Monday, December 15, 2008

Christmas Epiphany

Over the years, my approach to the holidays has evolved. A lot. As a kid, my parents were "anti holiday".

My mom :

From what I can gather, she inherited her attitude. Even so, when I was a kid, she did make an effort, which I'm sure now she just did for me. When I was about seven or eight, my parents gave me a gigantic stuffed St. Bernard for a Christmas gift. He was in a huge box that my mom wrapped with wallpaper because that was the only paper that she had enough to cover the box. I loved that stuffed dog. I even remember how sad he looked sitting on the curb still wearing his collar with his little plastic brandy barrel many years later, waiting for the Good Will truck to pick him up.

My dad:

His family was very poor, and when he was in the second grade his teacher went around the class and asked everyone what they got for Christmas. He didn't get anything. My dad is as honest as the day is long, so he didn't make up an answer. He hasn't liked Christmas since. The interesting thing about this story is he didn't come to dislike the holidays because he didn't get anything. He dislikes them because he was embarrassed at having to say he didn't get anything. I made the mistake of telling my daughter this story. Her take on it is that Santa Claus is mean and unfair. And she's right in many ways. Isn't that the point of many of the stories about Christmas - proving just how great Santa really is because he doesn't neglect the poor people - even though we all know he does.


Me:
I was well on the path to becoming a true anti-holiday person. My parents had divorced and I think particularly as an only child, I felt pulled in all directions. To be fair, that pressure was entirely self-inflicted, and enhanced by having a boyfriend whose parents were also divorced. But when I was in my late twenties, something happened. Nobody hit me, I wasn't in an accident. My epiphany came while I was in the midst of spreading my bah humbug attitude throughout my little world. But I did work with a group of holiday fanatics - or at least that's how they appeared to me. One day, with little warning, I realized that I was expending a tremendous amount of energy hating the holidays, and it would be much easier on me (not to mention those around me who were subjected to my constant humbugging) to just go with the flow. In retrospect, those fanatical co-workers really weren't all that fanatical - they just represented the holiday standard.

I started small. The first year, I just quit complaining. By the next year I was starting to respond to those bidding me a Merry Christmas with a heartfelt "Merry Christmas to you, too!" By year three, I was hooked. I think I even bought toilet paper printed with Santa's List that year. I began to relax during the holidays and I quit looking for everything that was wrong with the season. I began collecting Christmas decorations!

Now I have a nine-year old daughter. I'm so glad that I started liking the holidays a long time ago, because I'd certainly have to make the transition now. We're a small little group, with just the two of us and maybe my dad. This will be my first Christmas without my mom. I miss her. I think she was starting to kind of like being with us for the holidays. She's sure been on my mind most of the day today. Last year she was a hospice patient, living in a residential care home, but we brought her here for Christmas Eve. She seemed to enjoy it - quite a lot. We definitely enjoyed having her here, knowing even then that it could be her last Christmas with us. A week later, my mom got her best gift when we were brought her back here to our home to live with us. That also included having good hair days again. Hair is important - one of the easiest little fixes for cheering oneself up. Mom passed away on May 3 but lives on in our hearts. I'm finding another small evolution taking place this year, experiencing my first Christmas without my mom. As I pass through stores, I find myself thinking, "Mom would like that! Oh. Wait. She's gone." It makes me a little sad this year, but I know from experience that time will buffer the sadness. And in the interim, my dad is getting crankier by the minute. Bah Humbug and Merry Christmas!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Henry's Sandwich

This is one of my favorite stories about my mom. The part about the dimes in the payphone is one of the images that I will always keep of my mom.


Henry's Sandwich
Several years ago, my mom befriended Henry. Henry was an eccentric, possibly brain-damaged, neurotic homeless fellow who frequented the government building where my mom worked. He was probably in his late thirties, slender, always very clean, and always wearing shoes several sizes too large for him, reminiscent of clown shoes. Henry, like many in our society, probably shouldn't have been living on his own. Each morning he'd come into the lobby and wander over to the payphone and shake the change flap several times looking for change. Most days, my mom had already left a few dimes for Henry to find. He was always delighted with his good fortune.Ironically, I also knew Henry because I worked in several of the libraries that he liked to frequent. The libraries were about 30 miles apart all told; Henry would ride the bus from library to library. During my seven years working there, I worked in four different libraries, and I saw Henry at each of them. He'd sit and read the newspaper each afternoon. The newspapers were kept on long bamboo poles, providing Henry a perfect cover for what came next. Whenever a library employee walked by, he made a clicking sound with his tongue against the inside of his cheek. Then, highly amused with himself, he'd laugh his neurotic laugh, shaking his shoulders up and down, inhaling and exhaling excitedly. One afternoon I got so annoyed with him that I shot at him with the stapler that I was carrying. I shouldn't have done it - it just egged him on.My mom was one of the information ladies, and sat at the front desk of her building. Henry used to come in and chat with my mom. Mostly he'd just giggle, hunching his shoulders up and down over some joke known only to him. On good days, he could tell her about the bus ride he'd just taken.One year around Thanksgiving, my mom asked Henry if he would like for her to bring him a turkey sandwich. Henry's face lit up. He would LOVE a sandwich! My mom told me that day about the turkey sandwich that she was going to take for Henry on Friday. She even shopped for special bread and pickles for his sandwich. On Friday, Henry came in and went over to the pay phone to collect his daily dimes. Then he started to leave the building! My mom called to him and said, "Henry, don't you want your sandwich?" He had no recollection of any promise to make a sandwich for him. As he approached her desk, my mom proudly went over and got the sandwich and other goodies that she'd prepared for him. Henry examined the sandwich. Whole wheat bread, mayo, turkey, and pickle slices. He looked at my mom and slapped the sandwich down on the counter. "I'm not eating that," he told her. My poor mom, crestfallen, asked why. "It's got mayonnaise on it," he said. I don't eat that crap." Then he hunched his shoulders up and down, giggled, and sauntered away in his big shoes. leaving my mother with a beautiful turkey sandwich.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

