Sincere apologies

The optics were immediately unpleasant. Fresh-faced teens dancing around the Lincoln Memorial in bravado flagrante, openly mocking a Native American man beating a drum and singing.

Not a crime, indeed, but also not behavior in step with what any rational person would recognize as the intent of religious preparatory schooling.

A quick and direct apology from the school, along with a promise to investigate, in real time reinforced what was undeniable.

Contrition was called for and necessary.

But then the reporting changed incrementally and with small nuances as longer videos from different vantage points joined the online collection of evidence. The main narrative hadn’t changed: Hotheads on two sides, a peaceful drumbeat purposefully meandering into the middle.

Press releases. Interviews. Anger everywhere bubbling over.

But the facts in agreement remained clear and unsettling:

The kids, a large and boisterous mob from a Catholic high school, attempted to overwhelm the voices of the others using the same volume and ferocity of their inbound sideline taunts. The cherry on top is the red MAGA hats, which for many have come to symbolize the normalization of American racism in the new millennium.

Chaperones reportedly gave sophomoric advice and permission for students to escalate tension.

One student removed his shirt to lead a sporty “fight” cheer. Another made hatchet swings with his arm, clearly reveling in mimicking the Native American song. A third, and the most prominent, is motionless with a tight smile and sharp eyes — as deliberate as Marina Abramovic with her The Artist Is Present stare.

The ring of jubilant faces around this teen know what’s happening: he’s standing his ground. There are murmurs of immovability. They are kids and this is fun. They are the center of the universe, and they aren’t going to give an inch.

What we see over and over again is ugly and jarring, but also irksomely familiar. Snarky, entitled teens who are having a laugh at someone else’s expense. They don’t see the cruelty in their actions. They never see the cruelty, even when it's held up to them like a mirror.

Yet it is so apparent as the cameras roll. The cruelty has a pulse and a rhythm, if not a heartbeat.

Yes, these are kids. They have committed no crime for which they need a pass. But the behavior deserves scrutiny all the same. In religious texts, we might start with “...whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ...”

As I watch the media turn this new information about the encounter into the familiar, time-worn defense “boys will be boys,” I can’t help but think how much worse it is to see the undeniable and watch as good people deny its existence.

Thing is, we don’t want to see these boys lose their futures over their adolescent awfulness any more than we want to see black children murdered for buying candy.

But perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst learning experience for them if we temporarily block their path with an immovable mob of crossed arms, determined faces and similarly reassuring smiles.

They need not worry. This ugly picture might haunt these boys in perpetuity, but with publicists and time it won’t keep them from having the life of privilege and opportunity they have come to expect.

The system is ready, willing and able to give them the benefits of not only doubt but also of any dubious defense they can pay to put forward. No one will ever mistake them as someone who doesn’t belong.

And that's the real shame.

None of us should seek to belong to a club that takes its dues by extracting from humanity.

Afterglow

I am pretending not to care that the Christmas-flavored water bowl is still standing tall and festively dressed in my living room. The lights are still glowing. 

Twice a day I replenish the liquid meant to keep the tree’s needles from falling out prematurely, though I suspect the Frasier fur has ceased taking any nourishment of its own some time ago. I’m keeping it full because all the free-range quadrupeds in the house prefer it to the flat tap they have to endure the rest of the year. Who am I to end the party early?

The working plan is to have all its adornments disassembled and packed away before Valentine's Day. 

Take small joys where you find them. 

Life can be such a drag. Like having to drag in all the boxes from the garage, figuring out which ornaments (that may or may not have been lightly chewed by dogs) get to return to a very cold storage for another year.

It’s a tough decision, and one that I have put off — on at least one occasion — until St. Patrick’s Day.

I’m not sure how Marie Kondo would weigh in, but I feel that only keeping those things that bring joy leaves entirely too much room for disappointment.

You know ...like when the kids spill grape juice on the joy-filled rug. When you love every single object, each loss must be equally amplified. Aside from an extra lap with the broom, no one really cares when the dog chews up the recycling. 

And what about when that joyous thing could be literally defined as clutter?

Thus far the son’s third (or fifth) Santa Letter, written hastily and last-minutely on the back of a cash register tape, continues to make the cut.

