a bunch of funny-looking people

Now Playing: "Looney Tunes" short.

The cousins and siblings are all parked in front of the TV, which gives me the chance to write. Laura beams at me from the rocking chair, her braces and eyes sparkling, as the two little gophers say, "And think how much better it'll be when we have electricity!"

I woke up this morning to the chatter of little girls. To be precise, it was Annalee bursting into Laura's room, squealing, "We can open our stockings now!" Downstairs, I found Ross, Andrew, Laura, Lillian, and Mary eating breakfast. No one eats breakfast all at once. I drank hot tea and ate apple strudel bread with cranberries in it. Mary hopped around, begging for a grapefruit. My mother was already busy in the kitchen, fixing the ham.

When Grammy arrived, she realized that she'd forgotten her presents. So she gave me her car keys, and I got to drive her new Buick back to her house. That was fun. :o) It's nice to drive a car that doesn't cough when you accelerate, or groan when you go over bumps, or quack when you're quietly minding your own business. A cold north wind scoured the brown fields under a blue sky--a broad horizon, high sky day.

Back inside, I sat around for awhile, reading The Everlasting Man and listening to people talk. Once everyone was ready, it was time to open presents. We gathered in the living room. I handed out the presents: stockings first. Then I handed out Grammy's presents to the Fearings. Mary was delighted with a white plush cat in a green purse. Next were my parents' presents: giftcards for all the kids, and a basket with chocolates in it for Aunt Lisa and Uncle Kirk. Aunt Lisa and Uncle Kirk gave all of us chocolate Hershey's bars, and Peter handed out boxes of cherry cordials to everyone. Lots of sugar!

Lillian, Laura, and Annalee had all trotted off to San Born Lake. Uncle Kirk had mysteriously disappeared. Grammy realized that she'd also forgotten her pills, so she decided to drive back to her house. Aunt Lisa, chafing Ross to go for a run, suggested that he go along, so he reluctantly tied on his shoes and left. I myself was becoming edgy. I bounced into the study and dragged Philip and Stephen out, and managed to pick up Andrew and Peter along the way, to walk around San Born Lake. We all wore hoodies and tied the hoods around our faces.

The area around the lake was cold and windy. Desolate under the scouring wind. The wind howled and rocked in the branches of the trees, ruffling the lake. I saw deer prints in the mud. As we rounded a corner between juniper trees, we bumped into Uncle Kirk, who said that we looked like gnomes going down the path in our pointed hoods. He'd been outside "GPSing" with his new handheld GPS mapping device. We trooped behind him down the path, in quest of "nothing", a point he'd labeled on the map of the area. "We're about thirty-five feet away," Uncle Kirk announced. We crunched off the path, between tall stems of sumac and goldenrod, and into a clump of juniper trees, where the grass was silvery and velvety. "Here's nothing," he said. Andrew and Peter had already discovered the beaver's dam and were clambering along it. The rest of us followed suit. I led us up the steep bank on the far side and onto a flat clearing, where the grass was thick and spongy. Uncle Kirk and Andrew climbed the ridge above the clearing, standing silhouetted against the sky. I scrambled after them. The wind hit my face, sweeping over the field. We could see the pale yellow of the dry grass in the clearing, falling away to the tangle of willow and cottonwood trees along the creekbed.

Uncle Kirk decided that it was time to go home, so we crossed the creek, back to the path. The boys and I continued around the lake. Nary a sight of the little girls did we see, though we walked very quietly on the muddy trail--soundlessly, the rushing of the wind in the trees covering any slight noise we made. As we came out in the meadow on the other side of the lake, we spotted my father, Uncle Kirk, and Mary strolling down the path toward home. We ran to catch up with them. Uncle Kirk followed his GPS's directions home, nearly bumping into a car in the street, to Mary's amusement.

At home, we all had to take off our shoes at the door, thanks to the caked mud. Grandma and Grandpa, my father's parents, had arrived, and were sitting in the dining room, talking with Grammy, while my parents and Aunt Lisa worked on cooking. Mary popped by occasionally to swipe a black olive off the relish tray. I propped my legs up on a chair and kept reading.

