I am fairly certain I have taken at least one picture of my baby just about every day since the day she was born.  Some would say that is excessive.  For me the shots are priceless.  Looking back I notice the little things I was too tired, too worried, or too inexperienced to notice as they were happening.  I sometimes hear people admonishing others to put down the camera and simply experience life.  For me the camera records and documents our lives and does not hinder my ability to live in the moment.  It does however allow me to go back and RElive it with a kind of clarity and acuity my mind’s eye cannot fully recall.  My baby, now four, got an iPad for Christmas and I had no idea she’d been taking pictures with it.  I was too worried about childproofing it and loading it up with educational apps to notice.  Today I discovered this picture.  I remember her saying, “Hey Mama!” and when I turned around she said, “CHEESE!”  I have since discovered she has taken pictures of her daddy, the wolfies and a LOT of her baby doll.  I have NO idea where she gets it.  <Looking up at the sky and whistling nonchalantly.>  I really think she has an eye and she certainly has an interesting perspective being so little — literally and figuratively.  And so now I have discovered yet another way to love pictures — through the lense of my child.  Writer Kurt Vonnegut said, “To practice any art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow.  So do it.”  I intend to.  And I believe my daughter does, too.

Mama always called me “Baby Doll” from the time I can remember until she passed from this life.  I never played with dolls or even liked them but I loved the endearment because she gave it to me.  Like my Grandmother Maris, she was so soft spoken, elegant, and gentle.  I never knew where she got the idea to call me that.  Then when I met my future husband he began calling me “Baby Doll” almost from the instant we started seriously dating.  I KNEW he was different and that confirmed it.  When he met my mother I told her what he always called me and she just smiled her sweet, beautiful, radiant smile.  I asked Burk why he chose that name and he said he didn’t know.  I just knew that for whatever reason it must belong to me.  The first time I saw my precious child for whom I had waited 41 years and for whom I had so fervently prayed, I marveled at her perfect beauty and thought she looked just like a Baby Doll.  With that realization dawned:  the cycle continues.  Now I call her my Baby Doll.  Former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “There is a mysterious cycle in human events.  To some generations much is given.  Of other generations much is expected.  This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”  Everyone of us has our rendezvous; we just have to wait and pray to find it.

For a little over two weeks now I have had a shadow; a sort of mini me.  Without complaint she has gone with me to work, thanked me for bringing snacks, and has been my partner in crime.  We have sung silly songs together, shopped together, cooked together, read books together, taken naps together, gone on walks together, watched TV together, giggled together, gone to church together, survived Christmas functions together, played games together, rung in the New Year together, and savered time in the park together.  We made up a fire hydrant game while we’re in the car.  Whomever spots the most by the time we reach our destination wins.  And she came up with a great alternative phrase for being frustrated:  “Oh Ritz crackers!”  We have brushed our teeth together, said prayers together, and have done chores together.  From the celebratory to the mundane, this little girl makes my life better.  She goes back to school tomorrow and I will miss her.  But I know she needs her friends, to learn, and to  discover other activities.  I sure have loved having her around though.  Author Elizabeth Stone said, “Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”  My precious, funny, sweet, kind, smart, strong little girl is the keeper of my heart.  I know it’s in good hands.

My little one came to me in tears.  She’d been playing with the Christmas ornaments even though I repeatedly explained they were not toys.  She said she was so sorry; that she’d broken one and put it in the recycling.  I asked her which one and discovered it was from the first Christmas Burk and I spent married.  I had never had a house and I’d had my new last name put on it.  She was sobbing and I told her that even though she should not have been playing with them I knew it was an accident.  I went to the recycling expecting to find it shattered.  Instead I was surprised to find most of it intact.  As we go through life, all of us have little pieces of ourselves that get broken for one reason or another.  It’s how we choose to deal with them that makes or breaks us.  Feminist writer Virginia Woolf said, “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”  Sometimes a lot of shattered fragments make a beautiful mosaic.  Or we can sweep them under the rug and pretend nothing ever got broken.  Our little ornament is still salvable.  I told her I was so proud of her for coming to me and telling me.  I think it is a testament to her character that she owned up to it, didn’t try to put the blame on anyone else, and told the truth.  I feel guilty to this day because I broke Mama and Daddy’s wedding cake topper and blamed it on the cat; poor Snowflake.  As this year closes I am trying to gather broken pieces of my own mostly because it has been a year since Mama has been gone.  I realize at least I have some; they just need to be repurposed into the mosaic of my life and my daughter’s.  We will always miss her, but brightly colored pieces of her that cannot be dimmed still shine their way through.  I will not let them fade with the passing of time.  And this mosaic will become part of others in the years to follow.  It already carries strong pieces of a Choctaw matriarch I never knew.  Then came pieces so elegant from my Grandmother Maris.  Daddy’s pieces have been the most prevalent, carrying wisdom, positivity, and perseverance.  Now Mama has added her own funny ones, soft ones, and beautiful ones and rather than try and bury them I choose to gather them all up and wrap them about me like a patchwork quilt.  The mosaic of my daughter has already started.  I think it carries seeds of greatness as its foundation.  From my side alone she has inherited the blood of French royals, Choctaw spirit and Irish fire.  And so our little ornament cannot hang anymore but it still exists; altered but standing.  It does not stand defeated, rather it stands open, proudly full of the memories from its past with room and hope for those yet to come.

