childhood – Emptying The Backpack

What’s ‘Just enough’ Christmas?

Christmas swings like a pendulum do….

My paternal grandmother, Arbaleta (Grandma Leta), and maternal grandmother, Marie (Grandma Ree), could not have been more different creatures, and this was never more obvious than at Christmas. At first glance, it seemed to me that they were polar opposites when it came to wintry holidays especially; in retrospect, it is evident they were each on opposite points of the pendulum that has come to symbolize Christmas for me. Generation after generation on both sides of my family seemed to be unconsciously caught up by the wild swings of this holiday pendulum, a reactionary arc between a resounding “Yes!” to Christmas and its counterpart, an adamant “Hell, no!”

My Granddaughter’s depiction of our favorite activity: swinging. She is so wise….

Finding Healing Around Christmas

Maybe your family needs some healing around holidays as well. Sure, it seems strange to talk about Christmas amidst all the paper and ribbon and cookies and tinsel, but it is, in fact, the best time to step back, recognize struggles and disappointment and start our families on paths to peace with Christmas; maybe along the way we could even figure out what’s “enough” for joy. I offer this reflection then to all our families because we cannot find healing if we do not know our family’s wounds. Here’s hope for discussions about upcoming celebrations: may they be intentional, loving and truly joyful for all.

For me, it seems the best place to start is with the grandmothers. Both of my grandmothers were born around WWI; each married during the Great Depression. Neither had, as they say, “a pot to piss in,” not while they were growing up and not while they were young mothers. Both worked hard to support their families outside the home as well as in. Dad’s mom, Arbaleta, had two children, a boy and a girl, nine years apart. Mom’s mother, Marie, had three daughters all close in age.

Arbaleta’s husband, my Grandpa Mac, fell from an electric pole when he was young and wasn’t supposed to ever walk again, but did, in great part because Arbaleta would not let him not walk. She reportedly insisted he move his legs and even moved them for him for months as physical therapy until he could walk and work again. While I was never close to Grandma Leta, I have always admired the steely determination that these actions showed.

Marie had a husband who was always on the road as a truck driver, mostly because the bus or truck driver jobs close to town weren’t well-paying. He died of a massive heart attack at age 50; she lived another 30-plus years and married her high school sweetheart, then outlived him and married another kind man when she was eighty. At that wedding, the minister declared what we all knew, “Marie is a hopeful woman!” Grandma Ree, as we called her, was the quintessential kindergarten teacher when teachers still had time for nature walks, ironing leaves between sheets of waxed paper, and silly songs. Thus, she was the kind of grandmother I aspired to be: she played games with us, prayed for us, encouraged us and defended us when necessary. For most of her life, she modeled a love of learning: she earned a master’s degree, helped “plant” two churches, became an accomplished painter and was memorizing her favorite Bible verses in her seventies because she was losing her eyesight.

While I know little of Arbaleta’s childhood except poverty and hardship, I know Marie helped her mother run a boarding house after her chiropractor father divorced her mother, something which mortified both women.

That I’m aware of, Arbaleta seldom left her home after we were born. At least we never saw her leave her home, though, as far as we knew, she was perfectly capable. Our collective memory of her is of her seated on the sofa in her silk pajamas. Every time we visited her, we would wave to her from a few feet away as she perched on the sectional sofa in the corner, surrounded by shelves of various sizes and shapes of cacti. In one hand she held a lit cigarette, ashes threatening to crumble onto the silk, and the other hand held the ever-present bean bag ashtray (you know, the kind that has the bean bag on the bottom and the colorful aluminum tin bowl on the top.) That I can remember, she never once kissed, hugged or touched us in any way, shape or form. And, though she was pleasant, there were no memorable conversations, just the cloud of cigarette smoke that circled above her.

As for Christmas, well, I can’t remember there being much of it in their home at the edge of a Kansas golf course where she and Grandpa had retired. Ironically, I’m not aware Grandpa played golf, though my Dad did well into his eighties. As far as Christmas goes, Arbaleta represented the point in the arc where celebration was merely tolerated. Every few years, our parents would tote our gifts to their house to open on that rare occasion we woke up there on a Christmas morning, but the mood in the house was that Christmas decoration was, well, perfunctory. There was a tree and maybe a wreath, but evidently, for Grandpa and Arbaleta, a tree and some lights outside were “just enough,” though I suspect they were only put up to satisfy us. If overcoming poverty was Arbaleta’s life goal, she met it, thus the home on the golf course as well as the purchase of a new Lincoln every year. Secular or religious, it didn’t matter; Christmas was a formality, expected, tolerated for the children. Christmas dinner involved polished silver and store bought sweets, if any. “Please wait until you have permission to touch.”

