Vile Intruder

I would tar and feather it if I could. Burn it in effigy while dancing in a circle. But I can't stand to touch the little plastic thing. Can't stand to look it in its narrow hard face. Cannot bear for it to touch me with one stiff thin antennae. My son knows this, and he thinks its hilarious.

Dammit. My husband swore he'd take the blasted thing back to work, get it out of my house and out of my life. But he hasn't. He only takes it away from my eldest son now and then, smiles with a "now cut that out" expression, and tucks it away somewhere he thinks is safe. Well, as you can imagine, every few months my son discovers it anew, then begins to laugh oddly for no reason I can see. That is until I come around the corner and he throws it at my feet or I open a drawer and it pops out at me in full grotesque glory. He can set me up several times in a day, and I scream every time, jump back, and tell him to get rid of it, cut it out, don't do it again. But I can never bring myself to touch the thing, to actually show nonchalance or jaded amusement. So it goes on and on until I'm half laughing and crying, and my four-year-old comes to hug me and says, "It's alright, Mama. I'm here."

To understand my irrational fear of something which I know is fake, you must know about the times when I have discovered the real deal in my proximity.

The first memorable confrontation in Arizona took place in our apartment when I was eight months pregnant with my eldest son. It crawled out of the drainage pipe in the sink, its body at least three inches long, as I went to wash my hands. I flung myself back against the wall and wailed with an undulating scream to rival any I produced in natural labor. My husband came skidding into the bathroom.

"What...are you...?" he panted, looking my full trembling body up and down.

"Cock...roach," I breathed and pointed.

"What? You can't scream like that for a cockroach!" he scolded, blithely approaching the sink to beat the hell out of it. "I thought you were in labor." (It was our first pregnancy, you understand. He had no clue what a laboring woman should sound like at feeling that first contraction.)

But the time I remember best, the time that still makes me glance to the ceiling in dread now and then, is the time when my husband had to do full battle with the cockroach of all cockroaches - the General Woundwort, the Napolean, the Sauron, the Genghis Khan of cockroaches. It simply wouldn't die easily.

We were watching The Kennedy Honors on TV, a most respectable and cultured means of entertainment when your children are asleep. Whoever was being honored was someone we found truly fascinating. Nevertheless, my eyes roamed at one point up toward the ceiling, and there it was - the ghastly thing! - black, large...on the stinkin' ceiling. I flattened myself against the couch cushion, drew my legs up - ready to dive, spring or hide - and asked Matthew while pointing with an unsteady finger, "What is...that?"

I feared I knew. He got up, examined it with wide eyes, and said softly, "A cockroach....get me something."

I looked about for something heavy, something to inflict pain on this vile intruder. I didn't want to move from my position, but I ventured centimeters away from the couch, stretched my arm out to hand My Man a rolled-up magazine.  He took aim, swung, missed, and the thing took off running. It didn't scurry or crawl. The thing darted like an insect cheetah across our ceiling. I give My Man props, because he took off after it instead of huddling pitifully in the corner, whimpering and negotiating - offering it all the junk food in our house if it would just leave us alive (as I would have done).

He finally knocked it off the ceiling, but then we searched, and we couldn't find the carcass. We were determined. We needed proof, something to put on a toothpick in the front yard to intimidate fellow nasty insects. But nothing. Nothing! Until it occurred to us that it might have fallen into the bin of Christmas wrapping paper that was still residing in our house that chill February evening.

My husband carted the plastic bin gingerly outside, and the brave, brave man began to sift through its contents to find the evidence of the giant cockroach's demise as I watched from the safety of our doorway. Nearing the bottom, he tipped the bin over on the driveway, and out the damn thing ran, right at him. Such flailing of arms! Such wild prancing as he chased it, thumping the magazine down the length of the drive in a fight to the death. At length he stood over that Woundwort of Cockroaches, just beating it every few seconds to make sure it wouldn't reanimate itself like some horror movie villian. Then, weary, he took a crumpled bit of festive paper, picked up its mangled remains and dumped it in the outside trash can.

He stumbled to the door and pronounced, "It is done."

No, not really. He came shaking his head and said something like, "Wow," and, "I knew I had to get rid of it or you'd never let me rest."

