In 2005, as I waited in an airport two days before Christmas with thousands of other people, I pondered what it would feel like to not have to spend every major holiday stuck in an airport, a rental car, or a traffic jam somewhere on the Eastern seaboard.
I should have been more specific.
Holidays now don't mean airports, rental cars or I-95 traffic jams, but it seems we've traded those for long road trips, icy mountain passes and no sleep. We might be closer to relatives, but there is a whole lot of nothing - vast open wilderness - between us and them.
Last year, I issued a moratorium on road trips during the month of November. It worked so well, I did it again this year. This year, we decided to play grown-ups and host our own holiday - something we haven't done on any major scale since moving to the Frontier. It was all carefully planned ... and then, Mother Nature decided to make things interesting and brought in a winter storm that turned every road into a sheet of ice and, as a result, no Thanksgiving guests.
When I wished for no traveling during the holidays, I didn't really mean spending them alone. Again, I should have been more specific.
Stuck with a 15-pound turkey (courtesy of work - at least I didn't have to pay for it) and a fridge full of ingredients for a family-sized traditional dinner, I set out to craft side dish upon side dish for Himself, myself, and two little girls who chose today as a day to eat like birds. I will be eating reincarnations of Thanksgiving dinner for weeks - if I was really creative, and had room in my freezer, I could probably make it last until Christmas.
At some point in the morning, I realized I wasn't having any fun. Cooking a holiday dinner for 2.5 appetites isn't terribly exciting. I put the turkey in the oven, left roasting instructions for Himself (who ignored them, being a man), bundled up the girls and took them to the zoo.
It was my favorite part of the day, and it was then I realized: I am deeply grateful to not only have a child, but to have two of them. I watched as Woodstock, looking for all the world like a pink marshmallow with stick legs (thanks to a puffy coat and skinny leggings) pushed Pebbles (who looked like the kid on Christmas story - complete with arms out to her sides - bundled too much to put them at her sides - it was only 27 degrees after all) around the zoo in her stroller. No people + a cumbersome umbrella stroller over which one can barely see = very little risk of out-running Mom, and Woodstock relished her freedom. She chattered away at Pebbles - detailing every exhibit and opining about this or that. They giggled at the turkeys wandering around and Woodstock (ever one to make me want to be vegetarian for animal reasons and not just health reasons) asked if they were like the turkey roasting in the oven at home.
They giggled at a sleepy crocodile. They laughed at the echos in the giraffe enclosure - who knew that a big empty building full of nothing but giraffes and two little girls could provide such amazing acoustics? Pebbles squealed at the leopard and Woodstock excitedly told me that we were going to visit a rain forest (I will admit - the rain forest/reptile house was my favorite - as it is the warmest building at the zoo). I marveled at how - now that Woodstock is potty trained, Pebbles sleeps through the night and both feed themselves - my joy was doubled with two children without necessarily doubling the work.
Our noses red, our fingers frozen, we returned home to put the final touches on the meal and to give thanks. Woodstock gave thanks for animals and family and the funny looking food on her plate (when else do you serve soggy bread?). I gave thanks for a few hours that lifted my spirits and made me realize Thanksgiving can be a holiday even without a house stuffed full of people. Fresh air, sunshine (cold sunshine, but still - sunshine), good food, family and two beautiful little girls.
I'm thankful, once again, for the simple things. The ones that warm my heart the most.
Next year, the Thanksgiving travel moratorium may just have to be re-instated.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Channeling My Inner Santa
The Christmas after I turned 6 - the year I was in Kindergarten - Santa brought me the ugliest pink bike on the planet. I should confess, my assessment of it as the ugliest pink bike on the planet, is from my thirtysomething eyes. When I was 6, it was the exact bike I wanted. I had specifically pointed it out to my parents - sitting outside the hardware store with all the other shiny new bikes - indicating that that exact bike - the one with the extra wide, extra squishy pink seat and rubber pink handlebar grips - was the one I was going to ask Santa for.
When it arrived in my living room that Christmas, I was ecstatic. Not just because Santa had brought me a bike, but because he had brought the exact bike I had asked for. This should have been my first clue that Santa was someone other than a fat old man in red, fur-lined pajamas, but I was so caught up in the magic I didn't begin to even have doubts for another two years. I still remember it as one of my best Christmases ever - and it has been more than a quarter century since that day. Of course, it may also have to do with the fact that I also got a new brother that Christmas, but I doubt it.
The point is, Santa scored big brownie points that Christmas. In fact, Santa was pretty good at scoring brownie points every Christmas. I want to be that Santa for my kids - he never fulfilled every wish, but he knew just how to fulfill one wish perfectly - and that's really all that mattered.