Arbaleta died when I was seven and, suddenly, the focus of Christmas on my father’s side of the family shuddered and swung hard to the opposite extreme. Her daughter brought in Christmas every year from then on with a vengeance, lovingly, but with an overwhelming force. Every year, my aunt seemed to be competing for best Christmas ever, ostensibly in response to her own mother’s lackadaisical attempts.

While certain treasured and expensive statuary graced my aunt’s mantle for Christmas, for example, every year, the Christmas tree itself, usually the biggest tree I’d ever seen, sported a different theme with new, all handmade ornaments. I often asked when she started making them, sure she must have begun the previous New Year’s Day. She also made most of our gifts; they were always of Pinterest quality and I treasured several sweaters she knitted for me, for example.

As if it were necessary, she also became an amazing cook and thus, Christmas visits always involved impressing us with recipes for new dishes. Ironically, my mother didn’t want the recipes and my mother’s mother, Marie, didn’t need them; my mother was too busy leaning into that dysfunctional pendulum that was swinging back to the starker side, likely in reaction to her mother’s seasonal excess.

Marie, my mother’s mother, was on that same swing of the pendulum as my aunt, though I believe Grandma Ree went all out for her Christmas celebration for different reasons. Her husband, Grandpa George, also died when I was seven, but that did not slow Marie down in life or around the holidays. From the moment you opened the door into her home at Christmas, the scent of pine and wild berry candles carried you through room after room of greenery, holly, bells, poinsettias and new figurines or miniatures each year. Also new each year were the sweetbreads and cookies and homemade candies, all awaiting our discovery after hugs and kisses were exchanged and the coats and mittens and caps were piled onto a bed in the back of the house.

Grandma Ree with her brother, Mother and Sister, c. 1960’s.

A Family Nightmare

While Marie’s response seemed to me to somewhat resemble that of Arbaleta’s daughter, the driving force behind Marie’s likely unconscious Christmas reverie gone amuck was a well-kept secret, a family nightmare. On two separate Christmas Eves, during her childhood and youth, Grandma Ree had lost family members to suicide. I was, of course, an adult before I was made aware of that history or the details: one drank poisoned alcohol and one shot himself, both on separate Christmas Eves. Of course, the grief and shock of their actions was complicated by their (conscious or unconscious) efforts to ruin Christmas forever for some of their family.

How painful were their memories of the holidays?

Before we assume that Marie’s attempts to reclaim Christmas was the reason for the pendulum’s extreme movements, though, we need to recognize that some calamity in earlier generations drove those men to choose Christmas Eve to end their lives; we have to ask how painful were their memories of the holidays that drove them to risk also ruining the holiday for their spouses and children? How far back did the pain begin and what don’t we know about that?

In other words, it’s not likely either man, both of whom must have been suffering and feeling hopeless, started the family on that path.

The result, though, seems to have been an unconscious struggle to compensate. Those grand swings between holiday excess and hopelessness left subsequent generations still unconsciously at a loss to figure out what’s enough celebration. Further, while we can understand what might have spurred Marie’s need to excel at Christmas, I’ll likely never know what caused Arbaleta’s lack of enthusiasm for the holidays, and so I’m left simply to marvel at the overwhelming force of her daughter’s frenzied Christmas efforts. Sadly, or thankfully, no one now has picked up that mantle and the extended family is so fractured as to make these discussions nearly impossible.

I offer these reflections then to my nuclear family as the beginning of some discussions around conscious choices rather than wild reactions.

How does a family figure out what’s enough Christmas when the family’s history is, well, fractured? My own efforts were often emotionally unsatisfying; not only were my mother’s Christmas efforts headed for the stark extreme in reaction to her mother’s and her sister-in-law’s excesses, but they were complicated by my general lack of interest in cooking or baking except when absolutely necessary.

