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.