By the chimney with care

By the chimney with care

It has been a good many years now of stocking stuffing, and Santa and I seem finally to have our reindeer in a row.

            However, it took that jolly old elf a number of seasons to teach me just what to fill those Christmas stockings with. Growing up in a family of non-stuffers, and then marrying into a family who did, necessitated my acquiring skills I’d had only marginal involvement with. My first forays into the gathering of goodies were discouraging. Too big, too expensive, too boring. But with time, practice, and a wink and a nod, I learned how to merrily stuff a Christmas stocking. And at the same time, my husband learned how to appreciate the miracle of an oil lamp and the goodness of latkes and applesauce.

            But this year there's a new twist, a new skill to master, an expansion. This year there will be two more at our holiday table, two more in our home, two more to consider. My 20-something boys are bringing home their 20-something girls. This will be the first Christmas morning when there will be more than just our nuclear family waking up in our home. Given my want to be inclusive, I’ve already purchased a few small gifts for our guests, but now I’m wondering whether I should stuff stockings for them as well. Go so far as to screw extra cup hooks into our mantle to hang them on. . .but what if these visitors are merely passing through? I’d be stuck with gaping holes or empty cup hooks. On the other hand, what if they are “the ones?”

            Our family stockings have our names embroidered onto them but this is not because I am talented with needle and thread. Quite the contrary. Duct tape is my go-to. This stitchery is due to the mishap of '97. Our children still talk about it, the time Santa mixed up the stockings, filled the brother’s stocking with the sister’s trinkets, and vise-versa.

It is 5:30 a.m. Brother and sister, in their footsie pajamas, are already perched on the living room couch, tussled hair and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. Mother and father linger upstairs, buried beneath their warm, down quilt. The family rule is that no earlier than 5:30 a.m. can little ones gut their stockings, and no earlier than 7:30 a.m. will parents join their merriment. Patience, for young ones — a virtue difficult to manifest under the best of circumstances — can be quite tested on a Christmas morning.

            On this Christmas morning, the brown-eyed boy hastily opens his first stocking treasure, a pen. A pen with pink kitty cats on it. He digs for another bauble and unwraps a bottle of purple nail polish. Meanwhile, the girl has begun to extricate her bounty. She unwraps a Matchbox police car and then a pen decorated with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

            But it's when the boy unwraps an outfit for Barbie that suspicion slowly enters his mind. Yet does this stop him? No. Age-appropriate greed drives him to plow through goody after goody: raspberry crush Chapstick, curly-Q hair ties, a toothbrush adorned with princesses, a lavender My Little Pony, and more. All opened. All in a crumpled mass piled next to him, and sitting on the other side of the couch, his sister. She has opened only a few of the gifts in "her" stocking: a miniature Star Wars figure of Yoda, a Darth Vader toothbrush, and a plastic pocket knife, just like Daddy’s.

            These incongruities, coupled with a bit more maturity, allow her to resist tearing through the rest of the clearly mis-stuffed stocking. Feelings are hurt; expectations are dashed. Santa forgot that the stocking with the sled is the boy’s and that the one with the reindeer is the girl’s. As a result, and in order to avoid future catastrophes, Mrs. Claus found it necessary to belatedly embroider names on all the Christmas stockings.

What alterations will this Christmas bring? Should I show my acceptance for my boys’ new loves by embroidering their names on stockings? If not this Christmas, when? Living arrangements are so different these days. Partnerships can be permanent without culminating in formal marriages. Should I give my children checklists? Ask questions like “What is your level of commitment to this relationship?” “Has the L-word been spoken?” “Would you share a toothbrush with this partner?” I’m searching for ways to assess whether the current apples of my children’s eyes rate taking up needle and thread. And yet, perhaps I should just slow down, show some restraint, simply use Duct tape to tag the extra stockings. Would embroidering labels like “Plus One” or “S.O.” (Significant Other) be tolerated? Or might that impermanence elicit pouting, resulting in a stocking full of coal from the big man in red?

            Our family is growing, but there have been no wedding bells. So how do we know what is real and what is practice? And to add to that, how do we as parents manage when siblings judge siblings? Those rumblings behind the scene about whose partner counts enough, whose partner has earned a place at the holiday table, and ultimately, whose partner merits consideration for an embroidered stocking. What might our children’s checklist look like for each other? Would they have questions such as “Have you been dating for more or less than a year?” “Are you two living out of backpacks, or in the same home?” “Are you splitting the Comcast bill, or just the occasional Starbucks tab?”

