Guilt and holiday cards

Photo by Mahlon Burch - This is as close to a holiday card as we'll get this year.Despite the article on Slate suggesting Facebook has killed the holiday card, my mantel is thick with them. Maybe my friends haven't gotten the memo that we're not supposed to have time for this sort of thing anymore. Thank goodness for me.

I love holiday cards. I always have, ever since I was a kid and our family would receive scads of them in the mail, along with letters that outlined all the year's big events, including but not limited to: bitter divorces, stints in rehab, and genital surgery. (I'm not making this up. People really did put that information in their cards. Now, they put it on Facebook, so maybe Slate has a point, after all.)

In any case, every time I look at the array of cards on my mantel, I feel horribly guilty for not having sent any myself. I actually haven't sent any out in the last couple of years, not since what I considered the greatest holiday card in the history of holiday cards was a complete and utter failure.

You know those holiday sweaters, the really embarrassing ones that look like a craft closet and a ball of yarn got together for one night of drunken debauchery and will never live down the photos that someone posted on the Internet? Yeah. Those sweaters.

My plan was to get one for everyone in my family. We'd dress up in them and put on prosthetic Gnarly Teeth, and it would be, quite simply, the funniest card ever, a sort of Hillbilly Holiday Gothic.

As so often happens to me, though, my idea was better in theory than in reality.

For starters, those holiday sweaters are like Donald Trump's gold bathroom faucets: tacky, and also ruinously expensive. So I did the budget route and got us matching sweaters at Old Navy. There weren't any appliqued reindeer on them, but neither did I spend more than $500 on something meant to be a joke.

Then came the problem with the Gnarly Teeth. Alice, who was only about 2 at the time, couldn't really fit them in her mouth. So instead of looking like a happy hillbilly, she looked like she was chewing on a ping pong ball. 

Also? The photographer, my dad, was NOT amused by the setup. You know you're not going to get a good picture when the photographer is philosophically opposed to making a joke out of the Sacred Holiday Photo Experience.

Every year of our childhoods, my dad shot roll after roll of pictures trying to get a good one of the five of us--shots ruined by everything from ill-timed Oreo breaks to my toddler sister's missing underpants (those put the X-rating in X-mas for sure). It was a really big deal, and an entire wall of their house is covered in these photos.

Despite his opposition, I insisted. I would have my Hillbilly Holiday Gothic, and the people would laugh.

Only that didn't happen. Not only did no one laugh, no one even said anything. It's like no one even noticed. I'd gone to great lengths to make us look comically hideous, and to our friends and family, we looked like we did every other day of the year.

It's possible the experience has scarred me for life. But maybe next year I'll be ready to jump back in the game. Especially if I find a good deal on matching elf suits for the lot of us....

On healing a broken world

On Sunday afternoon, Adam and Alice had tickets to a UW women’s basketball game, so Lucy and I had a rare opportunity to hang out together, just the two of us.

She asked if I’d take her to “Harry Potter,” and since the answer to any question about the boy wizard is yes, we hopped into Adam’s convertible and headed to the theater.

A pineapple express weather system had blown into Seattle—the sort that fills the unseasonably warm air with raindrops the size of grapefruits.

I mention this mainly because in weather like that, riding in Adam’s car provides an opportunity for one to contemplate one's own mortality. The thing is only slightly larger than a shoe, and in rain like this, it’s easy to imagine the worst. Especially if, like me, you are prone to imagine Technicolor calamity during the quiet moments of the day. It’s how I do most of my cardio, actually.

As we drove across one of the Lake Washington floating bridges, skimming through a translucent mist of water kicked up by the cars ahead of us, Lucy initiated one of her deep conversations that I so love to have with her.

“Mom,” she said, “Can I ask you anything?”

“Of course,” I said. “Anything, anytime, forever.”

I braced myself for a question about puberty. There have been a lot lately. I flipped off the squeaking windshield wipers as we drove into a tunnel, and the world suddenly grew quiet and dark.

 “How can you stand life,” Lucy asked, “when it’s so awful?”

