My Homemade Holiday Card, on this 12th Day of Xmas

This year my homemade holiday card offered a cruise through time, starting with this 1909 shot  of my mother and her brothers and cousins.She's the sad-looking one holding the toy phone. She was saddish by nature as a small child, whereas her oldest brother James, on the far left, was just plain jolly. His letter to Santa to Santa that year was signed, "from James Sullivan, A Fat Six-Year-Old Boy."My card was like that generally, both jolly and  jokey. After this first old picture I fast-forwarded 50 years to an image of David and his cute brothers posed by the their tree in Medford Massachusetts. He's the one with the nice big smile and the striped shirt.He and I didn't know each other yet of course but here I am not more then ten miles away then, together with my big sister Nan in our front yard on Charlotte Street in Dorchester. Nan is so pretty  even now, and was then too. I was always mugging so you can't ever TELL what I looked like.From there the card opened up to show two shots of David and me as a couple,  both in our early 20s, one depicting a holiday-minded Dave with a big red Christmas bow stuck to his head.  I won't put that up here since he hates having his image going far and wide  for all the world to see. Then the other one showed  me having what appears to be a 99th glass of champagne and wearing a one-piece hot pants getup and once again mugging.Then further down came pictures of our kids AS little kids and then a few shots of our grandchildren.Here was little Callie, AKA Caroline Theresa the 5th, named for her mom who was named for her mom who was named for her mom who was named for her mom - tiresome, I know.And, here since I seem to be doing a Ladies First thing, was little Ruthie-Roo, born 13 months ago and already one of the funniest people in the room.Young David Marotta came next in the card, a guy who was plain crazy about Nerf Guns for a while there, until the principle of disarmament settled upon the house.And last but not least there was this picture of Edward, at 11 our eldest grandchild, here dressed for battle for the honor of the Fenn School.Finally when you turned the card over to side four, there was this picture of David and me in the late 80s headed to a gala to celebrate the purchase, by its citizens, of a new Steinway for use by our town. The accompanying text basically said that al though WE two sure don't look as good now as we did then, at least the hall wallpaper has greatly improved.So there it was: a card that was funny and fun to make.And now, with Twelfth Night behind us and Little Christmas here, I'm sweeping away the last of the pine needles and laying those slender self-lighting, self-extinguishing window candles to rest in their attic box. Where one or two of them may well flicker on as darkness gathers and where, until their batteries run down, they will faintly light the gloom up under the eaves, until we pull them forth again next Christmas 

Summer Morning : Earth

When we’ve all moved lock, stock and candy wrapper to some giant biosphere high up in Space, what will be said of our time on this planet? What will be remembered, say, of a summer day here on Earth?

Will anyone recall the young women riding morning buses on their way to work?Earlier this week, I looked up from the task of wedging groceries into my dented little car, and saw, on a bus idling at a red light, one such young woman perched on the inward-facing seatsShe wore a dress scooped low in the back, and I watched as with sure and practiced hands she reached behind her to arrange her hair, lifting and looping sections, disciplining its long braids, until, at last satisfied, she let the heavy whole of it drop against bare skin.  Where is the video camera for moments like these?Later that day, 100 miles farther west, at a rest stop on Interstate 90, I wondered that same thing again, as I sat on one of the arc-shaped stone benches encircling the stone tables on the Visitors’ Center's leafy patio.  I watched as the scalloped edges of the umbrellas sheltering this Stonehenge-like seating danced in the wind and thought, “If I could only paint! I wouldn’t need a video camera if I had the artist’s eye to capture this breeze in a series of brush strokes.”I looked around more and saw a woman well into her 70s so delighted with the pre-school child holding her hand that she was literally skipping from her car to where I sat, the little boy skipping with her and the two talking delightedly away even as they flitted from the hot asphalt to that cool bower of shade where we outdoor diners sat, paused on our several journeys.That pause is a big element of life on this Earth in the warmer months I think.I move through my days, same as I do all year, but find myself lately taking more time to notice each moment.Yesterday I was trying to clear a sink drain and accidentally dropped the small red cap to the can of the harsh chemical down into the drain too, thus doubly stopping it up, and the irony of that fact made me ponder.I called the plumber and when he arrived we chatted away about all the small mild ‘reprimands’ Fate sends our way. “Look at this,” he said, indicating his reddened left arm. “I was weeding around the foundation of my house when a whole swarm of yellow-jackets buzzed up out of the ground and stung me!" "I have eight or ten bites here,” he added, pointing. “Yikes!” I said. “And nothing hurts worse than a yellow jacket’s sting!” “Oh, but that’s not all! The next day when it started itching like crazy, I realized: That weed patch was full of poison ivy!”    It seems likely to me that here was a conversation that would NOT have taken place in the hurry-up cold months.The young woman would have been in a coat for one thing, her lovely back all covered; and the canvas umbrellas would not have even been there to snap in the breeze; and for sure the older lady would not have been skipping over stone-cold asphalt.Time seems to slow in the warm months and open these small still pools into which we can for once really see ourselves living, the way God sees us and, let us hope, the way God smiles in the seeing. 

