Take me down to cookie town

Kayte and Katie will be happy to know that I am typing this from my parents' house, where the girls and I have spent the afternoon baking Christmas cookies. We have made English toffee bars and Scotch shortbread -- if I only had an Irish coffee and a copy of poet Dylan Thomas's perfect little book, A Child's Christmas in Wales, I would feel that the British Isles had been very well represented.

The Ka(y)t(ie)s were horrified to find out that I, Ebeneeza Scrooge-a-licious, bake cookies from scratch with my children once a year: at Christmas. Any other cookie that enters our home is either baked by the Keebler elves or the fine people at Nabisco. Sometimes we do "bake" them ourselves, using the break-and-bake kind found near the canned biscuits in your local grocery; when I mentioned this, the Ka(y)t(ies) both turned pale and had to shakily sit down.

That is not, they told me sternly, baking. It is faking, and it causes health problems in children.
Because presumably, they might run off and marry an elf someday and catch a cold living in that damp hollow tree.

By the way...

The girls and I did get to sing in the church choir at 10:30 Mass yesterday. It was slick, but only because of rainfall, not because of ice.

We sang "O Come, Divine Messiah" in four-part harmony, as well as "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." The closing hymn was the English chant "Savior of the Nations, Come" and during Communion, we sang the Gregorian chant, "Rorate Caeli" with lyrics taken from Scripture, so beautiful that they wring my heartwith gladness. I can't sing the words "Consolamini, consolamini, popule meus" (Be comforted, be comforted, my people) in that haunting melody without tears coming to my eyes.

Here, from Cantate ey Iulilate Deo a hymnal of Gregorian chant published by Scepter Publishers: "The text of this hymn is frequently used in the Mass and Divine Office during Advent. It is a plea of the Prophets, the Patriarchs, and the entire Church, all of whom long for the coming of the Messiah. As dew comes down from the sky and quenches the dry earth, only to evaporate back, so too will the Messiah come to sae his people and return to heaven. We recall our past offenses and sins and seek forgiveness as we await the birth of Christ for our redemption, a redemption that will bring the waters of life to desolate Jerusalem."

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.

Be not angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity :
behold the city of thy sanctuary is become a desert,
Sion is made a desert. Jerusalem is desolate,
the house of our holiness and of thy glory, where our fathers praised thee.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.

We have sinned, and we are become as one unclean,
and we have all fallen as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away
thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast crushed us
by the hand of our iniquity.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.

See, O Lord, the affliction of thy people,
and send him whom thou hast promised to send.
Send forth the Lamb, the ruler of the earth,
from the rock of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Sion,
that he himself may take off the yoke of our captivity.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.

Be comforted, be comforted, my people;
thy salvation shall speedily come;
Why wilt thou waste away in sadness?
Why hath sorrow seized thee? I will save thee; fear not:
for I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.


Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

Ne irascaris Domine, ne ultra memineris iniquitatis:
ecce civitas Sancti facta est deserta, Sion deserta facta est:
Ierusalem desolata est: domus sanctificationis tuac et gloriae tuae,
ubi laudaverunt te patres nostri.

Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

Peccavimus, et facti sumus tamquam immundus nos,
et cecidimus quasi folium universi;
et iniquitates nostrae quasi ventus abstulerunt nos:
abscondisti faciem tuam a nobis,
et allisisti nos in manu iniquitatis nostrae.

Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

Vide, Domini, afflictionem populi tui,
et mitte quem missurus es,
emitte Agnum dominatorem terrae,
de Petra deserti montem filiae Sion:
ut auferat ipse iugum captivatis nostrae.

Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

Consolamini, consolamini, popule meus:
cito veniet salus tua:. quare moerore consumeris,
quia innovavit te dolor? Salvabo te, noli timere:
ego enim sum Dominus Deus, tuus, Sanctus Israel,
Redemptor tuus.

Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

I Saw Mommy Committing Adultery with Santa Claus

Let's face it: There are a few times during the holiday season when Santa comes out of things looking like a man whose name ought to be at the top of his own Naughty List.

