The End
When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.
--A.A. Milne
For years now I've been claiming that the only way I can have a truly peaceful holiday season would be to barricade myself in my home from November to January. No cards, gifts, wrapping, parties... nada. Nothing. Zip. The whole in-your-face-ness of it all is bugging me. It bugs me that people act like they're "taking back Christmas" like the terrorists took it away. If you want to celebrate Christmas, celebrate it! Just don't expect that everyone else will follow suit. Remember that Great American Melting Pot that Schoolhouse Rock said we had? We do. Now it's time to deal with it. Times have changed.
You know what else bugs me? The nouveau "I'm not going to have my kids buy into the whole Santa" shtick with the commensurate holier-than-thou attitude. Threatening to call Santa is one of my parenting techniques from Labor Day to New Year's. I live by it. Not only that, but Santa is one of my favorite childhood memories. My Mom would always tell us we couldn't wake her up before 7am on Christmas morning. We'd negotiate her down to 6am. My brothers and I would wake up at, like, 4am and tiptoe back and forth to each other's rooms, stage-whispering until the parental units were forced to cave. We would dash downstairs to see what Santa brought and those were always the super-spectacular gifts. If you don't want to have that experience, if you don't want to "lie" to your kids, fine. Just ditch the 'tude.
I'm also getting irritated by the attitude of people who feel all lofty if they only get their children two presents. Fine! Make your own fucking choices! Jesus! As for us, Sweet Pea has got, like, ten BILLION presents (okay, it's more like ten. Still). Christmas comes once a year. We bargain shop, we start shopping early. We're careful. But damnit, life is way too short to miss the look in her eyes when she comes downstairs and her eyes widen to the size of saucers. She checks the plate to see if Santa ate the cookies, if the reindeer got their carrots. The dog gets a big bone in his stocking to keep him busy for a while. We make hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls and marvel over every item Santa brought. We take turns opening presents. Wrapping paper is tossed everywhere while Christmas music plays. Stacks of gifts form next to each of us. Each gift is exclaimed over. Sweet Pea's eyes light up every time it's her turn to open yet another gift. DJ starts glancing at his Xbox, wondering when he can start playing his latest game. I surreptitiously stroke the cover of whatever book I got, waiting to start reading. We spend hours opening every toy for her, untwisting the ties and cursing the litigious people that made all that packaging necessary. DJ and I look at each other over her head, wondering how we're going to find space for one more Barbie, then smile.
And I wouldn't change a thing.
I don't think I've completely bought into the commercialism. I worry about it occasionally. But you know what? I don't care. My favorite party of Christmas is riding around in the car with my family looking at Christmas lights. Sweet Pea's favorite part (according to her) is that it's God's birthday. Those are the things you can't buy, anyway.
And there's always room for one more Barbie.
"Mommy, what's this? I found it in a present downstairs."
Rational Self: Remember, we believe in telling the truth whenever possible. Irrational Self: Right. And why is that again? Rational Self: Because the truth presented as matter-of-factly as possible will make her lose interest in the item. Snatching it away will only make her more curious. Stay calm. Do not display fear. They can sense it. Irrational Self: Right. Okay then.
"Umm, it's called lubricant."
"Oh. There were a few more, too. What's it for?"
"Umm... well, it something is dry, lubricant can make it better."
"Oh. Do you drink it?"
"No, not exactly. If you get it in your mouth, that's okay, though."
"Oh. There were different colors. Is there flavors?"
"Uh, yeah."
She ponders the container as I try to finish getting dressed as nonchalantly as possible.
"Wa... wa... water...meee.. meh"
Rational self: Holy shit! She can sound out 'watermelon'! Code red! Move, move, move!
"Hey, Sweet Pea, do you want a brownie? Aunt Elaine made them!"
"Oh, YEAH! Here, Mommy, you take this lubey thing."
Every year the same scenario is played out in my marriage: I spend the entire year dropping hints about what I'd like for Christmas, only to have DJ turn to me on December 23 and say, "What do you want for Christmas?" Admittedly, my hints are pretty subtle... I send e-mails with links to things with titles like "THIS WOULD MAKE A WONDERFUL GIFT FOR YOUR WIFE" and expect him to read between the lines.
I'm guessing that my house is not the only one that has these issues, so I'm going to do a post of gift ideas for the female in your life. Each item can be found online and MUST be available in red, as that is one of my two favorite colors.
