (in my mind it is), because this was my FAVORITE nightgown I ever had. My mom made them for Becky and me out of flannel-backed satin, only it wasn't the cheap, thin stuff you can find now. The flannel was thick on the inside, and the satin was substantial. I loved that nightgown! My older sister Suzette is in the picture with us, and our niece Alicia, who we were always babysitting (her mom was a young teenager, struggling to figure out how to be a mom and a wife and everything that entails at about 16, so we helped her out); she almost felt like another sister!

Resolution: I do all of these traditional gifts for my kids (except for the baby doll thing, obviously; Haley was more of a Barbie doll kind of girl), but I'm not sure I've ever shared the stories behind them. This year, I will!

Christmas Writing Challenge #4: December Activities

Writing prompt: What activities and experiences did you have during December that made it feel like Christmas to you?

Sometimes when I've sat down to write the journaling for layouts about my kids' Christmases, I've remembered that the holidays are so much more than just Christmas Day. All the activities before the day itself make you feel it, and even those lazy, post-Christmas days are full of it, when you just hang out in pajamas, eating left-over fudge and caramel and cheeseball with fancy crackers, using your new Christmas stuff. I think it's important to write about those things, too.

I'm hoping my sister Becky will respond to this prompt, because I seem to have forgotten lots of our December activities. Maybe we didn't have many? I remember the cousin Christmas parties very clearly. We'd all draw names and bring little gifts, and Santa always came. My clearest memory of those parties was of receiving a doll from someone---when I was 11 or 12. I remember being so frustrated that no one saw me as grown up yet. I remember lots of baking and candy making; putting up the tree; going to the candy sale at the Elk's Lodge. All of those activities were fun, of course, but what really made it feel like Christmas to me was snooping.

Yep, I was a snoop. Starting about October, I'd begin visiting all of the hiding places I knew my mom used: underneath the tarp on the boat in the garage, the corners of her closet and under her bed, the downstairs storage rooms, the coat closet. I don't think that, from the age of eight onward, I received more than ten gifts I'd not already snooped out. Part of me knew I was ruining the surprise, but honestly: the fun of snooping was worth the exchange. I didn't just find my gifts, either. I knew what my sisters were getting, too, although I didn't ever spoil the surprise for them (I hope---did I, Becky?). On Christmas morning, I'd tick of a mental list as each gift was opened. The frustration came in when all the gifts were unwrapped---and there was still something crucial my mom had forgotten about. One of the perils of being a snoop was knowing exactly where the forgotten gift was and not being able to say a word about it. (Generally my mom would find those gifts about March or August of the next year.)

Here I am at one of the cousins' parties, age nine or ten, wearing those awful ringlets my mom insisted on. How I hated ringlets! I loved that dress, though. Maybe I am looking down to hide my guilty conscience from Santa's all-knowing eyes?

Resolution: Today I caught Haley snooping. This is the first year I've not had somewhere to lock up the Christmas gifts, so I think this is her first year of snooping. Luckily she's not found my best hiding place (I know this because it's almost impossible for me to open the door to this spot, and I'm certain she's not strong enough to get it open). It reminded me of the secret life of children, how their parents think they know their kids but they also have all these other, secret facets of themselves. My resolution is to move most of the gifts into that good hiding spot tomorrow---but I also think I'll leave a few here and there for her to discover. After all, snooping feels like Christmas!

Christmas Writing Challenge #3: Me + The Big Guy in a Red Suit

Writing Prompt: Write about your relationship with Santa Claus.

Most families, it seems, have their unique Old St. Nick relationships.  Write about the specifics of Santa Claus in your family. How did you feel about him? When did you discover the truth, and how did you feel about it?

As an adult, I've known families who don't do the Santa thing at all, or who do it but their kids know who Santa really is. Personally, I am a little bit obsessed with making sure my kids believe in Santa for as long as possible, because I was way too young when I found out the truth: six or seven. It was mostly my fault, as I was incurably curious, and one of my favorite things to do (Christmastime or not) was to look in drawers and corners of closets and under beds, just to see what I could discover that I didn't know before. One day, I was looking under my mom's bed and I discovered a sack of little toys from a department store (ZCMI for you locals!). I sat on the floor between the bed and the wall, playing with one of them, a little clear tube filled with water, with a small hoop and floating balls inside. The base was blue, with a white button, and when you pushed the button, the balls came rushing into the tube, and your goal was to get the balls through the little hoop. I played with it for awhile, and then very carefully put it back---I somehow new, instinctively, not to tell my mom or anyone else what I'd found. When that same toy showed up as one of my Christmas gifts that year, the Santa gig was up.

I don't remember going to visit Santa at the mall as a child. I also don't remember the parties we used to have when I was really little, at some relative's house whose name I've forgotten; I only know we did it because my older sisters and mom have told me we did. Here's one of my favorite photos from one of those Christmas parties (thanks, James, for all your scanning work!):

I think I was three in this picture. I love the look on my face and that dress---no doubt sewed by my mother---and that I'm clapping my hands.

