by advicefrommarta | Dec 20, 2013 | Random Stories
Christmas Eve 1986 I was a freshman in college. I lived in a downtown apartment with my roommate Bill, his boyfriend Mark, and various other people who found themselves needing a place to stay.
We had a Christmas Tree decorated in ornaments rejected by Bill’s parents, ornaments made out of Legos, and garlands of cigarette packs. At some point in late November we had switched from Merit Ultra-Lights to Ritz by YSL recognizing how much more-Christmas like the green and gold box of the Ritz were than the soft blue packs of the Merits. The Merits were easier to string, but the Ritz added a touch of glamor. At the top of the tree, instead of an angel was a strangely colorized picture of me as a toddler. It was my first, and second to last Christmas tree and I loved it. We also had a nativity scene made from empty bottles of poppers.
We had planned a Christmas Eve dinner just for our family. I don’t remember most of the menu, but I know I made a cauliflower gratin with Gruyere cheese, the recipe came from Elle magazine. Our friend Danny (not to be confused with my husband) was living with us at the time and I went out around seven to pick him up from his video store job. It was a beautiful, snowy Christmas Eve and Danny and I decided to drive through Cherokee Park.
Somewhere in the park we were flagged down by a distressed girl about our age. She was carrying a brown paper bag. When we stopped the car she told us that her father had just had a heart attack and she needed help getting to him. I asked if she wanted a ride to the hospital and she said, “No, can you take me to my friends’ apartment, he’ll take me.” So we drove through the park. It was 1986, Danny and I had both just turned 18 and everyone we knew was at some level estranged from their parents. It made perfect sense to us that this girl needed our help, and it was Christmas Eve, how could we say no?
At this point I’d only been driving for about a year, it was snowing, Cherokee Park is confusing, and I’ve always had a lousy sense of direction. I felt like her directions were taking us in circles, but I wasn’t sure. Finally we arrived in front of an apartment building. Without getting out of the car she announced that her friend’s car wasn’t there. Could we take her to another friend’s instead. So, we made our way to an apartment on Bardstown Road, again following a bizarre set of directions known only to her.
Again, the friend was obviously not home, and so could we take her to her parents’ house. We drove through a typical subdivision, me asking for an address, her insisting she would just tell me when to stop. As you might suspect, we stopped in front of a house with no lights, and no cars in the driveway.
At this point, even Danny, a boy who has never said no to an adventure or a chance for drama, was losing patience. He told me later that he had turned around and peaked in the backseat and that her brown paper bag was filled with newspapers, and that there was an odor wafting off of her every time he turned around.
I announced that she could either get out of the car here, or we would take her to the hospital. She wanted to go to the hospital, and so we drove to Baptist East. When we got there she announced that she did not see her parents’ car and that they must be at a different hospital. I told her she needed to go in and check and see if he was there, and when she eventually left my car, we drove away.
We went home to our Christmas Dinner and Midnight Mass and the story became one more of those odd “remember whens” that you have with old friends.
I never saw the girl again, or figured out an answer for her odd behavior. But, a few years later I was at a party and told someone the story. He told me that not only had the exact same thing happened to him, but he had been at a fiction-reading, and someone read a story with the same situation, a situation he admitted was based in reality.
by advicefrommarta | Dec 13, 2013 | Family Life
One of the things I remember about the Newtown shootings last year is that I was going that afternoon to my daughter’s Girl Scout Troop. I could not wait to get to school and see my then six-year-old son, a boy the same age as most of the victims. I could not wait to surround myself with joyous Girl Scouts, only slightly older, and tell them all about the wonders of cookie sales.
I promised myself that I would not waste a single minute of the time I have with my children on being aggravated or annoyed. I would cherish their childishness, not “consequence” it out of them.
About ten minutes in to the Girl Scout Meeting I was ready to tie most of the girls to a chair. They had not heard about the tragedy and were being their normal selves. A group of 14 eight-year-old girls is, although very cute and fun, also pretty obnoxious.
I’m sure it wasn’t more than a day after that horrible day that my children were in trouble.
Whenever we, as parents, hear about a child who has died or is gravely ill, or a parent who has died, or a horrible tragedy like Newtown we make these vows to ourselves. We promise ourselves that we will not be so rushed or hurried, that we will treasure every moment.
But, then real life comes in to play. Our children are loud, they talk back. They are disrespectful and messy. They dawdle when we have a schedule to keep, they hit each other and will not leave us alone for five minutes to pee (yes, still).
So, we do not treasure every minute. We do not let things slide. We impose consequences and have serious discussions with dos and don’ts. When we hear about a child who has died too soon we feel so much guilt about sending our own child to his room. We think about how if today were our daughter’s last day we would want it to be filled only with hugs.
But, today, almost exactly a year after the Newtown massacre I went back to my daughter’s Girl Scout Troop to talk about cookies. They listened and took notes. They remembered things from previous years, they were polite and worked well with each other. They are now mainly nine and ten, and they are still just as cute, but less obnoxious.
The reason they have grown and are growing in to reasonable human beings is because we parents have gone about our lives. We have imposed consequences along with hugs and kisses. Our children have grown up.
The children of Newtown were not allowed to grow up. So, yes, remembering that horror I’ll give a few extra hugs and kisses. But I won’t feel guilty for not living each day with my children as though it could be their last.
I’ve been given the gift of time with my children, and I will treasure it, and use it, even if that means sometimes acting like I’m not.
by advicefrommarta | Dec 11, 2013 | Family Life
For most of my life I’ve been led to believe that I have a great imagination. In my younger years, thanks to parents and unauthorized parties and boyfriends and unauthorized other boyfriends, and minimum wage employers and unauthorized hangovers, I came to discover that I’m a pretty good liar. Yet one crucial element of parenthood completely throws me for a loop – the benevolent imaginary creature- the Santas and Tooth Fairies.
