Merry Christmas from New Orleans

Yes, there still aren’t any curtains on any of the downstairs windows, and that strip of trim you can see along the top of the French doors in my office isn’t painted yet. And yes, the front arched window is still not trimmed out and there's no lamp shade and nothing is hung back on the walls. NEVERTHELESS, it felt wonderful to be celebrating Christmas in our own house this year.

My mother thinks we’re weird, but for several years now we’ve been wrapping our presents in brown paper with silver and gold ribbon (the packages with gold paper you can see are, ahem, for my mother). The electric train was one of Steve’s presents to me—he was paying attention to my sad tale a few weeks ago about how my dad gave away our electric train when we moved the summer I was eleven. It’s the first time in more years than I care to remember that I’ve found a toy for ME under the tree, and it was pretty neat. At the moment, it’s chug-chugging around the tree in a giant loop. Toot-toot.

Yes, conversation at our family’s big Christmas Eve get-together was still dominated by “So how’s your house coming?” conversations, but we did manage to talk about a few things besides Katrina this year. Despite everything—or, just maybe, because of everything—we’ve had a wonderful year.

Merry Christmas!