It seems unlikely to ever face the revolving file as the missive has historically attained prime real estate space, front, and center since  it was first drafted.

I think it’s the tell-tale pink line meandering down the left side that makes the letter extra festive and rare.

Not that a decommission is impossible. The construction paper bat headband made for a preschool Halloween party seven years ago never saw the light of our LED Christmas spread this year. That was a notable first. However, the turkey visor made from the outlined hand of a kindergartner stayed in the clutch last year.

Well ... not that anyone besides myself noted the absence. 

Not even me, truth be told. It must have made its way into the box labeled optional. … the one that gets opened and closed in one fell swoop. The one that has last year's Christmas cards and gift tags and other various objects a non-depression-era person might typically toss.

The box doesn't really have a label. That would take more organization than I have the patience for. 

It's the same chore, year after year. Usually done in solitude when I am procrastinating some other obligation. Not that I don't enjoy the tiny lights that almost convincingly pretend to glow as if they were incandescent.

Flawed logic and dream sequences

The boy isn't living up to his potential.

At least, that's what his teacher called to say at 2:16 p.m. -- about a minute after class was dismissed -- last Friday afternoon.

I'm sure I wasn't supposed to laugh, but I find nervous reactions of the parental sort are hard to contain. The stress of getting good grades, which will lead our kids to better colleges and opening up the best life possible seems to be overwhelming in this day and age of disruption.

This is why I usually close my eyes and plug my ears and try and empty my mind of all the things I can't control... 

Such as how to get my son to care about evaluating numerical expressions involving decimals ... or which homework assignments he has yet to complete ... or how to improve his god-awful penmanship.

You know .... like I'm taking it for granted that his teacher is the only human on the planet who can make out his hatch marks, which are forever decreasing in size as they trail at a diagonal across a smudged loose-leaf page. 

You know what happens to those who ASS-U-ME?

Apparently, I wasn't surprised by the phone call or the concern. And it's not that I don't take it seriously. 

I mean ... who isn't worried their son will prove to be a failure to launch and spend the rest of our natural lives living in the basement, playing video games, and doing deep dives into the dark web? 

Maybe you can tell, I've been waiting for this shoe to drop.

The boy follows in the shadow of his sister, whose school work, while not beyond reproach, left little for a sixth-grade science teacher to desire.

Hers was on time.

Legible.

And mostly accurate.

And she had taken great pains to correct the things that she misunderstood in texts she could trade for extra credit.

My son, however, doesn't really aim to please.

Any circle on the target is fine.

Doesn't have to be near the center.

He aims to finish. Quickly.

And without double checking to be sure he handed it in to be graded. 

You know that school teacher in "The Christmas Story?" The one who dances about Raphie's imagination as he dreams about the A-plus, -plus, -plus grade she will give him for his preternaturally eloquent essay on the attributes of possessing "a Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time?” 

Well, the not-so-fictional teacher of this story might very well have celebrated my daughter's cerebral output with better than perfect scores, but the score she had to settle with my son was a little more to the point.

And it was just as blunt as it had been for Ralphie: He'd shoot his eye out ...only the "I" my boy would shoot out would be the "Incomplete" he'd get for all the homework assignments he'd neglected to hand in before the marking period ends.

"But I finished them," he protested as I turned off the TV and fanned out a stack of pages 100-year-old-tree deep that I had extracted from his book bag. None of which had been inscribed with a red mark or frowny face. "Doesn't that count?"

"Only in flawed logic and movie dream sequences."

Top of the world

I was laughing. Giggling really. Begging someone to take a picture ... to record this moment. But I had the camera in my back pocket, and I had retained the sense to leave it there even as I had let one inhibition slide.

Surely this wasn't the top of the world, but it might as well have been.

Maybe the air was thinner up here? No. Couldn’t be.

I must not have been thinking clearly.

My only excuse.

That had to be at the root of my current predicament. My brain had somehow detached from all of the synapses that should have kept me tethered to reality, or at least allowed my body to remain planted, cross-legged, in a comfortable chair, sipping lukewarm coffee, as I waited for the fun to be over.

