The tree is now in its third year. The tradition is to be seven years, if we can keep its pieces for that long. Marcela works away at an old lithograph or cuts the new holiday cards we have just finished. The weeks in which we hoped to slow down have continued to present us with more to do. Is it a busier life here in Florida? It is too early to tell. This week Noah's pre-school class put on a Christmas pageant. Ms. Daughtry, Noah's teacher pictured here, announced that this was the end of her 38th year as a pre-school teacher in this school. That makes her first graduating class two years older than I am. Noah is in the center of the photograph, a little-dour faced in his reindeer antlers. He decided he did not want to be only friends with Elizabeth that morning. This had led to some bad feelings. That's Elizabeth to his right, who got her way, mostly. Noah is still full of interesting questions. This morning after he and Maxim had sung Twinkle Twinkle Little Star a couple of times, he asked me, "Daddy, how did they do that song?" "How did they what?" "How did the people make it?" He wanted to know how the song was written. "They made it up, like we sometimes make up songs." "Oh." Yesterday I had to do some work on campus and they joined me so Marcela could have some time to do her own work. At first they did not wander very far, playing in their tent and wandering to the edge of a nearby pond. After a while I looked around and realized they were nowhere to be seen. I walked over to the pond, no sign of them. My heart sank as that instinctive parental panic sets in, I scanned the horizon. There they were. They had decided to climb Mount Eckerd, a 40 foot pile of dredge material covered now in three years of successional growth. Later they disappeared into the Palm Hammock, a five acre successional hardwood forest on the west side of campus. Same situation, I worried and went after them. They were on the far side, following a transect ("We were following the pink flags, Daddy," Maxim told me matter-of-factly"). They came home exhausted and we had a barbeque with some of our new friends. Maxim's school also had a holiday pageant. Maxim was the first candle of Hannukah. The kids sang almost a dozen songs and then all the kids and parents ate cake together. It is quite a crowd of five year olds. Maxim has many friends, but the kids are also still at an age where they bounce around and sort of recognize each other. Three girls sat together like friends for a few minutes when we started eating the brownies. After a few minutes one of them said, "What's your name?" "Dominique. What's your name?" "Amanda." "Hi." "Hi." "What's your name?" "Maxim." "Hi, Maxim." "Hi." Later the three posed with Ms. Wester, Maxim's teacher. We watched video of the kids when they were younger. The are fascinated, we are amazed at the rapidity of their growth. Just yesterday, It seems, they were helpless babies. Now they wander fearlessly around the wilds of Eckerd College campus. How quickly they grow.

It has been far too long and too many things have occured since the last time I posted. Silence can sometimes mean quiet, calm, unhurried, perhaps inert. Not so, however, for us; we have been more than busy during the whole stretch. Classes and running around with two growing kids and starting a business...we have barely had time to take a relaxing breath; our weekly visits to the beach had to stop as every possible second got swept up in a mad frenzy to survive the first semester and plan for the holidays and get through the final weeks of classes and deal with the new things going on almost all of the time. We did survive, however, and we are better people for it. We have missed you. Let's try to get caught up. ** On the "big decision" front, we have decided to invest in a small home-shop/studio for Marcela. She spent weeks on the web and on the phone getting prices, comparing shipping rates and quality. Her first press, an antique, arrived broken and had to be sent back for a refund. This is her second book press, 180 pounds worth of cast iron and grease. She also found a used board cutter in Canada for a very good price and a new nipping press, hand made out of maple. A beautiful piece. She has work already, although not enough to make her comfortable, yet. At night, now, like when we were in Buenos Aires six years ago, she sits up in her smock late at night and slowly caresses the dirt off of fading lithographs. She stands and looks for long stretches; how should this repair proceed? What do the tears and smudges tell me? There is a rhythm there that suits her. The work will come. She was contacted by Eckerd's Art Director to act as a consultant on a book arts independent study that one of his students will be doing this Winter Term. We will look for a house with ample space to build a real workshop. Our minds are made up about this. Our hearts are set. We are certain. ** It is every parent's prerogative to feel boastful about their children and so we do with ours. Our gifted daughter Maxim continues to astound us. She has taken to the camera and snuck almost a hundred shots in the past few weeks, mostly a series of beautiful portraits of her brother, who loves to be photographed. She has learned the fundmentals of reading and is quite skilled and will be joining the first graders during reading time after the holidays. She misunderstood when Miss Wester told her what was going to happen and so she came home believing that she was being promoted to the first grade half-way through kindergarten. She was disappointed to learn the truth. In late November, just before Thankgiving, she played a little girl in the party scene of the Nutcracker. Long rehearsals for a couple of weeks leading up to the show, but a very professional production from the participants point of view; we knew what they wanted her to do and when and how to help get her ready; a sharp contrast with the experience we had in Massachusetts. She really liked getting all dressed up and she especially enjoyed seeing all of her friends in the audience during the second afternoon matinee. ** Noah Manuel is more of a character every day. He came from school today telling Marcela, "I asked Mrs. Daughtry if she knew Templeton {the rat in Charlotte's Web which we are now reading at bedtime}. And she said she didn't." There was pause. "I told her that's ok." He asked me a few weeks ago, "Daddy, where do... what are the... how do dreams go?" He asked Marcela a few week earlier where his thoughts went when he wasn't thinking them. He's an interesting boy. Very gregarious at times, engaging in long conversations with perfect strangers. He does seem to believe everyone is somewhat interested in the things that have happened to him that day, this week, since moving to Florida. He is still very much enamoured of superheroes, especially Spiderman and Batman. And he was for some time convinced that Troy Cott, one of the other Daddys among the parent set at Eckerd, actually HAD a Batman cape with which he could actually fly. This was one the tidbits he shared with people, perfect strangers, for quite some time. "My friend Troy is Batman, and he has a cape and he can fly!" He doesn't seem to be boasting, so much as offering them a chance to be part of such exciting company. When he was in Maynard he used to recite, "I love my Mommy, and I love my Daddy, and I love my sister, and I love myself!" and then give himself a big hug. I would not call him arrogant, however, but rather full of self esteem. ** For myself, it has been quite an adventure this semester. I survived. I think I even taught a few young adults a few things they didn't know they wanted to learn. I have a stack of final papers and exams to grade and I will be able to put my first semester on the tenure track behind me. I sidestepped a few unmarked mines and I think I managed to salvage a class on its way to the bottom of the north Atlantic. Time will tell, as evaluations get passed out in January. I shift my own energies from the frenzied hurry of one class to the next to the more gradual pace of house and family and book about mining. I am, without too much extra emotionalism, proud of myself. This was what I wanted. And now I have it. Life is wonderful sometimes; persistence and steadiness towards a goal, it turns out, is the best gamble.