It’s beginning to not look much like Christmas

It’s Christmas morning and all over the world pajamed kids are clawing at shiny ribbons, their hearts thumping with anticipation. Parents are snapping pictures, in love with their children’s happiness.

In our little house at 6512 feet, Col has just put a cloth diaper on his stuffed dog and Rose is trailing him, munching on something she found in her room. Dan is brewing coffee.

Even though we had a Christmas Eve Dinner last night–elk stew, baguettes and chocolate ice cream–the kids don’t know that today is Christmas. And I sort of love that. As I explained in a previous post, this is our first Christmas and we’ve done it all wrong.

But as my friend Diane told me recently, it’s so cool that we can all make our own family holiday traditions. Our kids are still riding in the backseat of their own lives, relying on us parents to steer, and each family’s drive looks different.

The kids opened their last gift sometime on December 23rd (the Hess race car from Grampa Starks!) in the same fashion that they’ve opened all their gifts: Packages arrive in the mail, get placed under the tree and then get opened ten two minutes later. I know this is crazy, no “magic” of a Christmas morning, no watching the delight on children’s faces as they sit for hours anchored like a boat in a swell of ribbons and wrappings.

But in a way it feels more sane, giving the kids time to absorb each gift, to test drive and remember it, to write a thank you card before the next wave hits.

In the end, we do what feels right for our family, each of us, and that’s all that matters.

Now I will go drink my coffee and make sure the unidentified things Rose is eating are actually food.

And I will be thinking of your children and hoping they are sitting in their sea of lovely, new things–or whatever your tradition calls for–with a big, big smile.

Not such a great start to the morning

*wordless wednesday*

 

Solstice Hobo Camp

We’ve been dropping the phrase “Winter Solstice” in child company for just the past twenty four hours. And really, we just zipped up our eight nights of Hanukkah (due to menorah misplacement we started one night late) and look out kids, here comes another sacred, meaningful day.

 

Explaining Winter Solstice to the kids makes me feel like such an adult, or at least that adult in me who has this anticipatory sense of tomorrow, who can flip through my brain’s calendar and console my snow-bound self that in just two months, I’ll be pressing tomato seeds into greenhouse soil. This is to say I like to know what’s happening next and despite the fact that winter holds a secure spot in my heart, that one extra minute (starting tomorrow!) of daylight is simply thrilling.

The kids don’t live like this, with anticipation, plotting, foreseeing. They are just as likely to wake up in the middle of July and feed squash and rice to an orphanage of animals, as they did this 10F degree morning on December 21st.

 

And I love this about childhood, how Dan and I can plan a trip to New Jersey to see his mom and meanwhile lose a month of life and a modicum of good will to airline websites that change flight prices every time we each pause to consider dates, and then we make our lists and consider housesitters and deliberate over whether to heft Col’s bulky nebulizer to New Jersey and I panic over who will sleep where and what entertainment to cart on the plane and how we’ll transpose our wild life on someone else’s space. And the kids? They simply wake up on the day of travel and get toted here and there like so much carry-on baggage. They’re thrilled to see the giant gumball machine at the Durango airport, and never once say “wait a second, you didn’t tell me we were going to have a four hour layover in Denver.”

And just like that, they wake up and we tell them “today we’re celebrating winter solstice.”

On the solstice, the sky is a symphony of blue, like a wildly uplifting piano note held for eternity. It’s almost ridiculous, comical, this forever blue like the heavens are shaking out a cerulean sheet, trying to dry it on the shortest day of the year. It makes us giddy, that, and the four wild turkey hens we see as we stomp through the calf-high snow to hobo camp.

 

Dan had taken the kids to hobo camp, a snow-free rectangle inside a metal tunnel under the highway, the previous weekend. Dan is like this. When he has the kids, he’s most likely to take them to the woods, toting a passel of firewood, refreshments, and bows and arrows, while the little people really can’t be relied upon to walk very far. Dan jumps creeks with a kid under each arm, his back loaded like a Sherpa’s. There have been cold little hands, donuts for breakfast and thorny bushwhacking but there have also been bald eagle sightings, cotton-candy sunrises, and eavesdropping on mating deer chasing each other in a frostbitten field.

 

                                        (Our very own Hobo Camp )

“So, who knows what Winter Solstice is?” We ask the kids as a small juniper fire sweetens the air. Between the occasional car roaring over our metal ceiling, all we hear is the drip of snow melting off the outstretched arms of ponderosa pines, pinyon and junipers.  

 

“It’s the shortest day of the year.” Col says, pleasing us with his powers of repetition, for which he gets high fives.

