Memories Monday -- It's Still Christmas Until Epiphany

Even The Holidays don’t keep Karen, Nikki and me from our Friday nights.  The first Friday after Christmas (or Saturday if Christmas was on Friday) we get together to exchange presents and eat leftovers. This year, I gave Karen a miniature music box that played “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with skaters twirling on a  mirror pond and Nikki a page a day calendar with cartoons from The New Yorker.   Karen gave me a set of Victorian-looking Christmas placemats and Nikki, who loves flea markets, gave me a little china dog from occupied Japan.  There was something different about him that I couldn’t figure out at first.  Then I realized that his eyes were “slanted.” 

Karen wondered if that was racist.  I said I didn’t think so, since he was made in Japan.  If his eyes had been round, that would have been racist.  I named him Nick, after Nikki and Santa Claus.

Sometimes we have horror stories, like the time Nigel knocked over the Christmas tree or when the flame on the plum pudding set off the smoke alarm.

But Christmas was pretty peaceful this year except for the Great Christmas Tree Debate. 

We don’t have a big dinner until Christmas Day;  Christmas Eve is pizza between the family church service at four and the eleven o’clock candlelight Mass.  My parents always stayed over to watch the kids so Ed and I could go to the eleven o’clock service and they could be there for Christmas morning.  My father still does, although without my mother as a restraining influence, he fusses about “that nonsense.”  I used to tell him not to talk like that in front of the kids, but now I just let them argue with him.  He enjoys it.
 
This year they got us up at six.  Kate and Janet came over for dinner, but he was too tired for any Discussions.

"He was quite cordial this year,” I said.  “He and Kate played Monopoly with the kids.”

“He must be getting some,” Nikki said.

“No!” 

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Karen said.  “You know, he caught the bouquet.”

“Well, if he gets married again, maybe she can do dinner.”

“But they’ll be coming over here on Christmas Eve.”

I sighed.  “Well, the more the merrier.  I’ll have to see what Ed thinks.”  

 

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

Merry Christmas from the McDonalds

Ed, Charlie, Betsey, Josh, Cilla, Duke and Nigel

 

 

Memories Monday -- Christmas Eve Eve

When I was a child counting down to Christmas, I would say, “If you don’t count today and you don’t count tomorrow, Christmas is X number of days away.” 

When I told my mother this, she said, “Why wouldn’t you count today and tomorrow?”

I said “To make it come faster.”

“Now, Charlie, you know that doesn’t make sense.”

Later I heard her telling one of her friends about this on the phone.  “She’s such a funny little thing.  I just don’t know how she’s going to get along in the world.”

If she’d sounded amused, my feelings would have been hurt, but she sounded concerned.  So I never shared the countdown with her again, although I kept it up.

 

I did tell my cousin Bethany, who thought it was a neat idea.  Aunt Pooh suggested that we could also count down to Christmas Eve.  “And then there’s Christmas Eve Eve.”

The day before Christmas Eve always had a special feel.  It was the last day of school before Christmas vacation.  I’d get to stay up late.  There would the final deluge of Christmas cards waiting to be gone through when I got home and my parents brought home the schmooze food gifts they’d gotten from business contacts.  It was a preview of Christmas.

As an adult, with the job of “doing” Christmas, I count today and tomorrow to try and make Christmas come more slowly so I can get things done.  I’m not sure if it works.

But by Christmas Eve Eve, I either have finished everything or given up.  The children come home from school all excited and I let them have some of the “not until Christmas” cookies that I’ve been guarding.  We sit around and they try to get me to let them open “just one" of the presents that Ed and I got for them to “help Santa out.”  Somebody says, “If you don’t count today and you don’t count tomorrow, it’s Christmas.” 

And we all understand. 