Call the Darkness Light

The  solstice is past, but the days are still so short  many of us are traveling to and from work in darkness even now. I think this was the first year I really “got” why so many people deck their houses with  lights – sometimes even before they’ve polished off the Thanksgiving turkey.They don’t do it because they feel 'hurried into' the season by retailers. They do it to lift their spirits.So this year I tried doing it too, and wonder of wonders, stringing little lights did indeed help me beat back that shudder of dread I feel when the darkness comes to cloak us.In the classic Isaac Asimov/Robert Silverberg story Nightfall, the action takes place on a planet whose sky holds as many as six suns at a time, where, at 2,000 year intervals, a mysterious event occurs that causes the land to be enveloped in darkness for the first time in anyone’s memory.And yes, one ‘fringe’ religious sect teaches that it’s God’s judgment that brings the dark, along with the subsequent appearance of these fearsome things called ‘stars’ that rain down fire to destroy all of civilization. Few believe this though, because each time, the conflagration destroys all records.  The reader learns only as the story unfolds that it’s the people who are responsible, because as creatures who have never in their lives experienced darkness, they panic and set the awful fires themselves, for the light.All during December I wondered why this tale kept coming into my mind. Only in the last few days did I see it is because that same kind of wild and unreasoning fear lives also in me.Over the past six months, we have had many ‘systems’ problems in our house, as first the washing machine died, then the dryer, then the fridge. The shower pan in the upstairs bathroom also failed so that for days on end water dripped down into the room below it.We fixed all these problems, but not before I had expended a world of energy whining about them.Sometime in there, social media allowed a faraway friend to take note of all this and sit down and send me this message:

Terry, I am sorry to hear about your refrigerator and the discomfort you have been having. I know just how bad it has been for you. We have seen similar things happen here. Our bathtub legs fell off while one of the girls was in the tub, the bathroom sink got clogged up and one of the refrigerator doors broke so for over a month our food was constantly spoiling.“Thank God things are back to normal now – somewhat, LOL! The roof is still leaking but God is on that too. Remember, you are in my prayers.”

With what shame did my cheeks burn as I read this note from a woman who, virtually alone, raised up her own three children, sent them off to college, and then took in three teenaged girls to whom she has given love and care in full measure.  The one who was in the tub when its legs broke off was pregnant when she came into her family and is expecting her baby this month, a fact that only gladdens my friend’s heart, because - as she will tell you - God is on that too.And there it all is in a nutshell: One camp of people sees the approaching dark and panics, while the other just calls it sweet night and waits in trust for the light’s return. I think in this new year I'm going to try moving from that sad first camp into the second.  

A Final (Funny) Postscript

Here's a final postscript as the  jingling tinker's wagon we call 'the holidays' lurches off down the road. It served as my column last week.Remembering Christmas Past is like remembering childbirth: a certain amnesia sets in. If you asked me earlier in December what happens around here most Christmases, I’d have said not much. Then, last week, I looked up  Christmas in an old diary. How quickly we forget.That year, I came up with the idea that I should send a card to 192 people, and thus spent every spare moment over a five-day period entering their names and addresses on my laptop so as to generate labels.Finally one morning, I pressed “Print” and hurried away to take my shower - but when I came back, our nice fat-bottomed cat was delicately shredding the sheets of labels one by one as they emerged from the printer, while sitting directly ON the laptop, causing it to beep frantically, then lose its mind altogether, writing  “#!” when you tried to write "the" and "%#~" when you tried to type "when." And it kept ON doing this, hiccupping and speaking in gibberish for the next 13 hours.Then I spent five more days of non-existent spare moments working up a newsy collage of holiday greetings and when that turned out to be way too big for a conventional envelope, I went and bought bigger envelopes, on which my printed labels now looked puny and impersonal. So I took another five days and made everyone who came into the house help me decorate each one with a bright holiday drawing.And then there were the Disappointing Presents.Our then 15-year-old turned out to be hoping for a leather jacket and instead I bought her a big silky Cheese Puff of a thing. What was I thinking?So too, our then-10-year-old wanted little green army guys, but when the bucket of them was opened on Christmas morning, I turned out to have bought the wrong kind, a kind that couldn’t even lie down in the mud and inch along on their tummies. What kind of army guys can’t do THAT, right? Yet asking this bunch to do it would be like asking a Ken Doll to reach up and tousle his own hair. No elbows was the problem.Also, the much-wished-for video game was sold out until March, and it seemed you couldn’t BUILD Erector Set Number 6 unless you already OWNED Erector Sets Number 1 through 5 - which we didn’t.And as for the two presents I thought were sure-fire, the ones I had actually I had in fact bought super-early and even wrapped? These I couldn't even find until three days after the big day.On climbing into bed Christmas night, I recall my ten-year-old’s eyes shining with sorrow. “It’s my fault,” he said, so as not to sadden me his hapless mother. “I didn’t get in the Christmas spirit. I should’ve thought more about what I was giving, instead of what I was getting,” he went on.So this year we all tried to do that in this family: think more of what we were giving and not at all about what we might be getting.Still, you sure can get turned around. All this time later I now see that I was the one who wanted that big downy Cheese Puff of a jacket all along. I think it looks pretty good on me, don't you?  The hot pink really sets off my new hair color.:-)

