Slow and Steady

How was your Christmas?
By this time of the year, this is the question my friends and I ask each other, and, thankfully, the answer is almost always positive. Great! Fun! Exciting! Slow! Slow?? Well, yes. At least in my house. Many times I stare at Flipper, wonderingly, at this little person, an individual in her own right. And I think, who are you? Christmas morning raised this question yet again, and I'll tell you why. Picture dawn creeping across the land, as thousands of children leap out of bed, rush pell-mell to the living room, and fall upon their presents like a horde of deranged puppies. Pretty typical, right? Exciting, fun, all that good old Christmas stuff...but not slow. Not even close. Now come to my house: Sister and I have been up for some time, she drinking coffee, me making a coffeecake that required yeast, which makes me quite nervous. At 7 a.m., the grandparents arrive, and we wait. And wait. By 7:45, my father could bear it no longer, and wanted to start making noise to wake Flipper up, "get things going" in his words. Since I never, unless I absolutely have to, wake up any sleeping child, I tried to urge patience. My pleas fell on deaf ears, and so at 8 a.m., I urged her to consciousness. Slowly, she got out of bed, and slowly, she came downstairs. She silently knelt by the fire, gazed at the empty plate that held fruitcake and carrots the evening before, and then slowly dipped into her stocking. Stockings are a big deal in my family: many small treasures, carefully selected over the course of an entire year, presents both practical and frivolous must be carefully removed, exclaimed, and passed around. It took her an hour to go through hers. A new pair of tights required a change out of pyjamas and to get dressed in a skirt that would show the new tights to perfection. Back downstairs. By now, the rest of us had long finished with ours, and were watching her slowly examine a tooth fairy box, a cupcake-shaped container of lip gloss...it was edging past 9 a.m., and those of us that had been up since the crack of dawn, which is to say everyone but Flipper, were getting peckish. Almost jokingly I said, "Why don't we take a break to eat and then come back to the presents?" Much to our surprise, she willingly agreed. Present-opening was suspended, and we ate a slow, leisurely meal, then returned, moving as if underwater, to the tree. Sister and I exchanged glances. Who are you? This thought went through our minds again as she carefully, slowly, thoughtfully unwrapped each gift, examined it closely, played with it or arranged it somewhere. Doll clothes had to go on the doll that minute, not later. Books must be paged through at the moment, not at bedtime. And so it went. It took more than an hour. But there was something so sweet, so innocent, and yet so strangely adult-like in her desire to savor every moment, that the build-up and the hype of Christmas morning wasn't, for Flipper, to be cast aside in a hastily unwrapped pile of paper and ribbon, and new toys dropped where they were unwrapped so the next could be grabbed and torn open as well. And so our Christmas was slow, very slow. And even I, one of the most impatient people you'll ever meet, wouldn't change a thing. It was perfect.

Tradition, tradition!

I bought some candy canes (all-natural, of course) to give to the high school students on the last day of school before break. I decided to put little tags on them with their name, and some sort of unoffensive, non-denominational cheerful message. So I crawled into the storage space under the stairs and dragged out what I refer to as the Christmas box. It is pretty unassuming: plain clear plastic, lid long gone, and, occasionally, quite dangerous if you snag your hand against any of the jagged broken edges. It holds random-very random-odds and ends and bits and pieces of Christmas-y wrapping things. Tags, ribbon, stretchy gold cord, tape, etc. It was my grandmother's, and I got it when she died, along with so many light bulbs that I am just now coming to the end of them. And she died almost 5 years ago. She was a grand lady, a lawyer that practiced until she was in her late 80's. A working mother, well, stepmother, really, way before everyone went back to work.
I thought of her recently, now that my sister is home for this Christmas, and we are slowly establishing traditions of our own. It is Christmas, not Thanksgiving, that makes me feel lucky, and for one reason only: mine is a family that lacks drama. Mine was a childhood that was happy. For us, the holidays were fun. Not crazy, overstimulated fun, not insanely extravagant presents that buried the bottom half of the tree, but plain fun. Simple things. The same things in our stockings (always a box of thank notes). And so on.
We usually stayed here for Christmas, and she remained in her beloved city of birth, Atlanta. But every year, without fail, a package would arrive about a week before Christmas day. Out would come 10 presents-all wrapped in white tissue paper with her shaky lettering in bright red: To Open 5 Days Before Christmas. To Open 4 Days Before Christmas...well, you get the picture. How we loved this!! They would go under our own little trees in our room, and contain the same things, year after year. An ornament. A book. Candy. And now, this year, Flipper will get her own little pile of presents. Indulgent, I know. Unnecessary; I know this too. But I also know that as long as traditions, big or small, live on, so do the people that started them. So thanks, Grandmargaret. And now, I need to go buy some plain white wrapping paper. And a red pen.

