Sleepy winter days

We've had a lovely, relaxed week during which we've mostly hung around and done -- well, we've pretty much done nothing at all, unless you consider finishing off leftover holiday food an accomplishment. We've watched movies, played games, read books, ate cookies, sat by the fire, and put together a jigsaw puzzle. We've got a couple feet of snow on the ground, so it's a good time to hibernate. Our cat Rogue, who spends most of her time outside in warmer weather, has chosen the little Christmas village as a fine place for a long winter's nap.

Winter

Twelve years old

Biker Boy’s birthday comes right after Christmas: this was his first birthday since he’s been in foster care. A storm dumped a couple feet of snow on our region this week, but the plows have been out in full force, and the roads were clear as I drove to the town where he's staying.

We went for pizza, of course: it’s our tradition. Then I took him to the store to pick out a birthday present, and we came back to my house for the rest of the day.

We didn’t really do anything special. We built a fire in the fireplace. We played with the remote control car he’s chosen for his birthday present. We went outside with shovels to clear away the snow the plows had pushed into the driveway. Red-haired Niece and Blonde Niece stopped by to borrow some snowshoes on their way to Pretty Colour Lakes so we talked to them for a few minutes. I had a couple of stitches in my arm that needed to come out today, and Biker Boy watched, fascinated, while Boy-in-Black took them out with scissors and tweezers.

Biker Boy had a new iPod Touch that someone (his foster parents, I'm assuming) had given him for Christmas, and he was eager to figure out how to use it. He gets frustrated easily with technology, but Shaggy Hair Boy came to his rescue and patiently helped him transfer music. That’s when I figured out that we could use the little device for video chatting.

It took us awhile to set up his account, but soon we had it in place. To practice, he went upstairs and I called him from my computer. Sure enough, his face appeared on my screen. “This is awesome,” he said. “I can see you! I can see the Christmas tree!” He was talking so loud that I could have heard him even without the computer.

It was getting dark when I drove him home. Lights were going on in the farmhouses that we passed. The pine trees held big curves of white. Biker Boy held the GPS in his hands, even though I assured him I know the way by now; he’s fascinated with the device.

I felt sad, like I usually do, after I dropped him off, but this time my drive home was interrupted three times by phone calls from him. “Are you home yet?” he kept asking, “I want to Skype with you!”

Once I was back in my living room, I opened my laptop, and soon his face appeared, grinning. “I can see you!” he called out. He began panning the iPod around the room to give me a tour. “Look! Here’s the television! Here’s a chair!”

I’m old enough — and he’s young enough — to be excited by the technology. It’s not the same as having him right across the street, but it will be a nice way to keep in touch while his uncertain future gets sorted out.

White Christmas

Help to make season bright

When Dandelion Niece and Taekwondo Nephew arrived on the morning of Christmas Eve, I put them to work immediately — chopping vegetables, ironing the white tablecloths, and carrying chairs in from the garage. We tried to figure out how many people would be here for Christmas dinner. Twenty? Twenty-one?

"We might have to shove the folding table up against the Christmas tree," I said.

"We can use the piano bench if we run out of chairs," said Taekwondo Nephew.

Boy-in-Black, who had taken a break from cleaning to obligingly taste the baked beans, looked up from his bowl. "Maybe more barbecue sauce. Or something spicy." He rooted through the spice drawer, pulling out cayenne and red pepper.

"You didn't bring me a holiday wreath?" I teased Dandelion Niece. "I saw on facebook that you were making them."

"There's a wreath on your door already," she said.

Puzzled, I went over to the front door and opened it. She'd hung a lovely, homemade wreath on the door on her way in. Busy with food preparations, I hadn't even noticed.

Worst holiday scent ever

Our youngest cat is almost fourteen years old. So I’m guessing it won’t be long before all of our cats die peaceful, natural deaths. And then after that, as God is my witness, I’m never going to let a cat in my house again.

I tried to be pro-active this holiday season and avoid feline mishaps. I don’t think anyone benefits from the tender holiday image of me swearing at the cats while wielding a bottle of Urine-off. So I did what I could.

I even moved our Christmas village – wooden buildings that my parents built and painted almost thirty years ago — out from under the tree and up onto a couple of tables by the window. This maneuver was in response to an ugly incident that happened a couple of years ago when Trouble, our aptly-named male cat, directed a blast of urine at the village. (If the village were on fire and he were a character in an eighteenth-century satire, I suppose his action would have been justified. Alas, it was not.)

This year’s incident happened on my husband’s birthday. With the house decorated for Christmas, our youngest in school, and the older kids at the castle, we planned to spend a romantic day home in front of the fire. I’d finished my grading for the semester, my husband had a couple of days off, and snow was beginning to fall. When we woke up that morning, everything was perfect — except for a strong stench that permeated our home.

