Hope

Last year I wrote a post about how difficult the holiday season can be for people who have experienced a loss over the year. I wrote about the man in the red sweater who had just been widowed for the second time. His wife had just died suddenly of a massive heart attack. He is in his early eighties.

Tonight, we are going to that same party, at the same house with people eating the same foods and wearing their same holiday clothes. When my husband called his friend, Auto Shop Owner, to let him know we would be at the party, they began talking about all the people who would be coming to the party. My husband asked about Red Sweater. It's been over a year now since Red Sweater's wife died.

It turns out that Red Sweater is bringing a date to the party. He's been seeing a woman he's been friends with for years. He'll be smiling again this year, telling stories again, and eating some of those holiday cookies.

Under the tree

When my mother was little, she says she used to spend hours lying on the floor on her stomach, staring at the Christmas village under the tree. It was a village of delicate little houses and glittery snow. Her story gave my father the idea of building a Christmas village for our tree, using odds and ends of wood he had in the basement. The village he built was sturdy – so that kids could play with it – but also pretty. My mother painted all the little houses and bridges. I can remember setting it up with my little sister and carefully arranging the lights of the Christmas tree so that they shown into the streets. A mirror made a lovely pond, and pine cones served as trees. In those days, hardly anyone had Christmas villages – we were way ahead of our times – so it was hard to find figures of people to go in the village but eventually Christmas villages became fashionable again and you could buy little figures. And at a flea market, my mother found a lead ice skater just like the one in the Christmas village of her childhood.

I can remember neighbor kids playing with the village, and one of our extras proudly bringing us something he thought would fit in. It was a scantily clad woman with unrealistically large breasts hanging onto a lamp post, the kind of decorative statue sometimes seen in the 70s when basement bars and sexist decor were both in style. My parents graciously accepted the gift from the enthusiastic but clueless kid, and then my father got out his acrylics and painted a more modest outfit onto the woman. We also had any number of villagers that were missing arms and limbs, due to the breakable nature of the porcelain figures. The horseman on the white steed crossing the bridge was missing his head, which gave him kind of a mysterious air.

When I got married, my parents made me my own Christmas village. It was built sturdy, of course, so that kids could play with it. Because I spent a semester in London during college, my Christmas village has a British theme to it. My parents for a few years would add a piece each Christmas – Buckingham Palace, one year, Saint Paul's Cathedral the next. It's got a castle too, as well as a little tea shop modeled after my favorite tea shop in London, and the Mitre, which was my favorite pub.

My father has no use for delicate Christmas decorations that kids aren't supposed to touch, and he has always said, "Let kids play with the village. If they break anything, I'll fix it."

So that has always been the rule. When families with young kids come here and I hear the parents starting to tell their kids not to touch the village, I always jump in and say, "Oh, they are supposed to play with the village. Kids are allowed to touch whatever they want in the village." The kids always give me a grateful look and then flop down on their stomachs to move around the houses and push the train through. It can entertain them for hours.

When I look at the village the next day after having young visitors, I'll often notice strange things – like all the people lined up on the flat roof of the British museum, as if evacuating from a fire. One of my own kids used to like to put all the pine trees in one spot so that it looked like a Christmas tree lot. When Boy in Black's friends were in seventh grade, they eagerly set up the village for me, and took apart the pine trees so that they had a pile of trees and a pile of trunks. They made a little sign that said, "Trees $15, Trunks $5."

I can remember that SweetFunny Extra especially liked the broken parts of the village, particularly some of the mangled trees we'd gotten at a place that sold model trains. He would hold up a tree that still looked like a tree and say, "Here is a tree." Then he would hold up a mangled tree, all twisted and contorted: "Here is a tree on drugs."

The cats, too, have been known to wander through the village, or curl up near it. You might think this would cause the villagers to panic and run, like they always did in the Godzilla movies, but luckily, inanimate figures continue to smile and ice skate no matter what danger hovers nearby. I've come to think that the village looks peaceful with a sleepy cat in the background, nestled behind the castle or the cathedral, like a furry dragon that hovers in the mountains to protect the people from harm.

The very thought

It's just a small rectangle of cardboard, exactly the size of a credit card. It's bright pink, usually, or sometimes black, and big letters on it scream, "Free Panty!"

Because I have a credit card to a lingerie shop, I get these little cards in the mail all the time. I don't throw them away because I think to myself, "Well, if I happen to be near the lingerie shop sometime this week, I might as well stop and get a free pair of panties." I mean, who in their right mind would turn down a free pair of panties?