So true. Now, I am sane. Truly. I do know COUS (Cockroaches of Unusual Size) are everywhere on this planet, eating our food when we're not looking, infecting us with horrible diseases, throwing parties in our cupboards when it's dark and we can't catch them. I also know that the city where I live regularly sprays the sewer heads in this town to control cockroach numbers, and that's why every little bit the revolting creatures have the audacity to come into homes, trying to escape their fate. Because they come into our homes and make us wet our pants, urban legends exist such as, An enormous cockroach ate my lap dog, or I found a cockroach in my kitchen, reclining in the chip bag and drinking my tequila, and An army of gargantuan cockroaches invaded my shower; I had to scale the glass sliding doors and pitch myself over the top to escape.

I don't know if those urban legends are true, but my story about the battle between My Man and General Woundwort Cockroach is sadly so. It's why for months after that incident I couldn't come out into our dark living room, my baby son in arms to nurse, without feeling incredibly uneasy and/or queasy as my eyes scaled the twilight of the ceiling wondering what was looking back at me. It's why to this day I kick, pat, or knock against the furniture on dark nights to discourage any insects from bearing me company in my chair.

I can't get rid of cockroaches. They're part of life, like spiders, crickets or flies (none of which I mind nearly as bad). But I have taken my stance against the plastic impostor kind, and the nine-year-old boy who aides and abets it. If he attempts to scare me again with that hideous thing, he'll be standing in the corner for an hour. And if it ever ends up in my clothes, hair, purse or car seat, I will get my husband's hammer and pummel it gleefully to see if plastic is really as strong as everyone claims it is.

Funny Girls

We're a couple of bagels on a plate of onion rolls, she and I.

We had a spontaneous combustion of friendship when I moved to Idaho from Tennessee and she moved from Cascade to Boise in our junior year of high school. We were such fast friends by early senior year that I referred to her as my sister Sarah. Eventually I didn't bother correcting myself. It felt true.

A couple weeks ago my Sarah came to visit me. We had not seen each other in 14 years, not since the summer after graduation. We jumped and screamed at the sight of each other, and our men laughed. Our children acted like cousins that had never met due to bizarre circumstances, and Sarah and I sat and reminisced that first evening of our reunion.

We talked about the time she made me laugh so hard in an all night diner that the muscles in my face froze, I began to hyperventilate in some panic, and then keeled over due to the loss of oxygen in my brain. We talked about how she always had older boyfriends while I could be found at lunchtime munching peanut M&M's and playing poker with a bunch of sophomore boys. We laughed at how we hunted each other down in the middle of a period near the end of our senior year to tell each other about the C on our English papers (and we thought we would be writers!) We remembered the snowy days when we skipped school, having no money to do anything fun but ditching responsibility anyway, because we thought snow flurries were pretty.

Then there was the adventure of living by ourselves for two months in our senior year. She drove and worked parttime. I joke that I was the stay-at-home one, and I didn't even cook (she doesn't remember us eating at all during the time; I remember eating endless cans of Beans with Bacon soup).To thank her for giving me rides and bringing in money on top of what my parents gave us, I locked her out of the house on a bitterly cold night when she was out late, and she slept in her car with the engine and heater on until our neighbors called the cops. As she tells it, the police knocked on the window loudly, fearing she was dead, and she sat up with blurry and mascara-smeared eyes, assuring them that she was alive but near frozen.

During that time there was also that frightening incident where Sarah in true panic did the best Curly, Three Stooges impersonation I've ever seen. Just home from school one afternoon, Sarah entered the house first. Right behind, I was aware of the danger in a moment, having seen the threat gleaming in his beady black eyes as the small rodent crouched and panted beyond her in the kitchen.

"Sarah," I said as calmly as possible, my body stiff and ready. "Don't move."

The "Why?' as she spun to look at me had barely escaped her lips when my squirrel Okkado leaped upon her back from the kitchen counter. She ran in a small frantic circle (the Curly impersonation) and screamed while my little friend scaled the length of her body, gripping with his claws. I tried to catch him to no avail - they were both whirling so fast - until he sprang from her when he could take the crazy ride no more. She bolted down the hall in terror, and I heard an ear-splitting bang as her bedroom door slammed to. It took me at least two hours to calm Okkado enough to lure him back into his floor-to-ceiling cage with a handful of nuts. It took even longer to calm Sarah, who is no animal person she admits. She stayed in the back room the whole time, only rarely peeling the door back an inch to call, "Is he in yet?" "No," I yelled back again and again, and again and again the door was sealed with due speed.

