Holidoze

Hanukkah came "early" this year. Too early for us to prepare.  Late nights and early mornings. Swim practice and meets. Sports conditioning. Academic finals for students and teachers. Coughs and colds and trips to the doctor to avoid the truancy fine. Make up homework. Long commutes in short daylight hours. No time means no latkes, no matzo ball soup, no geldt.

The Menorah, relegated to decorative status, held up two Christmas stockings. Accusing.

Chastened, we offered our oldest to the Holy Land and tracked her progress via social media. She sent the occasional text to stem the tide of maternal worry. I was a stone's throw from Gaza and survived. I was not amused by the stone's throw comment.

I developed an affinity for Grumpy Cat thanks to my bossfriend.

In the middle of the holiday ramp up, perfectly centered in the parties and decorating, the world went red and thus began the rage at the machine gun. We've become  a horrible caricature of ourselves. Social media has enabled us to put a megaphone to the microphone. Deafening.

I retreated a little, seeking refuge in inappropriate, but mostly private humor.

Short of gift ideas for the children, I made tasteless jokes about purchasing guns, ammo and whiskey to protect them from lurking danger. If adding more danger to dangerous situations is the answer, then I'm all for providing them with the means to protect themselves. Give them STDs or give them death! Don't tread on their need to text and drive! Bike helmets are a slippery slope, I tell you what.

Or to misquote one of my favorite movies Brighton Beach Memoirs "If Wayne LaPierre taught logic in school, this would be one fucked up and heavily-armed world."

Not that it isn't already.

Christmas was a simple affair. Small, practical gifts for Nathan and Sophie. Chloe's absence felt a foregone conclusion. One day our family would likely scatter, too. We ate. Fudge, chocolate kisses and stars, clementines, cinnamon rolls, Chinese takeout.

Turns out the best gift of all really can't be purchased at a Walmart, ordered on Amazon, wrapped in a big red ribbon in the driveway or exchanged for store credit. It can't be loaded with ammo, requires no batteries,  isn't made by slave labor in Asia and doesn't take up space in the basement when the novelty wears off.

Time.

A long break from the routine. Several days off from work. Days to spend doing whatever I want, some of what needs to be done. Scads of uninterrupted time with the family, enough to understand the true meaning of the holidays phrase "Proximity breeds hostility."

Enough to realize that each comes by their quirks and diagnoses honestly. Have I ever mentioned how my husband eats his meals in sequence, finishing one item on his plate before moving on to the next? All the broccoli must be eaten before he takes a bite of chicken.

I've made my contribution, as well. Too bad none of the children inherited my need for order, instead opting for anger management issues and anxiety.

Thankfully, we have something that brings us together. Something upon which we can agree. Dr. Who. A Christmas Story. Harmony, a sweet interlude between revoking driving privileges and explaining again why dishes must be unearthed from bedrooms and delivered to the kitchen.

And the only thing I required besides my reading glasses, a burrowing deep into the covers. Read, sleep, consider writing, consider cocktails. Reject both. Netflix, Acorn TV. Eat more chocolate. Promises to myself that after this long winter's nap, I'll take this store of energy and do something with it.

Wrapped up

 

The funniest holiday newsletter we ever received began with the following salutation:

Happy holidays from the disgruntled Smiths. (I changed the name to protect the disgruntled)  The newsletter cataloged the family's year of mishaps, misfires, and messes. It described battles with ill health and other unsavory features that are all too often a condition of being part of the human race. The writer of the letter was clear. In this race, the family was losing.

It was worse than the saddest country song you've ever heard without the weary acceptance of a blues song. It was an airing of grievances before any of us had even heard of Festivus and yet the writer gave the reader the gift of laughter.

I've always aspired to that ability. No matter what I write about, I want to be able to maintain my sense of humor.

While this year has given me plenty to fess about and I've had to dig deep to find the humor at times, it's also been a year that highlights what really matters. Love. Family. Friends. Health. Laughter. Books. Music. A good meal. A decent night's sleep. Shelter. Writing. Those are the things that make a life well lived. For me.

The coming year is full of opportunities for the good, the bad and the absolutely terrifying. But then, that's life, isn't it? We don't get guarantees. Not even if we're willing to pay the extra sixty-nine dollars for the extended warranty.

This is where I go all wobbly on you and tell you how much I appreciate you. How grateful I am that you come and read and share. How being part of this community is another vital part to my life well lived.

Now I have to go take a nap. Sophie woke us up at an obscenely early hour to unwrap her gifts from Dr. Who and I nearly wore myself out yesterday asking MathMan obnoxious questions about how he planned to stuff my stocking.

Wishing you all the joys of the season.

