Feast or famine

You’ve done it again! Another holiday season is on the wane. Congratulations! 

If you are anything like me, you are putting your house back in order. You’ve no doubt instructed the children (if still living at home) to take all the things you remembered to wrap up to their rooms and find all the other things you forgot you had bought as you are taking the new vacuum cleaner your husband bought for …. himself … around the house just to drive that dirt home.

“You know … this model has a quiet function?”

No matter how you managed, you managed. And that’s reason enough to celebrate.

Hopefully, it was different than last time.

I say, hopefully, because I know that it was. Nothing ever stays the same.

Which, if we think about it just enough, can lighten some of the burden.

Did you skip a step this time? Perhaps you left some decorations in the storage bin or untangled yourself from that extra strand of holiday lights. 

Maybe you made one fewer dessert for the big dinner?

Or maybe … like us … you started something new. Like making your Big Night into a Feast of Seven Potatoes …. “Because we are Irish and dad hates fish.”

I thought about this as I searched for fridge space; the inside of which is packed tightly with things leftover from other dinners, and the outside now dotted with magnetic derrières of farm animals thanks to my daughter and the sense of humor she certainly inherited from my side of the family. 

My uncle, at another Christmas decades past, would have made a joke about politics being all about horses’ asses in wordplay: “Defeat goes over defense before detail.” 

My mother, his sister, would have spent hours making a plain cheesecake just for him, and my father would have spent seventeen minutes constructing a tiny sign of a Santa-hatted skull with crossbones out of a shirt box, a toothpick and the tail-end of the Magic tape.

We may have had stressors, but we didn’t have strife.

We didn’t make a cheesecake this year. 

It seemed a little too rich for our blood, which is already loaded with more than enough cholesterol to warrant the prescribing of a statin. 

Statin, I say the word over and over, tricking myself into believing it is just like a lovely fabric that feels good when fashioned into pajamas.

Still, there are enough riches for ample embarrassment.

 

The numbers of gifts may be fewer in quantity but their complexity and cost has increased on a relatively expected trajectory. 

We want for nothing. Not even time to waste. And as we recline in front of the flatscreen, settling in for “Love Actually,” it is abundantly clear we have plenty.

“EIGHT IS A LOT OF LEGS, DAVID!”

As the room echoed with movie-line dubs, I flipped through a box of index cards written out in my mother’s handwriting. Some things were familiar. The cheesecake was there. As were some other special desserts she made on occasion. Some recipes were foreign, like “The President’s Mac and Cheese.” 

Perhaps, that one, like so many recipes in my folder of printouts, had been an idea that’s time never came. 

We were alike in that way.

Also alike in the recipes that were glaringly absent. Like her recipe for beef stroganoff and potatoes au gratin. Things she made so often, she didn’t need instructions.

Truth is, we do want for some things.

Perhaps, a few years from now it will be recipes for our Feast Seven Potatoes.

No Good Deed

“Happy BIRTHDAY!”

This was a most auspicious occasion. On this day my Ittybit, a child born to me roundabout YESTERDAY, reached the age of majority.

The phone seemed to know what an epic moment this was. Because at its whim, balloons took flight while the letters I had carefully spelled out undulated in a crescendo of animation; each one becoming bold for just an instant before tripling in size, and finally, settling back into a standard sentence-like formation.

It was like a tiny party in the ethosphere.

It was also a little sad. 

This was the first birthday in her whole little life she has spent away from home … away from family. … away from me.

And even though I may have had grand plans to surprise her with something elaborate and exciting – like one of the many classroom-sized birthday parties of her youth –  it wasn’t something I was able to wrangle since the timing and logistics of her new adult life aren’t within my power to commandeer.

As it should be, I realize without lament.

Still, I want her to know we are thinking of her, but with something isn’t just some nebulous thought. And so I scour the internet for a gift she will like, and that I can schedule for delivery at a precise time on The Day Of All Days.