            Our family is learning a new language. We are trying to decipher unfamiliar road signs to gauge how fast or how slow to go, where to turn, and when to proceed with caution. There is no denying that it is a wonderful thing to witness love and happiness in one’s children. To watch them look at another, pupils dilated, tongue hanging out, stupid in love. We wish this for all our children, that bumping-into-walls kind of love. But what happens when the tongue-hanger doesn’t seem like a good fit? When are our children too old to have their choices questioned? If only it were as easy as climbing in and out of millions of chimneys — on one night, all over the world. Sometimes I would rather be Santa’s helper on that most grueling of nights than have to navigate through the unexpected blizzard parenting adult children can summon. What would Rudolph do?

            One of my new strategies is to just smile and keep my mouth shut. It doesn’t always work. But I am trying. I’m trying to trust that all that time I spent with my children — kissing their little fingers, building their Lego spaceships, singing them lullabies — all that time modeling kindness, showing respect, reading stories about confident girls and caring boys; all that time spent supporting their inner scaffolding, shoring up their competence and compassion, their strength and creativity — I have to believe that all that time mattered, and that they will carry those lessons forward.

            “Make good decisions,” is our family’s mantra. We used to say this when our children went out for the night or drove off to college. “Make good decisions.”  But sometimes trusting our children’s decisions is tough. Keeping the faith can be difficult. Trust gets tested. Trust gets complicated. Especially when you have to add things like Christmas stockings to the mix or when you have to unexpectedly un-embroider a name from a stocking.

            What happens when your child says goodbye to a partner? Does that mean you have to say good-bye, too? What if you liked that one, really liked that one. Can you still secretly send token gifts, dental floss or Post-Its to the one that got away?

            We will have two new people sharing our holiday traditions this year. Christmas morning we will lounge about in our pajamas and jam together on the well-worn couch. We will warm ourselves by an early-morning fire, unable to deny the sweet anticipation of gifts unknown. There will be a fresh blanket of snow carpeting the fields, and a hint of cinnamon simmering through the air, hot cider steeping on the stove. There will be presents under the tree, a waffle iron at the ready, and this year, this wondrous year, there will be two extra stockings hung with care, in hopes that true partners soon will be there.     

   Real Simple – Not!

Fuck!! An explosive wail heaves from my throat. I'm standing in my grown-up daughter’s shower trying to hang a new shower curtain. My source for all things important, Real Simple Magazine, has alerted me to the horrors of off-gassing from chemical filled shower curtains. I’ve learned that these brightly colored protectors of the floor actually get lighter as their chemicals release and migrate into our lungs and cells. Oh my God! In full combat mode I marched off to my computer, did Google search after Google search, found chemical free shower curtains and procured them post haste.

I am now on a rampage to clear my home of all that is evil. I am standing in my no-longer-lives-at-home-but-comes-home-to-visit-sometimes daughter’s shower. I am attempting to hang one of my newly acquired, chemical free shower curtains. I am holding the crumpled, mostly on the floor, curtain in one hand, and this excessively sweet, ducky curtain hanger in the other. As I reach up to hook the little yellow quacker through the hole at the top of the curtain, the bottom of the curtain gets caught under my foot. This causes my reach to unexpectedly stop short, and jettisons the ducky from my hand, smashing it to the floor.

Fuck!! I moan. Ducky is on the tile floor minus its cute orange beak, I’m enraged, and my eyes are rimmed with tears. Luckily, being the insightful menopausal woman that I am, I quickly realize that my reaction to ducky's demise is obviously an overreaction. I pause a moment to examine where this fuselage of emotion might be coming from, but instead disassociate and trot off to the everything drawer in our kitchen in search of Superglue. Long story short, and after a lot more swearing, I find the glue, make my way back to my I-still-miss-her daughter’s bathroom, glue ducky’s beak back on, and hang the chemical free shower curtain. When finished, I glance at the clock. I am wondering not how long this task took, but whether 3:30 is too early for a glass of wine. 5:00 is my usual cocktail lift-off hour, but on rare occasions I’ve made allowances for a 4:45 start time.