*****
The Bag: I've spent years trying to avoid the ever-dreaded tote bag. I even splurged on a couple of Vera Bradley bags, hoping to avoid the canvas bag that gives me the hives. I've found, though, that having an expensive bag can be a real problem: I don't want to set them down on dingy classroom floors. So what I really need is a relatively inexpensive bag that can hold heavy books AND my laptop. Solution? Land's End Open Top Totes. These bags were actually voted 'Best Value' by the Wall Street Journal and can be personalized with initials or a first name. I say 'first' because I have yet to find the bag big enough to personalize my legal last name, being a hyphenate. I personally can't say enough about Land's End products. I live in their All-Weather Mocs during the winter and we used their nylon diaper bag as a carry-on long after Sweet Pea stopped wearing diapers. Tote bag prices range from $15.50 to $29.50. Does it come in red? Why yes -- and it solves the 'canvas bags make me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit' problem! Look at the red/walnut bag -- and there's an olive/walnut one, too!
The Coat: Living in Georgia, I rarely find that I need a heavy winter coat. I also dislike the bulk of wool -- even leather bothers me sometimes. So what I really need is something I just purchased off ebay for Sweet Pea: a fleece vest. Warm enough to keep your torso toasty, lightweight enough to wear all over the mall. The brand I bought her was LL Bean, so I headed to their website to see what they had. I found the Trail Model Fleece Vest for $29.50. Naturally there is a Fat People's Surcharge bringing my cost to $34.50. Does it come in red? Well, there's a color called Raspberry -- which looks red on the website but could end up hot pink. It does come in basic black, however, and that's probaby more useful for a vest.
The Bling: Let's head over to Ice.com, shall we? If your woman likes a bold jewelry statement, I think this is a knockout. If she prefers something more delicate, try this bracelet. I think it's absolutely beautiful and it has matching earrings. If you want some traditional ice, consider hoop earrings that can go from grocery store to cocktail party. Does it come in red? Yes, yes and yes.
The Scent: I hesitate to recommend scent for anyone -- it's such a highly personal thing. It also changes over time. The perfumes I loved 15 years ago I now find heavy. However, I have found one scent that is delightful: Nina by Nina Ricci. Fruity without smelling like food and serious enough to wear at night, it's just delightful. Does it come in red? Just check out this gorgeous bottle!
The Teacher's Gift: Get a gift card. Trust me. Unless you know her REALLY well, just get a gift card. The tote bag I mentioned above, personalized, would make a nice gift. Yeah, on second thought, just go with the gift card. Unless you're broke, like me -- then go for heartfelt. I knit scarves for Sweet Pea's teachers every year. Does it come in red? It doesn't matter -- she can buy her own red.
The Gift Certificate: Zappos.com!!!!! Women love shoes. All women love shoes. Quite possibly THE perfect gift, Zappos.com has a gift certificate option. Zappos also sells accessories and apparel, so you really can't go wrong. Does it come in red? Oh yes. And yes.
The Little Luxuries: Heading back over to Lands End, we find the Baby Cable Cashmere Gloves, Hat and Scarf. At $140 for all three, it's a great deal on something I can promise you she will LOVE to wear but would never consider spending the money for herself. Does it come in red? Yes, it does! AND it comes in a color called 'Blackberry', which is a delicious dark purple -- my other favorite color! Actually, there are a ton of colors in these, so you can get a set for your mother and your mother-in-law, too.
The Cause: What better way to say 'Honey, I love your rack!' than to make a big fat donation to breast cancer research? Make a donation in your wife's name and then pick up a little something for her to open with a note about what you've done. An iPod case or t-shirt would make a nice reminder of your thoughtfulness and altruism. Does it come in red? Nope. But in this case, pink is even better.
Lessons learned from the Great Fireworks Extravaganza of 2007:
1. Misfires can happen.
2. The pile of fireworks that have yet to be lit should be at least 20 feet away (and behind a fireproof barrier) from where the misfire might occur.
3. Bystanders should be at least 30 feet away (and behind a fireproof barrier) from where the fireworks that have yet to be lit are waiting. Particularly if they are elderly or children.
4. ALWAYS have a fire extinguisher nearby the person lighting the fuses.
5. Remember that if the person lighting the fuses is trying to put out the fire on his own head, he will be too distracted to use the fire extinguisher. Make sure that someone in the crowd has another fire extinguisher.