Then, Dan draws a picture of the sun’s winter arc, shot across the horizon by a low-aiming arrow; our house, still the center of the children’s universe sits squarely in the middle of the ripped notebook page. Dan starts to explain with his pen how the sun’s trajectory will steadily rise, but it’s just a string of words and Col’s gone off to look for “special things” in the tunnel and Rose delicately unwraps her chocolate Hanukkah gelt, perfect golden suns.

 

Dan and I smile at the children, at our lucky life. The sun elbows into the tunnel and this is enough warmth on this shortest day.

O Christmas tree with a side of menorah

I’m looking at this Christmas tree in our living room—this baby white fir just slightly taller than Col—selected, sawed, and dragged like a felled animal through the crispy leaves while winter was still a suggestion. The November ground still dry then, except for a few lean snow shapes stretched in north-facing shadows like sleeping animals. 

We stuffed the tree into the Subaru, returned to the forest, made a small fire and watched the sun burst into orange flames over the horizon then ooze into the sharp spines of Baldy peak. (Also, if I remember correctly some female member of the family tried to initiate a little campfire singing until some other, smaller member, always encouraged to be honest, said “can you stop singing please?”)

If you ask Col what he remembers about that late November day, it’s the feel of the handsaw in his 4-year old grip, the metal teeth ripping into the live, grey bark. If you ask Rose, it’s the roasted marshmallows, the gummy remains on her toddler hands, like so much tree sap.

And me? Ambivalence like a sticky place in my own chest.

I grew up in a liberal, Jewish, highly-educated Berkeley family that didn’t think much of religion. We were (to borrow writer Joanna Brooks’ phrase) allergic to Christmas trees. Stockings and caroling brought on hives. And while Dan—across the country and unknown to me then—was tearing into a Christmas ham, his house twinkling with lights and good cheer, my family was scoffing at the hoopla while we ate mushu chicken, alone, at the local Chinese restaurant.

This Christmas allergy—a “social allergy with deep historical roots” says Brooks—had a bit to do with the landfill-marked plastic baubles, the feverish shopping, the list of prescribed activities that seemed as spontaneously joyful as the step-by-step of changing a tire. But break through the surface ice and below lay a thick river of fear. Fear that our own Jewishness might get trampled by boots storming a sale, drowned out by the swell of carols, or simply forgotten. Also, Brooks says “What is the Christmas tree but the mermaid on the prow of the ship of Germanic cultural conquest.” Yes, with family who didn’t survive the Holocaust, that too.

And then I left home and watched my 20-something friends taste the disappointment of their new, anemic adult Christmases, while I smugly continued to scoff at the hoopla and satisfy my late-December mushu chicken craving.

Then I got married to a nice Quaker boy and all Dan ever asked for on Christmas was some egg nog in his coffee. And so passed many December 25^th’s

And then, like a rolling snowball that grows and grows, we had children. The children matured. And one day their bright eyes noticed the VW van-sized inflatable Santa on a neighbor’s lawn and the twinkling lights downtown and the tree at the library stacked with candy canes (one of which has been re-hung with a broken neck due to Rose frantically biting through the plastic while hunched behind the children’s non-fiction stacks).

And I’m realizing—even if a bit late in life—that when it’s 10 degrees outside and the day is just a just a sliver of light sandwiched between two thick, slabs of darkness, I need some brightness. Even if that brightness is the shine of my children’s drool while they ogle the cookies at a Christmas cookie exchange. Even if our clay ornaments came out lumpy and Col insists on sleeping with the ones he made and Rose sneaks nibbles at the salty, rock-hard edges of hers.

And like the Grinch, I’m growing out of my allergy to Christmas. I’m finding there’s room in our house for a small tree decked with the children’s ephemeral art and the menorah my paternal grandfather brought back from Israel. And truthfully? The children seem to think that bending the flaming tip of the Shamash candle towards the wick of the next candle in line is at least as exciting as tearing into a present. Last night, after lighting six candles on the menorah, Col stayed at the table, gazing into the light, in a rare, quiet, still moment.

And maybe most surprising—given that my Christmases were spent passing egg rolls across a shiny red tablecloth trying to ignore the holiday—is how I’m a little taken by Christmas now. Maybe it’s the kids, the way they love the Jesus story. “Was there chicken poop in that barn where he was born?” Col asks. And truthfully, even I’m a little in love with that story. Perhaps it’s the mother in me – what Mama hasn’t stared at her spanking new baby and thought “miracle.” Plus there’s that part of the story where Jesus grows up and teaches kids to share their toys and use their words and be kind to their sisters.

