Entry #10: FIREWORKS

FIREWORKS

It's New Year's Eve, and I am waiting to see fireworks tonight. Real ones, not on television. I like the ooo's and  ahhhh's of the crowd. I enjoy the anticipation as each rocket shoots into the night. Will there be a dandelion of red, or green, or blue sparks? A weeping willow of white stars? A thicket of twirly shrieking whistles?

As far as I'm concerned, fireworks are good for any occasion. What a way to celebrate an anniversary, or a birthday. How great it would be to have fireworks at your wedding! I can even imagine a funeral with a few white rockets shot into the sky.

As New Year's fireworks begin their journey around the globe, I am reminded of the fireworks I enjoyed as a child. All my life - until I went to college -  my family would spend summers in Rhode Island, and every so often we would be permitted to go to the Fourth of July fireworks at The Dunes Club in Narragansett, RI.

The Dunes Club is the greatest place in the world (and I NEVER exaggerate). It has the most wonderful beach you've ever seen, with the best waves for bodysurfing. The club itself is all grey, weathered wood with long walkways that are covered with straw mats. If you don't want to spend a fortune, you get a little closet in a long line of closets where you can leave your bathing suits and baby powder and boogie boards in between visits. There are little shared wooden shower stalls with freezing cold water you dump on your head by pulling a chain. This follows the "inversely proportionate" rule for rich people: they spend more to have less.

If you are really rich, you wait for someone to die and then you get a cabana on one of the horseshoe-shaped semicircles. Each cabana has "his" and "hers" changing rooms and a shower between. The water is still ice cold, but  you can warm up on a lounge chair out front as you chat with your neighbor.

When I was little, we were allowed to spend one day per summer at The Dunes Club as the guests of one of my mother's friends. It was the most fun I'd ever had in my life. We could swim for hours in the ocean, and get blue Popsicles at a little window without needing any money, and order a fabulous lunch in our bathing suits in the tiny walk-through cafeteria. The very old folks drank on the deck beneath umbrellas overlooking the ocean, or ate lobster salad at tables with crisp, white tablecloths in the fancy dining room with huge glass doors that opened onto decks overlooking the sea.

The Dunes Club is, of course, very exclusive. Most of the families could easily model for Ralph Lauren or J. Crew. The husbands show up on weekends and are captains of industry in their Nantucket red shorts. The women are all thin and blonde and laugh lightly. The nannies are slightly less attractive to keep the husbands under control, and the children are all tow-headed, active, and suntanned. Voices are never raised. Radios are unheard of. Good-looking young people in white clothes run back and forth to the cabanas all day with drinks. The distinctive blue-and-white beach towels are stolen at a rapid rate.

My parents could have joined The Dunes Club at any time, but they waited until their last child (me) was in college before they did so. Why waste money on children enjoying themselves?

They quickly graduated to a cabana for just the two of them. While others filled their window boxes with bright red and white impatiens and other sunny flowers, my mother stuck a plastic plant from BJ's in their window box. Most people had lovely chaise lounges with flowery cushions and a side table or two. My parents dragged in some broken plastic chairs and moldy coolers for their booze. Their broken-down furniture was extraordinarily inappropriate. Anybody with a cabana obviously had money, so apparently they truly did not care how crazy they appeared in a cloud of bright flowers and tasteful hydrangea prints.

On July Fourth, the Dunes Club hosted its own private fireworks display. My mother made the effort to take us only a few times when we were little, but what times they were!

We kids experienced total freedom while the adults all stood around like tree trunks, drinking and waiting for dark. We could run around anywhere we liked, totally unsupervised. The sand cooled down after sunset and was as soft as velvet. The stars came out and we would race around among the adults' knees.