Maybe, Flipper, there is a Santa Claus...

Straight from Gone With The Wind is this wonderful quote: "eavesdroppers often hear highly instructive things"-with the unwritten "about themselves" directly following this. And in my house, while the Christmas spirit that has surrounded us, Flipper isn't quite as eager to swallow the whole Santa Claus thing hook, line and sinker like she did last year. This morning, while I was racing about, getting ready to go to work, I heard her ask my mother if "Santa Claus was really real." Blessedly, Smokey deftly deflected this, asking her what she thought, and even though I was out of sight, I could still see the wheels furiously churning in her little brain. I could feel her desire for it to be true, very true, battling it out with the other part of her, the very, very literal-mindedness that will probably make a wonderful, (yet maddening), scientist one day. She will be, I am convinced, EXACTLY like my own father, a true scientist in every sense. This is the man that leaned over during Star Wars to whisper, "Remember girls, there's no sound in space." (OUCH!!)
Anyway, my mom answered her best, "It's a mystery." A non-answer, really, but one that has satisfied her (for now). As much as I want her to hold on to all forms of fantasy and magical beliefs, I have to admit that the whole Santa-thing makes me feel very conflicted. I used to believe, strongly, that parents that did not support a belief in Santa Claus (and fairies, and gnomes and so on) were cruelly, Scrooge-ily robbing their kids of something important.
But then I began to read a few personal essays online, opinions that contradicted my point of view, and I started to see it in a different light. Some people felt that as an adult you were lying directly to your children, and therefore it was not just wrong from an ethical perspective, but that it was potentially trust-destroying, and others felt that their children should, indeed, know that it was their love and hard work that makes piles of presents appear Christmas morning, not some old guy with a beard. So I totally get-and respect-these beliefs, much more than I would have BEFORE I had Flipper. Funny how a world that was once so very black-and-white is now many, many shades of gray. Not that this solves MY dilemma: whether or not to directly answer her questions about Santa, or continue to deflect, distract, deny. A technique that works quite well for almost any touchy parenting situation, as a matter of fact. So we'll see how all of this plays out: I don't think I can lie to her face, but I do know that I can easily (almost TOO easily) cloud and confuse her with half-truths, questions, and non-answers.
I do know this: Christmas in my family is, thankfully, fun. No family fights, no drama, no frantic racing from place to place, no "taking turns" with in-laws, no bad food, no nothing but fun. And THAT is what she will carry from one year to the next, not (I hope) questions about what is real and what is not. Flipper is planning to dictate a thank-you note for Santa this year, thanking him for last year's presents. So I guess he's real enough, after all. And that is enough for me.

