Ho ho hold on a minute

Cue the music: "It's the most wonderful time of the year." And it's one of the craziest. Regardless of how much planning I do, how much ahead of time finding and wrapping and making, I am invariably behind. It's like a rule of nature.

Of all my lists (and there are many), my list of Christmas projects is usually the longest, and the most involved. And every year, I fail to complete about 50% of it.


I should put it on the calendar:
December 19th: Have a small breakdown because today you will realize the "great Christmas list" will not be finished. Feel sad, feel overwhelmed. Worry about how Christmas will not happen because of incompleted (fill in blank here).


I know I'm not alone in feeling the pressure to "make" a good Christmas for our family. The holidays do indeed conjure ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.

For me, the ghosts of Christmas past seem to urge me to control every element of the whole season with deadly earnestness. As one might guess from my accounts of my own childhood holiday seasons, parts of my childhood were chaotic. Christmas was, for most years, a fun though limited blip on the screen of our family, something to be experienced in its entirety in the space of 36 hours, including the decorating, cooking, and gift-preparation. I am the cliche of the rebellious adult child, and I have shaped my own family life in the mirror image of the compressed holiday. Ours is a lingering, slow experience, with presents or small advent events each day of December. It sounds lovely, and it is. But I've also fooled myself into thinking that the perfect Christmas is a handmade Christmas, from the gifts to the decorations, And it's this misconception that gets me into trouble every single year.

Though I'm not sure you'd know it if you saw me, there is some part of me that shudders with fear at the thought of not making good on all my Christmas plans. Seriously, I quake at the thought of not finishing the stockings for each of us by Christmas eve. Where will Santa put his gifts? Never mind that we do have store-bought stockings that work quite well and look cute. I've dropped the ball--and I'm "ruining" Christmas.

Don't forget the handmade mouse (with babies), the flannel pjs and matching pillowcases, the embroidered felt ornaments for each of the girls, the collaged bookmarks for each of us, the gumdrop chain for the tree, the Santa outfit for Mr. Mouse, the Christmas pjs for Ada's babies, the matching Santa sacks for us to use each year, and the holiday skirt for Ada and the corduroy jumper for Esme. There is much more to add to this list, but I will stop boring you and overwhelming myself with it now.

This is where I stand today, and where I stand on so many Christmases, surveying all of the unfinished things, each in some form of progress, stacked around my studio and serving as reminders of my inadequacy. I just can't do enough.

But wait, I said I had conjured the ghosts of Christmas present and future, and this is what they tell me:
This whole month of December has been full, so full, of beautiful moments for our family. And there are gifts aplenty, even homemade ones, to give to our family. My husband would tell you, as sagely as Dickens' ghosts, that the best present I can give him and myself is to be present. For his ideal image of Christmas, I am calm and with them on Christmas eve, not fussing about the perfect wrapping, shiny bows and the best frosted cookies, etc.

The ghosts of Christmas future will forgive me if I don't finish all the great homemade projects. So will my kids. What they won't forget (or perhaps forgive) is the frantic and manic mommy that emerges on December 19th each year, fitfully aiming for a phantom ideal that eludes her each time.

I have made my lists, and the list is as long this year. But this year is different. This year, I give myself and my family a present of being. Just being, and being enough, too.

I'm signing off now to laze on the couch and watch Grinch with Ada, and then make messy, frosted cookies for Santa.

Sugar plum tuckered out

This is after a long weekend of a "staycation," in which we visited a local town, stayed at a hotel, saw the movie Desperaux, and shopped. Time for resting!

Sneak Peek

My dear friend Bari, who is the artist behind Bari J., has been at work on a bag for me.  She recently sent me this sneak peek of the design, and I had to share.

How sweet is this?  

Bari and I know each other from way back when we were pre-teens, and she has always been an amazing person, from the way she sees the world and translates it into art, to the way she dedicates herself wholeheartedly to anything she does.   I've used the phrase "force of nature" to describe her, and it fits.   She's got an infectious smile, a wicked sense of humor, and she is honest, honest, honest.   Did I mention she can sing?  I'm gushing, I know, but I just love her, and I'm so pleased to see her make her dreams come true.  And now she's making one of mine come true with this bag she's making in the "three chickies" theme.

It's too late to order from her for Christmas, but you should think about being your own post-holiday Santa and look at her work.  She has lovely, detailed handbags and accessories, and she'll soon have her own line of fabrics available.  Did I mention she's amazing?