Happy Day After

A nice day here yesterday. The mess alone made a wonderful spectacle. Also, what's nicer than spending the morning in your pjs on Christmas.Just for old times sake I wore the bathrobe David gave me for Christmas in long ago '79 when we first moved to this house - even though it doesn’t wrap QUITE so entirely around me as it did when I weighed 120.Lots of years gone by, the old Christmas stockings falling apart now, including the little one we hung for the baby that didn’t get past week eight in utero. David insists that little one's stocking hang front and and center every year, though the two of us may be the only ones who know what it represents.I'll put more picture to put up if I get the chance – such happy mayhem – but for now I’ll close with the robe, a Pendleton woolen number. A few moth holes in the girl by now but none in the garment!Happy Day After to all, and to all a good night.  

Holiday Slip 'n Slides

You forget about the Holiday downsides: The way you always plan too much. The way your eyeballs start jiggling the minute you get to the mall and see those kiosks filled with jokey T-shirts and giant bunny slippers. You THINK you’ll be fine and finish all the holiday tasks.  You’ll just get up a little earlier in the morning. You’ll just go to bed a little later at night. It’s all about efficiency, you tell yourself.In the name of this efficiency I decided to brew my morning coffee one day last week right in the bathroom, to get that jolt of caffeine at the earliest possible moment.I had my little pot all set up on the edge of the sink. It would brew while I took my bath. Brilliant! I thought.I had tested the water temperature, dipped a toe in the tub and had just lowered myself into the hot suds when I realized I’d forgotten to press “Brew.”No problem I thought.I stood up looking like the Michelin Man in my coat of soap bubbles, stretched across the length of our wide old 1940s sink and then…lost my footing.  My whole upper body crashed down onto that rock-hard porcelain, causing the coffee pot to SHOOT off the sink and land in the toilet – but not before creating geysers of coffee grounds, which plastered themselves on the walls, the floor and even the ceiling.That should have acted as a sign for me if I had eyes to see it. It should have been just the lesson I needed.But no, I had no such eyes. And no, I heeded no lessons - with the result that a worse occurrence followed three days later when I leaped suddenly from our bed to assist my sick ‘roommate.’It must have been something he ate that day, or maybe it was just one of those pesky stomach viruses that settle in and shiver your timbers for 24 hours.Anyway, this roommate-slash-spouse felt suddenly sick around midnight and, on waking to realize that this was so, I vaulted from the bed and ran to the bathroom just as he had done.Thinking to show support, see.Only once in there, I found myself bouncing against the shower door.Are you all right? I called to him in a faint voice.Then I careened in the other direction and bounced off the sink.This bathroom is two rooms, really, the larger one with the shower and sink in it and the other, far smaller one, with just the ‘facilities.’That’s the room he’d been, until he heard my voice.“What’s going on out here?” he said, emerging. “I’m not sure,” I said. He walked toward me. “You seem to be falling down,” he said.“I think I’m falling down,” I said, amazed,  and I fainted and did fall, section by section, knees buckling, ankles turning to Silly Putty.He grasped me under both arms as I dipped and swayed. “What do you want to do?” he said. “Just let me lie on this nice bathmat a while. “I’m fine,” I said.  “I love this bathmat,” I added.I lay there for a good little spell while my roommate, feeling rather better for his ordeal, went back to bed.  And it was as I lay there that a double realization came to me:One, too much haste around the holidays really is ill-advised.And two, have a nice soak in the tub or start pumping in the caffeine, but never, ever, ever try doing both at once. 

