Best Laid Plans...

Christmas gets more complicated with each passing year. I think back to the fall of 1981, when my sister and I and both our fiances made a day trip up to North Carolina, where her beau's family lived. The four of us squeezed into Ken's red Chevrolet truck and trawled through the mountains, having a rollicking good time laughing and then eating and visiting with his family. We'd have to hire a double-decker bus to haul all of our progeny these days. Add to that my brother, his wife and six kids and we might have to get a Marta train to take all of us. I think we're numbering around a hundred now. Once a year, Christmas Eve, my side of the family gets together. I remember in our early years, we'd all go to lunch after church. There's not even a Golden Corral that could handle us now. As Mama's house has gotten smaller (she now lives alone in a garden-type dwelling, with no parking), she has continued to try to have Christmas Eve there. This year, a persuasive granddaughter convinced her to do it at her house, a much larger venue. We trekked up there last night, with a majority of the family bringing their casseroles, desserts and Christmas joy. 

My kids and grandkids were supposed to come over tomorrow; we were going to break from turkey and ham to have taco night while we opened gifts. Alas, one of the sons' families is suffering from the domino-effects of a stomach virus, so we're still deciding on our strategy. Do we go ahead without them, or wait another week to be all together? Either way, Christmas day feels mighty sad today. The Fear-Of-Missing-Out runs strong in my veins. 

Ken and I have a long-standing Christmas tradition of eating breakfast at the Waffle House. After a leisurely morning of acting like irresponsible newlyweds, we moseyed there to find the parking lot spilling over like so much lava. I said I'll just make pancakes at home, but Papa had the brightest idea: "Let's go over to the RaceTrac. You can get their good coffee, they have hotdogs and Krispy Kremes there -- and we can watch people." So that's exactly what we did. He didn't even bother to park in a proper place -- just pulled up to one of the pumps and left the car while we did our "shopping." We bought hotdogs, snacks, donuts, coffee. He still didn't move the car, and we ate all the junk, every last crumb, while we laughed and watched the parade coming in and out of the doors.  Ken always has hilarious commentary: what people are up to, their clothing and what they might be thinking. I felt transported back to when we were "just friends" and would sit in the church parking lot talking for hours. After awhile, when there was nobody but us (sitting in that sexy red truck), the cops would inevitably pull in and ask me, "M'am, are you okay?" I'd think about the hunky guy next to me and wonder what it might be like to kiss him. Eventually that happened. We blinked and landed in the RaceTrac parking lot today, four kids, four in-laws, twelve grandkids and many, many meals and miles later. Yes, I'd tell the cop. I'm okay.    

The Magi Saw...

Not everyone gets a happy childhood. I view mine through a gauzy scrim -- a secure, sweet, simple upbringing where time seems to stand still. But the unexamined life is not worth living, isn't that what they say? Every family has its skeletons, and all of earth and humanity have its fatal flaws, capable of cracking off and plummeting into the canyons. My family is no exception. There were deep addictions and suppressed traumas on one side, then moral jump-offs and escapades on the other. There's really no telling where following your "heart" can lead, no matter how idyllic that sounds to our Hollywood-sirened-ears. I'm sure Ted Bundy was following his, too. Here it is Christmas, and I'm being morose. But no, I've witnessed miracles in my not-so-short life, beyond all that comes natural to us humans. They do exist, without the benefit of celluloid and soundtracks. If you've heard me tell of my (and my siblings') favorite Christmas story, please indulge me once again. The best stories bear repeating, and often...

Our earliest Christmas memories were happy ones. Mama made it very special for Daddy, who had grown up hungry, cold and poor. She went a little overboard, even with just a single income on a postal worker's salary. The Sears and Roebuck catalog yielded up tinsel, ornaments, a tiny nativity scene and spray snow for the windows. Perry Como crooned from the record player as we danced around the tree. Sugar cookies, fudge, peanut brittle, brazil nuts...need I say more? There was a blight, however, in the background that us little kids did not understand at the time. Our Mama was angry, for what reasons, we did not know. The house we grew up in looked like a hospital -- clean and sanitized daily from top to bottom. The porcelain on the toilets began to be dull from all the scrubbing. There was plenty of crying over spilt milk. Don't spill the milk, because that's when earthquakes occurred. In later years, I learned that in those days our parents were coming to an impasse -- over time, anger makes cracks form in even the strongest foundations. 

