Memorable Scene of Christmas Cheer

We’re all familiar with the artwork of Norman Rockwell. He gives us idyllic images of Christmas cheer wherein familial joy and the scent of home-baked cookies actually waft off the canvas. In MY reality, the source of any wafting scent is usually a diaper. Well, so what if we’re no Rockwell painting? Memorable scenes of Christmas cheer happen to be our specialty.

For years we used an artificial Christmas tree. But the tedious and unending task of unbending the wire branches, or “fluffing,” as we came to call it, never caught on as a joyful Christmas tradition. The sing-song invitation, “Children, gather ‘round, for it’s time to fluff the tree!” was met with groans that made even the Grinch sound optimistic. So last year, we opted for a live tree.

As the tree was headed for the roof of our tiny Civic, the memorable scene of Christmas cheer began. The two older children were happily chasing each other nearby, while I gave the baby an impromptu feeding in the front seat. Armed with twine and a knot-tying merit badge or two, my husband secured the tree to the car’s roof. It was a job well done.

Too well done, as it turned out. When Daddy and the children tried to get in the car to bring the tree home, the doors were all tied shut.

Feeling sheepish, but never losing his “can-do” attitude, my husband freed the last in the sequence of bound doors—the rear driver’s side door—and the kids easily scampered over the baby’s car seat to make room for their dad. He settled into the back seat without difficulty, but his face showed strained confidence at the prospect of transferring himself from there to the driver’s seat.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay there and I’ll drive?” I offered. I had only a gear-shift to surmount, and I figured the oldest child had a much better chance of making it unscathed to the front seat than did my sanguine, robust-ish husband.

“No, no,” he enthused. “I can make it just fine.” Tasks requiring upper body strength are my hubby’s forte. A lithe swinging of the feet between the bucket seats while hefting his upper body with raw triceps power was, I’m sure, what he had in mind. But no Civic has ever been sold on the merits of head room, so Daddy barreled through torso-first instead. It became obvious his plan lacked forethought when we discovered he was soundly wedged, face down in the dead center of the vehicle. Feet trapped by the baby seat, belly firmly packed against the center console, he finally admitted, “I’m stuck.”

I began to giggle. The children began to giggle. Daddy began to giggle. We couldn’t stop. Giggles turned to tear-streaked guffaws as, straining, grunting, laughing, and exerting all his might, Dad eventually broke free from his bucket-seat captors. But the battle was not over, as he found himself sideways across the front two seats, one of which was occupied by me and a nursing newborn.

At various points during his continued struggle, the windshield wipers demonstrated their full array of speeds, the radio was put to scanning every station, the hazard lights hazarded, and the car’s horn played a monotone yet lively concerto to an audience of tree lot patrons. Our breathless laughter continued long after my poor husband was upright again, sweat beading down his temples and tears of laughter striping his flushed face.

Back at home, no fluffing was necessary as the scent of fresh-cut pine wafted through the house. We had to call Grandma to share the hilarity and, as we did, I truly think we experienced elevated levels of familial joy. Norman Rockwell? Perhaps not. Memorable scene of Christmas cheer? Absolutely. And we will cherish it for many years to come.

Prop 8 on My Bumper

I'm not a big fan of bumper stickers. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading about your honor student as much as the next person. Your views on war, beef, the Earth and the exact location of your mother-in-law all make for a riveting read. Some stickers give me a genuine chuckle ("If you can read this, I've lost my boat"), while others cause me to slow down, lock the doors and change lanes immediately ("Nuke the unborn baby whales"). It's amazing what you can learn from a bumper sticker. According to one I saw recently, I am crunchy and taste good with catsup, and therefore should not meddle in the affairs of dragons. Then again, perhaps this sticker reveals more about the driver than about me.

Indeed, as a medium for revealing one’s character and opinions to others, bumper stickers are amazingly effective. But I’ve never been at ease revealing my character and opinions to people with whom I have only traffic patterns in common. Besides, I still owe money on my bumper (it keeps company with a late-model hybrid engine); defacing it for the purpose of informing strangers that “I ‘heart’ my Chihuahua” just doesn’t sit right with me. I once considered creating my own bumper sticker that says “I am unwilling to deface my bumper,” but actually adhering it would raise my irony barometer to a level I’m frankly uncomfortable with. So, the few bumper stickers I’ve owned have found their voice in remote locations like the inner flap of a notebook or the far side of my refrigerator.

Until now.

In keeping with the nature of bumper stickers, the one newly displayed on my yet-to-be-paid-off bumper reveals a few things about me. It reveals that, as a parent, I wish to decide when and how to discuss sexual orientation with my children. When the time comes for that discussion, I wish for the freedom to speak in a manner consistent with my beliefs, one of which is to be kind to everyone. And if I disagree with something taught in my children’s schools, I wish to claim my right to opt out. The sticker also reveals that, as a churchgoer, I wish for no tenet of my faith to be at odds with state law. I wish for churches to be able to freely practice what they preach, without the likelihood of lawsuits and the loss of their status as non-profit, charitable organizations. I wish for churches to be unhindered in their humanitarian efforts locally and around the world. One proposition on the ballot this November holds the power to grant or deny these wishes.