Shop Fearlessly - Really?

They say credit cards can be dangerous, but I can’t help it: I love the way you can just input that old number and send away for a thing.  Of course catalogs are arriving at our doors by the dozen at this season, every day their glossy pages spilling slippery through our letter-slots.Lots of them I CAN resist. After all I can just choose not to open the skimpy lingerie catalogs with those poor cold girls, skinny as insects - but rhe mail-order items that do get my attention are the ones found advertised among the sober pages of the traditional old news magazines.One example: I’m reading along about some country where they’re trying to actually SELL clean air to people, when all of a sudden there’s this ad with a picture of an old-fashioned model train chugging out from under the branches of an old-fashioned Christmas tree. “Classic trains!” reads the text “Relive the magic of your childhood, when large metal trains were a part of every holiday season!”Large metal trains, I sigh, growing instantly misty - and then I remember: We HAD large metal trains when I was little. We kids I used those sharp-edged bullion-bars of steel to clobber each other with. Then there was the year I got the wheels of one stuck in the thousand tendrils of curl that sprang from my scalp, causing me to run around the house dangling a Large Metal Train from my hair and shrieking, ‘til the grownups could figure out what to do about me.Another example:  I’m reading an article about teaching kids Phonics and here’s another ad: For a gizmo said to rid your home of “pests and vermin, mice, rats, roaches bats. Even raccoons and squirrels” the ad says.“It delivers a tremendous blast of ultra-sound, inaudible to you and your pets“ that disrupts their nervous systems. “They’ll leave your home within a few weeks - never to return!”It has volume-control and six variable pitches, depending on the size of the vermin, and already my fingers are reaching for the credit card, because don’t WE have such pests? Mice, when the weather turns cold? Egyptian meal moths the year round, raising their children in our cereal boxes. Bats and raccoons and I-don’t-know-what-all?We had a serious infestation of squirrels in our last house. They threw parties inside the eaves, chattering just inches from our sleeping heads when their friends came over, and grimly chewing and chewing when they were alone.In our desperation, we actually bought this device back then, or something very much like it. We never had the slightest notion whether or not it worked, its sound being inaudible and all. WE wound up moving instead.So last week those two items tempted me.But just the other night, and this is no word of a lie, I thought, “Never mind these silly toys and gizmos, why not use my credit card to order some nice books from Amazon the way you can so easily do these days?”I decided on The Age of Innocence and Doctor Sleep. I entered my credit card number and pressed “Buy.” Then, well pleased with myself and humming a little tune, I decided to check my e-mail.A message from Amazon - already!'This is to confirm your recent order,” it said. 

• 'Copies of The Age of Innocence: 1. 
• 'Copies of Doctor Sleep: 591.
• '$17,745 billed to your MasterCard. Payment authorized.”

Maybe these credit cards are deadlier than I thought.

Ready or Not It's Here

Well, SOME of you may have been ready for December. You know who you are. You've had your lights up for weeks. Goodie-goodies.Most years I don’t get our lights up ‘til our youngest child arrives home from whatever faraway place has beckoned him that year and I’ll admit it: that practice makes me nervous.One year I just couldn’t wait and got taken in by a catalogue ad for trees that are supposedly harvested only hours before shipping and what a mistake THAT was. When the thing arrived it looked like a giant Q-Tip -  and kept on looking that way even a whole week after I'd liberated it from its plastic mesh hairnet.“W-h-a-a-t?” our son exclaimed  when he got home on December 23rd and saw it all decorated in our living room. He's burdened by what I can only call your 'artist’s eye' : your crooked trees, your trees half bald on one side are a torture for him to look upon.Gently, swiftly he took off every ornament and string of lights, dragged the poor tree out back and drove straight to the nearest nursery for a realer version, shaggy and flouncy and still smelling of the piney woods.But preparing for the holidays is just part of what I have to face come December. For me there's also the glove problem.Every fall, I buy two pairs of black winter gloves that are sort of nylony and hug the hand so nicely. Then, not two weeks into the cold weather, I lose the one for the right hand.Always the one for the right hand. Never the one for the left.I don’t know how it happens but at last count I had on the shelf in the front hall closet exactly seven identical black gloves, all for the left hand. And because they have these nice little gripping ‘pads’ on the palm surface, you can’t just flip them. You’d walk around looking like somebody took each arm off, switched it and hung it from the opposite shoulder.It’s a problem for a person like me, who can’t leave the house from November to April without gloves on. Last winter I bought five pairs, just to keep that right hand warm.And finally in December I face the issue of storing the car, since, where we live, they fine you in winter for parking in the street.We do have a driveway, though it’s narrow. We also have a garage built circa 1915 when a car wasn’t much bigger than a sewing machine.But somehow this garage gets filled during the warmer months, this year with items from a deceased uncle’s house, boxes of our own mismatched china from Dallas and Dynasty days, and a broken old Nordic Track.You have to empty a garage enough to get one of your two cars inside but where do you begin?  Especially when you really loved the uncle and can’t part with his furniture? Especially when you’re the kind of person who remembers so very many of the thousands of meals eaten off that china?Every day I go out there looking to see what I can pry from the pile and discard.It’s painful. Worst case I’ll find that cast-out Q-tip of a Christmas tree. But best case, who knows? I just might come upon seven right gloves. 

