Happy New Year!

Dear Cindy,

This harkens back to when I was seven or eight on New Year's Eve. My brother and I desperately wanted to stay up until midnight, and so we collaborated on this note to attempt to sway my dad.

Love,
Jade

then and now

Dear Cindy,

I am sad to have missed out on both your mother’s culinary delights and her learning process on skis! Family pictures made awkward by cumbersome ski equipment are quite enjoyable, so I hope to get a good look at those!

This year’s Christmas was both wonderful and full of surprises! My dad somehow survived our family’s first vegan Christmas Eve dinner. Vegan cupcakes are as delicious, if not even better, than good old animal-product-containing treats. My mom agreed that this would be the last year she would expect my brother and I to leave letters to Santa by our fireplace. 

On Christmas morning I became the confused owner of two miniature African water frogs. Names are still pending a stroke of creativity, and will preferably complement Marvin the bamboo and Elliot the cactus (their future coffee-table companions).

Some things never change. My mom, with my grandparents as sous-chefs, created a constant flurry of activity in the kitchen. There is the usual conveyor belt of sumptuous, mouth-watering meals, including goat-cheese stuffed filet minion! We’ve spent the past few days sighing with contentment and slowly drifting from one meal to the next.

The Christmas holidays are an emotional mix of fondness for the past and of optimism for the future. As we say goodbye to this decade, we bid farewell to our teenage years. This was our decade of firsts. We learned the bulk of what we know now. We experimented: our better ideas became accomplishments, our mistakes became experience. 

As we leave 2010 behind, we are at the precipice of series of limitless possibilities. Ten years from now, I wonder which of the endless choices we will have made. 

I hope I ask more of myself.

I hope I say what I mean.

I hope I travel to far-flung places.

I hope I know almost everything about something.

This is also the conclusion of a decade for which we still have no name. Unlike the nineties, there is no general consensus on a succinct designation for the first decade of the twenty-first century. The path the world followed as it entered the new millennium was violently and forever shifted on September 11th, 2001. Should this decade then be defined at the post-9/11 decade?

That day and its aftermath remain the most distinct world news event in my memory. My brother and I were walking up the steps of our front porch when our mom anticipated our arrival. She opened our front door weeping. “Your world will never be the same,” she said. And so she mourned that the world in which we were to grow up would now be profoundly altered. America’s missions in Afghanistan and Iraq have permeated our vocabulary with abstract language such as “axis of evil, “ a “global war on terror,” and “weapons of mass destruction”. I suppose this ambiguity is aptly reflected by a nameless decade.

Whatever we come to call it, this was our formative decade. Its events form the lens through which we view the world.

I can't wait to look back ten years from now.

Much love,

Jade

Merry Christmas!

Dear Jade,

It’s Christmas day.

I’m sitting by a crackling fire, wearing a festive sweater, and drinking hot chocolate as the smell of steamed rice and stir fried bok choy wafts luxuriously from the kitchen. 

I spent the day skiing down powdery white hills, flanked on either side by majestic evergreens, stopping every so often to watch my non-skiing family members slide, flail, and side-step their way down the hill. Thankfully, there were no fatalities.

With a sun-kissed mountain range, a lake, and a picturesque village as a backdrop, our family Christmas photo was taken from the peak of the highest ski run, whereupon we got back on the gondola and rode to safe ground because my poor mother’s record for time upright on skis is approximately three minutes and the long descent back to the hotel would probably kill her.

One version of Christmas.

I used to be mortified by scenes such as these, but as I get older I’m starting to appreciate my family’s entertaining attempts at fine living.

Anyways, I hope you and your family are having a wonderful Christmas--whatever that may mean for you.

Love,

Cindy

It's underrated.

Dear Cindy,

Raisins are underrated. Sure, they don't gleam like their flashier, juicier cousins. And brown is not quite as visually appealing as red, green, or purple. And it's easy to dismiss their long-past-expiry-date appearance. But only up until mid-chew, when one is suddenly confronted by their perfect balance of sweetness and subtle succulence.

Children may quickly reject them along with other nutritious but disappointing snacks such as peeled carrots and celery. But oh how they err! Raisins are simply delicious. One could call them nature's candy -- in disguise.

Even better, raisins are food with life experience. Their wizened looks reflect their greater depth of character. They have endured the hardship of scarcity, but they have made more out of less (water). Give me raisins over grapes any day.

Raisins come in boxes. Like presents!

And, it's just super cool to eat something that looks just like your fingers after you emerge from a lengthy soak in the tub.

Love,
Jade