This is, after all, in line with the established bylaws my constitution, which have been in place since the moment a person wearing a mask and latex held a pruny bundle of joy in front of my face and declared: “It’s a girl!”

It took me a while to snap out of it.

When I did return to my so-called self, I turned my head and realized I was maybe 40 feet taller than everyone around me. 

And the mantra I’ve repeated since birth in memoriam, MOMS DON’T PLAY — words that have kept me from literally following my children up jungle gyms and down slides — had failed me.

I shook my head hoping to clear it.

I had the sharp recollection of climbing hand over hand up the rock wall, carefully trying to stay as close to it as possible. Spreading out my weight in the hopes of cheating gravity.

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d make it half way; I had absolutely no inkling I’d climb right up to the bell-ringing tip-top.

But there I was, peering out over the pinnacle edges of engineered rock, slapping my hand silently at the rope’s anchor trying to make a celebratory sound.

Then I looked down ... and immediately realized the reasons why the professionals tell the amateurs to avoid that very thing:

Rapid heart rate? Check.

Vertigo? Check.

An overwhelming sense of terror? Check.

Inability to move any part of my body even a fraction of an inch? Check.

I was frozen in place, 40 feet up, waiting for someone in my entourage to capture this moment for posterity.

Which, with a shrug and a you-should-probably-come-down-now, my-neck-is-getting-tired, wasn’t going to happen.

Eventually, my senses returned, and I shifted the weight that needed to change to start my descent.

Slowly and steadily returning to the ground with a whisper-soft landing.

Oddly, that moment of realized safety was when the adrenaline finally surged and left me shaking.

I know why they call it "a rush."

In my case, it’s also knowing full and well that my kids, having not seen for themselves, would not believe that I had literally climbed a wall.

I’d have to do it again.

Seen and not heard

I haven't seen my son all day.

Unfortunately, this is not an unusual occurrence. Technology being what it is, and sites such as “LOL Cats” taking up more time in our consciousness than any single feline we have no obligation to feed deserves.

But this was different. My son wasn’t home. He had taken his bike and driven off, muttering something about the library and the Entreiky Ofnydne.

I may be wrong about that last bit. Probably wrong.

Prior to his disappearance, I only heard his voice once. It echoed through the hallway and into my bedroom early this morning, dulled by sleep but sharpened with alarm when he noticed the presence of light in the sky.

This is also not unusual.

"What time is it? I’ll be late. I can't be late!"

But his willingness to venture out into the world … is a little out of character.

I didn't have the heart to play tricks on him (even though I am ALWAYS of the mind to do just that), so I told him the truth: He had an hour to get to the library for the very important, ultra shrouded in mystery, literary extravaganza that the tween librarian had devised ... and that I knew nothing about. Even though I had visited the website and scrolled through vacation week offerings.

Nada.

Not that the librarian is a tween. He is just a clever bibliophile, catering to a crowd of soon-to-be teens who have sort of aged out of story time but still kinda believe in magical creatures ... like Santa’s elves and Amazon’s Free Shipping.

But I digress.

This library function wasn't some snooze-fest geek-a-palooza printed in last month’s calendar as an afterthought. This was a vital word-of-mouth soirée that could change the course of an 11-year-old’s entire vacation. Plus it had all-you-could-eat popcorn.

And he NEEDED the entire hour to get ready.

I mean ... he had to shift his messy crop of bed-head hair from one side of his face to the other; pour an entire box of breakfast cereal into a bowl so he could pop handfuls of apple-flavored loops into his mouth as he pulled socks up over the bottoms of his pants because that's his style now.

I've seen this feat, and it's not at all like watching paint dry, especially if I haven't "right-side-outted" his socks, which, as the lackadaisical laundress that I am, is highly likely.

The only challenge left, then, would be lacing up his new purple Chuck Taylors (that only Santa knew he wanted) with the use of his one free hand. Since this will probably seem a daunting enough of a task, he will probably jam his cheeks with whatever nuggets of fortified sugar cubes remain uneaten, allowing him to have full use of both hands for the loop, swoop and pull portion of the dressing exercise. And, if I know my boy, he will continue to eat by osmosis as he pedals his bike to the library.

Hopefully, he will have finished his cheek-pocket meal by the time he reaches his destination and has to speak to anyone.