In school, her teacher has been reading Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains, a book about two sisters enslaved during the time of the American Revolution. The sisters are separated, the stuff of nightmares for Lucy, who loves her sister more than anything in the world. When you add beatings and the injustice of slavery to the mix, it’s been more than Lucy can take, and I’ve spent a lot of time lately reassuring her.

“Life isn’t always awful,” I said, getting ready to list some of the great and wonderful things about it.

Lucy cut in. “But people do bad things to each other. And we die.”

She had a point there. Some people do horrible things. Every last one of us will die. At ten years old, Lucy knows some of life’s hardest truths, and she’s staggering under the weight of them.

I glanced at her profile. The rain had turned her hair extra-curly, the way it was when she was three. Her lower lip trembled. What was I supposed to say to her?

I took her hand and squeezed it three times, our secret code for “I love you.”

Then I remembered something I read in a book, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: tikkun olam.

I told her about the expression, and how it means “repairing the world.”

“So the world is broken,” I said. “And it’s up to us to spend our lives putting as many pieces together as we can.”

We emerged from the tunnel into the foam of rain and drove in silence for a few seconds.

 “That’s exactly right,” she said. “The world is broken. I can fix part of it.”

We talked about all the things she’s good at in life—taking care of smaller children, singing and performing on stage, loving everyone she meets. We talked about how every day gave her opportunities to mend one of the world’s infinite broken edges.

Yesterday, when she came home from school, I skipped my usual, “Highlights/lowlights” question. Instead, I asked her how she fixed the world.

“I played with a third grader who’s always alone at recess,” she said.

Tikkun olam, Lucy.

The experience has me thinking about children’s books and the work that authors and illustrators do. Sometimes, it can feel inconsequential—this business of creating stories while other people are out there literally saving lives, building houses for the poor, comforting the terminally ill.

But when I think about my kids and their growing awareness that life isn’t all tea parties and happy days, I think about how much they need these stories.

The world is broken, but not irreparably so.

The very best stories show children how they can be courageous. How they can be loyal to their friends. How they can be empathetic. How they can do what's right, even if it will cost them everything. And perhaps most important, good stories show that love can sustain us, even after we’re gone.

Isn’t that what Harry Potter did, and why we loved it so?

Children can see how the world is broken, and in giving them stories, we show them how it might be fixed. I sometimes wish adults saw things as clearly. But if these good-hearted kids grow up reading enough stories, maybe the next generation will.

The truth about Santa

Lucy and Alice, Christmas 2008I wrote this last year for Cozi, after my daughter Lucy asked for the truth about Santa. My good friend Holly Cupala reminded me it was the season to repost. I hope you enjoy!

Dear Lucy,

Thank you for your letter. You asked a very good question: “Are you Santa?”

I know you’ve wanted the answer to this question for a long time, and I’ve had to give it careful thought to know just what to say.

The answer is no. I am not Santa. There is no one Santa.

I am the person who fills your stockings with presents, though. I also choose and wrap the presents under the tree, the same way my mom did for me, and the same way her mom did for her. (And yes, Daddy helps, too.)

I imagine you will someday do this for your children, and I know you will love seeing them run down the  stairs on Christmas morning. You will love seeing them sit under the tree, their small faces lit with Christmas lights.

This won’t make you Santa, though.

Santa is bigger than any person, and his work has gone on longer than any of us have lived. What he does is simple, but it is powerful. He teaches children how to believe in something they can’t see or touch.

It’s a big job, and it’s an important one. Throughout your life, you will need this capacity to believe: in yourself, in your friends, in your talents, and in your family. You’ll also need to believe in things you can’t measure or even hold in your hand. Here, I am talking about love, that great power that will light your life from the inside out, even during its darkest, coldest moments.

Santa is a teacher, and I have been his student, and now you know the secret of how he gets down all those chimneys on Christmas Eve: He has help from all the people whose hearts he’s filled with joy.

With full hearts, people like Daddy and me take our turns helping Santa do a job that would otherwise be impossible.

So, no. I am not Santa. Santa is love and magic and hope and happiness. I’m on his team, and now you are, too.

I love you and I always will.

Mama