But I don't go to that shop very often any more because a certain blogger taught me how I could buy lingerie of all types online – the trick is to know your size, know which brands fit you best, and not be afraid to spend money on expensive stuff. So mostly the cards end up migrating to various spots in the house, turning up on the kitchen counter, under my desk, or on the living floor. My daughter treats the cards like any other kind of junk mail, either sweeping them into the garbage or checking the expiration dates to see if she can swipe a card and claim a free pair of panties for herself. My teenage sons, however, treat the cards the way any reasonable person might treat a venomous snake that has slithered into the room.

Shaggy Hair Boy will be cleaning the living room, gathering up juice glasses and crumpled school papers and miscellaneous sneakers, and suddenly, he will stop dead in his tracks, looking at the little pink card in horror and then turning to shield his eyes. "MOM!" he'll say to me in a tone that indicates that this is a matter of great urgency, "Could you take that out of here?"

Even logical, level-headed Boy in Black will not touch one of the cards. "We don't want to see that," he'll say and then suddenly become absorbed in his laptop computer, averting his eyes from those evil words.

It's not like I leave panties strewn about the living room – my lingerie is kept upstairs in my bedroom, unless it's hanging in the laundry room to dry. But apparently just seeing the word PANTY, or perhaps the very thought of their Mom buying lingerie, or worse yet, wearing it, is enough to send teenage boys into a paralysis of horror that can only be overcome by a few hours playing computer games.

Mission Impossible

I went to the mall the other night on a serious mission. I was determined to buy a Christmas present for my little sister. I know I've said before that I don't buy presents for adults, but my youngest sister is an exception, partly because she has no kids and partly because I keep forgetting that she is all grown up now. I would rather spend an afternoon at the dentist's than spend a few hours at the mall so the fact that I went voluntarily to this dreadful monument to consumerism shows my devotion to my sister.

Of course, I did not go alone. Shopping malls, as my architect students have patiently explained to me, are designed to be confusing so that consumers will wander around aimlessly, spending money, trapped like parents who attempt one of those corn mazes, except it's worse because there's no teenager with a megaphone to shout helpful hints about which way to go. I have no chance in such an atmosphere. I would not even attempt such a trip without my Wonderful Smart Beautiful Daughter to guide me.

And let me explain the enormity of our task. Urban Sophisticate is impossible to buy for. First, she wears trendy sophisticated clothes and lives in the city that is way ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to fashion. The only way I could buy her something fashionable is if I flew to Paris. And even then, I am clearly not up to the task. The other thing to consider is that her home looks like something out of magazine so I couldn't buy anything for her apartment without first getting a degree in interior decorating. But worse, her tastefully decorated urban apartment is damned small that she doesn't have an extra closet or drawer in which to toss "it's the thought that counts" kind of a gift I might be reasonably able to pick out.

At one store, my daughter and I were discussing the dilemma, when a salesperson overheard us. "Who are you buying for?" she asked cheerfully, "We have something for everyone here."

"It's my sister, " I said. "She's 36, sophisticated, lives in Big City Like No Other."

"She lives in Big City Like No Other?" the salesperson said. Her cheery demeanor changed to one of resignation. "You can't buy her anything in Snowstorm City."

"Exactly!"

We exchanged smiles, she shrugged, and we continued on. By then, I was already beginning to achieve that daze that I get after about thirty minutes in mall so we went to the food court (the one thing I can unerringly locate in a mall) to fortify ourselves. I do enjoy the eating part of shopping, and I like having all kinds of little food places lined up in one spot.

An hour later, we were still just sitting at a table, relaxed and talking. I was enjoying myself. It was fun to sit and talk to my daughter. Then I glanced at my watch and realized with a panic that we weren't shopping at all. We'd bought nothing.

I leapt to my feet, knocking over the plastic red tray of food, and we set off again. This time, I half-heartedly tried to look into store windows and make suggestions. At that point, I was desperate, willing to buy anything. That's why it was handy to have my daughter along. I would point to some random piece of clothing that I thought might be sophisticated, based mainly on the fact that it was something I didn't own. My daughter would say: "Are you kidding? She would hate that." And we'd keep walking. Pretty soon, I got the hang of this whole fashion thing, and I would point into store windows saying, in what I hoped was a sufficiently snobby tone, "See that? She'd hate that." And my daughter would nod in agreement. It was actually kind of fun.

