Life (and List of 100 Dreams) update

Happy New Year!

I did not mean to take two weeks off from the blog, but life happens. At the beginning of this stretch, the preschooler got a nasty stomach bug, so I was up much of the night with him. Then our nanny got it, so we were sans childcare. Not my most productive week!

And then of course it was Christmas. We hosted my extended family for a party a few days before. On another day, all 7 of us went into NYC to see the Rockettes and go out to dinner. Activities like this remind me that my family is…bigger than average. When we parked the minivan at the garage we’d booked and all climbed out, it had a real clown car feel. It was a fun trip, but it was also 17 degrees that day, and so every time we were outside someone got massively unhappy.

We did the Christmas pageant (this year we had a reader and a sheep) and the service of lessons and carols on Christmas Eve. Christmas itself was low key in the morning but then the afternoon was a flurry of packing because at 5:45 a.m. on December 26th we drove to Newark Airport to fly to Barbados! International travel is another thing that is challenging with 7 people. But we made it. We spent time in the pool, on the beach, with my husband’s brother’s family (they went to the same resort) and just generally relaxing. Also, we celebrated someone’s 5th birthday! Yes, the little guy turned 5. For the first time since 2007, I do not have a child under the age of 5. Crazy.

I will give a shout out to my husband here, because I arranged to fly home from Barbados on 12/29, leaving him to travel solo with five kids the next day. Why? Because I had a dress rehearsal in Philly on 12/30 for a performance of the Bach B-Minor Mass!

Yep, this item has been on my List of 100 Dreams for ages. If you read 168 Hours, it’s in there. In college, I learned the mass, but then I was going abroad to study in Australia, and so I missed the concert. I figured I’d have another chance. Then 25 years passed. I started to realize that a bucket list item like this was going to be challenging because while you can buy a plane ticket somewhere exotic if you wish to go, it is a lot harder to arrange for an orchestra, a chorus, a director, a performance venue, etc. My back pocket idea was to audition for a choir an hour north of here that performs the mass every spring.

But I got a hot tip that Choral Arts Philadelphia would be performing the B-Minor mass on New Year’s Eve, and the director was kind enough to let me join them. I started going to rehearsals on Monday nights downtown, and re-learning the music. Yesterday, I sang in the performance and finally crossed this off my list. It was really cool. The singing sounded amazing and I was just trying to be as present as possible to appreciate it all. I hope it won’t be another 25 years (any other Philly area choirs doing this work, let me know!) but I know now to appreciate the opportunity.

(Also cool: a member of the orchestra introduced herself to me before the concert and said she had read my books! How fun is that?)

Then I drove up to my neighborhood to meet my younger two kids at a New Year’s Eve party (our nanny worked during the day and took them to the start of it). We did a New Year’s countdown at 7:30 p.m. The kids danced and waved glow sticks. Just perfect. Then my husband and I came home to supervise a houseful of teenagers, because some of the older kids decided to have sleepovers. There are 5 extra young people in my house right now but everyone is still asleep and they have all been very good.

So that was how I rang in the new year. This hasn’t been the easiest year, but I love the way it ended — with music, family and friends. Here’s to a great 2025!