I just hope they can understand him.

Only 367 shopping days until next Christmas

I was startled by the air-filled sigh that rustled the hair on my arms as I gripped the steering wheel.

It was coming from the lump of teenage flesh — still a few ounces too light to engage the passenger-side airbags of my car — to my right.

I didn’t know what to make of it. The girl had been so happy, so bubbly, so brimming with enthusiasm for this eleventh-hour Christmas shopping trip with her mom.

She had been chirping about it all week. Just moments before, she’d even twittered about the stores she might visit and gifts she hoped to find as I white-knuckled my way through traffic.

But the suspiration was a harbinger. 

“We can’t go to this mall!” she exclaimed with alarm just as I had carefully eased our car onto that same shopping mecca’s access road.

I don’t understand. “The whole point of this trip ... for the past 35 minutes at least ... was to go to THIS mall?!”

She held up her phone and thrust it in my direction.

If she had held it back from my face another six inches I might have barely made out a couple of big-headed cartoon characters that resembled simulated friends, but with my aging eyes and traffic laws being what they are, not to mention a swath of cars swishing by on my left, I demanded she explain herself.

“I know people at THIS mall.”

Now, I don’t know the exact translation of teenage-ese in which she was attempting to communicate, but I fully understand that it’s likely a statement conveying the kind of metamorphic adolescent embarrassment that expands a thousand-fold when one is shopping with one’s mother.

And while I can empathize with her predicament having been a teenager once myself, I could also fully appreciate the miracle that kept my own mother’s head from rocketing off her shoulders and blowing up into a gazillion fiery shards.

I quickly calculate an alternate destination and manage to navigate back onto the highway, all while lecturing about the probability of seeing familiar human beings is likely to be extremely high, no matter where we land.

She flaps her arms a bit and directs us back to the initial destination.

I hold my breath and take a different exit. This is just the beginning. For the next hour, we will have angst about parking proximity and crowd densities and the general queasiness of feeling out of place.

I also know a single, happy purchase will turn the mood around.

Three shops in, her eyes narrow on a sweater.

And not just any sweater. This one is a snowball-white, coconut-fibered confection of impossible softness that will make her the envy of the school Christmas concert.

And it will only set her back seventeen and change.

Her smile had returned as she made her way to the dressing room and then to the sales counter. She practiced third-year math and had enough cash at the ready.

The cashier smiled, but announced a foreign price .... starting with thirty-four.

We both stood there blankly for a moment but my daughter, trying to patch this glitch in the matrix, acted quickly, digging into her wallet for more cash.

I can’t help by try and stop this forward momentum.

“Wait ... the tag says seventeen ...”

I don’t have a chance to finish. The cashier is used to this exchange.

“I’m sorry but our prices are in euros.”

I turn my attention to my daughter, who hasn’t handed over the difference. “This seems like a deceptive practice. It’s perfectly okay if you want to stop the transaction.”

My daughter puts her cash away. “Yeah, I think I’ll keep looking.”

We left the store, walked about a hundred feet and found — I kid you not — the exact same sweater hanging in the center of a flurry of tops in a display window. But this one had a giant tag draped around it, beauty pageant style, announcing it could be had for the bargain price of ten dollars (minus one penny).

She tried on three styles of coconut jumpers and settles on the doppelgänger she’d had her mind set on previously.

The nice young lady at the counter bleeps up the price ... and starts with twenty-four ...

I can’t help myself ...

“This sweater is in your window with a sign advertising it for $9.99.”

“That was our crazy sweater sale.”

I cock my head. “Yes? And this is one of the sweaters in the window. With a sign that says $9.99.”

“I think or crazy sweater sale is over now.” 

I blink. We trade another couple of sentences where were state the obvious. There is silence.

My daughter is shrinking beside me. She starts to apologize for my logic and obstinance. She’s ready and willing to split the difference.

And I am almost about to let it go when a manager swoops in and gives the clerk the approval she needed to give us the sale price.

“It’s fair, and we want people to be happy,” he says with a practiced flair that helps everyone save face.

My smile suddenly feels less tight, though I’m a little afraid to look at the expression on my daughter’s face. 

I worry that being in the vicinity of mortification may have killed her buzz.

