The slam of the sedan door was satisfying; the sound of another full day ending. Unlike most days, she got to hold onto her sense of accomplishment, rather than losing it in a struggle with that horrible contraption in the backseat. She stayed in the driveway to dig her keys out of her purse. It was pleasant out. Richard Webber, the only tolerable member of her cohort, but a ridiculous man, had made a show of reacting to the chill since October. As though a slight crispness qualified as cold! There'd been snow on the ground in Hanover at that time last year! And she'd been pregnant!

"Hear that, Meri?" he'd said to the baby. "Your mom hiked uphill fifteen miles every day to get here."

"Oh, stop it."

"A blizzard is but brisk to her thickened blood!"

"Brrrr," Meredith had imitated.

"That's absolutely right, brrr. Aren't you glad you're a West Coast girl now?"

It shouldn't have been jarring to hear him say that. Ellis's parents had been the ones to move out here, going as far as to buy the house she hadn't expected to inherit. But there'd always been an understanding that they belonged "back East."

Sometimes, Ellis wondered if it was true. Sometimes, she felt hopelessly out-of-step on this side of the country. Certainly, it didn't feel like the holidays, and Richard had only made it worse, humming about white Christmases this evening.

There was a saving grace to the lack of snow, she supposed. Meredith wouldn't be inspired to take a sled to this incline and spend the winter being told how unladylike such antics were. Careless, Ellis could see, now, but her daughter would not hear what a "tomboy" she was, only to face all the same patriarchal expectations at her menarche. If it ever did snow, she wouldn't be told that boys shoveled, but she could become a mother's helper.

She was surprised not to find Thatcher in the foyer ready to hand her a red-cheeked infant. As though he had anything to do but grade for the next two weeks. Not that she supported closing the day-care. She doubted they could staff nursing for the holiday with only matrons, single women, and Jews even, if the board didn't consider a woman could have a child and an M.D. A Christmas album was blaring from the study record player. "Baby It's Cold Outside." How apt. The baby was trying to throw herself out of her walker. They'd adjusted it to put the seat as low as possible for her feet to touch the floor, but she was knocking the thing so hard against the living room step that it would've tipped had it been taller.

"All right, all right, you're fine, Meredith." Ellis's arches screamed at the transition from godawful heels to sliding on the rug through the abominable hose she had to take on and off twice a day.

"Mama!" Meredith reached for her with one hand, the other holding the end of the tinsel garland laid on her tray. An adhesive bow was stuck to her fine hair. Ellis's first thought was that the frustrating task of picking it out would inevitably fall to her.

Picking up the baby, Ellis noted she hadn't been changed for the night yet. Giving her the last bottle could be a decent cap on the day, but this made it likely she hadn't had her dinner, and the mess of the so-called solid food hadn't been dealt with.

"Where's your dad?"

Meredith's green eyes held hers steadily as she said, "Uh-oh,".and threaded her narrow fingers into the loops of reflective red ribbon on her head. Before Ellis could disengage her fingers, she yanked it out. She didn't take skin, but the patch of hair that came with it was jerked right from the scalp. In the second it took her to scream, Ellis heard Thatcher's chagrinned, "Over here, El."

The scene on the far side of the room took her longer to take in than anything she'd seen in the E.R. Thatcher was half-slumped against the arm of the sofa, holding up the tipping Christmas tree. He had a tangle of lights around one arm, and it wasn't difficult to imagine what had happened. As she tried to sooth the squalling baby, another blown glass ball tinkled to the floor. The boxes they'd been in were nearly empty, as was the tree. Shards covered the tree-skirt like sparkling snow. These ornaments had survived a cross-country journey and half a decade of her father bringing them up and down from the attic. They'd lost one or two every year in her youth; slipping from a child's hands, or an adult's once Mother had served the eggnog. Her husband had destroyed three-quarters of them in one evening.

"I wanted to surprise you," he said. "I-I measured and tightened the stand accordingly—"

She closed her eyes. The buffoons she worked with would have any number of things to say about him wedging the trunk into the stand. She sat the grizzling baby in her playpen, and she popped up again, her eyes barely railing.

"The lights," Ellis snapped, stalking over to stuff her feet back into the toe-pinching heels. "Go on first."

"It m-made more sense to…. She was napping, and…and the ornaments are fragile…."

"Are they?" Ellis let her lip curl into a momentary snarl. Thatcher ducked his head, and a needle snagged in his hair. "Did you put them all one side?"

"Well—Well, it's facing the wall."

"That doesn't change the laws of physics." Finding gaps wide enough to grab the fir without scraping her fingers on hooks and getting lockjaw for Christmas reminded her of avoiding vessels and bones in a cracked chest. It wobbled precariously, sending a shower of fir needles to the floor. "You put them on first, and tuck them in. Doing it properly would've made the lack of stability obvious.

"You're tipped when it did! What if Meredith had come over here and grabbed one of the strings?"

"I wasn't going to let that happen, El."

"You can't control what happens! Do you know how many parents we hear saying they only turned away for a moment?"

"That's different."

"Tell me how. You didn't think she could reach your coffee mug from her walker last week, and she nearly got scalded!" She finally managed to grab the tree with both hands and yanked it upward, and Thatcher sighed and stretched and cracked his back like he'd been holding a retractor for eight hours.

He couldn't have been pinned there for very long. Meredith hadn't been wet, as she often was whenever he passed her ons. Never to the point of diaper rash, but enough for her to presume he'd been so distracted by work that he hadn't checked. Initially, it'd been a relief that Meredith wasn't fussy, but if she couldn't demand even her father's attention, she would have it rough.

"Get down there and straighten it up," she snapped. "We'll need every minute to pick glass off the floor if you want her anywhere near the tree Monday morning."

