RALLY ROUND YE OLDE ARTIFICIAL TREE

Apparently you are never too old (or too depressed) to learn lessons from a family Christmas. Of course some should have been self-explanatory. I figured out I’d overdone the gifts when, on December 31, I wrote a three-figure check to UPS to package and mail the ride-on steam shovel, skate board, magic castle, etc. Solution: Don’t spoil the grandchildren. Another was in the disappointment of learning that neither daughter nor daughter-in-law nor anyone else in the family wants my monogramed silver and Royal Copenhagen dinnerware (inherited from in-laws) or the 1840 secretary and the Victorian sofa inherited from grandparents, or the watercolor set-designs done by my late brother in the 1980s. Solution: Read “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.” And then there was the most serious issue. Uncertainty. Remember, said one child, life is not easy. There are unpleasant times ahead that have to be faced. Solution: Practice meditation. Other highlights of what may have been our last Christmas at the home we’ve lived in for 35 years: Julian, who just turned five loved the Minion comforter I got for his bed, dismissed the balance board I bought and wrapped (I already have that, Nana. I don’t need it), laughed his way through an indoor obstacle course with his four-year-old cousin, operated a tree-loving drone out in the yard with Uncle Ben and surprised me by being able to read Toby’s collar which says “Best Dog Ever.” Abby, four-and-a-half, who tore the (supposedly) permanent ribbon off the outdoor light display then apologized to me, played school with Uncle Ben (sending him to the office to “think about it,”) curled up next to me to watch the first half hour of “Home Alone: Lost in New York,” told me sternly that I had fed Casey (dog) too many treats and she had thrown up all night, held her sister’s hand at the playground and, on Christmas night, yelled, “Nannie, Nannie, Elliott is eating Toby’s food!” (Toby, a picky mini-goldendoodle, gets his kibble served in a round plastic contraption with little covers. I mean, in all fairness to Elliott, it looks just like a kid’s game.) Molly, two-and-a-half, asked for time alone with me to watch Baby Shark and Rock-a-bye baby on the upstairs computer, put her shoes away in a drawer and cleaned up after Play-Doh (she is very neat…must get that from my mother) painstakingly painted a rock in a rainbow of colors and gave Grandad a hug and a kiss good night. Elliott, almost two, alternately loving and fearing the two dogs, toddled around amusing himself, mostly by “reading” entire books by himself, looking for Abby, and finally, finally consenting to watch several episodes of his favorite show, Peppa Pig, with ME! There were other notable moments, like when I discovered mouse droppings under the Christmas tree skirt and when I realized that some of my carefully chosen gifts had never made it out of the box. But there were many more great times, like some rare time alone with my beloved daughter-in-law and the fact that the kids either prepared or paid for nearly all of our meals and listening to the guys talk about the Spiderman Movie and watch the Cleveland Browns lose to Baltimore. I have learned in recent years that life can be unexpectedly hard and the road zigs when you think it will zag but these family times seem to make everything worthwhile. The memories will sustain me for a long time. I hope the same is true for all my friends. I’ll close with the words of someone much funnier than I. “Adults can take a simple holiday for children and screw it up. What began as a presentation of simple gifts to delight and surprise children around the Christmas tree has culminated in a woman unwrapping six shrimp forks from her dog, who drew her name.” – Erma Bombeck

