Eyeliner

I was twelve when my kid sister was born. Due to the difference in ages, our relationship was always warm, cozy, lovey, and easy. I was always cool. And she was always adorable.

I could never count how many times I have done Caroline's makeup. When she was small, before she actually wore makeup, I would do her makeup when I babysat her, or I'd do her nails on the weekends. When she got older I would show her how to do her eyes in different layers of eyeshadow, how to hide a zit, how to use blush to fake better cheekbones (a genetic failure for our family). I did her makeup most recently this past fall for her Homecoming dance, smoky eyes to go with a little black dress.

This Christmas, while the family was lounging post-meal, I leaned against Caroline and asked her to teach me how to do eyeliner the cool way she does. We went up to our bedroom at Grandmother's house, sat on the world's most uncomfortable bed, and Caroline did my eyes. Pale grey, with black eyeliner snaking slightly upwards at the end, Cleopatra-like. I'm not a fan of eye makeup usually. I'm more of a flavored lip gloss girl. But I wanted to see my eyes the way she does her own, and it felt neat to have her do my makeup fo a change. The lesson was brief (symmetry is the key), the results were pretty, and I don't think I'll ever forget it.

There's some silly symbolism there. Some passing of the torch. Some circle of life. Years of teaching her that coloring in her lips with lip liner and covering them with gloss is much more effective at long term color than lipstick. And in the span of 10 minutes in Grandmother's guest room, with my eyes closed, I was happy Caroline was growing up. I've always been rather sad that she stopped being 5, stopped thinking I was eternally cool, started thinking maybe I was a bit boring or square or unexciting. I am glad we are different, glad she is an artist, glad she loves things I never loved. I am glad she has things to teach me, bigger things than eyeliner, glad she dreams things that never crossed my mind. I am grateful that she's brave and strong and beautiful, even though she probably dismisses those things herself. I feel honored to be the girl that sang her to sleep with Les Mis tunes, and I'm excited to see who she becomes. It will be something great, that is all I know. And that's all that's really necessary.

I'm still not a fan of eyeliner. But I will ask her to do my eyes again. Happily.

The First Day of Winter

It is fitting, I suppose, that on the first day of winter I woke up to frozen pipes and a car that would not start. After giving my car a much appreciated jump, my dad snapped my photo with his phone as I scraped the ice off my windshield and said, "it's like a scene out of Fargo." We drove around picking up some winter necessities I'd managed to avoid purchasing thus far, namely jumper cables and a space heater, and as we drove back to my parents' house I was struck by how different my life is now from this time last year, or the year before that, etc. It astonishes me how much can change in a year's time, and makes me excited for the year(s) to come.

Winter is not my favorite season, as everyone is well aware. But the English major in me loves the metaphor. I love the cold death of the season, the house of ice, the hibernation of everything with a heartbeat. And then the promise of Spring.

Backseat Bible

This is, by far, the busiest Christmas season I've ever had. Every weekend evening has been packed with Christmas parties or Christmas baking or Christmas shopping or general Christmas frivolity. It's a happy kind of busy but it's also the kind of busy that makes the season feel less like a religious celebration, more like an opportunity to wear my sassy gold dress and guiltlessly bake too many chocolate goodies. At church today I was struck by the fact that I had been more concerned about which adorable brown boots to wear, what lipstick went with my green dress, than I had been about where I'd misplaced my Bible.

My Bible, as always when I "lose" it, was in the backseat of my car, where I always absent-mindedly toss it when its placement in the passenger seat is no longer convenient. Ah, the metaphor! I toss it there when I pick up a friend on the way to a party, when I need space for newly purchased cookie ingredients, when I'm too lazy to put my gym bag in the trunk. My Bible stays comfortably on that passenger seat for less than 48 hours after every Sunday. And every Sunday morning I wonder where it has escaped to, but that worry is never as intense as what heels make my calves look thinner.

