What relationship could use a mending word?
We gave time on December 19 and resources on December 20. Today's currency is words, and today they have a mending job.
If you can, watch the Christmas Eve choir scene from Home Alone tonight. The 1990 film was directed by Chris Columbus and written by John Hughes.
Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister has been left behind by accident when his big family flies to Paris for Christmas. The night before they left, after a fight, he wished they would all disappear, and now he's home alone. He's also afraid of his next-door neighbor, old Marley, a quiet man with a snow shovel whom the neighborhood kids tell scary stories about.
On Christmas Eve, Kevin slips into a children's choir rehearsal, and Marley sits down beside him. Up close, Marley is nothing like the stories. He has come to hear his granddaughter sing, he explains, because he won't get to see her on Christmas. Years ago he and his son had a falling-out, and they haven't spoken since.
Kevin admits there are things he said to his own family that he'd like to take back. Then he asks the obvious question: why not just call your son? Marley says he's afraid his son won't want to talk to him. Kevin points out that at least he would know.
On Christmas morning, after Kevin's own family comes home, he looks out the window. In Marley's driveway, a younger man is hugging the old man, and a little girl runs up to him. Marley sees Kevin in the window and waves.
Kevin is eight. All he offers is one plain question, and he won't let the excuse stand. Those few words help send a man who has carried a broken relationship for years to make the call.
Words can mend what's broken between people. Some mending words are ours to say: "I was wrong, and I'm sorry." "I forgive you." Others are words we offer someone who is stuck: "Have you thought about calling him?" "I think she'd want to hear from you." On Day 1 we named forgiving, apologizing, and reminding someone it's going to be okay as gifts of peace. Today we give them.
A real apology names what happened without excuses, says sorry, and asks how to make it right. Real forgiveness admits the hurt and lets it go.
Most of us have at least one relationship with a crack running through it. One sentence won't repair all of it, but it can start the mend.
Today, say the mending word, or help someone else say theirs.
Choose one relationship that could use a mending word. If your household made a plan on December 18, use the Words line from it.
If you owe an apology, try this shape: "I shouldn't have ___. I'm sorry. I won't do it again. How can I make it right?"
If you're the one forgiving, try: "I didn't like that. But we all make mistakes. Thank you for apologizing. I forgive you."
If the break isn't yours, encourage someone else toward theirs, gently and once.
A small nightly habit keeps cracks from spreading: "attend to the mend." Before bed, check whether anything from the day needs a sorry or a forgiveness, and take care of it while it's small.
Kids' story: read "The Longest Night" from The Overflow Adventure in Wanderful Woods together.
Time: 15 to 30 minutes, plus the movie scene.
With kids: ask, "Is there anyone you need to say sorry to, or forgive?" A child can practice the sorry shape with a parent first, then say it in person.
Go gently: some breaks aren't safe to reopen. A mending word never requires going back to someone who harms you.
Closing the week: stand in front of the tree together. It holds three layers now. Tomorrow, December 22, Joy begins, and the fourth green layer goes up above this one.
Hello, my wonderful story friends! Last time, Mr. Moose became the Truce Moose, and two snow forts turned into one, with a little light in every window. Tonight is the night Tessie told everybody about: the longest night of the whole year.
Have you ever said something you wished you could take back? Let’s go see who is waiting on the longest night.
The sun went down early. Very early. It slid behind the hills in the middle of the afternoon, and the sky turned purple, and then dark blue, and then black, and the stars came out one by one over the snow, even though it was hardly past lunchtime.
“It’s the longest night,” said Tessie. “It will be dark… for a long… long… time.”
“Then we keep every light lit,” said Mr. Monkey. “All night long.”
So that’s what everybody did. Ricky made a list of every light in the woods, of course. It was so long that he had to roll it up and carry it under his arm, and it dragged behind him in the snow like a tail. And the friends went from home to home, all evening, checking.
The Moose home: lit, with the gold candle on the table. The treehouse: lit. The three candles by the fire in Sunny Square: lit. The long snow fort, with a light in every window: lit. Mama Hedgehog’s snow lantern at the bottom of the littlest trail: lit. And way up at the very top of Everest’s cliff, the little squash lantern: lit, and steady.
“Check, check, check,” said Ricky, marking his list.
Then they came to the river, to the old crow’s branch.
His light was lit, too. A little snow lantern sat at the bottom of his tree, glowing, the one they had left on the night of the doors. And the old crow was up on his branch, wearing the woolly mitten they’d left him like a little hat.
“Hee hee,” went Benji softly. “He’s still wearing it.”
But the old crow wasn’t happy. He was sitting very still, all hunched up, looking across the river at the dark trees on the other side.
Mr. Monkey felt it right away. Everybody else in the woods was together tonight. Families in their homes. Friends in their forts. But the old crow was all by himself on the longest night of the year.
“Mr. Crow?” called Mr. Monkey. “Are you okay?”
