Janelle Evans

This week, I had the good fortune of sitting next to two lovely older women at an all-day wrestling tournament. I don’t think I’ve ever met closer sisters. They finished each other’s stories and their shared glances might as well have been a secret code of understanding between them.  They truly loved each other.  When they told me about the last year they had, I learn just how much.

The older sister had an only child who died of cancer last year. She was a young single mother with four children.  Though this older sister was the grandmother, her poor health prevented her from taking the children.  The younger sister stepped in and brought the four children into her home, so her older sister wouldn’t lose her Grandchildren to foster care.

It was an amazing story of sacrifice and love. Showing me once again how important our families really are, like a safety net for all the bad in the world.  When the bad comes knocking on your door, if you’ve kept your family ties strong, there will always be somebody you can turn to for help.

I volunteered at a huge wrestling tournament we had at the Junior High School this week. Two gyms covered in mats and eight teams in attendance, it was a packed school. My husband and I were asked to run one of the tables for the matches.  I watched the time and flipped the chart for points made, while my husband kept track on each bout card handed into the main paring table.  Who knew I’d be getting some mat time too.

It all started when my son’s name showed up on a bout sheet for our mat.  Of all the mats in this place, he was going to have to wrestle on ours.

Now watching my oldest son wrestle is always pretty stressful for me, but having to run the table at the same time, whoa momma, being an impartial official went out the window.  Oh I flipped the points chart, and was careful about the time periods, but I rooted shamelessly for my son—even my husband did so I wasn’t alone.  When the match was over, my son had to come to the table to sign the bout card because he won.  The referee comes over and puts his hand on our son’s shoulder.  “It’s pretty obvious who this one belongs to.”

“How’d you guess,” I said raising my shaky hands. “I’m a frazzled mess.” I swear, whenever he steps out on the mat, it feels like I’m out there with him.

Sometimes the days leading up to Christmas are so full of to-do lists the joy in the season gets lost.  This week it was an old man who helped me find the spirit again.

I have a little side job that requires me to go from store to store checking and restocking toys in crane machines.  Normally, my job is simple and not very taxing, but during the holiday season it seemed to quadruple in stress.  At one point, I had bags of toys scattered everywhere and almost every tool I carried with me on the ground trying to fix a certain machine.  A man said, “excuse me,” a couple of times, so I crawled back out of the machine to see what he wanted.  It was the middle of the night, and I had been wrestling with this machine for several minutes.  I really wasn’t feeling very friendly.

This bent old man apologized for disturbing me, but he wasn’t able to get his cart through the mess I’d made with my discarded toys and tools.  I forced a smile I wasn’t feeling and quickly stood to move my things out of the way.  Before leaving, he patted me on the shoulder.  “It must be nice to have such wonderful Christmas music to listen to while you work.”

I hadn’t even noticed the music the store was piping overhead until he mentioned it.  The music really was wonderful—songs about all the things that make this season the best.  Just recognizing it changed my attitude.  Not only did I go back to work humming the rest of my shift away, it made my whole day that much brighter.

This week I went sledding with my family, something we never did while living in Las Vegas.  The lack of snow was probably the biggest reason.

When we started I was the boring adult, stuck with the job of hauling the sled back up the hill and letting the kids enjoy the ride down.  Yeah, that didn’t last long.  The kid in me would never allow it.  But taking the sled from the kids would be mean, so we all piled on.  We laughed and crashed a zillion times down the hill.  It was awesome, until the evening came…  Oh how my body ached—making me paying for all the fun I had.

I would do it again in a heartbeat.  Writing is a very isolated profession.  I spend hours alone with just my imagination.  Any time I get to spend with my family is precious.  They are very important to me.  I never want them to forget that.

I’ve never outgrown my love for music.  Loud and pumping, my radio is always blasting when I’m in the car.  And yes, I sing along, ‘cause it’s fun!  My children often join in with me so my poor husband has to sit in a surround sound of different tones whenever we go anywhere.  Yeah, we’re awesome 😉

My youngest is the biggest kick of all, being six-years-old, he sings as loud as me.  And he doesn’t need to know the lyrics; he just says whatever he thinks they’re singing.  Great example is the song Can you love me again? by John Newman.

The lyrics are I…need to know now, know now, can you love me again?  My son thinks it says, I…need an old man, an old man, to love me again.

When I asked him why he would want an old man to love him again, he rolled his eyes. “Duh mom, daddy’s an old man.”

Mmm…precious.

I love Thanksgiving.  The holiday holds some of my fondest memories of family and friendship.  And lucky me, I get to travel home again this season.  I hope each of you will be surrounded by loved ones as well for the holiday.  May you take the opportunity to not only reflect on the bountiful blessings in your life, but thank all who make your life so wonderful.  With such a large extended family, I know I have many to thank.  But let me start by thanking you, my readers, for sticking with me through all these years.  It feels like it has taken forever for my first novel to get published, but I promise, we’re almost there.