Finally the most extraordinary fireworks would begin. A few desultory rockets at odd intervals brought everyone to attention. Then the fireworks began in earnest, with showers of gloriously colored sparks directly overhead. Occasionally there would be a bright flash of magnesium and a BOOM that would make your heart vibrate inside your chest. I loved those best of all, and thought they were thrilling. The Grand Finale always involved countless rockets all fired at once, Roman candles, a sparkling American Flag set up on the beach, and a deafening series of bright explosions.

"Aren't they WONDERFUL?" I could not help exclaiming.

My mother, who at the time fancied herself against the Viet Nam war - except for her investments, of course - answered drunkenly, "Well, if you enjoy the sound of bombs."

That was it. I was never able to enjoy fireworks again with the same joyful abandon - which is exactly what my mother intended.

I wish I could go back in time, but the arrow has already been shot, and it found its mark. I try to forget her words, but innocence lost cannot be regained.

Please treasure innocence where you find it. Shield and protect it, so it may continue to be joyous a little longer. There will be plenty of time for cynicism. Let innocence bloom in your presence as long as possible. It lightens the weight of the world.

And a happy, successful, healthy 2014 to all.

Entry #9: THE HEIRESS

THE HEIRESS

Once upon a time - in 1921, to be exact - a remarkable couple lived unremarkably on the Upper East Side of New York. The husband was a very well-respected psychiatrist and author. The wife was one of the first women to graduate from Johns Hopkins Medical School. The husband was truly, madly in love with his beautiful wife, who not only had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Bryn Mawr College in Physics, but also spoke several languages, published research papers as well as a wonderful book of poetry, and painted lovely watercolors - when she was not at her clinical practice. I like to imagine the two of them discussing medicine together at the end of the day, reviewing each other's patients and research.

Then, at age 38, the beautiful doctor became pregnant. I think it must have been a happy surprise. But the beautiful doctor was worried.

She went to her good friends: four sisters in Philadelphia who were the daughters of one of the early robber barons. Only one had married; the other three lived with their mother and were what you might call spinsters. In addition to being fabulously wealthy and at the top of the social elite, they were also lively, affectionate, smart, curious, and well-traveled. They had many wonderful artifacts from their trips around the world.

The beautiful doctor asked her friends to take care of the baby if anything happened.

I imagine the spinsters saying, "Oh, Helen, don't worry so. Everything is going to be fine. But if it makes you feel better, of course we promise to take care of your child."

Things were not fine. The beautiful doctor became very ill and had an emergency caesarean. The baby lived. Three days later, the mother was dead.

The psychiatrist could not bear to look at the child. He surrendered her to the maiden ladies in Philadelphia, and they took in the baby with both great sorrow and great joy.

The baby was named Helen after her mother, and she was showered with affection and given the best of everything. She had maids, and a chauffeur, and everything she could possibly want. She was pampered and adored until at length she went off to Vassar College, and then, after the war, she asked a handsome boy from a good Philadelphia family to marry her.

After the wedding, things went south fast. They bought a house in the suburbs, and the husband got a job in the city. The pretty socialite did not want any children, but a son came along anyway. She hated being a suburban mother and started drinking. Another son quickly followed, and her drinking escalated. By the time she was pregnant with a daughter, she drank all the way through her pregnancy.

If you haven't guessed by now, the pretty socialite was my mother, and the daughter is me.

One by one the spinsters grew very old and died. They left heaps and heaps of real estate and money and possessions to my mother, but it was not enough. She took the other relatives to court and demanded what THEY had received as well. She did not need more money or possessions, but she was greedy and wanted it ALL. She burned many bridges with people who would have been loving relatives - but money and booze were more important to her than people.

Her psychiatrist father - who had kept in touch - remarried and lived quietly in Cold Spring, NY. When he died, he left his modest inheritance to his second wife, who had taken care of him for many years in his old age. My mother was FURIOUS and wanted that money, too.