But I do remember believing in Santa Claus. I remember that tingly anticipation of Christmas Eve, trying to fall asleep in your new pajamas. The best part came right after we'd finally gotten Mom & Dad out of bed and we were all sitting in front of the tree. I loved just looking at all of the gifts under the tree, wondering what they were and which ones were mine.

Even after I knew the Santa truth, I still wanted him to be real, anyway. I tried to create scenarios to disprove my knowledge: my mother was just helping Santa out, or storing the gifts at each individual home made it easier for S. Claus on Christmas Eve. I very consciously wanted the secret to not be spoiled; I wanted to believe without reservation. Even when I was older---12 or 13---I continued wishing despite knowing. The Christmas I was 11 or 12, my grandparents slept over, so Becky and I slept in the basement, next to the "kids' tree" (the "pretty tree" was upstairs), and I stayed awake long after she had fallen asleep, listening for the telltale signs of my parents putting the presents out, but I never heard anything. I know my mom worked hard to keep us all believing---I've never told her how  young I was when I found out, and I always went along with the facade of believing. In fact, to this day I don't think I've ever said the words to her: "I know who Santa really is." Because, if your mom knows you know something, then it's got to be true!

Resolution: As much as I write in journals, I don't think I've ever written down the details of how I make the Santa magic for my kids (where I hide things, for example, or the fact that I've developed a whole other handwriting style that I use only for the tags on Santa's gifts). This year, I will!

 

Christmas Writing Challenge #2: Most Vivid Memory

Writing Prompt: When you think of your childhood Christmases, what is the most vivid memory you have?

My friend is still scanning my photos, so today's another photo-less writing prompt (unless you have a photo to go along with your vivid memory; if so, lucky you!). I think the most vivid memories have two separate connections that keep them strong: a sensory connection and an emotional one. If that holds true for you, include those details in the telling.

Surprisingly enough, my most vivid memory isn't connected with the Christmas-morning gift-opening frenzy (although I have some fond memories of that event!). I wrote yesterday about our Christmas-Eve dinners at my grandparents' house, and my most vivid memory is connected to that. I'm not sure how old I was when this happened, but I was definitely younger than six, because I still believed in Santa. Sometime during the evening, it had started to snow, and when we started getting ready to leave, we discovered inches & inches piled up on everything. I think this is the only time we had a Christmas-Eve snow during my childhood. I'm not sure what my mom was doing, but my sisters and I stood outside on the balcony, watching the snow fall down through the sky, illuminated by Christmas lights. In this memory, my sisters are like shadows behind my dad and me; it's mostly just the two of us, watching the snow fall, looking up, and then suddenly the magic happened: we heard sleigh bells. Maybe that is what my mom was doing? I don't really want to understand how the magic was made. I just want to remember that moment: cold air and falling snow, the warm yellow light from the open door behind us, being small enough to feel safe in my dad's arms, the sound of bells and the absolute certainty that everything impossible really exists.

Christmas Writing Challenge #1: Wished-for Photo

Writing Prompt: Write about a photo you wish someone had taken

I think that we have clearer memories of the experiences we have pictures of, because the pictures help us involve another sense (vision) with the memory. But I also think that the majority of people twenty or thirty years ago didn't think about taking pictures the way we do now (obviously, digital cameras have a huge impact on how many photos we take and what we photograph), so we don't have very many pictures to help jar our memories. Maybe this writing prompt will help you remember something you've forgotten. You might want to give some of the back story before you write about the wished-for photo, like I did here. Happy writing!

My grandma (her name was Florence, but we never called her "grandma Florence," because our relationship with her was so much stronger than it was with my dad's mom; she was just Grandma, the archetype all others are measured by) had this really cool table. Most of the year, it looked like a regular sofa table. But during the holidays, its secrets were revealed: it was really a dining table folded into the shape of a sofa table. For Christmas Eve, she'd unfold the table. It spread nearly the entire length of the front room in their tiny one-room apartment. In my memory, we always had roast beef on Christmas Eve, with mashed potatoes of course, and her curiously-strong brown gravy.

While my mom helped Grandma finish up the dinner preparations, and Dad and Grandpa sat at the round, yellow Formica kitchen table, talking while Grandpa smoked, my sisters and I would hang out in the bedroom. My grandparents slept in separate twin beds, with off-white matelasse bedspreads and heavy, flat down pillows. We'd play with Grandpa's old till calculator (which we called the "add-em and add-em machine"); he was the manager of the little apartment complex and part of his job was to collect and balance the rent every month. Or we'd rummage through Grandma's jewelery box, sifting through her long strings of shell necklaces from Hawaii. And we'd speculate---what might Santa be bringing tomorrow morning? In my mind, those discussions were endless. I've a clear memory of my sister Suzette sending me out into the kitchen as a spy: my job was to discover whether or not she was getting a new pair of jeans. Problem was, whenever my mom and grandparents talked secrets, they spoke in their secret language, so I went back to the bedroom with nothing but a roll to share with my sisters.