Shake Not Thy Gory Locks at Me!

"Shake Not Thy Gory Locks at Me!" That's Macbeth, talking to the bloody ghost of Banquo who shows up at the palace just after Macbeth has ordered the death of  his old best friend. Scary, that image of a split scalp and bloodied hair..And speaking of scary, here are some images to stop you in your tracks: Pictures of how kids used to look when they went out on Halloween. Worse than any creepshow mask you can buy today eh?Hope you all got through the big night safely and are happily enjoying your loot today. Don't forget to brush and floss after, is all! :-)

Good Haul

I’m as happy with what I didn’t get for Christmas as what I did.

• I got a white high-neck long-sleeved nightie. Psych!
• I got a book by Jonathan Kozol one of the last of the American heroes. Psych again!
• I got four sherbet glasses from the early 1920s that I'd fallen in love with at an antique store in November. They cost $25 for the set and are the color of a peacock’s wing. One has a chip in it and what could be nicer than that?
• I got a camera from Old Dave. I got this only after I found out he thought we were no longer exchanging gifts after all these years. No longer exchanging gifts! When I had just finished wrapping three sweaters and a new bathrobe for him since the old bathrobe has under the left arm something resembling a hash tag – you know, the symbol for number - only it’s 8 inches around. Pretty drafty for the cold nights when the wind is up. When he saw my face he said “Poor T! Go buy yourself something!” (This reminded me of when an old flame of my sister Nan said of her ironing that it certainly didn’t look like any shirt his mother would have ironed. Her response: “Does this meat cleaver that I’m about to bury in her your head look like anything of hers?” ha ha. ) So I did “go”, right to Best Buy where the clerk told me they no longer carry the Nikon D-90 that I have been burning to own but she looked it up on Amazon for me, she was that nice. She found a reputable seller, made sure it was a new one and not a rebuilt one and had me email the link to myself. Two hours later I had ordered thing and sometime next Monday it will land on my front porch.
• I also got a funny little cube of a radio with that little slot-like mouth into which you can set your iPhone so you can wake up to music OR news OR your own playlists and podcasts. Joy! This came my way only when because one of my kids asked for it as a gift and when I saw its awesome properties I asked for one too. (Well that’s not QUITE what happened. In the pre-Christmas chaos I ordered the darn thing twice from Amazon and so talked myself into wanting since an extra one was coming to my house anyway.)

I was happy about all these things and happy too that I didn’t have to talk myself into wanting a bunch of stuff I never heard of before, like a belt you can wear that gives you periodic electrical shocks to reduce your love handles or some such.So a nightie, a book, some glassware from the old days, a clock to mark the passage of time and a camera to record it with. It was almost as good a Christmas as the one when I got that model of the naked lady AND the see-through frog... And really Dave is a pretty good guy. Anyone who reads this blog knows that. Here's a picture of him that I've always really liked. (And now he even has a decent bathrobe :-))

They Say Don't Give a Pet for Christmas...

...But maybe it's OK  to get one yourself.Watch this video and just SEE if it doesn't make you smile. You might even take their suggestion at the end..[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG3O6UBLGbA]

The Squirrels Know

I feel for this guy, who I found trying to raid the hawthorn tree for berries before the poor birds could get to any.They’re running out of food out there!It’s been mighty mild for these parts but still: The critters know what's coming.I hung around in my bedroom for almost an hour to get this shot. (I have 20 lousy shots.)There were four squirrels in the tree at the time but this guy seemed the perkiest. And then he turned and gave me his handsome profile.And I was just close enough, my breath fogging the cold windowpane  - though if you click on the picture to enlarge it you'll see the mesh of screening.Just look at him, shoveling it in with those slim little fingers.  I suppose he’s offering a lesson to us all, but with the holiday aftershocks still bouncing against me, I’m still too fried to figure out what it is. 