The primary blot in his copybook comes from the movie Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which is one of the worst movies, like, ever. My family, including my parents and brother, is well aware of my disdain for this holiday blight, which includes Rudolf being mercilessly bullied for being different and then being shunned from the reindeer games by none other than one of Santa's Famous Eight. This leads Rudolf to run away from home and I feel that we're all lucky that we were spared scenes of Rudolf's selling himself for drug money on the corner of North Pole Boulevard and Snow Street. Just when you think it couldn't be worse (because of an abominable snowman's having his teeth wrenched out of his head without any apparent use of anesthetics), Santa appears on the scene when it looks as if Christmas will have to be canceled because of poor visibilty for low-flying aircraft. He proceeds to make use of Rudolf in an arrogant way that I find appalling. Yes, Rudolf, we banned you from the reindeer games because of your repulsive nose, but now that it turns out we need to light our way through the snowy skies, please feel free to let me harness you to my sleigh. Giddy-yup.

I watch the movie every other year or so, complaining bitterly through the whole thing, but holding out that small shred of hope that Rudolf will say with dignity, "Santa, your hypocrisy astounds me. How you can look me in the eye after the way I've been treated requires a degree of boorishness that I simply can't fathom. Now, if you'll excuse us, Clarice and I will be leaving; we're moving to Greenland to start our own combination reindeer dairy and Christmas bulb factory. I give you good day, Santa. I said good day, sir!"

The other Christmas song that delivers an entire sack of coal to Santa's stocking is the classic "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." I found this song horrifying as a child; imagine, something as beautiful as shiny-wrapped gifts under a sparkling tree, tainted with your own mother's illicit love affair with the jolly old elf! I thought Santa was supposed to come to kids' houses to eat some sugar cookies and drink a glass of milk, not paw their mothers under the mistletoe. What kind of world is it when SANTA cheats on Mrs. Claus and gets a little somethin'-somethin' from your mom? How many moms is he doing this with, the nasty old pervert?

Does Santa keep a second list in addition to the well-known Naughty & Nice one? Is it a list of mommies who serve up something more tantalizing than cookies?

Eventually, of course, I realized that the "Santa" in question was actually the little boy's dad dressed up in a costume because the parents knew the little boogerhead was going to peek through the balusters on the staircase. It gave me a profound sense of relief and I was able to stop obsessively trying to compose the lyrics to a festive song I planned to call "I Saw Daddy Administering a Righteous Beatdown to Santa Claus, Right There On the Floor Underneath the Mistletoe."

Incidentally, I wonder if the cost of renting that Santa costume was worth the price of the therapy that kid no doubt had to undergo as an adult, all as the result of seeing Santa feeling up his mother. It's a shame, it really is.

Someday, if I work up the energy, I'll relate my thoughts about Tim Allen's vile movie The Santa Clause.

Granny and Mamaw

I have two new elderly companions, two dotty old bats who drive me nearly 'round the bend with their incessant complaining and bickering among themselves. Their names are Granny and Mamaw and they're the kind of old ladies that make you want to take them to Bingo down at the AmVets hall and leave them for four or five hours. Or forever.

Granny and Mamaw are with me constantly, their querulous voices hounding me throughout the days, strident over the clicking of their knitting needles and the repeated bangings of their canes on the floor. I can't even go to the bathroom for a private, relaxing wee without them standing outside the door, insisting that I listen to their litany of grievances. I have tried turning on the exhaust fan and even the tub water; I've even stuck my fingers in my ears and hummed "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," a song for which I ordinarily entertain a very limited fondness, in an effort to drown them out.

But I can still hear them. And let's face it: You have to come out of the bathroom sometime. no matter how often you plead with your husband to just push a peanut butter sandwich under the door; try as you might to be content with your water supply and access to towels and blankets. And when I come out, they are there waiting for me to run their gauntlet:

"Mommy, why do I have to wear these dumb boots? I hate boots. They make my feet feel all sweaty."

"She took my hoop earrings, Mommy. She didn't even ask. And she'll probably lose them, just like she loses every other thing in the world that isn't nailed down."

"Mommy, why do we have to have stupid chicken for dinner again? I'm sick of chicken. What do you have against chickens, that we have to eat them all the time?"

"Make her stop, Mommy. She is the worst pest I have ever known, like ten thousand mosquitos. She jumped out of the closet and scared me and so I pinched her and now she's upstairs crying like a big baby and saying she's going to 'get me.' How am I supposed to stand this?"

"Mommy, she is so mean. She is the meanest, biggest, dumbest big dumb head I have ever known, just like a big bunch of buttered bees. And you want to know why?..."

"Mommy, why do I have to read The Yearling? Why? Nobody else in the world has to read this stupid book except me. I hate it. All about this...this...fawn. And this boy. And they are so boring nobody could ever care in the world about their dumb swamp and...."