Ross and I set the table. My parents had pushed together most of our tables, covered them with bright red tablecloths, and made a centerpiece out of a gold garland and a holly garland and candlesticks. Once the plates and silverware were around, I agonized over where to seat everyone. We sat down to eat at about twelve-thirty. Adults at one end, small ones at the other. The adults talked about real estate and businesses and new restaurants. The girls chattered and giggled. The boys stoically ate their ham and potatoes. Before any of the children could eat dessert, we lined up on the stairs for a group photo. And then we were allowed to eat: chocolate-chip cookies, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie. I had to drink black spice tea to balance out the incredible sweetness of the brown sugar in the pecan pie.

After lunch, Peter and I decided to go kite-flying at Boomer Lake. Somehow, we picked up the rest of the motley crew on the way so that the entire horde of kids, from Uncle Kirk to Mary, decided to come along, except Stephen, who was too engrossed in the computer. (Well, we did ask Uncle Kirk to come, just to make sure nothing disastrous happened with the kites.) And because the other boys were coming, we picked up a football and a soccerball along the way out.

We ran across the big highway to Boomer Lake--the feeling of freedom stolen by danger as we burst through the juniper trees and onto the big open field below the water tower, looking out over the lake. The girls tootled off to play on the playground. Uncle Kirk helped Peter tie his kite securely to its nylon string. Andrew helped me get my kite up. The wind was changing toward the west, blowing very strong. My kite pulled hard. And then, all of a sudden, it plunged nose-down and drove itself into the crown of a big pine tree further down the hill. I groaned. "Sorry, E--!" Uncle Kirk called matter-of-factly. "That's the first time that kite has ever been in a tree," I growled. "Looks like the last time, too," Andrew said, coming up beside me and tugging on the string. "Thanks," I retorted. Ross and Philip ran down the hill and stood under the tree, staring up. "Tug!" Ross yelled, "Tug harder!" as the wind scoured over the top of the tree. Andrew yanked on the string. "Pull! Pull!" the older boys yelled. Andrew tangled the sleeves of his hoodie into the string, and between his yanking, and the wind's blowing, the kite finally slipped free of the bouncing branches.

With Philip's help, I reeled in the kite and took out the supporting plastic bar so that it wouldn't present a surface for the wind. Everyone else, except Peter and Annalee, trailed off downhill. I bundled up my kite and set it down in the lee of a juniper tree. Peter had got his smaller kite up successfully. The nylon fabric flapped in the wind and the thread hummed tensely. Silhouetted against the pale blue sky, the kite was a beautiful thing, bright colors glowing in the sunshine between black seams. The only trouble was that, in the strong wind, the kite kept looping down, swivelling between the two pine trees lower down the hill and the golden rain tree closer to the water tower. Every ten seconds or so, it would loop-de-loop down and bang! Its triangular nose would slam into the ground. Annalee stood faithfully underneath it and picked it up every time, holding it high over her head with both arms. The kite kept buzzing her curly blond hair before it hit the ground. "It's trying to give you a haircut!" Peter and I laughed to her across the field. "Would you like to have a try?" Peter asked. Reluctantly, I took the spool. The familiar tug of the kite on my hands was like the pull of a live thing, the kite itself like a temperamental animal on the other end of a leash. Swerving to and fro, looping down, leaping suddenly up, hovering or yanking. I managed to keep it airborne for five or ten minutes before fluttered gracefully downward for Annalee to pick up again. We finally decided that it was time to reel it in. "I've only reeled in this kite once. Every other time, it's crashed!" Peter chuckled. We untangled the string from the grass and walked down the hill.

Everyone else was inside the soccer court. Like a tennis court: a long rectangle of asphalt, with wooden boards built up probably four feet all the way round, and chain link above that so that playing soccer in the court was like playing indoor soccer. Just as we arrived, Uncle Kirk and Ross were splitting everyone into teams for a game. Peter, Andrew, Ross, and Lillian were on one team, with Philip, Laura, Annalee, Uncle Kirk, and me on the other team. Marry trotted back and forth, kicking the oak leaves drifted in the corners, her wispy hair almost white in the sunshine.

