"Halfway" is rather charming, actually!

How do you celebrate "Halfway Christmas?" a friend recently asked me on social media. My response: "Halfway." We have an abbreviated, very low-key Christmas celebration in June, when we are halfway way to the real Christmas.

...and it's rather charming.

As an example, for the real Christmas, I buy multiple gifts for all five of my kids, so shopping takes me weeks and weeks, and yes, I love every single second of it! But for Halfway Christmas, I buy only one gift. We all draw names and buy one $15 gift for the person whose name we draw. Then we put all the gifts around my little Charlie Brown Christmas tree and open them one at a time.

This year, everyone seemed delighted with his or her present. It was lovely to witness. Here's the rundown:

I got a PopSocket for my phone, something I've wanted ever since I got my new phone in November. Gerald got an assortment of treats to take to work: Pop Tarts, iced oatmeal cookies, licorice, Good & Plenty candy, and a Mounds bar.

Seth got some fancy hair gel, and Isaiah got spicy chips and Lifesavers Gummies.

Eli got a new water bottle since he's given up soda (Can he really be an Erichsen-Webster?), and some bright socks. Amanda got an expansion pack for their "What Do You Meme?" game and a lemon-scented candle.

Shulamith got a T-shirt style dress that she had in her Target shopping cart a few weeks ago, but ultimately put back, deciding it was a luxury she didn't really need. So I texted Eli (who had Shulamith's name) and asked if he wanted me to grab it for him. He said yes (!), and it was done.

Swen got two Hot Wheels ID cars for his collection, Kennedy got purple hair extensions and a new sleeping mask, and Theodore got a set of 12 different vehicles and a mat to drive them on.

For the real Christmas, we pretty much eat all day long, grazing on numerous snacks and some real food as well, usually egg casserole first thing, then either crepes or French toast mid-morning, appetizers throughout the day, and often fondue in the evening. It varies, but it's always an all-day feast. For Halfway Christmas, we plan just one meal. Yesterday, Eli grilled chicken kabobs, and Shulamith prepped a baked potato bar and rolls. For dessert, she fried scones, which we topped with butter, jam, and cinnamon sugar.

Simple. Uncomplicated. Delicious. Halfway! That said, between the gift opening and dinner, I was seriously craving sugar. Like I needed something sweet. So Shulamith whipped up some peanut butter, oatmeal no-bake cookies; that's how much she loves me.

During the real Christmas season, I listen to Christmas music nonstop from November 1st through December 25th. For Halfway Christmas, we played Christmas music just the one day, but still, it was incredibly comforting to hear those words of hope, the joy of a promised Savior, whose birth, life, death, and resurrection continue to offer hope today, despite the scary and uncertain circumstances in which we live.

We sometimes watch a Christmas movie on Halfway Christmas, but this year, we instead opted for a rousing game of Phase 10, which we didn't finish but enjoyed nonetheless. Well, most of us did. Seth thinks it's a stupid game because there is no strategy involved. I think that's what makes it so perfect.

Another Halfway Christmas for the books. It was rather charming, actually!

COVID anxiety, and how do you get the hood of my car up?

So at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I thought I was handling it all very well. Others even commented on how calm I was. With my anxiety disorder that specifies to fear of fatal illness, everyone expected me to crumble right to the floor over coronavirus. I didn't. I attempted to use logic, and I was mostly successful. I have none of the risks for a serious reaction to the virus. I am female, young, healthy, and normal weight. I exercise regularly and have no underlying heath conditions. I even have Type O blood, for heaven's sake, which I guess is the best type to have for this virus. It's all good.

That was 3.5 months ago. As time passes and the uncertainty grows, I find my anxiety grows right along with the uncertainty. The fear is getting worse, not better. The past two nights I've lain in bed, terrified, sure I had a fever, because I was cold. Both nights it took every once of courage I could muster to get up and take my temperature, which registered 96.7 and 96.2 Degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. As Shulamith likes to tell me, I'd probably be better off just staying home 24/7, not leaving the house at all. That's what my mom does (and I'm very glad she does!), because she is 80. So far, I haven't gone to that extreme, but I wear a mask and gloves everywhere in public, and I'm definitely not comfortable with people outside of my family coming near me.