Then we passed a store called Waddling Creatures, Female and Male. As we gazed through the big glass window in front, we could see all kind of country home decorations, festooned with ribbon and calico and little hearts carved out of wood. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was incredible. An entire store filled with stuff Urban Sophisticate would absolutely hate.

My daughter laughed. "You know what would be fun? Some year let's all agree to only buy presents that we know the other person would hate. That would be soooo much easier."

I think she's right.

Tease

The latest meme going around the blogs involves getting assigned a letter of the alphabet and then listing ten things you love that begin with that letter. When I commented on the meme over at PPB's, she gave me the letter T, which she said stood for time. So I picked out some T words and started writing the meme up, using all my favorite T words, and then somehow I got it into my head that I could only use T words and nothing else. Here is the result. I only regret that I just didn't have room for tongue-twister, totem, or tiddly-winks.

Part of the meme is supposed to include me assigning letters to anyone who comments, but as my readers know, I am not very quick about answering comments, especially on weekends. So if you leave a comment and want to do the meme, take the first letter from the word verification screen. And cheat if you want. No one will ever know.

Travelling together

This train traced the trail through tiny towns,
twisted through throbbing traffic,
trembled through tulips thronging tidy triangles.
Together, the two travelled through tall trees,
teeming trilliums, tilted tombstones. Tigers.
Tugboats thrust tuneful tidings towards towpaths.
Toy trucks trailed tinsel through tollgates.
Tropical tiffany temples tickled their throats.

Through thistle, thorns, toothaches, therapy,
through tattered tie-dyed tapestries, they travelled.
Thunder teased the trees, terrified tadpoles.
Tenderly, they talked through tea,
tight-roped through tears, tiptoed to thanks.
They tasted tangerines, tried tap-dance, trusted tango.

Tenacious, they twinkled through tunnels
talking, thrashing, tumbling.
Thirsty, they tugged time tendrils
towards thick towels, tents, turtledoves.
Toes touched, teeth tickled, talcumed thighs tingled,
trumpets thrilled through twilight.

Nothing in the world can buy

When my kids were little, they were always very excited about decorating the Christmas tree. They would wait eagerly for me to pull ornaments out of the box and then run over to put them on the tree. I can remember the first year my daughter was old enough to help. I handed her about a dozen ornaments, one at a time, and then when I looked up from the box, she had lined them all up on the very same branch, which was sagging from the weight. We'd play Christmas music while we decorated the tree, and then we'd all admire how it looked.

The teenage years have changed that heart-warming tradition. We still decorate the tree together, but the scene is less like a greeting card commercial and more like a Saturday Night Live skit. With teenagers, I've learned to lower my standards about family rituals. So long as the teenagers are gathered in the same room with us, I count them as happily participating. And if ridiculous jokes and teasing comments are how they express their affection, well, I guess I will take that.

Usually, my husband claims the job of putting on the tree lights, mostly because he has really specific ideas about how he wants them put on. We have the kind of old-fashioned strings of big lights in different colours, and he will spend hours carefully arranging the five strings of lights so that you can't see the green wires. He's got this whole system which he will carefully explain to anyone who will listen: "See, you put one light on the outside, and then weave the lights back to the inside of the tree, and put the next light on the inside, and then alternate." I myself have never understood this compulsion to hide the strings. Is he trying to fool people into thinking that the lights are magic, that somehow a pine tree will start glowing with red, blue, green, and white all on its own? Does he think that our friends and family are that stupid?

This year because we've all been pretty busy and because my husband's method takes forever and because I have no patience, I decided to break with tradition. I decided to put the lights on in the afternoon so that the tree would be all ready to decorate when my husband got home from work, saving all kinds of time, and preventing the usual scenario of us decorating a tree at midnight on a school night. My kids are fine with staying up until midnight on school nights, but I am getting too old to function past nine o'clock. I then offered each of my kids a chance to put the lights on, but they seemed to think it would be more fun to watch me tackle the job.

I am not very tall, so even standing on a kitchen chair, I cannot reach the top of the tree. You would think this would inspire my tallest son to offer to help, but instead, he chose to watch from the chair and mock my efforts. "MOM! What is that? You can't possibly be serious!"

I looked at him, "Want to help?"

"Oh, I would ... but I'm busy studying for my organic chem final."