 

Memories Monday -- Christmas Traditions at the McDonalds' House

Every year, the children fuss because the Church doesn’t decorate or sing carols until Christmas Eve.  I tell them they can get as Christmassy as they want at home the Sunday after Thanksgiving. (I used to tell them that the Advent Police check churches, but Betsey asked Kate if it was true.)  But every Sunday in Advent on the way home from church, they complain.  I kind of agree, so it doesn’t get on my nerves.  I even join in.  Ed asks me why I encourage them, and I say that it makes them appreciate the fact that the Episcopal Church allows disagreement.

 The first step is getting out the Christmas tea towels and mugs.  Then we change the message on our voicemail.  It’s just “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the McDonalds.  Please leave a message.”  The children take turns each year.  I used to be more creative (“Now joyous Christmastide is here/The halls are decked with red and green/We hope you find a lot of Christmas cheer/And that you’ll leave message on our machine.”), but I decided that was too cutesy even for me.

We put the tree up about two weeks before Christmas.  Ed takes the kids to go out to buy it and I stay home to make cocoa and bake cookies.  The children come home all excited, sucking on the candy canes the tree place gives out, which they never finish.  We haven’t gotten The Elf on the Shelf yet, but we have The Half-Eaten Candy Canes All Over the House.  After we get the tree in the stand, Ed has a drink.  I tell the kids we can’t start decorating right away because the tree has to “settle.” 

This year, one of Betsey’s friends told her that cutting down trees was bad for the environment.  So Betsey suggested that we get an artificial tree.  Josh said, “No way, Jose.” Cilla added, “Like Hell, Emmanuel.”  Betsey said that when trees were cut down the birds and animals lost their homes and even died.  Cilla said Betsey just wanted to spoil things for everybody.  Betsey said Cilla was a selfish moron and didn’t care about animals or the planet or anyone but herself.  Cilla asked Betsey what she thought Jesus would say if he heard her talking to her sister like that.   Then things got really ugly.  Josh just listened;  I’d like to say that he was horrified, but he was amused.  Nigel took off for the cellar. Duke started joining in the shouting.  Ed was in the bathroom.

I prefer to let the kids work out their disagreements, but things were getting out of hand.  “That’s it!”  I shouted.  “We are not having any goddamn artificial tree in this house!  Ever!  Now everybody shut up!”

The girls were so shocked that they stopped yelling.  Josh remarked that all he had said was “No way, Jose.”  Betsey ran up the stairs, nearly knocking Ed over.  Cilla looked like she couldn’t decide whether to cry or not.

Ed said, “What the f . . .heck is going on?”  After Cilla and Josh had filled him in and Cilla said, “We’re going to get a real tree, right?”  Ed explained that if everybody stopped buying real trees, the tree farmers would stop planting them, which would hurt the environment, and anyway, the factories that made the artificial trees were really worse for the environment than cutting down trees. 

I told him to go talk to Betsey.  It would sound more logical coming from him.  I gave Cilla and Josh some cookies.  I thought they would run off, since they had won, but they sat very quietly in the kitchen, only asking for milk.  I think they were afraid of what I would do next.  I told them I was sorry for yelling.  “That’s okay, Mom.”  Josh patted me on the shoulder.  “Everybody makes mistakes.”

There seemed to be something wrong with this picture, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what.  Where is Dr. Phil when we need him?

In the end, everybody made up and they came back with an enormous tree.  We had to make paper chains for filler and the girls cut out stars from aluminum foil, which I’d done as child.  And, of course, it was the prettiest tree we’d ever had. 

Memories Monday -- Reflective Discussion at Midnight

“You know,” I said to Ed last night, “If I were Rudolph, I would have told the other reindeer to bug
off since they’d been so mean to me.”

“Oh, dear God!”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Ed sighed.  “I don’t know.  But it was Santa who asked him.  I would have done it for him. ”

“Of course, you’ve always been a team player.  I never played team sports.  But it would be hard to turn Santa down.  I bet the other reindeer were still nasty to him as soon as they got back to the North Pole, though.”

“Can’t you talk about this stuff with the kids or Karen and Nikki?”

“You’d think Santa would have put a stop to it.  I guess he was too busy.  Maybe he didn’t even notice.  You can sit and watch TV when the kids are fighting in the next room.”