In Just One Year--a note to Ada

Thursday was a big day for us.   Ada's end-of-semester assembly, for the end of her first-ever semester.  As I watched her, sparkling on the stage in her pink sequins and shiny voice, my eyes welled up with pride and amazement as I reflected on how much she has done in a single year.  Allow me to share an open letter to her with you:

Oh Ada, you are our shiny star.  Here is some of what you have done since last Christmas:

You can now read!  You started reading in February, and you took to it like a duck to water.  You read everything you see, and scour our shelves for new books, and delight in the library at school.   You love narrative, and you love when we read to you.  James and the Giant Peach, Cherry Ames, Desperaux, and the Bobbsey Twins have been so fun to discover and rediscover through your eyes.  All of this reading is thrilling for your dad and me.   It is a pleasure you will never tire of, and one that will enrich your life immeasurably.   

You can swim!  For you, getting into the water was not as easy as getting into a book, but true to your strong self, you tried and tried.  This year, you not only shed your "floaty suit," but you also managed to get your face in the water.   And then at your lesson this Thursday, you swam real strokes, face in the water, no floaty needed.   Better yet, you wanted to stay and swim and swim and swim!  Oh dear girl, you are proving to yourself you can do anything you set your mind to.  We are so proud of you!

This September, you stood up to your fear of meeting new children, and you strode bravely into school.   Again and again, you proved to yourself and all of us around you how grown-up you are, how caring and outgoing and wise you are.  You not only made friends with all of the kids in your class, but you've become known as a go-to gal, a real friend.  You help G. with his shoelaces and N. with his rowdy behavior.   You comfort friends like G. when she is sad.  When E. was rude to you on the playground, you stood up for yourself, strongly and politely , saying "I will speak to you when you apologize, E."  E apologized, and you forgave her easily, explaining to me, "E just had a rough day. She won't act like that to me again."  And you were right.   Your generosity extends beyond your forgiveness, too.    If you have something nice, you love to give it to someone else, too.  You share your snacks and bring treats and pictures for friends (and their dogs, sometimes too).  

There are a million other things you have shown us in the past year  Here are a few more:

• You care for creatures smaller than yourself.  We were impressed with how you cared for your pets, the snails.
  
• You can take amazing photos.  You already know how to share your beautiful viewpoint with the world!
  
• You are brave!  With school, with swimming, with trying things new.  This year you were brave enough to talk to Santa.
  
• You are responsible.  You can get yourself ready each morning, including brushing teeth and putting on a headband!  
  
• You take a commitment seriously.  You get to work on your homework first thing, even on a playdate.  You know that when the work is done, you will be free to play.
  

Ada, you are a wonderful girl, and once again, you have given us a wonderful year.  Your daddy and I know that each year will bring you closer to adulthood, and those years seem to trip away at an ever-accelerating speed.  I remind myself all the time to stop and feel how much beauty you bring to my world and to everyone you meet.  

love, Mommy

Poetry for a Thursday

On my "treasure plan," I'm finding treasure all over, every day. One of the best places to look is in my collections of poetry. Here's a gem by Debra Spencer in her collection Pomegranate.  

"First Decade"

Water is not always warm.

If you lean too far out of the high chair, the floor will hit you in the head.

The leaves of geraniums smell better than the flowers.

The safest place to be is in my father's arms.

Every word has its own color.

Singing is like flying.

If you tell Candace Fields a secret, she keeps it.

Sometimes there's nothing to eat but turkey soup.

When they fall into the bathtub, library books make a big splash.

It takes a lot longer to fill a coffee can with shelled walnuts than it does to eat them.

It's worth walking all the way around the block to avoid Timmy Weems.

A baseball card over the hole in your shoe keeps your sock clean.

Everybody else asks their mom first.

No everybody wears the same kind of underwear.

No matter how stuck the bread is, you can't stick your knife in the toaster.

A baloney sandwich smells like lunch at breakfast and garbage at lunch.

If you're only as big as Taro Inoke, they can sew the finger back on.

If you beg hard enough, you'll get the white Keds.

Michael Gilroy's lips feel good against my cheek.

Even Taymor Johnson gets sunburned.

If you're one of the Schumtzes, you have to spit out your pomegranate seeds.

Boys like Louis Trachtenberg make fun of you but give you their cupcake.

I can think anything I like, and no one will ever know.

I'm going to die.

Girls and Dolls Tea Party

The tea party was a success. It was all the things a tea party for dolls and girls should be, I think. Real paper invitations, real tea, real china cups, real linens, real bears and dolls.   I filled plates and plates with cookies and little sandwiches. The girls filled themselves with candy canes, sticky ribbon candy, and hot chocolate and whipped cream.

Here is what I learned about tea parties for seven-year olds:

• Fifteen girls at an inside party is equal parts exciting and exhausting. 

• Seven-year-old girls do not serve themselves tea and cookies. They wait like sweet baby birds for someone to serve them. The little tea table I set up with sugar bowls and cream and various pots of flavored tea remained untouched.  
  

