Month: December 2013

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Christmas Memories

Tick tock, tick tock, folks.  Christmas, that most stressful/joyful of holidays, is only a week away.  Hop to it, am I right?

Not me.

I get reflective this time of year.  Things are winding down, a new year is about to begin, another year is ending.  I miss the people I love who have died.  I think a lot about all the years that have passed, all the Christmases that have come and gone.

As a parent now, I am the one responsible for helping my sons make their first Christmas memories.  I want them to be happy memories, joyful memories, loving memories.  So, I do what I can, suck up my grief and sadness, and get about the work of “making memories.”

For me it is work, always has been.  Along the continuum of Scrooge and Merry Martha Stewart, I fall somewhere left of center, inching dangerously towards Scrooge.  But I try.  I do.  And the trying helps.  It’s best for my kids and, no doubt, I could try even harder and it would be even better for them. Sigh.

This year, I find myself thinking a lot about my Donnas — my Mom and my daughter, both buried now, dead from brain tumors that took them too soon.  I think about my childhood Christmases and my eyes well up on an almost daily basis right now.  Water works, folks.

One thing that helps when I feel sad and weepy is just to embrace it.  Wallow a bit.  Feel all the feelings.  So here they are, a few of my memory snapshots that have me weeping this year.

  • I remember the potent smell of dust and must as I stood behind the heavy draperies in my childhood dining room looking out the windows up at the night sky on Christmas Eve, scanning for Rudolph’s bright red light, guiding Santa to our home.
  • I remember the Christmas I had chicken pox and spent the whole holiday in pajamas, separated from my brothers, sisters and cousins.
  • I remember Midnight Mass and how very crowded the parking lot was and walking into church up way past my bedtime and my breath, visible in the cold, stretching out in front of me.
  • I remember the year I proudly wore burgandy colored knickers, Calvin Klein brand, bought in a flight of indulgence on my Dad’s part, after telling me about the knickers he wore as a boy.
  • I remember how incredibly stressed and short my Mom would be trying to corral all us kids to clean up our holiday loot before the guests arrived and how all that stress and shortness just disappeared as soon as the door bell rang.
  • I remember being the youngest of four kids all piled in my parent’s dark bedroom on Christmas Eve, feigning sleep, anxiously waiting for Santa to arrive.  The doorbell would sound five, six, seven times, my Dad’s voice would boom out, “HO, HO, HO!  Merry Christmas!”  A few moments later we were allowed to run down the stairs to a living room full of Mom, Dad, Grandma, and our two nuns/aunts, settled around the sofa and the tree surrounded with wrapped gifts.  In just a few minutes the gold carpeting would be littered with scraps of gift wrap and smiling faces.
  • I remember licking the homemade crochet bell ornaments made by my Baba (Croatian grandmother).  They tasted like sugar, year after year, as she had dipped them in sugar water to help the fibers harden.
  • I remember the sound of the tea kettle, calling us all to the kitchen table on Christmas Eve, sandwiched between our gift opening and our Midnight Mass sojourn, for cookies and cheer.
  • I remember the artificial tree, well past its prime, that challenged anyone who tried to construct it, just one more year.  I remember the toy blocks, red and blue squares, that we had to nudge in between the tree and the silver screws that barely did the job they were charged to do — keep the tree from falling over.
  • I remember Baby That-a-Way and Tiffany Taylor — both Christmas gifts and the only dolls I ever played with my whole childhood.
  • I remember being at a Knights of Columbus Christmas party and entering the whistling contest.  We had to eat a number of saltines and then whistle into Santa’s ear.  The first one to whistle won a prize.  That poor Santa’s ears were flooded with half chewed saltine globs, mine included.  Poor, poor Santa.
Clearly, I was ambivalent about Christmas at an early age. Me and my brother, c. 1973.
Clearly, I was ambivalent about Christmas at an early age.  Me and my brother, c. 1973.

I could go on, but I won’t.  My own tree still needs trimming, my boy is home sick with a cough and headache, and very soon, the baby will need a bottle.  I’m the Mom now, not the kid, despite still feeling like a kid myself.  There are some memories that need making and as hard as it is, I want those memories to be sweet ones.

