The holidays ended here last weekend. Josh departed for Virginia on Saturday, but because of the snowy weather in the East, he was unable to complete the thousand-plus miles to his destination in a single day as he did on his return to Kansas a few weeks ago. He stopped overnight near Lexington, Kentucky, completed his trek on Sunday afternoon and learned that Monday (when classes were scheduled to resume) would be a snow day. (What do you call sixteen Kentuckians stopped at a possum crossing in downtown Lexington? A full set of teeth. Bah-dump-bump.)

Having all three boys (and often their cohorts) back in the house for a few weeks crowded this little place, and when the simple friction of rubbed elbows wasn't enough to warm things up, other more provocative measures were undertaken, primarily by Owen, this household's most incorrigible tease. For days, he hid Taylor's Christmas CD Walkman away while Taylor and the rest of us searched house and car, hither and yon, high and low to find it. When the Walkman finally reappeared and Owen's guilt was plain, Taylor retaliated, striking Owen where he lives by hiding his hair gel. The gel hasn't yet reappeared, and Taylor still denies that he had anything to do with its disappearance, but motive, opportunity and (most of all) timing suggest that he's less innocent than he claims to be.

During the search for the Walkman, I rummaged through a lower dresser drawer that I seldom use and found the 35mm photo from which I've cropped the digital version on this page. That's Josh at daycare in summer '86, probably in the months leading up to his fifth birthday. I don't know who took the photo -- the unfamiliar handwriting on the back gives only the season and year. I can't even say that I remember seeing the photo before, but I am glad to have it, and I suppose I have Owen to thank for that.

Each of the last few Christmases, after all the presents have been opened at both our home and his grandmother's, and after he has matched his mental list of presents requested against his presents received, he has offered a small gift of his own � always privately, quietly and apparently offhand � when he comments that he won't know what to ask for on his upcoming birthday because he received all he wanted and requested for Christmas. It's a good moment. I hope for it every year.

The moment from this holiday that I think will best reward its recollecting happened when Joshua left Saturday morning. Seven in the morning. Temperature below freezing. Frost on the ground. Sky still dark, maybe dull gray. Everyone but Owen awake to see Josh off. Josh's Buick warming up in a neighbor's drive for easier loading. Having barely stirred when Josh peeked into his room to say good-bye, Owen has finally arisen. He charges out of the house, stumbles down the front steps dressed only in flannel pajama bottoms and, arms in the air, he trips barefoot and bare chested across the front yard bellowing to Joshua "Hey! I need a hug here!"

I could hope for another moment like that one, too.

I've almost decided to devote a separate section in these pages to quotations from my current readings, just swatches and ravels that I prefer not to lose track of. Before setting up a new section, I have much housekeeping to take care of in the existing sections (that picture of my eye on the index page, for instance, must go), but I didn't want to lose this (again):

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new "attempt," differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.

from White's foreword to
Essays of E.B. White

Reading: Finished The Stranger, reading One Writer's Beginnings (E. Welty), and browsing Essays of E.B. White and his Sketches and Poems

Watching: The Way We Were, Cast Away, and the three Die Hard movies (enough times that I can lip-synch the dialogue.)