When my siblings and I started reaching that age where we weren’t quite so tied up in receiving gifts at Christmas, not coincidentally, about the same age that our own children WERE beginning to get tied up in receiving gifts, we all made a change in our gift exchange practices.

We decided the siblings would not buy presents for every other sibling/spouse.  We would draw names, and buy something for just one other person.

In order to carry out this plan, names must be drawn.  For whatever reason, Singing Sally and I have always executed the name drawing.  I suspect we became the keepers of this task because years ago when we were the Mom’s of little kids, we had to do something to occupy our brains, so we started to think about Christmas far sooner than everyone else in the family who actually had a life.

So, every year the two of us draw names.

We held this ritual last weekend at my kitchen table.  Magoo was our lovely assistant.

Here is the final result:

Here is what SELFISH Sally ACTUALLY sent out to the siblings:

Selfish.  The prosecution rests.

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Singing Sally is old.  She has a 22 year old child today.  Jakester, my number one nephew, turns 22 today.  He’s in England going to school so it seems I’m writing this post after his birthday is officially over in his current homeland.  But, I live in the States, and here it’s still his birthday so I declare that this blog is still on time.

Jake is a serious guy.  He has a lot of dreams and ambitions and I trust he will reach his goals.  But, talk of dreams and goals is way above my simple mind.  Let’s get back to talking about him being serious.  He doesn’t smile much.  In particular, he doesn’t like to smile for the camera.  He is the complete opposite of his sister AUBS! as can BE SEEN HERE.  She has trouble NOT smiling.

Jakester was a great sport this past summer when I asked him to pretend to be AUBS! and AUBS! pretend to be Jake.  Here were the results:

I will never ever forget the moment I learned of Jacob’s birth.  It was probably the single most surreal times of my life, as it consisted of such UNREAL mixed emotions.  

It was 1987 and SweetGuy and I lived in St. Louis.  Singing Sally, full with child, lived in Florida. Our incredible Grandfather was on his deathbed in Northern Illinois.  I took to the road to be with him one more time.  It was back in the day before everyone had cell phones.  I hadn’t seen Grandpa in more than a year.  It was imperative to me that I get at least one last chance to touch his hand and whisper my love and appreciation to him.  

As I entered his nursing home room it was immediately clear he was not the man I remembered, and he was so incredibly close to leaving this world.  As my eyes were transfixed on him, Sue, TheOldest sister, who was by Grandpa’s side, gave me the news that Singing Sally and her husband had a son, Jake, the first grandchild in our family.  Oh my, the feelings were unreal.  Despair.  Joy.  

A generation ends.  A generation begins.  In a single moment.

Jacob, you have been given the unenviable position of the first.  Basically, it means you’re the beta version, the practice child.  It means we try things out with you and then do better with those that follow.  Sorry about that.  You should have chosen your birth position a bit better.

Jacob Thomas, I wish you far more than a Happy Birthday.  I wish you contentedness, joy, deep relationships, and great hair.  Your great-grandfather had ‘em, and I expect you will too.

I’m going back a little ways and talking about each of the kids leaving the nest.  Dustmeister LEFT FIRST.  And, this was the next one to go:

I’ll be quite honest, my reaction to Magoo’s leaving was the one I was worried about the most.  It’s not because I love her more. Unlike my Mother, I don’t have a favorite child.  It’s because I had already experienced living without Bud, and of course DustMeister not actually being my child and all, I wasn’t worried about my reaction to him leaving.  But, I just didn’t know how I’d react to Magoo’s departure since, well, to state the obvious she’s been kind of a staple around our house for 18 years or so and I figured my reaction to her leaving would fall somewhere between pure elation at being an empty nester to 24/7 sobbing around an empty house.

I was right.  My reaction fell somewhere in between.

SweetGuy, Bud, and I loaded Magoo and her things into the van and headed down the highway to U of I.  She was putting on a brave, calm face but I knew she was a jumbled mess of emotions inside.  She loves new adventures, but also craves the safe and familiar. 