Is there someplace in Florida that I could send these two too? Or better yet, is there a place where I could go? I would even consent to go to The Villages, Florida's Friendliest Hometown for People With Leathery Suntans and Unattractive Tennis Visors. Just for some peace. P-e-a-c-e.

I don't want to tell you. Okay, I'll tell you.

Why am I awake, typing this post at 5:05 a.m.? I can't tell you. No, really, I can't. Because it's a little bit pathetic.

It's partly because Kayte sent me an email that made me wince, titled as it was in all-caps: IT'S BEEN TEN DAYS. She is a stern taskmaster, and has no truck with paltry excuses like "The dog ate my keyboard."

But that isn't totally the reason why I'm awake. It's so silly. So promise not to roll your eyes.

I'm awake because this is the second Sunday of Advent and the new choir at our church has its debut this morning. We have practiced . We're due to practice more this morning before Mass. And Noelle, the choir director...well, talk about your stern taskmasters. She makes Kayte look like Glinda the Good Witch, with the pink dress and the wand and everything. Noelle has us singing page after page of Gregorian chant and a number of other ambitious songs and to be honest, I'm excited. I'm looking forward to it.

However, freezing rain is forecasted. It hasn't started yet, but I jerked awake about an hour ago thinking "Rain? Here yet? Roads bad? No SINGING? None?" And I went to the window to check out the sitch. It was not raining, but I just had one of those feelings, located precisely in all the bones I broke in that car accident back when I was 21, which is to say "almost all of them."

I had that achey, rain's a-comin' feeling. So I came down to the computer, and sure enough, it is raining west of us.

This feeling is familiar from childhood. It's the worry that Santa might not get through because of a snow storm. I know it's silly, to be up and awake with my anxious face scanning the weather radar for central Indiana. But that's just how I roll.

There is some rather special pleading being sent upwards to the place where, as I've heard, Gregorian chant is very much appreciated.

Synchronized sick-ish-ness

I still laugh every time I think about seeing Ratatouille last weekend, when unbeknownst to me, Kayte was seeing it as well. We had originally planned to see it together in August and take Meelyn and Aisling with us (Kayte always needs some pink in her life, she says), but what with one thing and another, it just never happened.

And now come to find out that we were both so grossed out and that neither one of us liked it. Both of us spent our time in front of our separate DVD players, nervously clenching and unclenching the sofa cushions and fighting down that terrible feeling that one gets when one's tongue takes on the texture and consistency of an old army blanket in the mouth.

Imagine what it would have been like if we'd had to watch that nasty little Remy in Linguini's hair and scampering around the restaurant, walking on the countertops and drinking soup out of a ladle -- the same ladle that was being used to stir the soup -- on a huge cinema screen.

I am not prone to anxiety attacks, but I know that would have likely reduced me to a shivering mess, dampening the popcorn with my tears and rendering the Diet Coke undrinkably salty. Not to mention throwing up on everyone in, say, a ten-aisle radius.

FOODIE REVIEW: Martha Stewart's Classic Stuffing

Well, the opinions have come in fast and furious from my experimenting with a new recipe for my traditional Thanksgiving dressing and the word is that is sucked and I should never, ever make it again because it was a major disappointment.

Meelyn said it was "slimy." I don't know if that's what I would have said, but I do agree that it was way too wet. By the time you get two pounds of onions, sixteen celery ribs and a quart or so of chicken stock, you have PLENTY of moisture, believe me. Celery, when cooked down, produces one heck of a lot of water. Considering that the instructions required me only to cook the diced onion until it was translucent (which didn't take very long) there wasn't much time available for the liquid to reduce.

So! I leave this Thanksgiving weekend with the happy knowledge that my own dressing recipe is better than Martha's. Mine is buttery, crispy on the top, and golden brown, a handful of golden raisins nicely balancing the savory with some sweetness; Martha's was wet, gluey and a strange greyish color from the three cups of fresh parsley. Even the toasted pecan pieces couldn't rescue it.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ratatewwwwwwwwille

Our family movie this weekend was Ratatouille, a movie I was totally prepared to love, being a major fan of Pixar. Unfortunately, I was so skeeved out by the sight of a rat crawling around on a kitchen counter and picking up some bread -- which it later put back down for a human to pick up and eat -- and a horde of rats falling through a ceiling into a person's living room, I couldn't enjoy the movie, what with the little bit of vomit that kept coming up in my mouth.

