A Christmas "Fail"

Some people are lucky enough or organized enough to be able to plan the traditions that become part of their family Christmases.  They decide what they want their traditions to be and then go about creating them.  Their trees are decorated with strings of popcorn and cranberries, they go carolling in the neighorhood on Christmas Eve, and their freezer is full of professional looking Christmas cookies as early as November.

Traditions exist in our family no less than in the families where elaborate preparations go into creating them. It's just that the routes of our traditions are a little more circuitous. 

Even when I try to create special Christmas traditions, I find that there are only a few things that I can really count on from year to year.  Unfortunately, they're not usually the traditions I've tried to foster.

I can count on our Christmas tree being dead within a week because I can't find a place to put it that's farther than four feet from a heating duct.  I can count on stepping on pine needles through at least March.  And I can count on planning a special family excursion to chop down our tree, but ending up buying it precut in a K-Mart parking lot.

I can also count on discovering new traditions every year that I was totally unaware of.

When the girls were young,  I overheard Alex tell Bess that the presents in their stocking are always wrapped. In truth, those presents had been wrapped only once. But that one time was the previous year, the Christmas that Alex remembered most vividly. Since Bess had only vague memories of any prior Christmases, and took everything Alex said as gospel, I found that we had a new tradition that year.  Henceforth, every stocking present would be wrapped.

Other traditions have been even more elusive.  One year a reporter came to Bess's preschool and interviewed the kids about Christmas.  As with most things that happened at school, I knew nothing about this, and was surprised to open up the local paper and see Bess's picture.  I was even more surprised to read her quoted as saying that "Santa Claus brings you presents and puts candy canes on your tree."  I certainly knew about the presents, but the candy canes were a total surprise.  Knowing that I wasn't always in tune with our traditions, I asked the girls.  Alex knew nothing about it, but Bess swore it was true.  And from that Christmas on, it was.  

This year, our traditions were turned upside down since Alex and her family wouldn't be with us, having moved to Africa in July.  I broke tradition, shopped early, and managed to get all of their presents to them before Christmas.  It even seems that I did a pretty good job, which was particularly important, since returns weren't going to be an option.

Flynn loved his tunnel, Alex liked the earring holders I made for her, and Andy might wear the shirts that I bought at a very deep discount so no one would feel bad if he doesn't. There were other presents too. All equally well recieved.

But I wasn't perfect.  According to Alex, there was one definite "fail."  It was the entire series on CD of the TV show "My So Called Life," which was a favorite of hers years back, and which I was sure she'd enjoy since their own TV selections are limited.

A good present indeed.  Except for the fact that this is apparently the third Christmas in a row that I've given it to her.

It seems I've started another tradition.

You Can Have Our Silver, Just Leave the Christmas Ornaments

It used to be a joke in our house that if anyone ever robbed us, they better go straight for the Christmas ornaments because that's where the money was.

It was only funny because it was probably true. With a nubby, dusty pink, 60's couch and loveseat that I won for a dollar at the local auction house and an old chicken incubator that I cleaned up and refinished for a coffee table, our furniture was eclectic, cheap, and generally used.  My finest jewelry was Monet, our only silver was stainless, our TV's were won in raffles, and our computers were slow and secondhand.

Our Christmas ornaments, however, were bought new and  sometimes at prices that I'd balk at spending for dinner for three at Denny's. Wrapped in tissue paper and packed in plastic tubs, they were prime for the taking in all but the last month of the year.  In that month, they were brought out and put on full display, a sort of tactile history of our family.

At the height of our Christmas celebrations, we had enough decorations to cover three full size trees, two wreaths, two wall hanging trees, several table top trees, and one circular thing that hung from the ceiling and held ornaments that were too fragile or too heavy for the trees.

There wasn't a single plain round ball ornament among them.  I take that back. In later years, there's been one red ball, a remnant of my parents' last tree which, as the years passed, was only reluctantly brought out and then decorated almost entirely with identical red balls.

It wasn't the tree of my childhood which is shown in photographs as being sparse of branches, long on tinsel, and with only a few ornaments, so that the tin foil covered milk container bell that I made in first grade stood out. Sometime after my sister and I left home, and over our objections, an artificial tree came in and the red balls went up.  I don't know where they came from, and I don't know where my tin foil bell went. One red ball is its stand in.