“Maybe he thought it was best to let them work it out for themselves.”

That is a good idea sometimes, especially when you’re too tired to do anything.

Then I thought of something else.  “What if the next Christmas Eve wasn’t foggy?  They wouldn’t need Rudolph.”

“You do know that this is just a story?”

“Oh sure.  The only real Santa’s reindeer are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen.  But it’s fun to pretend.”

Ed laughed.  “Well, maybe what’d I’d do would be to eat a lot of beans before we took off.”

I didn’t get it at first.  Then I did.  I had to laugh.

Memorie Monday -- Is this my fifteen minutes?

Sometimes all you can say is, “What the heck happened?”  Karen put it in stronger terms and asked
 me if I was related to Ned Flanders.

Our local paper read my story about Cilla and Fr. Barryfitzgerald and called for an interview.  But not with me – with Cilla.  I said they could talk to me.  As much as Cilla loves the spotlight, I didn’t think it would be good for her.

So the reporter said, “How did you feel when your daughter insulted a priest?”

“Not as bad as I felt when he told her that her grandmother was going to Hell.  It was a very bad thing to say.  Of course,” I felt obliged to add, “that doesn’t make him a bad man.”  (“Though he probably is,” I added in my head.)

“So you forgive him?”

“As a Christian, I have to.”

“Are you going to pray for him?”

“I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess so.”  (Not the best attitude, I suppose, but it was the best I had.  I’ll have to pray for a better one while I’m at it.)

It must have been a slow news day, because they ran the story with the headline, “Priest Damns Lesbian Couple to Granddaughter.”    They recapped the story and quoted me.  They said that Fr. Barry and the church had no comment.  Janet told me later that they talked to Kate, probably looking for some feminist or gay rights comments, but she just dazzled them with theology.  She didn’t get a mention.

I cut out the story and put in the pile of things to be put in the family scrapbook it I ever get the time. 



Memories Monday -- Remembrances of Thanksgivings Past

I’d say that Thanksgiving is about my third favorite holiday, after Halloween and Christmas.  Of course, it’s special because Cilla was born on Thanksgiving.  My water broke just as I was bringing in the pies. (My mother made sure Ed had the carpet cleaned before I came home from the hospital.)  My cousin Joanna, who is an artist, was doing the birth announcements for us and designed one with a turkey wearing a pilgrim hat carrying a bundle with a baby girl wearing a pilgrim lady’s cap.  If anyone had said anything, or even looked like they were thinking of something, I was ready to say, “Cutesy is the new trendy.”   But nobody did.

When I was a child, we always went to my mother’s parents’ house for dinner.  My other grandparents  lived in England.  Aunt Pooh would be there with my Uncle Joe and my cousins Meghan, Joanna, Bethany, and Jim, and my Uncle Hank (Henry James) and Aunt Judy, and their three children, Jennifer, Jessica, and Jason.  Aunt Judy refused to go literary with the names, although she did try to persuade Uncle Hank to start calling himself H. James, so they could be the Five J’s. 

We kids all had fun running around, but what I liked best was sitting with the grownups and listening to them talk. Someone would always say that Thanksgiving was their favorite holiday, since it wasn’t cluttered with a lot of religious baggage.  There would usually be a debate about what we had to be thankful for, since the world was in such a state and how should we feel about having so much when so many people had so little?  Someone would say something about helping the poor, and everyone agreed that we had to do it, but really what good does charity do when the system continues to oppress everyone?

One year Jennifer, who was just in nursery school, wanted to say grace, but my grandmother saved the situation by suggesting we all go around the table and say what we were thankful for.  I said I was thankful for the Barbie doll and Barbie Dreamhouse I’d just gotten for my birthday.  Aunt Pooh and Aunt Judy looked at my mother, who said, “She wouldn’t give us any peace.  But we got her Veterinarian Barbie.”