When the Big Day Comes

You wait and you wait for that elf to arrive.Looking out this window and that butfinallyfinallyfinally he does comeand brings those toys and clothessome of which are so scary that the children won't put them on.So the grownups have to wear them instead..which is initially terrifying,but then not so muchIn general people seemed to like their presents around here,  especially the one who got a giant abominable snowman jackets.In general it was like this today around the tree (though the video is from two years ago.)  I just like that little one’s quiet way as he looks around in his webbed Spider Man PJs, taking it all in.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7SVfdvNqN8]Hope you take it all in too, and are warm and happy and safe as the sun does its quick winter  fade and we rush around fast to light the candles.

A Less Than Joyful Noise? Complicated Feelings at Christmas

The boy is standing halfway up my front hall stairs. He is a little boy and his speech is still imperfect.  The “s’s” at the beginning of his words come out sounding like “t's” but I can understand him – most of the time. Right now he has paused on the way up my hall stairs to ask me something.“What are you going to get me for Christmas, TT?” (He calls me TT.)“Oh!  Well I’ve already gotten it!”“What is it?’ he asks, twisting his hands together in front of him.“Ah now I can’t tell you that, can I?”“You CAN tell me!” he cries with a sudden anguish. “TT, you can!”Stalling for time, I then do what grownups so often do: I fib.“Um, let’s see if I can remember. Oh I know! I got you every single thing on Santa’s sleigh!”“No, you didn’t!” he nearly sobs, even as I am asking myself what on earth I think I’m doing, teasing a four-year-old.“I’m only fooling,” I quickly say. “What kind of thing would THAT be, putting Santa out of a job?”“So, what DID you get me?”“A jar of pickles.” (Gad, I’ve done it again!)“Not really!” he cries, his expression turning desperate.“No, not really. I’m sorry honey. Do you really want to know what I got you?”He sits down on the fourth step like a man exhausted by life.“Shall I tell you in your ear so it’s a secret?”He nods.“It’s a bank that counts your money as you put it in,” I whisper.At this he turns from me, closes his eyes and leans his little forehead against the wall, a bit of body language that comes through loud and clear.“You don’t want a bank that counts your money as you put it in?”He shakes his head no as the tears begin to brim.“Then I’ll give it to your brother, why don’t I? He loves banks, come to think of it! And you love stuffed animals, isn’t that right? Should I be thinking about a stuffed animal for you?”He nods his head. Of course! How many times have I seen him arranging the occupants of that toy doll carriage!“And what would be the best stuffed animal, do you think?”He tries for a brave smile but he can’t seem to speak.“Do you have a favorite animal?”He nods.“What kind then?”“A raccoon,” he says in a very small voice.“A raccoon is it?” I repeat after him.“Yes!” he now full-out sobs.He falls into my outstretched arms and there we stand, two people balancing on sharp point between laughter and tears, two people caught on that sharp point (a) because these long weeks of ad-fed hankering stand in opposition to every stated spiritual impulse of the season, and (b) because, thank God, they areFinally...Almost ...BEHIND US!

Quick Where's the Dog?