It was my ex-husband who started me thinking about some of our responses to holidays years ago: he protested the idea of Valentines’ Day for example, saying we could and should give one another cards or flowers or candy at anytime of the year and not just one day chosen by candy and card companies and florists. Yes, we can, I agreed wholeheartedly. But do we? Of course not, I pointed out. To his credit, he came by his dislike and struggle with holidays honestly and thus brought his own reactions to our holiday table: his birthday is the day after Christmas, and he was one of six children. His Christmas gift always came with a declaration that, “Oh-that’s your birthday gift too.”

Over the years, I certainly have struggled with holidays, whether it’s decorating or preparing a feast or just planning. Don’t get me started on birthdays for children; too many of those ended in my tears from exhaustion and a sense of failure. Did I tell you about all the “Pinterest Fails?”

All these things and more (all these things and more) that’s what Christmas means to me, my love….)
Stevie Wonder

Plenty of us struggle with the holidays, though, whether because of grieving a loss or knowing you’re the only one who can’t afford the gift exchange. I’ve tried over the years to make our gifts for Christmas but again, I know too many of my family members and friends were less than thrilled with the results. Mea culpa. We tried spreading the Christmas holiday over several days to lessen the wild two-minute frenzy of Christmas morning. We tried taking Christmas to the mountains; we tried staying home. We wondered what would happen if our family just gave up one Christmas and had lots of little ones? Could that not translate into lots of chances to do or give or be kind to one another? So many of our attempts at intentional Christmases revolved around not expecting one or two people to create a magical holiday that only left them in tears and exhausted.

We’ve finally begun to incorporate some activities intentionally. Instead of china and crystal, we copied someone else’s snowman place settings, something the granddaughter and I could share. Last year, we started some silly story telling. This year, we introduced Karaoke and I am trying to reclaim the joy of baking by helping my granddaughter learn; watching her “knead” the goop she bought at the store made me think. Lo and behold, she discovered the joy of yeast and how it rises and how the baker must punch down the dough, then knead it. Her eyes grew wide after she made a fist and punched away. “That is soooo satisfying,” she said. A keeper.

In case you’re wondering, religion did not seem to figure at all in the wild reactions to the holiday through the years for my extended family. While Arbaleta was, as far as I know, agnostic, and Marie was a strong Christian, neither of them addressed or seemed to include the religious holiday in their efforts to reclaim or dismiss Christmas. For our family, that’s a different pendulum altogether. I personally love a good candlelight Christmas eve service singing and the idea that God came to be with us as an infant. Nevertheless, culturally we continue to struggle with all that Christmas celebrations have become for generations and we cannot heal from pain we do not acknowledge.

For our family, the faith and religious rituals are different pendulum altogether. I will never know why my Grandma Ree did not incorporate more of her personal faith into the celebration. Personal experience suggests she was treading lightly with agnostic family members and, as is true for many families, also celebrated on different days with different parts of the family, balancing church events with home. Nevertheless, culturally, we continue to struggle with all that our secular celebrations of Christmas have become for generations, often leaving us to begin another year frustrated, sad, discouraged. That is where we can start, but we must look collectively at this because we cannot heal from pain we do not acknowledge.

The best time, I believe, to reflect on how we celebrate Christmas is when we are all together…and we’ll before Christmas comes around-unexamined-again.

For my family, I continue to try to reframe Christmas in light of the history I bring to the holiday. I guess I hope through reflections and questions to step completely back from that wild, reactionary swinging between excessive celebration to indifference and even disdain.

I think one key is that we focus on the children, but with respect for their needs and not our own needs to give them the best holiday ever!

They get tired; we pay attention. They want to dress up; they don’t want to dress up. Quiet time, dancing in the kitchen time, gifts that involve us engaging with them. I’m not saying we’re the best with children ever or that ours are happier than any other. What I am saying is that like in so much of life, the children around me ground me. What they need is so often what I need. Let’s sing Jingle Bells, yes, at a gathering, but we mustn’t forget the bells themselves and our need to jingle them to make the song come to life.

A little percussion goes a long way and when we sing “Jingle Bells” there need to be jingling bells….A five-year-old taught me that.