I land on flowers. Which makes me kind of giddy, I’m not going to lie.

“THIS is PERFECT!!!!” (Yes, in my mind all those exclamation marks and capitalizations appeared along with a fist bump I probably executed in real life after entering all my credit card details). I didn’t think I could go wrong: I know her favorite flowers and her favorite color scheme. And I know they would be a gift – even from her parents – that she would adore in the moment and for the seven to 10 days they are guaranteed FreshTM.

Of course, what I didn’t know was where she would be during the 12-5 p.m delivery window. The plans she told me about, which included a work party on her actual birthday and two more days of her internship afterward, which lead me to assume she would be at work, and that I could safely send it there.

Worst case scenario, I thought, would be that she misses the delivery and receives her flowers the next day.

But no … the worst case scenario is that she is assigned to work from her dorm that day, and she has conveniently taken the day after off, just in case the results of her evening of welcome-to-the-excesses-of-adult-beverages leads her to a morning filled with stomach upset and a throbbing brain trying to escape the confines of her cranium.

*Phone rings* (THIS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE CHILDREN NEVER USE THE AUDIO PART OF THEIR PHONES UNLESS SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG).

I take that back … THE WORST CASE was that since she signed an NDA for her job, she didn’t mention that it was a clean facility where deliveries of cut flowers would be frowned upon.

“MOM! MOM! OMG MOM. FLOWERS. CAN. NOT. GO. THERE!!!!”

“Yes. Your mom, who loves you, just handed you a HUGE problem on your birthday. … But don’t worry, I will fix it.”

Somehow.

And somehow … after six phone calls to the florist; three text messages to the delivery driver, countless minutes on hold, and finally a herculean interception by one of her coworkers … I have fixed what I broke.

Past, Future and Presents

The deadline for submissions of pictures for the high school yearbook was at hand, and the boy had pushed off deciding.

I didn’t want to pressure him  … again. But this felt like a momentous occasion and I wanted him to take it seriously.

He was keen to make cheeky jokes about his future, binging on beer and games of chess at college as he slouches toward adulthood.

In addition to The Official Portrait SelectionTM … There was also the matter of a message from home, consisting of an uplifting missive about this milestone and a photo from his childhood.

Now, some of the blame was mine, of course. It didn’t help that despite taking a bazillion photos during his formative years, I hadn’t managed to create physical albums for him to thumb through. Instead, I had to comb through The Cloud and find a smattering I could send him through text messaging.

“Just pick something. I don’t care.”

To which I replied with the inclusion of one particularly ADORABLE picture of him (age 6) displaying a copy of The Dangerous Book For Boys with his scrawny, Sharpie-tatted arms akimbo; and wearing a newsboy cap sideways (so it gave the impression of a beret).

“OHMYGODNO!”

How prescient of me, Right?

Two things can be true simultaneously: 1) High School IS NOT the best years of your life, and 2) You may stumble on this dusty yearbook in an old cardboard box some decades from now and thumb through its pages with a minor amount of fondness.

 

Because in the words of everyone’s mother since time immemorial: “You never know.”

This is why when he narrowed the parameters of what he would consider an acceptable image from his formative years: Infant or toddler photos only – no evidence he had ever attended school. And nothing - NOTHING - that could be construed as having any degree of foresight into his temperament. The happy, silly-faced boy who matched the ideal of a happy childhood … was just too embarrassing.

He sat at my side as I fired up the computer, and began scrolling through the old online archives.  

There was Newborn Him, wrapped burrito-like in a blanket … one eye squinting.

And Infant Him propped upright in a basket … the other eye squinting.

Oh, and Six-Month-Old Him reflected in a mirror, his tongue sticking out like a rascal who was going to be (Capital T)rouble. 

“OMGODSOCUTE.”

“Did you ever take photos of me that were just … I don’t know NORMAL?”

I quickly swiped past the one of Toddler Him howling in delight just before dropping a cell phone into the dog’s water bowl.

