You’ll have to pardon my extended silence, believe me I have been anything but silent this week. Mostly I have cried, wailed and railed against the useless chunk of machinery that was once my computer. Internal components went kablooey. Weird ka-chunga noises and shaking preceded what turned into an endless loop of booting, rebooting, rebooting, rebooting and never quite making it to safe mode. Sigh. Thankfully I have a computer savvy father to turn to, one with whole sale connections. According to him, my new best friend is currently enroute to my home and will have me suckling at the teat of high speed again sometime this week.

Aside from the joyful cries of “Thank you Jesus” sure to tumble from my lips when those 4 magic lights flicker back on my modem and possibly Jesus being mentioned in my chagrined confession of kissing another man/woman when my computer is delivered, Jesus has been on our mind. My youngest daughter currently attends a church affiliated preschool. They were one of the few establishments in town that were willing to place her up with the 3 year olds, despite her birth date falling past the traditional Florida cut off of September 1st.

I had my reservations about enrolling her. Growing up in a faithless house and only encountering organized religion through the overly zealous neighbors who were harvesting my soul, my perspective on Christianity was/is a rather skewed one. Happily, they keep their church agenda to the basics. My child has yet to turn to me and tell me we are evil heathens for not regularly attending a religious house of worship (unlike the writhing masses of thumpers who beat my door down on a regular basis inviting us to revivals). This week the school is having a birthday party for Jesus, complete with cake and party games. Tessa is quite proud to be bringing some apples for the lunch feast, though desperately wishes she could do more.

Today, in the grocery store, she turned to me and said “Jesus needs party hats so we wear them when we sing happy birthday to him. They will make him very happy Mama”

“Well sweetie, I bet your teachers have already thought that. All they asked us to bring is apples”

“Mama, party hats would make Jesus happy. You don’t want Jesus to be sad, do you?”

Aw Christ…

I stared at her wondering where she had fashioned this manipulative argument from. Had she been paying attention all those times I finagled pizza, movies, or other superfluous luxuries from her father’s tight wad grasp?. There she stood in isle 8 with a stack of princess party hats, batting her watery brown eyes at me, telling me that I would, in fact, be making the baby Jesus sad - me and my selfish no party hat attitude. What could I do?

I shut my eyes, took a deep breath and replied

“Who wants to go to the bakery for a cookie?”