Issue #12

and the greatest of these is . . .

A twitch upon the thread

Early December, after the burial of my sister Josie, after ham and pasta salad, after cupcakes and cookies and singing “Happy Birthday” for what would have been Josie’s 58^th, my sister-in-law Debbie and my oldest sister Ceci quieted everyone down (there were over fifty of us and it was noisy)—and said they had some good news to announce.

The announcement was greeted with cheers and clapping, hurrahs and woo-hoos. You would have thought we all won a free trip to Aruba.

I’ll tell you what the announcement was, but first I have to explain an old Hathway family Christmas tradition.

In the late 1950s, having produced six of their eleven kids, my parents, certified geniuses for building family bonds, started a tradition they called Advent Angels. At the beginning of Advent everyone picked a name out of a hat and had to secretly make a gift for that person. (Praying for that person was also part of the bargain although I’m not sure how much that translated into practice.) On Christmas Eve gifts would be opened one by one, and the recipient had to guess who the giver was.

Over the years the handmade gifts varied in quality and originality. Orange-juice-can pencil holders, woven hot pads, and trashcans made from Baskin Robbins ice cream tubs (my older siblings worked there) were all the rage when I was young. These days some givers shine with their woodworking, painting, or sewing skills—and others merely get by with spice rubs, stationery, painted birdhouses, fleece throws, and in a pinch, Christmas ornaments.

Now that the family numbers 96 (siblings, in-laws, nieces, nephews, grand nieces and nephews) and some of us have moved away from our home state of Maryland, we no longer open gifts under the same roof; and to accommodate busy schedules, the list of what counts as handmade has expanded (curated Spotify playlists are fine). But the basic rules still apply: everyone over the age of two must participate, and all presents must be received by Christmas Eve.

However much we love our Advent Angel tradition, coming up with an idea, executing it, and making deadline in the busiest season of the year is stressful to say the least. This past Christmas season, that stress became pure dread; Advent Angel morale hit an all-time low. No one could think of anything besides Josie—her suffering when she was ill, our suffering when she passed.

So you can understand the joy in Whoville when Ceci and Debbie announced that this year the Advent Angel deadline was extended through the end of January.

Because of this extension it was the Saturday before Valentine’s Day that I finally received my Advent Angel gift. For the record, when I pulled the package from the mailbox, I was in a funk, mean as a goose, sad and wired at the same time, an uncomfortable combination. There was no ostensible reason for me to be in a bad mood, which tells me it was probably a stealth attack of grief.

Everything changed instantly when I opened the package. This is what I saw—

[If you read Issue #1 you’ll remember that an igg is a total moron.]

Inside the egg/igg carton were eggs decorated with pictures of my husband, my four kids and me. Not all were flattering pictures.

The mean reds vaporized like steam from cartoon ears. I couldn’t stop laughing.

I verified that the giver was my newest nephew-in-law Matt, and that made me laugh even harder. He’s a big, bearded, busy guy, not one you’d picture working decoupage glue onto a wooden egg. I was delighted. While his crafting skills are on level with a kindergartener’s, his creativity, effort and humor set the bar high for his future Advent Angel gifts.

But there’s something else that lifted my spirits. Matt’s full-on embrace of our family tradition shored up my sense of belonging, of all of us belonging to each other. To quote Chesterton, a twitch upon the thread of an unseen hook and invisible line brought me back, 5,000 miles away though I was, to the love of my Hathway family; brought me back to our shared past, present and future; brought me back to our beloved dead, to my parents who started it all, to my dear niece Joanne who would crochet scarves for her Advent Angels, to sweet baby Paige who never got to make a present for someone, to Josie who somehow managed to get her gift done in the fall and who once made the most memorable Advent Angel gift of all—and that’s the story I’ll end this piece with.

When she was about six or seven, Josie picked my brother-in-law Richard for her Advent Angel. Richard was going into active duty with the Air Force and had to shave off his magnificent handlebar mustache. (This was in the 1970s—mustaches were the beards of the day). So Josie made him a paper mustache to replace the one he lost. Here they are:

*

The unseen hook, the invisible thread

When I was active on my blog Poem Elf (getting back to it is still a goal for me, the same as some people think they need to get back to the gym), every Valentine’s Day I would post a Poem Blitz, putting love poems on lampposts and lingerie displays and high school gym doors and wherever else lovers might find themselves.

For this Valentine’s Day, I’m re-upping a post about a Lawrence Raab poem that I left on a playground in 2021. I send it out to anyone who is alone and doesn’t want to be. Love is a renewing force, and a mysterious one. You never know when it’s going to sneak up and upend your life story.

My Life Before I Knew It
by Lawrence Raab

I liked rainy days
when you didn't have to go outside and play.
At night I'd tell my sister
there were snakes under her bed.
When I mowed the lawn I imagined being famous.
Cautious and stubborn, unwilling to fail,
I knew for certain what I didn't want to know.