By the time she was 40 my mother not only owned the house in Radnor, Pennsylvania, that we lived in, but also had inherited two cabins on the Rancocas River in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey; two huge, connected homes on a single estate on the Main Line outside Philadelphia; a giant Victorian home near the water in Rhode Island; and some undeveloped land in Rhode Island as well. She also inherited the contents of the houses: hundreds of valuable antiques; vast quantities of sterling silver; heirloom jewelry of gold and diamonds; old paintings; ancient genuine china - the blue-and-white kind as well as an ancient pink flowery kind; thousands of historic books; plus scrolls and swords and Japanese prints and endless other treasures, from small sculptures made of semi-precious stones to large wall hangings brought back from Asia. And this was all in addition to millions of dollars in stocks and bonds.

Once my mother, like Smaug, had amassed this huge fortune, a curious thing happened. She couldn't handle it. She didn't want to think about real estate or antiques - she just wanted to drink. She began a hasty process if deconstructing and destroying everything she'd fought so hard to get. She called it "simplifying."

She ran the vintage blue-and-white china through the dishwasher and broke it. She put the first-edition, leather-bound books in cardboard boxes and moved them into a wet garage, where they became moldy and dissolved. She left all the jewelry in her top bureau drawer, then one day hired some "housecleaners" off the street who took everything and disappeared.

She gathered up all the silver chafing dishes, pitchers, tea sets, random teaspoons, and chests of cutlery, and put everything in an old safe in the dirt-floored basement of the Victorian house - purposely leaving it UNLOCKED in order to "simplify" her life. Then she hired dozens of random people to work on the house  unsupervised over the winter. No more silver.

She called up antiques dealers and had them cart away truckloads of priceless furniture for a few hundred bucks at a time. For some reason she liked one colonial wooden table, so she sent it to a cheap refinisher who sanded it down, accidentally splattered it with white paint, and then coated it with polyurethane - over the white paint spots.

She had builders chop the charming cupola off the top of the old Victorian house, and add some hideous modern decks with cheesy plywood sides to the second floor. She covered the beautiful old white clapboard with wide, hollow vinyl siding. Then she systematically went around the perimeter of the property and ripped out all the vintage rose bushes and tiger lilies along the beautiful stone walls. There was a thriving patch of raspberry bushes that yielded quarts of scrumptious red berries in late summer - and she ripped those out, too. One day, when all the plants were gone, she announced with satisfaction that she was finished "simplifying" the grounds.

After my brother died, we moved into one of the stone houses in Bryn Mawr. My mother's coup de grace was suddenly deciding she could not afford to pay for oil heat - which of course she could - and abruptly dumping the house at auction for $200,000. Today it would be worth many, many millions.

Future generations would have derived great joy from the ancient books, beautiful jewelry, family silver, and so on, but today every single scrap of it is gone. It took her a long time to do it, but my mother successfully got rid of everything the maiden ladies had given her. The last bits of valuable artwork went to a strange woman who ingratiated herself with my mother to the point that she got to pick whatever she wanted from what was left - and she had a good eye.

Towards the end of her life, my mother would play a game called "what would you like?" The entire contents of her house had been professionally assessed, and nothing of value was left. At that point my mother realized she was surrounded by heaps and heaps of junk, so she started urging me to take things - like old sweaters I had once given to HER. If I actually asked for something - say, an old picture on the wall - she would refuse and say it was for someone else. That was how the game was played.

I visited the house just before Christmas and realized my mother had successfully "simplified" her life to the point that she has virtually nothing to leave to me. Technically she could leave me the old Victorian, but she decreed that it shall be sold after her death rather than go to me. If she can't have it, neither can I.

Just as with the economy at large, there was no "trickle down" effect from my parents' millions. They never, ever spent their money on anything as useless as children. But they took several first-class trips per year to exotic places all over the globe so my mother could say she had seen a live "blue-footed booby" and eaten ice cream on the beach in Costa Rica.

My parents believed that withholding their money from their children and grandchildren built character. If you had any mental or emotional issues, being cut off financially would force you to shape up. If you wanted to go to college, you were forced to scrounge around for campus jobs and grants and scholarships and loans from other people. You also are forced to work indefinitely. When I once complained about being tired of working, my mother - who never worked a day of real work in her life - said briskly, "You're not even 60. You're too YOUNG to retire!"