The picture I wish we had: the eight of us at the magical table, just after the prayer, everyone feeling a bit squished, one of us sitting right in front of the tree with its blue ornaments and lights. I want to be sitting next to Grandma in this picture and, since I'm getting far too romantic, maybe my dad's arm could be over my mom's shoulder. Grandpa would be sitting at the head of the table, of course, with the ancient TV about two inches away from the back of his chair. My sisters and I all manage to smile, keep our eyes open, and look at the camera. I'd like to have a clearer memory of dishes and tablecloths and steaming platters of food, of the tree in its corner and our faces full of anticipation. As it is, what I remember most clearly are the purple glasses (which are now in my kitchen) full of wine for the adults, and the way it felt to hug my grandma in her scratchy lace apron, and the scents: cigarette smoke and gravy and potato-y steam and pine tree and the fresh, cold air coming through the open window.

Resolution: make sure to take a picture this year of my kids sitting at their grandma's table for Christmas dinner.

If you play along, make sure to add your name to the Mr. Linky below!

In Which Family Photos Prompt Epiphanies, Resolutions, and a Writing Challenge

At last, on Saturday, we got some snow. Jake and Kendell shoveled the driveway and sidewalks together, and then we drove out to my mom's house, so Kendell could put her lights up for her. While Kendell and Jake were busy stringing Mom's icicles, I found myself with an intense desire to look at my childhood pictures. So I pulled out all the dusty photo albums and started flipping through them. This prompted an intense series of epiphanies for me, sitting there on the floor of what used to be my bedroom (in those days, the walls were covered with photos torn out of magazines and Depeche Mode posters, in complete contrast to the country-blue floral bedding and the gymnastics trophies on my dresser, and one day I'll have to blog about that patched-up hole in the wall you can still faintly see underneath the paint) and is now the TV room.

First off, I realized how meaningful pictures are---even the bad ones. Which is a good thing, because I'd say about half of my parents' photos are bad in some way. The earliest were taken with an ancient camera that took 110 film---remember those? In my mind, all of the photos are in focus, well-composed, and colorful. In reality, they're---well, not. But looking at even the bad pictures made me remember dozens of things I'd forgotten, like the very-1970's wallpaper in our kitchen, and the way our front room used to be decorated, and even that our downstairs didn't always look like a fabric store. Resolution: worry less about photographic perfection (read: posed, perfect lighting, and a clutter-free background) all the time (although, of course, sometimes it's a good thing to worry about!) and invest more energy in just getting the moment down on film (well...in bytes, I suppose).

Secondly, I found those everyday details so appealing. Sure, there are photos of birthdays and Christmas Eves and trips to Lake Powell that evoke emotion. But the ones I was drawn to the strongest were the everyday photos, taken just because. I try to do this in my life---snap a photo of a kid doing something cute, just because. Obviously digital cameras make it a lot easier. But I could do it more often, especially of my older kids. Resolution: get the camera out more often.

And finally, as I pulled a few photos out of Mom's album because I wanted to have them here, in my home (my friend James is even scanning them for me), I realized: no one but me has any idea why those specific photos (the ones I took home with me) hold an emotional connection. No one but me knows the specific stories behind the pictures. I do, every once in awhile, make a scrapbook layout about myself. I write about my memories in my journals. But I've never paired up my old photos with words. Resolution: make some sort of scrapbook about my childhood.

After I looked through the albums and pulled out my pictures, I sat on Mom's couch and looked out the window, remembering a conversation I'd had the night before with some friends we went to dinner with. One of the wives started talking about her other friend, who had started a blog, and she found it to be the biggest, dumbest waste of time. "Who has time and energy to sit around blogging all day?" she asked, and then Kendell volunteered, "well, Amy has a blog." Cue awkward silence. We managed to talk for a bit about blogging in general, but I found it hard to explain why I blog. I think it's just something you get or you don't get. But there in my mom's front room, I found the two things combining (blogging, my resolution to somehow pair my photos and memories) in my head, and I decided to do something about it.

So! That's a long explanation for the point of this post, which is what I am going to be doing on my blog over the next two weeks, a series of writing challenges. Starting on Friday, December 7, I'm going to be doing a twelve-days-of-Christmas sort of thing, in which you'll find me writing about my childhood Christmas memories, pairing them with a photo (if James finishes scanning them all!), and challenging you to do the same on your blog, or in your personal journal. You could even collect all the prompts and make a real, live scrapbook if you wanted. There'll be a Mr. Linky link for you to add your name to, so that others can come and read what you wrote. Answer some of the prompts, or all of them, but I hope you'll come and play along with me!