Christmas 2013

Sex? You Won’t Believe It. Worth the Wait.

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Every speaker of the car, in every row, is singing carols. I’m even gladly enduring The Carpenters who start to wear on me after 23 days of jolly. But we’re on break for the holidays and there’s a freedom I can’t escape.

“Say whoop, whoop if you’re excited for Christmas!”
“Me! I am the most!” they all say.

Except for my oldest who is being blasé with lips around a drinkable applesauce.

“Let’s try that again.”
With glorious fist-bumps I repeat it.
“Me! I am the most! Me.”

Fine.

We are bobbing our heads, I am speeding a little.

“Mom?” asks my son.
“Yeah?”
“Do you know how to French kiss?”

I may have swerved. It’s a bit of a blur.

“Yeah buddy, I do. How did you hear about it?”
“A kid at school told me.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“When you stick your tongue in someone’s mouth.”

Keep. Calm. Remember to use an even tone. And breathe.
I mean, I probably knew about this at six. Did I?
He’s six!

“Yep, you’re right.”
“They said they knew how.”

Is that right?

“A kid in your class has done this?”
“No, they just know how.”

I can begin to see the lines on the road once more. Consciousness is returning.

“I’ve only done that with Daddy. It’s something you do when you’re older.” Like on your 50th birthday. Maybe. “You’ll love it. When you’re older.” Did I mention to him that he’ll need to be older?

Chase and I have made it a point to remove any shame with matters like these.
Your body? It’s wonderful. Save it like a present.
Sex? You won’t believe it. Worth the wait.
French kissing? You’ll be amazed at how long you can do this activity when it’s new. Be very selective.

It’s probably a good thing he’s in the seat behind me, his face blocked by my headrest. He’s my blusher, my giggler.

Dear boy, keep being bashful. Stay innocent for as long as you can.

How Foolish to Think I Didn’t Want This

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This 3 a.m. snack was not planned. But when arms full of blankie and sippy cup need tucking back into bed, there are reevaluations of the schedule.

So here I am next to a pile of tangerine peelings. A thin shadow mimics all the strokes I make in my journal because of the glow from our Christmas tree. This most sacred of symbols is a collage of hot glue and stickers, things I swore I’d never let hang in the branches. I can see through wide gaps of fake needles, straight to a trunk that is smaller in circumference than the body of our floor lamp. (On a side note, do designers of artificial trees think that the wrapping of garland in candy cane fashion actually disguises the pole?) Wooden and leaning, our star sits in vintage style at the peak.

When we were first married I liked the idea of uniform, of ornaments that would flow together and compliment each other. I wanted ribbon to accent perfectly and everything spaced just so. I wanted any future, gaudy adornments cast out and burned.

My kids, they have changed me.

There’s a little bear with a stocking cap and a polka dot number “2”. Glitter and a picture of my youngest dressed as a star at her preschool. Three blocks covered in mod podge and sanded on the edges with three faces I will someday grieve not being here during this season. One green footprint askew a glossy ball, a reminder that small was here once but doesn’t last.
Some of them are clustered together and all on the bottom row of limbs. “HOPE” is actually hanging as “EPOH” and “PEACE”  as “ECAEP.” A select candy cane also near the floor, has been handled. It is broken and pulled through the plastic packaging in great attempt to just smell the sweetness but not taste. Yet.

How foolish to think I didn’t want this.

Welcome homemade decorations, you are like pages in a book. And I’m a sucker for a good story.

You Are Gold

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Tissue paper brighter than a Christmas tree at night is spilling out the gift bag. Her youngest cries and reaches high, and her first grader would be in school if pinkeye wasn’t threatening to make a girl out of his eyelids.

I’m standing across the hall from her trying to empathize with how tiring it is to chaperone a field trip like her husband did yesterday. I would be tired, if I ever showed up on the right day. (See archives. Yeah, I did that.)
But what’s actually on my mind is that I’ve dropped the ball again. I have no bags, no gift cards, no bows or ribbons. No teacher presents. It is the last day before break at our preschool and my hands are empty.

I, am empty.

By the time I’m signing out in the little box marked Phone Number to Reach You, I’m angry. And I have a few good reasons why buying teachers anything at Christmas is insanity.