Love,

The Goldens

Bazaar

Each year we went to the Christmas Bazaar held in the high school gymnasium. Mom dressed us up for photos with Santa. When we got too old for Santa, we dressed ourselves in our holiday best. One year I wore a deep green velvet dress my mother made for me. It was the prettiest dress I'd ever had. It was long, to the tops of my shoes with white buttons and a high neckline.

Years later, I found the dress in the bottom of my mother's cedar chest. My brother, bless his teenage heart, had cut squares out of it to use for cleaning his guns.

The grade school kids sang Christmas songs. Frosty the Snow Man, Silent Night, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Up on the Housetop, one of our favorites.  A couple years in a row, David S. would put on the reindeer suit his mother sewed for him and entertain the crowd while we squirmed on the wooden bleachers and sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

In high school, I dated David S. for two years. I rarely teased him about his days as Rudolph, but if I could have gotten him to put that suit on just once....well......

The gym's wooden floor was protected by canvas tarps stretched across them and taped down. You had to be careful as you walked in your dress shoes. Many a kid caught their toe in a fold and went down, scattering candy canes and other collected loot when they tumbled.

There were tables set up in large squares and moms stood behind them. I can't quite remember what was on the tables. Crafts, I think. We kids walked around in clumps, chattering about the upcoming school break and wishes for snow. We shared our hopes about we hoped we'd find under the tree. We told on ourselves about snooping for gifts.

My favorite part was the Cake Walk. Folded metal chairs were set in a circle and you walked around it music played. When the parent who manned the record player lifted the arm and stopped the music, you looked at the number on the chair in front of you. If your number was called, you won a cake that somebody's mom had baked and brought wrapped in a box or in a Tupperware carrier. At the beginning of the night, I liked to look at the tables holding all the baked goods. My sweet tooth has always been one of my downfalls.

At the end of the evening, we'd gather near the lobby. Our mother would stuff us into our coats reminding us to make sure we hadn't lost a mitten or a dreaded knit cap. We'd go outside making smoke with our warm breath in the cold air. Stars flickered overhead in the winter sky. We'd climb into the car clutching our loot with our mittens and watch as Christmas lights made smudged kaleidoscope shapes on the fogged car windows as we made our way home.

Your turn.

With Tummies Full of Chinese Food

Click to enlarge

Thank you for sharing 2010 with us.

All of our best to you!

Oh, give it one more try

I've got a busy day ahead so I'm just going to offer for your mocking pleasure this photo of my brother and me in our matching outfits and rockin' boots.  The guy in the red suit had boots, too, but I bet he didn't wear his to an Osmond Brothers concert at the Cincinnati Gardens.

How are you going to rock your weekend boots?  With whom will you be coordinating your outfits?  Plans to sit on the laps of strangers?  Wine, beer or whatever is left on the liquor shelf?  Did you note Santa's zip code just in case?

Tis the Season...

This turns out to be the season of change. Or perhaps, more accurately, the season of going back to the start...

Our gifts have been of an incredibly practical nature. We put up a tree for the first time in probably ten years. (Thank you Target staffer who pointed out the display tree was 75% off. $7.50 for a tree? Why not?)

There are no more markers of having little kids in the house - it's more like when MathMan and I first started sharing a life. Although Sophia is ten going on twenty-five and still a child, of course, there is a distinct lack of things that need assembling. There were no stickers to stick on Barbie things, nothing that needed to be cut out of packaging using the Jaws of Life.

Christmas Eve started what, I hope, will become a new tradition. This year, we used the wonders of technology and the Spirits of Skype to converge on MathMan's oldest brother's house for carols played by the Golden Family Concert Band. There we were, us in our Georgia living room and MathMan's youngest brother and his family in their house in New Jersey, enjoying the sights and sounds of Christmas Eve, just like the old days. It was quite nice, actually.

We put out our own version of a holiday spread and will probably just eat leftovers all day and save the turkey roll (hey, there are only five of us) dinner for another time when the food is running low and we've got more month than money (The joys of a once a month paycheck for teachers. Ask any educator you know, they'll tell you that January seems to stretch on forever, especially when even the Ramen Noodles have run out.)

The point is, we've fussed more than usual with the busyness of the holidays, but the fussing has been in ways that have been more rewarding and less frustrating. I keep telling myself - write it down, this is what the holidays are about - being with the ones you love, being good to them and yourself, spreading the cheer where you can and having some fun that doesn't feel squeezed from the last little bit you have to give.

Okay, so now I've written it. The trick is to remember it, right? Right.

From all of us here at Golden Manor, may you and yours have a very happy holiday season. Thank you for sharing yourself and your thoughts here. I'm honored that you come here to read and be a part of this happy madness.

Love,

Lisa

Here's a little sampling of the music from Christmas Eve (with special guest, MathMan's sister)

Our Christmas scrapbook.