Leaving nothing to me was clearly my mother's intention. Despite having been given so much during her own life, she was determined NOT to do the same in turn. This is probably the only goal she pursued in her life with any perseverance.

The thing is... I wonder why?

ENTRY #8: IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

The waves outside our beach villa had been pounding all day and all night. The noise was thunderous. The combers kept rolling in long after I wished they would stop. With each wave, tons and tons of sand-filled water would heave up all the way along the shore, curl into a crest, and fall with a BOOM under its own weight into tumult and foam. Then there would be a moment of respite while the sea fell back and regrouped before rushing ahead and falling again with another BOOM. It had been this way for hours, and the waves kept rolling in from the ocean without end.

The wind was relentless. It did not breathe softly in and out as on a summer's day. It did not rise and fall the way it did during storms back home. It just continued to blow ceaselessly through the night, whistling through the thatched roof, never letting up.

The palm trees would be fine. They had been through this countless times before. Their long trunks bent and their fronds succumbed, letting the wind rip past.

I lay wide awake on the couch in the living area. It was creepy. My parents were sleeping in a real bed in the actual bedroom on the other side of the wall, door closed. Heavy rains pounded the roof, causing odd drips and noises inside.

It was dark. I don't remember if there was power or not, since there were few lights, and in any case everything was turned off for the night. It must have been well after midnight.

I watched the blades of the ceiling fan moving idly in the darkness - a reminder of the hot, still afternoons when any touch of air was a relief. The blades slowly circled and circled as the wind found its way through every crack in the little beach house. I could not sleep at all.

There was a sudden pounding on the door, very loud. Not a polite knock, but someone bashing on the door a few steps from my couch. I was terrified.

My father roused himself and answered the door. It seemed like a very manly thing to do, answering a pounding in the middle of the night in the middle of a typhoon - a time for my father, the war veteran, to step up. Like checking for intruders, or killing huge spiders. Not a job for womenfolk.

The man at the door was soaked through, leaning into the wind and rain, carrying an old-fashioned lantern. The two men had a brief conversation. My father had to go to the hotel office for an urgent phone call. There was no phone in the villa, and of course there were no cell phones in those days.

In the future, I refused to stay anywhere without a telephone. Today I never go anywhere without a cell phone. I even sleep with mine. The hell with "getting away from it all." We should never have gone away.

My father returned and informed us with a minimum of words that we had to leave. Immediately. My mother panicked. What was wrong? My father refused to say.

We packed our things fast, and somehow a taxi was found by the hotel. The driving was terrible. As dawn arrived, we made the 20 mile trip to the airport in Grand Cayman. This was back when the island was still remote, slow, and undeveloped. It had not yet become the darling of billionaires and financiers hiding their millions in offshore accounts.

We waited a long time at the airport. The storm was subsiding. Flights were few, and fully booked. Someone was bribed to give up their seats to the family of three with an emergency.

WHAT emergency? My father clenched his teeth and would not say.

We had to change planes several times, but each time room was found for us somehow. We did not speak to each other. My mother, eyes wild, was reduced to asking my father over and over, "Is it Richard? Is it Richard?" My father said nothing. He had to bear the truth alone because he knew she would go psycho if he said anything, and first he had to get her home.

I looked out the airplane window. I was 13. I knew it was Richard, my oldest brother. I talked to him in my head. I denied the obvious. I bargained with him. I said I understood that he had to get away from my parents, but I asked him to please, please just pretend to be dead. He could come back later, some time when they were gone. Maybe he could secretly visit me. Just knowing he was still alive somewhere in the world, even if I could not talk to him, made all the difference.

By the time we got home it was night again. Our house was full of people weeping. How did they get in? I wondered. How did they know? No one told me anything.

