Incompletely Complete

This picture was taken at the Burj Al Arab hotel December 22, 2008. I think Aunt Cho stayed back at the apartment with Chase that day because he wasn’t feeling well. Aunt Cho was flying for Emirates airlines back then, so she flew us all out to celebrate Christmas with her. We had so much fun on that trip — riding camels, going to a desert safari party, sliding down a water slide into an enclosed shark tank at Atlantis, and skiing the indoor slopes at the gargantuan Dubai Mall…just for starters. It was as it should be. Surrounded by my four kids.

We are all together again today. As together as we can be. This time, in Santa Fe. Chandler would have loved our lunch and dinner — Mac’s Steak in the Rough after we landed and tonight Tomasita’s. It was well worth the hour-long wait. My internal dialogue vacillated between, “I’m so grateful to be here with my family,” to “I hate that Chandler is missing this and that we are missing him.”

I pictured him among us. Pictured him completing what feels incomplete.

Today’s Chandler-ness:
(From our Christmas letter 1996)
Chandler, at three, is a bustling bundle of perpetual motion. Remember the afore-mentioned gecko? Tonight I walked into the room to find Chandler holding it upside down in his hand saying, “He likth me, Mom.” Three seconds later, Little Timmy the gecko had no tail. Hopefully it will grow back. That’s Chandler. Once when Chase brought the class rats (Itchy and Scratchy) home for the weekend, Chandler came crying into the room, “I fall wif Itchy!” He had taken the rat out of the cage and dropped him. The search was on. That’s Chandler. He learned to swim this summer and actually went off the high dive. He “wuvs” his “bullers” (translated brothers) and has an iron will. He keeps us running to say the least, but what a sweet cuddly bundle.