How could I not smile every time we pass twinkling lights and Rose shrieks “there’s Christmas!” (Except it sounds like “Dere’s Cwis-a-mas!”). We’ve spent many a frostbitten day inside, gratefully decorating the tree (which still makes me a little itchy), the kids hanging, re-hanging, dropping and breaking their own handmade ornaments. And what’s not to like about packages arriving in the mail, festive potlucks every weekend, and our friend Natalie dropping off homemade sweets at our door.

It’s beginning to look a lot like confusion, and when your holiday season is a goulash of flavors, none is celebrated perfectly. Sometimes we forget to light the candles until a pajama-ed kid points out the empty menorah right before bedtime. Last night I carried the candles to the menorah while absentmindedly humming “let heaven and nature sing.” And as for Christmas, there will be no bottomless pile of presents to wade through Christmas morn, no Santa myth to uphold. In fact, we recite regularly in our house: “Santa is pretend. Right everyone? Not real.” This weekend we’ll introduce winter solstice to our kids, maybe build a small fire in the woods and eat chocolate Hanukkah gelt. And there’s the Buddha icons sprinkled about the house that embody reminders to be mindful and kind, a religion I can get behind. Perhaps we should hang a bag of locally-roasted, organic coffee at the top of our tree, or a pound of elk meat and a thimbleful of homemade compost, which in the way of spinning banana peels and egg shells into soil, has always seemed a miracle.

And so like my Jewish ancestors thousands of years ago, we trudge through the wilderness (of holiday season), finding our footing, seeking the light and eating the hell out of some Christmas cookies.

How does your family celebrate?

Acknowledgements and a sneak preview

Have you noticed the new banner picture here at 6512 and growing? In the background, behind the faux-cheerful family, is the Animas River, one of the West’s last undamed rivers. This is where you’ll find us most summer days, scrabbling around the shore, investigating the miraculous triumvirate of sand, water, and sun.  Col digs and builds like he’s on the clock, or at field camp for sand engineers with an emphasis on hydrology. Rose makes sand cupcakes and in her confectionary fever, takes a surprising gritty bite and then looks at me, shocked, with these sad, sandy clown lips. And me? As usual, I’m uttering some variation of  “I’m just so happy to be outside where the kids can play and be happy.”

Yesterday when Sabrina (who also took the previous banner photo of us in the autumn leaves, and is supremely talented) shot this picture, we were such a long, long way away from summer’s sand-a-palooza. If this classic picture had volume you’d hear Col whining about how he was soooo cold and could we please go see the model trains now (which are at the Durango mall until Dec 23rd and totally worth seeing even if only for the chance to hob nob with the old-school train aficionados who can answer any question that sparks in a young train-lover’s mind). And you would have heard me telling Rose “that doesn’t feel good” as she grabbed my face with her lobster claws. Then if you were so cursed to actually hear my thoughts, it was along the lines of “Can these kids just smile sweetly for the damn picture!”

And yes, Col does have a really big forehead; for Christmas he would like some hair.

So, thank you Sabrina (whose own two kids were playing quietly and independently in snow drifts, by the way).

****

Also, a local reader and Life Coach, Victoria Fitts Milgrim, has a new offering to help moms of kids (any age that are still living at home) to regain their balance and inner sovereignty – it’s called The Breathing Room (www.truelifecoach.net/breathingroom.htm).  It will meet twice a month as a safe place to let off steam, be yourself, be seen and heard AND listened to.  She will offer coaching tools for staying on your authentic path and remembering who you are – including but also beyond the role of ‘Mother.’

****

And now, the sneak preview:

If you check in tomorrow I will be explaining what happens around Holiday Season when a girl, raised by a Jew and a Buddhist, co-habitates with a boy raised by a Quaker and a Pagan.

Wordless Wednesday

(Or a few words, because…y’know, I’m Jewish and apparently I like to talk a lot).

One small step for chickens…one giant leap for my conscience.

The unexpected gift of deer meat.

The raven who saw it.

Ode to the universal two year old

Rose is exactly 2 ½. What’s that like you ask? It’s backwards pants, mismatched shoes, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” puddles of despair and then presto change-o: irrepressible glee over a handful of raisins.

Adventure, no matter the weather

I was making my morning pilgrimage to the chickens, down the long single track path my boots have stamped through the snow.

Just one foot at a time.

I was thinking about these hens we raised from delicate, chirping babies under a grow light in our bathroom. Col loved to hold the chickens (“But oh, careful! Not around the neck honey.”) And Rose, a baby herself then, loved to tap their heads repeatedly with her open palm as if she was dribbling a very small basketball.

