The Christmas Spirit

  Before the Christmas Spirit evaporated in a swirl of dust bunnies and pine needles, we managed to eek out some truly good times.  They’ll stay like spuds in the root cellar- providing colorful memories to dine on until the gray gloom of winter gives way to warm and hopeful spring.

A few of my favorites…

The shotgun shell Christmas lights- a gift from my buddy, Ellen.

  Lovey and the Unnamed Ones sledding in the Big Snow.

 

  The big, fat, happy tree.

  The interpretive cookies fashioned to resemble the out of control dogs who live amongst us.

 

The fun and games…

 

 

  The lights…

 

   Maggie thinks she in no way resembles the blood-thirsty dog portrayed in the Christmas cookie and says she will honor Christmas in her heart.

  

  I, for one, believe her.

Moony Mommies and Holiday Nostalgia Attacks

He looked lost- Which wasn't hard to understand given the greater picture...The installation of the new TV to the new HD box and pre-existing surround-sound system.



This is what I like best about the holidays- the chance to slow down long enough to watch and enjoy the world around me, in particular, my boys.





And to see how my family sees me-



The sweatshirt I am wearing seems to reappear every Christmas. The boys were in preschool. The teachers pulled the children out into the hallway, dipped their hands in green paint and made wreaths out of their hand prints. I remember opening their package on Christmas morning, pulling out the sweatshirt and crying.

The next year- another sweatshirt. This time their feet formed a moose head and their hand prints were the antlers. And I cried, touched by the little, carefully preserved bits of their rapidly passing childhoods.

Every year I pull the sweatshirts out and wear them. I point to the images emblazoned across my chest proudly, mushy with my soupy-mama love and memories of the sweet scent of boy hugs and kisses. The objects of my affection roll their eyes in mock, or maybe real, horror. The girlfriend smiles indulgently and exchanges a knowing glance with the boys.

It is an all too familiar ritual- sappy mothers mooning over their grown children during the holiday season.

The Unnamed Ones take it in stride, as they do most everything these days.

Having a Lovely Time, Dad- Wish You Were Here!

It's almost time for Christmas vacation. I won't be back at the nursing home for 3 weeks. "What will we do if there's a...well, um..." The social worker's voice trails off and she give me an apologetic smile.

"Emergency?" I say, supplying the word she doesn't want to use.

"Well, yes," she says, sighing. "Three weeks is a long time."

I smile at her. "If something goes wrong around here, call me at home and tell me to get up off the couch and get down here."

I tell her this because this one home tries very hard to do their best for their residents and because of this, I don't mind if they call me. They won't be trying to cover their liable tails after some neglectful incident- they'll be trying to avert a crisis.

I tell her how hard I know they are working- how I see it every time I visit and it makes me feel good. And then I confess I can't go back to the home we both left because it is too hard. "I feel so guilty about it," I say.

Jan shakes her head. "You can't, you can't, you can't" she murmurs over and over, until I realize she is also telling herself.

I stand up, ready to leave but I don't go because I know there's one more thing I need to tell her. "I know this Christmas will be hard," I begin. "At best, strange, without your dad."

She nods. Her dad has been gone for 7 months and mine a year and almost 3 months. I know how much she loved her dad.

"We took flowers to the gravesite yesterday," she begins but breaks off and shakes her head.

"But he's not there, is he?" I whisper.

Tears fill her eyes. "I know he's in a better place," she tries. "But I feel mad, too. So much has happened and keeps right on happening. I want to say, 'Why'd you leave me to deal with this?' But I know it's not his fault."

She begins to cry. "It's the weirdest things. Like he had an old Plymouth Volare. Thirty years old with 54,000 original miles on it. He did all the work on that thing. Then when he got sick, he couldn't work on it anymore but he wouldn't sell it." She pauses a moment, gathering the strength to talk. "We sold it last month. We had to. You can't hang on to everything and Mama needed the money. Anyway, the man came by the other day and that Volare looked so good. He said he'd put 24-hundred dollars into it and it looked perfect. But things like that...they just tear me up."

