Next

I'm beginning to realize that I'm not the only person who has multiple Christmases. Last night, the traditional big meal with my sister and her husband (what's left of my family in town--a celebration that once meant 12 people, now down to 4). My stepdaughter comes Tuesday, so that's another. Then I go to California, where we have one celebration with our family, one with my son's partner's Mom's extended family (Chinese-American, about 20 or 30 people), his father (another 12 or so), and breakfast with about 8 of our old family (my kids, their father, and his brother). Meanwhile B continues here with his other daughter and maybe some part of his ex's family. That's a lot of celebrating!

We used to think divorce meant splitting apart--turns out for some of us it mean recombining in ever larger and more complex patterns.

However, part of my family's tradition is from-scratch eggnog, with raw eggs. You have to make it right before eating, and now we consider it dessert. So we got up from the big dinner and went to make it, and found that my mixer had died. So my sister and I beat cream, egg whites, and yolks to froths. They looked the same as when we use the mixer, but drinking it, clearly it wasn't the same. It was the best it's ever been. I'm not doing that again, but wonder why hand-beating makes it so much smoother?