Next, I find myself in the master bathroom throwing out all of my husband’s and my shampoos conditioners and body washes. I have learned from Real Simple Magazine that these too contain nastiness that will eat through your brain. I again engage with the mighty Google and search for chemical free bath products and order a slew of them. My goal, turn all our bathrooms into safe zones. I then send e-mails to my three children ticking off the offending bath product chemicals, and urge my progeny to eradicate these vermin from their homes as well.

Feeling momentarily satisfied with my household massacre, I innocently glance at myself in the mirror as I head back to the kitchen to check the clock. It’s only 4:30. Bummer. But on top of this too-early-to-drink hour, what I see in the mirror is startling. My hair looks like I stuck my finger in a socket, I have dark circles under my eyes, and I think I see the start of an age spot on my forehead. I’m agitated, emotionally spent, and resignedly surrender to a confrontation with the beast of my mania.

The letter in the mail said, "probably not cancerous." So does that mean I should "probably" not worry? From my actions over the past few hours, I would have to say that not worrying is not an option. My annual mammogram revealed a spot on my right breast that is suspicious, not suspicious enough for the follow-up ultrasound I had a few years back, revealing healthy, but dense breast tissue, but suspicious enough for a six month “recheck.” "It's probably nothing," the letter encourages. Probably nothing for whom?

My mind’s been like a pinball machine. It keeps ricocheting from thought to thought as I grasp at ways to keep my family and me safe. Meanwhile this troublesome termite of a notion has been burrowing its way into my psyche, wreaking havoc. I have watched a few friends survive cancer, I have driven other friends to shear their locks mid-chemo, and I have grieved over the loss of dear friends whose "probablies" became “definitelies”.

To cope I purge, when DING, another obstacle collides with my pinball. To make the mood swings and hot flashes of menopause even more fun, there is the arid drying up of the body to contend with – skin, eyeballs, crotch. At a recent gynecological appointment, I tell my doctor that sex hurts. She looks here, pokes there, confirms atrophy of my lady parts and recommends this lovely device called an Estring. Smaller than a frisbee, larger than a silver dollar, you squeeze this thingie into your special place and voilà, little bits of estrogen leach out to just where they're needed. They chemically plump up the lady walls which menopause has made as crispy as dried up rice paper. However, today it’s occurring to me that that thingie has estrogen in it, artificial estrogen in it, and isn't that the kind of stuff that encourages "probablies” to grow? And might this dawning of understanding, coupled with the threat of a “recheck,” be the impetus for my chemical purging and perseverative checking of time?

I call my gynecologist. I leave a message regarding my concern over the mix of suspicious mammogram with fake estrogen. I check the clock again, 4:45. Might this be one of those days where an early cocktail lift-off is warranted? At five o'clock the phone rings. It's the gynecologist's office. Dr. Crotch has looked over my mammogram, revisited the miniscule dosage of estrogen in my Estring and says there is no connection between boob and crotch. She confirms that this amount of estrogen does not affect breast tissue. Phew, I think as I pour myself a healthy goblet of Pinot Noir. No effect on breast tissue. But then paranoid me wakes up and wonders, why did she specify breast tissue? Might artificial estrogen affect other kinds of tissue in my body?

But it’s too late for that debate, the wine has begun to work its magic. The world is muted, my heartbeat has slowed, and I find myself being drawn to the doings of Alicia Florrick on The Good Wife. Will she run for state's attorney? Will she take a new lover? I head to the den and turn on the TV. Purging is exhausting, mania is exhausting. Tomorrow I will do more Google searches. Tomorrow I will try again to ignore my “probably”. Tomorrow I will pursue more ways to make my life real simple, and hopefully, real safe.

Cuticles

Cuticles

What is going on with my cuticles? They are dry and splintery. Drawn to their imperfections, their little flecks beg me to pick. Have I developed eczema of the cuticle, or is this just another manifestation of my midlife moisture crisis?

I am parched. I'm in a drought. Even if I were to gulp down gallons of water, I’d still be as dry as a Texas lake bed. Like the prunes on my counter, I am puckering up. My skin is crumpling, my epidermis is weathering, and my prime is wilting.

I am in awe of what is happening to my body, and at the same time don't have a clue what to do about it. What does one do to combat dry cuticles? Are there creams? Are there incantations? Is there a God? How did I get overlooked when the How To manuals for these kinds of malady's were handed out? Did I get in the wrong line? Or was it that I didn't even know there was a line to get into?

