The State of Our Unions

Dear Blog Friends,

Happy New Year! We are always touched and overwhelmed by the copious quantities of holiday greetings which make their way over to our mailbox every December.Year after year, we are impressed by the pleasant faces, artful tableaus, and matching sweaters which fill envelope after envelope. We tried color coordinating this year, but must have missed the memo restricting the wardrobe to khaki slacks and pastel polos:

 

We love reading the thoughtful and informative updates, and recognize that it isn't always easy to craft a coherent Christmas message -- this year, Momo decided to write ours in pseudo-rhyming code:

For those of you interested in some nittier, grittier (TMI)nformation, read on for Five's annual, overindulgent, agonizing anniversary epistle.

Kimber (née One), her husband David, and three children continue their nomadic wanderings between Washington DC and Denver due to a prolonged consulting gig. Kimber enjoys having friends in both locations, but the constant freneticism can drive her a tad crazy. Hettie (4), Phin (2), Willa (8 months), and dogs Dolley and Bert have about 50% collective potty training rate. When in DC, the 5% left of the 95% finished renovation drives Kimber mad, and while in Denver, it's a bit surreal to be cramming her 5 member family into a beautiful, if cozy, 2-bedroom apartment above Momo and Zen. She feels awfully blessed that David has such a wonderful job, though she sometimes wishes it would translate into a bit more physical stability. She really wants her sisters to start having babies. . . at least, the married ones.

Charity (née Two) and her husband Yoni celebrated their first year of marriage that they largely spent getting through a second double-lung transplant (we know, crazy), recovering and traveling around the country. Charity is fulfilling the multi-generation Tillemann-Dick ambition of making noise for a living - travelling from coast to coast singing arias, eating local foods and speaking. She likes to paint, and others like her to paint, too, because she does it rawther delightfully. She has also been honing her photography skills with a new instagram account, and they're much improved. She's an occasional contributor to the HuffPo and other places, but she really likes to write here with her sisters. She likes to do other things with them too, and she frequently does with Liberty, who lives right down the street. Read on for details on that.

Liberty (née Three) got married! Her and her delightful new husband, Premal (who we all adore) make adorable newlyweds. For the time being, they’re camped out in D.C., where Liberty is working as an energy consultant and Premal is doctoring. They will be migrating to the Mile High City this summer - and, after being in D.C. for 10 (!) years, Liberty is a bit anxious about the move. Be her friend, ok? She’ll have a cool job no doubt, but she’s all like ‘Maybe I’ll wait for a few years to make a really attractive half-Gujarati baby child’ and the rest of us are all like 'totally lame'.

Mercina (née Four) is settling into Yale quite nicely. She keeps herself busy studying bioethics and political science, but when you add her leadership roles in TedxYale and our church’s student group, as well as her compulsive need to make everything lovely, her schedule borders on insanity. It’s a wonder she has any time left over to write blogposts or keep in touch with long-distance beau, Tom. . . . the . . . . the astronaut. He’s an astronaut, guys. He’s in space (actually, not really). Mercina remains very stylish, but refuses to go into fashion because she thinks she’s above it. Pfffffftttt.

Glorianna (née the number that's left) remains too cool for school. She dropped out of Yale. Just kidding, but she IS a philosophy major--which is basically as bad as dropping out, amiright? By day, she kicks butt at artsy stuff typically involving inappropriate use of scissors and/or copious amounts of metallic spray paint/glitter - in her dorm room without opening the windows. Her evenings are spent catching up on neglected school work in candy-fueled-all-night philosophizing-binges, wherein she accomplishes a full semester’s worth of studying in 12-short hours.

That's as much over sharing as we'll indulge in right now, but what about you? What are some of your favorite developments from 2012?

(re)Introducing, FIVE!

Hello there! You may notice some changes around our little cyber domicile in recent days - not the least of which is the replacement of our numbered titles (One, Two, Three, Four, and Five) by our actual names. This year, My sisters and I resolved to try to be a bit friendlier and more authentic in every aspect of our lives - including this blog. We decided that actually introducing ourselves to any of you out there who don't already know us would be a nice way to start off. So all of us here at FIVE - Kimber, Charity, Liberty, Mercina, and Glorianna Tillemann-Dick - say hello and wish you a very, very sweet New Year.