Yes, we were that household. Everything was great until the misfire, and then somehow sparks from the misfire (which smashed straight into the side of the house) caught the unlit fireworks that were sitting on a table. There were two family members sitting at that table (STUPIDSTUPIDSTUPID I AM SO STUPID). The fireworks that were supposed to go straight up into the air went in every direction and the crowd sitting on the lawn took off running for the woods. DJ was trying to get to the fire extinguisher while putting out the burning hair on his own head and getting through the smoke and sparks on the deck.
We were incredibly lucky. DJ has a small burned patch of hair. DJ's Aunt went to the emergency room but had only burned hair -- no scalp injury. She was more irritated that there were ashes in her beer, rendering it undrinkable. Our 7-year-old nephew received a couple of scrapes and what looks like two puncture-type burns on his hand. Ten minutes later he was running around with the rest of the kids. It could have been SO much worse. They could have lost limbs, or eyes.
I feel so horrible. And so grateful that they are okay. And I am going to turn into the most protective host in the world. If we ever do this again, we are going to have four fire extinguishers and several cement block walls between the fuses and the bystanders. If anything more serious had happened... I don't know how I would be able to live with myself.
I have to go shopping for a card today.
Every year I dread this, shopping for a Father's Day card for my father. My parents divorced when I was three and by the time I was five, my father decided not to exercise his visitation rights. I didn't see him again until I was fourteen. After that I saw him about once a year. He has met my husband of ten years exactly once and has never come to meet his granddaughter. So you see, shopping for a Father's Day card is a challenge: the funny, sarcastic ones come across as too sarcastic and the serious, heartfelt ones... well, they end up sounding sarcastic, too, because we both know they're just not true in our case.
The Blogosphere is probably full of people waxing rhapsodic about their fathers right now. But there are other kinds of fathers, Internet.
There are fathers who abandon. There are stepfathers who feel up the girl-children that call them 'Dad', who beat their stepsons and cheat on their mothers. There are other stepfathers who slap their stepdaughters across the face with the full force of their bodies, who use religion as a tool to shame and hurt and confuse.
And those are just the ones I know about.
Father's Day was a bittersweet holiday for so many years. It wasn't until my daughter was born that I could start to celebrate again, truly celebrate. You see, I chose a husband who would NEVER leave his daughter. I think that may be part of why I chose him.
This itself is not always easy. There are times when I am acutely aware that I may always play second banana to the tiny tyrant in our house. There are times when I worry that we're not putting our marriage first and that it has suffered for it. But it's all too easy to remember sobbing on my bed, convinced I was inherently flawed because my own father didn't love me enough to want to see me. And I see the relationship that Sweet Pea has with DJ and I know she will never feel this and it is all worth it.
I spent so much time and money in therapy over these issues. They no longer rule my life, but they shaped me and are a part of who I am. I will probably always view Father's Day with a skewed eye.
I have two close friends who lost their fathers in the last year. This is their first Father's Day without them. They are grieving. I know a thing or two about grieving for lost fathers, even if the situations are different. I hope -- I truly hope -- that they can also use that day to rejoice in the relationships they had. To treasure the things that shaped the way they grew, to be grateful for the wonderful fathers they had. I hope they can celebrate on that day, celebrate their fathers as well as their husbands.
In the meantime, I'm going to Hallmark, to try to find a card that will walk the tightrope that I walk every year: trying to express to my father that I love him, that I honor the fact that he is my father, even if I cannot say he was the best Dad in the world. Then I will help my daughter pick out a card for DJ and the little girl inside me will rejoice because this time? This time we ARE looking for a card for the best Dad in the world.
Guess whose husband turned 40 last Thursday?
That's DJ as a kid.
We went to a nearby Japanese steakhouse, where we secured the worst Japanese chef in the world, possibly because he was actually Mexican.
DJ received many excellent gifts. However, the best ones were given later that night. Sweet Pea told DJ that she had a present for him and ran upstairs to bring him her favorite stuffed Kangaroo. Then she gave him her pink stuffed dolphin, her baby Tinkerbell and a stuffed Clarice the deer from 'Rudolph'. Not surprisingly, these gifts were his favorites, proving that no matter how broke we may be, we are so rich in love.
"Pat Summerall here with John Madden, welcome to Stacy's post-Holiday Wrap Up. John, how are you tonight?"
"I'm great, Pat, glad to be here -- say, that was some holiday season, wasn't it?"