Love to you as this Christmas countdown continues.  Feel free to share your own Christmas snap shots.  I will read them tonight over cocoa.

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Newtown: Speaking Up About Gun Violence

A year ago tomorrow I was driving home from a lunch with two old friends in Milwaukee.  Mary Tyler Son was giggling in the back seat and I called my husband to let him know when we would be back in Chicago.  He was audibly distraught and asked if I had heard the news about the latest school shooting.  I hadn’t.

I waited until my boy fell asleep and then I turned on the radio.  It didn’t take long for me to start crying.  I didn’t have to see any footage of desperate parents or scared children.  Just the idea of what had happened a few short hours earlier was enough to cue my tears.

For a few days there, my little corner of the Internet sobered up.  We empathized when we picked up our children from school that day.  We collectively strategized about how to discuss a school shooting with little ones.  We confided in one another about our fears and our vulnerabilities. And then, well, life went on.

Except for a lot of families in Newtown, Connecticut, life has not gone on as before.  Their lives are forever changed after losing someone they love, twenty of them children, to gun violence.  Their lives are a shadow of what they were before that December day.  Those families have forever lost their innocence.

One of the details that has stuck with me is hearing from parents of slain children what it was like to have the clothes that their child was wearing the day of the shooting returned to them. The clothes tell the story of what really happened in those classrooms.  They have holes that shouldn’t be there and are covered in blood that shouldn’t be there.

The clothes tell the truth of what guns do and how they kill.

Something changed for me that day last December.  I spoke up about guns. As a blogger, guns are sort of like religion and politics — they are taboo. They provoke too much intensity on the Internet to create discussion. Instead, when you mention guns in your blogs, people tell you you’re an idiot and threaten to teach you about why you should own a gun in the first place. They talk about knowing your address and how many kids you have.

It’s scary, to be honest.

But enough is enough.  Something needs to change.

You can argue that the problem is really about mental health.  I won’t disagree with you.  Our mental health system is as broken in America as is our gun regulation.  I dream of a day the mental health lobby is as powerful and feared as the gun lobby.  We will all be better off.

Today another school shooting occurred in Colorado.  A high school student brought a gun into his school and harmed two students before killing himself. Not an hour after that was reported I am already starting to see status updates blaming the mental health system for failing the shooter, his gun a seemingly insignificant detail.

Give me a freaking break.

Enough is enough.

We need to do better.  All of us.  I don’t give a flying fig if you own a gun or not.  The Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, if you feel the need to do so.  Have at it, folks.

But if those arms can be bought without any sort of delay or registration, yes, I have a problem with that.  If those arms are the type that soldiers use in combat, yes, I have a problem with that.  If they are left out in a place that kids can access them, yes, I have a problem with that, too.

Common sense gun laws.

The impact that the children and families of Newtown had on me was significant.  Some would say, living in Chicago, that my response is hypocritical, as gun violence is epidemic in my hometown.  That’s a fair assessment and I own that.  Somehow, it’s been too easy for me to chalk up Chicago violence to gangs and drugs — things that are well out of my day-to-day life.  Newtown helped me to see the global aspect of gun violence on children, including those in my own back yard.

Here’s the thing.  You read my words.  You’re reading them right now.  My blog is a part of life for some of you.  That is some hard core stuff.  And so, I use my voice now, when the spirit moves me, to write about guns.  I worry a little about if that could hurt me or my family in some way.  I worry more about staying quiet about something so important.

Right now, Mary Tyler Son is standing over my keyboard asking the question, “What are you writing?”  “Well, I’m writing about guns, and how they hurt people,” was how I responded.  I want him to know, just as I want you to know, that we need to do better in America where guns are concerned.  And I will keep writing about it, too, until we do.

Since last December 14, here are the posts I have published about gun violence:

I get that I’m one mom blogger in a sea of thousands.  I know that while 25K folks might follow me on the Facebook, I’ll be lucky if two thousand of you read this post.  I’m not curing cancer here, I’m not testifying before Congress, I’m not organizing protests or leading marches.  But I am doing what I can to educate and start a discussion about the impact of guns on America.  And the reason I am doing that is because of the 26 people who died on December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut.