The most inexplicable part (though where the roots started) of our Mama's anger was when we visited our Grandma, way up in Illinois. We'd drive for many hours to get there in our tiny car, usually a Volkswagen Beetle. Us kids would sleep in the back, cuddled like so many kittens in a pile. The trip would begin pleasantly, but within a day or two there would always be a fight between Mama and Grandma. It would start small, then escalate to what sounded like two cats killing each other in the kitchen. Everything went sour from there. I didn't understand the dynamics of the hurt, shamed, bitter adults that surrounded me, but I knew that there was nothing good about it. Our simmering, volatile Mama had deep, mysterious wounds. I loved being a kid, but I didn't think that I wanted to be a grownup. 

We grew up in our local church, dutifully sitting in the pews every service. Daddy was head of the boy's group that met each week. We had a form of religion, but there was something missing. Then things began changing in our church. A revival isn't a bunch of scheduled meetings, it's when God starts taking out peoples' hearts of stone and replacing them with hearts of flesh. One of our uncles visited one week and brought shock waves to Mama when he said: "Judy, you go to church all the time and you carry around that big ole Bible with you, but you hate your own Mother." She was struck by the fact that she had been forgiven by God, but had not forgiven her Mother. God instantly gave grace for her to lay down her bitterness, and that was the first miracle. Again, we were kids and not fully cognizant of what was happening, but we noticed that the house started blooming. The cold, sterile walls mushroomed with color. She started painting, wallpapering, sewing beautiful clothes, humming while she was cooking. Daddy and her started sparking, holding hands, giggling. I knew there was a God, when I spilled a big glass of milk one night at supper and she happily jumped up and grabbed a towel to clean it up. No earthquakes. It was in this new environment that our already-sweet Daddy announced one day that he had become a Christian. We thought he already knew Jesus, but apparently he had not. He could be found on his knees in our freezing spare room, his Bible getting lovingly worn out from reading and re-reading the passages. Their marriage was not just repaired, it was ignited, sometimes embarrassingly so. 

That first Christmas, after all that, we took the long trip to Illinois to visit Grandma and our step-Grandpa. We played Carpenters Christmas tapes and sang along as the miles went by. Things had changed drastically in our family. There was love, warmth, peace, but I pondered how it would be, up there with Grandma. As we pulled up to their snow-blanketed townhome, the light spilled out the door as we all hugged and unloaded. Eventually, things calmed down inside and most of us were in the living room except for Grandma and Mama. I leaned up from my chair and looked into the kitchen to see them bear-hugging, something I had never observed in my entire young life. Tears were streaming down their faces, but no words. Grandma lived many more years and our visits became more frequent, but they never fought again. 

"The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned." Matthew 4: 16 

Christmas has come.   

It's Not Paint, It's Insulation

I'm assembling projects for 2024, as if there's not enough to do already. When I still had a thyroid, I never anticipated that just hauling in groceries for two people and fixing my hair would become such chores. I have two buckets of paint staring me in the face, something I should have never bought. I like to purchase those little paint samples at Lowes and Home Depot, slather them onto foam boards and then stare at the ideas until something strikes me. This causes us a lot of problems. 

It started with the fact that I mostly live in our study. It is a gorgeous room, in our old Victorian house. When we first bought this place, in 2012, Ken found a huge, ancient painting in the barn. It's a mystery -- a picture of several old men gathered around a stove at a feed store or something. We stuck it above the mantle in that room, before I decided on colors. Ken decided he wanted everything to match that painting, to feel like a man cave in there -- with textured, suede-colored walls and leather chairs. Clubby, sophisticated. That room was the worst one in the whole house. There was old wallpaper hanging from the ceiling and walls. Liz and I started scraping. We dogged it for a month, making some headway, but that stuff was not yielding much. One morning, I decided to prime everything with B-I-N primer, the Mack-Daddy of primers. It's oil-based, heady stuff. We got up on scaffolding and worked all day, painting and covering up all the nasties that were left from all that scraping. Ken arrived home, hollering something about why didn't we open the house up while we were exposing ourselves to toxic fumes. Liz and I were singing and basically hanging from the rafters, oblivious to the fact that the Elvis who was singing with us was not real. A massive headache took over my brain and I think Liz might have eventually succumbed to the porcelain. I recall doing many such events way back when I was pregnant with my various children. The grandmas would worry about the ladders, the heights, all the drama. I should have listened. One child has Aspergers, one is dyslexic, they all have ADD and one's a firefighter. What was I thinking? 

