jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

Letters for Santa

Reindeers of Santa,

I hope that your elves are feeling well.

Love,

Elliot

Dear Santa,

I hope that I get my computer.

I hope that I’m on the good list.

I hope you have a safe trip.

Love,

Alden

The boys are in Kentucky getting a jump on the holiday with the in-laws. I stayed behind for work and will head up in a few days.

I’ve lit the trees and a candle. I’ve got a pot pie in the oven and I’m drinking a beer. This Christmas, so far, has been the best I can remember in a long while. NO JINXES. Last year the kids found their gifts and Alden will still sometimes say, “Remember when we found our presents and you cried?” I call his sweet face going from thrilled to horrified when he took in my reaction. Not this year.

Gratitude is a program that always runs in my background. I could make you a list of the thorns in my side, but I try to be in my right mind by the time I go to bed at night. I’ve found it’s really helpful to literally run away from my problems on a treadmill. My feet race, my mind races, and at the end I feel purged. The beer also helps. When my kids fall asleep at night I indulge myself by petting their heads, kissing little cheeks, often I go in for the full-body snuggle. They’re so used to it that they rarely stir; once in a while I get a slurred, “I love you Mommy” from Elliot. Most evenings of their lives have gone that way. I don’t know what it does for them, but it snaps me into the right frame of mind.

They’re not with me tonight. Instead I think about them, what I might change about them if I could, and it’s really nothing. I think about how fortunate I am to have a husband who sincerely and enthusiastically wanted to be a parent as much as I did, and who approaches the whole thing with the same fierce love. Our mothers are with us, approve of us and support us. That is not something everyone can take for granted.

Some day I hope my kids read this. They’re ultimately my most important audience. They will know about this journal some day, and they’re always in my mind as I write. I want us all to remember this time of great privilege and pleasure and love.

I’m in my cousin’s basement watching my two goofy boys play on iPads while the adults get ready to head out for the family celebrations. They don’t have a care in the world today. They’re well-nourished and healthy. They have zero doubt that they’re surrounded by love. They don’t even understand that there are any other options.

We have enough family that wants us that we have two different houses to visit today. I am looking forward to seeing every single person. The important social research agency of Facebook tells me that many, many people don’t have this good luck.

The back half of 2104 has been pretty hard, and just a few days ago I told Damon we should be proud if we can just drag our carcasses over the finish line. Still. We exist in such a state of privilege. I had some serious injuries this year, but also doctors and physical therapists who cared, were thoughtful, and got me back on my feet. Work has been hard, but I have excellent coworkers and I do still have a job. Alden was diagnosed with a sensory processing disorder. Now I have the gift of understanding him better and we can afford the out-of-pocket therapy he needs. Getting the boys into the right school this year was excruciating, much more so than I expected, and yet now that it’s done the results have been no less than life changing. Some things just suck. We lost two cats this year, one suddenly and shockingly just two weeks ago. I don’t have distance from much of these things yet. I recall very clearly the pain of a stress fracture in my leg that added a layer of unpleasantness over many of my days. I can still get choked up remembering the sleepless anxiety of not knowing what Alden needs, of finding a school that both wanted and welcomed him (which his old school very much did) but also could teach him in a way that worked for him. Some day it will all fade away. Today I’m grateful to remember because I can still savor the relief of those things abating.

Somehow I am in possession of a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old. That sounds so old. No one says “Wow” anymore when I say my kids’ ages. And yet, they still are so tiny to me. They still wake me up on the blistered edge of dawn, although now I get Alden saying, “I hate to wake you up Mommy. I’m really sorry, but I can’t make my robot dog work.” (Please note that it is a stretch to say that he hates to wake me up.)

We’re still in the time of life when a kiddie birthday party in the backyard is a Pinterest-y good time. We put up a pinata and a bounce house and had just a small gang of buddies over. (Please note that 7 is probably the oldest age eligible for a bounce house. At least boys. At least my boys. They managed to take it over on its side two times.)

Elliot has a few more years of kiddie-ness.

I know that soon, at least for Alden, these days of noise makers and party hats will soon give way to laser tag and… Whatever else big boys do. Wrestling matches? Sports… Fighting? Definitely uncharted territory. This seemed like the right year to get that birthday cake off the life list.

I love to cook, but I don’t bake. I don’t have the precision. My goal was never a fondant masterpiece. Fondant takes terrible anyway, and that breaks the first rule of being a cake. I also don’t make cakes form scratch. Maybe I could have, but a box mix tastes 85% as good to me. What I wanted was something that looked cool, that spoke to who the boys are.

I did four cake trials. I baked so much cake that one got baked, iced, and thrown right in the trash. One we ate. One went to my office. I can’t even remember what happened to the other one. I did it all late at night so the boys didn’t get a sneak peek. I’m really happy with the outcome.

Alden and Elliot both are crazy for doughnuts. Turns out I cannot make a cake this shape via creative use of a bundt pan, but I can make one with a silicone mold from the As Seen On TV store. It’s even got a sort of trough in the middle for cream filling. Pictured here is the carrot cake. We also had a version in chocolate. My boys can agree on many things, but cake flavors is not one of them. Elliot, weirdly, won’t eat anything chocolate. I’m having him tested, but until we can cure this abnormality we make allowances.

For the grown ups we did a bloody Mary bar (highly recommended!) and a cheese plate. I was riding high on my cake success, so I threw in a cheese ball for the kids.