We played a good hard match--at least taking into account the fact that half our players haven't played soccer in at least four or five years. The ball ricocheted off the wooden walls and skipped over the cracks in the concrete, which had been poorly patched with tar. We made a couple of goals, but the other team made three.

Back at home, the grandparents were still sitting around, drinking coffee and tea. After my father's parents left, my mother and Aunt Lisa managed to collect the little girls so that they could finish their baskets. I moved to the corner of the dining room, with my legs stuck out in front of me, Aragorn-style, and went on reading. "I have a feeling that you're like our cats. You like to be near things, but not participating," Aunt Lisa chuckled. "Once when I wanted to gather the cats so that they could go to the vet, I decided that all I needed to do to catch them was to go out in the front yard and start gardening. Not five minutes had gone by before there they were, all three of them, watching me and having a good old time." I grinned, and finished my book. I lounged around and stroked Mandy (who purred reluctantly when I rubbed her stomach) and gave Annalee helpful hints about binding the rim of her basket.

Upstairs, I found Andrew and Peter playing computer games, Ross reading The Gulag Archipelago on the floor amid a scatter of plastic food (courtesy the little girls), and Mary scampering upstairs into Laura's room with Stephen, draped in a maroon velveteen blanket, prowling after her. "He's the tickle monster!" she squealed. Peter and Annalee appeared on the scene, attracted by the promise of rough-and-tumble fun. When Uncle Kirk emerged from the bedroom, where he and Aunt Lisa are staying, Annalee begged him to play with them. So I found them an old blanket, and Annalee proceeded first to drape him in it and then to clamber on top of him while he stood on his four legs on the floor. Mary scrambled on, too. Uncle Kirk, from under the blanket, reached out a long hand and grabbed Peter's ankle. "No, no, no!" Peter squawked as Uncle Kirk dragged him along the carpet and proceeded to tickle him. Somehow, Peter ended up at the bottom of the heap, until Uncle Kirk switched to tickling Annalee instead. He seized her ankle through the blanket. "Hm, what's this doing here?" he said, and proceeded to tickle it mercilessly while she giggled and wheezed on the other end. She has a very funny little giggle, and even when he stopped tickling, she couldn't stop giggling. I lay on the sofa and laughed and laughed. Somehow, Peter ended up on the bottom every time, usually with Annalee sandwiched between Uncle Kirk and Peter while Mary pranced around the edge of the melee.

This kept going for quite awhile--yells, shouts, laughs, squeals, giggles, tangles of disordered hair and rumpled blanket--until someone called upstairs that it was suppertime. My parents had a somewhat difficult time getting everyone settled down enough to eat. We ate roast beef and leftovers for supper. All the kids were very hyper--very hyper. "Oh, my, it's only six o'clock," Aunt Lisa said with a hint of disgust. I suggested a movie to my father, and he immediately approved the idea, so the girls all got marched upstairs to take baths before the movie. The rest of us sat around the dining room table, talking. Every so often, one of the other kids would pop by to swipe a cookie.

It was too hard to get everyone's attention by verbal call, so Stephen and I turned on the TV. As soon as the cheerful, tin-music-box theme of "Looney Tunes" started to play, kids emerged out of cracks and crannies. Philip and Ross from their rooms, Peter and Andrew from the computer, the girls from the shower. Even the adults gathered around to watch, while my father set out chairs. We watched two "Looney Tunes" shorts, and are now watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Uncle Kirk sits at the other end of the sofa, with Mary snuggled beside him. Aunt Lisa just finished "Mary's" basket (though almost everyone except Mary has worked on it). When she handed it to Mary, the grin lit up Mary's little face. My father perches on the piano bench, Andrew has been nestled in the armchair, Peter sits in a rocking chair, Lillian, Laura, and Annalee flit about, and Aunt Lisa works on her other baskets. Grammy was sitting on the chair at the end of the sofa, but she's gone now. Ross and Andrew are upstairs playing on the computer now, I think.

To quote Father Christmas, "Long live Aslan--and Merry Christmas!" to all of you.