“Where’s the smell coming from?” my husband asked, picking up a couch cushion and sniffing it. “It’s somewhere in this room.”

“I can’t find a wet spot,” I said. We both began frantically sniffing everything in the room. It wasn’t any of the pillows. It wasn't the Christmas village. I could smell the odor — the whole room stank— but I couldn’t find the exact spot.

We spent hours crawling around on the floor, smelling for a spot on the carpet, a urine-soaked pillow, anything. At least, it felt like hours. Time goes slowly when your living room reeks. Finally I opened the windows to let in fresh air, even though that made the room frigid. By then, I'd pulled sweatpants and a sweatshirt on over the lingerie I was wearing for the occasion. The day was getting less and less romantic with every passing minute.

We gave up and went out to lunch to get a respite from the awful smell and to stop at the pet store to buy more Urine-off. When we returned, the stench was worse than ever. I began moving things out of the room, just to eliminate them from our investigation: the pillows, the chair, stacks of piano music. We even moved the Christmas tree into the middle of the room to check the carpet underneath.

“Maybe the cat peed in the heat duct?” my husband said. “And it fills the room every time the heat goes on?” He went down into the crawlspace to check out the furnace.

I was sitting on the floor next to the Christmas tree, and I leaned over to breathe in the pine scent of the tree. That’s when I figured it out. That strand of garland? Those low branches? A whole section of the tree reeked.

Trouble had peed on the Christmas tree.

I grabbed my pruning shears and chopped off a branch. “I found it!” I yelled to my husband. When he appeared, I made him smell the branch — and the strand of contaminated garland. I started hacking branches off the tree like crazy.

I kept bringing bit of Christmas tree over to my husband, “See? Smell this!”

“Stop making me smell them,” he said finally. “Really, I believe you.”

I hacked a whole section of branches off the tree and tossed them outside. The room, thankfully, began to smell better. My husband began carrying in all the furniture and pillows we’d tossed tossed into the kitchen during our frantic search. I began to feel optimistic. “I’ll just turn this side of the tree to the wall,” I said. “It’ll look fine.”

I yanked the tree across the room, ornaments bouncing onto the carpet as I spun it into place. Then I reached down to plug in the lights. Only the very bottom stand lit: the rest of the tree was dark. I peered in at the branches as an awful thought crossed my mind. Yep, in my eagerness to hack away urine-soaked branches, I’d clipped the strand of Christmas lights with my pruning shears. Damned cats.



Note: The Christmas village — as seen in photo above — was not harmed in this year's holiday cat pee incident.

Bring us a figgy pudding

Most of the audience were in wheelchairs. But I could hear many of them singing the old familiar songs, and they applauded after every song. They even laughed at the corny jokes my husband told as he introduced each number.

Shaggy Hair Boy stayed at the piano, flipping the pages of Christmas music and playing. With-a-Why, Shy Smile, and my husband sang, and sometimes they jingled bells. I stayed in the audience next to my mother-in-law. She doesn’t have enough strength in her arms to clap her hands, but she whispered to me that she was proud.

They sang for an hour, and then it was time for the staff to start wheeling the residents back to the rooms so they could prepare the dining room for the evening meal. When we got home, the boys went immediately to the piano to continue playing and singing. They perform with or without an audience.

On stage

We all went to see the play at the local high school: my kids, my parents, Blonde Sister and her family, a bunch of our extras, even Brooklyn Friend. In fact, we bought 42 tickets altogether over the three nights that the play ran. My husband and I saw it three times.

It was a terrific production, filled with singing and dancing — and clever adlibs when things didn’t go exactly as planned. The cast wore rented costumes in bright colors, and a whole crew of teenagers dressed in black came out between scenes to shift big pieces of the set.

But you’ve probably guessed the big draw. Our youngest son was up on stage.

Longtime readers probably remember my stories about how shy With-a-Why was a child. Throughout first grade, he never said a single word to the teacher. Not one word. And even as a teenager, he often hid behind his long hair.

But music has drawn him gradually out. Piano Teacher was one of the first adults outside of the family that he would talk to. With her encouragement, he played recitals and exams often enough that he was no longer intimidated playing in front of an audience. Playing the piano was a way for a quiet child to express himself.

My father takes credit for discovering that With-a-Why could sing. When he, Shaggy Hair Boy, and With-a-Why got together for jam sessions, he started giving With-a-Why some vocals. Then Choir Teacher convinced him to join the high school choir, invited him into the select Chamber Choir, set him up with voice lessons, and eventually began asking him to sing in front of people.

