Tag Archives: children

Wrapping Up Christmas

My kids ruined Christmas for me.

Or maybe they just ruined me for Christmas.

When they were small, I made a concerted effort every year to remind my children of the true meaning of Christmas.  We had an advent calendar with little pockets.  I drew an outline of a stable and taped it to the wall next to the advent calendar.  In each little pocket would be stickers I had made to complete the scene: stars, the star, sheep, shepherds, angels, Mary and Joseph, and of course, baby Jesus.  They each would remove a sticker and stick it onto the make-shift nativity scene. Naturally, they fought over who got what sticker, or who removed a sticker first.  “Christmas,” I would say, ‘is a birthday party for Jesus, where everybody gets presents.” Santa? He was a good soul who loved Jesus and children so much that he flew all around the world to help good little children celebrate.

We had a real nativity scene, too.  By “real”, I mean little clay figures.  Not real people.  But those little clay figures look like toys to kids, and mine were no exception.  They couldn’t keep their hands off, and frankly, I was happy they noticed it.  Unfortunately, the inevitable happened, and baby Jesus broke.  I glued Him back together, but He was never the same.

Regardless of how I phrased it, there were presents to look forward to. So, three kids.  Maybe 10 presents each, plus stockings.  Five or so for my husband, gifts for my sister, my dad’s sister Niki, my mother’s brother Joe and his wife.  Every year, we spent Christmas Eve at Niki’s house.  This was a lifelong family tradition, but it meant getting home late and still having to wrap presents, even though I always tried to get as much done before Christmas Eve as I could.  I would literally be up all night trying to finish the wrapping.  I’d get an hour or two of sleep before the greedy little bast….uh, little darlings came in to wake us up to see what Santa brought. 

I wasn’t willing to let some fat old man take all the credit, so there would always be three presents each, wrapped in different paper, and placed away from all the others, that Santa would leave in the living room.  Of course, all the coolest stuff came from Santa.  But the rest came from Mommy and Daddy.

Christmas day would be spent first at church, then cooking and cleaning, since the family came to our house Christmas day.  It was a formal meal with fancy tablecloths, real napkins, china, crystal,  and silver.  That’s how my mom always did it, so that’s how I did it.  I don’t have a large formal table, or even a small formal table, but I would set up folding tables and chairs in the family room, and bring out the finery.  

In between all that fancy stuff, I helped Jerry wrestle toys out of packages, and assemble. Have you tried helping a kid get a toy out of the box it came in?  There are endless plastic sheathed wire ties.  It takes forever.  Heaven help you if the thing then needs to be put together.  And you’re in deep doo-doo if you forgot to buy batteries.  There is nothing like a kid getting the toy of his dreams Christmas morning, and not being able to play with it because his exhausted parents forgot to buy batteries.  Hell hath no fury.

My aunt eventually passed away, and then everybody also came to my house Christmas Eve, although it was casual, since I would still host a formal dinner the next day.  Nevertheless, it meant a late start on finishing the wrapping.  Up all night.

Add a couple more kids to the mix.  We are talking some serious wrap loads, now.  Over fifty gifts every year, kids, husband, parents, sibling combined.  Eventually the Christmas Eve tradition fell away as my parents became too elderly to come to my home, and my sister and I split Christmas and Thanksgiving duties.  But I started moving slower, too, and caring for my parents filled the hours I would have spent wrangling little ruffians, so it never seems I have any more time.

I also have a little cottage industry, sewing a product for ice skates.  It all started when my daughter was figure skating, and it makes a great gift.  A great Christmas gift.  So I get a ton of orders from November 1-December 20, and I’m exhausted every year.  And all the sewing makes it hard to keep up with the wrapping.

My point?  I’m still working my ass off right through the Christmas season! 

It ends a little earlier, though.  I can come home from Christmas dinner and not have to wash china or build toys.  I can sleep.

But I long for the day when I can sit back and enjoy Christmas.  When I can slow down, enjoy picking out a reasonable number of gifts, sip a hot toddy by the fire Christmas Eve instead of being up until dawn wrapping.  I don’t know what’s in a hot toddy, but it sounds good.  And our fireplace doesn’t draw well, so unless we renovate, there won’t really be a fire.  Not even the fake yule log on TV because we ditched cable service as an unnecessary expense.  I guess I could find it online.  And if you read “No Place Like Home”, you know the seating options here are limited…

So we are really talking about sitting at my computer at the kitchen table, sipping something that isn’t as cheery as a hot toddy, but hopefully alcoholic.