Good times. Well, at least times, anyway. Time together for sure friends is precious in most circumstances. Even when squirrels attack. Or at least when you're looking back on the time when your best friend's squirrel attacked.

On the second day of Sarah's visit to Arizona, we knew we had to do one very important thing before we parted. I hunted it down, the movie I had bought several years ago specifically because the introduction to it was a gift from my Sarah and one which will always remind me of her. Ah the marvelous Funny Girl, the Barbra Streisand hit musical. Like old times, we admired her voice, her comedic timing, her beautiful long white hands and her outstanding nose as we enjoyed our skip down memory lane. We laughed and then got sad again when Nick Arnstein took his wrong turn, made his fatal decision for pride against love. We shushed the boys in the room when the finale "My Man" commenced. When it was over, they all applauded enthusiastically, not because Babs had sung her heart out but because she had sung her last note, and we marveled again at the blindness of men, because Streisand is obviously one of the most original, beautiful and talented women ever to walk the planet.



And that's my Sarah, too, a thoroughly original and lovely woman - "a bagel on a plate of onion rolls" - one who taught me a great deal about being kind first and striving to be nonjudgmental, one who taught me about strength and resilience, who became like a fourth daughter to my parents. Someone who dreamed and schemed with me about how unusual our lives would be, and someone to laugh with now about all the usual but mostly blessed paths our lives have taken thus far.

Sarah and I are alike and different, of course, but from that first day we met in an uptight Boise high school that had prison-like slits for windows, there was that irresistible pull of friendship. Some natures are meant to bond. We had a mere two years to build that bond, and it has held during 14 years of absence.

I missed her when she left after our visit, but all that evening as I wandered around my home, belting out in mock-Barbra style on an almost endless reel, "Oh, my man I love him so!/ He'll never know/ All my life is just despair.../ But I don't care!", I had the comfort of thinking of her and of our extraordinary and enduring friendship.

A post in pictures...Beautiful Behemoth

Beautiful Behemoth is my pet name for a mountain that I adore called South Mountain. I would say its proper name is uninspired, a directional label that does not attempt to encapsulate the humble, friendly spirit of its scrubby, cacti-dotted slopes. But I consider everything pertaining to this mountain, including its pedestrian name, to be special by association.

This mountain brings me joy just to look at it, just to drive down the street nearly every morning toward it. When its gentle lines are smeared with the smog of this wide city or rare storm clouds obscure its shape, it disheartens me. My eye is always searching for it; it's my natural compass in a vast valley of human contrivance. Thus I am anxious for true blue of sky to carve it plain against the western horizon.

A couple days after Christmas, my family hiked its trails with a friend and her family, at last Matthew keeping his promise to take me up it. It was a post-Christmas celebration of nature in the Southwest, and I loved every minute of it, even when the shortest trails were closed for wildlife, even when for tactical reasons (in favor of future hiking) I relieved my husband of the hiking backpack with our youngest in it (Matthew warned me how heavy it was even as I stoutly insisted he give me a turn, my shot at the physical burn), and even as couples and solitary urban adventurers marveled and exclaimed at our bravery in traversing its crests and valleys with a gaggle of six children in tow.

In fact, I was glad to have the company of those children, especially of my own for whom hiking is a fresh experience. And I thought it fortunate that we had to take the long route and that our feet were forced in longer communion with the mountain. I was glad of the company of my good friend and her family, because without them, my husband would have paused at the first good rise in the trail, clapped his hands together, and announced with finality that it was time to go home. The company of my friend's pug Buster was a blessing, too, because my eldest son had the little dog's company on the hike among so many little girls, and it built his confidence when he was able to keep the eager little animal from nipping at the pounding feet of runners or from chasing the hypnotic wheels of the bicyclists.

It was a long hike for a family so foreign to the exercise. I am proud to write that our kids did not complain but instead were invigorated by the views and by the climb, eager to plan the next trip. Miraculously, my muscles did not squeal the next day when I attempted to walk. My husband's and my own shoulders ached a little from carrying our youngest, but they didn't cramp at all. Even more of a marvel, my husband said he was not adverse to doing a hike again, someday, if the trail was shorter.