That was March of 1968, and no one ever did tell me anything. Later I found a black binder full of Richard's stories and pictures. My other brother, a year younger than Richard, had spent the entire summer, every day, typing up Richard's original works and copying them so we would never forget.

I opened the binder fearfully. The front page read: "Death Certificate." Below that: "Cause of death: Decapitation." Richard had thrown himself in front of a train. They had interviewed the engineer. I closed the book and tried not to vomit.

It was absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong to take a Caribbean vacation without access to a telephone while Richard was in distress. What a message to send your child. Feeling blue? We have just the answer! A nifty vacation to an obscure Caribbean resort with rum drinks and fresh barracuda for dinner - just for us. You? You get nothing.

I still dream that Richard has returned, and it was all an elaborate hoax just so he could escape my parents. In my dreams he is alive and well and I am overjoyed beyond anything to see him. But he can never stay.

Entry #7: GIFTS FOR GAMMA

As soon as her first grandchild was born, my mother picked out a name for herself. Instead of waiting to see if her grandchildren would call her "Grammy" or "Nana" or "Bzzbzz," she selected Gamma - a letter from the Greek alphabet, just to remind everyone forevermore that she had studied Greek at Vassar College. I never heard her refer to Greek in any other context or capacity, so I guess her entire Vassar education culminated in these two syllables.

Gamma once worked briefly for the CIA (called the OSS back then). I think her job was probably to look decorative around the office, since she had no skills, and once spent an entire train ride next to the Secretary of State during WWII and had no idea who he was. "And what do YOU do?" she asked politely, after talking about her own high-stakes position.

The OSS, however, did something brilliant. They gave my mother a job in the Anti-Morale Department (whatever it was really called). The task there was to think of devious and deceptive ways to undermine the morale of the enemy. For example, they would rain down pamphlets on the Japanese soldiers telling them that their wives were being unfaithful back at home while they were fighting. Makes you feel a little depressed, doesn't it?

The OSS, knowingly or unknowingly, had tapped into my mother's Super Power. With just a few words, she could suck all the happiness out of ANYTHING, even the most sweet, or kind, or good-hearted gesture. She could uncover a dark underbelly of maggots and crawling vermin beneath ANYTHING. Some people, bless them, see silver linings to every cloud. She, on the other hand, always saw the dark side of the moon. The most precious child - probably a mistake. An upcoming wedding - undoubtedly covering a shameful secret. A cheerful greeting - a sure sign of a defective intellect on the part of a village idiot. There was virtually nothing in her world that was bright or pure or good.

In movies and video games there is often a character who can instantly turn everything into solid ice. That was my mother. This can be tough on a little kid who wants to share some good news. Time after time I would come to her with a little candle of Joy, and she would blow it out. Making other people miserable, even a little child, made her happy. No, your picture does NOT look like a kangaroo. No, that child does NOT want to be your friend. No, getting straight A's is NOT a great accomplishment. No, you are NOT smart, or pretty, or even very nice for that matter. You're stupid and fat and dull - unlike ME.

When Mother's Day or Thanksgiving or Christmas rolled around, I was always so tied up in knots about what to do about her that it never dawned on me for nearly six decades that these holidays applied to me, too. Since she was virtually unpleasable, I knew I was beating my head against the wall attempting to make her happy, but I was commanded to perform, and, like a trained monkey, I kept trying.

My mother's birthday was a source of panic for 92 years. Virtually no gift brought her pleasure, no matter how much thought or effort or expense went into it. 

One year I bought her a hummingbird feeder for their home. She ripped the wrapping paper off a corner of the box and said, "It's plastic." She handed it back without even looking to see what it was. 

Once I bought her an expensive television that accepted VHS tapes so she could watch her favorite old movies. I never saw it again, and she later derisively dismissed it as "electronic." 

One birthday I tried the hand-made route. I bought fabric to match their living room, hand-stitched and filled two pillows, and had my children decorate the reverse sides with birthday greetings. "Those?" she said with disdain. "You just bought some old pillows." 