Holidays can be delicate situations for divorced families. Janet and Ed’s father switch off between Allison and Ed.  This year, Janet and Kate are coming our house, as well as my father.  There will be some game on TV for the men to watch and Janet and Kate like to help in the kitchen or amuse the kids.  By dinner time, everyone will had some wine, so we'll all get along.  I’m thankful for that and basically for everything.

More Like Urges for Spicing Pumpkins

 

Fall is my favorite season.  School starts, then Halloween arrives, then Thanksgiving, all leading up to Christmas.  And Cilla and I both have birthdays in November.   The only problem with fall is that you know what’s coming next.

On Saturday, I got out everyone’s winter clothes and put the summer ones in garbage bags until I could decide what to do with them.  We had just had the first prediction of frost and the college radio station was playing wistful Autumn songs.  Ed says they're annoying and if he wanted to get bummed out, he'd watch TV ads for animal shelters .  I tell him not to be such a curmudgeon;  the point of the songs is to get pleasantly depressed. 

 

On Monday, I had lunch with my friend Emily who teaches English at the college.  “I see it’s turtle time,” she said.  “You know, your turtleneck.”

“Oh yeah, I got them out on Saturday.”

“How do you get anything done on Saturdays after your debauches on Friday night?”  Emily loves to hear about our Girls’ Nights In.  She jokes (I think she’s joking.) that my stories are the only excitement she has in her life. But since her specialty is early American literature, maybe she isn’t.

“I guess I have a high tolerance.  They say that that’s a sign that you could be an alcoholic, but nobody in my family ever had a drinking problem, so I’m probably okay.”

Emily nearly choked on her pumpkin spice tea.  “Bless your heart, Charlie. You think you’re such a wildwoman, but I think your idea of heavy drinking is two glasses of wine.”

 

“Three glasses,” I said with dignity.  “And we have cocktails.”

We would love to have Emily join us, but before she got tenure, she usually had to go to some English Department thing so she could schmooze and politic.  And now that she has it, she’s free to live the life of a madcap bachelorette and to try to meet somebody, so she can’t be sitting around with three tired out old married ladies on Friday night.

“You know you’re always welcome, but we don’t want to cramp your style.”

“Maybe I will come after Thanksgiving.  I’ll need something after a weekend with the family.”

“Will you be able to hold out until Friday?”

“My mother is going to send me home with lots of food, so I guess I’ll be all right.”

It made me sad that a holiday with your family could drive you to drinking and eating, especially when you don’t have to cook.

Memories Monday --The Meeting

 

 

Even though I am what Barbara Pym would call a “holy fowl” and we have an Episcopal priest in the family, the prospect of a conference with a Catholic priest was almost as scary as being questioned by a homicide detective.  But at least he couldn’t put me in jail.

I’d hoped for a progressive young priest, maybe even one all the girls fell in love with, a Father Whatawaste.  But this guy was old enough to be Father Whatawaste’s father or maybe even his grandfather. He looked like Barry Fitzgerald, but without the twinkle in his eye.

“So young lady,” he said to Cilla, “why do you want to become a Catholic?”

Veronica must have prepped her, because she said, “To learn about God and Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mother.”

“Are you willing to work very hard and make sacrifices?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And what do you think your faith will help you become?”

Cilla looked puzzled.  He looked impatient.  “A mother? Or a nurse?  Or a nun, perhaps?”

“I’m not sure.  But maybe a movie star or a veterinarian or a priest.”  Father Barry looked surprised, but he recovered quickly and put on his stern face, which would have scared me when I was six.  At my age, it just made me clutch my purse.

“Women can’t be priests.  You’ll have to choose something else.” 

Not being Catholic, Cilla didn’t realize that you don’t disagree with a priest.  “But my Aunt Kate is a priest!”

Father Barryfitzgerald glared at me.  “Your sister, I suppose.”  (Obviously, as a male, Ed could not have such a thing as a sister who was a priest.)

“Oh, no,” Cilla clarified.  “She’s not really my aunt.  We just call her that.  She’s my grandma’s friend.”

His eyes narrowed.  “Does she live with her?”

