Spring Time in December

The Christmas trees are up and decorated, the houses and trees are lit up nightly, and the stockings have been hung by the fireplace with care. The malls are jammed with stressed out shoppers, the lucky few have already bought and wrapped their gifts, and the college football bowl season is underway. Yes, it’s beginning to look a lot like…spring time?

Here in the Northeast, it certainly doesn’t seem like it’s the end of December this year. It actually feels more like spring than winter. Daytime temperatures have been in the high-40’s to mid-50’s, instead of the 30’s. It’s even gotten up to 60 degrees around here! For those that use the Celsius scale, that would be temperatures in the 7 – 15 range. In December! While it has gotten cold a few days, I’ve worn my winter jacket only about 5 times this year. And instead of snow on the ground, the grass is still green. It looks like we’re not going to have a white Christmas this year.

As an adult getting along in years, this really doesn’t bother me. I don’t need to drag out the snow blower or shovel the driveway to be able to go somewhere. I don’t even need to scrape frost off the car windows on the majority of mornings. I don’t need to bundle up to just get the mail from the mailbox and I don’t shiver through the first 10 minutes of my daily commute to and from work. If this is the result of global warming, then bring it on because I could get used to winters like this.

As a kid, however, I would have been going out of my mind, maybe even devastated. Winter break from school would be coming up and there’d be nothing to look forward to. There would be no way we’d be playing ice hockey at the pond from early morning to the time darkness made it impossible to see the black puck any longer. The only pause in the games would be enough time to go home and eat some lunch and slightly thaw out the feet and hands. If it wasn’t cold enough to freeze the ponds, there would be no way we’d be spending most of the day sledding down the big hill in the back of my house, punctuated by a hot chocolate break and finishing up warming next to a roaring fire, because there wouldn’t be any snow.

Sure, we would have found stuff to do. We would have probably played street hockey for a few hours, perhaps switched over to football since the grass wouldn’t have been rock hard, and maybe even rode our bikes somewhere since it wouldn’t have been so cold. But it wouldn’t have been the same. Winter break from school was meant to be spent freezing our little behinds off, doing stuff in the snow or on the ice – and we liked it that way! I don’t remember any of us even hinting that it was too cold to go outside during our time off from school in December.

I have no shame in saying that I’m enjoying the holiday season so far. I don’t need a pile of snow and below zero temperatures to feel the joy of the season, and I certainly don’t need to get numb by running out to the mailbox to know that Santa is on his way. This year, I’m dreaming of a green Christmas. Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Christmas With the Family - Revisited

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been four years since I started this blog. Instead of writing new posts, I thought that I would go back and repost some of my favorites. This post is from December 26, 2010 and is about Christmas in my family. Whether you’ve read it before or not, I hope you enjoy it.

I’m sitting in my living room, the football game on the television and the snow piling up outside. The forecast is calling for 15 – 20 inches of snow today and tomorrow! Yesterday was Christmas and I got to spend the afternoon with most of my family (those who weren’t there were absolutely missed). We talked, we ate and we laughed. As usual, we laughed a lot, especially talking about things from growing up. And of course, we talked about Christmas. 

My childhood Christmases, at least as far as I remember, were pretty great. Christmas for us was not all about Santa and presents, partly because of our financial situation. With such a large family we didn’t get a lot for Christmas, yet Christmas was still awesome. Don’t get me wrong, we still did the Santa thing. We made our list for Santa, went and saw him at the mall, and did our best to behave because “He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sakes!” We got presents, just most years not too many. One of my all-time favorites was Rockem Sockem Robots. I loved that game and I especially liked playing my brothers and knocking their block off! I’m sure they’d say they let me beat them, but we know better, don’t we?

But the biggest thing about Christmas was that my parents made it more about the birth of Jesus. They taught us about the reason for the season and we talked about it. We also had a Nativity scene, or manger, and that became the focus on Christmas Eve. One of the discussion topics yesterday was our Christmas Eve tradition. After dinner, we’d turn out the lights, light some candles, take some of the figures out of the manger and we’d parade around the house singing Christmas songs like “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger”. The older ones got to carry the candles, while us younger ones got to carry one of the manger figures. Oh, and if we weren’t really singing, Dad let us know to pick it up a bit.

Some people might look at this and think we were nuts, but it’s one of those things that I still remember decades later. And I remember it in a positive way, with happy feelings and thoughts. I don’t know if other families did this, too, but when I think of Christmas as a kid, I definitely think of this. The weird thing about it is I don’t remember when we stopped doing it, other than when we moved from my childhood home when I was in high school.