Music drew him to the high school play, and being in that play was a transformative experience. He even cut his hair for the part — and donated 18 inches of fine, black hair to a charity. The day he returned to school with short hair, Drama Teacher stopped me in the hall to say, “Thank you for cutting his hair!” Then she added, “You should see the attention he’s getting from the girls.” 

Hanging out with the bunch of creative, expressive students who are drawn to drama club turned out to be just what With-a-Why needed. I’ve watched these last couple of months as the last vestiges of his shyness disappeared.

He played Ralph Sheldrake, a fast-talking Big City professional. Not exactly the part I’d give a shy, small-town boy. But onstage, dressed sometimes in a suit and sometimes in a uniform, he delivered his lines with confidence, just like a smooth-talking Ladies' Man. He sang beautifully, and even danced at the end.

“He didn’t seem shy up there at all, did he?” Drama Teacher said to me afterwards. I could tell that she and Choir Teacher, as well as Piano Teacher who had come to watch the show, were all proud of how he’s blossomed. I wanted to put all three teachers up on the stage and give them a round of applause for what a difference they’ve made in one young man’s life.

The young man in the uniform dancing to the left is With-a-Why.

White lights

The drive from Biker Boy's foster home to my house takes about 45 minutes. That gave Biker Boy and me time alone to talk in the car this morning. He told me about stuff that had happened to him over the last week, and then he said, "I know about the shooting -- the kids getting killed."

I glanced over at his face. "I wondered how much you knew," I said. He's eleven, so I figured he would have heard the horrifying news.

He said his foster father had talked to him about it. "It's really sad," he said. "But there were good people there too. Like teachers who tried to save kids and hide them and stuff. Just one person who was shooting, but the other grown-ups wanted to stop him."

Unlike most of the adults I've talked to since Friday, he didn't express any shock or disbelief. He didn't say, "I can't believe something like this could happen." He's eleven, but he already knows that unspeakably bad things happen to kids. He's known that since he was small.

We talked as we drove past cornfields and red barns. But once we pulled into my driveway, we agreed to stop talking about topics that made us sad. It was time for a comforting seasonal ritual: getting our Christmas tree.

Once we were in the house, I made Biker Boy a cup of cocoa. Brooklyn Friend had come in for the weekend and she was already drinking a cup of hot tea. While we waited for my husband to get home from the gym, we ate cookies and moved furniture to make room for the Christmas tree. With-a-Why stopped texting his girlfriend long enough to play the piano — songs from the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

We went to the same Christmas tree stand we always go to. The family who owns it are super nice. I like to walk through the rows of freshly cut trees, smelling them. Biker Boy likes to run up to each tree and yell, "This one! Can we buy this one?" and then change his mind two seconds later.

The teenage boy who came over to help us was patient and cheerful. When Biker Boy finally chose a tree, he showed him the machine that you push the tree through: the tree ends up magically tied up with twine.

Back at the house, we ate pizza (it's a tradition) and built a fire (another tradition). My daughter and Sailor Boy came over to help decorate — or rather watch while Biker Boy and I decorated the tree. Shaggy Hair Boy played Christmas music on the piano. We ended the day with a feast of Italian food that my husband picked up from a local restaurant.

It was dark by the time we got back on the highway to take Biker Boy back to his foster home. "You did a great job picking out the tree," I told him.

He leaned back against the car seat sleepily. "Yep. I did."

That glorious song of old

At a holiday party on Saturday night, I wandered into the kitchen, where the best conversations always take place. Sure enough, a bunch of my friends were gathered by the stove, chomping on Christmas cookies while they talked. A long-time friend, Warm Smile, was explaining the Secret Santa tradition her extended family — about 30 relatives in all — chooses to do each holiday season instead of traditional gift-giving.

“My sister-in-law takes all of our names and pairs us up. So we get a buddy,” she said. “This year, for example, I’m paired with my nephew.”

The pairings are top secret. No one is supposed to know who your partner is. “But we talk to each other — each pair — and we tell our partners what kind of charitable contribution to make,” she said. 

“So you don’t buy gifts?” asked Christmas Sweater, helping herself to some taco dip.

“Nope,” Warm Smile said. “And the rule is that you can’t just donate money to the Sierra Club or some organization. It has to be a gift of time.”

For instance, an aunt could be paired with a teenage nephew. She could tell him that she worried about families who go hungry. He could respond by agreeing to volunteer in a local soup kitchen or help out with a canned food drive. Then he could tell her that he wanted to do something about the environment. She could agree to volunteer to be on a committee at her church that’s looking to install solar panels on the roof. 

“We talk over options until we figure something out,” she said.

“Does it all remain a secret?” I asked. “I think I’d want to know what everyone was doing.”

 “Oh, we all tell my sister-in-law, and then she publishes a family newsletter. It’s fun to see what everyone did,” Warm Smile said. “It’s really so much rewarding than opening presents.”