Except what does that mean?  There is no one to give gifts?  All the kids are grown and gone, and we are alone?  There are no grandchildren?  Santa isn’t real?

And if I’m honest, I really, really miss having little kids, and not just at Christmas. 

And I miss the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, the fancy kind my aunt always had.

I miss hearing an excited little voice cry out, “Just what I wanted!”

I miss fighting over the advent calendar stickers.  I even miss broken baby Jesus.

I guess I don’t really want things to change after all, but they already have, and they will change more.  However, I have five children.  And one can assume they will each have children.  I’m going to have a heck of a lot of grandchildren.  Which means a lot of gifts.  And parents who would be happy to have some help wrapping, and fighting toys out of boxes and putting them together.  The wrap load isn’t going to get lighter, it’s going to increase exponentially. 

So fix me a hot toddy, and make it a double.  I’ll drink it while I wrap. 

Do You Smell Something?

My life stinks.  Literally.  I am assaulted daily by the malodor of my life.  My home emits odiferous breath where there should be none.  You will not sense soothing ocean breezes or cinnamon wafting from my Glade Plug In.  Far from it.  In fact, if you plan to visit, I suggest you bring a clothes pin.

To begin, there is an unholy funk coming from my laundry room.  Dirty laundry by definition should smell dirty.  Our laundry, however, surpasses all expectations.  The first problem is the sheer mass of it.  I have a six section sorter and a hamper in the laundry room, but you’d never know it.  They are completely buried in a mountain of clothes, which spills over and out the door.  Unfortunately, my children have a habit of tossing wet towels anywhere on the pile, which inevitably get buried by more dirty stuff, and  begin to stink.  However, I consider my self fortunate that they at least now know that laundry goes in the laundry room, not on the floor, hanging off the back of chairs, or even, heaven forbid, behind the couch.  I’ll keep working on the towel issue, but I’m keeping the kids, so I guess I own this one for awhile.

The next problem with the laundry room is the cat.  I have a 17 year old male cat who has developed some very unpleasant ways of expressing his dissatisfaction.  He yowls, and he pees.  He pees on laundry.   Clean, dirty, he doesn’t discriminate.  If his litter box is not just so, or he is not happy with the catch of the day, he will pee on the laundry mountain.  If he’s really unhappy, he pees in baskets of clean clothes, which then become peed-on dirty laundry in the laundry room.  

You might be thinking, “Close the door, idiot!”, but I can’t.  The mountain spills out the door, remember?  You should see us pushing and cramming the beast back through the door when we are expecting guests.  The laundry, I mean.  Not the cat.  He’s a pain, but he’s been my friend longer than my husband, and I love him. 

Speaking of the cat, there’s a nasty scent that comes with kitties of all ages, which is the litter box.  We have two kitties, hence twice the volume.  The old guy is showing his age, drinking more, which means peeing more, and his poops have developed a truly pungent aroma that is almost visible in its intensity.  I can tell immediately when I walk in the door if there’s a Boo-Boo poop in the box.  But we’ve discussed that; he’s old, and he’s staying. 

My son, on the other hand, is only 10.  He’s very athletic, and just at that age where his body is starting to produce new things, like BO.  Holy Crap, that kid reeks!  He’s got the kind of BO that snakes out from him in a hostile coil of invisible gas that both clings and spreads at the same time.  After soccer practice, I usually have to open the car windows and run the air conditioner full blast just to get home without suffering brain damage.  I know, I know, deodorant is the key, but try to get that into a 10 year old’s head!  He just doesn’t get it, or care, that if you use deodorant after taking a shower at night, you still need to put it on again in the morning!  And if you used it yesterday morning, it’s not going to tide you over until the weekend!  He’ll figure it out when he starts noticing girls, and realizes they don’t like boy stink.  But in the meantime, he’s my smelly guy, and like the cat, he’s staying.  

