This picture is from Christmas eleven years ago when Tommy was only two weeks old, and now all of them—and Gio and Pipo–are playing charades or some such game in the dining room, shouting and laughing at each other’s miscues and fortifying another enduring memory into the mosaic of their lives. For me, it is another reminder that everything in my life is worthy of this moment, made this moment, and remembers this moment because it validates and makes sense of the patterns and actions Denise and I follow and create as parents–patterns and actions that we question in the moment and agonize over in retrospect (and all too often regret) but through the distillation of experience, the guidance of faith, and the search for perfection within imperfection become the patterns and actions that made us and make us a family. And so a band of small kids gathered around the mystery in a cradle eleven years ago can become a gaggle of kids gathered tonight around the only table they know, practicing a gift of love that anyone can know and live and create and sustain, for if we have faith in love, then we have faith, and it is a faith worth living, if only to give a bit of light to the mystery. Merry Christmas