I know. I tell her about cooking with the Eldest Unnamed One, just like I used to do with Dad. "Even though it's neat to see the generations continue and see my Dad in my boy, it still hurts because I miss my dad and it's not the same."

I am dangerously close to losing it myself but I "hold the tail," so I can stick with her. But later when I walk to the car, it is all I can think about, all I can feel.

I miss my dad but I live on, trying to follow the things he taught me. Doing it, in part for him because that is what he would want, I think. He would want me to pass the essence of who we are and what we are about on down from one generation to the next. He would want me to let the love he gave me flow on to my sons and their children and the host of others who will follow us.

But it just isn't the same as having him here.

Don't get me wrong- I'm having an exceptionally good time with my boys and my friends, but I'm just aware of how much he would enjoy all of this and how much I would like one of his hugs.

Bowling Ball Ballerinas and Christmas Expectations

When I left the cabin a few hours ago it was getting dark. The reindeer were finally synchronized so they all jumped in the same direction at the same time- no easy feat with six different plugs to coordinate.



Inside the soft glow of the fire and the twinkle lights made saying goodbye even harder.



But it's Sunday night and time to go.



Still, I think I feel like the redbird in my kitchen Christmas tree...



My Sister Flea called as I was driving back.

"It's all your fault!" she cried. No "Hello, how're you doing?" No "Hey!" Just "It's all your fault!"

I think she said this four times before she explained herself. "Last year...the way you decorated the house," she sputtered. "And Dad...And it was all so...Well, I caught the fever, your fever!"

This is code for- It's all my fault she did something because last year she came to my house for Christmas because we were dreading it- because we had just lost Dad at the end of September and we couldn't imagine a holiday, let alone life, without him.

"What did you do?" I asked her.

"Remember? All the way back to New Bern I shopped for Christmas decorations! Now I have 2 closets full and I can't even remember what they were! And I'm going to have to put them all up! AND so I had to go buy a tree. I finally found a seven foot tall, pre-lit tree for $59 at Lowes."

"Wow, Bec, that's great!" I say, wedging this complement in-between her 90 mile and hour, rapid-fire report.

"Oh, yeah?" she says. "Well then today I needed rubber cement, so I went to Walmart."

I smell trouble now. What, their trees were less?

"I remember how you used to have a tree in every room. And there was this white tree. White! With multi-colored lights. For 49 bucks! So now I've got a white tree and rubber cement. Where am I going to put a second tree? I live in a condo!"

She goes on but I am thinking about Dad and why he somehow spurs this passion for Christmas decorating and celebrating when I don't remember him ever being that into it. So I ask the Flea why this is.

"Well," she says, pausing to don her therapist cap. "Christmas was always hell for Dad. You know all those church services he had to do and then trying to do the family thing at the same time. I guess we do Christmas because that's what we want- the real, exciting thing- like other families had."

This makes sense to me. And if my sister who converted to Judaism and her ex-Jewish daughter, now turned Wicca, can celebrate Christmas with this much enthusiasm, I guess Flea must be right. We want the Folgers commercial kind of Christmas. We want the magic, the sense of hopefulness, and most of all- the family togetherness.

Christmas at our house when we were little was often nightmarish, but sometimes the magic broke through. Always, though, no matter how crazy or dysfunctional things got, we did always have the family togetherness with Dad. It might've started late or ended too soon- but we did carve out a bit of magic with him every year.

I think of my sister and brother now and realize we are all three living the same Christmas's of our youth as adults. It's like we're trapped and cycling through the season with emotionally labile families who don't love the idea of Christmas the way we do.

I suspect this is the way life is for lots of other families. There's a lot of pressure surrounding the holidays- pressure to be more and better than you really are; pressure to be what others want us to be; pressure to be together and happy- "Say cheese!"

My Sister Flea wants to come up to the cabin to see the magic, but I also suspect she wants to make sure I'm okay with her being home with her family instead of up here with mine on "The" day. I tell her we will be fine and how neat it will be for her to have her kids home with her- how much fun they'll have with the new decorations.