Yes, I know it was just computer animation. And I even know that the entire ironic theme of the movie was that this rat -- a dirty, flea-ridden, disease-carrying verminous creature -- wanted to be a chef in a five-star restaurant and had an actual talent for creating wonderful food. My impressionable head was filled full of Templeton at an early age and I'm sorry, but I just can't get over it. E.B. White trumps Pixar, which is as it should be.

The only thing that could possibly made things worse would have been for the rat to have had a cockroach as his sous chef.

I need a Joseph

In the Old Testament, there was this guy named Joseph who seemed like a fundamentally decent kid, but who had the unfortunate inability, as a young man, to quit tooting his own horn.

He was the youngest of a large family of brothers, and was unable to stop himself from sharing his dreams at the breakfast table, while everyone was sitting around with their faces buried in mugs of coffee and bowls of farina porridge.

"Hey, listen, I had this really interesting dream last night," he said, ignoring the well-known fact that people who want to tell other people their dreams are a blight on the face of this planet. "Last night I dreamed that I was the ruler and you all had to bow down to me." He made this announcement to all his older brothers and was surprised when they all looked up from their mugs with expressions ranging from the bleak to the murderous. "What? Why are you looking at me like that? I'm just sayin'."

So later on the older brothers sold him to slave traders. Which was not right. But perhaps....understandable. There's only so much of that boastful dream-saying that a person should have to listen to before Taking Steps to make it stop.

Anyway, Joseph continued with the dream interpreting, although he was careful afterward to deal solely with other people's dreams, having perceived that interpreting your own dreams with a strong personal bias and then telling them to other people will get you into trouble.

I need a Joseph right now myself. I have been thinking for days now what that nightmare I had that involved a vampire and a can of Campbell's Chunky Clam Chowder could possibly mean, but I just can't figure it out. I do know that the soup in question was definitely clam chowder, and not something more useful when being unpleasantly confronted with a hungry vampire, like chili made with beans, ground beef and Type O. Because the vampire was definitely hungry.

But not for clam chowder.

When or if I remember this dream, I will be sure not to tell you.

Thursday's List (Thanksgiving Day)

WHAT I'M THANKFUL FOR: For so many things. My family, obviously -- my husband, Meelyn and Aisling, but also for everyone else, including Carol and Uncle Graham and Lilly and John and Susie and Doug and my parents and brother and sister-in-law and nephews and niece... For good books to read and good food to eat. For my circle of friends, who let me cry on their shoulders during a recent disappointment and were all that is comforting and supportive.

But most of all, and as always, that God in His wisdom and grace, brought me to the Catholic faith. I will never understand why. Surely, there must have been a Bible scholar somewhere out there who would have had a greater appreciation of the Old Testament foreshadowings of Jesus Christ, the Eucharist and Mary, and especially the covenant relationship that God has arranged with those who call Him Father. Surely there was someone holier and more deserving of receiving the sacraments, which are the birthright of all Christian people, but still so sadly unappreciated.

But He chose me. And my family. That is what I am the most grateful for, every single year.

READING: I'm reading another Maeve Binchy and have decided that I must be in the mood for engrossing stories about people and their lives. I've been on a Binchy binge lately. Although I've also been reading a lot of Dean Koontz -- I love that Catholic man -- and more Marian Keyes. These three authors, it seems that their books never grow tiresome to me. Last summer, I immersed myself in British chick lit, as you may or may not remember, and I grew weary of that in just over a month. But Koontz's suspense novels (where good always wins) and Binchy's and Keyes' tales of ordinary lives and the ups and downs along the way are always interesting.

Anyway, the Binchy novel I'm reading right now is titled Quentins and is about a Dublin restaurant of that name, the people who run it, the people who eat there, and all their worlds.

LISTENING TO: Blissful quiet.

FAVORITE NEW FIND: I think perhaps it may be Martha Stewart's Classic Stuffing recipe, with the optional pecans. I think I'd like it with the optional dried cherries, but I didn't add those for fear that the family would protest. I added two eggs and four extra tablespoons of butter to her ingredients and it turned out very well. It came out of the serving dish in satisfying dense slabs and tasted great with turkey and gravy.

FAVORITE THING TODAY: This is our second day of Thanksgiving break. Ordinarily, we'd be around the table, suffering through math and listening to Meelyn howl about the unfairness of her life and how wicked miserable she's been ever since Jody Baxter and Flag entered her life. I am to be spared this misery, just another thing to be thankful for.