That’s when I landed on a photo of Toddler Him and His Papa, my father. It harkened to a scene in my head from "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." The two of them snowshoed, trudging along a cross-country ski trail. They had exchanged hats. My dad had the boy’s Nordic earflap hat perched on top of his head, while my son struggled to see through the vintage ski cap that made Anabel Moriarty famous.

We were both silent.  In my mind, the picture could have been a scene out of a Robert Frost Poem: My father with my son, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. 

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

“This is the one,” he said with a catch in his voice. "You can send that one ...

“Unless you find one of us together at the pub with a beer, playing chess.”  

Many happy returns

 “I chose wrong,” said the boy as he strode through a crosswalk, dodging cars and trailing behind. The three of us, now in full jog, were headed toward a wall of sliding glass doors. Truth be told, her brother hadn’t needed much convincing. 

When his sister, freshly back from college, asked if he wanted to join us for some pre-holiday shopping, he smiled slyly and asked, “Whose car are we gonna take?”

“Dad’s. He’s joining us, too”

The menfolk were game even though she had warned them the quest would involve all manner of things that she knew might be irritating; things like darting to various goods stores, sorting through women’s clothes and cosmetics while visiting one particular department store she would insist on pronouncing with a flourish. 

Her brother would chaff at the sound of it. 

We laughed. He laughed. And the doors swung open. In we went — our family. 

I grabbed a handbasket as she perused the first bank of merchandise … an island of misfit toys.

Their father was the most self-protective; he grabbed a double-decker cart, declaring his mission would be to corral all the things we’d managed to forget during three trips to the grocery store over the span of two days and headed toward grocery items.

The boy hung back as if straddling a fence … should he go with us past the “unmentionables”  or should he go with his father toward electronics?

The Ys disappear… only to reappear In phone calls seeking our locations, and then in person a few aisles later. 

“Again, I feel like I have chosen the wrong path,” the boy announces as he tugs at the handle of the basket I am lugging around, indicating by a delicate force the universal language of chivalry.

He will make himself useful by carrying the load.

 “I CAN ALSO show you the forty-six-thousand-inch TV dad would like SOMEONE to fit down the chimney.”

And so we spent the better part of an afternoon chasing each other down aisles looking for hot chocolate and cozy socks. 

Fielding phone-call requests for guidance from the pet food department (yes, Virginia, there is a Kibble Clause, and also there is more than one aisle of dog food brands).

Sending text directions to the store, and more specifically, the parts of the store we had migrated since last he saw us.

And recreating the viral videos we’ve all of the shoppers in search of something fantastic …. Like “a reindeer sculpture that is tiled in disco ball mirrors but rolling on its back” … and finding the very last one in stock.

Of course, we left most of the stores empty-handed. Somehow, the joy we had of being together shopping barely translated to sales. But all was not for naught.

We had broken the ice. Gotten our feet wet in the shallow end. And retreated to a warm car and laughter.

We may not have said YES to the faux-topiary dog sculpture made almost entirely of astroturf, but we managed to cross a few things off of the list. We even found a few reasons to make a happy return. 

Read ‘em and sweep

The girl’s face lit up my phone smack-dab in the middle of a random Tuesday.

I didn’t panic. 

I switched my audio to speaker and perched the phone on the edge of a table so I could continue to push a broom with both hands.

I had been doing busy work … pushing dust and debris into little piles around a cement floor as I waited for a technician to arrive, who would tend to the more necessary work of the enterprise. 

She had been texting me with a litany of minor annoyances while I pecked out a word or two between sweeps. 

I understood that she had been struggling with registering for next semester’s classes and that she was taking a break from one of forty-seven thousand other things she does in any given week. She just needed to let off steam.

“Chell-ooooo,” she sang with a relaxed and happy tone, signaling that this rare phone call was more about efficiency than venting end-of-term grievances. “It’s just easier to talk than type,” she said with a labored sigh. All the words she had planned on typing would have cramped her hands if not necessarily her style.  