This hike was meant to be, I plainly and gladly believe, the first of many up South Mountain. I can't wait to drive to its base another fine, clear winter morning, jumping with anticipation and ready for my visit with Mother Nature.

                            

Short post - fantasy, candy canes and No. 4

Many years ago as a young teenager, I spent a January and February in an old chair in my room sucking on leftover Christmas candy canes and reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien. My rabbit Freddy reclined on my lap, and if while engrossed in a particularly exciting part, I neglected to stroke his soft black fur, he turned his head and sank his sharp little teeth into the flesh of my hand. Peppermint sticks, black rabbits, and little gold rings with deceptive power are now forever linked in my brain.

That winter still comes back to mind each year, begging for me to scour the tree for any forgotten candy ornaments and renew my relationship with books. As a mother of four kids, I find it hard to keep that relationship going. I can either write sometimes or read novels sometimes, but not both. I do still lean against the walls in my home now and then, perusing a chunk of the newspaper before I give it, and all its sundry information, up to recycling. But its not the same as curling myself around a book, letting my house go to pot, and hearing my children whine, "Mama, are you done with that chapter yet? You promised to come outside."

"I'm almost done!" I'd call back to their sighs.

This year I haven't even begun. And what I really need right now to conjure up that old excitement in the story is Book 4 of Kelven's Riddle, but I can't have it. Or so I've been told.

I have great memories of nursing my younger two children and putting various responsibilities on hold while eagerly ingesting Kelven's Riddle in it various forms. As the daughter of the man who wrote them, I was trusted with the rougher drafts of the story. When Dad gave me a section of the first one, I was pregnant with my youngest girl and stayed up way too late, already exhausted, and read it. At that time he hadn't even given me the ending. I read it in its entirety later on. When Book 2, The Walking Flame, came out, I left the house to its own destructive devices and got up from my chair only to feed the children, grab a snack for myself or use the restroom. I would end up reading the last incredible chapter of that book over and over again as I wished and waited for the third book. Then at last! Book 3, The Sword of Heaven, was in my hands, and again my house was buried in the mess with no hope from me as I read and nursed my young son and tried to balance my baby and dad's manuscript on my lap. That time I was actually allowed to read the final chapters before the book was released on Amazon.

Throughout all these literary entrapments, my husband was patient and forbearing with my neglect of our home, but I suspect that was only because the books had been written by Dad. And after I had Book 3's manuscript in my hand and confided in him with a laugh that Dad had actually named a character after him, Matthew (who does not read for pleasure, only business) began the series, and miracles of miracles! Read the whole thing by nightlight in the evenings while waiting for our youngest girl to drift to sleep.

Now Dad tells me he'll give me Book 4 soon, but won't say exactly when. Still he teases me with the details of the story - with war scenes and devastation and forecasts of how the whole series will go down but no solid information. He tells me frankly that Book 4's ending will be more astounding than Book 2's, and I'm trying to imagine how. I'm puzzling over which of my favorite characters he might be inclined to kill off, and if it's Thaniel he dooms (Thaniel is a brave, proud and reserved being, the main character Aram's closest friend and a fellow warrior), I just might consider not speaking to Dad for a while. But I don't think he'd do that to me or any of his readers. I don't think he would.

But I don't know, do I? Because I don't have Book 4. Do I think that by writing this post, my dad will hurry to finish the manuscript and send it off to his youngest child with love? No, not really, but I wish he would. I still have one leftover candy cane, and no new book to enjoy with it.

# 4 short, (mostly) unedited post - Park Season

I am always glad on January 2nd, after all the frivolity is done and only Three King's Day yet glimmers on the horizon, that there is something really grand to look forward to here in the lowlands of Arizona. It would be called spring in other states (forget the calendar, for that's what it is if one trusts the weather). To me it is known fondly as park season.

It's that time of year when I find every possible excuse to shuttle my kids to the park. The time of year when I get to whoosh down the slides behind them, climb the monkey bars after my youngest, hop down the jungle gym steps with glee, and steal my kids' scooters or bikes when they're not looking in order to take a rollicking tour on the sidewalk. It's the time of year when all is right with the world, when the child within me is reborn in mild weather.

