After a long stint of what I can only describe as indifference toward completing driver’s ed classes, Julia suddenly lit a fire under herself, accumulated the requisite number of hours required to finish the online class, and found herself on the driving portion of the schedule. Then, she drove, and within three days’ time, she was holding a certificate declaring her eligible to earn her permit.
Which she did, hours after completing the driving portion of driver’s ed. Kelly let her drive home.
Last night at dinner, I felt a twinge of emotion spring into my throat. It caught me by surprise, not that it shouldn’t have: we were sitting down to Sunday supper around the table, each of the children lighting the candles of the wreath the fourth week of Advent, our plates piled high with steaming-hot food on the darkest evening of the year.
Our anniversary.
It’s been too long now for me to remember with any accuracy whether we thought much about the symbolism of getting married on the winter solstice. Rather, I suspect we chose the date because it was a Saturday. That it happened to fall on the 21st was lovely enough–we first started dating on a 21st, and my birthday is on a 21st. Kelly, a young teacher, and I, a poor college student, both knew we’d have winter break to count on for time off from work. The church was available–and, importantly for a budget wedding, already decorated. So it was that we spoke our vows to each other four days before Christmas.
Yesterday I lit a fire under my own rear end and decided to put together the family video for the year (a tradition of sorts that started way back when I began making videos documenting each month of our kiddo’s first years), and if nothing else, I can say with confidence that the Hogan family has been on the move.
In the course of this past year: Atlanta, Miami, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Labadee (Haiti); Washington, D.C. with Thomas (the kiddo-trip-with-Dad experience); Cherry Grove (the annual Beach Week); out west–Denver, then Las Vegas, then Zion National Park, then Grand Canyon National Park, then Phoenix; then to Toronto for a Springsteen concert, then to New Jersey to visit family. Not to mention a bunch of trips around Cackalack.
It was the year a hurricane came and devastated so many towns and communities here in western NC, an occasion where I found myself sitting in for my boss while he was out of the country. (This, coincidentally, was roughly where my commitment to working out every week sort of fell apart. See more below.)