Whatever your holiday traditions, I hope you enjoyed time with friends, family and loved ones, and had time to reminisce and laugh. Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to read my posts this year. Happy New Year!

Oh Christmas Tree

Do something well once and suddenly it becomes your job. That’s what has happened to me when it comes to picking out our Christmas tree. We had a fake tree for years, and although it looked quite real, my wife wanted to get a real tree. She had grown up with real trees and the fake one just wasn’t doing it for her. I grew up with a fake tree and thought the one we had was just fine, especially when compared to the one we had when I was a kid in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Even with assorted balls, bulbs, lights, tinsel and whatever other decorations we could find, you could still tell it wasn’t a real tree. Most people thought our 2000’s fake tree was real until they got real close to it and saw that the trunk was just a green circular piece of wood.  

So a few years ago we started getting a real tree. Last year, armed with instructions from my wife, I went to pick out the tree by myself. I just looked for one that wasn’t too big or too small, that didn’t have any glaring bald spots, that didn’t drop all its needles if I banged it on the ground, and that was actually green (not all of them were). Everyone thought we had a great tree! I was happy that I picked out such a great tree, proud even, but little did I know the trouble I caused for myself.

When it came time to get a tree this year, I mentioned to my wife that we should go out and get one – together. “Why do you need me?” she asked. “You did such a great job last year!” I protested that I didn’t want to do it myself, that last year was a fluke, beginner’s luck. “You picked out a great tree last year” she responded, “You can do it without me.” So now it was on me to get a tree, something that everyone who came to our house until sometime after New Year’s was going to see, something that was going to set the tone for all the other Christmas decorations in my home. The pressure was on and I wasn’t liking it. I should have come home with a Charlie Brown tree last year and it would never have been my job again!

I put the pressure aside and went out – by myself – to get a tree. I took my time, checked out all the trees that were there and made mental notations as to which ones I liked the best to narrow it down to three or four. I then went back and checked them out again. Now I was feeling the pressure again. What if I went home with a clunker? What if it didn’t look so great in the light of my house? What if there was a critter hiding in the branches like in the Griswold’s tree in Christmas Vacation? I chased these thoughts from my mind and chose what I thought was the best tree and brought it home. Much to my happiness, my wife loved the tree when she saw it!

As we have been doing for many years, we decorated the tree as a family. I don’t know if the kids enjoy it as much as my wife and I do, but it was a lot of fun. We have some ornaments from before the kids were born, some that they made in pre-school or elementary school, some that are just a couple of years old and one little felt Santa Claus I made in third or fourth grade that holds special memories for me. We laughed when we saw the ones the kids made, especially the ones with their school picture on them; we “Aaaaawwww”-ed when we saw the ones that hold special memories, like the one for my daughter’s first Christmas, which is now eighteen years old; we shook our heads at the what-were-they-thinking-when-they-made-this ones, like the red, white and blue eagle ornament that we got at SeaWorld in Orlando. When we fit on as many of the ornaments as we could, we stepped back and took in the scene: a beautiful Christmas tree that lit up the room, warmed our hearts and made us all smile.

Yeah, I guess that picking out the Christmas tree will be my job every year. Merry Christmas!

Childproof No More

This past weekend we had some of my wife’s family over to our house to do a gift swap with our kids since we can’t get together on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Their kids ranged in age from about 18 months to 12 years old. My daughter, who is in her first year of college, wasn’t home but my 15 year old son was. Because my kids are older we are not used to having small children in our house. Our house is no longer “childproof” so we had to watch the little ones all the time. However, being seasoned veterans of child rearing, we know that is pretty much impossible, so every so often some of us would check on what was going on.

At one point all the adults were sitting in the kitchen, talking and eating, and we weren’t really paying as much attention to the smallest kids as we should have been. My brother-in-law and I went into our family room to find that some of the kids had got into a few of our games that we thought were put away in a safe place. There on the floor were the games Life and Apples to Apples. All the money and little pieces for Life were mixed in with the 500 or so cards from Apples to Apples. They weren’t just in neat little piles, separated by game. No, as only small children can do, they were mixed together all over the place, along with about 50 Matchbox cars. When I say all over the place, I mean all over the place; the cards for Apples to Apples were under the couches and under the coffee table. It took a long time to find all the cards, put them all the same way so they fit into the slots in the game box and put them away. And yet, it only took a few minutes to make the mess! Even with our diligence we later found Scrabble tiles in different places.