When others up north and back east are shut in their homes, cursing the lingering but now burdensome snow, feeling cabin fever and making love to their steaming cups of coffee, most Arizonans are taking to the outdoors, offering ourselves up to the sunshine. It accepts us and carresses us and keeps its promise not to roast us until sometime about mid-June. It will then be our turn to lock ourselves indoors, cursing not the snow and cold but a blinding, scorching, piercing, drunk-with-its-own-power, absolutely maniacal star that acts like its the center of our solar system.

But until then we'll be wearing shorts in January, playing golf until May, acting like giddy fools with our kids at the park for months to come and wishing everyone a happy, jolly, very merry park season!

Holiday Tales of Horror: Forgotten Socks and a KitchenAid Mixer

That Christmas was pretty entirely my fault. I can only blame my husband Matthew for one small thing: what he said on the phone call to Albuquerque.

We were going home to Matthew's parents for "the most wonderful time of the year", and he had called to tell them, and they were asking what we wanted for a gift.

"Hillary could use a KitchenAid mixer," said Matthew.

I was stunned. I hit him, and then said loud enough so his folks could hear, "Matthew, don't ask them for that! Your parents should not buy us something like that."

I had been telling Matthew how nice it would be to have one; that is true. I mean, I bake a lot; it's the only kind of cooking I enjoy. Still, I would never ask his parents for such an expensive gift. All the hints I'd been dropping in the cooking aisles at Target had been for Matthew.

"Hillary says you guys shouldn't get that," amended Matthew with a smirk.

I rolled my eyes, and then Matthew said into the phone, "So what do you and Mom want?"

After listening to the reply, Matthew repeated incredulously, "Really? Cookies and socks? C'mon, Dad."

His dad was adamant, but to us it was a joke. Of course I'd bake cookies; no one could keep me from doing that even if they bolted my oven door shut, smashed my mixing bowls, and poured all the flour and powdered sugar in my cupboard out onto my head, but socks as a gift? Surely not.

So we went shopping, looking for some inspiration. In Sears Matthew found a Craftsman grill set and brought it to me excitedly.

"How about this?" he said, Christmas fever in his eyes.

"For who? Your dad?" I was trying to think how to say it best. "Honey, don't you think he has enough tools? Your dad has the money to buy any tools he wants, and even you've told me he has pretty much everything."

Matthew looked at me none too kindly, and I suddenly wished I'd kept my mouth shut.

"I like my set. It's a nice set!"

"I know. I just think..."

"Fine. Never mind. You ruined it," he said, turning away.

"Honey, I'm sorry. Just get it..."

"You ruined it," he replied, stalking off.

We trudged to his Mom's favorite department store next, Matthew silent.

"I don't know what to get her," he said finally after looking over many nice things. "It'd be better to get her a gift card. But I'll get these anyway; she likes these."

So we went to the register to pay for the two pairs of furry soft socks he held in his hand. But we didn't get the gift card. We still needed to work out our budget.

We picked up some nice solid-colored dress socks for his dad, figuring since we'd already begun down that road, maybe we'd just do the socks thing for fun along with whatever else we found for them.

But we didn't find anything else, because time caught up to us amid all our travel preparations, and we headed for Albuquerque two days before Christmas, still talking about what else we should get them.

"Look, your parents eat out a lot now that none of you guys are home, right?" I said. "Why not get them a gift card to a restaurant? Where do they like to eat? There was some Japanese place you used to mention going out to for birthdays and stuff..."

"Maybe," replied Matthew noncommittally. "I'll have to ask them when we get there."

I was beginning to feel uneasy. I kept coming back to that suggestion. Matthew didn't warm up to it and never acted on it liked I hoped he would. I had the mistaken idea that since it was his family the final say should be his. Shoot! Wish I thought more like my sister Vinca.

And somewhere in the middle of the wide open drive to New Mexico, while reading a book, I suddenly realized something that hit another nail into the coffin of our Christmas spirit. For though there were two festive tins full of cookies in the back seat of the car....

"The socks!" I cried, sitting up. "We forgot the socks! They're at the top of the closet."

"We'll ship them," said Matthew.

Over the road noise I thought I heard the dull dismal thudding of disastrous Christmas tidings.

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We got in late that evening, and there were all those presents for our nieces, our Secret Santa brother (Matthew has four brothers), and our own two little ones to unload from the trunk of the car. I carried the cookie tins in and tried to lay them in a prominent spot in the kitchen as if to say, "See, the cookies! We remembered the cookies you wanted." Plus I was proud of them: Cinnamon Chocolate Chip and Cranberry Orange Oatmeal, two of my best recipes (or so I thought).