“Oh, no; Aunt Kate has to live in the rectory.  That’s what we call the priest’s house.  And my grandma says that since she’s paying her own mortgage, she’s not going to live in that mausoleum.  I guess we call it a mausoleum, too.”

Father Barryfitzgerald didn’t miss a beat.  “Well, your Aunt Kate is going to Hell and she’ll take your grandmother with her.”

 Ed looked like he was ready to deck him and I wanted to walk out as quickly as possible, but Cilla was too fast for us.

“No she’s not!  You’re a very bad man.  I don’t want to be a priest and I don’t want your old First Communion!” She ran out of the office, with Ed and me trailing along.

“She’s right,” I called back.

I sat in the back seat with Cilla, expecting her to cry all the way home, but she was too busy listening to Ed rant about that SOB and that GD organization, mainly because he didn’t use the initials.

When we told Betsey and Josh what happened, they high-fived Cilla and wanted to call Father Barryfitzgerald and add their thoughts.

I sat them down and gave them a talk about disagreeing respectfully with others, even if they were wrong, but my heart wasn’t in it

Memories Monday -- We're Marching to Zion with a Stopoff in Rome

I’ve always prided myself on the fact that “We’ll have to think about it” doesn’t mean “no”.  Sometimes, though, it is a stalling tactic when I’m hoping the kids will forget about whatever it is they’re asking for, when I know I’ll say yes.  I think it worked once.

But when I told Cilla that we would have to think about her joining the Catholic Church, I was really stalling to give myself time to get used to the idea.  If she really wanted to do it, I knew I’d have to let her.

We decided that she would attend the services (“Mass”, as she called it) and go to religious instruction classes on Wednesday nights.  Then, after a year, if she still wanted to, she could do First Communion.  I could tell that she wanted to ask about the party but was afraid that might make me change my mind.  “And we’ll have the party.  But the money presents will go in your college fund.”

Cilla squealed with joy and rushed off to call Veronica and her grandparents.

I confessed to Karen that I felt a little bit guilty “only thinking about the party and presents,” which I’m sure the children are warned about.  Was I not being respectful of the Catholic Church and not remembering that “It’s all one God?”

She said I was probably angry about the whole thing and had issues about Cilla, “the baby”, getting older and being so independent and that I shouldn’t be surprised if I got pregnant again.

“Good one,” I said.

Anyway, I called the church and Cilla, Ed, and I have appointment to talk to a priest.  Ed fussed that they would probably want a retainer fee on top of Cilla’s bringing an offering every week and something for the classes.

I said maybe we’d make it up with the presents.  “ Short term, maybe,” he said, “but probably not net.”

 

Boo Ho Ho! (Not to mention gobble gobble.)

 

Well, here it is the beginning of November and Christmas Madness has started already.  The Hallmark Channel is showing Christmas movies every day, Christmas candy is out next to the last reduced price candy corn at the drug stores, and on Facebook, people are sharing pictures of Santa with a countdown of shopping days.  Sometimes their comment is “Mwahaha.”

I had the girls over on Saturday night, and, just to be ironic, I served eggnog and fruitcake.   The fruitcake had brandy in it and I had a bottle of rum so everyone could do it themselves with the eggnog.  As a nod to Thanksgiving I got pumpkin spice eggnog as well as the regular kind.  Fortunately, the kids think eggnog and fruitcake are yucky.

“This is probably the last chance I’ll get to relax,” Nikki said.  “I’m doing Thanksgiving, since Helmut’s invited some German friends for ‘a real American feast.’” (She said the last with a German accent.)  “I was afraid my mother would get mad, since we usually go to her house, so I had to invite her and my father.  Fortunately, my sister has to go to her mother-in-law’s.  It’s not that I don’t want them, but still . . . I was thinking I wouldn’t have to get too fancy, since the Germans wouldn’t know the difference, but if my mother is there, she will.”    

“Did Helmut ask you first?”

“He said,”(in a German accent) ‘If you wouldn’t mind Liebchen.’ “ 

“How can you say no to him when he’s so charming and has that cute accent?”