WHEN CHRISTMAS BECOMES ALL ABOUT PAJAMAS The most wonderful time of the year is here: the season in which you have to (once again) make a wrenching decision: Should I lie to the kids? My friend has an eleven year old daughter who discovered her baby teeth in her mother’s drawer and extrapolated. “She wasn’t sure about Santa last year,” her mom says, “but she gets it now. And she’s bitter. I mean, no Santa, no Tooth Fairy. She asked if it means there’s no Easter Bunny, too, and what about God?” To tell or not to tell. That is the question. I know this particular issue has been debated ad nauseum and yet I intend to add to the nausea with my own reminiscences. It seems to me Christmas is all about magic. At least for kids. It certainly was for me. I loved going to get the tree, setting it up, listening to mom and dad argue about the placement of the lights, hanging the tinsel on the lower branches. I loved the anticipation of Santa and of family. Our family enjoyed a tri-partite Christmas On December 24th, in the late afternoon, we’d pile into the station wagon and dad would drive us from our home in Ann Arbor to Dearborn to visit my mother’s parents, sisters and brothers, and our cousins. We’d spend the evening running around the basement, drinking (otherwise forbidden) Cokes and eating chips, liverwurst sandwiches and Lebkuchen, watching the adults guzzle cherry-topped manhattans and play silly group games devised by my dad, listen to Grandma sing “Stille Nacht”, in her high, thin voice, and opening gifts from the relatives. Mostly Avon products and pajamas. On the drive home my younger twin brothers slept in the cargo section of the car while I hung over the front seat avidly listening to my mom and dad chatting about the relatives and looking out the window as we passed the lighted manger scenes and the strings of lights across the downtown streets in Garden City, Westland, Plymouth and Ypsilanti, all the little towns along Ford Road. The sense of anticipation was high and sleep hard to come by and we, my brothers and I were always up well before dawn. Unfortunately my dad worked for the newspaper so he had to go in for a few hours. We’d open out stocking gifts then go back to bed. I wonder now how on earth my mother convinced us to do that but I suppose there were threats. The actual opening of presents was the zenith. I can’t remember ever being disappointed. My mom would have coordinated with my best friend’s mom to get us the same doll, the same ice skates, the same Nancy Drew books. Dad would contribute little surprises like a wooden barrette or a bracelet. Of course those glorious moments eventually came to an end and we would pile back into the car to drive three miles to my dad’s parents’s house. It was a big, lovely Victorian home with a Christmas tree inherited from the fraternity boys next door. My grandad did not believe in spending money. We’d have a great turkey dinner then open packages, most of them for my grandmother from her many sisters, and a few for my brothers and me. Nearly always pajamas. With that reminiscence out of the way, let me get back to the great lie. I think it’s okay. I mean life is full of disillusionment, right? And there have to be a few years between receiving the perfect Madame Alexander doll to getting a new laptop or a pair of pajamas when faith and belief are uncertain. My folks actually did a great job of bridging the gap. At some point when we were adults (or almost) my dad started a tradition of dragging out of his wallet, a curled and yellowed copy of the famous editorial from the New York Sun in his wallet titled, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” He would read it (without his glasses), and always, always the beautiful sentiment would make my otherwise happy-go-lucky, irreverent dad, tear up. That was kind of a magic moment, pajamas notwithstanding.

MEDITATION COMPLICATION

JUST BREATHE IN (note: It’s not as easy as it sounds.) Somewhere in Dan Harris’s How to be Ten Percent Happier, he refers to a conversation in which his wife is asked by an acquaintance how meditating has changed her husband. Her assessment? “It made him less of an asshole.” I love Dan Harris’s book. And I’d definitely like to be ten percent happier. Or five percent. Or two. I’d settle for whatever percent would allow me to calm down, be more productive and behave better. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask. In pursuit of this goal I plunked myself into a slouchy version of a lotus position on the sofa and activated the Ten Percent Happier app installed on my phone by my ever-optimistic son, Ben. After two breaths I started thinking about the shredded fabric on the couch cushions. We really should replace the twenty-year-old sectional but what if we move into a smaller house? Or a condo? Or an assisted living facility? What would we do with a new couch? I remembered Dan’s advice then. If thoughts creep into your mind, just start over. I start over. Breathe in. Breathe out. This time I make it through three breaths before I start thinking about dinner. It’s only a couple of hours away. What will we have? I have, for the eleventymillioneth time failed to buy the ingredients for the Mediterranean diet recipes I’ve collected. Our choices are scrambled eggs and freeze dried bacon or grilled cheese and tomato soup. I decide to warm up a frozen pizza. Uh-oh. Breathe-in. Breathe-out. Breathe… Why didn’t I get some work done on my book today? At least I could have started decorating for Christmas. What’s with the two naps and hours spent searching the internet for a shoe rack that looks like living room furniture and costs less than thirty dollars? Breathe-in. Breathe out. I should have taken a walk earlier. It’s getting colder and windier and perilously close to the time I have to preheat the oven for the pizza. Should I call one-day blinds? Our house is a fishbowl. The blinds in the bedroom have been there for forty years – longer than we have. Can I get new blinds before the kids come home for Christmas? Can I do it for thirty bucks? Breathe-in. Breathe-out. I wonder what Trump’s been up to today. Oh, wait! It’s four- o’clock. I don’t have to wonder. I can turn on Deadline: White House and find out. Yay! I turn off the app and promise myself I’ll meditate more tomorrow. After all, according to Dan Harris, even one minute a day makes a difference, although I’m pretty sure I wasn’t doing it long enough to become less of an asshole.

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? IT'S JUST WATER!

