A Girl...

In a Family Way

No, not in that family way. I'm going to milk the suspense a little bit longer.

***

We got a lot of good stuff for Christmas this year, and among the best was something I don't yet have a photo of because it's in transit via mail on account of there being no way we could have shoved one more small, flat, compact thing into our bulging suitcases when we left, let alone a big thick blanket made of thrift-store sweaters, which is what it was.

The package was labeled with a tag wishing us a "warm" holiday season, and when we opened it we found a full-size quilt with red backing and a checkerboard of mostly gray, blue, and brown squares on the right side. It was so well crafted I didn't know it was homemade until my mom described the process she, my dad, and my brother went through to make us the gift:

After returning from their Thanksgiving visit to our freezing cold abode, they made a trip to the D.I. (Deseret Industries, the Mormon-owned thrift store) and picked out a bunch of old wool sweaters of coordinating colors and contrasting patterns and textures. They washed the sweaters on hot and dried them to a quarter of their size and then cut two squares from each--one from the front and one from the back. (The felting process that occurs during the shrinking keeps the sweaters from unravelling when they're cut.) Some of the squares include the original buttons and watch pockets, and most are patterend with intricate cables, which run not just up and down but sideways and even diagonal. My brother and dad laid out the cut squares on the living room floor and arranged them for my mom to sew together. It's amazing. I will love it forever. In the moment, I tried to play it off all cool, but I just about cried right there when I heard the story of its genesis and then imagined them all working together on it. It's what Simon's family calls a "true gift."

And speaking of Simon's family and mushy-squshy holiday momentswe had a lovely time with Simon's mom, sister, and brother-in-law, just hanging around doing nothing in particular. Although punctuated with moments of terrifying awkwardness (spilling hot yam juice all over the counter and then dropping a festive Ralphie-style F-bomb) and feelings that I could never live up to and fit in with people who can make perfect apple pies from scratch and without a recipe (see some photos here), my overall take on the bunch is that they are as generous and wonderful as I've always suspected them to be, and if I must be intimidated by them at all (and, yes, apparently, I must), the best way is to be intimidated by their sheer awesomeness, right? Simon's mom had a stocking hanging from the mantel for me and let us take a bubble bath in her new bathroom; his sister gave me three of the sweetest little gifts that couldn't have been more perfect than if I'd known her all my life; and Kilo brought me the most charming old-timey china tea mug featuring the two horses from their farm (as seen here).

I also got to meet an old family friend--one of those people always charmingly referred to by both first and last name--about whom I've heard so many stories so many times over the years, including the one where he spent a weekend in Michigan with Simon's uber-Christian grandmother and by the middle of the visit she was convinced he was the best thing since bottled ketchup and deserved to marry into the family via whichever granddaughter got to him first. The trick was, in order for him to marry into the family, some laws would have to be changed in Michigan because this guy was (and still is) gay gay gay, and Christian Grandma was shaken to the core to discover she'd been completely enchanted by a real live homosexual after all she'd read about them you-know-where. It was a treat to finally meet this guy, and if you can judge a family by their friends, Simon's group is the tops.

Here are some holiday family photos--all of them of my peeps because those are the only ones I have downloaded right now. Even though there are a lot of times I roll my eyes and try to distance myself from those to whom I'm blood related, one look at the physical resemblances in these photos tells me maybe I should be a little more forgiving and accepting because we're probably all more alike than we realize.

My grandma and her great-granddaughter.

She's my cousin once removed--that means she's my cousin's kid. Here you can clearly see that she takes after yours truly when it comes to warm brownies served with peppermint ice cream.

Again, it's pretty clear we're related, especially when she sports MY Christmas present from Simon on her wee blonde head. (Yes, he got me a tiara. How cool is that?)

More cousins once removed: my cousins' kids--cousins to each other, although they might as well be sisters.

Me and my shadowbrother. The tongue, the eyebrow, the lopsided squint wink? We didn't plan any of it.

Me and my beau. My mom kept taking photos of us "for the children." Thanks, mom. Future generations will get a kick out of our plaid flannel and wonder why we're dressed like 1996 in 2006 and hey, that's where the tiara came from!

Posted by Leah at January 3, 2007 03:20 PM