"Studying? How is that studying? Since when does playing some weird riddle game on your laptop count at studying?"

Boy in Black looked up from the computer and waved his hand at the chemistry textbook at his feet. "I'm multi-tasking."

I tried to get help from the next tallest person, Shaggy Hair Boy, but he too claimed he was busy studying. Of course, since he was leaning over the same laptop as Boy in Black, engrossed in the same puzzle, it didn't look to me like he was studying anything but apparently as long as you are in the same room as your textbook, you get to use studying as an excuse.

Not that he didn't have helpful advice, though: "That's all wrong! You are not using the system!"

"The system?" I asked.

"Yeah," Boy in Black explained patiently. "You put one light on the outside, and then weave the lights back to the inside of the tree, and put the next light on the inside, and then alternate."

Shaggy Hair nodded, "No one is supposed to see the wires!'

Obviously, my husband has brainwashed them. I glared down from the chair where I was standing with strings of glowing lights draped all over my body. "Do either of you want to do this?"

They both laughed. Clearly, I was asking a rhetorical question. What self-respecting teenager would choose to help his mother when he could instead tease her about the way she did things?

I ended up putting the lights on in my own haphazard way, much to the delight of the teenagers who saw raw material for jokes in my every move. "You've ruined Christmas," Boy in Black announced in a somber tone, "It's just not the same if we can see those green wires."

Thankfully, Wonderful Smart Beautiful Daughter and With-a-Why rallied with some holiday spirit and put some ornaments on the tree. My daughter likes rooting through the big box to find the home-made ones that have school photos on them. We've got ornaments from all my own kids, plus some of their cousins. Because the kids on my side of the family are painfully shy when they are young, the school photographs are never of a smiling happy child, but usually of a grim, terrified kid who is scared to death because some stranger is taking his photograph. Add the fact that the kids in the family are all pretty skinny – and well, the happy holiday ornaments look like they should come with text that say: "Send money and we will release this child."

Boy in Black's approach to decorating the tree was pretty low-key. By low-key, I mean that he and Sailor Boy gathered nearby with two laptop computers, playing some kind of horrible computer game that he claims is not violent at all, even though it's got the word war in the title, and he would look up now and then to tell a funny story about past Christmas tree mishaps. "Remember the time I decided that it would be fun to decorate the tree by lobbing ornaments across the room? Yeah, that got me out of decorating the tree for life."

Shaggy Hair and Blonde Niece were on the other end of the couch, both doing homework, occasionally consulting each other on matters of deep importance: "Which books did he say would be on the test?" But Blonde Niece would look up at the tree and say things like, "That looks nice."

So yeah, holiday traditions do change as a family gets older. My husband, to his credit, said only positive things about the way I'd put on the lights. Well, mainly, he said he was happy I had put them on so that he didn't have to. And even if certain young people in the room were too cool to admit how much they enjoyed the ritual, it felt good to have my two older kids home as we gathered to mock childhood photos, make jokes about each other, and decorate the Christmas tree.



Shaggy Hair Boy studying underneath the Christmas tree.

Career plan

After one semester in college, Boy in Black has got his career all figured out. He announced it the other day.

"I've decided what I want to be. I'm going to get a doctorate in physics, and then be a hobo who hangs out on the street corner with a guitar."

"A hobo?"

"Yeah, I could see myself doing that. People would be saying to their kids, you need some help in Physics? Go see that hobo on the street corner. He's mad smart in physics."

As he talked, he was getting dressed so he could drive Skater Boy to the music store. He was wearing old pants patched with duct tape and his usual black t-shirt. Over this outfit, he pulled on a wrinkled flannel shirt, a shapeless black hoodie, and these pink fingerless mittens that he had taken from his sister. He hasn't shaved since September. His long uncombed hair hangs in his face, some of it tied back with a black bandana, which gives him sort of a disreputable pirate look. He's tall and dark, and the facial hair makes him look older than eighteen.

"See, I'm already halfway there."

What I learned this semester

At the end of the fall semester, I ask my first year students to write on an index card one thing they learned their first semester in college. I tell them that they can include things they learned in the residence halls or from their friends or in any class. Then I shuffle the cards and read them aloud. Here's what they wrote this year.

No matter how early you wake up, you will never be awake enough for an 8 am Chemistry lab. This will result in spilled chemicals.

People aren't always what they seem in the beginning.

How to be more social while still working hard to do well in college.