• Tea is not the drink of choice for a group of little girls. We went through a gallon of hot cocoa, and two cans of spray whipped cream. One cup was filled with tea, and that was Ada's.

• Candy is a must, but not all candy will be eaten.  In fact, most candy will be tasted, or simply licked to see if it is good, and then disposed of--whereever.   Based on the number of sticky bits we found about the house, ribbon candy looks much yummier than it tastes.

• If you serve hot chocolate, you should use chocolate milk and then just heat it up in large quantities.  What you should not do is this: have your poor husband make cocoa from scratch, heat it on the stove, and serve it from china pots, especially when he will need to make and pour a gallon of it in 30 minutes.   If he does all of this, including adding whipped cream to each cup multiple times, he deserves a reward, like your undying love.  Or something else good.

• Tea time is quiet time. Quiet as in "what-are-we-doing-here?" quiet. For some reason, I had the crazy notion that they would talk to each other while they ate and drank tea, like some facsimile of Victorian ladies. No. They were ladylike, but super quiet, save for the munching of cookies. A few of them shot me strange glances over their teacups, as though they were biding their time, waiting to be done. "Just get on with it, lady," I imagined they thought.

• Don't serve sandwiches, especially not ones made with smoked salmon and cream cheese, unless Ada is your only guest, in which case you should have many on hand.

• Because not all little girls are Francophiles, don't call quiche by its French name. It prefers to be called "cheesy egg puff with bacon." It is much more popular that way. 

• Sugar cubes are as good as candy, and much more fun to eat when picked up with silver grabby tong thingies.  When dispensed this way, fifteen girls can eat almost one bowl of sugar cubes in an afternoon.

• Crafts are good and necessary for large groups of girls at parties. In my elegant planning, I had envisioned that for our 15-minute craft, I would supply each girl with a wool felt stocking, which they could embellish with sequins, buttons, and felt. 

• Free form crafts are best.  In my not-so-elegant reality, I actually only finished 4 stockings, so that changed my plans. The embellishments became the craft, and I just dumped bunches of craft materials onto our dining table. The girls then could make their own ornaments, using cookie cutters as shapes, and adding the sparkle as they wished. As things so often do, this worked out much better than my original thought, as the girls were more than ready to be done with tea, and they needed to fill an hour with crafts. Our family room was filled with cookie cutters, glitter, sequins, buttons, and giggling, and it was clear to me that 15 uniform stockings would have been a disaster.
  

• Lay out the rules ahead of time. Even the most ladylike and well-dressed girls can be lured into thinking doing gymnastics is a good and fun thing to do in someone's living room. Near a glass cabinet. Using the cushions from the couch.

• Parents can and should be encouraged to stay. Some parents did stay, and that made a world of difference for the craft time, when we needed many hands to help trace and cut felt into shapes of gingerbread men, stars, and candy canes. It also meant that someone besides Ada could enjoy the smoked salmon and tea.

• Six types of homemade cookies is overkill. While the frosted citrus sugar cookies were a huge hit, the girls were oblivious to amazingness of my gingery, crispy palmiers (with homemade puff pastry--high fives to me!). In fact, they did not touch them. I reveled in my cookie-baking prowess alone. 
  

• Tea cups as favors is a fun and good idea. I scoured thrift stores all week to find cups and saucers for each girl. Sitting on the table, waiting patiently for their guests to arrive, they looked lovely.

• Seven-year-old girls speak their minds. The teacup favor was refused quite plainly by two girls, who said "I don't like tea, I don't want your cup." Okay. Got it. 

• It is good to save your favorite cookie and teacup for yourself, to enjoy after the party is over.

• Post-party tables and tablecloths make great tent-houses for girls.

• Final lesson: Ada and Esme love having parties. They were amazing hostesses, and their smiles lit the room. Taking all that I learned into account, this should be an annual event.

Taking a moment

I'm a master at stating the obvious--I've been away for a few days.  So much of the past week has been fun--making treats for the tea party, preparing for Christmas, and getting ready for a visit from my parents.  And yet all of it has been tainted with a deep sorrow for my friend, Kim, and her family.   It hasn't felt right to just prattle on about all the trivial joys of my day.

It's a time of year for this sort of juxtaposition--endings and beginnings, happiness and great emptiness, togetherness and loneliness.    Even the religious celebration of Christmas is actually celebrating not just the birth of Jesus, but also his ultimate gift: his death.   

And so it is that I am feeling those contrasts vividly.  I feel compelled to take a moment from the fun and cutesy photos and writing to acknowledge it.   I feel that sticky mixture of happiness and loss, and I embrace it as part of being human. I will breathe. And be. And be awash in the morass of feelings for just a moment...