Snap By Snap

I arrived home last week to find a mystery box with my name on it. It was from my sister Debbie, but she hadn't said a word about sending anything. I opened the box and found myself looking into a distantly familiar face.

I have previously written about my mom's story when I started this blog in 2009, but visiting her life again through the contents of this box I am especially struck by her resiliency. She was determined to go to school, graduating from Long Beach Junior College at 21, and later finishing her four year degree at the University of Southern California at 24. When my father met her several years later, he found her still living at home, trapped in a family that depended on her for cooking, cleaning, and general maid service. He told me once that she seemed to live the life of a Cinderella, and he desperately wanted to rescue her. They married, and her new life as wife, mother, and registered nurse began. Finally, she had a family of her own.

I bought Christmas cards this year, I did. I even wrote the dreaded Christmas letter and printed some photos to include. And then .... I don't remember much after that. A sledge hammer of work stress descended on me at the worst possible time of the year. We had decorated the house at Thanksgiving, so I had plenty of twinkly lights and our tree to enjoy, but I did not do one bit of shopping or even really think about Christmas until about the 22nd, and the Christmas cards are still sitting on the shelf. It's a shame, because I wrote an awesome Christmas letter this year.


The best Christmas present I received this year was an understanding family. Late nights were met with hot meals, candlelight, Christmas music, and a listening ear. All of my family prayed for me, including my Church family. December slipped by, my scheduled two week vacation shrunk to a handful of days, I blinked, and Christmas was over.

Fortunately, Banjo added a lot of fun to Christmas this year. In the midst of long hours and stress, he brought lots of laughter in unexpected moments. I had heard that laughter is the best medicine, and now I'm a believer. After we filmed the video below, I felt absolutely GREAT for the rest of the day.


Banjo's santa suit taught us two things. First, we had to admit that we are the type of people who dress up their dog. There. I said it. It is sad, and possibly an artifact of two 50 year olds with an empty nest, but there you have it. Secondly, it has taught us how to calm down our dog. Banjo moves much more slowly in a sweater. He also walks sideways. So it is funny AND useful.

Today is January 1, 2012. I have a hard time believing that, but it's true. The scary part is that Amy is leaving for London in nine days. That's a week and two days. 216 hours. And she is NOT ready to go. So tomorrow we will try to finish up shopping for her trip, and try to get our heads around the details of having a twenty year old living in another country for three months.


There's a lot to get done, big changes to digest and process, and new year beginning.

I am not a big one for new year's resolutions. I do tend to set goals, but I am cautious of resolutions. I am more interested in progress and am happiest when I see progress in work, home, and relationships. But this year, I think I will try my hand at a resolution.

My resolution is to hold on to, to believe, the promises made to me. Like this one:

For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. ¹² Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.   _ Jeremiah 29: 11-14

It is an almost overused verse - and unfortunately scripture can often be relegated to the level of "favorite quotes" instead of real, life changing promises meant to affect our daily lives. This year is the year I know I cannot do it by myself (and pretty sure I've known that before) - and there's no way that gritting my teeth and trying harder will do. I need the promises.

When I was in high school, being the Bible Nerd that I was, I spent some of my hard earned Pioneer Chicken money on a book titled "The Jesus Person Pocket Promise Book."  (Yes, I did grow up in the 70's - and proud of it!) I had a hard time, then, believing that the promises were for me - but maybe that was because I still believed that what I did, I accomplished because I was really just that smart, talented, and lucky. Nothing like 50 years to teach a person what they don't know and what it really takes to make it through a day. Or a year.

Maybe next year I'll send out two years worth of Christmas letters and cards. Maybe not. Either way, I hope I will be celebrating the year knowing it wasn't by my own power that I made it through. That I made it through holding on to the hand of the One who made promises He knew I'd need.

 Do you know how many times it takes for something to become a tradition? One time. I learned this from my daughter, Amy when she was about 8 years old. One year we bought a gingerbread house kit and what do you know, it was a tradition. For at least 12 years, we have purchased a kit every year and made a total mess with it. With all the practice we've had, you'd would think that we would be really, really talented at gingerbread houses by now.

One of my own traditions is watching the yearly show about the White House Christmas decorations. As a part of that show, they always show the White House pastry chefs creating the White House gingerbread house. After all the years of practice we have had, I'm pretty sure we could compete at that level. Yep.



Half the fun of buying the gingerbread kit (besides revelling in not having to bake our own actual gingerbread) is purchasing all of the extra sugary goodies to glue on, and licking the stiff white icing off our fingers as we go. I don't know if more sugar goes in us, or on the house.