Not everything has improved with time but swimming lessons have. Recently I observed my three-year-old granddaughter’s first swimming lesson. There was an instructor in each lane. Abby, in the beginner lane, was with three other tots who were being taught to jump into the water facing the instructor. Some of them landed horizontally, some vertically. All were encouraged and, at the end, the virtue of effort was rewarded with a purple ribbon. (Purple, luckily, is Abby’s favorite color.) The point is, the kids were learning to swim one skill at a time with patience and encouragement. My children were taught by hanging onto the edge of the pool and kicking. The arm movements were practiced on land and then in the water, held aloft by the instructor. It worked, mostly. My first lessons were at the junior high pool where I clutched the side with my elbow and sucked in sobbing breaths while the instructor (fully clothed) stood above me on the deck. Even with the chin-strap, rubber bathing cap, I could hear him shouting at me to put my face in the water. After years of swim team (as a kid and a mom) I still shudder at the scent of chlorine. I have other, better, memories of swimming. I once placed tenth in a state swim meet and it was in the paper. “10th-Emmons.” I still have it. Because the summer swim club had a trampoline, I learned a few tricks which I translated into a first place in a Junior High diving contest by performing a front dive, a back dive and a somersault. I beat two other girls and named myself president (and sole member) of the Pinpoint Diving Club. I expected to move on to the Olympics. There were some efforts at synchronized swimming but they were a little lame. All I remember is some group “dance” with the uninspired title “Assorted Fish.” I guess my best memory should be the odd days in junior high, when the girls would lie on the floor of the locker room trying to get a glimpse of the boys in the pool. Rumor was, they swam naked. You couldn’t prove it by me, though. By then I was wearing glasses which prevented me from lying flat enough to get a good view. Kinda of a metaphor for my life. Anyway, after the swim lesson, we took the purple ribbon out for ice cream, so for Abby and me, it was all good.

MIRACLES AT REHOBOTH

A long, long time ago, after the arrival of our third baby in four years, my sainted mother-in-law abruptly canceled our up-until-then annual family vacations to Avalon, New Jersey. At the time, I thought she’d overreacted. Not so much now. Just kidding. I love vacations with our family. We just returned from our third time in Rehoboth Beach, a tiny jewel of paradise with its charming old-fashioned houses, its quaint bookstore, its abundance of fudge shops and the dancing waves of the Atlantic Ocean a mere block away. Our house was a genuine antique built in 1908 and pretty much untouched since then (except for the addition of a dishwasher that has to be shuttled across the room and attached to the kitchen faucet before it will work.) The house was large and rambling with plenty of bedrooms but only two bathrooms for eleven people. The bathroom problem didn’t bother me as two of our number are still in diapers and, perhaps more importantly, because Pete and I got the room with the biggest bathroom. The house was perfectly situated, within easy wagon distance of the beach, the downtown, the playground and Starbucks. It had a large backyard that was perfect for splash pools, cookouts, a rope swing, water balloons and endless, mountains of bubbles. The trees kept eating the Styrofoam stomp rockets but, luckily, there was a toy store nearby on the boardwalk. Since the adults outnumbered the toddlers, seven to four, things went pretty smoothly. At least until the night my grown up offspring and their partners decided to go out to a restaurant leaving me at home with two four-year-olds, a two-year-old, a one-year-old and a dozing husband. As we approached the end of Captain Underpants, and the dreaded debacle of bedtime, only the baby was already asleep. Two-year-old Molly was wide awake and not at all interested in her crib. She agreed to wait on a queen-sized bed in her parents’ room until her sister, Abby, joined her. I left her upstairs and felt my courage start to fail as I descended the stairs. Both Julian and Abby are used to bedtime rituals, like drinks, conversation, toothbrushing and bedtime stories. I knew I couldn’t leave Molly upstairs for the twenty minutes those activities would take. I turned off the TV and looked at my eldest grandchildren. “Look guys. You’ve got to help me out here,” I said, no doubt sounding more desperate than I’d intended. “I need you both to go potty then get into bed – QUIETLY – and go to sleep. Okay?” (You’d have to be a parent or grandparent to understand how ridiculous the request was.) But here’s the thing: THEY DID IT! Julian slipped into his room and into bed. Abby wanted me to stay with her and Molly so the three of us curled around each other on the big bed without (much) further ado. Did I mention I have the best grandchildren in the world? Also the best children. And that brings me to the other miracle. On Sunday, the first day at the beach, my daughter, Emily, rescued my most precious inanimate possession. No, not my wedding ring or my phone. I’d been stupid enough to wear my glasses (my $900 glasses) on my head when I stepped into a wave that knocked me down and stole the eyewear. For four horrible minutes I thought the mauve-framed magic-makers were gone and then Emily caught a purple glint, lunged and retrieved them. It was another miracle. I would never willingly give up family vacations, no matter how few bathrooms there are.