"It sure was. I think it's being defined by the fact that the main conflict -- that between Stacy and the goddamn sore throat -- is still being fought. We're on 7 days of overtimes here, John."
"Unbelievable. For those of you just tuning in, Stacy started to feel chilled and nauseous on December 23rd. That night she spiked a fever of 102, marked with chills and shaking. She was sidelined from her Christmas Eve performance at church by the illness and has spent the majority of every day since then in bed."
"Too bad about her Mom, eh?"
"That's just the worst, Pat. Her Mom traveled several hundred miles to visit and Stacy spent most of it in a haze."
"Let's show a clip from the trip to the Georgia Aquarium, John. 
Here's a shot of DJ and Sweet Pea inside the plastic bubble of the penguin habitat. There were only a couple of inches away from the penguins at that point. The four of them spent three hours at the Aquarium and according to Stacy, it felt like ten. However, her Mom upgraded their tickets to annual passes as a Christmas gift to the family in what might be the Best. Christmas Present. Ever."
"Pat, when she was wheeled off the field to the doctor's office on Wednesday, we thought she'd see some relief. However, in what can only be described as really shitty luck, she got one of those doctors who think that antibiotics are of the devil so in spite of having almost every textbook symptom of strep throat, he didn't do a throat culture and sent her away with a prescription for cough syrup."
"Now, John, to be fair, that cough syrup did require the doctor's DEA number and had to be special ordered, so we know it's the good stuff."
"That's true, Pat, but if it doesn't fix the problem in the first place it doesn't do a helluva lot of good, does it?"
"John, how would you say that these events are affecting her fellow team members?"
"Well, Sweet Pea has never done well with unstructured time but thanks to the conspicuous consumerism of the American Christmas, she has no shortage of activities to keep her busy. DJ is clearly displaying a lack of patience but he can hardly be blamed for that -- seven days is a damn long time. This is the vacation time he looks forward to every year and he's been stuck inside for most of it when Stacy promised that the minute her Mom walked in the door, they'd be gone to the movie theater for most of the week."
"And how is Stacy herself holding up?"
"To be honest, she's pretty pissed off. She feels like she missed her daughter's Christmas, her mom's visit and her husband's vacation. She's tired of trying to eat solid food in pain and the pudding and Jello routine is wearing thin. She's decided that if she sees that young whippersnapper of a doctor in a dark alley she's going to kick his ass and that as a matter of policy from here on, if her doctor is younger than she is, she's calling the shots. But she really likes the drugs."
We're heading into 72 hours of madness. Peace on earth, my ass. Running, visiting. The child has double ear infections.
*****
We've been fighting a battle here at home against a formidable enemy. Ants. The ants, people, they are taking over. Every room. One here, one there, then millions. I have the cutest candy cane wrapping paper and I got mini candy canes to tie into each ribbon and I haven't done it because, the ants, they swarm. When I find a swarm I grab the Raid and spray away. Then I leave the little corpses there for a while as a warning to the other ants. My countertops look like an aerial view of the beaches at Normandy.
*****
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
*****
There is something that is tiring me. I am tired of feeling like I can't identify myself as a Christian because people will think I'm discriminatory and narrow-minded. Can't I be a liberal AND a Christian? I feel like the neo-religious freaks are making the rest of us look bad and it is pissing me off.
*****
I have struggled with something else this holiday season. I didn't just make a buck stretch -- I made it scream. I put it on the rack and stretched it out, then laid it on a bed of tacks and did the Mexican hat dance on it. I've spent less not just on my own family but on the kids of everyone I know. It was really hard. I feel guilty. Usually at Christmas I've spent tons of money on DJ and never even needed a list -- I always know what to get him. He ends up feeling like he couldn't surprise me. We've had some role reversal this year. I am learning humility.
*****
I probably won't do much updating over the next 10 days or so. We're going to the Georgia Aquarium and I may post a few pictures from there. My Mom is coming to visit and she and Sweet Pea are very taken with each other -- DJ and I will, hopefully, be able to slip out for a couple of movies.
*****
By the way? 3.5 GPA. Two A's, two B's. One C, but that was my lab and it was only one credit hour. I want to do better next semester. I know -- nobody asks your GPA after you graduate. All that matters is getting the piece of paper. But I want it for ME. I want to do well for myself. Which, if you ask me, is about the best reason of all.
*****
Merry Christmas, Internet. Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa. Peace on earth and goodwill to men in the name of God, Goddess, All That Is. Warmest holiday wishes from our house to yours.
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