Music must also be a source of holiday joy for many families. I’m jealous of those who manage a musical gathering but hopeful that might be in our future as well. Certainly with percussion everyone can participate! The idea of introducing music brings us back, though, both to the need for sensory awareness and to the idea of joy and reverie throughout the year. In order for there to be music next year, we need to practice throughout the year – often and, by practicing, remember the things that do bring us joy without wearing us out. I write this and share it now, after the holiday blitz, planning to share it with my family, to start the conversation we can have in anticipation of next year. I am curious to hear from them, and find out if they are aware of, or experiencing their own pendulum of Christmases, maybe even unknowingly riding that pendulum right now. I’m hopeful that with some lowered expectations of ourselves and a little yeast, we just might be able to rescue the holidays from the extremes of that dysfunctional pendulum my family rode for far too long AND decide for ourselves what is “enough Christmas.”

The First Time I Ran Away

Always a Fashionista…gotta love the boots.

When I was five, I ran away from home. Of course I didn’t get far. My world then revolved around a quarter-acre yard in Springfield, Missouri, on a corner lot, two blocks from my elementary school. We lived a short drive away from where I was attending kindergarten at our First Baptist Church and near enough to some train tracks that I knew it was bedtime by the train whistle every night. The little three-bedroom, one bath brick house on Marlin Street had a fenced-in backyard, a sand box, a metal clothesline and a weeping willow tree, all seemingly perfect for three children under six. Its feathery leaves hung to the ground, draping around the trunk with just enough room under the canopy for a five- year-old to hide and imagine different worlds than were to be found inside the little house on Marlin.

For the longest time, I couldn’t tell you why I ran away on that particular day. I often wondered if it hadn’t been that I didn’t want to go back to kindergarten. I went on the afternoon shift, so we basically had an hour or two of ABC’s, singing, and a snack in the gymnasium of First Baptist Church before we took a nap. I already could read and write some when I got to kindergarten, so there was no struggle for me there.

There had been a memorable first day spent on the vinyl chair in our kitchen trying to learn to tie my shoes. “Little boys and girls who can’t tie their own shoes are not big enough to go to kindergarten,” I’d been told again and again. “They’ll send you right home.” I had spent the morning of my first day of kindergarten tying and untying my red plaid tennis shoes, both my mother and me praying I’d avoid the shame of the teacher calling my mother to bring her little “baby” home. We needn’t have worried. Not once did I ever have to tie my shoes while at school.

Perhaps, on that morning, I simply didn’t want another perm.

My mother struggled daily with my full head of “straight as a pencil” “dirty-brown” hair because it was constantly tangled. Every day, we’d have the same conversation about brushing the underside of my hair, that thick mat next to my neck, and every day I would stare at her as if I were hearing the laments and reprisals for the first time. My hair may have been the bane of her existence but her brushing my hair is the only physical connection with her I remember. Her brushing it angrily. Her trimming errant bangs until the top of my head was nearly visible. Her trying to make it curl. Her finally chopping the hair off rudely, at a strange angle because she was done with it, as fed up as I was with trying to tame that mane.

Mom had been introduced that summer to the “home permanent.” I’d never been to a salon even to have my hair cut. Mom cut our hair herself with her sewing scissors, black handled shears that were never sharpened or oiled, as far as I could tell, so they’d pull when she hacked away at the thick bunch she’d grab in her left hand and chop with her right hand. I remember staring into the bathroom mirror blankly. I hadn’t cared that she cut it because of how horrid it looked, I realize now. I cared because she said, as she was sweeping up the hair from the floor, “Now you can just brush it yourself.” She would no longer brush it for me. I think I would even in that moment have agreed to another permanent like the one that had failed so miserably and sent her to her sewing basket for the shears.

I can still smell a home perm a mile away….

The day before, the permanent had required a couple of hours of me seated on that sticky vinyl chair in our kitchen while she rolled strand after strand in metal-curlers, the kind with bristles meant to grab and hold the hair long enough for the chemicals to alter the makeup of your hair and teach it to curl like those golden locks on Shirley Temple If the rolling of the curlers wasn’t bad enough, the chemicals made my nose burn and my eyes water and the bristles on the curlers pricked my scalp. Then, once the solution had been applied and wiped off my neck and back, I was told to take my daily nap. Whether we slept or not, we “napped” every day so Mom could have time to herself, a practice I appreciated when I had children. Only on this day, because of the perm, I was relegated to a rug on the floor by the washer in our laundry room. I could have no pillow for my head because we didn’t want to ruin a pillow. Were we worried about ruining my head? Also, no pillow meant any attempts to rest my head caused dozens of tiny needles to prick my scalp, but sitting up and trying to read sent rivulets of stinky solution dripping down my neck and back. I would not rest well that afternoon.