We pulled into her residence parking lot and with a family prayer and one last deep breath she nervously exited the van to her new life.

It took twelve seconds before our anxieties were laid to rest.  We were met at the door by one of her roommates and another girl whose specific role in the house is to make the new girls feel at home.  It’s her job!  (Side note: There are 38 girls in this house and everyone is assigned house tasks and some girls have assigned roles.  You can tell it is a house of GIRLS because one of the roles is that of SNUGGLER!)  With the help of other girls from the house we had her stuff moved in within a few minutes.  SweetGuy and Bud went off to do manly things like assembling shelves and Magoo and I got her all unpacked and settled into her cozy room. 

In this case, cozy equates to small.  Very, very small.  The girls have separate sleeping rooms, but their dorm room where they hang out and have all their clothes and stuff is something like 6′ x 14′ — and there are three girls in there!  You do the math… no, wait, I will.  That’s something like 30 square feet per person.  Yes, cozy.  Especially considering that Magoo’s shoes alone take up 6.5 square feet.

As we were getting ready to depart I had purposed myself not to get too sentimental or subject her to something LIKE THIS.  I didn’t want to make it any harder on her, or any of us, than it needed to be.  The transition is difficult enough as is, without having her family get all sappy.  So we said quick goodbyes and just walked out.  I had to physically drag SweetGuy a bit, as he definitely started to do the glance back with tears in his eyes thing, and we were going to have NONE OF THAT young man. 

It was hard.  And it was depressing.  And it brought a slide show of memories of the last 18 years that now seem to have passed by in a heartbeat.

But, it also was something else.

It was easy.  And it was uplifting.  And it brought a slide show of imagination of the next 4 years in her life that will pass by in a heartbeat.

Seriously, don’t take this the wrong way, but it was so easy to leave her.  It was easy because she was clearly living in a place that would uplift her in every way.  It was easy because she was excited and ready for the adventure.  It was easy because SweetGuy and I know she’s mature and strong and as prepared as one could be to tackle this thing.

We knew we’d miss her to be sure.  But, we just felt RIGHT leaving her.

And, if I had any remaining trepidation, it was certainly relieved that night when she posted this status on Facebook before she had even SLEPT A SINGLE NIGHT at college:   ”I was born for the college life!”

Since then, in the last month or so she has posted a total of two statuses and they have read like this:

• “Pulling my first college all-nighter!  I’m pumped”
• “Tonight was a milestone of my life… I ate a spoonful of cinnamon and got a phone number from some guy off the street.”

I would say she is adjusting just fine.

And as for us adjusting without Magoo?  

Magoo who?

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Like many other college kids, Magoo attended her school’s club fair, where each club and organization advertises themselves and invites students to join them.

Magoo, again, like many other college kids, signed up for any organization that offered her something free.

She clearly cherished her free treasures, as she sent these home with me when I took her back to school a few weeks ago:

Those free plastic glasses meant a lot to her, evidenced by the fact she effectively threw them away after scoring them during organization sign-up day.  I brought them home and SweetGuy spotted them.  He reminded me of how we, a year or two (or 25) ago as an engaged couple, got our first set of glasses.  They were classy and expensive and we certainly didn’t sign up for meaningful clubs just to get them for free.  

It was a different era back then.  We worked for our glasses.  SweetGuy and I had student season tickets to U of I football.  After each game, we would loiter in the stands, talking with friends and discussing the game.  When the last of our friends left, we shot each other that knowing glance, and then sprinted around the stadium picking up Illini plastic beer glasses tossed beneath the bleachers.  

SCORE is right!  By the end of the season, we had dozens of the best plastic glasses someone else’s $2 beer could provide.  Amazingly, I managed to rustle up a picture of our set of glasses:

We had stacks of those things and used them much longer than I care to say.  Back in the day, we had the motto of “If it is free, we’ll take it.”   And, the glasses?  We were AMAZED that anyone would actually discard such an incredibly special possession.  

Magoo, you’re going to be a starving college student for a long time to come.  You may want to hold on to those glasses.