'Tis the Season...

Welcome to another unhinged Christmas letter. I thought I might write something more serious, more sentimental, more jolly, but it turns out that I’m short on time, patience, and cheer.

2024 has been like if someone bought me a giant bag of my favorite snackable candies, peanut butter M&Ms, and then they made me eat them in the dark without telling me that they’d dumped some lime Skittles in the mix. (Everyone knows that lime Skittles are the grossest.) So all year long, I’d be savoring a handful of chocolatey, peanut buttery goodness and then BAM! Sticky, chewy, cleaning supply flavored goo.

I’m obviously making light of the situation, but the reality is those who have lived through this year with me know that it’s been full of pain, literal and figurative. I have for a long time made it a rule to not “write from the wound” but to instead wait to write from the scar. I’m not trying to be vague or mysterious. I just don’t have the energy or proper perspective to tell the 2024 stories yet.

That said, I’d love to tell you about all the good parts of 2024, and I’ll save the depressing bits for the next book. Deal?

WILL JOHNSON IS IN COLLEGE! We could not be more thrilled for him. As I write this, he’s packing up to head home for the break after stopping for a couple days to stay with his girlfriend’s family. After a rough hurricane-affected first semester in the mountains of western North Carolina (his fall break turned into three weeks at home in the aftermath!), he aced his classes and won the lottery with his roommate. His musical theatre cohort family is precious—salt of the earth kids who love each other well. Parenting Will has always been the best, and it’s no different now that he’s an adult. Catch him this spring in “Pippin!”

Ben Johnson is three months out from being able to drive himself to his packed activity schedule and social life. HALLUYER! After a successful marching band season, he’s pivoting to off-season baseball and applying to all kinds of smart kid things. He’s also working toward getting his Eagle in scouts, following in both his dad’s and brother’s footsteps. One of the things I love most about mothering Ben in this season is watching how at ease he is in his own skin. He’s settled into a friend group so adorable I’d like to carry them around in my pocket, and I love coming home to a house full of nonsense all the time.

Bea is in third grade and hurtling through Preteenland at a breakneck pace. Her adjustment to her (our) new school this year has exceeded all expectations. She’s in gymnastics and taking an art class, and she just wrapped her first season of Girls on the Run. She is asking Santa for Ninja Warrior classes because the pretty face and Swiftie dancing is all a facade—our girl is an absolute beast. Every time she tells a joke that doesn’t make sense or blames her toots on the dog, I want to package up her giggles and send them to every sad person in the world.

Case is in second grade and in all the same activities as Bea (minus running because it’s for 3rd graders and older). She continues to wow us regularly with her creativity and curiosity, both of which involve a good deal of clean up. Her transition to the new school has also solved a lot of solvable problems that were weighing us down the first half of the year. She is funny and snuggly and full of ideas. Scott is on a trip currently, and she told me she’d sleep with me in case I got scared tonight. I hope she never stops taking care of me this way.

Scott is still working at the five-sided building in the nation’s capital. He’ll be deploying in 2025 to a sunny vacation spot somewhere else in the world. We’re gearing up for that big change, and it’s the first time he’s left for an extended period of time since the girls joined our family. Cross all your fingers and toes that we all have a smooth transition.

AND BOY HOWDY has this year been full of change for me. I started the year piecemealing contract work together and riding the bucking bronco that is getting a kid through the college musical theatre audition process, and I’m ending the year in a job that I needed more than I could have ever known. When I started down the road toward teaching full-time, I knew I wanted to be a high school English teacher, and teaching all the subjects to fifth graders would never have been my choice.

But as Saint Garth says, “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers” because this job is the gift that keeps giving. I love my school. I love my admin. I love my team. I love my kids. I love that I get to work where my kids go to school. And every time I stand in front of the class to teach about rock cycles or informative writing or decimals, I get this tingly sensation. Some of it is neuropathy, but MOSTLY it’s this feeling of “I can’t believe I get to do this.”

Oh, I also published a book. And the reviews have been humbling and life-affirming. Buy it for everyone you know this holiday season! Buy it for your doctors’ office waiting rooms and for your church libraries and for your kids’ teachers and for your neighbors and for your white elephant exchanges and for…who am I forgetting? BUY IT FOR EVERYONE! (And if you’re local to me, I’ll sign and hand deliver it.)

In the muck and mire of this year, one thing has remained: my people are so good at loving me. My parents uprooted and replanted again, and they are an absolutely Godsend. For the 44th year in a row, my life would not be possible without their support. I keep paying them back by buying their dinner. They should probably strike for higher wages. I am truly the luckiest kid on the planet.

That’s it for now. I do hope that 2025 brings the hope and healing that I need to put the turmoil of the past year on the shelf next to the other lessons I wish I’d never had to learn like how you should smell the Dr. Pepper can before taking a sip to make sure it’s yours if you’re hanging out with someone who dips tobacco. ::shudders after snapping out of a flashback to 1996::

Happy Christmas and a blessed New Year to everyone except the tow truck driver who took my car from behind the house where it was parked with the garage door open and the lights on in my house while I swapped kids in and out between activities on a weeknight. That guy can choke on his own spit.

But everyone else—I’m glad we’re in this together.