Celebrating in style

I think I miss holiday parties more than I should. 

Not that I miss the dressing up. Conversing with family and friends in the warm glow of festive decorations. Eating and drinking just a tad too much. Any remaining stress from the party preparation melted away with the first hardy laugh. None of that has disappeared. It's still happening, though perhaps in smaller, more subtle ways.

More ornate observances have gone the way of obsolescence. 

Those fancy fetes seemed rare in the before-times anyway. The gatherings I remember best, and miss most, amounted to an awkward pause in the workday when a few of my coworkers would chat about the things they had left on their To-Do lists as they wait in a line at the break room for a slice of pizza and a handful of sugar cookies. The parties would always last for about seven minutes before we'd return to our desks and eat in silence.

Is it weird to miss such an office holiday party?

The kind of forced frivolity at which we all used to scoff, they seemed to be just tinseled up coffee breaks designed by the very folks who may have already been working on our last, frazzled nerve. Nothing says holiday spirit like dunking on Dave from accounting.

Especially since there was always someone reminding you (usually Dave) as they filled their plates, that, in some past iteration, these parties used to be something grand. They'd be the highlight of the entire year, held in some grand hotel with catering and a cash bar. We'd go for scandal and intrigue. It would produce a story so salacious that it would be woven into the office lore and spread by successive generations of employees as if they were there.

Suffice it to say we were not our best selves.

It's a shame people don't remember how nice it was that Danielle made buckeyes every year. I hope we thanked her.

Sometimes I think when all this is over -- when we can lower our masks and truly embrace -- we may end up keeping our distance.

Eventually, we may even give up on the graduation of "normals" from new normal, to newer, to newest as we come to accept that some of the workarounds may suit us better than the old normal ever did.

I was thinking about this as I planned our running club's unofficial holiday party for the second year in a row. Unlike pre-pandemic years, where a panel of club officers voted on venues and menus and budgets, this time it was just me, plotting a course around the neighborhood for a winter evening tour of the local holiday lights. I would throw caution to the wind by bringing along a carafe of cocoa and a sleeve of paper cups. 

I hope this kind of celebration – a simple pleasure - will stick once the pall of this pandemic lifts. Because wearing a set of jingle bells from my running belt so the sound carries through the course as other like-minded friends follow along with their elf hats and Santa beards and blinking safety lights, will be a memory I cherish forever.

So you can bet when we can finally celebrate in style, I'll be there with bells on. 

All good-good

The news reached out and hit me like a fist:

bell hooks, the author, poet, professor, activist, and social critic who helped push feminism away from its white, middle-class worldview toward a more inclusive movement, died this past week. She was only 69.

The loss felt especially poignant to me as I steeled myself to celebrate the 18th birthday of my firstborn, who, on the eve of her coming of age, will come of age in a new, more unsettling time for women. She will be "Ittybit" no longer.

It seems like only a blink since this soon-to-woman joined our world. We remember how she came into it standing up. Asserting herself. How I didn't know her the way I thought I would just from having her swimming around in me for so long.

I'm not sure why, but the notion came as a surprise. As if such a thing weren't possible. That, somehow, this baby of mine wouldn't be a person separate from me starting on Day One. Or that intuition could only take me so far.  I didn't quite understand that the work of getting to know this new person would be the most laborious part of parenthood, but also the most gratifying.   

So we turned to books to help guide us on this journey. We thumbed through Spock and Sears as if they contain the perfect recipe for child-rearing. Indexed alphabetically for convenience. 

It was about this time that a gift arrived containing some of the most instructive examples of the kind of parents we wanted to be:

hooks' lyrical children's book "Homemade Love," introduced us to "Girlpie," and the trust parents can build around their families with unconditional love and forgiveness. With love, there was no hurt that could not be healed. It turned out to be one of the most comforting book we owned. The way her words came off the page and into the room helped soften the hard edges of our day. It soothed tears, lulled her to sleep, and invited pondering.


We read that book so often the pages became raggedly at the edges and the paper thinned where I'd traced the words. I knew all of them by heart. "Homemade Love" turned out to be my first and best field guide to parenthood. It was also an introduction to hooks' extensive work on the radical possibilities of feminism, race, and self-determinism and how it all interconnects through love.

For sure, her words comforted me in their artful and gentle reminders that transformation isn't all of a sudden like a bolt of lightning. It isn't delineated by things at all. It is a process of doing. A good life, while not free of suffering, has its basis in love.

"To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending."

"True resistance begins with people confronting pain ... and wanting to do something to change it."

All these years later, it occurs to me that “Homemade Love” was the parenting lesson that stuck with me best and made me seek out more. Though hooks' passing is most certainly a terrible loss, it is also a reminder that her life's work is an enduring treasure … one we can take with us wherever we go. One that new mothers will find and pass on to their children through the act of love.

She will always make you understand that it's never too late.

Elevation

Hah hah hah uhhha uhha haaaaaah.

