29 Days and Counting

There are 29 days until Christmas.

There. I said it.

Twenty-eight if we're taking shopping days.

That's right, I went there.

The holidays are breathing down our necks, and have been since four days before Halloween. (Don't tell me you didn't notice the green and red tinsel-y twiddly bits not-so-cleverly hidden behind turkey plumes and things labeled "pumpkin spice" at your local supermarket?) It was all right there in plain sight near the automotive section a hop-skip from seasonal.

I imagine you've heard a chorus of "It's too soon!" from someone, if not uttered the words yourself, at least once already.

My son, bless-his-You-Can-Just-Get-Me-Socks-For-Christmas heart, has lodged his objection to any attempt to play holiday music or screen It's a Wonderful Life before he's stuffed himself with turkey.

Thanksgiving greases the wheels, but it doesn't really count as a holiday.

Not in our house, anyway. Even if the furnace went out or the Bumpass' dogs carried off the turkey, we'd find a way to celebrate even if we had to rely on burnt toast and popcorn.

Food holidays are different than gift holidays, or holidays that mark the passing of time.

Food holidays lack the hefty helping of angst that gift holidays and celebrations that mark the passage can wring out of even the most willing participants.

Too much pressure.

But every year I have hope. ...

Hope that I will find the perfect thing.

And that everyone I love will be happy, and healthy, and at peace.

And for once, I won't get bogged down in register tape and regret.

This year is no different. I make the same pledge to be truly present, not just a slave to the presents, fully expecting to fail.

I vow not to feel sad at the passage of time, and that this is the year the reindeer will trample the neighbors' roof and leave ours unsullied. Or that our Santa's elves no longer make toys.

So what if gift cards don't cause nearly the same heart swell as true gifts once did? Here they are ... a necessity of the age and a joy for the receiver.

And before I know it, I am able to anticipate the Capital H holidays without the nervous knots.

I am looking forward to snow.

And to my kids having days off from school.

I may not be so jazzed about staging a blackout to pry my kids from the isolation of screen time and drag them kicking and screaming the intimacy that is family time.

The memories, I tell myself, will be worth the battle.

I am looking forward to baking cookies with them. And making paper snowflakes. I'm even at peace with losing games of cards, and checkers, and chess to them, too.

Who could forget the snowball fights? Or dragging the Christmas tree home from the farm?

Or the farm store? That's memorable, too.

Christmas doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be the same every year. Maybe it's best if it changes.

Especially when we're missing something or someone important.

A mother. A husband. A child.

I will see my father and my sister, and we will remember our mom.

And it won't be nearly as sad as it sounds.

She loved this time of year. … And she hated it, too.

Up a creek

Amazon appears to have carved a new canyon in the commercial disruption landscape this week by cheekily announcing its long-anticipated decision on a city to locate its second headquarters will actually include a third HQ location as well.

Critics immediately sounded the alarm, saying the maneuver was calculated to get pit cities against one another in an effort to get as much tax benefit for itself as possible, while also gathering vast swaths of government data to use in future development plans.

One fear being business choice as we know it — Malls and what department stores remain there — will follow the Mom and Pop bookstores into Amazon’s dustbin. Leaving an untenable choice between high-tech indentured servitude and say a warehouse job in one of the many sprawling complexes that are quietly popping up around the globe. The shadow of Amazon looms large.

Not that I have any skin in this game. Nor am I in any position to stand in the way of progress. But I can't say I'm all that excited about drones choking the sky, raining down shoe-box sized packages onto our porches or into the state of the art delivery chimneys they must be developing to minimize theft from finding.

Did I tell you about the time my husband ordered tool sets from the online megastore, and what they delivered included one-third of a stripper pole, its installation instructions and a pallet of frosted eye makeup?

Another time maybe.

I’m not sure why but Amazon’s news has me thinking about my mother, and how she might have hated the company but taken some of her “mad money” and invested in its IPO anyway. She was all about offers you couldn't refuse.  Not that she wouldn't likely continue the shared family history of buying most of her books from bookstores and housewares from hardware stores.

From the percolators to toasters, it seemed almost every gadget in the kitchen one could plug into a wall socket she had procured from the same place my dad would buy penny nails and washers for drippy faucets.
There wasn't a widget you needed that our local mercantile didn't stock somewhere, even if the clerk had to dust it off to read the price tag.
I think I bought my first (and only) hand mixer at the very shop my mother bought her last and final whistle topped kettle.

I’ve mixed mashed potatoes and whipped cream (separately of course) with that $12 mixer for the past twenty-five thanksgivings, slowly at first and then giving my thumb a cramp trying to keep the lever at just the right location between speeds 3 and 4, because its motor had somehow slipped somewhere around the Thanksgiving Ought 2.

Why are you looking at me like that? It wasn't like Amazon offered a steady stream of gadgets until somewhat recently, whereas bookstores will probably seem like they existed in the good old days by the time we reach this new millennium's mid-century.

Everything is disposable these days.
I mean … that new iPhone you got in Rose Gold last year will be almost obsolete and entirely passe when the old apple tree introduces Sunshine Yell-O next year.

“I don't need a phone,” I say as I scroll through pictures in this meandering virtual catalogue.