1. We are so ridiculously commercialized.
2. If it weren’t for me, my kid, and that check I write every month, you wouldn’t be a teacher. With an income.
3. YOU can thank ME for number 2.
4. I think I just feel guilty, and feel like I shouldn’t feel guilty, and I’ll get them something really nice at the end of the year which I never forget.
5. The point is, I am empty, not that teachers don’t deserve gifts. They deserve all manner of appreciation.

I pour out and run ragged in the name of fun. In the name of nostalgia. Even in the name of Jesus. And when I open my hands in a season that is all about giving, there’s nothing there.

But what if empty is good?

Legend tells of a man who was wealthy in every way. He had a woman by his side, countless employees, his health, lots of commodities, best friends and plenty of children with their own families. He lived, like a king.
Until his sons and daughters were kidnapped and his employees stabbed. Until a fire burned through his commodities. Until those kidnapped children were trapped and killed inside a crumbling building. Until his skin was so sore that he was in pain around the clock. Until his best friends told him it was all his fault.

What do you offer when you are void of everything? When the holidays aren’t jolly and you just want to crawl into a quiet cave and eat all Santa’s cookies yourself? When the New Year reminds you of the last one: arduous, lonely, unexpected?

“When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

-Job 23: 10

My emptiness, is my gift.
What can I offer you this year? I don’t have it all together. I forget teacher gifts, sometimes deliberately. I carry loneliness on a weekly basis.
There are days my hair is greasy, I yell about jeans hanging lopsided on footboards, my marriage isn’t always a fairy tail, and that shopping list is just too long with a bank account a bit too short.
All this life, this difficult, desolate life is refining something precious.

“Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

-Matthew 2:11

What happened to the man in the story? He got it all back, twofold.

My Puzzler Is Sore Too

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Sometimes, I just have to go back to the classics and really see the words.

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,

Stood puzzling and puzzling: ‘How could it be so?

‘It came without ribbons! It came without tags!

‘It came without packages, boxes, or bags!’

And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!

‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store.

‘Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!'”

                                                                -Dr. Suess

Duty Can Adulterate Passion

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More than one Christmas decoration sits on the floor waiting to grace our mantle, our front door, and our everyday decorations are piled together to be stored until January. I think of dinner and wonder if it would be outlandish to have a Hot and Ready pizza for the second night in a row. Quickly, I talk myself out of it though I am not above it.

It’s becoming clear why I’ve often heard from veteran mothers, “Put yourself on the list.” This Christmas schedule thing? I don’t think I’m doing it well.

Cards. Tons of cards. With snowflake borders and smiles that show only the pleasant and none of the frustration.
Fake tree needles. Everywhere on the floor.
Strands of light bulbs breaking from small shoes, not glowing after their performance last year.
A preschool program requiring something other than pajamas. Dang it. 
Croup at 1 a.m. and an unplanned ER trip with my son, contributing to the comatose-like stare I’ve carried since Thanksgiving afternoon when I ate that second helping of green bean casserole. So unhealthy, so worth it.
Bath towels becoming superhero capes well after bedtime.
Carols, which I assume are beautiful and nostalgic but I never hear above the arguing over who stole whose breakfast seat. When those familiar melodies are the backdrop to chaos, they just sound…chaotic.

Seriously disconnected from myself I curl up on the couch, my legs pulled in like a grasshopper’s. Milk turned chocolate from cereal is coagulating in the bottom of bowls on the table while warehouse-sized boxes of the food we eat in a two week period clutter the kitchen floor. And I. Don’t. Care. I’m taking this hour or I’ll never survive the next one. 

I love Christmas. Even more this year because last year it seemed too short. I love keeping Shutterfly in business, writing a recap letter, and baking homemade cookies for teachers. I love getting things for my kids because we hardly buy them anything the rest of the year. I love puzzles after waffles at my mom’s, and picture calendars for all the grandparents, and a hole-in-the-wall playhouse with actors who write their own material and have perfected the art of improv (especially when a balding man be present). I love it all.

Except I’m realizing duty can adulterate passion. And when it’s just about getting it all done, I lose what I love about this season.
So Bah, and Humbug. I’m having cocoa, a movie involving an elf who does the splits on an escalator, and perhaps a tickle fight. 
The cards? Maybe for New Years.