In the hours before we leave for the airport, the erratic artillery fire of footsteps rattles the house. Four of us, up and down and in and out. We somehow manage to eat a full breakfast and pull off an early-morning pre-Christmas gift exchange in the midst of it all. Bug purchased surprise tchotchkes for all of us from Colvin Run Mill’s gift weekend for kids. Volunteers take children through the country store with their lists and budget helping them both pick out and wrap the presents. Parents are not allowed. It if fun to see my little boy growing up enough to take pride in selecting treasures for each of us. He bought me a lime green kitty cat ring-keeper. Considering how much he loves to play in my jewelry box, the gift is especially sweet.
During our morning exchange, Bug crawled around behind the tree and made a pile for each of us. It is amazing how quickly he has put the alphabet together into words. He reads the names on the tags easily, tossing each gift into a pile. Never mind that the tags are hand-letters and a little smeary and that each of us goes by different names to one another. He understands whose is whose. He counts them out and makes sure we take turns.
Then we are done and off to the bath, the laundry, the packing. Giovanni stops by to drop off gifts and to say goodbye. This is not an easy moment. He is moving out of his apartment in a few weeks and we are seeing less of each other. The New Year will be very different than the last. After giving Bug the winning gift of the morning — a Lego minecraft set — Giovanni kneels down and says, “Listen, buddy. I won’t be seeing a lot of you. If you ever, ever want to talk to me, you just tell your mommy that you want to call me. You can call me anytime, okay?”
“Okay,” Bug says, only half looking at him. Giovanni sweeps Bug into a bear hug and tells him he loves him. Watching him attend to my son through this farewell makes me shiver. I can feel those arms as if they are holding my own heart. I take a breath and decide not to cry as he kisses me hard before driving away.
Soon, we are at the end of the morning. We take out the garbage, empty the dishwasher, set up the cat’s food bowl for the kitty-sitter. All through it, the bump-bump-bump the overstuffed suitcases and the last remembered items shake the rafters.
Another Christmas awaits us when we land at DFW. My grandmother, still kicking at 92 despite the dementia and the broken hip, will have all five of her children and a good fraction of her assorted grandkid under one roof this year. It will be bright chaos. It will be a story to tell.
And we never know when it might be goodbye.
Tag: Christmas
Happy 100 Days: 21
My son is standing at the kitchen counter with a handful of permanent markers and a stack of recycled paper. The brush in my hands works its way through his golden hair. The tangle in the back tightens like the fist of Christmas lights we threw into the corner after 30 minutes of trying. The smell of spruce clings to the morning.
Bug continues on a picture of a golf ball factory he began last night. His running commentary distracts us both from the small knots yanking at his scalp. “This bin is for one color, and this one for blue. They get sorted into the right boxes, and here is where they go if the wrong color is in the box. Ow!”
“I’m sorry, baby. I’ll go slow.”
He fills the page with tiny circles, long funnels, and snaking tubes. He writes the words “picker” and “golf ball tools.”
When we were decorating, I managed to pick apart one fist of lights and unfurl a string to adorn the tree. When I finished, I hooted and cheered. “Perseverance pays off!” I hoped this would make us all forget about me tossing the other strand aside and declaring it hopeless.
Bug leans close to make a thin line on the edge of the page. My hands follow his arc. I separate the twisted locks at the base of his skull one snarl at a time. The brush barely moves yet its work is relentless.
“I am going to be an engineer,” he tells me. “Not the train kind. The building kind.”
“Yes, you will, baby. You can build anything you see inside your mind.”
“I know, Mom,” he says.
Good. I lean in and kiss him on the damp head. He barely registers me. He is too focused on crafting his vision one perfect circle at a time. Let’s keep it that way.
Happy 100 Days: 24
Train platform, new friends (hello! hello!), young boys not much older than my son approach me to shake my hand and say, “Nice to meet you.” I am so stunned I almost forget how to respond. Metro cards, turnstiles, find a car. Kids spin around the metal poles, “Sit down! Sit still!” It does not work, they are all maps and windows and new new new. The littlest ones cry, both wanting the window seat and the seat next to daddy. Once we are zipping along, tears dry and the traffic, tracks, sky, tunnel mesmerize.
Then, up onto city streets. Dusk. Lights, crosswalks, thousands of cars. “Stay close! Stop at the curb! Don’t run ahead!” The boys slam into each other, their bodies pin-balls pinging between Pennsylvania Avenue office buildings. The caravan growths thin as it stretches down a city block. Two boys race ahead and we lose sight of them between the looming wall of strangers. The dad carries his young son far back, his daughter in the bubble-gum pink coat bringing up the rear.
Then, it is giant tree. White House in a golden glow. Crowds, bustle, tiny trains, throwing coins into open freight cars. We lose one another, gain an additional mother and daughter, lose her, re-group. The little ones and the big ones all press into the fence, sharing snacks, all learning and then forgetting names. The girls ask their mother for pennies. Another round of coins until we all stop digging into our wallets. The kids throw clumps of grass. The state trees arc behind us and we find the ones we know. Rhode Island, where one went to culinary school. Texas, where one will spend Christmas. Then we see Virginia and we all crowd around for a moment, squeezing our way in.