Which brings me to what happened here:

Yesterday, Shulamith and I were at Smith's picking up a food order. If you haven't tried this, Smith's online grocery orders and parking lot pickup are fabulous, especially if you don't feel comfortable going inside stores. The Smith's worker brought out the bags of groceries, and we were good to go until Shulamith tried to start her car. Dead. As a doornail. Wouldn't even make an effort to turn over. This didn't make sense. She drove there with no problem, and the car had only been shut off maybe 10 minutes. We decided we needed to try to jump the battery, but how does one do that, we wondered? And where would we find jumper cables?

We called Seth to ask him to check in Isaiah's car, and sure enough, jumper cables! Kindly, Seth came right away to save us. But then that first question. How does one jump a car battery? Shulamith and I are educated, resourceful women, so she pulled out her phone and googled the question. The result was a diagram showing how and where to place the positive (+) and the negative (-) gripper deals. We were terrified! Why worry about COVID-19 when you can just blow yourselves up with jumper cables?!

Okay, we can do this.

So I drove my car around to face hers, but then. Then we needed to get both hoods open. We pulled the release in both cars, and her car hood opened just fine, but neither of us, to save our very lives, could figure out how to get mine up. We tried for several minutes before the nice Smith's truck driver pictured above came over to help. He managed to get my hood up right away and attached the cables for us. And yes, he was so kind to help us, but please everyone, PRAY he didn't have the virus, because there he suddenly was, right in our space, no one wearing masks, talking to us. I nearly freaked and ran away. I should have. I was just so stunned to have a stranger that near me. Oh my goodness. And now I'll be on high alert for two weeks, waiting for symptoms to appear. Blah.

And then the stupid cables didn't even work. Her car still wouldn't start, even with the jump. By now we'd been out in the hot sun for an hour, and her cold food needed to be refrigerated. Matt was on his way driving from work, so I left and took her cold groceries to put in my fridge. Once Matt arrived, they were able to buy a new battery and all's well that ends well.

Except my COVID anxiety is now ten times higher. And I still have no idea how to get the hood of my car up.

"Teen Empty," after 22 years

 

Twenty-two years ago, our oldest son, Luke, revolutionized our family by becoming its first teenager. Two years later, our youngest son, Seth, was born. Today, Seth effects yet another dramatic change by leaving us "teen empty."

Today is his 20th birthday, and for the first time in 22 years, our family has no teenagers. I struggle to wrap my mind around it. Pretty much my whole identity is centered in being the mom to kids and teens. What now? I honestly have no idea, but it can't be very good.

One of my plans for this blog in 2020 was to tell each of my five children's birth story in the month of his or her birth. There have been three so far: Eli, Isaiah, Shulamith. Following the pattern, this would be the time to tell Seth's birth story, but as I was scrolling through posts just now, I see that I've already done that. This is my 733rd post, so yeah, sometimes I forget what I've written. If you'd like to read the story of Seth's birth, feel free to go to to the post titled "A Decade of Joy," which I wrote exactly 10 years ago.

Regarding that story, I will add just one thing. Had I any idea back on June 14, 2000 that my precious baby would share a birthday with a man who would become the most incompetent, egotistical, unhinged, immoral, and downright terrifying president our country has ever seen, I would have sacrificed my preference for waiting for spontaneous labor, and demanded my doctor induce me on June 13th. Really, I would have, Seth. I am so sorry.

Believe me when I tell you that Seth is nothing like that other man. Seth is kind and smart. He cares about others. He's hardworking and resourceful and has the most delightful sense of humor. He makes me laugh every day, and though this crappy COVID that ended his mission four months early is not what he would have chosen, he continues to adapt and adjust to life's circumstances with grace and humor.

It's now 8:44 a.m., and he is still dead asleep. I'll pause for a bit and finish my post this evening, when I have a full report on the day's celebration...

Okay, it's now 10:08 p.m., and the celebration is dying down. For lunch, Seth and I got Panda takeout because Panda is Seth's favorite food in all the land. He says he probably wouldn't eat Panda every day, but every other day would be perfect. When he looked at his bowl of honey walnut shrimp, orange chicken, and chow mein, he noted that "this is possibly the most perfect bowl of food I've ever seen."

In the afternoon, he and Matt (Shulamith's husband) went disc golfing, arriving home just in time for dinner and games. Shulamith grilled burgers and Polish dogs and made pasta salad. I made brownie sundaes with ice cream, strawberries, and whipped cream. While Seth enjoyed all of this, the best moment was when he opened his one birthday present: Apple AirPods. He was so surprised and thrilled, which is EXACTLY how presents should be. My heart was happy!

Happy 20th birthday, dear Seth! Even though you were supposed to stay a teenager forever, 20 looks dang good on you.