If you are ever looking to delight people at a party with very minimal effort, Great Ball of Cheese is the cookbook you want.

Two things I’ve been planting a flag in for years rose up last week and showed me, once again, there’s almost no such thing as “never.”

So Boy Scouts. I’ve been vocal about Boy Scouts. I’ve been vocal TO the Boy Scout organization. Their ban on gay Scout leaders is cruel and wrong-headed. Certainly it’s on the wrong side of history, and I doubt it can hold much longer. Last year a sent a message to the organization saying I really appreciate the spirit of the Scouts and deeply hope that they will abolish this vicious and discriminatory policy so my boys could participate. They certainly wouldn’t be participating before that. 

As I write this, as I can see Alden’s Cub Scout uniform hanging in the bedroom doorway. The reason why is simple. It’s really hard work for Alden to do anything unfamiliar. We’ve got a fresh diagnosis of sensory processing disorder that explains much of that. Knowing, though, doesn’t change the fact that he had an epically bad day of first grade. That he suffers significant anxiety in new and group situations. That he turns down almost every offer that involves leaving the house. 

Last week someone from the Cub Scouts came and talked to Alden’s class. I wish I could have seen it, because I’d love to know how he managed to sink the hook into my reluctant boy. Alden came home with a lot to say about it, including that he is ready to be a Scout and when can he go to his first event. “We are going to cook hamburgers and shoot a BB gun.” I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the first thing Alden instigated for himself. We drag him to things on the regular, and sometimes he really enjoys them when he gets there. (We do need to perhaps examine our methods there, in relation to this new SPD thing, but that’s a thought for another day.) I can’t remember a single time, though, where he has spontaneously asked us to take him somewhere. All of that backstory is why, when he came home that day, I said, “Of course you can be a Cub Scout!” while Damon and I made amazed faces at each other over his head. 

I’m not trying to white wash a breaking of an ethical stand. Clearly, my values on this had a price. I hope to mitigate the incidental support we give by association as well as I can. I’ll be sending another message up the chain to Scout leadership. And I’m going to keep track of any money that goes to the Scouts and double it in a donation to a gay rights association that I’ll pick after consulting Charity Navigator. (Full disclosure: This is partially possible because Scouting is amazingly inexpensive — something I really do appreciate philosophically and practically.)

Part 2 of eating my words is smaller, more personal and, honestly, harder. 

When my Dad died I inherited the little cabin he lived in for many years. It’s not fancy, but it’s a sweet little place right on a beautiful lake. It is very much my Father’s home, to me. I wish everyone in the heartbreaking time after losing a parent had the luxury this gave me. I didn’t have to pack up all my Dad’s life. I can go to the cabin and see it just as he left it. I’ve spent years carefully protecting that status quo. I know that can sound a little Miss Havishamy, but I promise it isn’t creepy. When we go there, I feel my Father’s presence. It’s infinitely comforting. 

It’s also almost five hours away, which means we don’t get to go there nearly as often as we would like. During the months in between visits, sometimes many months, I have a low-grade worry gnawing at me that something has happened. A pipe has burst. An animal got in. We’ve done what we can to protect it, things like putting on a tin roof so that we didn’t have to read every storm report as a promise that water is pouring in. It’s not the cash value, it’s the emotional value. If the place burnt down we wouldn’t get a dime because we can’t afford to insure it. It’s so remote from a fire department that the premiums are, while understandable, not in our budget. I don’t mind that lack of insurance, though, because what would kill me would be the loss of Dad’s home, not the loss in value. That’s why I’ve always sworn I would own that place forever. There are some people who have a cabin nearby and they’ve made it clear they’d love to buy ours for their kids. I always thank them and tell them my kids will some day inherit it as I did. Except. Except. I was making a list of end-of-summer things I need to handle a few weeks ago, and on it was getting back to the cabin to prep it for winter. I looked and looked at my calendar. It looks like Work Work Kid Stuff Work Kid Stuff Kid Stuff Kid Stuff Work ad nauseam. I spent two weeks sweating it. I could always hire out all the chores, but that would move caring for the the cabin from “somewhat problematic financially” to “unreasonably problematic financially.” My Dad would have a fit if he could have seen me fretting over it in that way. Damon, to his eternal credit, has never made a peep of protest about the hassle or cost of keeping that place. 

I could have worked it out. I guess I did work it out. My Dad originally bought the cabin with his sister and brother-in-law. They were wonderfully close, and many of my early memories of being there include all of them. He bought them out many years later, but I’ve always thought of it as belonging to the larger family. We still refer to the two bedrooms as “Dad’s” and “Aunt Pat and Uncle Jack’s” rooms. I sent the family an email, asking if maybe anyone was interested in accepting the torch I was feeling ready to pass. One of my Aunt’s kids is in, shall we say, a more fortunate financial position than most of us. More importantly, he loves that cabin. And my Dad adored him. He stepped right up and said he’d take the cabin and care for it “as if it is our family’s only home.” I am not the softest touch, but that is message I will never forget. So, next week I’ll start the paperwork. I know we can still go when we want to, even if I’m not in charge of it anymore. I’m sure some things will change. That’s okay. What I sacrifice in museum-like worship of the past, I gain in once again sharing this place with my family. 

Stay tuned next week for my sudden embrace of professional sports and a new passion for going to the mall.