Hello, my name is Jessica and once upon a time, I wrote this thing

It's been quiet around here. As hard as that was for me to let happen, I needed some of the silence. I've been working too many hours, losing too much sleep, feeling my shoulders rise up over things that are too small to get my attention, let alone tension. The holidays came, the boy was out of school, I had some time away from work, and so I chose to turn down the noise and turn off the laptop. It felt radical and there were evening hours I anxiously texted my friends just to hear the tap-tap-tap over the background noise of the television, the bath running, the kids downstairs running back and forth under me.

Lots of the time, that silence was filled with Lil E and I singing -- loudly, blissfully -- Christmas carols in the car and as we added ornaments we dug up from boxes stashed in our storage space, at my parents' house and in random plastic tubs that somehow made the transition through all the moves we've had this year. He discovered the grating delight of Alvin and the Chipmunks holiday songs, was stunned his mother knew the words and immediately put "a hooooooola hooooop" on a loop that lasted two long weeks.

And now, it is time to come back. Because my life is the way I've set it up to be, I am returning to my work and writing and all that I do with the volume going from a steady 3 to near-11. There is a lot this week. I will explain. But for now, just now we haven't gone away at all, simply settled in to listen for a while, to duck out and enjoy ourselves without the need or desire to broadcast the details just yet.

While I upload the photos and gather the stories to put in the queue, here's a little something to slide into the corners waiting to be filled. It's one of my favorite songs of '08 and one Lil E let me play once the lite station stopped playing songs about Baby Jesus and Santa.  It's "Quiet Times" by Dido and if you don't already have her most recent album, do get it. For now, you listen, I'll type.

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And so this is Christmas

It is Christmas Eve, my favorite day of the year. It is when the anticipation is met by the soothing smells of baking and cinnamon, the sound of wrapping paper being unrolled and carefully folded, the momentary loveliness of empty stockings.

It is the day I reserve to buying piles of magazines and mints and dollar bin gifts to fill those stockings.

It is the night that, for years growing up, I reverently lit candle after candle as an acolyte in our church's 11 p.m. service.

It is the night -- wow, eight years ago -- that I got engaged in the light of the Christmas tree as much younger acolytes began to light up the sanctuary in the still and silent church.

Last year, my parents kindly offered to skip the service, to interrupt the Christmas Eve rituals we've had as long as I can remember, if only briefly. Last year, I can't believe I was laughing and having moments of centeredness and peace, but I did. And I refused to let my divorce or anyone else take any part of my favorite day, this most precious moment of my year. So we went.

We've come much farther in this year than I could have dreamed, well beyond sugar plums and mistletoe. We are in a new place. I have a great job. Lil E is in a wonderful school. We are happy.

There was a chance last week, in my mad dash to finalize my divorce, that we might appear in court on Christmas Eve to raise our right hands, sign the papers and it would all these months and months later, come to an end. The full circleness of it would have been just as I like things to be -- neatly tied up with a red satin bow.

I envisioned it all and the beautiful chaos of the universe overwhelmed me. It gave me peace, it made me grieve.

But because most of life does not end up in a tidy package, there were complications and more unsurprising hold-ups and it became clear that the divorce will not be finalized by the end of the year after all.

I cried. And then I breathed. I want it over, but I also craved that calm that comes from all the pieces fitting together.  Really, though, none of that matters this week, and especially today. As my parents reminded me quietly, at least now we could have our holidays the way we have our holidays. Without the worry of court, without any more emotion that we'd already invited, without any interruption to our Christmas Eve.

And so, once again, it is here. Nothing has changed. Everything is completely different. This is Christmas.

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The party in our manger turns into some kind of Quantum Leap episode

Oh, Christmas. The time when old meets new. Tradition meets gold garland. Holy meets commercial. I just didn't expect that all to happen so quickly, so blatantly in our little manger, tucked into a cold and drafty windowsill next to the tree.  But as soon as Lil E eyed the Jesus action figure in the kitchen while I was busy spreading soy butter and jelly on toaster waffles (shhh, no need to tell me...I know this is the part of mothering I get right), that a new Christ was about to ascend upon the lowly barn.

Prepare thyself, Baby Jesu, you are about to meet the future you.

That's what I thought as I sliced apples and reheated coffee. Lil E padded off in his elf socks and Christmas jammies that ride up a little too high on his legs and arms this year and I got caught up in caffeinating and finding the last bit of creamer in the refrigerator. Until I heard a high, sing-songy voice echo in the room.

I didn't recognize it at first. I thought it could be the kids downstairs or the TV. But as I craned my head to listen, I realized the voice was Lil E's version of someone girly or silly, which are to him at four, quite the same characteristic.

"I am a princess," the faint tune went. "Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii am a priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnncesssssssssssss."

That repeated several times before I put the pieces and the people there at the manger together.

"I am a princess!" The lilty voice amplified.

"Ummm, who is the princess in the manger with Baby Jesus?" I called to my boy.

He annunciated in a loud whisper that shot across the living room to the kitchen where the soy butter was still on the knife I was holding.

"It's God," he nodded like he'd just revealed the secret of how the rock at the tomb was moved.

"Jesus...?" I had to get this one right. I needed clarification. "Jesus...is a princess?"

"YES!" he jumped up and smiled triumphantly, the infant savior and the adult action figure, each in a hand.

"I KNEW IT!" I yelled back with my own sense of triumph. "I knew it all along! Jesus IS a princess!"

A little while later, Lil E nibbled on his waffle sandwich and I finished up my second cup of coffee, and it occured to me how that equation was formulated in his preschool mind.

"By chance is Jesus a princess," I interrupted Diego and his magic fanny pack were saving drowning, orphaned cheetahs or whatever goes on during that show, "because he wears those long dresses?"

He looked back at me, eyebrows knit with some moderate concern and validation of my complete dumb-assedness on all things natal, gendered and mangerly.

"Yeah." He said it flatly. "Yeah, he's a princess in a dresses."

As he turned back to his breakfast and TV, I saw him glance over at the two Jesuses almost touching but not, just as Scott Bakula always did in the final scene of each episode. I swear he smiled. Lil E, I mean. The Jesuses are far more sovereign than that, even when meeting by chance in a mossy, dusty barn on a cold winter's night, with a pajamed, hungry angel keeping watch over them both by day and by night.

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