Himself is generally the chief present-purchaser (fitting, as he is also the chief spender) in the family. Last year he had scoped out a present for Woodstock before we had even found a Halloween costume for her. It was perfect. It was Woodstock's first Christmas that she sort of got the point, and she was ecstatic to find a play kitchen had magically appeared in our living room overnight. (Never mind the "magical appearance" involved 2.5 hours, a couple of screwdrivers, a 30-page instruction booklet and two grumpy parents the night before).
This year, Himself is as stumped as I am though. We ask Woodstock if she wants anything for Christmas - because she isn't old enough to realize she is "expected" to want something (is it wrong to hope it lasts forever?), she either responds with a blank stare or some random toy with which she played that day at the sitter's. I have left every toy add and catalog out within easy viewing for her - hoping it will spark a conversation that will lead to some brilliant idea. While Woodstock LOVES the fact that she gets "maz-a-gines" in the mail - particularly the Playskool ones - the only thing she indicated that she might possibly want was a $350 outdoor play set that would take up our entire backyard. I don't allow her to watch television on channels that have commercials, which means she isn't bombarded with images of hundreds of cheap, plastic, imported toys that require both assembly and a lifetime supply of AA batteries.
Alas, my other Santa problem is I really dislike shopping - particularly between Halloween and New Years. Particularly for children's items, as parents seem to take a daily dose of crazy pills during that time and seem to think they (and by extension their kids) are the most important people in the universe. It also doesn't help that I am taking big strides while my kids are little to limit expectations in the gift department - so I can't just buy a bunch of things and hope that one of them fits the bill.
And then ... sometime between cutting off a sheet of butcher paper for the latest art project yesterday and scrubbing watercolors off the tablecloth this morning, it hit me ... an epiphany of epic proportions. An easel. An artist's easel with paper and a chalkboard and a place for her watercolors and ... perfect! This is, after all, the child who routinely plasters the front door and refrigerator door with her creations. This is the child who will draw, doodle or color on any piece of paper in reach, who has three sets of colored pencils - for the car, home and church, and who sat yesterday morning and water colored for 90 minutes (an eternity when you're talking 3-year-olds).
We might just be able to pull off this Santa charade.
When it arrived in my living room that Christmas, I was ecstatic. Not just because Santa had brought me a bike, but because he had brought the exact bike I had asked for. This should have been my first clue that Santa was someone other than a fat old man in red, fur-lined pajamas, but I was so caught up in the magic I didn't begin to even have doubts for another two years. I still remember it as one of my best Christmases ever - and it has been more than a quarter century since that day. Of course, it may also have to do with the fact that I also got a new brother that Christmas, but I doubt it.
The point is, Santa scored big brownie points that Christmas. In fact, Santa was pretty good at scoring brownie points every Christmas. I want to be that Santa for my kids - he never fulfilled every wish, but he knew just how to fulfill one wish perfectly - and that's really all that mattered.
Himself is generally the chief present-purchaser (fitting, as he is also the chief spender) in the family. Last year he had scoped out a present for Woodstock before we had even found a Halloween costume for her. It was perfect. It was Woodstock's first Christmas that she sort of got the point, and she was ecstatic to find a play kitchen had magically appeared in our living room overnight. (Never mind the "magical appearance" involved 2.5 hours, a couple of screwdrivers, a 30-page instruction booklet and two grumpy parents the night before).
This year, Himself is as stumped as I am though. We ask Woodstock if she wants anything for Christmas - because she isn't old enough to realize she is "expected" to want something (is it wrong to hope it lasts forever?), she either responds with a blank stare or some random toy with which she played that day at the sitter's. I have left every toy add and catalog out within easy viewing for her - hoping it will spark a conversation that will lead to some brilliant idea. While Woodstock LOVES the fact that she gets "maz-a-gines" in the mail - particularly the Playskool ones - the only thing she indicated that she might possibly want was a $350 outdoor play set that would take up our entire backyard. I don't allow her to watch television on channels that have commercials, which means she isn't bombarded with images of hundreds of cheap, plastic, imported toys that require both assembly and a lifetime supply of AA batteries.
Alas, my other Santa problem is I really dislike shopping - particularly between Halloween and New Years. Particularly for children's items, as parents seem to take a daily dose of crazy pills during that time and seem to think they (and by extension their kids) are the most important people in the universe. It also doesn't help that I am taking big strides while my kids are little to limit expectations in the gift department - so I can't just buy a bunch of things and hope that one of them fits the bill.
And then ... sometime between cutting off a sheet of butcher paper for the latest art project yesterday and scrubbing watercolors off the tablecloth this morning, it hit me ... an epiphany of epic proportions. An easel. An artist's easel with paper and a chalkboard and a place for her watercolors and ... perfect! This is, after all, the child who routinely plasters the front door and refrigerator door with her creations. This is the child who will draw, doodle or color on any piece of paper in reach, who has three sets of colored pencils - for the car, home and church, and who sat yesterday morning and water colored for 90 minutes (an eternity when you're talking 3-year-olds).
We might just be able to pull off this Santa charade.
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