A Goodenough Christmas part 2

The whole family of 11 gathered into the living room and sat down. Elsie sat under a blanket warm and smelling sweet. She fussed and wiggled. Then I held her a little tighter. Once she slapped me and several times she scratched my face. I corrected her and she cried for a few seconds. I showed her how to touch soft and gentle. For a while, while Leon read us the Christmas story, I kissed her hands and she touched my eyes and mouth and cheeks softly. Her clean hands still smelled like doughnuts.

I noticed that the sun was coming out on a wintry, buttermilk sky.

Leon read about Simeon and our own Simeon smiled big while everyone gave him the attention he loved. Sim is nine years old and was adopted from Liberia, Africa 6 months ago.

Liberia's national language is English but illiteracy is so prevalent that their English is unrecognizable to us. The different sentence structure, lack of grammar rules and limited vocabulary have combined with incorrect pronunciation to make communicating the most difficult adjustment with this adoption so far.

When Havilah was opening a present with a lot of tape Sim sighed and said, " I tink so it's is coming to tay so lah tah". Translation: "I think it's going to take a long time."
When the presents were passed out, each person had the gifts that they had prepared to give, piled around them. Some peoples piles were large and some were small. We went around the room taking turns. When it was someones turn they were asked, "do you want to give or pass?"

Ephraim had a special gift to give and saved it for many turns before he finally gave it to Havilah to open. He had hand crafted a wooden sewing box with finger joints and a beautiful finish of stain and beeswax oil. He put her name on the cover in a bold font by making a stencil and keeping the stain from reaching the letters.

Some of the bigger gifts were: A quilt made by Havilah. She had made the squares out of clothes that were too damaged to repair. She made one special square for each person in the family with their name embroidered on it. There were squares made out of clothes from when the children were babies. It contained some pieces of Ephraim's newborn clothes. I can remember him wearing them and he turned 16 this Christmas.
The batting was a stained, fleece blanket and the backing was a sheet that Leon and I received, from our sister Teresa, for our wedding 19 years ago.

Havilah and I made shop aprons for Leon and Ephraim out of old jean material. We left the pockets on for more character.

I made a blanket out of 15" by 15" quilt squares made entirely of cut up sweat shirts. We really needed a couple more blankets and free sweatshirts are easy to acquire. They can be sewn together overlapping like fleece so they look the same on the front as on the back.

Asaph and Zuriel made a wooden sled for Simeon. When all gifts were given I volunteered to clean up the newspaper and boxes and sent all the children out sledding.


Thank you for spending time with my family through reading this blog. Please check back in a couple days for A Goodenough Christmas part 3 and find out what we didn't have for dessert.