I once saw a bumper sticker that claimed, “Bumper stickers are not the answer.” I agree. They’re never big enough to give a complete picture of any serious issue. For example, my friends who oppose the message on my bumper display the phrase “equality for all” on theirs. We all want that. But I believe a more accurate slogan would be: “Equality for all in marriage, but not in the free exercise of religion.” I’m no market analyst, but I don’t see that one selling well at all.

If the following bumper sticker were available, I would seriously consider displaying it: “Society rewards all couples committed to each other for the long-term. Ever since domestic partnerships were enacted in California in 2000, their scope has continually expanded until the rights they grant are now essentially indistinguishable from the rights granted by California traditional marriages. Equality is not the issue.” But then I’d have to trade my hybrid for a tank. No tanks.

Right now, when you pull up behind my loan-encumbered little bumper, you’ll read the words “YES on Prop 8.” After the election is over, no matter the outcome of this proposition, I will remove my sticker and rejoin the throngs of anonymous drivers who are entertained, outraged and inspired by the bumpers around them. One bumper sticker I hope I never see is this: “I miss my parental rights and religious freedom.”

Organic Comedy

Anyone who knows me, and in fact, anyone who’s ever laid eyes on me, knows that I love food. It’s so yummy, don’t you agree? But you should know that if I had a choice between a full buffet of sweet, delicious junk food and a full buffet of savory, healthful food, I would choose the healthful food absolutely every time. It’s true. Completely hypothetical, but true. In the real world, where full buffets are quite rare, I am an omnivore. Omni is the Latin word for ‘even if it’s marginally edible’ and vore, also Latin, means ‘I’ll eat it.’

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when a colleague said to me several weeks ago, “Hey, I’m heading next door to Kolesterol King for fried cow flesh and some frozen lard. You wanna come?” Of course I accepted the invitation and there began a beautiful friendship . . . or so I thought. Shortly afterward, this woman underwent a mysterious change. She said she found a book that opened her eyes to the evil acts being perpetrated by the cattle industry, greedy corporations, and David Hasselhoff. She started to know the names of minute ingredients in certain foods and could even pronounce the diseases they cause with commendable accuracy. Her lunches began to consist of things with names like tofurkey sausage, muesli flakes, flaxseed meal, Soy cutash, and cardboard germ. I had known people like this existed. I’d even known some of them personally. But I had never witnessed the transformation from normal to nutty until then.

I’m afraid I had to draw the line on our friendship when this woman offered me a canister of lemon-flavored drink mix because she was clearing her cupboards of things she would no longer ingest.

“What does it have in it that you don’t like?” I asked, mildly curious.

“[Insert barely pronounceable, but apparently potable chemical],” she responded, then added, “It causes cancer. Do you think your family would drink it? It’s a shame to see it go to waste.”

In our former friendship based on trans fats, she never would have wished cancer on my family! Obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart failure, maybe. But never cancer. (I took the drink mix, by the way, and the kids love it.)

As much as I enjoy a good artery-clogging meal, I have to admit I was swayed by her example. I’m trying to be reasonably selective now, and I’m noticing food labels more. One word I see quite a bit is the word organic. At one time I assumed it meant something logical like ‘grown without chemicals’ or even ‘we didn’t mess with this; it’s just food.’ But apparently I was mistaken because I see the word on everything from vegetables (reasonable) to peanut butter (questionable) to Li’l Debbie’s snack cakes (highly suspect). When I see claims of “organic” on such unlikely products, my imagination takes off.

[Wavy fade out and cascading bells please.]

A young go-getter sits in his shiny cubicle. An impressive logo reading “Top Notch Marketing Inc” glistens in the background. He reminisces proudly for a moment on the recent meeting with his boss during which he was assigned a new account: FOOD. Full of confidence and hormones he brainstorms for a word that will bump up sales for the client. And then, without warning, there it is. The word that will change food sales forever: ‘orgasmic.’ But having grown up on spell-check instead of spell-ing, the text-pad instead of the pen, he misprints it, and food containers by the hundreds of thousands leave their factories claiming “organic” instead.

[Wavy fade back to reality and bells cascading in the other direction please.]

But seriously. The principal difference between a regular food product and one marked “organic” is about $17.32. That colleague’s lunches, for example? Each one could have kept my family of five in Froot Snax for several weeks. Let’s see. . . plump, seedless, juicy grapes grown on 100 acre plots for 88 cents a pound versus teensy-weensy, anemic looking, seeded grapes grown on 1 acre plots for $3.99 a pound. Milk squeezed from the udder of a normal cow by a metal clamp attached to a remote pump for $3.10 per gallon. Milk squeezed from the udder of a cow on a special diet by a metal clamp attached to a nearby pump for $7.89 per gallon. There’s really no contest for me. A fashionable explanation for my not partaking of the organic lifestyle would include some reference to “these lean economic times.” But who would I be kidding? I honestly cannot imagine a reality in which a claim of organic would mean more to me than my money, no matter how well the economy were doing.

