Christmas Eve Gift, Again

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Again. I have a handful of things to get done between now and then — some wrapping, some deliveries, some copywriting, a meeting. Then, my teenage daughter and I will enjoy our annual tradition. I'll drive with her to the stable in the morning (something I never thought I'd miss, but after a year and a half of her driving herself there each day, I'm looking forward to it). Then, we'll find a place for lunch. Nothing fancy, just a local joint where we can enjoy basic food and a chance to play Secret Santa.

Here's the post I wrote about our Christmas Eves the first year Lovin' the Alien was published.

Merry Christmas!!!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

"Christmas Eve Gift!"

Our family has a tradition that dates back longer than I can remember. It started with my mother's own childhood, growing up in Mountain Grove, Missouri. On the morning of December 24th, the first person to shout "Christmas Eve Gift!' wins. My family takes this pretty seriously — my enthusiastic younger brother has been known to call people minutes after midnight to declare "Christmas Eve Gift" victory.

The game is not unique to my family. If you Google "Christmas Eve Gift" (with the quotation marks), you'll get over 600,000 hits. I'm a working mother and didn't have time to read them all, but the handful I did peruse were sweet reminiscences much like mine in the paragraph above.

This friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly, sometimes downright ruthless) competition frustrated my husband to no end. 'What do you win?" he demanded. "Why is there no gift? This is lame!"

So, when we adopted the practice with our own daughter, I made sure there was always a gift. A funny, seasonal knick-knack (which I chose based on its appropriateness for any of us, but bought specifically for her since I always let her win). It might be a wind-up dancing elf, a small box of chocolates, an ornament, a Pooh Bear dreidel, or (her favorite) a tiny naked baby doll from Japan wearing a Santa hat. This year, it was an adorable felt donkey ornament. I figured it was close enough to a horse if my daughter won it. And, it's the symbol of the Democratic party if my liberal husband won.

As per Christmas Eve usual, the tween walked away with the prize. I don't think she was impressed. She told me, ever so sweetly, that she thought it would look better on the big tree downstairs and not on the smaller one in her room. Clearly the adorable ornament wasn't as adorable as I thought. Oh well.

That's all right; we have another annual tradition. My husband meets his best friend for lunch (if the long nap he takes each year afterwards is any indication, we are probably talking 'liquid lunch'). So, my daughter and I go out together for our own meal. This was especially fun back when I was working at an agency in Boston and rarely saw her midday. She was just three or four years old the first time we had our special Christmas Eve luncheon. We went to a chic and charming little bistro, called ... Friendly's.

That particular day, Friendly's was overcrowded and understaffed. There were a couple of waitresses who weren't moving very quickly, and one waiter, who seemed to be pulling most of the waitering weight. He was amiable and efficient, and even though the kitchen mixed up our sandwiches (how do you mix up grilled cheese?), he kept his sense of humor and made everything right.

We felt bad that he was working — and working so hard! — on Christmas Eve. So, we decided to leave him a "Special-Secret-Santa-Christmas-Eve-Tip." I went and paid at the register while my daughter wrote "MERRY CHRISTMAS" (phonetically) in crayon on her folded placemat. We slipped an over-the-top generous gratuity inside and raced out, giggling wildly.

From then on, we made a date for our Secret Santa lunch. Once Friendly's closed (after more than thirty years; my husband worked there as a teenager), we moved on to other local restaurants: Bertucci's, Pizzeria UNO. Each time, we made it a point to converse with our waitperson and find out what he or she was doing for the holiday. Each time, we left a regular tip for our meal plus a generous Christmas bonus. Each time, we ran out of the restaurant, thrilled with our little secret and laughing.

Last year, we went to a coffee shop in neighboring Salem. The joint was jammed and our waitress was terrific! She noticed that we had made a list on one of our napkins and asked if we were still shopping? No, I told her. The list included friends' houses at which we planned to drop off goodies on the way home.