I was also thinking about the two children I left alone briefly in the house. Rose had been pushing her doll stroller around containing ducky and baby bear mingling inside of a newborn onesie. Col was wrapping “presents” for Rose in newspaper, announcing loudly “she’s really going to like this towel. And this tinkertoy. And this is a very special fork.”

I tossed last night’s wheat-free spaghetti to the chickens, bits of greenhouse basil still clinging to the rice-y ropes. I sprinkled the gritty crumbs from the bottom of a cereal bag onto the snow in front of their coop. And when the girls bobbed and clucked their way out of the coop it warmed my motherly heart, the way it does when my own children slurp a hearty vegetable soup, or crunch raw carrots under their pearly baby molars.

And then from the top of our stairs I heard Col’s voice: “Hi Mama!” And there were my babies thumping down the stairs in their pajamas and snow boots. They had thought to bring the doll stroller, but not mittens.

It was barely 8:00 AM, and the thermometer read:

But they were insistant that we all go on a walk, exploring.

 ”Zero. Zero degrees.” I pleaded. But these children are not worriers, nor planners. They simply are doers, in the moment, and apparently the moment called for an adventure.

And it was cold, pore-tightening, breath-gasping, fingertip-numbing, nose-redenning, see-your-breath cold. But the kids were warmed by the spark of their own ideas, by their two pajamed feet crunching down the snow-packed street, and by the adventure of their own wild lives.

May you have a warm, fun, adventurous weekend, no matter the weather.

Desperately seeking chicken whisperer

So, we got almost two feet of snow and then it turned cold. Very, very cold. Yesterday the low was -10F and the high was around 20F. We humans are doing okay, we’ve got wool socks and thick blankets and the kids seem to make extra heat in the way they run to get the yellow crayon that rolled five feet away. There’s also the strategy of Never Being Completely Still, which can be a subtle toe-scrunching under the table or the more overt game Col played this morning called “I’m trying to snap my leg off” which involved sitting on one leg while flapping the other like a fledgling bird on its first flight. It didn’t work, but I began feeling warm just sitting next to him.

But the chickens I am worried about. They haven’t left their coop in four days. They’re like some survivalist stronghold group that won’t leave the bunker and every morning I slip them their tea and grain and slivers of raw deer meat and tell them that it’s safe out here; cold and snowy, but safe.

It was just last Sunday, the day before the storm that the four hens were free-ranging around the yard, scratching up bugs and kicking soil out of our garden beds and shredding the garden’s winter leaf mulch and huddling under the bird feeder eating spilt seed and approaching us in hopes of food and then running from us with their clipped wings spread and leaving chicken poop on our stairs like loitering teenagers flicking cigarette butts under their park bench.

The chicken coop is tucked under the canopy of a hawthorn and a peach tree, which is like the shady umbrella section of the beach during our sweltering summers; the rest of us pant and sweat around the yard yanking bindweed while the chickens luxuriate on their chaise lounges and take nips at dangling ripe peaches. 

But I’m afraid our girls need a winter retreat; the sun isn’t hitting them, the snow isn’t melting and despite the clearing I shoveled out under the peach tree for them, they’re like nervous kids at the pool who won’t venture from the steps. And given the weather report calling for more snow this weekend, we’re not going to see bare ground anytime soon.

So, if this were a murder mystery, the next thing I’m going to tell you would be the turning point of the story, where everyone would say “ahhh,” seeing how all the bit parts coalesce into a workable solution. We live on top of a 400 square foot solarium, post and beam style, built by Dan and not a nail in the entire ponderosa pine frame. We share it with our three downstairs neighbors and our cat. It contains my chard-filled greenhouse, Dan’s bow-making workshop and some saggy couches. It has a rough wood floor, which has seen elk blood, kids’ paints, red wine, sawdust and muddy boots.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Are we together, seeing the workable solution? Now, who is going to tell Dan?

It reminds me of a story my friend told me of her friend who went to Jamaica, fell in love with a local, got married, had a baby and returned to her expensive hometown of Berkeley with her new husband and baby and no place to live. There was incidentally, her mother’s 2500 square foot house in the Berkeley hills, but we Americans are peculiar about personal space and cohabitating with our parents as adults, so the young family rented a cramped apartment in nearby Oakland.

Maybe it’s not the same at all, I mean we are talking about chickens and none of them has a baby and there isn’t much unused space in the solarium but damn that bunker’s getting stinky and the snow is so high I have to bend down under the peach and hawthorn branches to deliver the cult their daily rations.

What would you do?

My World is a Wonderland

I got the shoveling ache and it feels so good.

We’re right in the middle of a Rocky Mountain storm, 20 inches of snow so dry and light that I’ve been sweeping it off the stairs with a broom as if we’ve been accumulating so much white dust.