Our ornaments are all different, each telling a story of a time or event in our shared lives.  A beautician holding a hair dryer?  That one's for Alex, documenting the year she insisted on getting a permanent and learned never to do that again. The shark with a little girl hanging from his mouth? That one's for Bess, who discovered an unhealthy fear of sharks while deep sea fishing during a Florida vacation and wanted off the boat, "Right Now!"  The cat with a mouse hanging from its mouth.  That's mine, given to me by my sister, who shares my phobic fear of mice.  It goes on the tree, but  always in the back.  Waldo?  Where's Waldo?  He's there somewhere too.

This year while decorating, Bess sees me holding a little wooden ornament of a fisherman's hat.  "Is that Grandpa's hat?"  she asks.

"Why, yes it is."

I don't think my dad fished a day in his life, but he liked his hats. They were misshapen and discolored, with oil stains from his thinnng hair and black grime smudges from his work.  He would leave them in restaurants on family vacations and we would drive back.  We would buy him new hats for Christmas and birthdays and he would get around to wearing them, but never quickly. When he died, I think the grandkids took them.  Maybe even wore them. I have my ornament.

"We should have one for Grandpa's green golf pants too." Bess says.

"Well, yes we should, but we don't.  We do have one for his pink paisley shorts though.  See, right there at the top.  Next to the star you bought me with the date that I quit practicing law."

Truth be told, some of the ornaments are beginning to look a little worn.   Not surprising, I guess, since many of them are over 30 years old and have moved through six different houses, four musty basements, two garages, and numerous closets.  They've survived small hands of toddlers, sharp claws of cats, many a sniff from dogs, and several trees that fell in the night.

This year some of the survivng are even missing, gone in a box that I gave to Alex when she moved to Africa. She posted a picture of her tree on Facebook last week and it was nice to see that she had  a little bit of home in that faraway place.

My favorite ornaments are the ones the girls made over the years and which, some years, have had there own tree.  There are dough ornaments, mainly intact, but with a mouse nibble here and there. Tongue depressers with holiday greetings printed down the front.  Paper cutouts, brightly colored.  Pairs of little ice skates held together with a string of yarn and with paper clips for blades.  Litttle names or initials (in crayon or marker, not always fully decipherable) on most, reminding me which daughter presented which ornament. Some have years, but more leave me guessing.  Most I remember who made what, but memory fails a few.

Bess holds up a big snowflake, a full seven inches in diameter, cut out of plain white paper and them lamenated for longevity.  It's been on one of our trees for 20 years, usually in a prominent place because of it's size and its lightness.  Perfect for flimsy branches and bare spots.

"Who did this one, Mom?" she asks.

I take it from her, look at the back, see a small "B" and tell her that that one is hers.

She takes it back , looks at it more closely, apparently not remembering her little hands manuevering the blunt scissors.

"Mom.   There are two initials here.  It's not "B," it's "FB."  I don't think it's mine."

 I look again.  She's right.  I laugh.  Bess joins in.  We don't have any idea who made this ornament that we've been packing in tissue for 20 years. There's not a single FB in our family.

 I reach up and put the snowflake in a prominent place on the tree, right next to Grandpa's pink shorts.  There's a story behind the snowflake.  Just not the one I thought.

The One Item Christmas List

When Alex was two and a half, she wanted "big blocks" for Christmas. Nothing but "big blocks."  It didn't matter who asked, the answer was always the same.  When she climbed up on Santa's lap, a little nervous and not at all sure she wanted to be sitting there, she stared down at her hands and shyly whispered two words, "big blocks." And then she quickly jumped down and ran to my arms, without even a thought about getting the candy cane from the outstretched hand of the elf.

It was nice to have a list of just one item to fill for my little girl.  It was going to make Christmas shopping easy and leave a little girl very happy.  Santa was not going to disappoint at our house.

Except that I wasn't exactly sure what "big blocks" were.  Logic told me that they were probably just like what they sounded, but when I saw some big blocks at her daycare center and pointed them out to her, she had one word, "NO!" When I showed her some other blocks at the daycare, she had that same one word, "No." And when we looked through the Sears Christmas catalog for "big blocks," it was "No," and "No," and "No." 

Alex was pretty verbal for a two year old, once telling me, "I am two and a half, but you can't cut me in half."  Yet we were having some trouble with our descriptive words with this one. I tried to get her to explain to me what "big blocks" looked like, but she was unconcerned, uninterested, and a little dismissive.

"Santa will know!" End of discussion.

It was already the second week of December.  I was getting a little nervous and started watched morning cartoons instead of CNN, hoping for a commercial about "big blocks."  But they apparently weren't the big ticket item that season, because there was nary a mention. I walked the toy aisles of the local Venture store after work searching for something that looked like "big blocks" that we hadn't seen in the catalogs or at the daycare. Nothing. I went to the small toy store near our house that we sometimes walked to and that was filled with tin wind up toys that she liked.  Nothing.

