A New Year

I remember the first time I watched the big red ball go down the side of the Times Tower in New York City. I was probably in my early teens. Since then, I've tried to mark the end of each year doing the same thing. I've watched Dick Clark change from an incredibly handsome young man to a close to embalmed creature that no one under thirty remotely recognizes outside of his  yearly TV appearace each December 31. I've watched the dance of the day shift from classic rock 'n' roll to The Swim and The Mashed Potato (which always made me feel more like eating than dancing) to the wild flailing around of the eighties to the amorphous moving of today. To quote Don Ameche, "Things change."

Boy, do things change. I haven't gone out on New Year's Eve in twenty-five years. The last exciting New Year's Eve I had was in 1994 when my eight year old granddaughter Cassie and I visited my son Matt's family in San Antonio for Christmas. Matt and his wife went out to a New Year's Eve party leaving Cassie and I to watch their eighteen month old twins. The babies went to sleep around nine o'clock. Cassie and I watched TV, and like the rational people we were, we planned to watch the big red ball slide down Times Tower and then go to sleep.

Texas is an interesting country. I say country because it feels like one. I suppose all states are like countries with their own special traditions, foods, cultural styles and celebrations. But Texas was the first place I ever spent New Year's Eve where the tradition was to sit in a lawn chair on the roof of your house and shoot off shotguns and pistols to bring in the new year. 

At the first shotgun blast from the guy across the street, I pulled Cassie off the couch, and we ran to the babies' room. We each grabbed a sleeping infant and carried them back to the master bedroom where we all lay on the floor as flat as we could. Cassie asked if we were going to die. I assured her that dying was not part of my plan for the evening. I sounded in control, but I think she knew I was as frightened as she was. The two of us prayed out loud as the babies slept and gunfire resounded in repeated volleys outside.

Not since the Guns Of Navarone have I thought so much about firearms of any kind. The wild shooting seemed to go on for hours. In reality, it was probably forty-five minutes or so, which when you think of it, is a heck of a long time for crazy people to sit on their roofs at midnight for any reason, but especially if they're blasting away their shotguns like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western.

We survived. The shooting finally stopped. Matt and his wife came home. Cassie and I and the babies slept til morning. Life went on.

This New Year's Eve I plan to sit in my quiet little TV room and with my husband watch the big red ball go down the side of Times Tower. I may fall asleep a few times before that actually happens because I am a lot older than I used to be. Gary and I will reminisce about past New Year's Eves, about days gone by and people, sadly, no longer with us. We'll eat a few gluten-free cookies, drink some caffeine-free tea, and talk about the good old days.

But this year, there will be an air of expectancy in our voices. Because life doesn't stop when we get old. It continues in the lives of our children and grandchildren. This year we'll talk about our twin grandchildren Nico and Bella in Texas who will graduate from high school in June. We'll talk about their younger brother Danny who at fourteen just carved his first deer last weekend and hopes to shoot his first deer before the season ends. We'll talk about our thirteen year old grandson Steven and our eleven year old granddaughter Nina in New Hampshire who are getting ready for another year of soccer and baseball and running in marathons. We'll talk about our fifteen year old granddaughter Sami in Indiana who will be taking driver's ed soon and how it seems like yesterday that we held her in our arms as a new baby. We'll talk about how our twenty year old grandson Jake in Indiana is going to buy a boat, works hard, is getting good grades in college, and is the one we call when things break around here. And we'll talk about our lovely Cassie, the little girl who hid on the floor with me and her baby cousins that New Year's Eve all those years ago, who is twenty-four now and who on Christmas Eve this year became engaged to be married to her Matt, making us all very happy even if we do feel pretty old.

Things change. Some things get worse, but mostly things get better. And they get better because we relive yesterday in the lives of our children today, and in the lives of our grandchildren tomorrow. Browning said, "Grow old with me; the best is yet to be." He didn't sit on a chair on the roof to make his thoughts be known. He wrote them down in simple and true words that speak to us today, a hundred and fifty years later. That's the thought I leave with you for this new year: "Things change," but "the best is yet to be!"

Christmas Cards

One year, I was looking for a new idea for our family Christmas card. You know the routine: you try photo cards, you try Christmas letters, you try the unusual to cause a raised eyebrow and a smile from all those who receive your card. Craft magazines used to be full of ideas. Some used grasses and twigs, others used rubber stamps and glitter, still others used little dabs of paint. Gary had an uncle who painted small masterpieces in oil and signed them as Christmas cards. As I write this, I can look up at a small bookcase near me that displays four of his pieces of art. Who can top that?

Long before I had met Gary's Uncle Chuck or knew of his oil painting talents, I had the bright idea of letting my three children make our Christmas cards one year. They were all in lower elementary grades or I couldn't have convinced them to spend the better part of a month doing such a thing.