She said that she herself was almost finished. She was a single mom, she explained, and just needed two more presents, the big ones, for her teenage son and daughter. When she got off at 5:00, she was going to rush over to the mall to get them each an iPod. It occurred to me that she had probably waited until the last minute to get these special gifts because she didn't have the cash sooner. My daughter and I were excited — it felt like we had hit Secret Santa pay dirt! We did what we could to contribute to the iPods and our giddy dash out of the restaurant was even more exhilarating than usual.

I enjoy most (all right, many, or at least some) meals with my daughter. But, I treasure the time we spend together at lunch every Christmas Eve. Joining forces to help someone is powerful stuff. We don't have the resources of Oprah or Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, but we can make a difference in our way.

Maya Angelou once said, "I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver." I'll think of this as my daughter and I joyfully run down the street together after our lunch this afternoon.

May your soul find liberation and joy this Christmas Eve too.

If you've enjoyed this post, I invite you to order the book Lovin' the Alien here. 

Going Nuts

Oh, nuts! It's starting already.

Christmas is just two weeks away. But, that's not the problem. I'm actually in good shape.  

Christmas cards are done. Shopping is done. Wrapping is done. Well, everything except bows and tags. (BTW, this should be interesting. Will I remember what's what, where, and for whom? We shall see.)

One of my favorite things about the season is going to see The Nutcracker. Growing up in Manhattan in the 1970s, I attended the New York City Ballet's version at nearby Lincoln Center. One year, my sister and I got to go backstage to meet Gelsey Kirkland and she gave us autographed toe shoes. Another year, we bought little furry mice in the lobby concession stand. 

Still another year, we missed it because we both had the mumps.

As I grew up, there were many years I didn't go. In high school, I was too busy doing theatre (and homework). In college, I was too busy with my boyfriend (and homework). Then there were all those young professional years when ballet tickets seemed out of reach (I fondly think of that time as "The Ramen Era"). But, as I got older — and my bank account got a bit healthier — we started a new tradition. 

Each year, right after Thanksgiving, my mother would come up to New England for a long weekend, and together we would see the Boston Ballet's Nutcracker. It was pretty much just us (we did bring my future mother-in-law along once) until my daughter turned four. Then, she came too.

My mother likes to remember that first trip. She and I were both in elegant black velvet and my daughter was in red. We surprised her with her own nutcracker which she brought to the performance. As the lights dimmed and the orchestra started Tchaikovsky's familiar overture, I leaned down and whispered.

"I'm so proud of you, honey."

Without missing a beat, she responded, "I'm so proud of you too, Mommy."

Since then, we've rarely missed our annual performance. Things have changed: new sets, costumes, choreography, even a new venue when the Boston Ballet was evicted in order to accommodate the Radio City Rockettes (a poor call on the part of the Wang Center, if there ever was one). 

We've experienced change on our part too. Several years ago, my daughter refused to wear party dresses (she was already self-identifying as a horsewoman, and lace and bows weren't going to cut it). A few years later, I stopped giving her nutcrackers because we had no more room for them. Our collection, mostly hers and lined up on our dining room mantle, still generates a lot of comments at our tree-trimming parties.

This year, we couldn't stop for a pre-show dinner (or post-show pastry) because of a looming test in AP Bio, the bane of my daughter's senior year existence. But, we had fabulous seats and the production truly was the most beautiful I think I've ever seen. At intermission, I tried to get my companions to go out into the gilded lobby with me for a nice group photo. Neither generation was interested; the crowd was too thick, the seats too comfortable. As the second act began, something occurred to me.

'This won't work next year,' I realized. My daughter won't be here the week after Thanksgiving. She'll be in Ohio or Vermont or New Hampshire or Rhode Island. This, of course, made the lovely and bittersweet second act all the lovelier and more bittersweet.

At the end of the ballet, there's a gorgeous pas de deux between the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker (who is more of a prince consort by that time). Then, all of the inhabitants of the land of sweets dance once more and wave good-bye to Clara and her uncle/wizard/godfather/grownup-friend Herr Drosselmeyer (there's a little grey area there and more than one version I've seen has been downright creepy in a Humbert Humbert way). 

