WordSisters

Category: Holidays

  • Mom’ s Closet: Treasures and Surprises

    While helping move Mom last month, I unearthed a number of artifacts from bygone eras—hers and mine.

    P1030680How can you not love polka dots? They’re whimsical. Cheerful. And in the 1960s when Mom carried this clutch bag and wore these gloves to church, they were a stylish accent to her navy blue spring coat . . . and perhaps a reminder that she hadn’t always had four kids, dinners to cook, and laundry to do.

    P1030674If you’re not a Baby Boomer, you probably don’t recognize this item. I didn’t recognize it either because math has never been my forté, but it’s my slide rule (look closely—you can see my name on it). Before pocket calculators were invented, we used them for logarithms and trigonometry—skills that I’ve completely forgotten after high school.

    When the Apollo 13 space module malfunctioned, Mission Control engineers used slide rules in the calculations needed to get astronauts back to earth. Slide rules! One of the best-known Mission Control engineers was Gene Kranz, the flight director whose famous line in the Apollo 13 movie was, “Failure is not an option.” When Mom and I were talking about slide rules and the near disaster of Apollo 13, Mom mentions in an offhand way, “Yeah, I went to high school with Gene Kranz.” What? Why hadn’t she ever mentioned that before?

    hankyMom knows I collect and use handkerchiefs for my watery eyes, so she offered me this one from my grandma. Mom never carried hankies. Instead she keeps Kleenex in her pocket. If she doesn’t have a pocket, she tucks a Kleenex up her sleeve or in her waistband—something you have to be at least 80 years old to do.

    I love old hankies. Before Kimberly-Clark marketed Kleenex in 1924, people relied on handkerchiefs—elegant linen ones for good and simpler cotton ones for everyday. But even after Kleenex became commonplace, the humble hanky remained popular, especially among little old ladies. They were an accessory carried for show, not hygienic use—something that could be embroidered or bordered in lace—a little bit of pretty in a workaday world.

    This Thanksgiving, I hope you’re blessed with the treasure of fond memories and stories shared with family over a second cup of coffee and piece of pie.

  • Anonymous Donor

    Screen shot 2012-12-04 at 9.32.58 PM Here’s what I imagined: happy kids on Christmas morning, delighted to find some of the gifts they wanted. That vision helped me decide we’d sponsor a family for Christmas. As I got further into the process, it began to feel a lot less simple.

    My husband and I are comfortably middle class. We have worked hard, but we have also been lucky—an accident of birth placed us in loving, hardworking families who taught us their work ethic and helped us get college degrees. We’re also healthy, again the luck of the draw, not something we can take credit for. So as I consider the single mother and three children we are sponsoring, I think: “It could have been me.” It seems only right to help them.

    But I wonder about her. Was it hard for her to sign up to be sponsored? Did it hurt her pride? If it did, I suspect she set aside her feelings so her kids could have a Christmas more like other people do. Parents do that. I would.

    I also wonder how Christmas celebrations in the U.S. got to be so excessive. Now, because we make such a big deal out of Christmas, the absence of gifts is conspicuous. Children who don’t get any gifts feel left out, and maybe, unloved. After all, kids just want to have fun and fit in with their friends and classmates. The mother who can’t provide a bunch of stuff has to feel bad, too—ashamed or alienated. Or maybe she gets tired of everyone else having nice things except her. I can only speculate about her life and guess at her feelings.

    But I do hope that she will feel a little less alone, knowing someone else cares about her and her family, even if it is in an awkward and necessarily flawed way.

  • Gratitude

    I was surprised when my friend Lisa told me she kept a gratitude journal. On the face of it, she had little to be grateful for—stomach cancer had returned and spread to her esophagus, chemo was nauseating and exhausting, and worry was ever-present. Lisa acknowledged that sometimes it was hard to find something to be grateful for. Some days all she could write was that she was grateful she didn’t snap at her son or grateful for a sunny autumn day.

    At the time, my freelance writing business was on its last legs, and I had been looking for work unsuccessfully for months. But I figured if she could focus on what was right and good in her life, so could I.

    A few entries from December 2009—
    I’m grateful for my writers’ group—women who believe in my story and my ability to write it.

    I’m grateful for cozy flannel sheets. I’m grateful for my Bunco friends who help share the burden of Kathy Duffy’s illness (another friend with cancer). I’m grateful for my first writing coach client.

    I’m grateful for my youngest son Greg’s silliness—he crammed his 17-year-old body into a tiny Pokeman t-shirt he’s had since 4th grade and walked around the house singing, “I’m too sexy for my shirt!”

    Written on a day when my oldest son Mike had returned from college for Christmas break and my husband John was preoccupied and frantic about work when Mike arrived—
    I’m grateful for Mike’s maturity and wisdom. When I asked if he minded that John couldn’t spend much time with him tonight, Mike said, “He’s working his ass off to make my life and all of our lives better and nicer, and nobody really asked him if he wanted to do that, so No, I’m not hurt he didn’t have much time.”

    From February 2010—
    I’m grateful for John. He brought me flowers and said he appreciated that I didn’t complain about his lack of availability while he was under deadline for a grant proposal. I never thought to complain—I felt guilty for not pulling my weight financially—but I enjoyed being appreciated.

    I’m grateful for Greg who nudged me to put together a celebratory dinner for John to mark the end of proposal hell. I’m grateful to have such an easygoing cooking partner. He stirred the polenta endlessly while I finished the sauce for the beef short ribs.

    Cranky, mostly cranky. I’m not grateful for my hives or my migraine or my touchy tooth or my dog who vomits when she gets too hungry or my carpet cleaner that leaks and makes cleaning up after the dog even worse. But in the grand scheme of things, these are temporary annoyances (except for the dog—I’ve got to figure that out).

    Although I no longer keep a gratitude journal, I am grateful for idea of it, and I’m even more grateful for Lisa’s friendship—she gave me so much during the 10 years I knew her.

    If I were still keeping the journal this Thanksgiving eve, I’d say—
    I’m grateful for my family and that we all can get together for this holiday. I’m grateful for my wise, fun-loving, generous Dad whose birthday is tomorrow. If he were here, he’d love having the family in one place, all the jokes and stories, the good food, and Pete’s excellent wine. He’d sit at the counter and “supervise” while I carve the turkey, and he’d enjoy the piece I’d hand him—a juicy hunk from close to the bone.