The smallest child still wears a diaper and of course at some point it needed to be changed. I find it funny that people will pick up their child and smell their behind, cringe and with watery eyes say, “Oh, that’s a bad one!” Really? The rest of us knew it was a bad one without having to cause brain damage by taking a whiff. So then it was on to the changing. Like I said earlier, we’re not used to having small children in the house, especially my son. He was eating in the room off of the kitchen when the dirty deed was done. In about 2.5 seconds he was out in the kitchen with his shirt up over his nose to block the smell. To say he was having a hard time with the smell would be a huge understatement. There was about a 50/50 chance he was going to lose his lunch. He then went outside to get some fresh air and away from the smell, his face slightly pale.  

I found the whole incident amusing. I remember those days when I was younger and my older brothers or sisters were changing the diapers on my nieces and nephews. I couldn’t get far enough away! In my mind, I thought I’d never be changing a poopy diaper because I was going to let my wife do it. Then I got married and had kids and realized that would never fly. I think that’s about where my son is now. Just the thought of changing a nasty, poopy diaper is enough to make him physically ill. Someday he’ll be changing them like a pro.

I changed my share of diapers and even gagged on a few of them, but for the most part you get used to the odor. But now that it has been so many years of poopy diaper-less living, I have to admit that I wasn’t quite ready for the onslaught to my nose. I wasn’t gagging, but I was happy when my son went outside for a minute and left the door open. It helped clear the air so I could actually enjoy my food again and so we could get back to our normal conversation instead of discussing poopy diapers.

Later, after everyone was gone, I sat down on the couch and just reveled in the quiet in my family room. I have forgotten how loud small children can be when there is a group of them in a house. The silence was almost deafening. I got up to put away the last couple of Matchbox cars left on the floor and discovered a few more Scrabble tiles that had been missed. Some day we’re going to play Scrabble and find that the Q, the X, or the Z is missing when one of us has an incredible word with Triple Word Score potential. Then we will fully realize that, although we are seasoned veterans of child rearing, our house is most definitely not childproof anymore. 

I Can't Wait Until...

Quite often I hear people say something like, “I can’t wait until…”, where the “until” is somewhere in the future, sometimes many months or even years. I hear people say at Thanksgiving that they can’t wait until Christmas (like I did last week) because it’s the most wonderful time of the year. I hear people say at Christmas that they can’t wait until New Year’s because with the new year is a new start, resolutions and all. I hear people say in January and February that they can’t wait until spring when it starts getting warmer, and the trees and flowers come back to life. I hear people say in April and May that they can’t wait until summer when the weather gets really nice and they can take a vacation. I hear people say in August that they can’t wait until the fall when it’s a little cooler, the kids go back to school and the leaves on the trees turn amazing colors. I hear people say in October that they can’t wait for Thanksgiving because… On and on it goes.

What’s the matter with right now? It seems that we as humans are always looking to the future, looking forward to something further on down the line, something that isn’t… now. Whatever it is, it can never come too fast and it always takes too long to get to that point. Too many times, the things we’re so looking forward to finally come and they disappoint us because they don’t live up to what we built up in our minds. What then? Well, we already have the next thing to look forward to.

I remember growing up and looking ahead to many things and feeling like it was taking so long to get there. As I’ve mentioned before, I always looked forward to the day I could beat my older brothers at something, or at least be as good at something as them. When I finally got there, it didn’t matter because they had moved forward just as I had. Around 4^th grade I started looking ahead to the day I’d leave elementary school and go to junior high school (what’s now middle school) in 7^th grade. While it was nice to leave the “little kids” behind, I quickly found out how much I missed, and never appreciated, recess. When I was in junior high I looked forward to the day I’d go to high school because that meant I wasn’t a kid anymore. But when you’re a freshman and the low man on the totem pole, you’re still a kid to all the upper classmen and you’re treated as such.

When I was first in high school I couldn’t wait until I got my license and could drive, then I would have true freedom! However, there was often not a car available and when it was, most times there was an errand that had to be run as part of being able to use the car. So before I could go out with my friends I had to run to the store and get some milk or bread or something. Oh, yeah, don’t forget to put some gas in the tank, too. I guess I learned that with freedom comes responsibility – and expenses. When I was in my junior year of high school I couldn’t wait until senior year when we would be top dogs of the school. Then senior year went by so quick that we never really got to savor our lofty position and it was on to college.