I write for Charlotte Bacon and Daniel Barden and Rachel D’Avino and Olivia Engel and Josephine Gay and Dawn Hochsprung and Dylan Hockley and Madeleine Hsu and Catherine Hubbard and Chase Kowalski and Jesse Lewis and Ana Marquez-Greene and James Mattioli and Grace McDonnell and Anne Marie Murphy and Emilie Parker and Jack Pinto and Noah Pozner and Caroline Prividi and Jessica Rekos and Avielle Richman and Lauren Rousseau and Mary Sherlach and Victoria Soto and Benjamin Wheeler and Allison Wyatt.

I write these words because sometime after that horrible day, the families of the people who died got a package containing clothes worn by someone they love, most of them children, and that clothing had holes and blood that shouldn’t have been there and that blood and those holes told the story of how their loved one died.

And nothing about that is okay.

Newtown Angels

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Feeding Jacob

This is a guest post by Carolyn at Fumbling Toward Naptime.  I hope you enjoy her writing as much as I do!

By Carolyn Rabin

My son, Jacob, can eat me under the table.   Okay, maybe I’m not a huge eater.  But I’m not that picky either.  And the child is only four years old.

We got our first glimpse of Jacob’s voracious appetite the day we introduced solid foods. That was just the beginning.  It seemed that as soon as Jacob got a taste of . . . well, anything, he was hooked.  And wanted more.  MUCH more.  So, for the past four years, I have had the same conversation with Jacob’s (incredibly patient) pediatrician at each and every well visit.  It has gone something like this.

Dr. F: Do you have any questions for me?

Me: Is it possible for a human being to be born without the ability to experience satiety?

Brief, slightly uncomfortable pause.

Dr. F: The important thing is to just keep offering Jacob healthy foods.  No child ever became obese from eating too much broccoli. He can have as much broccoli or as many carrots as he wants.

I get it.  But sometimes there is just no end to it.  Even before Jacob mastered spoken language, he found a way to communicate his desire for more, and more, and more food.  I don’t know if he was truly hungry.  Or just enjoyed eating so much that he didn’t want to stop.  “I think he’s just bored,” my husband Dan would say.  Then Dan would try to distract Jacob with something really stimulating– like opera or Japanese literature or watching Dan program in Java on the computer. Oddly enough, Jacob was more interested in food.  This never ended well.  Jacob’s initial euphoria at being put in his high chair would inevitably turn to utter despair when (after his eighth helping) we finally cut him off.  So, we began luring him away from the table with the promise of watching Sesame Street videos.  I know, I know, AWESOME parenting.  (We. Were. Desperate.)

On the positive side, even as a toddler, Jacob was as delighted with broccoli and string beans and tofu as he was with sweets. He would eat nearly any vegetable.  And, of course, he just loved fruit.  So, we started calling fruit “dessert”. Which, honestly, made me feel a little dirty.  Because fruit is NOT dessert.  I love fruit too. But it is not dessert.  Full disclosure: I am addicted to ice cream.  I must eat it.  MUST. EAT. IT.  Every day.  (Don’t judge me, you latte addicts.)  A nice, creamy vanilla with chunks of cookie dough?  That’s dessert.  A nice apple?  NOT. DESSERT.  But since we didn’t want Jacob to even know that ice cream existed, out came the apples at the end of each meal.  (GAH.)  We would have been able to maintain the charade much longer, if Jacob hadn’t been in the 90-bazillionth percentile for height (thanks entirely to Dan’s genes) and able to reach the freezer door before the age of three.  If it hadn’t been for this, he might not have known about ice cream until, say, kindergarten . . . when he heard about it from some bad seed on the playground.

But I digress.  Because we have never wanted to tempt Jacob with sugary foods, we never eat REAL desserts in front of him.  Let me just say that nothing will make you feel more like a junkie than having to hide your ice cream habit.  Usually, I just wait until Jacob is asleep to break out my stash.  But sometimes, I just can’t wait. So Dan covers for me.   And distracts Jacob.  While I skulk off to the kitchen and rapid-fire-scoop a bowl of something.  Ahhh, that’s the stuff.