Bye, Bye Baby

I have many potential qualifiers for an imaginary contest entitled "Most Bittersweet Parental Memory of Vanishing Childhood." Many. Teeth coming in, teeth going out. Food icky and mushy, food crunchy and chunky. Transition after transition after transition. It is what it's all about, it is not? But two thing about this inevitable process continue to be hard to comes to terms with (at least for me); no one else seems to be inwardly suffering as much as I am!!
One is that the very things I want to hold onto, she wants to be shed of. Like teeth. I dread the gap-toothed smile, even as she continues to insist that, "all my teeth are loose!" No, they're not. "YES THEY ARE!!!" I cannot help but flash-forward 10.5 years, when she races out of the house, after carefully pilfering the car keys...oh, wait. That was ME. But race she will, eager to bolt our Required Evening Family-Time Meal Together and meet her friends, whom will, inevitably, become increasingly important to her. And my importance will imperceptibly slip into the back seat of her life. She already plans-as much as a five year old can-what to wear to school that is the same as one of her friends. "Alison and I are BOTH going to wear our WHITE TIGHTS tomorrow!!" What five year-old DOES this? And, perhaps more importantly, WHY?!?!? Note that I released my control-freak tendencies regarding her clothes many, many moons ago. I deserve a medal for this, it was so hard to do.
So many of these transitions don't make me sad, but one has happened recently, and it isn't so much WHAT has been outgrown, but the fact that I didn't really notice. It just happened. Peaceful mornings at our house (I am typing this a 5 a.m., which should give you some idea of how peaceful it is) are rent apart by the plaintive cries of "MAMA!!! I WANT YOU!!!" I head upstairs, we cuddle, she tries to come to terms with being awake, I try to quell my early-morning, hyper-caffeinated self long enough to enjoy a Tender Moment...and for years, years, I tell you, I would pick her up, carry her back downstairs to my favorite chair, and she would sit on my lap, head tucked under my chin. I loved this. It was like having a talking, no-diaper baby. Heaven, really. But it occurred to me recently that now she just...gets out of bed. Goes to get dressed. All. By. Herself. One more chapter closed...and I barely noticed. Didn't give it a second thought, until she tried to curl up on my lap a few days ago...and didn't fit. My heart gave a little drop as I recognized what has become a familiar feeling: it's over. And then, yesterday, she fell off a metal stool, screamed in agony, and ran to be picked up, and I had a fleeting moment of relief: not quite. And I was grateful.

Whistling While You Work...

My car, my house-my very world sounds as though it has been invaded by canaries. It is maddening. And I just don't have the heart to send that canary back down in the mines...since it is a human canary, appearing in the form of Flipper-The Amazing Whistling 5 Year-Old. It sticks in my craw-not to mention my ears-that she can whistle, and does so at every single opportunity that her mouth is not otherwise engaged in TALKING and EATING.

Why does it irk me that Flipper spends almost every waking moment warbling like a bird? Well, because her ascension to the ranks of a real, honest-to-gosh whistler in my family leaves ME as the ONLY non-whistler in the family!!! I can't whistle. I tried for years. It eludes me. Yelling at my dogs works just fine. And, how kind of Flipper, she likes to point out my inadequacy as a whistler every chance she gets.

"Are you sad that you can't whistle like me, Mommy? Maybe you'll be able to when you're OLDER. Me, Aunt Kathryn, Daddy, Grampy and Smokey can all whistle. Did you know you're the only one in our WHOLE FAMILY that can't? Did you know that?"

And so on. And on, and on and on. It is excruciating. Almost as excruciating as the past 5 months, as I experienced her "learning curve" of whistling. This in an area where I admire her and also look at her as an utter stranger. She has an incredible ability to really, really work at something over and over again until she gets it. And ability I lack, by the way. I want to be the instant expert at something, or else I want to quit. Lame, I know. Really lame. But, them's the breaks. But Flipper will set her mind on something, and then go for it. I admire this quality immensely, even though I don't share it (unfortunately). And so all summer long, she practiced. And practiced. Pursed lips, fat cheeks, endless puffs of air. Tiny squeaks, little trills. She's driving me crazy!! And now 5 months later, she has progressed beyond tiny squeaks to small bars of music, tuneless bars, mind you, but music just the same. And so, as maddening as it is, it is music to my ears.