We break free of the crowd’s tight grip and weave our way down the streets again. Up the stairs and onto Freedom Plaza’s deep breath of open space. Up past the marquee lights of National Theater. No one remembers what is here anymore, no one spends time in the city. Where will we eat? All around us, hotels, glimmering brass. The Willard. The Washington Marriott. Lights, doormen, black hired cars. We gamble on distant memory and hoof up 14th street. The Shops at National Place offer up a bakery with a kids’ menu. Sandwiches, fruit cups, chocolate milk. Slump, hydrate, chat, color, wait wait wait and then eat.
Back out into the night. The metro again, the front car now, kids take turns peering through the dark glass at the curving tunnel ahead. We peek our heads out at the station stops and wave at the conductor who grins and winks. Girls pour their tiny toy animals onto the vinyl seats. Boys wrestle. “Stop that! Gentle hands!” The parents talk more. Who is in school, who lived where, whose kids like which sports, instruments, books. Have you decorated yet? Where will they be for the holidays? With dad? With you? Half weeks, split Christmas, alternating years.
At the final stop, we all wait at the turnstile. No one in this crowd is left behind. We only just met, and already we are each other’s fierce protectors. For one sparkling night, we barely-friends are one tribe.
Office Party 2.0
We were able to dispense with the requisite “Secret Snowflake” office gift exchange this year. While I am reluctant to snub tradition, who needs another $10 tchotchke? We agreed to try something a little different.
The assignment: identify a favorite charitable organization, and come prepared to talk about it.
Our student services gathering was early this year due to the early departure of one among us to a lengthy holiday in Brussels. On Monday, we brought holiday treats along with our own brown bag lunches. It was low key, in a conference room over lunch. Nothing fancy, which was exactly right for us. Folks came bearing festive, chocolate-y, sparkly yummies to share.
Anyone who wanted to participate anted up a few bucks. While we ate and chatted, each participant in the “Charity Stocking” dropped his or her organization’s name in a stocking. We listened as each in turn shared that group’s purpose and describe why it mattered. This gave all of us the opportunity to hear one another’s brief, sweet and revealing personal stories.
We not only learned about a range of organizations and how they serve a greater good, we also became more familiar with how our co-workers think about service. I had not known before that one of our coordinators used to volunteer as a counselor at one of Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Camps, and that another has a relative who has recently returned from Afghanistan and has become involved in the Wounded Warrior Project.
We chose the team-member who is the most recent hire to draw from the stocking. He pulled our winner: Canine Companions for Independence. The organization raises service dogs to help folks with disabilities. I had a vague idea about such work from a documentary I watched a hundred years ago, but I did not know it can cost $40,000 to raise and train one of these pooches! Our small group of ten collected over $125. This will not transform the world, but it sure is nice to know our pocket change is going somewhere that matters.
Then we consumed vast quantities of sugar.
Since our Monday gathering, I find I am paying a little more attention to the food donation boxes and Toys for Tots collections scattered around my campus. I am also trying to tone down Bug’s fixation on what he is going to get from Santa. It is not easy, but even just having him help wrap the gifts or write the notes seems to get us on the right track.
I recently asked for Bug’s help choosing and bagging canned goods for the food drive. He was full of questions about who and how and why. I explained that the food was for people who do not have enough to eat.
“Why don’t they go to the store and buy some more?”
Well, of course, that would be the logical approach. So began a straightforward but carefully worded conversation about money and hunger and “enough.” It was all very strange and without context, but my boy took in as much as he could before he was ready to get going to the delivery site. “Come on, Mommy!”
In the frenzy of buying, traveling, feasting and festing, it is a fine thing to remember about giving.
Below are the other organizations that made it into this year’s Charity Stocking but did not win the cash:
We keep their good work in our thoughts during the holidays, and on our lists when we have a few dollars to spare.
Mother, Night
We talk of Christmas
gifts to make for ones we love
whose number may include each other.
Ties and books and the difficulty of music,
and what to do for the sister
with particular tastes
and an absence of time.
I say my year will be complete
if all I receive is a box of sleep.
Just think: to unwrap
one week, a mere seven nights,
each a polished pomegranate
swollen with its eight hours
and perhaps a nap or two, jewels
tucked in around the edges.
The story of this gift is far from new.
Three men arrive at the crèche
bearing gold and perfume.
What of their fourth?
In the forgotten chapter, lost
back in the desert,
he dared to crack the wooden arc
open, to sample the offering.
He could not resist the scent
(who could?)
and dipped his finger in.
Just a taste
and he was adrift
in the oblivion
he was supposed to have shared
not with the babe
but with poor Mary
who still, two millennia hence,
awaits the arrival
of a decent night’s rest.
Shannon E. Williams 