I don't really need a new hand mixer, either, mine still works just as well (read terribly) as it did on Turkey Day Number Three. It could get through another.

But I put a pretty mixer of a trendy blue Easter egg color in my virtual cart anyway, and take a deep breath … before I abandon it.

If I don't get a 20 percent off coupon code in tomorrow’s spam, I'm going to the hardware store, where it turns out I can get a just as dicey a replacement for $10 on sale.

I think my mother would approve.

Payment in kind

We are not a demonstrative family. But from time to time the boy surprises me. He snakes his hand into mine and gently squeezes. “I love you, mom.”

It usually doesn't last long enough for me to question whether he has an ulterior motive, though I imagine this sudden burst of affection is payment in kind for some happiness he credits to my doing.

This time, after he let go, he disappeared into the cavernous house that was his cousins’, finding a few moments of freedom amid the family festivity. Freedom to secrecy in all manner of imaginary boyhood things.

His sister, who had also sidled up to me earlier, wrapped her arms around my shoulders to profess her love, was now winking at me from across the kitchen island. She found herself happily volunteered to unpack glassware and replace candles in votives. The planners could tell this wasn’t her first fancy party.

In another wink, she would help arrange charcuterie on a stone serving tray.

I may have been out of my element, but she was in hers. It was the first family fete that she’d ever attended that had an organizer and a spreadsheet checklist. She was in love.

The boy will be back, this time wearing a safety vest and holding a walky-talky. Unlike his sister, who is all serious business, he is gleefully squawking made-up commands into the box: “We got a 23-19 out here. REPEAT. A 23-19.”

His job, which he chose to accept, was to help park cars. “Help” being a word used euphemistically.

As guest cars approached, my son dodged behind trees as if playing a game of keep away.

Instead of trying to explain he’s wearing a high-visibility vest so he can be seen, I follow him around the yard begging him to stand still for a picture.

He's still young enough to be adorable.

His sister watches us from the kitchen window as she carefully builds a pyramid of macrons, creatively arranging them by where they fall on the color spectrum. She is happy to correct anyone who calls the tasty delights “macaroons,” explaining in detail the difference between the finicky almond meal sandwich cookies and the sticky coconut islands. She adds that her own attempts to make the confections have not been entirely successful.

She is trying not to sound like a condescending know-it-all.

Luckily, she is succeeding, though the guests won’t be put off by a precocious teen. This party, she will soon learn, has a wealth of guests who actually do know all things.

And in the company of people who are so charmed, one can witness the difference between the type of confidence that breeds benefactors and the type that fuels charlatans.

They don't have much they haven't already proved.

In fact, they will find her charming.

I know, because many of them will approach me with their impressions, which are laced with superlatives.

I thank them for the compliments, assuming they think I am responsible. But I take no credit for either of my children. It's hard to explain that for most of our lives together, it's they who have molded me. 

At the end of the evening, when I snake my hand into theirs and give a squeeze, I feel the love without question.

It’s more intoxicating than the wine.

Sugar coatings

I’m not going to sugar coat this.

Mostly because I’ve reached an age where you say things like ‘I’m not going to sugar coat’ things. 

On the timeline, it’s somewhere between ‘I can’t believe I sound like my mother’ and ‘get off my lawn.’ It's just a hop-skip away from wearing purple AND red, and not quite managing to keep my lipstick from traveling to other parts of my face.

There’s nothing quite like counting birthdays in terms of new and more invasive (not to mention unmentionable) health screenings that are really just looking for c-a-n-c-e-r.

I thought only people my grandparents’ age refused to utter the word aloud. People my age are supposed to say it with an expletive preceding.

But then I looked in the mirror one day and saw someone who resembled my grandmother looking back.

Eventually, if we’re lucky, we might get there.

But there’s a checklist.

You mark your forties by getting the fatty deposits in your torso pressed into an X-ray machine that looks like an icebox door.

And before you know it you’re facing a date with a tiny camera, which will take a week to prepare for, and a day to get over once you’ve been given the “good” drugs that will make you forget what happened.

Katie Couric, bless her heart, has tried her best over the years (and on live television) to prepare us all for the potentially life-saving test we don’t want to think about let alone discuss.

But it doesn’t really help to know that “thinking about it” is worse than “prepping” for it; which is worse than the actual “procedure,” which entirely melts away — along with the room and the monitors and the strange coiled object on the tray behind the gurney— a few moments after an efficient nurse injects two types of amber liquids into your saltwater drip.

It doesn’t help because I don’t know how to turn off my thoughts, which always run away to the darkest place imaginable in the weeks leading up to any date circled on a calendar.

All the ‘what ifs' running rampant.

More circles on calendars.

I can only divert my attention for so long. The holidays are coming. Thanksgiving and Christmas. Too much could happen between now and then.

You just have to do it. Hold your breath and get through one day ... one test … one solution at a time.

And be hopeful that you wake up to a room full of smiling faces, who have only the best news to share. And that all your worry was  for naught.

A sip of ginger ale breaks through the haze, and I begin to remember where I am, and how to pull on my shoes. And there are smiling faces as well as jokes at my expense.

When I go home to my calendar full of circles, I will settle for a Netflix comedy as I root around in the leftover Halloween candy. 

Perhaps I’m not ready to give up the sugar coating after all.