The old crow looked down. “It’s a long night,” he said, in his scratchy voice. “Long nights are lonely.”
Mr. Moose was thinking. Why was the crow looking across the river? What was over there?
“Mr. Crow,” he asked gently, “who lives on the other side of the river?”
The old crow was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “My son.”
Everybody looked across the river.
“He’s grown up now,” said the old crow. “He has his own nest, over in those trees. A long time ago, when he was young, we had a fight. A silly fight, about a nest.
And I said something unkind to him. I told him, ‘Fine! Go build your own!’ And he did. He flew across the river.” The old crow tucked his head down into the mitten. “We haven’t talked since. Not one word.”
Nobody said anything for a moment. Then Mr. Monkey asked the plainest question in the world.
“Why don’t you just call to him?”
“What if he doesn’t answer?” said the old crow quietly. “What if he’s still angry?”
Mr. Monkey thought about it. “Then at least you’d know,” he said. “Right now you don’t know anything. You just sit here.”
The old crow looked at Mr. Monkey for a long time.
“I haven’t called across the river in a long time,” he said. “I don’t know if my voice still goes that far.”
Mr. Moose had an idea. “Then we’ll help you be loud,” he said. “We’ll all call together. And then you call, and your voice will be right at the front.”
They all lined up on the riverbank, in the light of the old crow’s snow lantern, facing the dark trees across the water.
“Ready?” said Mr. Monkey. “One, two, three!”
Everybody called at once. Mr. Monkey hooted. Hazel neighed. Dottie howled, “AROOOOOO!” Benji thumped his foot. Shiloh baaed. And Bruno, who was trying very hard to sound like a crow, took the biggest breath he could and went:
“MOOOOOOOOOO.”
Everybody turned and looked at Bruno.
“That was a cow,” said Ricky.
“I was trying to be a crow,” said Bruno. “It came out a cow.”
“Haw haw haw!” went Bruno.
“Hee hee hee!” went Mr. Monkey. “Bruno’s a CROW-COW!”
Even the old crow made a little noise in his throat, kuk-kuk-kuk, which was how crows laughed.
Then it was quiet. And the old crow stood up on his branch, and took the mitten off his head, and opened his beak, and called out across the river, all by himself, as loud as he could:
“CAAAAAW!”
It went out over the water. Into the dark. Into the trees on the other side.
Nothing came back.
Everybody waited. The river went gurgle-gurgle under its ice. The stars twinkled. It was the longest night, and it felt like the longest wait.
The old crow’s feathers drooped.
And then, from the dark trees on the other side of the river, small and far away, came an answer.
“Caaaw.”
The old crow’s head shot up.
Something black came flapping across the river, low over the ice, into the light of the little snow lantern. A young crow, big and glossy, landed on the branch right next to the old crow. And for a moment, the two of them just sat there, side by side, not saying anything at all.
Then the old crow said it.
“I shouldn’t have said that to you. ‘Go build your own.’ I’m sorry. I won’t ever say anything like that to you again. How can I make it right?”
The young crow looked at his father for a long time.
“Yeah, I didn’t like that,” he said. “But we all make mistakes. Thank you for apologizing. I forgive you.”
Then he scooted over, close, so close that their feathers touched.
“You could start by coming over for supper,” said the young crow. “I have a family now. You have grandchicks. Three of them.”
The old crow made a sound nobody had ever heard him make before. It was half a caw and half a laugh and half something else, and that’s too many halves, but that’s how it sounded.
Mr. Monkey grabbed Mr. Moose’s leg and held on. He was so happy he could hardly stand still.
The two crows flew off together across the river, into the dark trees on the other side. And a minute later, a little light came on over there, in a nest nobody had ever noticed before.
Then the old crow came flying back, just for a second, and picked up his snow lantern, and carried it across too. So now there were two lights in that tree.
“That one’s lit now too,” said Ricky softly, and he added it to his list.
All the rest of the longest night, the lights stayed on. The Moose home. The treehouse. The three candles. The long fort. Mama Hedgehog’s lantern. The crows’ tree across the river. And the little light at the top of the cliff, shining steady beside Everest. Mr. Moose and Mr. Monkey watched them from Mr. Moose’s window until their eyes closed.
And when they woke up, the sun was coming back over the hills. A tiny bit earlier than the morning before.
“What a day!” said Mr. Monkey at breakfast. “It was the longest night. Ricky’s light list dragged in the snow like a tail. The old crow was all alone, and he told us about his son.
I asked why he didn’t just call him. Bruno tried to caw and mooed instead, and he’s a crow-cow. Then the old crow called, and his son called back, and he said sorry, and his son forgave him. And now there’s a light across the river, too.”
Mr. Monkey whistled, and Mr. Moose hummed, and together they sang:
We are better together,
Moose and Monkey forever.
And over Wanderful Woods, after the longest night of the year, the morning came back a little bit early, and found every single light still burning.