Yesterday’s old school game post got me to thinking about the modern game I currently enjoy playing.  It all pretty much started around the time I got pregnant.  I would get up in the middle of the night frequently and couldn’t get back to sleep.  And so I dove into the equivalent of Scrabble with strangers on my iPhone.  I loved playing with this one guy from heaven only knows — New Zealand maybe — because it was day where ever he was and it would be about three in the morning my time.  The guy always beat me!  It was brutal losing EVERY time.  After a certain point I think he moved on to more cerebral waters.  I have some regulars with whom I usually have a game going.  Some are friends I know in person and some I’ve been lucky enough to meet through Facebook.  I’ve only tied twice and I have shamelessly posted a screenshot of my highest scoring word above.  I’m still trying to top that.  I’ve also been trying my hand at playing in French which has been VERY humbling.  As in I believe the gentlemen with whom I was playing might have thought I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.  Still, I enjoy the challenge of playing with people who are better in the hope that I will become better, too.  Tennis great Rafael Nadal said, “My motivation and aspiration is the same, being number one or being number five.  So that’s the truth.  And my goal is the same – it’s to always be happy playing, it’s to enjoy the game and improve always.”  He’s a bigger person … I want to be number one!  😉

When I was four I remember getting this game for Christmas.  I think I must have played it a thousand times with my parents.  I have never cared for math but always loved counting.  When I saw it in a catalog I jumped to buy it.  I had no idea they still made it!  Four years of waiting to be able to play games like this with Maris made this my greatest Christmas gift yet.  We played five rounds tonight and the last was an epic battle to see who would win as we were tied two to two.  The goal is to pick all your cherries off the tree but if the spinner winds up on the overturned bucket you have to put them all back.  I had forgotten about the dog and the bird that make you take two cherries out of your bucket if you land on them.  Maris shrieked with glee as she quickly won the first two rounds.  She lost the third and was incredibly gracious saying, “Good job Mama!”  When I was her age I’d cry when I lost.  We had no screens of any sort — no iPads, no television, and no iPhones.  Just a slowness of time sitting around the table.  It was déjà vu and a cycle of life continuing.  Author C. JoyBell C. said, “Life is a bowl of cherries.  Some cherries are rotten while others are good; it’s your job to throw out the rotten ones and forget about them while you enjoy eating the ones that are good!  There are two kinds of people:  those who choose to throw out the good cherries and wallow in all the rotten ones, and those who choose to throw out all the rotten ones and savor all the good ones.”  I try to cherry pick the good.

When most people think of Christmas, they think red and green.  For me it has always been blue and white.  We have a silver tree with dark blue “swag” that perpetually sways drunkenly because we have cats.  This was the first year my little girl helped me decorate the tree.  Every place we have traveled we always buy a Christmas ornament as a souvenir.  And so I explained to her where we brought this or that and she was delighted.  I know she will come to cherish them even more as she grows older.  It is like revisiting our trips with the placing of each bauble.  As she carefully helped me arrange the ornaments I thought it was no small coincidence that the first one she chose was Notre Dame — the place in which she took her first steps alone.  A Cafe du Monde ornament from New Orleans is hanging next to a trolley car from San Francisco.  A couple in a gondola dangles next to the Eiffel Tower, representing our honeymoon in Venice and Paris.  There is a Santa holding a cactus from Phoenix from the first trip Maris ever took.  Of course our tree has primarily wolf ornaments.  Some of my most beloved we got in Alaska, Quebec, and Santa Fe.  My very favorite ornament I chose to post.  I just cherish him and bought him a long time ago when I was single.  American author Louis L’Amour said, “No memory is ever alone; it’s at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.”  And so I see our Christmas tree as a tangible display of our life’s intangible treasures — yet another wonderful thing about Christmas.  At the top of our tree is a starfish from Florida.  Ave Maris Stella; Hail Star of the Sea.  So deck the halls one and all, y’all, and be blessed.

