Christmas Wishes

I am where traditions come to die.

My mother, like her mother before her, hand-stitched beautiful, painstakingly created Halloween costumes every year.  We have been elaborate mermaids and He-Men, pirates and princesses.  Once, my brother Johnny was a giant, well-designed hot dog.

Me?  I buy some overpriced, pre-packaged costume the week or day before it is needed.

My mother bought us unique Christmas ornaments every year, envisioning that we would eventually take them all with us and put them on our own trees when we were grown.

While a few of mine have survived, and some have even made their way onto the tree, I’m ashamed to say that the vast majority of them probably now live in a box in the garage, the result of several moves to different apartments and houses through my early and late twenties.  I’ve not had it together enough as an adult to start a similar tradition for my own children, though they do each have a “Baby’s 1^st” ornament.  I can’t even claim credit for buying those—my oldest child’s was a gift from my sister-in-law, and my younger daughter, who happens to have two, received one because her father picked one out of the gift shop in the hospital, as she was born in December, and the other came from (you guessed it) my mother.

And speaking of Christmases and trees, ours comes out of a box.  Well, a series of boxes, and because it’s so old—a hand-me-down—the colored labels that tell us which hole to insert which branch are all peeling off, making putting this tree together a special treat.  I wonder if my father is ever rolling in his grave at the notion of his daughter putting up an artificial tree.  He’d probably roll his eyes even more at our inept struggle to put the long branches near the bottom and the shorter one near the top, in spite of my grumbling that the color coding system is broken. 

My father would never have found himself in a situation such as this.  He had to go find the biggest tree on the lot for his family, every single year—perhaps like his father before him?  One Christmas I swear our tree had to have been twelve feet tall (our house, the same one I grew up in, is not big by any standard, but we do have vaulted ceilings in the living room—and I vaguely remember this tallest of trees touching the highest peak of the ceiling, the uppermost part of it bowed beneath the peak of the house, not exactly allowing for artful placement of a star).

It's not that I don’t try.  I want to be one of those moms who makes cookies for Santa and reads about Jesus’ birth on Christmas Eve.  It’s just that I also happen to be the kind of person who thinks that Christmas Eve is a pretty good time to, you know, start wrapping presents.

I’ve been a procrastinator most of my adult life, I guess.  I don’t mean to be.  There are aspects of my time I manage particularly well—at work, for example, where if I didn’t get things done in a timely manner, I probably wouldn’t have a job.  I faithfully serve at church each week, offering a smile and a handshake to church members, visitors, strangers.  I’m always on time and ready to do what is asked of me.

But when it comes to momming, I’m never going to be room mom or hold office in the PTO.  I’m probably not even going to make it to story time at the library, even though I think that’s a great idea in theory.

I’m just not wired that way.

But here is what I can promise my children, each and every Christmas:

As long as I’m alive, there will never be a day that I won’t want to hug you.

I pray for you as often as I think of you.

They won’t always make it to the table for Santa, but my chocolate chip cookies will be the best you’ve ever tasted, and I will teach you how to make them.

I will teach you to be kind.  I will do my best to model selfless living, and show you what it looks like to treat others the way that Jesus would.

We will value laughter in our house.  I believe how often we laugh is a much more accurate measure of our wealth than the numbers on the bank statements.

You will grow up in a house where the number one rule is “God first.”  Our other rules include “Don’t let anyone win”—I did inherit my competitive nature from my father, I suppose—and “Do things that make sense.”

It goes without saying that we will love each other in this house.

I will not be the kind of mother who protects you from ever feeling a consequence.  I will not argue with your teachers over grades or make excuses for you if you are in the wrong.  Instead, I will love you through any sort of disappointment you face, whether it is one you created yourself because of your own choices, or one that you must face simply because of unfair circumstances.

I will be the first to admit that life is not always fair.  I will do my best to teach you how to let this realization make you better, not bitter.

I will teach you that being more selfish is never the answer.

I will teach you that sour cream and onion potato chips are clearly the most superb amongst all flavors, and if you refuse to learn this lesson, good.  That means there will be more for me.