The next day was Christmas Eve, but there was still time to do something, anything. Unfortunately, by early evening we still had no gift cards, no wrapped presents for his parents - nothing.

I was officially desperate, because they didn't seem to care for the cookies I'd brought either. At this point I must have been so discouraged I was delusional about what constituted good manners, because I spent my Scrooge moments rudely munching my own Christmas cookies that I'd brought as a gift - the only gift we had at the time, mind you - and staring balefully at a half-empty plate of Nestle brand cookies. (Matthew's dad caught me at it. "Going for the cookies again, are we?" he said one evening, as I was digging in the tin, feeling sorry for myself and my poor ostracized sweets. I wanted to shout back, "They're good, dammit!")

"What are we doing?" I said to Matthew urgently in the guest room that evening. "Do you know what we're getting?"

"The socks and cookies," he answered. Damn, he'd given up. "Look, me and Rob are going to Walgreens," he added. I groaned in dismay. "It's our only option now. I'll try to find something."

I wanted to jump into a patch of tangled plants in the backyard and hide until after Christmas when I saw what he brought home.

"Honey, noooo..." I said in real mortification when he held up "his finds".

"It's the best I could do," he answered, chuckling. "And they're funny. They'll laugh; don't worry. Plus, we'll send them something later. Hold on - I have to borrow some wrapping paper from Mom."

No, no, no! It was bad enough that we had resorted to gag gifts for his parents' presents, but we had to borrow their pretty paper to wrap them up? What had I done? I should have bought his parents' gifts a long time ago! There was no even-steven at Christmastime. The woman should do all the shopping, because she'll get all the credit for choices made, good or ill. And some ill choices could be branded in her in-laws’ memories forever.

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Everyone gathered at my in-laws' house the next day to eat a fine fattening meal and exchange gifts. All of Matthew's brothers were there, the two sisters-in-law, and our nieces. Our little Berto and Ana were running around, too, while I stood in the formal sitting area where the beautiful full tree with its elegant white lights and coordinated handmade ornaments graced everyone with its presence. Beneath it was an ungodly cascade of wonderfully wrapped presents. The sight of them, instead of soothing my wounded holiday mood, only made me more angst-ridden.

"Wow, that's a lot of gifts," I remarked, climbing up onto an imaginary soapbox to begin my tirade, pounding an imaginary (candy?) cane emphatically for each point made. "Too many gifts. When I was growing up, it wasn't about the presents. It couldn't be. It was the decorating of the tree and Mom's wonderful food that we'd look forward to. Plus, Dad would always play his guitar for us on Christmas Eve and read the Christmas Carol before bed. I'm not a big present person now. It doesn't put me in the holiday mood. Just the opposite; it depresses me to see that many under the tree."

"I think someone broke the rules," was the only reply my mother-in-law made, tight-lipped. (She was referring to the Secret Santa exchange everyone had agreed to that year for the brothers and their significant others.)

My sister-in-law told me frankly that I hadn't really seen anything. She proceeded to tell us then about the extravagant gifts her parents had merrily exchanged that morning.

When I wandered off into the guest room to freshen up before the gift-giving pictures started, Matthew came in and shut the door.

"Hey, you need to be careful what you say," he told me, a seriously reproving look on his face. "You may not like seeing that many presents under the tree, but you need to remember that some of them are for you."

The weight of my own bad behavior settled quietly on my conscience like a subtle but chilly snowfall. I was ashamed and now really did not want to face the inevitable revelations of the gift exchange. But I had to, and I did - after trying weakly to eat some of my words of a moment before.

And so began the blur of torn pretty paper, discarded bows and numerous recited name tags. Our kids got way too many toys, including a Playdoh table, and as Matthew and I watched them accumulate, we wondered how on earth we were going to get them all home in his sporty little sedan. Then, on the suggestion of one of the brothers (no doubt someone who had not bought them mere socks), Matthew's mom and dad began opening their gifts.

And here's where it became evident that none of the brothers had taken their parents' suggestion of cookies and socks as only gifts seriously. There were plenty of socks and cookies, yes, but there were also gourmet food and chocolate and a beautifully handmade centerpiece for their dining room table. And from the youngest son - who didn’t have the benefit of a female’s input at the time - a lovely white sweater for my mother-in-law from her favorite department store, the same store Matthew and I had wandered so futilely in.