"Oh, I know we will!" she cries. "If I can ever get done with this stupid art class so I can enjoy myself." The Flea is in an art class with her daughter and has taken to telling the teacher exactly what she thinks of her- which is apparently not much.

"Okay," the Flea says. "This is how hard she is to please. She looks like a bowling ball and she does ballet for exercise! How's that for a perfectionist with impossible standards!"

I laugh at the image of Flea's bowling ball in a pink tutu trying to sink gracefully into a plié. Then I think, but aren't we all perfectionists with impossible standards?

Yes, I'll Send You Cookies Contest

Okay, you know I am technologically challenged and while I live with the teenaged Unnamed Ones, it has thus far, benefited me little. I'm saying this because I want to send you goodies, cookies or pound cake or an assortment and can't figure out how to do it!

I wanted to have a contest. You know, send in your name and a randomizer picks your name and I mail out goodies to the winner. Well, I can't find a "randomizer" program and even if I could, who knows if I could use it?!

Then I thought, well, I'll just have them send me a 25 word "Why I Want Them Damned Cookies Anyway!" essay...but that wouldn't work. I'd love every entry. I'd be biased.

So here it is- if you want to throw your hat in the Nancy Will Send You Cookies or Unnamed Goodies like lemon pound cake or an assortment of whatever I bake this morning- click on the email box at the end of this post, send me your name and, if you want, your email address and I'll print out every name. Then I'll throw all the names in my velvet hat and let one of the Unnamed Ones draw the lucky winner out of a hat. If the Unnamed Ones are in one of their rare accommodating moods, I'll even film the event and post it. Then I'll email the winner and ask for your address and send it to you!

Hell, I might even autograph a book and throw that in too!

It will be a down and dirty, 48 hour contest starting RIGHT NOW!!! You have until 10:30 a.m e.s.t to get your entry sent to my mailbox. Only one entry per contestant!

Let's see...disclaimers. All good contests have disclaimers. Here are mine:

Don't blame me if you get addicted, fat or have an allergic reaction. They're just cookies. Deal.

Don't get your panties in a wad if some of the cookies break or crumble...It's only the postal system. Deal.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Merry Christmas!

Nancy

Christmas Decorating Amidst Fisticuffs and Attack Dogs

Well, I am pleased to report some progress has been made around here in preparation for Christmas...

The tree is finally up and decorated. It's got to be one of our finest, even if the K-Mart star weighs the top down a tad. When the Eldest Unnamed One was 2, he decided nothing would do but that star and it's been tradition ever since.




Even the outdoors is perking up a bit. With a little help, I got the icicle lights up and yes, I do know they're not perfectly aligned with the roof! There are limits to what dangers I will risk on a too short ladder to put up lights. The sagging roofline is the price I pay for continued good health and unbroken bones.


It is not our usual wild and crazy, trailer park display...but then Christmas ain't here yet either. I have hope.

The Unnamed Ones were put in charge of stringing up chicken wire and light-wrapped balls into the trees in the front yard. This involved a potato rocket launcher, a whittled down nerf football, some twine and thus far, only one fist fight...and that took place inside, so at least I don't have to explain their violent tendencies to the neighbors.

Of course, there are no light balls showing in the above photograph either. That's because the twine broke stranding the nerf rocket atop a tall branch, resulting in aforementioned fisticuffs and trees without balls...but not without testosterone.

Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear my little angel, Maggie (a.k.a Maggot, BooBoo Kitty and Foostible, depending on our moods and hers) has calmed down considerably since last night's shower mania. She only attacked it 3 times today and is now snoring on my sofa.


I've been studying her today, with an eye toward Pimping My Dog for Christmas. With ears like her's I'm thinking surely I could turn them into twin trees, or angel wings.


Maybe I'll just stick to decorating inanimate objects.


More news tomorrow...after I bake yet another round of almond thumbprint cookies. If I'd just quit eating them, I'd actually have some to give away! I'm thinking my friend, Billy the Blogging Poet might like a few.