SLEEP LOGGED LAST NIGHT: I went to bed at 11:30, which is surely a reasonable time, and then my eyes popped open some time later and I was wide awake and refreshed. I figured that it must be around 6:30, which is when I seem to wake up naturally. So I bounced out of bed, looking at the clock as I did so.

It was 1:10 a.m. It took me for-freakin'-ever to fall back to sleep.

THE CAUSE OF MY STRESS: I have to do some HISTO today, tomorrow and Sunday, even though I am technically on vacation. I wouldn't have had to do this if I weren't such a disgusting procrastinator, but waa-a-a-a-ah anyway.

THE CAUSE OF MY JOY: Christmas lights going up outside tomorrow! At least that's what I'm hoping. The girls and I are also going to Hobby Lobby today to get the paper we need to make our big Advent wreath on our picture window that looks out onto the street in front of our house. This window is about twelve feet long and ten feet tall, so as you can imagine, it is a b-i-g display and it looks very nice from outside. We use sheets of paper cut into "fir" shapes for the wreath along the bottom of the window and then place sheets of paper four high for the candles -- three purple candles and one pink. We make little slips of black paper as "wicks" and attach a paper flame when that particular week's candle is "lit." We keep this up all through Advent and then tear it off the window on Christmas Eve to reveal the full glory of our magnificent 10-foot Christmas tree to the wonder of the pedestrians, neighbors and motorists on our street.

LOOKING FORWARD TO: The season of Advent, a time of beautiful hoping and waiting. I honestly don't know how Christmas meant much of anything before we became Catholic. Wait a minute....one of the reasons why I started reading about the Catholic faith all those many years ago was because I was searching for a way to make Christmas more meaningful for my family.

Meelyn and Aisling were only four and two back then, and when I started researching "Advent" on the internet, I didn't know that:

1) I was reading about a tradition that people still celebrated; I honestly thought that Advent was something that had died out hundreds of years ago and had no meaning for people's lives today. As I was searching and reading through different websites, I started out by praying that God would lead me to something that could bring light to me so that I could share it with other people. How was I, a presumptuous Christian to be sure, to know then that other people would end up bringing that light to me?

and,

2) that Advent had not only never died out, but that it was being celebrated in much the same way that it had been celebrated for hundreds and hundreds of years, a chain unbroken through century after century, through pope after pope, from Jerusalem to Rome to Indiana. Learning that fact not only changed the way my family views Christmas, it also changed the rest of our lives that don't occur from the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day until January 6, Epiphany Day. Now, we truly celebrate the Christ Mass.

PRAYING FOR: My poor little grandpa, who is having a terrible struggle with an infection near his ankle bone that may end up taking his leg.

Blame it on Martha

This year, just because I can, I changed the recipe for turkey dressing I usually use and switched over to the Classic Stuffing recipe from Martha Stewart's recipe file.

It is significantly different from my usual recipe, not so much in the actual ingredients (butter, onions, celery, bread, sage, salt, pepper and chicken or turkey stock) but in the amounts. Traditionally, I use about four celery ribs, two loaves of bread, four onions, a tablespoon of sage, two sticks of butter and a couple of quarts of stock, plus two eggs to kind of hold everything together -- my family definitely prefers dressing instead of stuffing. And dressing has to remain integrated so that it can be served up in slabs, layered with slices of ham and turkey, slathered with gravy and eaten with gusto on the day after Thanksgiving.

Martha's recipe called for slightly less butter, which I immediately overruled. She might be the CEO of Martha Stewart Omnimedia, but she needs to get a clue about dressing, which is that it needs to be as buttery as possible. But her recipe called for slightly less sage, the same amount of bread, onions, salt, pepper, but instead of my usual four ribs of celery, Martha's calls for sixteen ribs, which is a whole stalk.

I cooked a little bit in a small dish so that I could taste it and it tasted great, but we'll have to see whether this comes across like turkey dressing when combined with all the other Thanksgiving dinner elements, or whether it tastes like a screwball celery casserole.

Volleyball banquet 2007

Our volleyball banquet was last Thursday night and it was a very moving occasion.

The thing that was the most moving involved eight huge tables and 60+ folding chairs. Meelyn, Aisling, my friend Susan (the other member of the banquet committee) and Jeff, the volleyball-dad-and-associate-pastor combo at whose church we were banqueting, manhandled those tables and chairs all over this huge church hall. When we were done, I was ready to go home and take to the bed with some Kahlua and decaf, but the work was only just beginning.