If you haven’t yet done your holiday card, it's still not too late. In this age of the digital image you can get a picture for it in no time flat. Here’s all there is to it:Tip One, if babies and toddlers are involved, schedule the picture-taking before they get so tired they begin corkscrewing in your arms and turning their heads clear around on their necks like little owls. (Watch for that melting-like-wax trick where they slide clean off your lap too. Small children can go boneless at will, making it impossible to get them into a shoe or a snowsuit or get them up off the floor without the aid of a giant spatula.They also know how to make faces that can really sabotage your Holly-Jolly photo. Ask yourself: do you really want your little one giving the raspberry to 100 of your closest friends?Tip Two: If your kids are anywhere under the age of seven, put mittens on them to keep their fingers from their nostrils. Think how many plays and pageants you’ve witnessed where the little ones at the edge of the stage began these digital explorations the minute the curtain goes up!  Think how few you’ve been to where a tiny girl didn’t lift her skirt up over her head. See what I’m sayin’?Tip Three: Do include your family pet in the picture-taking session, even though this may seem like a recipe for mayhem. It is not. Because if the pet is canine, you’ll be patting it and holding it, causing it to offer a big old doggy grin that will lift the spirits of everyone who receives your card. And if it’s feline, it is bound to be making one of those dead-pan faces cats make where they're obviously saying,  'Uh, what happened to the good old days when we were looked on as gods?' Cats also wear an expression you often see in works by the Old Masters. Think of that one guy often seen in a painting who isn’t looking at the chief object of interest at all, but rather straight out at you, the viewer. 'This won’t end well,' his look says, which is exactly the look the cat has in the family picture. Hilarious!Tip Four: the cat is right: Things won’t end well with your photo shoot, but that’s OK, that’s fine, because this way you can pretend that your goal ALL ALONG was to send a madcap card. You might even consider putting jokey headgear on everyone, to perpetuate this fiction. Antlers are a popular choice.Tip Five: Examine the foreground of your picture. Soft drink can aren't great in the holiday picture, friend; this isn’t a young guy’s Facebook page.  In my family there was this rule that even ketchup and relish had to be decanted. “No labels on the table!” my mother would boom.  It’s a good rule for the holiday card too.Tip Six, even more crucial than Tip Five: Keep beer cans especially out of the picture and also NO DRINKING BEER BEFORE TAKING THE HOLIDAY PICTURE. My advice: go right to the hard stuff, have everyone yell “Whiskey!” so they at least look like they’re smiling, pick a pose, order up the cards, send them off to the 100 friends and you are done for another year!

Tell the Truth

Look me in the eye and tell me you accomplished a lot yesterday.That's what this guy is saying.Try telling me you bought gifts, he says...Or finished the holiday card...Or finally got done trimming the tree.Guys like him are always talking like this, always acting so superior, just because THEY may have spent the whole day gathering nuts.Me?I didn't spend the day shopping OR trimming OR addressing the envelopes for that holiday card, though all of those tasks go unfinished.Instead I laundered 8 sets of curtains, washed the windows they belong to, sewed a slip cover for a chair everyone else in the family is happy to bring to the Free Stuff table at the dump and ate a pint of ice cream.It's a stressful time of year.And sometimes, sometimes the only way to throw up a barricade against that stress is to work on something - anything - in no way related to the tasks you're supposed to be working on.Human nature, what can we say?

Misshapen

You can pick us right out if you go by our house these days: in a neighborhood where every other house is billowing with lights by December 5th, ours looks like Boo Radley’s .It’s not that we don’t want to dress the old girl up for Christmas. It’s just so much work.Putting candles in every window with their flimsy bases taped to the sills? We actually did that all through the 80s and 90s? Now I need a nap just thinking about it.The one thing we can seem to manage is a tree on the porch.A tree on the porch as well as in the living room has been our custom since a family member came home to see the live tree I bought one year, immediately undressed it and dragged it out the front door, then went out and bought a whole new tree and began again with the lights and ornaments. (The rest of that story is here.)Some years we've had TWO trees on the porch, the littler fake one and then also the real one, because Old Dave and I can’t seem to get around to dragging that live one in.Last year it waited 10 whole days out there before we finally got around to it.I think I have said that I'm generally the one buying the tree, as everyone seems to assume when you work from home you  'have the time'. I think it was Christmas of ’08 when I decided I just could NOT  haul one more tree off the top of my car and onto that porch.  Plus I had seen these nice fresh balsam trees advertised in a catalog. "Your tree will be SO fresh!” the copy read and I was SO gullible! I pressed "Add to Cart" and entered my credit card number.  Two weeks later here it came, delivered by the men in brown, landing thwump! on our porch in its plastic hairnet.A week passed. Eight Days. Nine. Ten. I couldn’t get Old Dave to tackle the two-man job of bringing it in. He was reading, I was reading. Then there were all those naps.Finally on Day 11, we peeled back its plastic netting and beheld what we had: a thin green Q-tip that stayed a Q-tip the whole time it was up, and upon which it was just about impossible to hang an ornament.The kids came home on the 24^th and shook their  heads.I can smile as I think about it now though. Because Q-Tips are cute, right? And a tree with its arms up as if in desperate supplication? That's funny too.Plus I just looked up the history of  Q-Tips, invented by one Leo Gerstenzang who first dubbed them 'Baby Gays’ and I have to say, that made me feel better all by itself. We're all good at some things, less good at others. When it came to product-naming, Leo could use some help, his friends doubtless said behind his back. When it comes to the Christmas tree project, the Marottas could use help too. No shame there. And admit it: isn't Charlie Brown secretly your favorite Peanuts character?