A young friend of mine, and I mean young, not quite thirty, is peddling a snake oil, I mean cream, for use on one’s face to help reduce the signs of aging.

“I use it every night,” she tells me.

“For God sakes! Why? Your skin is as smooth as a baby’s ass!”

“Exactly,” she responds. “It’s the cream! You should try it.”

 “Do I need it?”

She looks at me like I’m either certifiably nuts or pathetically stupid.

“All you do is wash your face at bedtime, and while your face is still moist rub in the cream. In the morning simply rinse it off.”

“That’s too much work for me,” I protest. Then add, feeling a bit ashamed, that I actually don't wash my face every night, and I never wash it in the morning. She looks at me, mouth on the floor, eyes like saucers, Wile E. Coyote incredulous.

“You don't wash your face? But it says to on page 1,037 of The Manual.”

“What manual?”

“You know, The Manual,” she chides.

 I stare at her blankly.

“You didn't get The Manual?”

“No.”

“OH MY GOD! That means you don't know anything about anything! I'm surprised you're even still alive!”

“Holy shit! What the hell are you talking about? What manual? Can I get one of these manuals?”    

“No. It's a one-time thing. My mother gave me mine when I was six years old. Didn't your mother give you one?”

“No,” I say, my voice rising to a pitch only dogs can hear.  “No she didn't!”

Not knowing whether to feel betrayed or furious I start to tremble and wonder if my life might be in danger. I also begin to consider if being without this manual might be why I felt like such a geeky outsider while growing up, if this lack of manual might be the reason behind not knowing how to dress like the cool kids or how to flirt with the cool boys. I wonder if this lack of manual might be the reason I never knew what to do with my daughter's hair when she was young. At my best all I could manage were loosely bunched pigtails that stuck out at odd angles and misplaced headbands that were worn more like sweatbands.

“I'm screwed!” I shriek. “Woe is me! Woe is my daughter! I didn't know about The Manual! I didn’t give her a manual! She’s doomed! We’re doomed!”

Whack! My young friend slaps me hard across the face.

“Get a grip on yourself!” She yells. “I know for a fact that your daughter has The Manual. As you seemed to be a bit clueless, and your daughter’s hair looked like, well you know what it looked like; I pulled her aside when she was six and told her how to get The Manual.”

“Thank God!” Words of gratitude burst from my lips as I fall to my knees ready to kiss my friend’s bare feet.  “No wonder Hannah’s haircuts have always been so much more fashionable than mine. No wonder her skin is so clear and taut, her fingernails perfectly manicured. It all makes sense now. She got a manual. Thank God she got The Manual!”

Tears of relief tumble down my cheeks.

Raising my gaze I beseech, “What can I do? Am I doomed to have dry cuticles and a wrinkly face for the rest of my life?”

 My young friend kneels beside me, looks around in all directions and makes her voice as quite as a spy.

“I can't get you The Manual. You are too old and too dry, but when no one is around I will do my best to share with you the secrets contained therein.

“Please, don't risk your life for me. Clearly it's too late for me. What about your husband? What about your plans for a family? I don't want to put you at risk by helping me.”

“I have friends on the police force. If I get caught, I'm sure they'll go easy on me, let me off with a slap on the wrist, maybe make me miss a manicure or two. But I’m strong. I can survive. And besides, I like you Nancy. You make me laugh. Your cluelessness of how to be in the world, how to cook, how to clean, how to sew, I always thought it was an act. I thought you were practicing material for a standup routine you were developing. Now I see that it wasn't an act at all. So I feel pity for you, maybe a little disgust too, but mostly pity.”

I am so grateful for her pity. I’m ecstatic. Maybe there is hope for me after all. Maybe I won't have to live my life with cuticles that look like last year’s cornfield, ashamed that I am always ten steps behind my friends when it comes to anything female, perpetually confounded by how or even why one would cook a leg of lamb.  Maybe my young friend will be able to help me, save me from my arid and clueless life, right my ship before it beaches on the shores of hopelessness.

DIY Lottery

DIY Lottery

One morning, while sitting in our bathroom, I discovered there were only three sheets of toilet paper left on the roll. At this peculiar moment in time, I understood that an opportunity, life-changing in its magnitude, dangled just inches from my fingers. I could curse loudly and rage against my ungrateful family, who for the millionth time had left me stranded, or instead, and please forgive the cliché, I could make lemonade from lemons. Boldly, I chose the lemonade, “Well my goodness Nancy, looks like you’ve won today’s Toilet Paper Lottery!” A tickertape parade, complete with marching bands, pranced down the main street of my mind.