One Christmas I searched high and low for her favorite buttercream candy, then bought her a whole box. She tore off the paper and asked, "Is this a joke?"

When her eyesight started to fail, I ran stationery through my sewing machine by hand, sheet by sheet, so she could feel the lines to follow. She refused to use it.

When my children formed a band last year, I gave her a CD of their excellent folk/bluegrass music. All their songs are original and they are really good. My mother handed back the CD of her own grandchildren and said she would rather hear tunes she knew already.

Food was too fattening. Perfume was the wrong smell. Necklaces and earrings and bracelets and hats and slippers all disappeared. Did she return the gifts and keep the cash? Or did she give everything to the Cleaning Lady? I have no idea, but the presents always vanished.

Sweaters and pashmina wraps were deemed "too nice to wear" and were never seen again. A beautiful silk scarf made her "look old." Instead of nice things, she would rather wear my husband's cheap cast-off polyester-filled permanently-stained red winter parka that made her look - well, look like a drunk.

The truth is, all my mother really wanted was booze, and that was the one thing I refused to give her. Liquor came before everything, certainly before her marriage and before her children. She once dropped a gallon bottle of Seagrams gin in the garage and I thought she was going to get down and drink it off the floor, glass shards and all.

From my mother I learned the importance of Being Polite. When someone gives you a glass pickle dish, you say, "Oh, how lovely, thank you so much,"  If you happen to know the pickle dish was just on sale at Target, you keep this to yourself. If someone brings you cookies you dislike, you still set them on a pretty plate and thank them for their kindness. And when you get cancer and someone perfectly healthy says, "I know just how you feel," the correct response is not, "You're an idiot," but, "Thank you for your concern." 

I hope you will share your gift-giving experiences in the comments below. Has anyone ever rejected - or re-gifted - a present of yours? Has your mother ever had a yard sale with all the presents you gave her?

Entry #6: TIS THE SEASON

I do love the holidays. The brisk weather, the spontaneous greetings, the decorations, the music, the bright lights, the foods, the smells - it's all wonderful. Well, maybe not the shopping malls. But it's a festive world out there, and underneath the crass commercialism there is still Joy. Whether you have a life-size baby Jesus in your front yard, eight candles in your window, or you're just moving through winter, it's a special time when the emphasis is on making an effort to be cheerful, and thinking about other people - two things I respect.

So far I've mentioned about ten things my depressed and alcoholic mother detested. Good cheer and thinking about others were never her strong points. Despite having the most over-privileged life you can imagine, she was mad at God and called herself an atheist - so there went Christian traditions out the window. My father would occasionally go to church on Christmas Eve, and she would mock him.

My mother resented any kind of Joy and would wage war to make sure everyone was as miserable as she was. She was dead set against any lights or decorations. Even a wreath given to us by a neighbor was unacceptable.

My father, a civil engineer, had one set of heavy-duty colored lights with replaceable bulbs that he would put outside year after year. The bulbs would get so old their paint would chip off. I thought they were stunning.

He also apparently negotiated a compromise with Mrs. Anti-Claus by buying a small, live evergreen each year, with painfully spiky branches and a ball of earth wrapped in burlap around its roots. The tree had to stay outside until the last minute because it was used to being cold. Once it came inside - which involved a lot of swearing because it was unbelievably heavy - it smelled like farm, dirt, and worms. Immediately after Christmas, my father had to take it outside again and plant it, as if planting trees in the middle of winter made any sense at all. Of course every year the tree would die - dried-up, brown symbols of folly dotting the yard.

My mother would have nothing to do with decorating the tree, but my father had bought some shiny globes and a packet of tinsel. Back in those days it was real tinsel - not made of Mylar but of lead. It was heavy, and crinkled in a fascinating way. I adored it. To me it did not resemble icicles at all, but it was a nice, shiny silver and looked vaguely liquid.