TRAFFIC CIRCLE OF DEATH

I was not thrilled to get the aged Mr. Ryan as my assigned driver’s ed teacher back in the mid-60’s. He’d been my dad’s high school track coach thirty years earlier and he kept calling me by my last name. He routinely yelled at me when I a) drove the car into a ditch, b) failed at all attempts to parallel park and c) jammed the clutch in and out at inappropriate times, stuttering my way down Main Street. Mr. Ryan agreed to pass me if I promised to never, ever again in my life attempt to drive a stick shift. I stuck to it, mostly. But here’s the thing. Mr. Ryan is long gone but there’s a new horror on the driving horizon: traffic circles. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the circle, personally. I like the Advent wreath and the Olympic rings. (I like all rings, actually.) I like the Native American dreamcatcher. Heck, the characters in my cozy mystery series set in the Upper Peninsula belong to a knitting circle. Traffic circles may make sense in London or Shang hai or New Jersey, but there is no earthly excuse to build them in Michigan, a state made up of snow and grids. So when I visited my hometown of Ann Arbor and began schlepping back and forth to the hospital twice a day, I was dismayed to discover that my seven-mile trek included three traffic circles. THREE! (On a related note, my mom, who lives in Ann Arbor, says nobody likes the danged circles.) Anyway, these circles, or as they are apparently called “roundabouts” – and let me just say that giving them a quaint, carousel-like name does not make the more palatable – caused my blood pressure to rise and my invective level compete with the number of steps on my Fitbit. Six times a day. I wound up in an emergency care facility on Washtenaw Avenue where – I kid you not – they thought it was important to measure my weight. COME ON, Ann Arbor! For those of you unfamiliar with the dreaded traffic circle, let me just print the rules of the road that I found on a very interesting South African website: As you arrive at a large traffic circle, traffic coming from your right has right of way, regardless of how many cars there are. Wait until there is a gap in the traffic and then easy slowly into the circle. Watch out for other traffic in the circle and be aware that they may not be using their indicators.” Yeah. That’ll work. If The Lion King celebrates the Circle of Life, the roundabout symbolizes the Dante’s ninth circle of hell. I say let’s send it the way of the clutch. I’ll just add that I love Ann Arbor, anyway.

THEY'VE GOT MY NUMBER

You’d think we were a nation of spies with all our passcodes and usernames and unlisted cell phone numbers. I’ll admit that (even with tons of caffeine) my memory is somewhat impaired by my advanced years or maybe it’s just laziness. In any case, I can’t believe how hard it is to get ahold of someone. For one thing, as mentioned, cell phones are unlisted. For another, there’s no longer a phonebook with anything except commercial numbers in it. And then there’s the annoying practice of using words to remind you of an enterprise. Word-numbers like 206-647-8262, which translates to 206-Nirvana or 1-800-Got Junk. I always avoid calling letters but several weeks ago, looking for advice about my mom, I needed to contact a nurse’s help station at St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor and the number listed was a word. Something like 734-NURSESS. I dialed away, hoping I wouldn’t get an automated message and thinking about my questions and then, lo and behold, a person picked up the phone. A woman. “Hello,” she said, sounding as if she didn’t mean it. “Oh, hi,” I said, brightly. “I’m trying to find out whether my mom needs a biopsy in order to have radiation.” A brief pause. “Who is this?” I explained. Over explained. I was the daughter, calling from out of town, didn’t want to risk a lung collapse, blah, blah, blah. More silence and then “Who gave you this number?” By now I was wondering whether I’d accidentally called a Southeast Michigan branch of the CIA or some other secret agency. “Uh, I think it was Stacy Somebody. I think she’s a social worker.” “Huh,” the voice said, disapproval dripping from the single syllable. “That’s happened before. The number is only one digit off from ours.” “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said, still thinking it was weird she hadn’t given me a department or a name. “Who did I call?” “The hospital morgue.” Let me go on to say her name was Mary and we chatted for a few minutes. I told her I was interested in morgues because of writing mystery stories and she told me she was interested in the Upper Peninsula. So we talked about snow and death for a few minutes and at the end of the conversation she invited me to drop in when I was in town. “Just to visit,” she added, hastily. “Not to stay.” In spite of the pleasant encounter, I still don’t like word phone numbers. But just for fun I tried to convert my number to a word and I came up with 703-SVU-OINK. If you call it, expect me to respond with a suspicious “Who is this?”