I started hoping that her list might change, sort of like her recent preference for plums over bananas. But it stayed the same.  And unlike our hearts at Christmas, it never grew.  There was only one thing that my little girl wanted for the first Christmas that she might actually remember, and I didn't know what it was. 

I talked to Alex's nanny and Miss Amy at the daycare to see if they had any idea what "big blocks" might be. They didn't.  I told Alex that Santa might not be able to make any "big blocks" this year and that sometimes he can't bring the things you want.  She told me, "He will."

And finally, I bought some toys that I knew Alex would like, but that weren't on her list of one. There were all kind of big blocks, including the ones that look like bricks that I remembered wanting as a child. But the real "big blocks" weren't going to be under the tree. 

A few days before Christmas, I took Alex with me to one of the local stores to pick up some tape and wrapping paper.  It had a small toy department in the basement, next to the Christmas displays, and we wandered over before heading for the checkout.  

Alex climbed on a rocking horse, walked through a Little Tykes play house, and then, in the middle of the second of two short aisles, stopped. There on the top shelf, too high for her to reach, was a big plastic bag filled with multicolored, over-sized, generic, Lego-looking, "big blocks."  The look on her face was like she had found her way home.  

She kind of had.  Home to the magical world of Christmas and a Santa who always knows.

      

                          A Merry and Magical Christmas to all.


P.S.  Ellen and I have a list this year.  It only has one item:  1) an occasional comment on our blog, please

   

Leslie's Christmas Song

    I’ve always thought of Christmas as a magical season, but there was one time, years ago, when the magic floated right out of the sky and landed right on my head.

    It was the Christmas Eve family mass at packed St. Matthews Church back in 1986, and I was crammed into a pew, along with Jim and three of my four children.  Instead of Jim’s favorite seats near the back of the church, we were all sitting close to the front.  I had a twin on my lap, as did Jim, and Steve was wedged in between us.  Only Leslie was missing.  She was a proud and happy new member of the Children’s Choir, and we had left her surrounded by her friends up in the balcony choir loft.

    There was a lot of whispering and murmuring in the crowded church as latecomers tried to find seats, and parents tried to hush small children excited about being in church at night instead of morning Sunday School and even more excited about Santa’s imminent arrival the next day. 

    And then, a bell rang, and a child’s voice rang out:  “Oh Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining, it is the night of our dear savior’s birth...” and a hush fell over the entire church.  The whole congregation was suddenly silent, mesmerized, listening to a pure, angelic voice fill the huge church with the true, simple meaning and joy of Christmas.  It was lovely, it was compelling, it was perfect that a young child was reminding us why we were celebrating that night, I remember thinking.

     It wasn’t until the last note drifted away, as the organ began to play and the other children began singing, and the priests began their entrance into the crowded church, that I realized that it was not just any child who had been singing, who had stirred the emotions of hundreds of people.  The young singer was my child, my Leslie, who had nonchalantly mentioned on the way home from choir practice a week ago that she had a little solo in the Christmas Eve program. 

    I was utterly shocked. I knew that Leslie had a sweet voice, that she sounded great singing along with Mary Poppins or the Sesame Street crew.  I knew that she had not inherited my complete inabiity to carry a tune, but I had no idea that she could actually sing.  I remember sitting in the pew, stunned, wanting to hear Leslie sing again, wanting to go back in time and listen again to Leslie’s incredible solo.  I remember leaning over Steve and whispering to Jim “That was Leslie,” and the surprised look on his face.  I remember hugging a twin tight and whispering “that was your sister.”  And I remember, to my surprise, tears running down my cheeks.

    Leslie’s Christmas solo was only the first of many performances I’ve listened to.  I will always hear the Christmas songs “I wonder as I Wander” and “The Friendly Beasts” in Leslie’s voice.  Every time I hear Julie Andrews sing “the hills are alive with the sound of Music,” I remember Leslie’s voice ringing through the trees as we hiked through the woods at Turkey Run.  

        I’ve always been proud and thrilled with Leslie’s performances, but I’ve never been as emotionally moved as I was that Christmas Eve.  In retrospect, I’m wondering if part of my astonished and emotional reaction was because Leslie’s singing made me realize for the first time the uniqueness of each of my children with their special talents, gifts, and personalities and how utterly distinct they are from their parents, no matter how much we love them.  A magic moment, indeed.