103: Season's Greetings

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. Our season was Christmas and we barely got home from Savannah in time to celebrate. Joanne arrived at the same time and we met her and Amy at the airport before we came home. I rode with Joanne and Amy while the five girls with me picked up my car from the parking lot and drove it home.

"I'm going to the dorm," Amy said. "I'm just hoping there is still someone around who wants to play."

"Just be careful of the new guys. They haven't gotten used to the crazy yet," I laughed. Eric had moved over to the dorm for the winter break and I could just imagine his response to Amy being aggressive.

"That's just it," Amy sighed. "This place used to be so much fun and now everyone is serious all the time. I think it's kids that do it to you. Have little ankle-biters and you forget how to have a good time."

"Really, Amy? The kids are a good time."

"Mmmhmm. Are you going straight home, then?" she grinned. I glanced at Joanne. She had a pleading look on her face.

"Uh ... A little later," I said.

By the time I got to the big house, of course, my family was all in bed. I kissed Xan on her head as she slept. Almost two years old. I knew Céleste and Liz would be at Casa del Agua so Céleste could nurse on Rachel. I hoped Doug took time to cuddle with Liz as well.

It had become a little difficult because Liz never really got more than a few drops from her nipples and Rachel flowed like a spigot. The babies had to eat every few hours, so Liz and Céleste needed to be near the food bar. Of course, Rachel, Sandy, Doug, and Doreen wanted to be in their own house. It was natural. When I was home, I found I spent a couple nights a week there as well.

I'd never thought about how complicated our relationships made everything until I'd started working on my estate plan. Providing for my family now that we were in our mid-twenties meant something very different than it did when we were teens. Sure, I had a master suite to which I could take an individual lover. But where did Rose go to be alone or to take one of our hearthmates for the evening? I'd already heard Elaine talking about having a place closer to work so she didn't have to commute in morning traffic.

Angela had completely moved to her mother's house before school started this fall. She was in clinical rotations now and was moving to different facilities to be with different kinds of patients. The fall had been in Family Medicine, Pediatrics, and now Ob/Gyn. Toward the end of January, she'd move to Psychiatry and Neurology. She wouldn't get another break until August. It was almost worse than Whitney's schedule in the Marines.

I noticed that Josh, Cassie, and Mary were spending more time in the suite at the Clintons'. Cassie was with me a lot, either as my assistant in the studio or on the road. I could scarcely begrudge her time with Josh when we were at home. After Mary graduated, her role on Young Cooking had moved from kitchen manager to assistant producer. She had worked with Rees to staff the kitchen the way Rees was most comfortable, to make sure all supplies were stocked, and to coordinate schedules, topics, and audiences. Since Young Cooking was live at nine in the morning, Mary was usually at the studio by seven. Rhonda was still functioning as Executive Producer for the show since it split from Chick Chat this fall, but it had its own crew, recruited from Lonnie's graduates at the University. One thing about working the way we had for the first few years, we had lots of contact with a lot of talented people through our cooperation with Lonnie's classes. Mary would be the full-fledged producer for that show soon and Rhonda would truly relax into the role of executive.

Dani was always with me when she could be. With Xan being almost two, it was harder to travel with her and have Dani function as my assistant on the road. At the same time, she was more active during the day at the café in the village with her sisters. They were still only open for breakfast and lunch, but it wasn't unusual for Dani to be up when I was at four-thirty and be at the café by five-thirty. Sylvia had moved up to the house in the village full-time. Bart was there three to four days a week while he still managed his distillery in Bardstown. They'd sold their house in Louisville. Sylvia was happy to have Xan in the mornings if I wasn't available.

I wasn't at all surprised when my little girl came padding up to me in her footie pajamas when I got up Christmas Eve morning to begin fixing special treats for the day. I didn't even realize she was there until I felt her tugging at my leg. I tossed a towel over the rising bread and reached down to scoop up my baby. She wrapped her arms around my neck to hug me and then signed, "Sleepy, Papa."

"Were you too excited to sleep last night?" I asked as I nuzzled her. She nodded. Xan wasn't much bigger than she'd been as a baby at twenty-seven inches and twenty-four pounds, though she was fully mobile now, including handling the stairs. It took her a while to crawl up them. They must seem like mountains and she preferred to be carried up. Coming down, though, she would sit on the step and bump down one at a time.