Of course, there were times, even when Jacob was still a toddler, that he did have sweets. For instance, when my friend Joe came to visit a few days after my birthday and brought a box of cupcakes.  I didn’t want to be rude, so I served them.  To everyone.  Including Jacob.  The next thing I knew, crumbs were flying. Frosting was smeared all over Jacob’s face.   And all that was left of Jacob’s cupcake was a crumpled wrapper. Suddenly, Jacob slid off of his seat, threw himself on the ground and started wailing.  LOUDLY.  Joe (who does not have children) looked panicked.  “Did he hurt himself?  Is he okay? What’s WRONG!?!” Joe asked.  WHAT’S WRONG IS THAT I NOW HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT MY CHILD IS HAVING A CUPCAKE-IS-GONE MELTDOWN.  Joe got a terribly pained look on his face.  And tried desperately not to laugh.

Nom nom nom.
Cupcake Exhibit A (nom nom nom)

Around this time, I had another well visit with Jacob’s pediatrician.

Dr. F: At this age, children’s appetites can vary quite a bit day to day.  Don’t be concerned if there are days when he seems to eat and eat and then other days when he hardly eats anything.

Me: Okay, I’m following your first point.  But could you explain the “hardly eats anything” part again . . .?

Jacob had a stomach flu once and didn’t miss a meal.  Seriously.

Of course, as Jacob has gotten older– and taller– he has become more aware of things.  As I mentioned, he can now reach the freezer door.  (Curses.)  So, he now knows that we (ALWAYS) have ice cream in the freezer.  But, we call it a “sometimes” food.  (Lies, lies, damn lies.)  Occasionally he will say, “Mommy, can I have some ice cream?  It is sometimes NOW.”  I hear you kid.  Mommy could use a fix too.  We’re not as restrictive with Jacob as we used to be.  Sometimes we give in.  It’s hard not to.  Jacob has become quite the negotiator.

Jacob: For dessert tonight, I think I’ll have ice cream with animal crackers on top.

Me: That’s not a choice tonight, Jacob.  You can have an apple or a pear or a banana . . .

Jacob: I WANT ICE CREAM WITH ANIMAL CRACKERS.

Me: I’m sorry, Jacob.  That’s not a choice.

Jacob: FINE.  (Eyeroll.)  Then I’ll just have ICE CREAM.

Me: Okay.

Wait a minute . . .

At Jacob’s four-year-old visit with Dr. F, the good doctor again reassured me that Jacob might be finicky about food at times.

Dr. F: Don’t worry if there are days when he hardly eats anything, he–

I cut him off.

Me: Dr. F, you’ve said this a number of times.  The child is now four years old.  There hasn’t been a day-  NOT. A. DAY- when he hasn’t wanted to eat as much as possible.  Some days when I ask him what he wants for lunch he says, “I want A LOT of food”.  I’m not making this up.  I know there are four-year-olds who barely eat anything.  Jacob is not one of them.  Is this normal??

Dr. F looked at me, stunned.

A few months after that conversation, the tide suddenly turned.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe it was something internal, like a shift in his metabolism.  Or maybe something more intentional.  Perhaps Jacob just realized that he prefers the food at preschool (pizza, chicken nuggets, waffles . . .) to what we offer at home (veggie burgers, baked chicken, quinoa . . . ).  Whatever the reason, suddenly we were seeing more and more left on Jacob’s plate at the end of a meal. And Jacob turning his nose up even at some old favorites.

The day before Thanksgiving, my sister was visiting. Jacob was so thrilled to have his auntie at the table that he could barely sit still.  Or eat.  As Jacob danced around the dining room, I pleaded with him.

Me: Jacob, can you please try to eat a bit more.

Did I just utter those words?

Jacob: No, thanks.

Me: Jacob, if you don’t eat any more you’re going to be hungry later.

Jacob: That’s okay, Mommy.  I have a plan.

Me: What is it?

Jacob:  I’m going to have a big dessert.

Me: Oh.

Wait a second . . .

Carolyn Rabin is the mother of two lovable but exhausting children (Jacob, age 4, and Emma, age 1).  Despite having a degree in clinical psychology, she is clearly no match for their antics.  You can follow her blog here or find her on Facebook here.