Lewis Dot Structures.

To appreciate home-cooked food.

My town is really boring compared to college.

How to make pasta in a microwave.

That college students can be just as immature as high school students.

More than I ever thought I would know about falconry.

I've learned not to yell at boys in the girls' bathroom at 3 am because someone will write it up as a noise violation.

It's cold here.

It's almost impossible to maintain a healthy long-distance relationship.

Leftover food gets really smelly if you don't do something about it.

I write better than I thought. I learned to believe in myself.

Apples are pomes, olives are drupes, and carbon comes from animal poop.

I am not good at everything. COUGH*Chemistry*COUGH. But I am smart.

I learned the importance of friendship and the necessity to be socially involved.

I learned way too much about the way that trees work. Like the way that leaves fall off and how the water gets to every cell.

It's okay to be happy.

Hydrochloric acid can burn a hole in your shirt.

That I have to wake up earlier on weekends because the dining hall closes at 6:30 p.m.

I learned how to live with a bunch of girls and share a bathroom with all of them.

Good bagels are hard to find.

The TA can be the nicest person in the world, but when it comes to grading, you will hate him with all your passion.

Fall asleep in Calculus and the teacher will kick you.

Writing without structure is enough structure for me.

Plants have hormones that cause them to either lose their leaves/needles, hold onto their leaves/needles, and cause different growth patterns.

You actually need to study in college.

Put your garbage in the right container or people will get pissed.

The entire life cycle of a plant and any detail dealing with it. Honestly ....

No matter what the topic is, there will always be a difference of opinion in a group.

I learned how to design a cemetery.

Tolerance is the key to living with other humans.

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas

When people talk about holiday decorations, they often comment on the colors or the lights or the visual effects. My favorite part of having a Christmas tree in the house is the way it smells. We haven't decorated our tree yet — our two college kids have final exams to take and final papers to write this week — but I love having it set up in the living room, the piney smell of the branches filling the room. If I close my eyes, I can imagine that I am in a pine forest.

I am home grading papers, which is most certainly not my favorite activity. In fact, you might say that I hate grading papers. But I am enjoying the smells of my household — the delicious aroma of vegan chocolate cake in the oven, the logs burning in the fireplace, and that great Christmas tree smell.




With-a-Why patiently waiting until it's time to decorate the tree.

Dashing through the snow

As Chip pointed out on his blog, the traditional trip to cut down a Christmas tree is a bit different with teenagers than with little kids. Children get so excited about everything: they will happily trudge through the snow for hours to find the perfect tree and will be thrilled by something as simple as a ride in a haywagon pulled by a tractor. I can remember the time years ago, when my husband and I had no kids of our own, and we brought my two young nieces to help us get a tree. They were bouncing up and down with excitement at every part of the adventure. Free candy canes! Wreaths with red bows! On the drive home, when the tree flew off the roof of the car and landed in a snowbank, they both screamed with laughter and excitement. They talked about that incident for years.

Teenagers tend to be more nonchalant. My kids came willingly on Sunday to get our Christmas tree, but more to please me than anything else. The Christmas tree farm is on a hill, and as we climbed up the dirt road, I noticed that Boy in Black was carrying a frisbee. As we reached the meadow at the top of the hill, he and Shaggy Hair began playing frisbee while the rest of us walked about the groves of Christmas trees to look for one that was big enough.

It was a beautiful day for walking around a hillside. The ground was covered with snow, but much of it was melting in the afternoon sun, and I could see golden fields of dried grasses in the distance. As usual, we found a tree in the farthest possible spot, off near the edge of the farmer's land. Little kids can take a long time to choose a tree, but older kids are much quicker. The four kids gathered near the first tree my husband pointed to and said things like, "Yeah, that's fine."

When the kids were little, they used to all help carry the tree, everyone wanting to be part of the process. We'd drag it across the snow to the dirt road and wait for a ride on the hay wagon. With big kids, the process is much different. Boy in Black took one look at the eight-foot tree that we'd just cut down, handed the frisbee to With-a-Why, and then picked the tree up with both hands. Carrying the tree above his head, he took off running across the fields, yelling, "I can beat that tractor down the hill!"

We all chased after him, laughing, as the tall skinny kid with the tree on his shoulders went skidding down the slope of mud and ice, running as fast as he could all the way to the parking lot. I will say this about getting a tree with grown kids – it is certainly faster.