So you can see that there really is no quick and easy solution to these problems.  I’m not getting rid of the cats, or the kids, or my husband, whose own particular brand of rankness doesn’t make for good story telling.  I love them all, and so here we are in one big, happy, reeking group hug of rancidness.  Because, like the song says, love stinks.  Yeah, yeah.

Reconciliated

Contrary to popular belief, Catholicism has changed in the past thirty-seven years.  Let me take you back, back to 1970, when I was seven years old.  Yes, you did the math right, that makes me 44 years old. Hey, I’ve got nothing to hide.  Besides, you can’t see the 24 ounce mason jar of diet coke and the three empty 100 calorie Chips Ahoy packages that litter my desk, or the spot on my hairline where the hair is really grey and grizzled.  Oh, wait, there’s another empty package under the monitor.  Make that four.

But back to sinning, and Confession.  Because that’s what I was leading up to.  When I made my First Confession, in the embers of the riotous ‘60’s, and the blaze of “free love”, hip hugger bell bottoms, and The Partridge Family, the Catholic church wasn’t buying into the social changes of the times, and was really big on sin, in the time honored fashion of Catholicism.  The pastor at our Church, Monsignor Varni, was educated and ordained pre-Vatican II, which is to say, before the church tried to come into the twentieth century just a little bit.  Some of those changes initiated by Pope Paul included recognizing a loving and forgiving God, versus the angry, penitential deity who’d launch you to Hell in a heartbeat if you didn’t follow all the rules. 

Monsignor had many admirable qualities, but his sermons were not among them.  His were of the “You are truly flawed from birth and God can only forgive a selfish, sinning butthead like you if you cry, pull your hair out in distress, give a lot of money to your Monsignor for his church, and pray every waking moment for forgiveness.  Otherwise, you’re screwed.”  And he was an intimidating presence, in his Monsignor cap, or whatever it’s called (hey, I went to public school, we didn’t have time to learn all the little details in just one hour a week of religious ed).

In those days, Confession meant going into a tiny dark room, no bigger than a small closet, and kneeling onto a padded kneeler that creaked with your weight.  In front of you was a small window, frosted and screened.  The room on the other side, where the priest sat, was lighted, and as you sat in the dark, and it was really dark, you spoke through this window to the priest beyond.  I can’t remember if there was an opening of some sort so that the priest could hear you.  Anyway, he seemed to hear pretty well, so I guess there was something.

As you kneeled, there, shaking in the dark, because what little kid likes to be alone in a dark room, you told the Father your sins.  You were given absolution, and a penance, usually some specific prayers to recite quietly in the pews after you left the confessional.  Monsignor, bless his soul, might have scared the crap out of you, but he gave the lightest penance of any priest.

Now all of this is really odd to non-Catholics, and I could go into religious theology, and tell you why we do this, and what it is that Jesus said that led to all this, but this isn’t a lesson in theology, and I’ve already admitted I’m a little shaky on my theological history.  The point here is that if the experience didn’t scare you into sainthood, you were pretty much a lost cause anyway.

So fast forward to the present day.  My seven year old son just had his First Reconciliation.  That’s what they call it now, Reconciliation.  Because that is what it is supposed to be about, reconciling with God, not beating yourself with a switch and ditching your Gap sweater for a hair shirt.  All of the kids who were to make their First Reconciliation, and all of their families, gathered in the church.  A joyous service was held.  The theme was more “Hey, let’s think about what we might like to do better in our lives, and isn’t it great that God forgives us for all those times we punched our siblings and back talked Mom?”.  When it came time to actually do the deed, several smiling priests sat in chairs at various locations around the church, each with an empty chair next to him.  One at a time, we took our children to a priest, introduced our child, who was warmly welcomed by the priest.  The child was supposed to name one or two things he thought he probably shouldn’t have done. 

At the point where the priest gives absolution, he raises his hand.  Watching from the sidelines, I saw my son look at this raised hand, hesitate a moment, and then give the priest the old high five.  The priest didn’t miss a beat.  He finished his piece, patted my son on the shoulder, said something softly to him with a smile, and that was that.

My son came away with a big grin.  I didn’t tell him he wasn’t supposed to high five the priest.  He was proud of himself, and who was I to take that away?  At the time, I was torn between laughter, and chagrin that everyone would see I had not fully prepared my son.  But now, several weeks later, I think how appropriate this was.  Isn’t this what faith in God is all about?  “Good job, I forgive you, now give me five!” 