Nikki snorted.

Karen has really gone Methodist, so she is now Assistant Director of the Church Christmas pageant.  “They tell me it’ll be fun.  Now Tom has even more opportunities to tell me how awful organized religion is.”

‘What do you say to that?”

“I tell him he should be glad that I have some organization in my life.”

“I’m doing Christmas, but Missy offered to do Thanksgiving at her house.  I mean my father’s.  I don’t know what the kids will say or what I should tell them.”

“They know what’s going on.  They could probably tell you.”

“Maybe they think she sleeps in the guest room.”

Nikki rolled her eyes and Karen sighed.

“Well, maybe Cilla does.”

“Just hope she doesn’t ask in the middle of dinner.  You don’t want to be spitting cranberry sauce all over the tablecloth.  You can’t get the stains out.”

I wondered if I should have a talk with the children about the situation.  I really didn’t have the courage to bring it up.

“I still don’t know how I’m going to handle Christmas Eve when they’re coming to watch the kids while we go to the midnight service.  My father always slept over.”

“Maybe Missy will be divorced by then and they can get married.”

“Good one,” I said and had another eggnog.

 

 

Memories Monday -- A Party, Presents, and a Veil!

Cilla and Veronica are all charged up about Veronica’s sister’s First Holy Communion.  She gets to wear a “beauty-full” white dress and a veil, they’ll have a party afterwards, and she’ll get presents!

All the Unitarians have is a naming ceremony, which, of course, you don’t have to do (because whatever Supreme Being(s) there is (are) forbid that you’d have to do anything regarding religion, spirituality or whatever reason you are a Unitarian.)  My parents didn’t have me done because my father said it was “foolishness imitating foolishness.”

There have been seemingly endless “rehearsals.”  Veronica invited Cilla to go with her.

“Watch out you don’t get hit with a yardstick” Ed cautioned her.  “Nuns have been known to do that.”

“Oh, Daddy, not anymore.  Veronica’s mom told me.”

Nobody got hit with a yardstick or even yelled at.  Veronica’s mother introduced Cilla to the nun in charge, who had said, “Maybe next year, you can make your First Communion.”

“Oh, Mommy, can I?   Please, please, please!”

“We have to give it serious thought,” I said.  When I was ten years old, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be one of those mothers who said “We’ll see.”  “This is a very big decision.  We’ll have to pray about it.”

“She just wants the presents,” Josh sneered.

“That’s not nice.”  I pounced on the teachable moment.  “Never criticize anyone’s religious ideas.  It’s all right to ask questions if you’re curious, but you have to be respectful.  And anyway, you just get money that your parents put in your college fund and things like Bibles and rosaries.”

Ed was passing by.  He shook his head.  “Charlie, you may be on the Altar Guild, but you are a still a recovering Unitarian.”  I was too worn out from dealing with Cilla to ask him what he meant.

 

Boo! 2

When I was a child, Halloween was my favorite holiday.  I loved dressing up and going outside in the dark.  The weather was usually just turning nippy by October, but somehow it was always warm enough on Halloween that we didn’t have to wear coats over our costumes.
My mother had never liked dressing up.  Even as a child she couldn’t see the point of pretending to be something you weren’t.  But she liked the candy, so she always went trick or treating.  She’d usually wear Aunt Pooh’s costume from the year before.

  My grandmother loved to make costumes.  When the kids were quite young,  she decided to dress them as the Three Little Pigs.  She got my grandfather to stay home and hand out the candy and she made herself a wolf costume.  She enjoyed it so much that the next year she decided to do Little Red Riding Hood.  Aunt Pooh was the woodsman, my mother was Little Red Riding Hood, and my Uncle Hank was the grandmother. “You should have seen your mother.  She was five years old and she kept saying ‘This is really dumb’ and rolling her eyes, just like a teenager.  My mother finally told her that she could stay home, but she wouldn’t get any candy and she wouldn’t let me or Hank give her any of ours. Not that she really had to worry about that.  So she went.  Poor Louie.”