I will teach you the true meaning of Christmas—all about love, grace, forgiveness, faith, and joy.  Each of these, which are the secret to living a life well-lived regardless of the season, are demonstrated through Jesus' birth, and I will make sure to explain as best I can how I know this to be true.  Some years, there will be many presents under our tree.  Other years, they might not be abundant.  I will try to teach you how to experience joy, no matter what is wrapped up and waiting for you Christmas morning.

My greatest joys in life are being your mother, being your father’s wife, and being a daughter of God.  I will try to show you how to love your parents and grandparents by loving my own mother and grandmother.  It is one of my greatest regrets that you never got to watch me love your grandfather, and that even if you had been old enough to experience that time, I might have shown him more obviously how much I loved him, so that neither you nor he could have doubted it.

I will love my husband and try to put his needs above my wants, as I believe he does the same for me.  I pray you find this kind of love, and when you find it, you don’t give up on it.  I will do everything in my power to show you how a real marriage is a partnership, that love is a feeling but also a choice.  That you must choose love day after day.

So, my dear children, choose love.  Whether you grow up to be the bake sale queen or the scattered artist, the mom who does all organic or baby yoga or still has a girls’ night complete with wine or all or none of the above—love your kids as best you can, in the way that is natural to you.  Listen to all of the people God has put in your path to guide you, but at the end of the day, make your decisions about how to live your life for an audience of one—what do you think is best in this situation, and what would God say about it?

Above all, choose love. 

PS--As I write this, there's a freaking squirrel in the fireplace.  Your father tried to force it to evacuate Chevy Chase style, enlisting one of you--the elder--to "SHOO it, SHOO it."  I'm not sure exactly how that worked out, but due to the scratching I can still hear directly behind me in the chimney in back of the recliner, I'm thinking:  Wildly Unsuccessfully.  There's always been a little bit of National Lampoon in our family--Chevy Chase was one of my dad's favorites.  Don't be ashamed of the everyday crazy.  Embrace it.

The Santa Clause Clause...

So when you become a parent, there's no contract that you sign, at least, not if you're giving birth biologically.  It's just bam... nine months and a whole lot of pushing and pain later, and, yeah, you're a parent.  No paperwork required.  (Well, minimum paper work required).

But if there was some sort of contract or agreement that you had to sign off on, I wonder what the Santa Clause Clause would state.  What advice it would offer, or what guidelines it would give for handling the whole Santa Clause ordeal.  Our daughter is nine now... old enough that she is questioning the whole Santa thing.  But they don't tell you in childbirth or parenting classes what to do nine years down the road.  Out at dinner a few weeks back, our daughter asked us point blank whether or not Santa exists.  My husband and I exchanged looks, giving each other the non-verbal go ahead.  The time had I arrived.

"Kaliah," Rashieme began.  And he proceeded to explain to her that Santa Clause is a made-up tradition and not a reality. 

She had to have seen this coming.  A few years ago, stuck in the conundrum of what to do in light of the fact that my daughter had been very well behaved all year, and yet had asked for a ridiculous amount of expensive gifts that were definitely beyond my capabilities to provide, I took an innovative approach in trying to balance her belief in Santa with her trust in his judgment of her excellent behavior, and to resolve that with the fact that she would not be getting everything she requested on her wish list, even though she had definitely been good, and not naughty.  I told her that Santa leaves a bill.  The bill, which was paid by mom, was used to pay the elves, and the more on the Christmas list, the higher the bill.  Therefore, even if one was very good all year, one needed to be reasonable in requesting gifts, so that mom wouldn't get stuck with a  ridiculous bill.

Certainly this doesn't go with what all else she's learned about Santa in the movies and books and in school and what not.  But she took the information in in stride and never questioned me on it.

Also, all parents generally consider their kids pretty smart, and I'm not an exception.  But even admitting my bias, my daughter scores in the top of her class when it comes to reading and math, and she's often praised for thinking outside the box and reasoning well.  So, based on the fact that she's NINE, and had begun deliberating the possibilities of one man getting around the whole entire world in one night, in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer, going in and out of chimneys--and what about the people who don't have chimneys?--given her intellectual achievements, coupled by the compromised version of Santa's charging for his services that I've already given her, along with the fact that she's asking us how Santa is able to do all he does... I'm thinking that she's ready for the truth.

So imagine my surprise, when, as Rashieme concludes his lecture, she stares at us both, pausing momentarily, and then asks:

"So... does a fake Santa come in and leave all the toys?"