"Like hell you will." My only close experience with racism.

"What nationality are you?"

It's a question I'm never asked. In the course of the typical, awkward, get-acquainted conversation, people want to know all sorts of other things. "How long have you lived in Utah? Are you married? Do you have children? How many? Where to you work? What are your hobbies? But no, "What nationality are you?" is never a question people ask me.

The answer, by the way, would be "On my dad's side, English and Dutch. On my mom's side, German and Native American."

Yes, you read that right. My maternal grandmother was Native American. You'd never guess that by looking at me. I didn't inherit any physical characteristics from my Native American grandma; I have mousy brown hair, blue eyes, and very light skin. Even my mom doesn't look like her mom. She has some facial features that reveal her Native American heritage and her body type is similar to most Native American women, but no one notices those. It's that mousy brown hair, blue eyes, and light skin that people see, the traits she inherited from her German father.

My grandma, however, was asked that question all the time: "What nationality are you?" People often guessed Latino or Italian or even Jewish (because she talked with her hands). The sad part is my grandma was always hesitant to tell the truth about her ancestry, embarrassed to admit to her rich, noble culture. She had been mistreated and marginalized too much as a result of it.

I am but two generations removed from that bigotry, and it breaks my heart. How could anyone not love the woman who loved me better than just about anyone? How could people not see her grace, her charity, her tremendous faith? How could they make a judgment based solely on her skin color? I'm baffled. And horrified.

Like so many, I'm also horrified over the recent murder of George Floyd at the hands (or knee) of a uniformed police officer in broad daylight, surrounded by onlookers including three other cops, as he begged for his life, using his last bit of strength to utter the words "I can't breathe!" I feel sick about it. I also feel driven to write something. But what? What could I possibly add to the narrative that hasn't already been said? Nothing that I can think of.

Instead, I'd like to tell you a different story, one that reflects my only close experience with racism, a story of my grandma. I wasn't alive yet when this happened, but I have been told about it, both from her perspective and also from my mom's.

My grandma was divorced, raising my mom on her own for about 10 years before she met my grandpa. His name was Albert F. Hartung, and he was the love of her life. A second marriage for both, they wed in a Unitarian church in downtown Portland on September 5, 1953, when my mom was a young teenager.

Like her first husband (my mom's biological dad), my grandpa was of German descent. He was also the president of a large labor union, The International Woodworkers of America, which represented those who worked in the logging industry throughout the United States and Canada. He began as a logger himself, where he experienced firsthand the wretched working conditions and sub-poverty wages in that industry, moving him to organize his coworkers into the solidarity of a union, in order to demand better. Through his effort and that of so many others, that union was formed, and he ultimately became its president, leading over 20,000 members in five regions: three in the U.S. and two in Canada.

In that role, he led individual meetings in all five regions of the IWA, traveling regularly through both countries. And in 1953, he married a Native American woman. A year or so after they were married, meetings were scheduled in Region 5, which included the southern states, at a hotel in Laurel, Mississippi. As my grandparents entered and approached the front desk to register, they were told that my grandmother couldn't stay in the hotel. I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly how the conversation progressed, but the bottom line is they wouldn't allow my beautiful grandma to stay in their damn hotel because of her race, or more precisely, because of her dark skin color.

My grandparents' reactions to this discrimination differed, hers and his. She quietly whispered to him that it was okay. "I'll just go home, Al. I'll just catch a flight and go home to Portland." Again, I wasn't there, but I know my grandpa, and he was never one to mince words or to hide the strength of his conviction. I imagine him turning to her and declaring, "Like hell you will, Nina! We will pick up our things, and we will move all these meetings to a hotel that will welcome my wife and me." And so it was. IWA members from all over the south who had gathered that day in Laurel, gladly moved to a different venue when President Hartung asked them to.

This man was my hero. Though he died when I was only 14, more than anyone else, he shaped my worldview and taught me the importance of caring for the weak, the downtrodden, and the marginalized of society. In an issue from The Woodworker, the IWA magazine, way back in 1958, he wrote, "If we stand united and remember that an injury to one is an injury to all, we will drive the fascist-minded enemies...back into their holes."

He would be outraged by the fascist, dictatorial, divisive agenda of the current administration. And do you know what he would tell me? He would say, "Tannie (that's what he called me), stand up! Never stop fighting for what is right. Never let hatred and oppression win. Gather support. Build unity. Do whatever you can to vote this insane man out of office in November."

I will try my best, Grandpa. I will try my best.