I always save the Christmas cards I receive from year to year. They're useful for unique gift tags, tree ornaments and reminders of what people wrote in their last card so I don't ask a dumb question in the card I send the following year. So, pulling out four or five years' cards, I let Sarah, Matt, and Rachel select what they thought were really pretty or interesting card designs to copy. This was no small task as I had about two hundred cards to look over and each child had to complete a minimum of twenty cards.

Now, in my own defense, I was not a task master, nor did I expect small children to whip out twenty cards in one afternoon. I started the project before Thanksgiving with a deadline of December 10. I had new crayons and colored pencils and water color paints and good sturdy art paper for the cards. I had colorful Christmas stickers for the envelopes which could also be colored or painted as per each child's whim. I thought it would be a fun way to allow my children to be a real part of the Christmas card ritual.

It was interesting to see which cards appealed to which child. Sarah liked the ornate and traditional garlands, Christmas trees, bells, etc. Matt chose winter landscapes and snowy scenes. And Rachel liked people and animals and, of course, Santa. Once they had their model cards in tow, they set into the task like real professionals. I was surprised at the detail and certainly the dedication that went into their cards. There were snowy villages, elegant trees and doorways, groups of carolers, and Santas. Over the next few weeks, making Christmas cards ceased to be a task and became a much anticipated recreation that we all enjoyed. I kept my slave artists well stocked with cocoa and cookies.

I was proud of them. These three had risen to the occaission and had exceeded my original hopes for the project. I saw artistic talent and creativity being expressed at my own kitchen table, and I often wondered how these same talents would be used as the years passed after my three children were no longer children.

As the project neared completion, I noticed that each had left a card or two that was particulary detailed or difficult to copy for last. I explained that if something was too hard to draw, they should dig through the pile of sample cards for another. Not these three. They stoically pushed forward.

The day came for the unveiling of their project. One by one, we oohed and ahed over the cards. They were beautiful, and in most cases, almost exact copies of some really fine artwork. They even wrote in feau caligraphy the sentiments that were in some of the sample cards or a variation of their own choosing. To say that I was overwhelmed with their abilities, cheerful attitudes, and determination to complete a long project was an understatement. I had promised them a Burger King feast with Aunt Mary when they finished all of their cards, and they were excited about that and the fact that afterwards we would drive around town to see the Christmas lights and then go to see Santa.

One by one we all looked at each card. We complimented. We asked questions. Sometimes one of the children would hold up the original and their artwork to show the similarities. But there is one card that to this day I can clearly see and that still brings a smile to my face. It was one by Rachel, the youngest. Her favorite card, and one of the hardest to draw so she left it for last, was a lovely old-fashioned embossed card showing a large red velvet high heeled slipper with a wide cuff of white fur around the shoe opening. Sitting inside the slipper was a white angora cat with a little pug nose and a smile that you'll never see on the face of a real live cat.

She wanted to make it a religious card, she explained. But there was nothing religious about a cat. This dilemma caused her to really think. She wanted Baby Jesus, but she wanted that beautiful red velvet high heeled slipper with that gorgeous white fur. The fact that the two had zero in common except that Jesus was the creator of all we see which she didn't really understand so it was a moot point at that time, didn't seem to bother her.

And so her card depicted the red velvet high heeled slipper with that unavoidable white fur, but inside it, instead of a cute little white kitten with a pug nose, was a wizened Baby Jesus with a tense face (who really knows what baby Jesus looked like anyway) wrapped in swaddling clothes that made him look like a butterfly's chrysalis. As if that wasn't enough, Rachel, who loved cartoons, comic books, and long explanations of everything, had drawn a speech balloon coming from the Baby's mouth that said, "Yep, folks. It's just me. Little old Baby Jesus!"

The Year My Kids Killed Santa Claus

No one wants to be the bad guy who informs a little kid there is no Santa. Santa is the glitter of Christmas, a harmless deception that adds excitement and even solicits good behavior for a few weeks in the days leading up to Christmas. But even our best intentions on the Santa playing field can be flattened by the neighbor kid or a TV show or a well-meaning person, and once the Santa bubble is burst, it's hard to reinflate.

Years ago, when my children were all under six, we had one of those Santa-flattening experiences. Most of the extended family was gathered at my parents' home, and the house almost rocked with the usual hoopla.The men were sitting around deep in conversation in the living room. The kitchen, always the women's domain, watched them unloading bags of their trademark recipes while the children ran here and there and generally were underfoot.

My three kids had just participated in a Christmas pagent at church. My son Matt had been an angel with a gold tinsel halo, something in real life I never saw above his little noggin.

Sarah, the oldest and wisest because she was nearly six, waxed eloquent to the other children on the subject of Santa and gifts. My nephew Dan, also six, was listening to her Santa saga and sagely agreeing, and it was clear he loved Santa with true belief in his heart.

