Joy!

I love the assortment of cookies in the children box God gave me. One is intellectual, silent, serious. Another is garrulous, emotional, intense, and wacky. A third is a mixture, but tends towards the very creative artistic type. I see bits of myself in all of them, but the most unreachable is probably my oldest. He doesn't like to talk, finds it meaningless, even painful, and wasteful of the allotted breaths humans can take on this earth.

On the other hand, talking through what I am feeling and thinking is very valuable to me. I share his stumbling with words, but still feel it is a critical aspect of human interaction. We are always at an impasse emotionally, totally clueless as to how the other can exist in their own psyche. I try to understand and silence my maternal concern. I try to exist quietly in his presence, but it is not easy. I prayed very specifically yesterday morning that God would grant a miracle of opening doors between us.

Last night, Arvo told me the kids should open the gift he had bought early. He said it was important since Anders only had a few days to spend with us. Based on my non-materialistic son's usual stoic response to gifts, I was not sure it was worth decreasing the visual and gluttonous excess of all the gifts under the tree Christmas morning, but being the typical dutiful and obedient wife (sarcasm is dripping like melted butter here...), I acquiesced.

The kids lined up by the large gift and Anders ripped open a corner. Now the fact that Anders even bothered to approach the gift with anything looking like interest was enough to tip me off that I was watching a miracle. When he lifted the box and began ripping into it, and the others converged on it tearing away packaging like sharks on a piece of meat, I felt knobs turning, rusty hinges creaking.

As they pulled out the guitars, and drums, and began hooking up the Beatles Rock Band set to the Wii, Matt smiled at me and said, "GOOD gift!" Anders, my silent Anders, was chattering away. He was singing, out loud, Beatles songs.

He asked me, as he handed me the mircrophone, if I wanted to sing. He assigned himself to the drums, and Matt to the guitar. Asherel and Arvo sat on the couch watching, and waiting their turn. Then Anders cranked the music up loud and our sunroom became a concert hall. The boys were at the "expert" level. I was a "beginner", but many times I noticed the screen flash extra points because we were all "in unison." If it would not have made my emotion-fearful son run screaming away, I would have burst into tears with joy. Never had I loved my husband more for having the wisdom to know just what we all needed to reconnect.

So while the typical Christmas message would be quite the opposite, I discovered that money CAN buy happiness. Maybe not permanently, and maybe not the kind that will carry you to the other side of "this mortal coil", but it is the most blissful family moment we have had with our adult children I think in a very long time.