The sound spells like laughter but it rakes through the old man's throat like cold air through a crack in the window. 

I listen for that sound the way I used to listen for silence when my kids were teacup-sized: Instinctively, hoping to avert trouble.

"Breathe through your nose."

If my voice sounds harsh, it's because I've said these four words at least forty times today and the knowledge that I will lose count of future repetitions is heavy.

Catching myself, I stop and try to practice a little of what I've been preaching. Letting a long stream of air soften my frustration, I start again:

"Dad, take long, slow, deep breaths through your nose. The machine is making the good oxygen you need. The room air isn't enough."

My father is attached to a machine that concentrates the oxygen from the air and feeds it to him from a lasso of translucent tubing. It irritates his nose and goes against every instinct he has to open a window and take long drinks of fast-moving air.

This is the new normal.

He doesn't live with me, but he's staying here while he ... convalesces.

We have no reason to believe there is a different word we should be using.

Still, it is not where any of us want to be. Complicated medical situations tend to send you on an unpleasant rollercoaster of emotions, going up and down, taking corners at jarring speed. It can be disorienting.

Everyone dies, of course. But we don't really get to choose the hill, let alone how close we'll get to the summit when that time comes. 

We don't know ... or even care to know ... how long that will be. Of course, we hope he stays for as long as necessary, but we will take as long as possible and count ourselves fortunate.

We have been fortunate.

"I'm the luckiest guy in the world," Dad tells his doctors as they help him struggle through the permanent effects of surviving lung cancer. "They found it when they could still cure it."

We knew that "cure" would come with caveats and complications that malinger: muddled thoughts, neuropathy, organ damage ... and other things that seem to come out of nowhere. 

I feel especially blessed he's so good-natured about the situation. Amazed, quite frankly, about how the darkest places make him focus harder on the tiny flickers of light. 

He's not angry at my frustration, nor is he deflated by the predicament of his child speaking to him in a parental tone. He just complies until his oxygen saturation returns and he is breathing more easily.

I relax when the panic in his voice is replaced by a story I've already heard a million times followed by a random question.

He's not a child, and my haranguing doesn't make me his parent. If anything feels familiar between caring for an elderly parent and caring for a child it;s how little confidence you have in either pursuit when you're just starting out.

"Don't get old," he tells me.

"I'd much rather that than the alternative," I sass back.

"Hey, do you have a rubber band anywhere?"

Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

It's been eighteen years since my last confession.

Wait ... I have the wrong etherial bearded guy. Let me try this again:

Dear Santa,

I still believe. But I must confess to feeling awkward about penning an inquiry of this sort so close to your proverbial game day. But here goes:

During the last score years, I have acted as secretary and scribe on your behalf with the express goal of indoctrinating the children in my household (as well as some in the extended familial orbit) toward adopting, in their own lives, some of the essential goodness of your legendary spirit.

Sadly, a majority of my accomplishments seem to have accumulated some degree of malcontent, especially when it materializes in those I've disappointed staring into the mouths of equines.

So by way of correction, if ever so slight, I would like to highlight some free and heartfelt desires of my own this holiday season.

But before I clear the air, let me first clear the dishes. There are so many of them. 

No matter how much you are tempted, I do not wish to find a new phone, souped-up computer, or a gimmicky gadget underneath the tree. My jewelry box is already filled with gems, though I wouldn't turn my nose up at polymer clay beads or a strand of macaroni for old times' sake.

Most of us don't need things. I'm sure you would readily agree with this statement if you didn't have such binding ties with all major retailers of American brands.

Not that I blame you. Someone had to keep the lights on in Santaland.

It's not all bad. The giving and receiving of things reminds us of the ongoing need to be grateful, kind, and forgiving. To remember and be remembered.

This is exactly what I'm thinking as I unpeel the paper accordion-wrap protecting some fragile object that has arrived, anonymously, by mail.

An eerie delight.

"Cloudberry Preserves," reads the jar's label. An illustration of a dimpled, peach-colored fruit reminded me of the dogwood berries that ferment in my yard and make the squirrels act drunk as they gather mouthfuls and run off.

I can guess who sent me this sweet delicacy and relax into the charm of its name. Hovering over the words that curve elegantly around the drawing. Smiling.

Until I picture the toast crumbs and jam-slicked knives, which I can foretell will adhere to the countertops or wherever else utensils become abandoned. If there is a plate, perhaps it will turn up before spring. Likely far from the kitchen sink. Hopefully, I'll find it before it goes through the wash in a tangle of bedsheets and comes out in a thousand pieces.

I know these aren't really the things you tally to make your final determinations. I don't tend to keep track of them either, despite the fact that they tend to stack up, especially during the holidays.

But maybe you can convince the elves that we don't really need their magic as much as we'd like them to rinse a plate, empty the dishwasher or wipe up a spill now and again.

This benefits you, too. I'll have clean plates for cookies.