One year there were a few meals that landed with a thud. Between different diets and preferences, a couple of guests looked at what was served and jumped in the car for take out. 

I recall an awkward year when we opened our home for company, thinking that they would stay for three hours tops. After six they were still here, and hinting for more food. We construed a story about a previous engagement and excused ourselves. 

My family of origin never stopped hammering me with the story about when my sister made a shoe box full of Skipper doll clothes, and I muttered a quick "thanks."

One of the twins still hurts to remember the Christmas program at school when she was in third grade. Minutes before she was to walk into the dark room with a candle, singing "How Far is it to Bethlehem?" she was sick. She missed it, and can never get that moment back. But this year she was a bell ringer, and filled the same auditorium with the silver sounds of her E and F.

Most families fumble with too small sweaters and the wrong color gloves, but those errors are inescapable unless you give nothing but cash. 

Marriage often entails the melding of two varying histories. How and when you celebrate, what you eat and why, where you worship and with whom are all details that show up when you thought everything would be as perfect as a Shutterfly card. But the facet of marriage and family that makes it to the final print is plucked carefully out of the morass of botched interactions. Except for the couple that gave up on the baby smiling for their Facebook photo, and decided to cry with her, most of us hide our mistakes like the bare side of a Christmas tree. 

The other morning I was teary in bed, thinking of the string of failures that snag my attention when I am supposed to be happy. John wrapped his arms around me and listened. Thirty three years holds plenty of room for disappointment. 

But there are an abundance of sweet moments too, if I look for them. 

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