This year's effort was a kit we bought at Sam's club and it came with fondant, which we had never played with before - big excitement. If you look really closely, you might be able to tell we are new to using fondant. Of course the rest of the house looks pretty much like the one above.

Some of our Christmas traditions have been adopted from Mark's family. One of them is that we serve hot Dr. Pepper (yes, you read that right) with lemon slices during Christmas tree trimming. It originates from a recipe my mother-in-law found in a magazine, and you know what? It is really quite good. I have to say that the first Christmas I spent with the Dobbs, I wasn't at all sure about this one!

The best tradition is not really one particular thing we do. Rather, it is the value that people are more important than things. Being together trumps presents, perfection, and busy-ness. That's what the gingerbread house is really about - it's about Amy and me taking time out of a busy season to sit at the table together and create . . . a $10 house that eventually we pick the candy off of or that the dog one day licks the decor off of. This year Amy reminded me that last year I didn't really help much with the house (too busy). Obviously, it was time to fix that. So today, in the year Amy turned 20 and I turn 50, we put the original Miracle on 34th Street on TV, and sat down with a pile of sugar and some magic stuff called fondant to create this year's house. It looks just like the box, don't you think?



I guess it's a good thing that having fun being together is really the point . . . because that is what we really succeeded at!

I have a confession to make.

It was very, very quiet in our house. Too quiet.

By the time Goldie had been gone for three weeks, we were ready for another dog to love. We had first met "Elroy" just two weeks after Goldie died, when we wandered by an adoption day in the Petsmart parking lot. There was this whiskery faced black and brown terrier in a crate, looking lively. I looked over in time to see the little guy lock eyes with Mark and stick his paw out of the crate to him. It really was love at first sight. But, we weren't ready yet, so we went home - confident that when we were ready there would be a wonderful dog for us, and that Elroy would certainly find a home. Several families were also looking at him that day. How could you not want to take home that face?

It is a sad time here at the Dobbs' house. On Friday, we had to say goodbye to our beloved Goldie. Eighteen months ago she was diagnosed with a slow growing cancer, and we were sure the end was coming. But she stayed fairly symptom free and happy until earlier this year. Then she began having more trouble with arthritis, and her heart began to be enlarged. Her eyes were clouded with cataracts and she was almost completely deaf. Still her life was very good. She ate (lived to eat, actually), loved to greet us when we got home (although she now often slept through our arrival), and love to take walks (shorter and slower but begged for nonetheless). Our Goldie aged gracefully, for the most part. Her face was completely white, but she was still a strikingly beautiful dog. As she aged she lost all inhibition when it came to trash cans, or raiding the pantry, and she had no problem at all barking at us to get what she wanted. She was almost 15.

On Friday she ran across the yard as she always did - to bark at passing kids - and injured her back leg. She could not put any pressure on it at all. I carried her inside, and we drove to the vet, her head in Amy's lap. She had torn a ligament on one of her back legs, completely disabling it. The injury that would require surgery to fix; a surgery she could not survive. Her age and her arthritis wouldn't let her manage on three legs, even if  her heart would have held out. We also knew that in the last few days her lungs had begun to fill with the fluid that marks true congestive heart failure. As much as we'd prepared, as much as we'd known it was coming, we weren't prepared in one hour's time to hear that it was the end. And it definitely was. The three of us cried and told her goodbye as the doctor injected her leg and she drifted quickly to sleep. It was wrenching.

There is such a fine line between life and death. One moment she was living, breathing, connecting, loving and the next all that is left is the shell. We drove home without a word. Shocked. And so began the grieving process.

We are still very much in the  midst of the grieving for our Goldie. Little things stop us in our tracks - like not putting a dish on the floor for her to lick. Thinking we see her or hear her in the house. Coming down in the middle of the night and finding the downstairs empty and silent. Watching a movie without once pausing to let Goldie out. But one thing that has really helped us in these first days is our photos. Looking at the snapshots of her life makes us miss her, but they also make us smile and tell stories, and remember what a very wonderful thing our relationship with her was.

Her portrait, ball, and collar now have a special place on the family photo shelf and Amy and I are going through photo albums, digital files, and the many stories Amy wrote about her when she was young. All of these will go into a book about Goldie, along with each of our memories. But as much as we'll love having the book - it will really be the process of writing it and compiling it that will be the healing for us.

The dark side of grief would have us retreat, withdraw, and avoid the pain . . . but these images from our years with Goldie draw us out of that place. There's more pain but also more joy in remembering her life as we sort photos, tell stories, laugh, and cry. Together.  It helps us move beyond remembering the death, to remembering the life. And what an exuberant, passionate, energetic, fun, and loving life it was.