O Crappy Tree O Crappy Tree

For the last nine years I've been the poor schmuck assigned the task of buying the tree.No one else had the time they always said.  My youngest, who has had a real eye for balance and proportion ever since he first picked up a crayon to draw a Ninja Turtle, was off at college since Christmas of '02 and of course Old Dave has never cared. He always just wants to do his Sudoku.My problem doing the job alone is this: I’m not good at it.One year I got some weird kind of tree with needles that LOOKED super soft but turned out to feel like asbestos fibers when you touched them. Plus they were so closely grouped on their branches that the ornaments you tried hanging on them ended up lying sideways.Another year I'm told I got a tree that was way too small - who can tell when you’re there in the lot with no indoor walls or ceilings to give you a sense of scale?Plus I  didn’t see the part on the tree's side that was sort of scooped-out looking, probably because I have a part on my own side that looks that way, a spine that, once it turned 50, started taking a right-hand turn out of the lumbar gate, then changed its mind and went left, then righted itself to head  north again. I'd show you the X-ray but it’s too disturbing. My tailor screamed when he saw it and he's a strong man. “God! Do you know what that LOOKS like?” he said but I wouldn’t let him go on. Bad enough knowing how I think it looks: like a fat worm, writhing. Like a slug, failing the sobriety test.Anyway, that  year when College Boy came home  December 23^rd he took one look at the tree and said “Oh.”Then  “Hmmmm.”     Then “Mum, don’t be mad.  I’m just going to go out and get another tree.”I wasn't mad. I'm never mad. My job in life is to make the first stab at a thing, so others can then come in and point out the problems.He went out then and there and got a new tree, then took every light and ornament off the slug-tree and dragged it out on the porch.....Where began our new custom of having a tree on the porch, which is now a fake tree that comes in several parts and that you jam together using its several daggerish stake-through-the-heart elements.The year I first came home with THAT one was a big hit. “Old TT!” shouted College Boy’s father. "Buying just the essentials again I see!”That’s a joke between us whose origins lie here, two posts back.Come back tomorrow for the rest of the saga.. But the holidays, man. Crazy-making or what?

Landmine Holiday

I guess it’s never really the same old, same-old at the holiday.It just seems that way to me when I drag out the decorations each year.Here's that spiky fake tree that looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie no matter how hard I try to get a graceful swoop into its crooked wire branches.Here’s old Donut the Christmas doggy, still with a crater of black seared into his plushy thigh from that rogue Christmas tree bulb. I keep him as a reminder of what can happen.Here are the battery-operated window candles that seemed like such a great idea when I bought them."Look. no more cords!" I sang happily to Old Dave as I carried them into the house.But it turns out you still have to actually traipse around to every window to turn them on, dang it, and what if you’re away for the night? Any robbers, parked and lurking in their van, would know right away that you weren't home and then what?They'd come right in and steal all your presents and your Christmas doggy! Maybe even your window candles too (which might actually not be so bad since as it turns out they glow so dimly the only way anyone inside OR out can see them is if you turn off every other light in the house.)

~ Sigh. It's such a production every year. And I sill haven't bought the evergreens that I first tie to the banisters, then spend two hours festooning with strings of blinking white lights until you can’t pass up or down the stairs for fear of tripping on the wires. Maybe we should thing about installing a Mrs. Deagle-style 'lift' on the stairs to avoid tumbles entirely. (though remember the ride she got once the Gremlins entered her life? Its right here if you want to see it.

Every year Dave says the same thing to me when I come home with fresh decorations: “Just the essentials, eh T?"It's a reference to this scene from Dumb and Dumber, that great old Jeff Daniels/ Jim Carrey movie, where they’re broke, they have no jobs and the Jim Carrey character says he’s going shopping with the last of their money. The joke comes when the next shot shows him emerging from the store in a giant sombrero with two cases of beer, two pinwheels and a Bolo paddle. See?[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppSUnOB4DZw]It’s a fun scene and I believe it has given me a fresh idea to pursue later today - for  a South of the Border Christmas, complete with tiny cactus plants nestled in all the corners, hot peppers hung on the tree and a pair of giant maracas for keeping the beat!That's 'maraca' not 'marcarena', people. The macarena is a whole different thing.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqzAVCn0ohI&feature=related]

A Post in Very Few Words

Here's how life is generally and around the holidays especially:  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old, same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old...

-  SUDDEN DEATH! -

~poor little kitchen mouse!~

same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old same-old,  same-old, same-old, same-old, same-old same-old, same-old.Then bury the dead and go on festooning with red.