What was slightly more concerning was that she didn't talk. We knew she had vocal cords because she could screech, giggle, and cry with the best of them. We knew she had language skills because she signed all her needs and conversations. She just didn't talk. Dr. Jan told us not to worry about it. She didn't think there was any vocal trauma and that speaking was often a choice a child made rather than a necessity. Sylvia had tried desperately to get Xan to talk and we finally asked her not to pressure our baby. She grudgingly accepted that if she wanted to take care of Xan on a regular basis, she had to abide by our rules.

I held our sweet baby and sang little Christmas songs as we danced around the family room. The whole time Xan almost purred in my arms with her hand petting my cheek. We finally settled in the big chair and both of us went to sleep. She was so much like her mother.

I woke up with C-Rae and Céleste having joined Xan. I was kind of a baby mattress. I decided not to move. There was a soft caress of my cheek and Liz leaned over the back of my chair to kiss me softly.

"It's only six, love," she whispered. "Go ahead and sleep with the babies."

"I'm missing James and Matthew," I whispered back.

"They'll be here soon. Matthew spent the night last night with Ellie. You know how fast Rachel wakes up. I don't think she woke up when we attached the babies to her tits this morning. I left James attached and brought Céleste. Dor's in the kitchen finishing what you started this morning."

"Thank you, love." I just sat there cradling my children in my arms.

Christmas Eve was beautiful as always. I mentally marked my calendar. The sixth Christmas Eve we'd celebrated at the ranch. It seemed almost impossible. I counted my days by the birthdays of my cónyuge, clan mates, and babies. The time between was simply filled with work. I enjoyed my job. I was never going to have the audience Letterman had, but he wasn't going to get high school kids tuned into his show every night, either. And that wasn't the reason I was on anyway. The reaction my audiences had to hearing words that simply suggested they respect each other. How hard is this to understand?

This year I am leaving behind my anger and sorrow. I am treasuring the memory of every moment I had with my children and my lovers. I am looking forward to a year filled with love and prosperity.

And the time marched on.

Honey Blossom Trane was born to Sugar and Lionel on March 28. They came to visit on a rare weekend that Lionel wasn't playing. Rachel took that opportunity to announce that she was pregnant again. Wow! James and Céleste were only seven months old.

"Neither of us went back on birth control after the babies were born," Liz explained to me. "This time, she took before I did. But we can keep trying, lover." We're trying? I didn't know that. But Liz was a doting mother and Céleste was an angel. We had money. We had a home. Hell, yes. Let's have another baby.

In May, Donna told us she and Lamar were pregnant. They were also building a new home in the village. There was a mad scramble to decide what to do with the upper barn duplex. It seemed we had no end of people willing to move into it. Ultimately, though, Larry, Theresa, and Dawn moved their family upstairs to the slightly larger home and said they weren't done having kids in their household yet.

Our second generation graduated from college the first weekend in May. It was like dropping a big rock in a puddle of water and watching where it splashed to. They all seemed to have something important to do the summer after graduation. Ross and Judy decided to continue the summer journey they'd begun after Lexi died. Pam had been invited by Heaven to see Paris and get introduced to some of her modeling contacts. TK went to visit Addison in Japan. Nancy went home to Mishawaka. Fashion Week was on hiatus for the summer and would begin again in September when we picked up our full schedule. Leonard, Bob, and Susan decided they needed to shop in New York and visit some of the major fashion houses. Mama Bear went with them.

Rich and Amber got an apartment in Indianapolis for the summer to see if now that they'd graduated they were compatible enough to live together. No one really gave it much chance. Rich was going to find out what it was like to have a real working woman to live with as Amber was taking over as summer guest host for Elaine. And Elaine was going to Hollywood to do a bit part in a movie and scope out the area. When I watched her plane go, I wondered if I'd ever see her again.

We were all pretty sad, but Jennifer was devastated when Larry came to tell us that Jingo wasn't eating and was slow getting up. Jen and I rode with him to the Vet in Columbus where they put him down. The two of us spent the night in the master suite crying while Rhonda, Courtney, and Samantha held us. It was like a part of our childhood—what brought us together—was gone.

Whitney came home for two weeks in July in the middle of her first deployment. I took a week off from the show during the Fourth of July holiday. I'd get more time off during the summer, but we weren't taking two full months off this year. Lee, my guest host when I was off, was getting good reviews, though. Whitney and I went up north and got a nice cabin not far from Lake Michigan where we spent several days sparring during the day and creating our own fireworks at night.