I hated to dance. I hated baseball,
and collected airplane cards instead.
I learned to laugh at jokes I didn't get.
The death of Christ moved me,
but only at the end of Ben Hur.
I thought Henry Mancini was a great composer.

My secret desire was to own a collie
who would walk with me in the woods
when the leaves were falling
and I was thinking about writing the stories
that would make me famous.

Sullen, overweight, melancholy,
writers didn't have to be good at sports.
They stayed inside for long periods of time.
They often wore glasses. But strangers
were moved by what they accomplished
and wrote them letters. One day

one of those strangers would introduce
herself to me, and then
the life I'd never been able to foresee
would begin, and everything
before I became myself would appear
necessary to the rest of the story.

You have go where you’ve gone to be where you are, I used to tell my kids. It’s a syntactical mess, of course, and maybe that’s why it’s less memorable to them than my other bon mots (Don’t be the drunkest girl at the party and Stay away from porn culture). Thank goodness for poet Lawrence Raab. In “My Life Before I Knew It” he says everything I wanted to tell them about heading off regret and seeing grace at work in your life.

I love Lawrence Raab. He’s droll and such a wonderful storyteller that the weightiness of his poems always catches me off guard. The ending of “My Life So Far,” for instance. With the lightest touch and the quickest maneuver, using One day and and then the way a dancer uses pause and pivot, he turns this amusing portrait of an awkward boy towards heart-swooning romance—

and then

the life I’d never been able to forsee

would begin, and everything

before I became myself would appear

necessary to the rest of the story.

This line—the life I’d never been able to forsee—almost makes me burst. Is there a more wondrous experience than to look back on the grubby, embarrassing moments of your life and see that with some invisible magic those moments led you, blind and headstrong as you were, towards the very thing your heart had secretly desired?

*

Tune-up

No Small Endeavor is a podcast usually focused on theological matters, but this week the host, Lee C. Camp, took a purely secular look at improving our connections with the ones we love. He interviewed Dr. Alexandra Solomon on the episode “How to Have Flourishing Relationships.”

The first five minutes or so made me cringe. The chemistry between the host, who I love, and the guest, who I initially found cloying, was off. But they grew more comfortable together as the interview went on, and in the end I found it a good tune-up for Valentine’s Day.

Here’s an excerpt:

Lee C. Camp

Another quote from your book that came to mind a moment ago when you were talking is, he had this great line about, 'say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean.' I've never heard that last part, don't say it mean, so where'd that come from?

Alexandra Solomon

Oh, yeah, this is a really cool therapist that I met along the way who was really helpful to me and to my family, and it was something that she had picked up along the way.

Somebody had said it to her. Right. 'Say what you mean and mean what you say, but don't say it in a mean way.' It was really a nice reminder about that alignment between what's happening inside of you and what you say out loud, but really trying to be mindful that compassion gets us so much further with the people in our lives than anything else does.

I mean, shame, you know, we can shame, we can invoke shame in other people and they will change their behavior. Shame's a behavior changer, but it happens more beautifully and more gently and more gracefully when done with love. So I really liked that. But that oftentimes means I feel like I spend a lot of time with my couples in therapy, coaching them around pausing conversations.

I think that especially like in our Western U. S. 'go, go, go' culture, this idea that you just got to deal with stuff head on and talk it through and dig through it. I think there are times when couples go on too long, the conversation goes on too long. It gets like cyclical and redundant and people end up being more polarized.

So I'm a big fan of dosing, you know, micro dosing conversation and pressing pause when we get activated and stepping away, coming back, you know, especially big ones and tangly ones and ones that don't have easy, obvious answers. I think that we do better to pause, reflect, come back, try again. I think there's something really loving about that.

*

Be mine but take a shower first

If you’re going through a tough time, my mom is here to help.

She was never one to offer advice, unsolicited or otherwise, but on this one occasion, when I was in college, she sent me a letter with advice I have since passed on to my own kids.

For background, when I was a freshman, my now-husband and I broke up around Valentine’s Day. I was miserable about the situation I had brought upon myself, so she dashed off this note:

In case you can’t read her writing:

Dear Maggie,

Wow-Pow-Boom I’m in a hurry to mail some letters.

Margaret, don’t worry, we all have bad days. They only last 24 hours & then they’re gone. As you go thru life you will encounter this situation many times. Don’t despair!

(Sometimes combing your hair & brushing your teeth & using Odor-o-no helps)

Happy Valentines

Love,

Mother

[Odor-o-no was a brand of deodorant that my grandmother, an early adopter, used. My mom always thought it was funny that after Grandma Kathleen applied it, she had to walk around the house with her arms in the air to dry it.]

She included a Valentine’s Day card—

and signed it to cheer me up—

*

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! If you enjoyed this post and you haven’t yet subscribed, please do! And share with anyone you think might enjoy it too.