Meelyn and Aisling arranged memorabilia that our senior girls had contributed so that banqueters could look it over and observe the girls' progress through five or six years of volleyball. I only met these big girls last year when they were juniors, so looking at all their momentos was very touching, seeing them as 12- and 14-year-olds like my girls, all pigtails and braces, instead of the nearly-grown young adults they are now.

Susan and I put tablecloths on the tables, then laid out the centerpieces and got the buffet table ready for the caterers. Our banquet bugdet is so small as to nearly be non-existent, and I highly suspect that Susan supplemented the amount of money she had to buy decorations out of her own pocketbook. She had made really nice candle centerpieces in clear glass containers, hand-painting the glass with the girls' names and team numbers. The candles were a very nice size for a centerpiece and I have to say, in spite of the fact that this was a low-cost event with paper tablecloths and napkins and no change-plates and salt and pepper that came in plastic shakers, it all looked very nice. And that was totally due to Susan, who is one of those people who could make a silk purse out of a pig's ear with ease.

The caterers arrived exactly when they were supposed to, which led me at first to believe that they weren't actually caterers, but extremely well-organized space aliens from Planet Dinnerparty. The food was very good, the beverages cold, the talk around the tables merry and bright.

Meelyn and Aisling's coach has been with our organization for five years now as the junior varsity coach, and consequently, he got choked up a couple of times. He gave Meelyn the Service award because of her habit of always being there for her teammates with a serve, set or save. Her sweet face glowed with pride and I had to blot away my tears with half of a Parker House roll.

Aisling was the last member of the junior varsity team to be called up to the platform. She was given the Personal Growth because, as the coach said, she had progressed from being a player who simply could not come to practice without getting hammered in the face with the ball, to being one of the team's most reliable servers. I was very proud of her, too, and offered up a thankful prayer that she made it through the season with her glasses intact.

Because my husband came to the banquet straight from work, we had two vehicles there that night. Meelyn elected to come home with me and Aisling said she wanted to ride with Daddy. So Meelyn and I piled into the van (with considerably less cargo than we arrived with -- we were rivaling the Joads for the Amount of Stuff You Can Cram Into or Onto One Motor Vehicle on the way there) and set off for home.

Three seconds after exiting the church parking lot, Meelyn said distractedly, "I can't find my letter from Coach! He said he wrote us all letters and put them in our folders with our team pictures and our certificates, but it's not here! I must have dropped it! Oh, Mommy, let's turn around and go back."

I obediently wheeled the van back around and took her to the door behind the church, which was actually an emergency exit we'd propped open when unloading the van earlier. She got out and banged vigorously on the door until someone inside heard her and let her in; she disappeared and came back about five minutes with an envelope, smiling.

"Daddy had it," she explained, tearing it open and reading.

I pulled out of the church parking lot and back onto the state highway, anxious to make the half hour drive home as quick as possible. We drove along while Meelyn finished her letter, perused her certificate and nearly drove me mad by insisting that I look at every single person in the team picture, even though I was driving through the deep darkness of a Thursday evening in November during rutting season, when the deer population seems intent on making sweet Bambi love and crashing through the windshields of unwary drivers.

Suddenly, Meelyn let out a high-pitched squeal and I hit the brakes, wincing and expecting to see either the sharp hooves or the eight-point rack of a startled 250 pound buck coming in at us. "Mommy!" she shrieked. "I CAN'T FIND MY AWARD!"

"You scared me half to death," I said accusingly.

"I can't find it!" she wailed. "It was really nice, too, a volleyball medal with my name on the back!"

"You know," I said, "when I picked up your purse, I heard something jangle and clang, but I just thought it was those charms on the zipper pull of your bag knocking against the metal folding chair. I wonder if what I heard was actually your award falling out."

"I bet it was," she said. "I put it in the front pocket of my purse."

Sighing, I wheeled the car back around again and drove a couple of miles back to the church. We repeated the previous performance and she pranced back out a couple of minutes later with the medal swinging around her forefinger. She hopped in the van and buckled up.

"Now," I said, leaving the van in Park. "Have you got everything? Your volleyball stuff? Your coat? Purse? HEAD?"

"Yep," she said. "C'mon, let's hurry up and get home. I'm really tired."

"You and me both," I said.

June through November, volleyball is over for another year.