Rashieme stares at her, then at me.  He reaches for his drink, grins, and just says, "I'm not telling her again."

And that was basically it for a few weeks, though I'd been debating about what to do as far as gifts go this year.  Not worry about setting them all up on Christmas Eve?  Kaliah, did, after all, decide to buy her own candy to go in our stockings yesterday.

But then, just today, she says, "Mom, I think I need to write a letter to Santa."

Before I can question her, she rushes into, "I know that Fake Santa's going to come, and he doesn't know what I want."

So not only is she still believing in Santa, (albeit a fake one), she doesn't even want to show me the letter, because she doesn't want me to buy the same thing as Fake Santa.  I finally convinced her that I needed to proofread it for her, because Fake Santa might not honor her requests if there were spelling errors in this letter (that I desperately needed to read in order to make sure that I'd covered her wish list this year).

It's nice, in a way, to have a child who's not ready to let go.  Who is so wonderfully innocent and naïve.  Yes, I worry about the future.  About whether she'll get teased.  If she will share any of these unorthodox views at the playground.

But mostly, I'm just happy that I'm still a front row audience to the innocence of childhood, to the refusal to let go of a fantasy, even if it needs a bit of tweaking to still fit with her world view.  I'm happy to let my kid be a kid.

Merry Christmas everyone.  Best of luck playing Santa this year.  Or in my case, Fake Santa.

A Belated Christmas Gift!

For those of you who enjoy my writing, take another peek!  From the tentatively titled This is Going to Sound Like Fiction... True Tales of Everyday Crazy, I give you another work of non-fiction, entitled "Unto Us, A Child is Born."

The title, of course, is inspired by this, the finest of all holidays.  I intend no disrespect toward my Savior in borrowing from the scriptures the title of this story.  In fact, if anything, it is a subtle reminder of the great awe with which I think of that starry night so many years ago, in which grace came to us in the humblest of ways.

Having said that... I am in fact easily awestruck.  The fact that Mary (and all women back then, and many across the world today) can make it nine months of a pregnancy without an air conditioner is amazing enough, before you even touch on what actual, miraculous happening took place on the first Christmas.  It is my prayer for you that if you've never considered the full implications of the night of Jesus's birth, that you certainly take pause and do such.

But on a much lighter note, I give you an unfinished snippet of my writing.  Raw, unedited, and incomplete.  This one is for all the moms out there.  Merry Christmas!

Unto Us, A Child Is Born

The birth of a child is a magical time for any couple, and surely an unforgettable memory, regardless of the circumstances and details.  Bringing a child into the world is a humbling, remarkable feat that requires a pause; that demands reflection; that sparks something inside our souls that leads us to examine our lives and those who are important in them, as we cradle our new little armful of joy.

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if my daughter’s debut hadn’t been tainted with all kinds of crazy.

First of all, I was overdue.  In June.  With an air-conditioner that kept breaking.  Now surely, I am not the only pregnant woman in the world who ever experienced this crisis, but those of you who have been in a similar situation will surely understand me when I gripe that I felt like all of the world’s injustices had been flung upon my giant pregnant rear-end.  I was the size of a barge.  It was a hundred degrees.  And my daughter was showing no signs of making an appearance any time soon, even though the due date had come and went.  Days ago.

As with most first-time mothers, I had all kinds of ideas about the birth that were fine… in theory.  I was hoping to remain “drug free” as long as possible, figuring that I would get an epidural if I needed it, but I wouldn’t go that route until absolutely necessary.  (FYI… if there is ever a next time, I will be requesting my epidural in the parking lot.  Apparently I am not one of those women who handles labor pains well).  So when my doctor was talking induction, I was immediately opposed.  I had read that being induced could result in more intense contractions, a predicament that was sure to get in the way of my drug-free experience.  So while I voiced my displeasure with the proposed induction, my doctor shrugged, sending me on my way to a sonogram to confirm that all was still well, as I was about a week overdue.  (By the way, a week overdue in mid-June on the Eastern Shore of Maryland feels like a year overdue.  The heat and humidity are unbearable.  As a pregnant woman in this climate, your only activity becomes sweating, and your only hobby and interest becomes finding ways to reduce the sweating.  And I say this as a person who was never much of a sweater).