A departure from the holidays

The events in Newtown, CT last Friday cast a long and very sad shadow over the light that Hannukah, Christmas and all of the winter time holidays spread. But if my life has taught me anything, it is that in our darkest hours, we learn our most important lessons.

This is one I learned.

We hear a lot of talking points from pundits, from special interest groups, from individuals and from media personalities. These talking points move an agenda forward. They don't move us forward as society. I grew up in a city where guns were almost always associated with violence. I have friends who grew up hunting or in the mountains. Everyone had a gun in case they met an unexpected mountain lion or bear, or they liked to go hunting. My feelings about guns and their appropriate place are probably never going to be the same as those of my brother's school mates from USAFA and I am probably not going to be able to convert a lot of the kids I knew growing up to my understanding of violence and the machines that make it easier. But I think that whether we are talking about guns, taxes, abortion, or any hot or not button issue that faces us, I think we can do a lot of good if we ditch the talking points and actually talk about making reasonable progress. I think that there are an awful lot of people who are looking for the same outcomes. But if we keep on depending on other people's talking points, we're not going to make any progress. 

I find when I actually listen to others (which I admit, I don't do as much as I should) I learn an awful lot. So I am going to try to listen more. I encourage you to do the same thing. And I hope that what happened last week will be more than a tragedy -- that it will begin a constructive dialogue on changes we can all get behind that will help make tragedies like this a dark, sad thing of the past. Because at this point, there has been enough that we should have learned something.

Looks Pretty Delicious to Me

A Happy Thought

You'll hear people say Christmas is for children or for Jesus, for giving or for families, for any number of things that are good and worthy and lovely in their own right. But I would suggest something else.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or Hannukah, Dwali or Ramadan or nothing in particular, the holidays are a reminder that even in the darkest times there is light. Even when the world seems cold and bleak, there is warmth and happiness. Even when hope seems hard to find, joy is all around us. To me, the holiday season is about  light, joy and happiness being present in the most unlikely of places. In a glass of warm cider shared with a stranger. In a smile from a passer by. In an unexpected gift or greeting that is shared or received. In candles lit. In memories made. In love shared. Even in a manger.  Goodness is all around us. So light a candle, turn on the lights and let the wonder roll.

A Blog Post Named Desire

For Christmas I mostly want hot chocolate with half-melted marshmallows, but these things are pretty neat, too.

#1

A watch. I really like watches. I like knowing what time it is when my phone is lost (which is often). I tend towards the stylistic extremes with timepieces - I either like them huge and gaudy and sparkly, or super simple (but still big). But don't mind that. . . I just want a watch.

#2

A family trip to the local thrift shop. Trundle into the car, give everyone a spending limit (I'd suggest anywhere from $5-$25, depending on how many people you have and your desired volume of giftage), and then play pop-up white elephant with your wares! (ß Guys. I want to do this, guys. Guys. Guys, we should do this. Guys. Ok.)

#3

A micro-lending gift card. I already got one of these from One three years ago, and I'm still using it. I've lent more than triple the amount of the original gift card to small entrepreneurs across the world. As people pay back their loans, you can loan to more people. It is the $25 gift that keeps on giving!

#4

I don't know what this is or where it came from, but I want to wear it around my neck like a trophy.

#5

These funny little rain boots would come in handy in a soggy town like New Haven. Although they would require some attractive socks for optimal utilization. Or really attractive feet.

All the cool kids were doing it

Like Three, I feel tremendously blessed to have everything that I want and need. But because all the cool kids were doing it (and because I need something to propel me through my last week of finals), I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon and compile a list of goodies, too!  

A dainty, Colorado-inspired bracelet - because it reminds me of home.

A short, light-weight bath robe - because normal towels don't always cut it when you share a bathroom with six boys...

Some not-quite-cowboy booties - because sometimes I don't have the energy to struggle with real boots.... 

A sparkly headband - because these are all so pretty!

Some jaunty pajamas - because I have a special affinity for pajamas. And because this set is so sensible that I could probably get away with wearing them to my 8 a.m. class...