Christmas Eve dinner was everything one could hope for. The table groaned under the turkey, potatoes, casseroles, salads, relishes, and breads. My dad issued his yearly complaint to my mother, "Why don't you cook this way all year?" and the rest of us just enjoyed the great good and being home for Christmas. The children, seated at a child-sized table not far from the adults, were also enjoying themselves.

Then somewhere between the second helpings of turkey and dressing and the advent of the desserts, we all heard a loud and painful wail commence. One's first thought was that one of the kids had cut themselves or had been punched in the face by a cousin or a sibling. It was neither.

It was our nephew Dan who at six was looking otherwise very sharp in his turtleneck sweater and little sport jacket and polished dress shoes, and he was crying the cry of the abandoned. His tears were literally jumping off of his little face. It was painful to watch, and immediately all those recently celebrating adults were leaning over the kids' table, trying to figure out the problem, asking queations and making the situation generally more stressful.

Dan's father gruffly asked him what was the matter.

"Santa's dead!!" the little guy wailed.

"Who told you that?" his dad asked.

"They did!" little Dan answered pointing to the guilty ones.

"They" were my three children still sitting at the little peoples' table. They looked as shocked by the whole fiasco as the adults.

That's when I got involved. A few questions later we learned that four-year-old Rachel's Sunday School teacher had recently explained to her little flock that St. Nicholas was a very good man who did kind things for people, including leaving them gifts, but that he was dead. In fact, he had been dead for many years, and today it was the moms and dads who carried out the gift-giving tradition on Christmas morning. A bit understated, but basically true.

The topic of Santa arriving on Christmas Eve had been the hot topic at the kids' table. New knowledge on the topic from a Sunday School teacher carried a lot of weight. It also presented me with a problem that needed to be solved very quickly: how to continue the Santa myth for one and all, and still not contradict the Sunday School teacher.

I must admit I thought more quickly on my feet in the good old days than I do now. I simply explained to all of the children that St. Nicholas and Santa were two different people. One really lived and then died. The other lives at the North Pole and still takes his yearly reindeer-led trek across the world to deliver gifts to good little boys and girls. It was the kind of lie that ranks right up there with the Easter Bunny and woodland trolls. The explanation seemed to do the trick as adults and children both resumed eating. Later, the dead St. Nicholas vanished from our minds as we tore into the mountain of gifts beneath the Christmas tree.

Over the years, all of the children stopped believing that Santa really came down their chimney. It had to happen sometime, but when it did, it caused me to be a little sad and retrospective as I remembered believing in Santa as a child and then not believing.  

A Christmas Story

Once upon a time many years ago, a boy lived with his mother in a small house in a small town. The windows of the house looked out on no where, and the sky was always gray.

It was December and cold. Christmas was coming and yet in the small house where the boy lived there would be no Christmas. The father had lost his job and had gone away to look for work. There was barely enough food for each day, and although the boy dreamed of Christmas and glitter and gifts, the sad and tired eyes of his mother prevented him from asking.

At school, the other children bustled with excitement over holiday preparations and festivities, but the boy kept his distance, holding back and watching the others as if by participating in any way he would be stepping out of what were his inexorable circumstances.

Christmas Eve arrived, and the boy was almost numb from the effort of avoiding it. He kept to himself most of the day, stacking wood and doing chores. Keeping busy would make time pass and with it the pain of knowing that Christmas would be only a word tonight.

Coming in from the woodshed late in the afternoon, it seemed to him that even the weather was shutting him out as dusk fell early and now there would be longer hours to sit and wait for that which would not come.

For a while, he sat on his bed, looking out the window, but his eyes grew heavy, and he fell asleep. When he woke, he went into the kitchen where the sights and smells that greeted him caused his eyes to grow wide with wonder.

Lit candles and evergreen boughs with tiny red and white gingham bows bedecked the table on which were plates of frosted sugar cookies and raisin cakes. The rich aroma of chicken pie and fresh baked bread danced across the room from the oven. Mother was smiling, and somehow in the cheery half world of the candlelight she didn't look sad or tired anymore.

And so the two of them, mother and son, dined together in a kind of splendor amid the evergreens and candles. There was laughter as they retold familiar scenes from years gone by, and they gaily sang the old carols as they ate the cookies and cakes. Then, while the candles burned low, the mother held the boy and recited once more the story being told the world over that night, how on another cold winter's eve long ago a young mother held her tiny son while singing angels filled the sky, and a bright star shone over a stable.

They sat together in the big chair for a long time after the story was finished. The candles spluttered and one by one went out until the room was lit by starlight alone. The boy sat very still, not wanting the moment to pass.

For the rest of his life, in better times and perhaps in worse times, he would remember the raisin cakes, the simple homemade decorations, the gentle voice of his mother, the soft feel of her arms around him; and he would remember what Christmas really was, and what it was not.