I, like many Christians, have a hard time remembering the "Christ" part of Christmas sometimes. I get as caught up as anybody in the joy of new clothes, fancy parties, yummy food, buying gifts, wishing for mistletoe. And tossing my Bible onto the backseat of my car (which, it goes without saying, means I'm not cracking that Book open very often during the week) is the perfect illustration of how easy it is for me to allow the season to swallow me without giving due reverence to the joy of its importance. And although I've taken note of that frailty before, today was the first time it really made me sad.

I had a lovely, festive, Christmasy weekend, complete with parties, cookie baking, Christmas parading, and hot apple cider drinking. Excellent. But I prayed very little, thanked God less, forgot that He was the reason I was happy (not the existence of those awesome shoes I got on sale at Target). I do not value materialism in others, I will not coddle it in myself. So while I see no harm in finding smiles and a bit of confidence in new things or new crushes or new adventures, I don't ever want to lose sight of who forges my ability to be happy, who creates in me an image of Himself, who loves me enough to die for my salvation. And that is why I love Christmas, for everything God gave the world, for His knowing me in the womb, for His holding me and cherishing me despite my habit of tossing him aside. I am so thankful to know that Grace does not throw me in the backseat to languish between foibles and failures. Seems the least I could do to say a tiny "thank you" would be to bring my Bible in from the cold, warm it up.

The Devil Is Wearing a Scarf and Mittens

It snowed in New Orleans today. And I missed it. This makes me sadder than I would expect, given my general apathy regarding snow. But it would have been lovely to see snow fall on the trees in Audobon, watch the mules pulling the carts in the Quarter blink back a flake. I would love snow more if it was special and unexpected. Unfortunately, I live a few hundred miles too far North for snow to ever be a surprise. Snow is a given here, as is ice, and apple cider, and toasty fireplaces, and salt, and ornery car batteries, and potlucks, and earmuffs, and cozy blankets, and happily, always, a White Christmas. Snow isn't my favorite, but it'll do.

Cousins

I spent the past weekend celebrating Thanksgiving in The Motherland (aka Arkansas), surrounded by too much food and a tribe of cousins I see too infrequently.

Cousins are a strange, beautiful lot. It seems both serendipitous and ill-conceived to throw people of such varying personalities into the same family and expect them to love one another. God, to me, occassionally seems a bit hilarious in his matchmaking.

After all, what are we supposed to have in common? We are the children of one parent's siblings. We share grandparental DNA. The bulk of us look nothing alike, some graced with height via paternal genes, others doomed shortitude thanks to our maternal roots. A handful of us with red hair (of varying shades), some with glasses and some without.

As the eldest, I always felt somewhat separate from the younger cousins. This was largely by my own choosing, I liked being the old one. I liked being the first to do things (though I've now been surpassed on both the marriage and child-bearing agendas). I liked traveling far away and coming back to share stories, pictures. But this past weekend I didn't want to sit at the grownup table anymore (where I've been sitting for over a decade). I wanted to talk and gossip and laugh and play games and be sad and be happy with the cousins that for so long were "young" and are now simply "younger".

I always knew Brent, Kristin, and Lauren, better than my other cousins. We spent a small segment of our lives together, attended each others' birthday parties. I gave them my dog when we moved away. My other cousins, though loved, were always distant. But it was good to see them growing, becoming the adults they'll be someday. And it made me sad to have missed so much of their lives. I look at Lauren and Kristin and think, you are on the edge of so many wonderful things! Even the shitty things, even the jobs you hate, even the cold, even the decisions you are unsure of, they are all such wonderful things to endure. How excellent to be unaware and confused but with the potential to be fantastic! And I just want to hug them and promise them that everything will happen. Perhaps everything won't work out. But everything will happen, and God carries all of it in his hands. And I am glad my sister looks up to them, the way, perhaps, they once looked up to me. They are women I want my sister to wish to become.

It makes me think of my siblings, Rob and Caroline. Will our children love one another? Will they see each other often or only on holidays? Will they be born in the same state? Will they drift and move away? Will they be short? Redheaded? Who will look up to the eldest? Who will hate being the youngest?

Who will sit at the grownup table too soon?