Apparently, it was time for me to reap the rewards of domesticity, and today’s prize was the much sought after honor of replacing the toilet paper roll.  And, not only did I get to replace the roll, I also got to choose how to install the roll—paper away from, or against the wall. Why on earth anyone hangs toilet paper with the sheets against the wall is beyond me. Clearly the proximity to the wall makes it much easier to scrape your knuckles and ruin your manicure as you strain to tug off a few sheets. And so, with glee in my heart, I grabbed a hold of those few remaining sheets, finished them off with gusto, and installed a fresh roll of toilet paper, sheet side out. Voilà, me, who never wins anything, stood triumphant and pumped anticipating my next conquest.

Experiencing an unparalleled excitement, I skipped off to see what other riches this new day might reveal. And sure enough, when I got to the kitchen I saw I’d won the Unload the Dishwasher Lottery! More fanfare, more tickertape. This feat secured me the right to put all the ugly mugs with stupid sayings way in the back of the cabinet, and instead place all my favorite mugs, Wonder Woman, Star Trek and the chipped one that belonged to my grandmother, up front. I could even, in a giddy moment of mischief, mix the lunch forks in with the dinner forks.

With an adrenaline rush that had me walking on air, I went into our bedroom. To my good fortune I saw that the Do the Laundry Lottery was mine for the taking. Our wash basket overflowed with dirty socks, shirts, and jeans like a pirate chest sparkling with treasure. I hastily gathered up the few loose doubloons still scattered about the bedroom floor, and scampered off with my booty. Oh joy, oh rapture, I murmured as I discovered there were enough dirty clothes for at least two regular loads and a gentle cycle. That meant I'd won the bonus laundry lottery of getting to tediously hang and lay flat all our delicates. Incredulous, I thought to myself, this day can’t get any better, and then it did!

            After starting the laundry, I went into the living room and beheld hundreds of golden, dog-hair tumbleweeds glistening in the morning sun. The feathery orbs lolled along the base of every wall, and congregated in every corner of every room. I was virtually weeping with joy knowing I’d won the Vacuum Lottery too! As I reached for the vacuum hose in the utility closet, it dawned on me that this win also came with a bonus prize. I had the extra reward of getting to empty the basement canister for our Whole House Vacuum. And if that's not the ultimate prize for every woman, I just can’t imagine what would be?

To claim the jackpot, I went downstairs and positioned myself below this gigantic container hanging from the basement wall. While encircling the bottom of it with a massive garbage bag, I deftly used my free pinkies to flip open three fasteners two thirds of the way down the canister allowing the bottom section to separate from its mother ship. Emptying this repository of our life’s detritus is so much easier to do with two people, but clearly today was mine to shine along alone. So, with dust, dog hair and discarded toenail clippings flying, I thanked God for the overabundant blessings of my day.

However, looking at the floor, right next to the bulging bag of yuck I’d just dislodged from the canister, I saw something. A mouse. It was the size of a small grapefruit, and dead as a door nail in our JAWS mousetrap. Its massacre was a total buzz kill to this most stellar of mornings, because A – although I don’t like mice running around my house, I do feel horrible about killing them, and B – emptying mouse traps is a lottery I’m not eligible to win. Being squeamish, I have recused myself from discharging mouse traps. Therefore, I begrudgingly realized I’d have to share today’s blazingly hot winning streak with my husband.

In truth, there are very few lotteries I want to disqualify myself from. Debilitating nausea at the sight of slain rodents has forced me to draw a firm line at emptying mousetraps. Up till now an equally queasy making exemption has been the catching of errant snakes. Occasionally, one of these reptiles slithers its way into our basement, and traditionally, corralling them has been my husband’s chore.  And yet, maybe with my freshly fueled domestic-life-is-a-lottery outlook, I could learn to reclaim this particular prize for myself. Perhaps the next time a snake mistakenly glides its way into our cellar, I could channel the late Steve Erwin, yell things like "Crykie! She's a beauty!" and pounce upon and catch the unsuspecting intruder all by myself—oh my God, I can almost hear those big brass trombones now!