"You need to be teaching, Brian," Whitney said as we lay in the afterglow.

"We still do forms in the morning. Judy works out with me on a regular basis. She's getting extremely good," I said.

"The children, Bri. You need to teach the children. Help them reach the peace that you've found through their bodies. I don't know why, but I believe it will help them a lot. We all need to find that inner peace."

"I don't know how to teach," I sighed. "I've always just followed what you showed me."

"That's all you need to do. Get them in the sacred space so they know it is different and have them follow you. They will."

Whitney spent some time with her mother and her mother's "longtime companion", Dave, in Mishawaka and Janet Anderson finally married him. They'd been together for ten years. It was about time, I guess. Then Whitney was off to South Africa again.

I finished my thesis. A year late, but Dr. Z was pleased and after I presented the paper to my committee, they congratulated me and conferred a Master of Science degree. I was pretty proud of it, even though Courtney was working on her dissertation outline this summer. She'd developed an algorithm that would analyze a digital image and identify areas that had been tampered with. Even I had a digital camera now, though all I ever took pictures of were my kids and my horses. Apparently, though, there was photo editing software available that would let you munge all kinds of things together and make fake photos that were more realistic than the old darkroom techniques had been. She told us that we could all expect our heads to appear on naked bodies in certain unethical magazines and tabloids. The Star was no longer printing that kind of stuff with their new emphasis on positive stories, but they weren't the only sleazy tabloid out there.

Courtney had two additional programmers working for her now and Geoff handled all her system support as well as that for the rest of the ranch. She said a company in California was interested in acquiring rights to her video editing software. Our IP attorneys were working to put things together. It looked like this software stuff could be pretty profitable.

I took Whitney's suggestion to heart and started gathering all the kids who could walk in the morning to go to the sacred space. I felt like I had to tell them something. I'd practiced and Rhonda helped me to make sure I used signs the kids could understand. I paused outside the silo door before we went in.

"This is a special place," I said softly. "It is a place of peace. Outside the sacred space, I am Papa. Inside, I am Teacher. Inside, I will teach you a new way of speaking with your hands and your feet. Inside you will follow what I do and practice what I show you. Do you want to go inside?" There were nods from kids ages two to almost five. "Then follow," I said.

Once inside I removed my gi and folded it carefully. The kids were used to nudity, so they all quickly got out of their clothes. Folding them wasn't exactly neat, but they got everything into a pile. We'd work on that. From that point on, I didn't speak out loud. I did everything in sign language. C-Rae was the youngest in the group. Then Xan at two and a half. Leslie was just two weeks older than Xan. Ellie was nearly five and Matthew was four and a half. Leon and Leann, of course, were in Charlotte. I thought I'd discuss having them come for the summer next year. The first morning we just worked on standing in a line and doing children's games. The littlest ones were still a little wobbly when it came to footwork and at one point, Leslie stepped forward and fell back on her bum. It shocked her and she started to speak but I held a finger to my lips. She got big eyes and for a minute I thought she might cry. I held out my hand to help her stand and we repeated the move. I smiled at her and she beamed.

That first morning, we only worked for fifteen minutes. I didn't want them to get tired or bored and I wanted them to know that this was a special and exciting place. As soon as I got them all dressed, I led them to the door and outside.

"Papa, you aren't dressed," Matthew said when he was outside.

"I'm not finished yet," I said. "You may watch if you want to, or go back to Aunt Dawn. She's waiting for you. But while I continue my dances, you may not come back inside the sacred space. Okay?"

"Yes, Papa," Matt said. The other kids nodded, but I expected them to wander away to play in a few minutes at most. I moved back into the space and began my own forms. As soon as I was into them, the world went away. At one time, this was how I channeled my anger and frustration and worry. It was stress relief to the max. Now I found myself with more emotions that I let out through the forms. My care and concern for the children, my everyday worries about performing on the show, and my sadness at what I saw happening within my casa. Just this weekend we'd agreed to partition the big room upstairs into two master suites so people could have just a little more privacy. We were dedicating one of the guest rooms as a children's room and one as another suite that the mothers would share. That meant expanding into the third room so there was a sitting area as well. Casa del Arco Iris was moving to the lower level of the barn duplex that Larry, Theresa, and Dawn would vacate once Lamar and Donna's new home was finished. Jennifer and Courtney were talking about having the girls' apartment they'd always imagined in the emptied Bunkhouse one. No one was breaking up with anyone, but we needed more room. More privacy.