Today’s poem is one I co-wrote with my soon-to-be husband on our way back from my 30th birthday cruise. It was Christmas Eve and that year we were all tasked with presenting something to the family at our traditional family dinner. I decided, since I enjoyed writing poetry, that we’d come up with a poem together. I love my family. I am blessed to have a family that thoroughly enjoys spending time together. We spend all the major holidays together and it’s something I really look forward to. I have an aunt and uncle who, with their tribe of kids (they have five between them), are always great fun to be around. I’m older than my cousins by at least a decade but we are close and get along quite well.

I know that it’s not often that people are able to say that they have a close-knit family. I’m incredibly close to my grandparents, parents and brother. I talk to my mom more than 3 times a week and the others with somewhat similar frequency. It wasn’t until my latter 20s that I began to feel this way. But now, I really and truly live for the time to hang out with them. We all know that if ever anyone is in need, all you have to do is pick up the phone and call.

And so Christmas 2010 was, as a result of the hard economic times, the first year we decided that instead of trying to get gifts for so many people, we’d share our talents with the people we knew would appreciate them the most. Kenrick and I presented our poem and the family of course loved it.