This year, Betsey decided she wanted to be a cat.  “A sexy cat?” Josh wanted to know, “Or just a regular one?”

“Or a slutty cat?”  Cilla piped up.

I didn’t know what to say.  But Betsey saved me.  “Don’t be such a moron.  That’s gross!”

Then Josh wanted to know the difference between a sexy cat and a slutty cat.

“Nobody is going to be a sexy or slutty anything.” 

“Veronica and I are going be nuns,” Cilla said.  “But just regular ones.  Veronica’s mom is making the outfits for us.”

“That’s a lot of work for her,” I said.  I didn’t want Cilla to get any more ideas about converting.   “I know!  Why don’t you go as a priest?”  That was an easy costume – black pants, black sweater over a white turtleneck and a cross.  “You can wear makeup.” 

“But she already started it!”   I could feel the “please, please, please” coming.  I didn’t have the energy for it.

“All right.  But you know, there are Episcopalian nuns.”

“Ok.  I’ll be one of them.  Are they sexy or slutty or anything?”

“Certainly not.”

Josh decided to be a zombie again.  Just a regular one, he assured me.

 

 

Memories Monday -- Boo!

 
When my mother was a child, she had lived in a suburb that was really The Country.  There were cornfields on two sides of her house.  She and her friends would go into the fields, pick corn, shell it, and on the nights before Halloween, go out without adults, sneak up to windows of houses, throw the corn, and run away.  (It was animal corn, so it was hard, like the decorative Indian corn you see in stores, although in the summer, when it was soft, she and her friends would eat it.)  The bolder ones would ring the doorbell.  The kids love this story and would have loved to try it, but fortunately there aren’t any cornfields around.

In our town, Trick or Treat night is always the Friday or Saturday before Halloween, so the kids won’t be kept up too late on a school night.  This makes Halloween rather anti-climactic, but I always make a Halloween dinner, which we eat by candlelight; pumpkin soup from the intellectual deli and grilled cheese sandwiches imprinted with a jack-o-lantern. (I got the stamp in a set, with stamps of a smiley face,  Santa, an Easter egg, and a turkey.)  We have tomato juice to drink, since it looks like blood.

Karen asked me if I wanted to come over and try to contact Margaret with a Ouija board.  I said we always watch scary movies together, and why didn’t they come over here.  Maybe it makes me a wuss, but after The Exorcist, which gave me nightmares as a child, I’m afraid of Ouijas.  I asked Karen if they were going to have pea soup.

I would have told Karen that it would probably be more worthwhile to say a prayer for Margaret on All Saints’ Day, but I didn’t want to be an obnoxious churchlady.

Pulp Nonfiction

“So,” I said to Karen and Nikki “Betsey had her friend Becky overnight last Saturday and the next morning, I asked if she wanted orange juice with lots of pulp or no pulp.”

“You get both kinds?”  Karen was incredulous. 

“Well, Cilla and I like it with pulp, but nobody else does. We tried some with ‘some pulp’, but then nobody was happy.”

“Nobody ever is when you compromise,” Nikki said.  “You have to make a commitment, especially with things you feel strongly about.”

“What kind did she want?”

“Lots of pulp, and of course Betsey had to say how yucky it was, and I had to remind her that everyone is entitled to their own preferences.”

“Not at my house when I was a kid,” Karen muttered.  “My mother refused to buy chunky peanut butter.  Fortunately, Tom and the boys like it.”

“If they didn’t, would you buy smooth for them?”

Karen looked surprised, as if she had never thought this could be an option.

“I guess so, but wouldn’t it be spoiling them?”

“Well, not if Tom liked it too.”

“We always used Hellman’s Mayonnaise,” I said, “and Janet always used Miracle Whip.  It’s no wonder people say she can’t cook.  Anyway, when we got married, we bought both.  I think that’s when I really felt independent.  My mother probably would have made herself use Miracle Whip.”

“Unless she hid a little jar of Hellman’s in the back of the fridge and snuck spoonfuls of it once in a while.”