Either way, eventually I did a gorgeous, velvety suede finish on the walls. Sherwin Williams Portobello. Yep, looks like a mushroom. Ken built a whole wall of beautiful bookcases to house some of my books and I painted them SW Turkish Coffee. The room is warm and enveloping, a place you might go to smoke cigars or swill brandy. But we don't do that in there. It's my office where I work and practice my music. That's all well and good, except for the fact that when winter comes I get really sad about all the darkness. I scoured thrift stores and yard sales, coming up with amazing, Victorian-styled lighting. Lots of it. Doesn't help. The walls are sucking all the light into their vortex. It's a near miracle that this room has stayed the same color for a decade. I'm like the Navy -- if it's sitting still, it's time to paint it. I got on Pinterest and started perusing colors. I laid out a paint fan (I only own four or five of them, having begged them off of gullible people at the paint stores)...and then proceeded to buy about a dozen samples. God really intended me to live in a beach house, He did. When given the chance, I revert to colors that have something to do with water. There's a big blue-green sample that's been floating on my mantle for some time. And one day, at a weak moment in Home Depot, I went ahead and bought two gallons of the goody. If we hadn't had to rip a whole rotten floor out of the nursery and change-up all the holiday magic this year, I'd have had it painted by now. Problem is, I've had too long to stare at it. I think if I go ahead and do it, I'm going to end up re-doing it, another problem that my poor husband has had to contend with these 41+ years. He never yells about it...he really never complains much, just laughs and shakes his head. 

Meanwhile, the Amazon boxes are piling up, Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. Will I waste two gallons of paint, again? Only the shadow knows for sure...   

You're A Mean One...

I'm trying to figure out what we did before Amazon came along. My sister was the first person that I knew that bought from them, way on back there. I looked at it online and thought, meh, why pay for shipping? Then they figured out that people would still pay for shipping but in a monthly subscription, so they wouldn't notice that they were still paying for shipping. I'm now totally dependent on them for say, that elusive container of mascara that I misplaced, or some delicious, crunchy, non-GMO Amish popcorn that I can't get at the Walmart. Every year, when tax-time rolls around and I have to account for all my spending, I bow my head in shame at the amount of money that passes through my fingers via clicks on that Amazon site. I vow to do better next year. Then I also wonder how they're making money on that shipping part, when I have to make bonfires out of all the boxes that have overrun my house. Apologies to my neighbors, but at least I'm not crowding up the landfill? 

Christmas is upon us, with less than three weeks to go. Once again, I'm late to the party. Thank the Lord for Amazon, however. I've got a massive cold (or something) and can't breathe, so I sat on the porch and ordered most of our grandchildren's gifts within an hour. That should be criminal, but it's not. It's perfectly legal to be that lazy and sit in my rocker and order wonderful things that will be delivered right to our door within a day or two. With all this extra time on my hands, why haven't I put up our tree yet? There've been years that I did it the day after Halloween. There have also been years that I decorated six other peoples' trees as well as my own, while painting a couple of peoples' houses in between Halloween and Christmas.  It's all Amazon's fault. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. My Grandma didn't have Amazon and she just put up one of those little ceramic trees that you plug in. The other Grandma didn't put up anything. I wanna be a Grandma. Oh yeah, I am.

Therefore, I will decorate. I will. And attend all the requisite parties, soirees, concerts and general hoopla that goes along with it. I'll at least show up, if I can find a way to get some oxygen through my nostrils in the next few days. The Grinch will be defeated!