Of course, I was overjoyed to hear her voice.

She seemed in a good place: excitedly annoyed about the reality of her surroundings and wanting to debrief. There are so many glitches in this eternal matrix of matriculation. She unleashed a torrent of words that, had I been fluent in … *waves hands wildly* …  whatever it is she studies that is well above my Intelligence Quotient.

She is a wonder, and I have no doubt she will figure out the snags in her system.

I thought about the beauty of her enthusiasm as she flitted from topic to topic like a bird gathering seeds.

“Oh hey, check your phone. I’m sending you a picture.”

It’s a snowflake. The kind that’s folded and cut out of simple office paper. It is hanging from some artificial greenery with a loop of white curling ribbon. 

“What is that?” I ask, ready for the most obvious answer to be her response. “A snowflake, you dork.”

She is still able to translate Mom pretty fluently.

“Work has an angel tree. I always had so much fun when we’d pick them off the tree at school.”

She picked someone she understood completely: A teenage girl who needed a hat and gloves but wanted make-up and the funds necessary to shop for herself.

“The saddest things I think I ever saw were the gifts we volunteered to wrap from the well-meaning folks who donated to church fund drives. Regifted cosmetic sets with little-girl colors or dried-up old nail polish testers. The add-ons or freebies, that are only meant to entice consumers to upgrade their purchases. Nothing would have been better.”

So she is spending her lunch hour and part of her savings to build a care package out of the things that are rarely discounted. Perhaps it’s just stuff, but it’s also a welcome distraction while she’s waiting for her tech support to arrive.

 

Rhode trip

For days, a flurry of text messages pinged my phone at all hours. 

College roommates had planned an impromptu “Rhode” trip, and they asked me to join. 

The joy was palpable. Our phones parsed potential itineraries that included 360º views of vacation rentals, and menus of interesting restaurants, wineries, and clubs. Did we want to do any Historic Homes tours or scenic trails? They were all within walking distance. 

I answered every text with what I hoped would sound like an excited amenability rather than reserved detachment. 

Or worse. Outright fear.

It’s not that I didn’t care what we did, it’s just that I was happy to go along with anything … even if it was outside my comfort zone.

Like … yeah …I’m older now … and my body has delineated new and lower tolerances for things like noise and red wine, and it’s been a minute since I helped these ladies close down a night club … but I think we’re mature enough now to make some accommodations.

Even though I am still the oldest at …  twenty-seven.

Also, I checked: The bars all close at 1 a.m. posing no risk that we would find ourselves wandering around the downtown, in some state of inebriation, looking for all-night diners at 4 a.m.

I haven’t seen them much over the years, but when we do get together, it strikes me as stunning how little these women have changed. And not just on the outside. They have the energy of teenagers and the same verve for the excitement of life.

But as the approaching date drew near, the text exchanges stopped.

Fear struck my heart. 

The election?

I scoured their social media sites. A digital detective looking for clues. No sign of political leanings. None at all. 

Unlike mine.

What if they voted for TFG?

What if we couldn’t coexist in an off-season VRBO?

What if I couldn’t move forward with bygones?

What if it’s too soon to try?

I told my husband … maybe I would bag the weekend. Feign and illness. Pay my share and see myself out?

But as I was planning my exit, a new flurry of plans erupted. Arrivals, departures, carpooling specifics. The weather looks fine. Maybe we can stay an extra day. 

Before I could say I was feeling feverish, I was feverishly agreeing to all of it.

And somehow, within those few seconds, I was back in our old apartment. Remembering who we were: different in almost every way, but strong, vibrant, and bonded by the experiences we shared. So many I had forgotten about. So many that were clearly etched.

I was always the stand-off-ish emo-girl, fretting about the world going to hell in a handbasket. And they were always the free and fun-loving ones, who kept drawing me out of myself. 