My Space - but not in cyberspace

Last weekend, my old friends and I stayed in Tahoe at what Ellen calls "The WOW House". And now I'm inspired. I haven't ever really made this place my own. When we moved in I made the egregious error of thinking that I knew which drawer our silverware should be stored in; it was promptly moved by my now ex husband. The coffee pot that my mom had gotten for me as a house-warming gift was replaced by my ex with a pot of his choosing with a malfunctioning clock (never mind that I'm the one who always made the coffee). The living room was arranged so that he could watch television from "his" chair, but nobody else in the room could see it even though it was a 36 inch television, which at the time was huge.

I take full responsibility for marrying him and staying with him, and maybe that's why it's taken me so long to start reclaiming my life. I think on some level I thought that since I had in essence signed up for this, it was what I deserved. And while I wanted to change things and apply the "out with the old, in with the new" approach, I couldn't legally do "out with the old" until our divorce was final. Then I had to give him extra time to get his stuff out of the garage because on the final day, his deadline, he said he'd had eye surgery and needed more time. I guess he couldn't see his way over here during the preceding three years to get his stuff. And then his new deadline came and went, my mom died, and there has just been a lot of stuff going on. But now....now it's time!

So...back to the living room. The television that he bought was a behemoth. In fact it was so big that it took three grown men to move it in, and it nearly collapsed the ugly particle board entertainment center that he also purchased without consulting me. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the television, and then it hit me - sell it on Craig's list and make whoever bought it move it! The TV was actually a good set - a Sony Trinitron. But it weighed so much that we had to stack a bunch of law books on the shelves under the shelf the TV sat on to support it; as it was, the whole entertainment center listed to port (leaned to the left). I finally managed to sell it on Craig's list. I had to keep lowering the price and actually sold it for less than $100. There are a ton (ha! very punny!) of those televisions listed on Craig's List and I figured the only way I was going to get rid of it was by slashing the price to some ridiculously low figure. It was carted away during the middle of Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. The people called to see if it was a good time and I suggested they come and get it before I broke it throwing things at the screen.

Then - get this - I bought an even LARGER set! It's a 42 inch LCD HD flat screen. I can't figure out how to get it to make popcorn but it's really nice. But it looked ridiculous in the entertainment center. It fit in the opening in terms of width, but it had space at the top and just looked like it really belonged somewhere else. So I started looking for a new stand for the new TV. Entertainment centers are SO passe - now we have media consoles. The thing is, most of them look like slightly shorter versions of my dad's old console stereo - without the innards. I kept feeling like I was back in my parent's house and I didn't like the style. I found a couple that were all right, but they had to be assembled and I thought that maybe at this point in my life I might be able to buy one piece of furniture that was new that didn't require assembly. Finally, I settled on a piece from Crate and Barrel. It's sort of a buffet, but is listed as a media console. So today, my neighbor came over to help me move out the old entertainment center. We got it as far as the front door on one of those furniture dolly things when it started to fall apart. It didn't take much convincing on Joe-joe's part for me to go get the sledge hammer and we just broke it up and put it in the back of my Jeep to go to the dump.

Tomorrow the new furniture arrives, but in the meanwhile, my daughter and I were able to sit together on the couch and watch television! It's like we moved and got a new living room! And when it gets cooler, we will actually be able to stay on the sofa and enjoy a fire in the wood stove AND watch television at the same time. AND I was able to move the "man chair" just ever so slightly, and now it forms a part of a conversation pit rather than making us sit in a row that destroyed any thoughts one may have had of actually conversing with people. Before the change, it was like sitting in a classroom with everyone lined up looking at the wall. Now we actually face one another and I can sit on the couch with my daughter and watch television. That's not a very lofty goal in life, but when you've not been able to do so for years....it will do for an evening.