“Let’s begin by taking a smallish nap or two,” in the words of novelist A.A. Milne’s beloved Winnie the Pooh.  There is NOTHING better than a Sunday afternoon nap!  Curl up with cats and it’s even sweeter.  I think there’s a form of sleep shaming going on in society, and those who get by with the least amount “win”.  As a kid I viewed nap time as punishment and now I regard it as the highest reward.  Of course most of us cannot take naps everyday.  But sleep is important and those who require more than others should not be viewed as lazy.  Mama was continually embarrassed because Daddy ALWAYS fell asleep in church like clockwork once the sermon started.  Ironically, he loved attending church and said he felt at peace whenever he was there.  I remember one Midnight Mass where a friend and I were the only two non-Catholics in attendance and literally the ENTIRE church was snoring.  It was so funny we giggled like school children.  I was sure the Priest saw us but we could not seem to stop.  And hey, at least we were awake!  I cherish nap time with my little girl — the feel and weight of her small body next to mine, hearing her soft snores, and having her arm wrapped trustingly against my neck.  I know this time is precious.  And so I am off to take a nap with some cats, a kiddo, a one-eyed Shih Tzu, and two wolfies.  We will be all snuggled up together resting for the week ahead.  Sweet dreams to all.

I have been in love with another man since shortly after I got married.  The picture you see here was taken this past Thanksgiving.  He served my little Shirley Temple her very first Shirley Temple.  Eight years ago as a new bride I decided to throw a housewarming party.  My new grandmother in law informed me I simply MUST get Osbourne because “He’s the best.”  I learned that he had been in high demand for the most elite and wealthy of Dallas society for more than three decades.  Quickly I came to realize what a gem this man was.  So many things I didn’t know … how to set up a bar, how to command the flow of a party, where to greet people, etc.  And this darling man took me under his wing and made me feel like a queen.  He deftly placed my newly acquired silver trays, procured the ice, opened wine and champagne, organized the liquor, set out my new linen cocktail napkins, got out all my glassware from the stemmed to the highballs, sliced lemons, limes and oranges, and discreetly arranged for a garbage can to be placed behind the bar at his side.  The next thing I knew the doorbell was ringing and I was frozen.  With a gentle wave of a hand, he had me stay where I was and went to answer the door.  Slight shock registered on some faces as they came in; after all we did not have a million dollar home. Some greeted him like another guest at the party; others with blasé familiarity.  Osbourne took a true command of my party without taking any of the credit for himself and helped me build my confidence.  When I ran out of platters I will never forget he served from my blue plastic TV trays with a panache that would have rivaled any party at Versailles.  He was incredible and I was in awe.  I have since seen him at many parties and he is always my favorite person with whom I look forward to visiting.  I have never known him to be anything but gracious, dapper, up beat, charming and kind.  He reminds me of my Daddy and the kind of person I aspire to be.  Aviator Beryl Markham said, “If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work.”  Every time I have thanked Osbourne for bringing me a drink he has never once failed to say, “It is indeed a pleasure.”  The next time I see him I shall tell him the pleasure is indeed all mine.

“Pride and joy” seems to be such a trite phrase.  And yet I felt the full force of its meaning at my little girl’s first Christmas pageant today.  I was so proud of her standing front and center singing and making all the little signs and gestures to her three songs.  It was indescribable and I was overcome with joy as I saw her looking around the church for me.  The stained glass lit with the radiance of her smile when she found me and my heart swelled.  Former United States Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said, “Don’t let anyone else take the measure of your worth and capabilities.  Always stand proud in who you are.”  This is what my parents taught me.  And I am still trying to follow those words.  I want the same for my daughter.  She really is my pride and joy.