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The next day, I awake to bright sunlight threatening my eyes and a soft voice caressing my ear. 

“Mom?” Kookie whispers from the doorway.  “Can I borrow the van?”

“What for?” I ask groggily. 

“I need to go buy a new hoodie.”

“You do?”  It seems to me that he has plenty of sweatshirts.

“Yep.  I gave my old one away, you know.”  Now he’s smirking at me.

“Ah.  I see.”

He disappears for about an hour.  When he comes home, he’s wearing a beautiful, burgundy hoodie.  It’s a size too big.  But it’s not quite swallowing him whole.

“You found it,” I remark.

“What?”

“Your new hoodie.”

He glances down at it.  “Yep.  It’s just perfect.”

“Really?  Seems to me it’s about two sizes too small.”

He glances down at his enormous shirt.  “Too small?” he echoes.

I just grin at him as I remember the Jungkook of BTS who loved to be swallowed whole by his sweatshirts.  “Now you can stop mourning the old one.”

He lifts his eyes to meet mine.  “I’m not mourning my old one.”

Just then, Emmie walks into the living room wearing said green hoodie.  Kookie’s eyes light up as they slide over her form.  Then he turns and grins at me.  “Best decision of my life.  Giving that hoodie away.”

He walks out of the room whistling.  Emmie, with her wide eyes, glances my way.  I realize that she couldn’t hear what he just quietly murmured to me.  I smile at her as I wander down the hallway towards the boys’ bedrooms.

“Guys, everyone assemble in the living room.  It’s time to work on our first Christmas project page.”

I hear several groans.  But I ignore them and return to the living room after snagging three of the five journals from my bookshelf.  I glance down at the beautiful, brown leather casing housing each of the notebooks.  I slide my fingers over the top one.  It’s embossed with the words Strong and Courageous.  There’s a zipper that runs from the top of the spine over, down, and around, covering three-quarters of the book’s edges, to meet the spine at the bottom.  I bought the zippered journals on purpose, believing they’d be a little more indestructible than a normal notebook.  I’m hoping this gift lasts a lifetime.  Maybe several.

I picture the future.  Kookie happily married to Emmie.  I can see them standing in their kitchen preparing for Christmas.  His little notebook is unzipped and opened to my butter cookie recipe.  Emmie is reading off the ingredients as Kookie hugs a tiny, midnight-haired beauty to his hip with one arm while opening the refrigerator to retrieve the butter with his other hand.  A honey-haired little boy is running around the kitchen, his obsidian eyes wide with delight at the prospect of tasting his grandma’s cookie recipe again.

A similar scene floats through my imagination concerning Janna and Lyric.  Only the book resting between Lyric’s elegant fingers is pink and a little better preserved.  I know Janna will treat this book of traditions like the treasure it is sure to become.  In this vision, two little girls – each with a waterfall of raven hair flowing past her waist – lean over a kitchen island and study the book that their father has just set down before them.  Baking with their parents is one of their favorite pastimes.  The girls laugh as they thumb through the book and read some of the traditions our family has enjoyed for three generations.

I smile as I picture like futures for Everett and my tiny twins, who won’t be so little by then.  My musings are interrupted by my youngest son.  Complaining.

“Do we have to write down a Christmas tradition today?”

“No,” I reply.  “You get to write down a Christmas tradition today.  In fact, you get to write down several.  Everybody, grab your book off the table.  Kookie, Janna, did you both bring yours?”

They each hold up their books. 

“Excellent.  Now.  What is our first Christmas tradition each year?”

“Getting a Christmas tree!” spars with “Black Friday shopping.”

I grin as I catch Janna’s eye.  “Until this year, that has been our tradition alone.  You can add it to your book if you like.  But for everyone else, chopping down our tree is the first tradition.  I want each of you to write Our Family’s Christmas Traditions and Recipes on the first page.  Then flip to the next page and write a couple paragraphs about all the things we do when we visit the tree farm.”

“We get the saw from the shack,” murmurs Abner.

“Then we ride the hayrack to the field,” adds Alastair.

“We find the perfect tree, and I help Daddy cut it down and carry it back to the hayride,” Everett asserts.

“Then we pick out our cookie and hot chocolate,” Janna reminds us of her favorite part.

“Or apple cider,” Kookie defends his.

“That brings us to our second family tradition,” I remind them.

“Baking Christmas cookies!” Alastair exclaims.

“That’s right, Stair Bear,” I smile as I press the pad of my index finger against the tip of his nose.

“Don’t forget that we get to frost and decorate them too,” Abner points out.  “Right, Mommy?” 

He glances up at me with an angelic expression on his cute face.  A beautiful countenance that is now stretched wide by his sweet smile.  The one he saves for me alone.  The one I saw for the first time five minutes after his awkward birth.  That smile lit up my whole world that day.  My world has never recovered.  It’s still being overwhelmed by the grace of that joyous curve.

“Right, Abs!  Should that be our third tradition or just part of the second?”

“I think it’s a third tradition,” Everett opines.

“So, our fourth tradition was hanging the lights and ornaments on the tree,” Janna comments.

I nod.  “That’s pretty straightforward.  So, I want you to include a description of your favorite ornament in that paragraph.  Including where it came from and what it means to you.”

Pretty soon all my kids are busy writing. 

“Oh!  I forgot.  When you write the paragraph about visiting the tree farm, leave the page across from it blank.  I’m going to have one of you type up a recipe for hot cocoa and apple cider.  Then we’ll print it out, and all of you can paste a copy of the recipes onto that page.”

Janna smiles.  “We’re going to have a whole Christmas recipe book created by the time we’re done with this.”

“Exactly!”

I’m grinning at them all now.  I think this is such a wonderful idea.  I hope someday all of them will appreciate the work we’re putting into preserving our memories this year. 