Once my father came home from work in the evening with six brightly-colored mercury glass bird decorations in a plastic box. This was such a seismic event I still remember them clearly. I thought they were AMAZING. They had beady eyes, and clips on their feet, and sprouted stiff fiber tails of different colors.

The fallout was immediate and severe. My mother pitched a fit that included drama of Shakespearean proportions - seething rage, bitter accusations, gnashing of teeth, and total incomprehension over the fact that my father could be such a fool. I disappeared into my room and listened to the gin-soaked battle rage for hour after hour. That woman had stamina - and an incredible liver. It was hard to believe the unstoppable raging and weeping was about fake birds.

The next day I came downstairs and the birds were still there. And they stayed for years. But the Joy had been taken out of them. My mother may have lost the battle, but she'd won the war.

She considered herself above common music, like "Silent Night" or "Frosty the Snowman." But not everyone considers Handel's Messiah or Johann Sebastian Bach's Messe in h-moll appropriate for Christmas activities like, say, wrapping presents, or light holiday conversation.

I clearly remember the anticipation of Christmas Eve, and the idea of waking up to stockings and gifts. I usually didn't get toys during the year, so the thrill would keep me wide awake. I remember being alone in my bed, too excited to sleep, wishing there really was a Santa Claus with a sleigh full of toys looking for me.

Then I would hear my parents arguing downstairs while they put presents under the tree. They made no attempt to do this late at night in secret. My giant balloon of excitement would lose a little air, and I would fall asleep.

On Christmas morning my brothers and I would wake up independently. Without waking my parents, we would each find our Christmas "stocking" - actual black socks that belonged to my father - and take it back to our bed. The stockings were always identical, despite the fact that my brothers were six and seven years older, and I was the only girl.

Invariably there was at least one orange in the toe to take up space, as well as some Brazil nuts from the bowl on the coffee table in the living room. There might be a toothbrush and toothpaste. One year the theme was clearly Hardware Store, and I excitedly ripped the wrapping paper off Scotch tape, a box of small nails, and a cheap flashlight. The message did not escape me. My mother had unlimited funds and virtually nothing to do all day. I knew how much effort had gone into this stocking, and how much empathy for what a little girl might like for Christmas.

Fortunately there were some fairly normal presents under the tree because my father's brother - my Uncle Ted - and his wife made an effort to be friendly. The presents were not expensive or extraordinary, but they were there, year after year.

I have wracked my brain and I cannot remember one single Christmas gift I ever received from my parents, except a set of Cray Pas drawing crayons, and a mechanical toy that allowed you to draw patterns. Everything else is a total blank. My brothers got plastic models and chemistry sets.

My mother hated cooking, and would not dream of buying a Christmas cookie. There would be no candy canes on our tree, no Christmas treats in our house! But on Christmas morning, my father would make scrambled eggs, which was a huge deal. I have no memory of the presents, but the eggs I remember.

Today, I just do the opposite of whatever my mother did. We celebrate Treemas, with the biggest Christmas Tree we can fit into the house, covered with an excessive number of blinking lights and a zillion ornaments of different shapes, sizes, and colors. And it stays there for weeks.

When the kids were little, I sewed giant stockings out of red and green felt with snowy-white tops that, when filled, were too heavy to hang anywhere. I still look at the pretty mantelpiece stocking hooks in the Pottery Barn catalogue and think, "What could you possibly hang from THAT tiny thing?"

And I loved playing holiday music so much that my children made a rule: No Christmas carols until after Thanksgiving!

The kids received an enormous number of presents and tried to open them as slowly as possible. After that we prepared the Christmas turkey and got it into the oven, then called friends and played with the new toys until Christmas Dinner was ready. The living room would be filled with an explosion of wrapping paper and boxes. 

If anyone wants to criticize me for this (and I know someone who does)... Well, I have a nice box of nails I'll wrap up for you.

Please let me hear about your Christmases Past in the comments. 

12/3/2013