We never even so much as the thought of forgiving another’s trespasses, since we hadn’t let them fester. Our differences weren’t something we ever really needed to overcome.

For two days, we ate and drank, laughed and cried, and we walked on cliffs instead of eggs.

It was glorious. And I was grateful to be there.

November surprise

Before I was bereft, I was annoyed.

No one wanted to cook, so I improvised. I made "sammiches": toast, lettuce, tomato, bacon, and cheese.

I had been feeding the washing machine all evening and the kitchen sink was piled precariously with dirty dishes.

I finished my meal between the first and third time I let the dog out into the backyard to chase the shadows brought to us by the wind and the return of Eastern Standard Time.

I cheekily vowed an end to the household assumption of clean dishes and laundered attire until they noticed such   assumed niceties were gone. Maybe this time it would stick.

A strange calm came over me after the polls closed and the returns trickled in.

The numbers started to add up around midnight, then they flooded the room.

The outcome didn’t feel like a surprise, but the numbness I felt about it, did.

Some have called the election of a man who ran on a platform of racism and misogyny, who acted brutishly and unscrupulously at every turn, and who has been called unfit and a fascist by his former aides, was … unfathomable.

I had fathomed. More than once.

And though I still believe that my fellow Americans possess the potential to be intrinsically good, if not always consistent in deed or speech, I similarly believed that people would listen to reason and be on the side of basic, if not always enumerated, rights.

I don’t believe that last part now.

Not after opening Facebook the next day and seeing a post from one of the nicest ladies I thought I knew, congratulating America for choosing to be great again by closing borders and cleaning house.

So often, we hear that if we want a better country, we need to be better citizens. This sounds hollow, especially as the civic gains of the last century—the ones that inspired the idea of American Exceptionalism—are steadily being rolled back.

Our City upon a Hill will have only  decrepitude to show for its years ... its integrity degraded and all remaining luster dimmed by gaudiness.

I don’t believe there is anything the Democratic Party could have done differently … whether it attempted to be more populous or more centrist, or if it leaned further left, or courted conservatism. We can’t stay mum about the ideals we have long stated we share, such as the rule of law.

I can’t believe it when the choice between candidates was as clear as a career prosecutor or a convicted criminal.

By the strength of the election numbers, it is indisputable that the real America is Trump’s America now.

I spent most of the day after the election tuning out people with microphones who sought to make sense of the aftermath … like normalizing a car that had broken through a living room wall by making it a couch.

Perhaps we can admit mistakes made in a game of politics, but I will never agree there is blame to go around.

There is right and wrong just as there is fact and fiction.

But the fight against injustice and cruelty is perpetual.

That’s when my phone rang.

It was an auntie … on my mother’s side. The “bougey” one from D.C. The one I disdainfully acknowledged as a teen but who I relish now.

She is the one who holds steady.

“Do you have time to speak?  How are you doing? Thank you for sending the photographs of the kids. …. Wow, they look so grown.”

 

She is busier than I am at the moment. Calling between Zoom book clubs and poetry readings.

She tells me she doesn’t have long to chat. She has a friend who is struggling with some tough health news, and they are meeting soon to talk about poetry instead of politics. She just wanted to check in with me.

Neither of us is thrilled about the election.

I don’t try to pick her considerable brain on what to expect this time. I know. But she surprises me and tries to pick mine:

"How do we move forward," she asked, not expecting an answer.

But I had one ready. Something she had said to me eight years ago.

“I have come to believe that all we can do is work on being kind and focus on being of service. Just like you are doing with your friend.”

She thanked me for being her “counsel“ before she headed off to do her part in the service of kindness.

After reconnecting, I went back to the solace of work. Saddened anew that until the sun would continue to rise for some of us, and while it does our lives would resume as if nothing had shifted.

I would end my silent strike by folding the laundry and attending to the dishes left in the sink.

The job ahead is not the same as before, but it’s still there.

Lather, rinse, repeat.