“Then leave space across from the paragraphs you write about baking cookies and frosting them.”  I consider our options for a moment.  “In fact, leave the next three pages blank.  I want to give you the recipes for the butter cookies, the gingerbread, and my frosting recipe too.”

“We’re going to put one recipe on each of the three pages, Mommy?” asks Alastair.

“Yes,” I smile at him. 

I glance down at his first page.  He’s written a gigantic #1 off to the far left of the top of the page.  Next to #1, he wrote Getting Our Christmas Tree.  When I peer down at Abner’s page, I read #1 A Trip to the Christmas Tree Farm.  Apparently, my children have learned how to write a paper.  I feel quite proud of them in that moment.

“Are there any recipes for the tree decorating paragraph?” Everett asks me.

“I guess we could put the hot chocolate bar recipe there,” I respond.

Everyone nods.

Janna looks at me. “What’s our fifth Christmas tradition?”

“I know what it is!”

“What’s that, Abs?” Kookie asks, smiling at his little brother.

“Shopping for toys for other kids.”

I grin at my youngest.  “That’s right!  We need to go do some more shopping today, don’t we?”

Alastair and Abner look at each other as huge smiles wreath their cute faces.  They’ve just remembered that they’re planning to buy themselves a toy at the sale today.

“So, what recipe goes with toy shopping?” Everett asks me.

“What do you think, guys?  Should there be a recipe for that tradition?”

“Yeah,” Janna quips, “instructions on how to fit a hundred toys into one shopping cart.”

I dust the top of her head with my hand to reward her for her sarcasm.  “I think we can skip a recipe on that page.”

“All right,” Kookie queries, “so then what’s our sixth tradition?”

“Why, that one’s easy,” I reply. 

Janna furrows her brow.  “It is?”

“Yes!  Because…what starts on Thanksgiving weekend?”

Clueless, she shakes her head.

“Christmas movies!” I exclaim. 

“Ohhhh, yeah.  We watch a lot of Christmas movies.  That won’t have a recipe either.”

“Anybody know what the seventh tradition is?”

“Making fudge!” Kookie is quick to name his favorite tradition.

I nod.  Then the kids begin to name off the rest of our holiday activities.

“Making salt dough ornaments!” Alastair interjects.

“And painting them,” adds Abner.

But Kookie is still thinking of food.  “Baking pecan balls and making buckeyes.”

“Don’t forget Mary,” Janna reminds us all of our next-door neighbor, an older woman who lives alone.

“Oh, yeah, we always make her a Twelve Days of Christmas gift,” Everett speaks softly.

“We’re going to have to come up with twelve items again this year,” Janna grumbles.

“Oh, come on.  It’s fun,” I say, preferring not to think about how much work it actually is.  “Remember, we usually make the larger numbers a food item, so they’re easy to replicate.”

Kookie begins to sing in his sweet voice, “On the first day of Christmas, my neighbor gave to me, a stuffed elephant in a tree.”

The twins begin to giggle as Kookie continues, “On the second day of Christmas, my neighbor gave to me two aloe socks.”

Now everyone else is laughing.  Kookie fast-forwards to the last verse, “On the twelfth day of Christmas, my neighbor gave to me twelve Hershey kisses, eleven chocolate buckeyes, ten pieces of fudge, nine striped candy canes, eight gingerbread men, seven sugar cookies, six body lotions, five pecan balls, four green tea bags, three candles…”

“Okay, okay,” I laugh, “we get the idea.  Let’s try to come up with some original ideas this year, okay?  So, we’re not just repeating what we’ve done in years past.”

“I think that’s a cool idea,” Emmie decides to join our conversation.  She’s sitting on the couch between Janna and Kookie.  “Giving twelve days of presents to someone who must be lonely.  I bet she looks forward to it every year.”

“Remember when she made us peppermint cupcakes to thank us?” Alastair asks.

Everyone nods. 

“Wait.  That was only eleven traditions.  Aren’t we doing twelve days of Christmas traditions?” Janna helps us focus.

“Yep.  What’s the last tradition?” 

Stumped, they all glance at each other.

“I’ll give you a hint,” I respond to their blank faces.  “It’s my favorite one.  And one of the ones I work hardest on.”

Kookie’s eyes light up.  “Our Christmas stockings!”

“Which we don’t open until New Year’s Eve,” Janna adds dryly.  “Oh, the irony.”

I chuckle. 

“Do we have to write all twelve down today?” Alastair whines, discouragement already making his penmanship worse.

“Absolutely not,” I respond.  “How about you just start with the first four today?”

His face immediately brightens, but Abner begins to complain, “That’s too much writing.  It’s impossible!”

For a moment, I experience a flashback to yesterday – or two months ago? – when I was the homeschooling mother of four children and Jungkook was part of BTS.  I recall that this hideous phrase – It’s impossible! – was spoken nearly every day by my youngest child as he whined over his schoolwork.  How could I have forgotten such an uphill battle?  And which version of my life is the dream?  Homeschooling mom of four or mother of Jungkook?

Today it seems that Kookie has won out over my old life.  Or is this my old life?  Will I ever know?  Will I one day awake to discover that I dreamt about being Jungkook’s mom for a very long time?  Perhaps I will have lived years in this parallel universe before I awake to discover seven young men in my Instagram feed.  Or maybe I will never awake from this unusual phenomenon because it is indeed my real life, and the world of seven boys from South Korea invading my sphere with their music was just a figment of my imagination.

Either way, right now I’m trying to get five kids to cooperate with my Christmas project, so I bend all my powers of persuasion towards the task at hand.  Once again completely forgetting my life before I woke up to discover Kookie was my son.  Every ARMY mom’s dream come true.