3:00 P.M. Dentist, 4:00 P.M. Dance, 4:45 P.M. Soccer…

I have wasted a lot of time flogging myself mentally for not measuring up to the level of wife and mother set as an example by my own mother.   Maybe my memory is frayed, but I do not recall my childhood home ever being as messy and frenetic as my home now.  My memories of my mother when growing up do not include a harried and harassed lady with little time for any but the most basic personal grooming, and whose very being emitted a sense of no control.  Granted, these are the memories of a child, but I am afraid my mother herself has confirmed the worst:

“Your life is crazy!”

What really burns my biscuits is that my life is less crazy than some other mothers I know, who seem to be able to cram in a whole lot more, and still keep their roots from showing.  I quit my work-at-home-so-you–can–be-stressed-all-the-time job when my youngest was about 11 months, and yet I do not seem to be faring any better with all the “extra time”.   I’m not lazy.  I try very hard.  My life is crazy but I believe I am reasonably sane (of course, what looney believes herself to be looney?).  

So what the heck am I doing wrong? 

The answer came to me a couple of weeks ago.  My five year old son had a friend over for a play date. The boy’s mom stayed for a little mom-to-mom chat while the kids tore the house apart.  It had taken me a week to get ready for this little event.  A kid, not my own, was coming over to my house, coming inside my house, with his mother.  That required extensive preparation.  Like not letting them see how we really live.  And making sure I had an assortment of healthy kid snacks in case he was picky, and a similar array for his mom.  The kids had a great time, and so did I.

But here’s where the realization set in. 

I never had a play date when I was a kid.  My mom had nothing to do with my playing with other kids.  I’d walk or ride my bike to a friend’s house, knock on the door, and ask if so-and-so could come out and play.  Come out and play.  We would almost always play outside, and in fact we had to ask permission to play indoors.  Many times the answer was “No!”. If the house was a mess, I never saw it.  There was no need to “get ready” for your kids to play with other kids.  And although I received the occasional glass of milk, my friends’ mothers were under no obligation to provide snacks.  Sometimes I never even saw a parent.  The child would come outside to play, and when it seemed like it was getting close to dinner, I went home.  A similar scenario played out if a child came to my house.

With the dawning realization of just how different my stay at home mom life was from my mother’s, I thought about all the other areas I had to be involved in with my children that was unheard of in Mom’s day.  We didn’t have a lot of after school activities, because we could go and play outside, on the sidewalk, down the street, wherever, without worry.  Mom didn’t need to keep us under her watchful eye every single second.  If we did have an activity, chances are it was within walking or biking distance, and we had to get our little butts there ourselves.  Mom didn’t haul us all over the county.  I didn’t have a schedule.  Didn’t want one.  I was a kid, for gosh sakes! 

My life, in contrast, revolves around my children’s schedules.  They cannot safely walk two blocks to play with a friend, or go to the school playground or local park without supervision.  Anything they do outside our own home requires parental involvement.  No wonder I feel sometimes like I have lost myself.  I’m not lost, but I am certainly low priority.  The world is so much more complicated and threatening than my childhood world.  I don’t know if there is really more danger, but there is certainly more awareness.  I’ve seen the online state list of prosecuted pedophiles who live in my zip code.  How many little faces arrive on flyers in the mail, asking if I’ve seen them?   Like any 21st century mother, I am determined my children will never be anyone’s victim, will never have their faces on any mass mailings. 

I still hate the mess.  I hate always having to hurry.  I hate never having enough time for anything.  But I look at it differently, now.  I see it is not my fault I can’t be like my mom, at least not entirely.  She really did have more time to get things done than I do.  She cared for us, and did it well, but she didn’t share every moment of our lives with us. 

My life is crazy because I am not living my life.  I am living my children’s lives, or facilitating their living their lives.  I have chosen this.  If I still worked outside the home I could probably find a piece of my mind and maybe a few intelligence cells that still work, but I sacrificed that willingly, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Besides, I really couldn’t guarantee that more time would make me a better housekeeper or more organized.  At least this way I have an excuse!  Heaven help me when the kids are grown and gone.  I’ll just have to plead senility then.