So, what is important to me when it comes to food? I’ll tell you what. It’s shelf life. Not in the traditional sense, though. I rarely have occasion to worry about my food not staying fresh long enough. My real concern is that it stay present long enough. That’s right. My number one criterion for a good food buy is how long the food is likely to stay in my cupboard. This requires it to not taste so bad that it would never get eaten, but also not taste so good that it would all be eaten on the same day I bought it. I never buy cookies, for example. (Any positive health effects of this decision are purely incidental.) At the store, if I see something that my children would actually enjoy eating, it’s definitely not going in the cart. You see, spending four dollars on a box of crackers is only worth it if I know that four dollars will be spread out over, say, four weeks. Then I’ve really gotten a good deal. So it’s salt-free Triscuits for us, thank you very much.

Some people overcome the dilemma of food disappearing too fast by shopping in bulk at places like Costco, Sam’s Club or other buildings larger than the Taj Majal. For me, this is also problematic. Sure the per item price is lower than at regular grocery stores, but it’s really hard to take comfort in that fact when I’ve just spent $39.50 on noodles. . . never mind that I won’t have to buy them again this decade. I don’t have room to refrigerate the five-gallon jug of meat marinade “once opened.” The 800-pack of flavored oatmeal might have a chance if it doubles as furniture, but my freezer would almost certainly be overtaxed by the industrial sized bucket of fish sticks. And if, by some odd culinary coincidence, I happened to need noodles, meat marinade, oatmeal and fish sticks all at once, I would push my way through the gale force fan gusts at the exit with only four items on my flatbed cart, but with the better part of $150 missing from my wallet. No thanks.

Well, despite the rift in our friendship, my colleague and I still occasionally spend our lunch hour together—she with her whole grain couscous, organic peanut butter (a.k.a. oil floating on beige sludge) and green tea, I with my humongous grapes, bland Triscuits and double stuff oreo shake from next door. I don’t tell her how tempted I am to spike her tea with lemon-flavored drink mix. Truth be told, I think she misses her old ways.

“How’s that shake?” she asks, failing to hide her longing.

My answer? “Orgasmic,” of course.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

In a rare moment of FM radio listening recently, I was taken back to my youth; Bryan Adams was the culprit. There’s something about a raspy voice that gets one’s adolescent juices flowing, don’t you agree? Bonnie Tyler knows the score. So do Rod Stewart, Sheryl Crow and that Amanda girl from American Idol.

What was interesting though, was that as I listened to Bryan croaking on about heaven, what came to me was only the memory of being carried away. Do you remember feeling that unmistakable mixture of romance, rebellion and longing for independence that somehow has a home in disproportionate bass lines and dramatic drum solos? Yeah. Me too.

Why, I wonder, is it only a memory? Why does this song, or any other for that matter, fail to carry me away into that realm of intensity today? Have I lost my ability to emote? My reaction to the toothpaste I found smeared on the laundry room wall the other day would certainly suggest otherwise. But I think that’s an emotion of a different ilk than what 1986’s top 40 could yield. To highlight what I mean, let’s take an in depth look at one of the decade in question’s finest raspy voiced offerings: Peter Cetera and The Glory of Love. Text in blue shows how I might have responded then, text in red shows how I would likely respond today.

You keep me standing tall
You help me through it all
I’m always strong when you’re beside me
I have always needed you
I could never make it alone

He needs me.

Of course you can make it alone. You can, and you will if you don’t stop sounding like such a wuss.

I am a man who would fight for your honor
I’ll be the hero you’ve been dreaming of
We’ll live forever knowing together
That we did it all for the glory of love

Totally! The GLORY OF LOVE!! That IS what it’s all about!

Exactly what situation would require my honor to be fought for I wonder. That lady that cut in front of me for the shady parking spot at WalMart the other day certainly could’ve used a talking-to, but frankly, the whole fighting for honor
thing’s a bit of a turn-off.

It’s like a knight in shining armor
From a long time ago
Just in time I will save the day
Take you to my castle far away

Be still my heart! Oh my gosh this songwriter TOTALLY knows the longings of my soul!

And who’s going to clean that castle, do you suppose?

Well, you get the idea.

You’ll be happy to know I have developed a theory. It stems from an actual auditory memory that I have involving this exact song (or one very much like it, I assure you). I actually remember the fading out of the unnecessarily repetitious final lyric and then the DJ’s cheery voice announcing, “Time to flip over!” This was for the benefit of those of us who were “laying out.” This was obviously before people knew that “laying out” meant “cancering up.” Could it be that all the emotional viscosity of our youth can be attributed to the effects of the sun?

Well, barring some impossible scientific research, there is no way to know for sure, and I am left with a fist full of perhapses. Perhaps it was the sun. Perhaps today’s youth are able to make some sense of the disjointed lyrics of their music and therefore feel just as I did. Perhaps life’s responsibilities will catch up with them one day, too. Then again, perhaps there’s nothing I can say, I’ve got a total eclipse of the heart.