In the current Boston Ballet production, there's an added coda. Clara is sleeping (on a really nice fainting couch) with her little wooden nutcracker. Each character she's met stops by and sort of enchants her one last time. She wakes and stretches in that graceful way that only ballerinas can. 'It's all been a dream,' she seems to think. Then, she lifts her hands and feels the jeweled crown on her head. She smiles in wonder and delight. And ... curtain.

So, yours truly spends the enthusiastic ovation, subtly wiping away tears (really not a good idea to let the teen know that I'm choked up). Was I verklempt because Clara's dream was over? Or because the past eighteen years have gone by way too fast? 

I think we know the answer. The more pressing question is this. If I can't get through The Nutcracker without tearing up, how will I make it through the next eight months?

This is going to be nuts.


If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my book  Lovin' the Alien.    

School's Out and I'm Feeling a Little Schmaltzy

Yesterday was the last day of school.

A seventh grader left my house at 6:45 am for a pre-school pancake breakfast at a friend's. An eighth grader returned at 3:15 pm, having "hung out" at Starbucks en route. She didn't look any different. She was no more (but, thankfully, no less) interested in her devoted mother. And still, this was another milestone in the endless string of events big and small that mark our journey together.

By this time, however, I know better than to point these things out. Why give her yet another example of just how schmaltzy I am?

It's a tradition in our family that my daughter gets to choose what she wants to do for dinner after the last day of school. In years past, we've had fish and chips on the harbor, pizza at Bertucci's and a pu pu platter at a local Chinese place. When second grade ended, we went into Boston and visited the aquarium so she could pick up a penguin hand puppet like the one her teacher had used with the class. They had taken turns bringing said penguin home and writing about his stay with them in a special diary. Its name was Fluffy or Puffy or some such thing. It amazes me that I can't remember now, since life in Mrs. J's class pretty much revolved around when you got to bring him home and what scrapes you could get into together.

Stop me now or I'll get schmaltzy again.

This year, I suggested another trip into Boston for pasta and pastry in the North End. We were all set until we realized that my husband had Peter Gabriel tickets for the same night. I decided to give the guest of honor a choice: she and I could go together or we could time shift the celebration until her dad would be available too.

"We can wait," she shrugged. "It's no big deal."

Let me explain that in the past, it would have been a very big deal indeed. My daughter loves the concept of tradition. In fact, she will often allude to something as a "tradition" that would never have occurred to us. Like "But, it's our tradition to stop for a McFlurry on the way home from so-and-so's house." "It's a tradition that we listen to the entire first season of Glee when we drive up to Vermont." Or, "Eating two bags of microwave popcorn is a tradition when we watch What A Girl Wants." Last day of school celebrations have always been important.

Not so much anymore, I guess.

Her new laissez-faire attitude certainly made my life easier. It's been a particularly cold and wet season here, and yesterday was no exception. Parking in the North End is stressful and expensive. And, I had several dueling deadlines for clients — my time would be much better spent sitting in my office and working rather than sitting in traffic on our way into town.

Still, I felt, as I so often do, that another piece of our life together was breaking off and disappearing. From experience, I've found that when these rituals fall by the wayside due to some random, seemingly inconsequential decision, they don't come back.

There it is again, the schmaltz.

I decided to give it one more shot. "What would you like to do this afternoon? Do you want to go anywhere? Watch anything? Have anything special for dinner?"

"Nope."

"You just want to hang out and do nothing?"

"Yep."

So that's what she did. I didn't ask her to go through the year's worth of schoolwork that had been dumped on her carpet. I didn't insist that she put away the clean laundry that was piled on her bed. I didn't tell her to stop playing games on her iPhone or texting her now eighth-grade BFFs. I served up an easy but tasty dinner, which we ate together at the coffee table in front of the TV.

After ten months of seventh grade, I figured she'd earned the right to be a little lazy. And, after ten months of seventh grade, I've earned the right to be a little ... well ... schmaltzy.