some of the best chocolate chip cookies in the world

This space has been sorely neglected during the course of the last twelve months.  I'm recognizing more and more that writing is a discipline, and it is one that I want to be making a more concerted effort to engage in.  It's interesting this year has been one in which Philip and I have been intentional about having extra bandwidth and one in which I have probably had more time, space, and energy than I have in a long time.  While I wish that the last precious twelve months had been chronicled more closely, I also recognize that on some level maybe a piece of me was just focused on being present and soaking in the moments of what has probably been one of the best years of my life.  Certainly not a year without significant disappointment, immense stress, grief, angst or the kind of growth that only happens through the crucible of acute pain.  But a year in which Philip and I have looked at each other repeatedly and realized that after sacrificing deeply and pushing really, really, really exhaustively hard for the first decade of adulthood we were able to coast for a bit.   

This year has been marked by immense gratitude for what I see when I look to my right and my left.  It has been one in which I have worked hard to not get spun up in my head about what is behind or directly ahead of me. 

This morning our fireplace was on and the Bing Crosby Christmas station on Pandora filled the living room.  I stood in the kitchen making what may be the last batch of cookie dough that Philip will consume for the next year.  As the words of Silent Night hung in the air I was brought back to a moment I will never forget last December.  Christmas 2014 was an incredibly special one.  Philip and I knew it was the one Christmas we would share in a three year time period.  And it was truly Wonderful in a very Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed kind of sense.  We joined my brother and his wife at my parent's home in Minnesota for a week of laughing, card playing, baking, eating, sharing, loving, shenanigans, trouble-making, merriment, and just plain being.  Together.  I remember coming home from the Christmas Eve service at my parents' small church and Philip remarking to me as we laid side by side in bed that night how moved he was as he sat in the sanctuary, looked around him at the community who lives together, loves, intimately knows, and serves one another in a manner that unique to the cultural fabric of a small town and thought to himself: "This is what I would sacrifice my life for.  These are the people I would die for.  This is who I serve." 

Two days later we boarded a flight from Minneapolis to Denver and had the somber experience of marking the second year since Dave Lyon had done precisely that. 

These are the images that are impressed  remain in my heart of the Christmas we shared last year.  The moments that I knew as they unfolded were priceless and ones that I wanted to sear into my memory.

This morning as I was standing in the kitchen making cookie dough I looked at the recipe card I was using.  Not only did it arguably hold the instructions to the best chocolate chip cookies in.the.world., it brought me back to when I first had these cookies and got this recipe.  It was our first year married.  In 2007 we celebrated Thanksgiving in Colorado, our household goods were packed up at Philip's parents house the next day (by some questionable, inebriated movers - leave it to the government to take good care of you. . .), and Philip left for England shortly there after.  After my medical paperwork was finally cleared and my visa arrived, I joined him later in December.  It was a whirlwind and a haze of culture shock and challenging adjustments that are inherent in the first year of marriage.  I arrived shortly before Christmas, so my induction to military life and our time in England began being jetlagged during holiday functions with people I didn't really know (two of whom now remain two of our best friends who we love like family).  One of these events happened to be the squadron spouse Christmas party where Philip's commander's wife made the infamous chocolate chip cookies for which I knew I needed the recipe. 

Here we are eight year later.  Changed.  Transformed.  Yet in many ways just more of who we are and who we have always been.  That chocolate chip cookie recipe has passed the test of time.  The recipe has been used over and over on special occasions.  Birthdays.  Send-offs.  Welcome Homes. The recipe has always been used over and over on the precious, ordinary days that have marked the passage of the time in the life we have built and shared.  The days where one determined that extra indulgence was warranted.  Or needed.  Precious days. 

Our first Christmas was rivaled only by Christmas 2013 in terms of how difficult it was (that's another story ;).  As thought back on that this morning I laughed to myself.  As I looked ahead to the holiday season that awaits, I was grateful for the sense of calm that I felt this morning.  My heart is full of emotion as we come closer to the day Philip departs.  Doing long periods of separation over and over doesn't make it easier.  But you do become more seasoned at it.   And this time I won't be living in a foreign country alone.  And I won't be moving someplace where I don't know a single soul and starting a new job while he's gone (and feeling unspeakably guilty/sick/horrendous knowing that even after he returns we will have to live in separate states for an additional four months).   In advance of the last deployment I remember being an anxious mess as I even thought about the prospect of Christmas that year.  This time is different.  We're each a bit more tethered.  But a full year of life is a suffocating, devastatingly long time. 

I don't know what is ahead of us.  As the clock winds down on our year together the weight of the realities that are ahead of us is heavier in some moments.  The discussions about life insurance.  The knowledge that a new batch of "If I go. . ." letters will be composed in the coming days.

I don't know what it will be like to look back on this last year later in my life.  Will it be the cream-in-the-middle year between two challenging, life-changing ones that I will replay over and over?  Will it stand out as the year of unparalleled professional fulfillment (and simultaneous disappointment)?  The Year We Became an Aunt and Uncle? The Year Philip Became a Hardcore Academic? The year of The Trip to Mexico That The Air Force Managed To Torpedo?  The Year of Peeing on Expensive Sticks and More Doctors and Appointments at Walter Reed Than I Can Begin to Count?  I don't know.  But I do know that the quality of the days of life that we have shared over the expanse of the last 12 months has been pretty fantastic.  I know that I'll remember fondly Sleeping in Saturdays.  Chipotle.  Cookie Dough.  The little things.  The things that are, in fact, the really huge things when you know that you have to make a finite amount of time count.