But she’s smiling and typing away on her phone.

“Hey ... I just looked up the Euro conversion rate: 17€ should have been about $24 ... not $34.”

“Want to go back? Cause a scene? I’m ready!”

“Maybe next time. Let's just get outta here before I see someone I know.”

Here kitty, kitty

The cat disappeared.

Friday of last week. That was the last time I saw her.

Our big ol' black cat.

A dog chased her under the next-door neighbors' porch, and she found some level of safety by wedging herself up into the joists. Once the melee was over I couldn't coax her out. She just glared at me with contempt.

"You are to blame," she repeatedly hissed in response to each of my "here kitty-kittys."

She's not wrong.

I feel some guilt. I invited that dog to come to our house every Wednesday and Friday for playdates. He would launch himself over couches and accordion carpets and she would find herself scarce until the canine revelry subsided, which it usually did in short order.

Still, she took the house guest as an opportunity to peruse the perimeter of the yard, or, if the weather was inclement, retire to her boy's room, where his homemade bed tent turned the lower part of his bunk into a comfy cardboard box fit for a lioness.

Which, truth be told, she sounded like as she chastised me from under the decking of that neighbor's porch.

I know the experts say cats don't hold grudges, they just work through trauma in their own feline way.

But this feels personal.

And yet I believed she'd find a way to forgive me. She'd come back. That's what I told myself and the kids when they asked.

She has disappeared before. She's always returned eventually, I presume when she's good and ready.

But the snap in the air gives me a nagging feeling. One day turns into one week, which is halfway to her most protracted sojourn two Augusts ago. It makes me wonder if she's ever going to be ready to come home again.

The last time she disappeared the weather was more conducive to following her hearts' content wherever it dangled its unraveling ball of yarn: Down the block, or deep into the neighboring field, made no difference. This morning, however, under a fresh layer of frost the great outdoors seems to be an inhospitable place. Certainly, its vast expanse is no longer teaming with mice.

"Here kitty, kitty."

I called the humane society. Gave a description. There hadn't been any calls. They suggested I try leafletting the neighborhood.

Maybe someone has seen her ... or taken her in ... or given her a new home without big dumb dopey dogs who take over the house on holidays.

Who don't let you get a word in edgewise ...

Who can't stop with the politics.

She could tell people quite accurately that she didn't really belong to us … she was, after all, adopted.

I don't tell my kids about this call. For them, having their cat select another family would be the worst thing that could happen. I also don't mention Coyotes.

Nor do I show them the poster I made, complete with a flattering picture and the word MISSING in the largest text that will fit on the page. I type out our phone number, copying it over and over for the clever pull strips at the bottom. I add the word REWARD.

I look at my handiwork, and my heart sinks. Print makes it real.

“Here Kitty, Kitty.”

What shall not be named

I’ve heard it said on numerous occasions that the ideas in books can be dangerous.

But it never really occurred to me that the library could be a hazardous place, even though there was that one time a couple-a three years ago when my youngest bloodied his lip playing a game of Quidditch on the library lawn as the children’s librarian refereed.

I was there on the sidelines, mind you, but I didn’t see the moment of impact. And I could barely make out the words as my boy reported through tears that he was a chaser for Hufflepuff when a keeper on the Ravenclaw team accidentally hit him with a Nimbus 2000. Broom checking was subsequently banned from future matches. Though he was upset because he thought I would pull him

from the game.

I did not. I wiped my son's lips, checked for loose teeth, and let him finish the match.

(Hufflepuff creamed ‘em.)

No, immediate bodily harm isn’t what most people mean when they say the ideas in a book can be dangerous, and therefore need to be controlled to the point of restriction. They are talking about censorship; often of critically acclaimed and classic works of literature, which tend to weave intricate tales about stark and complicated truths.

Works such as Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning southern gothic novel about racial injustice; and Khalid Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, a critically acclaimed historical novel about a father and son's relationship in a changing Afghanistan.

Normally, I'd think about these things in September, when organizers of Banned Books Week remind me in forehead-slapping detail how many works of fact and fiction across the country face expulsion from school libraries because they make parents uncomfortable.