"If I do? Is this you telling me you're going to be working for her first Christmas, too?"

"Screw you." Ellis let go of the tree. If he couldn't get it steady, that would serve him right. "I never led you to believe I'd be off for Thanksgiving. She has macaroni and mashed potatoes all the time, and she thought the cafeteria's cranberry sauce was poisonous. Frankly, she might've been right.

"I will be here to see her eat wrapping paper, and I will think it's adorable, but don't pretend this is about her. She won't remember any of it!"

"It sets a precedent." He picked up an unbroken glass ball, and it rolled out of his hand to explode in a starburst on the hardwood. "Tradition," he added, his bleeding thumb muffling the word.

"Dada!" Meredith poked her thumb into her mouth, beaming.

"That's right, Daddy's being a baby." Ellis surveyed the coffee table and the floor, looking for a pacifier that would probably be coated in dust. "Because you're a little sponge, who's going to have to choose between college and braces if he lets you do that."

"You're pulling at threads," he said, evenly, like he was advising a student. His calm in the face of crisis had made him seem so solid back when he was a new boyfriend willing to do anything she asked in the aftermath of her father's death. He'd buckled down to sort out her mother's estate last year, and she knew it'd affected the quality of his thesis. I don't care. I just want to be with you, had sounded romantic. If he'd had her ambition, things would've been far more complicated. He was a fair teacher. Like able. He'd probably end up with tenure, whether he pursued it or not. That'd spurred her to call on a Seattle Grace board member who'd known her father to pull strings with the UW hiring committee. She'd mined deeply enough to discover the vein of passivity that created his preference for equilibrium, though she truly hadn't anticipated him to be so thrown off by the repetitive needs of a baby

"Traditionally," she said. "Women don't become surgeons."

He rolled his eyes. "We're creating tradition."

"This whole holiday celebrates a baby, not the woman who had to give birth in a barn. Traditionally all that gave anyone was childbirth fever."

"Th-Then we emphasize the very unique woman!—It doesn't matter what anyone else does. Not for us… Not for Meredith. Look at this, Ellis." He waved his hand around the room. "We…We have a house…a home. We're not college students anymore. We have a…a healthy daughter. Isn't that worth celebrating?"

He came toward her, stepping over the mess that took up more room than their presents would. She'd started to think she'd gone too far with the number of packages she'd stacked in the hall cabinet as they arrived, too proud of the numbers she could comfortably write down in the subtotal box of an order form. It didn't matter. She and Thatcher had all they needed, and this was the only year Meredith would be indifferent to whether a bag held toys or clothes. Ellis's salary would never be lower. Her daughter would never discover only sweaters and practical shoes under the tree. Ellis could promise that much.

Thatcher was still talking. "I…I understand that…that this time of year…. Last year, you…you at least had your sister. But we're a family, now," he said, taking her hands. "We're new to this. Feels a bit like playing house, but if we start working on it, we'll have it down by the time she can remember. She won't know her first Christmas was a practice run."

"If I recall my child development notes correctly, we'll have at least three of those. Improvement seems unavoidable."

"That's the spirit" His aw shucks clumsiness wasn't nearly as endearing as it'd been whenever he was fumbling books in the library, but there were days where his was the only encouragement she saw. "Isn't proving you're more impressive than a fat man in a suit your raison d'être?"

"I suppose it is. Fine." She sighed. He didn't deserve to be let off the hook, but there was no chance he wouldn't take her smile that way. "We'll get the tree balanced sufficiently for pictures. I assume you didn't get her to Sears?"

"Oh. I…We can go tomorrow."

"They're closed on Christmas Eve. You think I didn't check on that before I put you in charge of getting tights on her? I suppose the dress will still fit on Tuesday. We'll buy a few boxes of baubles on clearance for next year."

"We…we won't need them for long. We'll collect our own ornaments."

"No, we won't. It's a sentimental waste to be attached to something so fragile. Come here, Meredith. None of that matters if you're not clean and fed." It was an unnecessary jab, maybe, but sometimes Thatcher had his head so far in the clouds, he needed the reminder.

"Co," Meredith said, pointing at the tree. "Co-co." She leaned toward Thatcher with one arm holding tightly to Ellis's neck. Thatcher looked down himself, confused, and the coil of lights on his elbow slipped onto the floor. Meredith lunged for them. "Cocococo!"

"Colors?" Thatcher asked.

"Cocolo!"

"The colors are nice," Ellis acknowledged. "Those are lights. You like those light?"

"Colo."

"Maybe…maybe we leave the ornaments off this year?" Thatcher suggested.

"We might as well," Ellis said. "Move her highchair closer to the door so she can see them while she eats, and I'll get this cleaned up."

The idea of the glass ceiling had never resonated with her in the past. She didn't believe previous generations of women had reached the heights a man could, but it still seemed appropriate that she be the one who swept away the broken glass so that her daughter would have a clearer path forward.

"Oh. Sure. I guess I'll feed her then," Thatcher said. "Let me get a bandaid on this," Thatcher said, as he put his uninjured hand on her back and kissed the top of Meredith's head. Meredith sighed, her fingers back in her mouth. Ellis needed to retrieve the sneakers that would save her from a far more debilitating injury, but she waited out the time it took Thatcher to drag in the high-chair. For once, Meredith didn't protest being put down, she was so entranced by the lights making her green eyes shine.

Ellis wasn't one for that type of imagery. Babies were cute to keep exhausted mothers from bashing them against the nearest rock, and humans would always be entranced by the light they'd managed to control to keep themselves protected and fed—That certainly explained how Meredith could stay so fixated on her while she was free from the obligations of internship for fewer than two days a week. Perhaps, she could let herself give herself into sentimentality for two days in a year.