Growing Versions

 Christmas vacation is the first time since summer when our lives are rearranged.   Our diet shifts,    the furniture gets moved around,  activities change, and the decor is altered. As everything gets rearranged, so do we.

I have been horrified by my kids in their Halloween costumes. They often toy with iterations of costumes in the weeks and days leading up to the big day, only to give me a shock the night of. Bunny, zombie business man, kid lost trick or treating, pharmacist gone berserk, ghost, bunny, skeleton. While none of these costumes are elaborate, if the light is right...they make you squint and see them as the terrifying little essences that they can be. My daughter, long haunted by Coraline, scared my socks off one year with her rendering of   Coraline's mother , her personal bogey woman. This year, my son finally settled on a skeleton and when he stretched out on the sidewalk, I could barely look at him through my fingers.

Do you have access to wifi? Do you have an active imagination? You only need one of these to go on a dream vacation. Especially at this time of year, I have a hard time sitting still. My mind wanders off on a ridge overlooking a deep lush valley, it meanders through a flea market in Paris or stares off into the distance next to a river side temple. My son and I invented "travel bingo when you are not on a trip", we use google maps in Beijing to locate "car", "bus", "tree".  We travelled to New Dehli's train station to find a "train". After I watch Broadchurch or Shetland, I immediately add them to my google map route. Airbnb helps me get settled into a meticulously decorated house in Mosonmagyarovar, Hungary  or a condo in South Beach  or a room in someone's apartment in Brooklyn. . I have a tiny (likely imaginary) view of someone's life in Denmark, Iran and Hungary, thanks to Instagram. I know exactly...

I seem to recall as a kid valentines were a major ordeal. I can still picture me sitting at the kitchen table, while my mother patiently sat with me while I copied down the names of my classmates onto whatever valentines became available to me. I really never gave it much thought.  I never remember feeling thrilled or joyful in the process, one mortifying year, a boy actually took the opportunity to declare his love for me.  It all was so routine (except for the declaration of love) it barely stood out against the snowed in the gloomy February 1980 something backdrop. For my kids, for some reason, Valentine's Day is a major holiday right up there with Christmas and Easter.  They have for two years now, made and filled in their valentine's with at least 2 weeks to spare. They have not waited for the class list, they have just made their own.  I learned the hard way last year, that it is important to do a bit of quality control before they get distributed, ju...