In my defense, I did not have a lot of reference material from my own childhood. As Jews, we didn’t have Santa Claus. From an early age my parents were very clear that Santa was make believe but I probably shouldn’t tell that to other kids my age. We lived in Kentucky and being a Christ-killer was hard enough without also being a Santa-killer.
I did not start losing teeth until the middle of second grade, and I was a second child and my mother had pretty much lost patience with the whole thing by then. So, when on my second or third tooth I got a note from the tooth fairy, written not only in my mother’s handwriting, but also in the green pen that she used for grading student papers, I was pretty aware that the Tooth Fairy did not exist (although I continued to pretend to believe, because, come on a quarter is a quarter).
When my own children were born I became very worried that if I didn’t tell them the truth about Santa they would feel left out, but if I did they might accidentally spill the beans to non-Jewish children. So, I very carefully answered every Santa question with “I don’t know, I’ve never had Santa, you’ll have to ask your friends.”
Miraculously, it worked. But then, came the fairies. My daughter started believing in fairies and wanting to bake cookies for them, and leaving them notes. “Hooray!” I thought. My chance to help my child believe in childhood magic. But, that meant writing notes back, and arranging for fairy visits while were were gone, and somehow inventing names for fairies. Harold Mookey, I invented a fairy named Harold Mookey, that’s how bad I am at this stuff.
Then came the Tooth Fairy. I couldn’t figure out how the Tooth Fairy knew about lost teeth, so I invented the Tooth Fairy hotline. Then my daughter thought maybe if I was calling the Tooth Fairy hotline I could tell them she wanted a sleeping bag for her doll instead of money. So there were rules about presents for your first two teeth and money thereafter. It all became way too complicated, way too quickly.
Then this year, after a hiatus, my children, at seven and nine, have been bringing up Santa again. My seven-year-old has been telling me that he doesn’t exist. I’ve kept to my line of “I don’t know, I’ve never had Santa. What do your friends think?” My nine-year-old though has been speaking wistfully of Santa. Of how you can ask Santa for anything and he brings it, of how a friend of hers got an iPad from Santa.
There are four things about Santa I have never understood. 1. How do you explain that Santa isn’t bringing something expensive that you don’t want to buy? 2. How do you explain that Santa brings nicer things to wealthier kids than he does to poor kids? 3. If you’re going to buy your kid an iPad for Christmas, don’t you want the credit? 4. Why? Given how much trouble all the minor make-believe stuff is, why take the busiest time of year, the time of year the most filled with expectations and disappointments, and add in this insanely more complicated wild card that could come crashing down on you at any minute?
I’d had enough, and I figured at almost ten, if she tells a classmate the truth, it isn’t the end of the world. So, I said it, “Honey, Santa did not bring her an iPad, her parents bought her an iPad. Santa does not exist and you don’t need an iPad because you use mine.”
The look on her face was pretty clear. She already knew Santa wasn’t real. She hadn’t been talking about Santa because she thought he was real, but because she sort of wished he was. She sort of wished she could believe in something a little magical that makes dreams come true.
For a brief minute I kind of got it. I kind of understood why other people put themselves through this. My guess is, if the kids and their friends have figured out Santa, they’ve probably figured out the Tooth Fairy, too.
My hope is that when they grow up they won’t feel like they missed out on the magic of Santa or the Tooth Fairy. My hope is that they’ll think their childhood had a different kind of magic. The kind of magic that can only be brought about by a fairy named Harold Mookey!
by advicefrommarta | Dec 5, 2013 | Family Life
One of the clearest signs that I am in my parents’ house is the word “oleo” pseudo-legibly scribbled in pencil on the backside of an envelope held on to the refrigerator by a magnet.
Oleo is a useful word to know if you’re living in the Great Depression, or are a crossword fanatic, as my father is. He writes it in place of both butter and margarine on the grocery list.
I once ran in to an aggravated friend in the grocery store. He is part of a passionate marriage that I greatly admire. But, his wife had created the grocery list and had not put it in any sort of useful order. Apples followed cereal, followed by toothpaste, then back to the produce section for broccoli and over to the bakery aisle for hot dog buns. It was all too much for him.
My own husband has a disgusting habit of spelling yogurt with an “h.” Seriously, with an “h.” I can barely stand to type yoghurt, that’s how gross it looks to me. Almost as bad as the vile “o” the British insist on putting in “foetus” as though the word “fetus” weren’t quite gross enough without it.
He adds the extra “h” because he lived in Holland, and he’s a geographer who studies milk and most geography texts are written in British English. I understand, but there are days when I see “yoghurt” scrawled over two lines on my nice, neat shopping list and I think, “Dear God, why did I ever get married? What was I thinking? Can I really live the rest of my life with a man who insists on not only writing “yoghurt” but writing it so large? Does he not know me at all?”
Then the next morning he is there, wrapped up by two children and a dog, all much too large to be snuggled in to our small bed. I think about how he worked from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm helping students who need this degree to make better lives for themselves. How he took time out of that marathon day to make sure his son’s last Hanukkah present wasn’t a bust. I think about how hard he laughs at even my smallest jokes, even when they’re directed at him. I hate that disgusting extra “h” but for today, it is no longer a deal breaker.
When I go home in a few weeks I hope my parents run out of oleo. I hope my dad notices it and writes it down. I hope my parents won’t mind if I secretly slip their grocery list in to my suitcase, to hold on to for a rainy day when I need to feel like I’m home.
This is what no one tells you about love. That it can all come down to the way you fill out a grocery list.