Sadly, the perm did not “take.” My hair rebelled. My mother was furious, disgusted, as she yanked curler after curler off only to watch the long brown strands defiantly continue to hang as straight as pencils. She was crying. I was crying. She’d been trying to prepare me to participate in a Girls’ Auxiliary ceremony at our church where her teenage cousin would be “crowned ” a princess. The Girls’ Auxiliary was the church’s alternative to the Girl Scouts, designed to encourage girls to learn Scripture, study the lives of missionaries and participate in ministries like collecting monies for children India and China. To the program’s credit, many of us certainly were inspired by godly women like Lottie Moon. My cousin had completed the requirements for attaining the “Princess” rank and there was to be a ceremony at church. I was tasked with carrying a paper gold crown on a pillow to be placed on her head. Mom wanted me to represent the family well, to look pretty and be a shining example of the next generation of princesses.

But my shock of brown hair refused to do its part. And mom was fed up. She’d gotten the shears out just as her aunt called and offered to come over and help. Her aunt had three daughters, all teens, and somehow managed to fashion a dainty pony tail for the ceremony.

The next day, however, the shears returned and that was all she wrote. My hair would not cover my neck again that year or the next. Not until I learned to brush it myself. I could not for my part, see the point. I didn’t care about my hair being pretty, which may seem ironic, since I was teased incessantly by my father. He was annoyed that I was so attached to my white straw hat, white gloves and white wicker purse, all gifts from grandparents the year before for Easter. He thought I wanted to be “a little lady” because I carried my purse with the gloves inside it and donned my little white straw hat with a yellow ribbon nearly every day for most of that year. I didn’t participate in outdoor activities anymore with my brother or sister that year. I preferred instead to go outside in my hat and carry my purse to sit under my tree and pretend I was somewhere else. It would be years later when I’d realize why I wanted to be anywhere else.

Of course, picture day came soon after the cut.

At the time, I just remember being grateful I could pull that straw hat over my crooked bangs. That afternoon then, while mom was sweeping my hair off of the bathroom floor, and I was supposed to be on my bed for naptime, I pulled the hat down over my ears, shoved my gloves into the purse and snuck out the screen door from the laundry room, careful not to let it creak or slam shut.

I had left a note on my bed that I expected her to find, a note that simply said, “I am running away. Jodi.” Then I went outside and sat under my tree, my back against the trunk, legs stretched out towards the backside of the house, the branches drooping and fingering the ground as the breeze tried to cool the afternoon. Then I waited. I waited for her to find my note and come running frantically out of the laundry room into the carport, searching. I waited for her to scoop me up and hug me and exclaim how relieved she was that I was safe. I waited for her to carry me inside proclaiming she would never let me go, maybe even to bake cookies for me. Just for me.

I waited, and, then, worried she wouldn’t be able to see me under the tree whose branches drooped to the ground, I moved to the sandbox. And waited some more. When the heat got to me, I moved to the back door that led to the laundry room and perched on the steps, clutching my purse, waiting to be found. I’ll never know how long I waited, but eventually I got tired and gave up. Then, slowly so as to not make the screen door squeak, I peered into the laundry room at the ugly rug that still stank of permanent solution. I crept past the opening to the kitchen and found no one, so I crept to the bedroom I shared at the time with my sister. She was asleep on her bed. My brother was asleep across the hall in his bedroom. Even my mother lay sleeping on her bed; drugged by the heat and disappointed by the day.

I guess I was sure Mom must have seen the note and ignored it, so, ever the quick thinker, I crossed my name off and penciled in my sister’s name on it instead, then fell asleep. It would be years before I’d wonder why I hadn’t just crumpled the note up, why it hadn’t dawned on me that my little sister couldn’t read or write at the time. As it turned out, the note was still on my bed when I awoke from the nap, so I folded it up and tucked in into my white wicker purse where I carried it for the rest of the summer.

Category: childhood