The way I saw it, these mouth-breathing parents probably hadn't read a book since “See Spot Run,” and would never understand why any self-respecting school district would allow any of J.K. Rowlings’ Potter volumes to take up space on library shelves because Hogwarts Academy exalts magic and witchcraft.

That was until my Harry Potter (the movies) -loving son came home with Susan Campbell Bartoletti's book, “Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow.”

I felt like a deer in headlights. Or a first-year wizard getting beaned by a bludger. 

“I've been wanting to take out this book forever,” he said as he flopped down on the couch with the prestigious medal-winning tome. I perched over his shoulder and looked down as he slowly turned the pages. Pictures of boys, from the looks of their faces, not much older than him, juxtaposed to a column of biographic material. 

They didn't much look like monsters.

And that worried me. 

I had so many questions. Why is my son interested in Germany during the war? What has drawn him to wonder about Hitler Youth? Why couldn't he have started this quest for knowledge with “The Diary of Anne Frank?”

I wanted to ask a professional. Was this the beginning of some slippery slope?  The launching place where history doesn't repeat itself as much as it recasts the roles of the villains?

Will these new villains look and act like my son? 

Honestly, I was as close to calling the principal and demanding to know what steps he was taking to ensure my son didn't take this information and twist it into some grammar school version of INFO WARS, when I realized this is how ignorance gets a foothold. With people like me not wanting to talk about it.

If there's no room for discussion, there's nothing left but fear and silence.

And he who shall not be named will return, time and time again. 

Watch. Us. Run.

Watch us run

No one ever pegs me for a runner.

I’m neither tall nor fast. My short stature is more penguin-like than cheetah-like. More tortoise than hare.

But run I must. 

Another thing no one tells you about running is how addicted to statistics we might become.

It might surprise you. 

Just as a very well-meaning loved one might surprise you one Christmas (or birthday) by plunking down a half a week's pay for a watch that lassos itself to satellites and provides a compounding list of moments for you to collect and compare. 

It will fold your best time into your best pace and sprinkle in information about the range of elevation and the weather conditions. It may even tell you who in the neighborhood ran the course faster, anything is possible.

It may seem too big and clunky for your wrist, but soon you will feel naked without it. A slave to its lusty numbers. You will love it’s impracticality if only because it brands you as a person who runs.

On rest days you will scroll down memory lane, and discover the ebb and flow of fractions of seconds over the past months curious if not positively maddening.

You may even vow to give up the technology for short stints, hoping to

reclaim your initial love affair with

simplicity.

 But it has turned you into a different person ...

Like maybe you’ll finally be able to follow baseball because to do so requires an encyclopedic knowledge of every play ever made since 1791, when baseball was first mentioned in the US after Pittsfield, Mass. banned the game from being played within 80 yards of its town meeting house. 

Anything is possible now that you are able to keep Jesse Owens’ 100-yard personal best (9.4 seconds) in your brainpan next to Joan Benoit’s record marathon time of 2:22:21, which, incidentally, she held for 18 years until Deena Kastor beat it in 2006.

It’s not as if you are competing against the elite track and field stars. You are battling against your own best 5K time and maybe a secret rival you pick out of the crowd on race day. 

You are lucky to break 35 minutes.

You don’t know why you do it, but you can’t help yourself. Breaking a half hour would be huge, especially now that you’ve bumped up to the next age group.

These personal records are numbers that might be searchable online, but won’t be entered into Wikipedia by a third party anytime soon. 

No, these are numbers only you will use, mostly to plug into your computer’s password fields so you might gain access to the World Wide Web and stalk other racers you know. 

Inspiration, after all, is just floating around in cyberspace waiting to be -ogled.

I don’t know ... you might find yourself searching the race results of friends and family, and maybe even the rankings of their dogs who race in what you ordinarily would have thought of as silly-named events called “Fast CAT.”

Who knows? You may even discover your sister’s Pembroke Welsh Corgi last year ranked 12th nationwide in her division with a top speed of 19.21 miles per hour.

Short legs and all.

You might also discover that your sister had no idea her short-legged, no-tail dog had attained such an athletic achievement.

But as a runner, inevitably you may wonder if anyone makes a watch a corgi would wear?

And if they can deliver by Christmas.

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.