Then came our gifts to them, meticulously wrapped in their own quality wrapping paper.

"We forgot your socks," I said feebly as they began to unwrap. "We have them; we just forgot them at home. We'll...we'll send them to you soon..."

I turned away as Matthew's dad pulled out his gift and held it up for all to see. Matthew's eldest brother let out a jolly, full-throated laugh, and I turned back to look once more with despair into the big yellow face of Homer Simpson on a pair of men's boxer shorts.

The underwear was held up for everybody's mutual merriment, and then tactfully returned to its packaging as Matthew's mom removed her present from its box. This time it was the red furry face of Elmo on a pair of oversized slippers that greeted everyone and elicited more snickering from the brothers.

Heaven help me! They thanked us without one look or word of reproof, but what could I say? Oh, you’re welcome. Agonized for weeks over your gifts and presto! Stumbled on these Christmas Eve! Sure hope you get some use out of them. (Oh, and here’s the gift receipt - you can return them, if you like, for a fat 10 bucks to spend on anything you want!)

Matthew and I afterward had to apply ourselves to unveiling the gift from his parents that someone had lugged to our feet. It was quite large. Heavy, too, and I must have known what I would find inside. Nevertheless, when I first really saw the words printed on the box and the beautiful picture accompanying them, I felt like the child who has asked Santa for an impossible gift, and then wakes Christmas morning to see it beneath the tree. It was the most shocking Christmas gift anyone had ever given me: a KitchenAid mixer. They honest to goodness, really got us a KitchenAid mixer! I began babbling incoherently and weeping convulsively, and everyone laughed again as I accosted my reserved in-laws with my wet face and broken words of gratitude while stumbling toward them for a hug.

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December 26th we prepared to drive home from that holiday visit with a car full of stuff, the mixer carefully packed in the trunk. None of us had room to move in the car, held hostage by the gifts, luggage, the lunch cooler and even some bagged dirty laundry crammed down by my feet in the front seat. Matthew's mom giggled at the sight of our small vehicle stuffed full as if it were Santa's second sleigh. She smiled and waved as we drove away…fuzzy Elmo slippers on her feet.



Afterword: We did indeed ship the socks, along with an old iron we found at an antique shop (his parents collect them), but, well..some Christmases must go down in infamy, so we can appreciate the merry years all the more. And, really, that year wouldn't have been so terrible if I hadn't taken each and every opportunity to dig myself into a deeper holiday "Bah, Humbug!" hole. The best we all can do is hope that, at least to those who love us, it's not really about the presents. Nevertheless, I can personally attest that as an unexpected gift, a KitchenAid mixer rocks.

Wreaths and garlands

 

My house has one outward decoration for the passing world to see; I made the eucalyptus wreath for the front door, clipping pliable branches from our huge trees out front. The wreath is small. It's always too small, but it's flush. The stems I chose for its construction were supple, so they hadn't turned a wizened brown but still had a vibrant burgundy hue. Unfortunately, they were also short. The newer leaves are tinged with rose, so the wreath is sagey green and shades of red - softened Christmas colors.

I make the wreath, because it reminds me of my parents and of Tennessee. My parents rolled wreaths to make a living in the winter, and Dad also made one huge briar or grapevine wreath to hang above our own front porch for Christmas. He strung it with green lights, and our neighbors across the creek would tell us how brightly it shone through the trees along the bank and across Spann Road.

Dad's wreath was huge, impressive. Mine is small and fragrant. But they're connected. I'm keeping the ritual, you see. I'm honoring the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Just as when I strung popcorn on a long stretch of thread last week. I was feeling down, bluesy, but the act of pushing the needle through the stiff kernels and then of pushing them down into place was peaceful and reminded me of my mother. I remember her patience in teaching me to string the popcorn as a child, and this garland of popcorn links me to her and to her calm spirit. And now it's my turn to supervise my children as they help me finish the garland one string at a time (it's still not done). I told my husband that I thought the puffy white garland looked surprisingly elegant. "That's a stretch," he responded. Well, he's not the one putting all the work in, is he? Anyway, it does look a tad more elegant than the red and green construction paper garlands my kids and I usually make.