Sucking the Marrow

Thanksgiving has come and gone with the requisite overeating, time with extended family, and good cheer.  Now it's on to writing Christmas cards, trimming the tree in our back yard with peanut butter pine cones, and anticipating the holiday ahead.  While the boys in the house hope for snow or at least cold enough temps for snowmaking at our local ski area, none of us is excited about the day to day challenges of wintry weather.  So too our emotions are mixed about this holiday season.

We'll all miss "Papa" this year.  This will be the first Christmas our family will celebrate without Shelly's dad playing some part.  His August passing seems so recent that we can still hear his voice in our heads and picture him in our house.  We feel for "Nana" who won't have the same companionship she's enjoyed for almost half a century.  There's no way around it, there'll be some sadness this year even as we celebrate the holiday.

And we suspect it's our last Christmas in Peterborough for a while at least.  We'd be lying if we said we're glad it's our last time to see Santa arrive on the fire truck to light the town tree and our last time to stroll down the street to the Werth's family Christmas Eve party.  We're not certain these are lasts, but it's highly likely it's our last Christmas in this saltbox we've called home for 9 years.

But where there's heaviness in our hearts this December, there's also joy.  Shelly and I are both fortunate to be home every day with Baxter and Atticus, learning by living.  We are excited to be able to ski together as a family this year more than ever before.  Travel has allowed the boys to see their grandparents, great grandparents, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin and other extended family in addition to friends who are like family to us.  Later this month we'll have time together with more of our extended family.  In loving family and friends, we are very wealthy.

And we are excited about the possibilities that lie ahead for our family.  Jumping off into the unknown brings its own stresses, but it's the way we are taking control of our lives. We're chasing a few dreams: living internationally as a family where we immerse in the culture and learn the language; experiencing the grandeur of our own country; and actively participating in a mostly self-sufficient homestead.  We'll have chances to experience each of these things in 2014.  For that, we're grateful and excited.

In his own way, Henry David Thoreau eschewed convention at Walden Pond:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. . . ."

Our 2014 experiment will be thrilling and challenging.  But we see no better way to honor those who've gone before us than to live today deliberately.  It's the only day we know we have.