So off I went to the sonogram, where the cheerful technician smeared my giant belly with goo and rolled her little magic wand over it, while all the while I shifted uneasily around on the unforgiving metal medical table, which was clearly built for no patient anywhere’s comfort, but especially not for a pregnant lady who’d packed on an extra forty pounds over the past nine months.

“Wow,” the tech said in her little peppy voice.  “I don’t even want to tell you how big this baby is measuring!”

“Huh?” I demanded, snapping out of my irritation long enough to engage with little miss cheerleader turned Barbie X-Ray Tech.  She’d been droning on and on about everything looking great and healthy and it’s all good, happy flowers, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Now I glared at her.

“What did you say?”

“Um,” her cheerful voice faltered.  “Let me just measure that again, real quick,” she murmured.   I sat stewing, envisioning any number of scenarios in which I wasn’t pregnant, wasn’t sweating, wasn’t sitting on this damn table.  Finally, she turned and smiled brightly up at me.

“Good news!  That time it looked like maybe she’s about, nine, nine and a half pounds,” X-Ray tech of the year giggled.

“Good… good news?”

“Yeah,” she chattered on, using a gloved hand to brush an escaped wisp of hair back toward her bouncy pony tail.  “The first measurement… it looked like your baby was about… ten and a half pounds!”

I stared at her for a second, sure I’d stopped breathing.

“Ten… ten and a half pounds??”

“Yeah, but like I said, this last measurement…”
            “Which is it?” I demanded.  “Nine or ten and a half pounds?”

“Well, measuring isn’t an exact science…. We’re estimating, and—”

“You’re telling me that my baby could be TEN and a HALF POUNDS??  And she’s just sitting in there?  Still GROWING?” I grabbed the sonogram tech’s wrist, staring her down as I clutched her unrelentingly. 

The girl smiled uncertainly.

“Oh my God!  She needs to get out NOW!” As big as I had gotten during my pregnancy, I still wasn’t what you would probably call a large woman.  I’m tall, but I definitely don’t have what you would say are child-bearing hips.  As huge as I was at the end of the third-trimester, the weight was almost all baby.  Apparently a ten and a half pound baby.  I shook my head, trying to imagine an eleven pound baby and my still relatively slender hips…. And somehow, the vision wasn’t too pleasant.

So I allowed the induction to be scheduled, in spite of my wishes to try and stick to a natural childbirth plan.  In the end, common sense won out.  I wasn’t willing to let my baby hang out in Hotel Utero another week, gaining who knows how much extra weight, when she might very well be already at the nine or ten pound mark.

The morning of June 17^th, 2005, we headed to the hospital bright and early, ready to meet our new addition.  The induction began smoothly, and as it took a decent amount of time for the drugs to kick in, we even went downstairs to grab some breakfast (although I wasn’t allowed to eat anything, just in case I ended up having to get a c-section).  It was at the end of breakfast with Rashieme and his family that the labor pains began to start in genuine, so I was all too happy to return to my hospital room.  The contractions, more than a minor nuisance, but not yet unbearable, were making this whole thing real.  Showtime.

Soon, I’d discovered how much I was not enjoying the show.  The contractions had quickly escalated into epic pain.  I have no basis for comparison, as I’ve never endured an induction-free labor, but if I had to guess, I don’t know that the drug made the contractions more painful… it just seemed to have brought them closer together.  I soldiered through about four hours of intense labor before finally breaking down and begging for an epidural.

That, at least, brought sweet, sweet relief.  Overwhelmed by the complete absence of pain, when moments before it had been unbearable, I was able, even, to get a quick nap.

Of course, this being my life, the craziness continued.

Rashieme, for example, thought it would be pretty funny to prank everyone in the waiting room, which consisted of our entire families (minus our mothers, who were both in the hospital room with us) as well as some of my closest friends, who’d joined in for the waiting game.  On a trip back from the snack machine, he popped into the room where everyone was sitting, and, grinning broadly, he shouted out, “Jenny had the baby!  It’s a girl!”

Directly upon the heels of this announcement, everyone stood up, clapping and cheering, rushing to congratulate him.  At which point he froze, smile stuck on his face, and managed…

“Just kidding.  No baby yet.”