After two years of college I couldn’t wait until college was done. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, I truly did. I loved the schedule, the way you didn’t have to go to class, the way the professors treated you like an intelligent young adult, not a kid. But I was tired of the homework, the studying and trying to get everything done while working 30 hours or more a week. Two years later, my last final finally arrived and I whipped through it feeling elated as I passed it in to my professor, thinking that I’d never have to do this again. A few of us finished at the same time and talked in the hallway as we went to our cars. One person was going to grad school, another person already had a job and the rest were going to start looking for a job. However, I had never thought that far ahead; I just wanted to be finished with college. I got to my car and just sat there thinking the same thought for ten or fifteen minutes, “Oh my gosh. I’m done with college and I HAVE TO GET A REAL JOB!” I felt like that was it, my carefree, young adult days were over and now I had to get a full-time job and be an (gulp) adult. I turned the key, took one last look around and started driving home. That ride home was the longest, most depressing ride I had ever been on. In a short amount of time, maybe half an hour, I had gone from the highest elation to the lowest depression, all because “I couldn’t wait until…”

Now that I’ve hit the half century mark I have a bit of a different attitude, or maybe perspective. I feel like the passing of time is going faster and faster every year, not staying the same and definitely not slowing down. If there were a Father Time, I’d find out where he lives and tell him to knock it off, to stop speeding up time for me. I’d tell him I want time to pass as slow as it did when I was in elementary school, when it seemed like the school year took forever; like it did when my brothers were always bigger, stronger and better at sports than me; like it did when eighteen seemed like it was so far away that I’d never get there. I’d tell him to ease back on the throttle a bit; that it’s OK, because I CAN wait until Christmas and New Year’s and spring. I like right now and want to enjoy it a little longer before it’s gone.

Did It Really Happen?

A couple people have asked me if some of the things I write about really happened or was it really like that growing up. And another person asked me how the heck I remember all this stuff. OK, you got me. I’m really an only child from a wealthy family and every story is made up. I don’t really have six brothers and two sisters, and there were never card games and board games; I didn’t have to learn to get along with others, or how to share things, or how to wait for things; I got everything and anything I wanted, especially at Christmas; my yard was not the football field or the wiffle ball field where we played for hours; I went on luxurious vacations every year; I didn’t have to count out M&M’s in a Dixie Cup. Well, maybe in some parallel universe or imaginary world that is true, but not here in the real world. All I can say is, I write things as I remember them. Does that mean that everything I write is exactly how it happened? Probably not, but what I write is how I remember things and so far no one has come forward and said, “That never happened.”, or “This is what really happened.”, or “This is how that really happened.”.

I know I have a pretty good memory because there are times I bring up situations and someone doesn’t remember it, but as I fill in the details they’ll say, “Oh, yeah. I remember that!” Then we’ll talk about it for fifteen or twenty minutes and laugh about things that happened. Oftentimes it will lead to the retelling of other situations that happened, some even funnier than the original one we talked about. I don’t know why I have such clear memories of occurrences from decades ago – but can’t remember where I left my cell phone ten minutes ago – but maybe it’s because those were some great times and I drank in all the details.

I try not to make it sound like everything was wonderful when I was a kid, because it wasn’t. We weren’t The Brady Bunch or the Huxtables on The Cosby Show. My family went through some hard times, especially trying to feed, clothe and provide for nine kids. I could focus on the struggles I had as a kid, or that we had as a family, but as I look back on my childhood I don’t see the tough times as much as I see how those times taught me something about life, myself or family. In many instances, those tough times taught me what was really important as opposed to what just seemed to be important. That doesn’t mean I always made the right decisions, I made enough bad ones in my life to last ten lifetimes, but I’d like to think that I learned from my mistakes and grew and changed because of them.

My parents and family were by no means perfect. However, my parents raised nine kids, all who are reasonably successful adults. Not one of us is a criminal or a derelict. Trust me when I say that there were other families we knew that had as many, or almost as many, kids as we did and that cannot be said about them. I’m not bragging or trying to put anyone down, but it would have been easy for any of us to turn to a different lifestyle than we did in order to get the “things” many of our friends had. That we didn’t is a testament to our parents and how they taught us to live.

So did this stuff really happen and was it really like I say it was? As far as I remember, yes and yes. I remember it from my perspective and through the lenses of 30 – 40 year old glasses. Things may be a little fuzzy around the edges, but the main part is very clear. I had parents who loved me, and brothers and sisters that I loved (well most of the time anyway). As my Dad used to frequently say, we always had “a roof over our heads, food on the table and clothes on our backs”, despite some fairly hard times. It’s not all flowers and rainbows today either, but I often think that if my parents got through challenges with nine kids, I can do it with two.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.