 “But anyway,” I said, getting back to my story, “Becky told her mother about it and about the mayonnaise and her mother called me and said that I was spoiling the children.  I told her that it gave them practice making choices.”

“What did she say?”

“That there are limits.”

“Did she mention the jelly, too?”  We have about eight kinds of jelly in the refrigerator: strawberry, raspberry with seeds, raspberry without seeds, grape, blueberry, peach, pineapple, and marmalade.  And we’ll probably have more after the Christmas Bazaar at church.

“Dear, God, the jelly!”  Karen looked up to heaven and laughed.  “I’m never going to let the boys look in your refrigerator”

“So what did you say?”  Nikki got us back on track.

“I thanked her for her input and told her what an angel Becky had been.  Then I said I had to go because Ed needed me for something.”

“Did he?” 

“Well, he might have.”

“I’m sorry I only have one kind of wine, tonight.” Karen said. 

Nikki snorted.  “It’s lucky we don’t need to learn how to make choices.”

Memories Monday -- You Have to Be In to Be Outted

Dear Readers:  It just occurred to me that you might think I outted Kate and Janet in my last post.  Not to worry;   you have to be in to be outted.

Kate called to thank me for mentioning her in my blog.  “So far we’ve gotten two new couples at Epiphany.”  Then Janet got on and said she burst out laughing when she read it, because I had “nailed” Kate.  “She talks that way all the time. Once she told me to ‘be mindful’ of something.  I said, ‘Cut the Pastor talk’ and she said ‘I’m sorry; what I meant was ‘Keep your head out of your behind and pay attention’ in her Therapist voice.  And she wasn’t being sarcastic, either.  She doesn’t believe in sarcasm.”

 “She didn’t think I meant it in a nasty way, did she?”

“Bless her heart, she didn’t notice.  By the way, what does your dad think of all this?  Or haven’t you told him?”

“Cilla did.  He said something about chickens coming home to roost and now I knew how my mother felt.”

“Good old Jack.  Mr. Liberal unless it’s his family.”

“I told him she’s probably getting a good laugh up there.  He just shook his head.”

Janet and my father have been sparring ever since Ed and I got engaged.  They’re like Spencer Tracey and Katharine Hepburn in those old movies, except they won’t fall in love at the end.

 

Memories Monday -- I may be embarrassed about caring about what other people think, but I’m not going to be embarrassed about being embarrassed.

I can’t count how many times I’ve told the kids that we don’t run our lives according to what people think of us.  This works fine as long as you don’t think anyone might disapprove of you.  Now I’m worrying about what to tell people at church when they ask where Cilla is.

Karen says I should just tell them to bug off, though she didn’t say “bug.”  I said, “I can’t do that; I’m on the Altar Guild!”

Ed suggested I talk to our rector, Father Mike, but I was too embarrassed to tell him that I cared what people thought.

Nikki thinks we should have our own reality show and said, “Why don’t you talk to Kate?”

Kate is Rev. Katherine Parker, rector of Epiphany Episcopal Church (the church across town) and my mother-in-law’s significant other, and if anyone’s had experience dealing with disapproval, she has.  She laughed and said, “Nothing like the smells and bells, is there?”  (Her church is High.)  “But seriously, if someone asks where she is, say, ‘Oh, she’s around somewhere’, which isn’t a lie.”

Then she launched into Priest Mode.  “It’s wonderful that you’re letting her do this.  But I’m concerned about your being upset.  And I’m not sure whether I’m hearing that you don’t think you should let her or that you’re upset about what people think.”

“I’m upset that I care what people think.”

”You certainly seem to understand your feelings.  But you want to know what to do about them.  Does that sound right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, tell yourself there’s nothing wrong with feeling the way you do and mentally tell everyone to bug off.”

Kate didn’t say “bug” either.  I hugged her.  “I’m so glad you’re my . . . you’re Ed’s . . .  whatever.”

After I talked to Kate, I felt better  Nobody asked about Cilla, which was a relief, though I was surprised that nobody noticed that she was missing.