A Grammy, An Angel and "Todzilla"

Advent: The Coming of Something Momentous.

Advent for me is always what the definition is: waiting, lying in wait for something to happen. Growing up in the Catholic Church, my memories of Advent are of the dark purple vestments the priests wore for the four weeks at Mass, the Advent wreath, the hymns of waiting for the Savior’s birth (“Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel”), and the bare altar that suddenly exploded on Christmas eve into a stage of brilliantly lit Christmas trees and holly lining the altar and a spectacular manger scene complete with the Holy Family, a crèche with lots of blessed hay spread around, shepherds and angels in diaphanous white gowns with wings that looked like Michelangelo himself had created them. Fast forward into my younger Mommy years, and immediately after Thanksgiving my Advent was coupled with that feeling of “lying in wait for something to happen”– and always with the angst of did I get it all done?! right up to midnight of Christmas Eve.

In my Grandparent years I still feel the “lying in wait for something to happen.” But the angst is replaced with anticipation for how I’m going to knock the socks off my grandkids with an experience they might not have had the opportunity to enjoy with their overbooked and exhausted parents. Sometimes it’s an expensive event, but the memories are priceless. This year it cost me less than $25 for my granddaughter Meghan.

Meghan is tiny in a family of non-tiny people. She is also “affectionately” nicknamed “Todzilla,” and lately, “Toddy.” She actually is proud of the moniker. Her small size is a shrewd disguise for her huge temper, the volume of her articulate voice and not the least of all her razor sharp intelligence. Her brain never shuts down. I find it amusing more often than not, but she gives her parents an emotional workout.

An application was sent home  for which role a child would like to be in the Nativity play. My daughter Kate asked Meghan if she’d like to be something different this year, maybe a shepherd or a reader. Meghan’s response was without hesitation, direct and terse: “No! You said I could be an angel.” Okay, we won’t dwell on the double entendre in the statement, but this is life with Todzilla, and angelic is not one of her characteristics .

Meghan’s mom was in that very place of anxiety I remember so well. When she called, I could hear in her voice the restrained panic: “Toddy wants to be an angel in the Nativity play, we don’t have a costume. The play is in two weeks.” We dug out last year’s costume. Because she is so petite the angel dress still fit her. But then we found the homemade wings and the halo. Toddy looked at them and stated, “I thought we threw those away.”

It was a set of fairy wings we purchased at the Dollar Store and covered them with foil. The only thing we could find were pink ones and had no time to find anything else. Meghan had declared she could not have pink wings in a white gown, so we improvised. We thought our resourcefulness of using the shiny foil did the job, but apparently other parents’ angels were adorned with real feathered angel wings trimmed in maribou. There was nothing homemade about their wings. Meghan looked angelic throughout the Nativity play, but she continued throughout that evening about how she was the only one with “silver wings.” That was last year.

This year, Meghan’s had no change of heart about the homemade wings and halo. We tried to convince her that her wings were special because they were different. But Toddy wasn’t having any of that nonsense and walked away, arms folded and chin out. With two weeks until the play, I was confident I could find a set of angel wings that would be suitable to Meghan’s standards.

Naturally, I consulted the internet. The initial search resulted in a lot of “sold out” or “out of stock” findings. It was beginning to look bleak. The feeling of anticipation and confidence that these wings were going to be a slam dunk was ebbing. After taking a break from the search, I went back online, determined we were going to have feathered wings for Todzilla in time for the play. Thanks be to God for persistence, patience and OrientalTrading.com: feathered angel wings, trimmed in white maribou, $8.50. Expedited shipping was more than the cost of the wings, but it did not matter.

They were delivered as promised and when I displayed them for her, Meghan exclaimed “Oh my God! They are HUGE!” Although the wings are almost the same size as Meghan, they are beautiful and look like real feathered angel wings.

The halo never fit well on her head, so we’re going to forgo the halo and go with a trimmed white headband. Toddy is just fine with not wearing a halo. As she so astutely observed, “it’s always slipping off my head.” YEA, No kidding.

Merry Christmas

 

 

I've shared my feelings on leaves before in Leaving the Leaves back in 2014.

Every year I have the same argument with my family. Every year, as soon as the leaves begin to change color, one would think we are expecting a blizzard. The anticipation of how much of a mess the leaves will make is unbearable to them. They linger by the windows, gaze out and watch for days into weeks, seeing and monitoring how the leaves are falling and wonder out loud how and when the leaves will be cleaned up. 

 

Every year I say the same thing, “Leave the leaves.” Their reaction is the same every year too, “WHY?”, more a whine than an inquiry. 

 

I never understood the purpose of raking up dying leaves only to expose the drying grass. It seems to me a dumb and wasted effort. 

 

Autumn is my favorite season and personally, I have always liked the look of a pile of leaves. I like the crunch under my feet as I shuffle through a nice pile of tawny crisp leaves just waiting and ready to be pulverized for their end purpose of food for the earth. Then there’s the smell of moldering leaves, musky and woody, to remind you that it’s almost finished its life cycle and ready for the last stage of their seasonal performance. Why not wait until the show is totally over? 

 

The best collection of falling leaves is under our maple in the back yard. Over the years this Maple has become a grand old lady. Every year it is a spectacular transition of dark green to blazing red to a brilliant yellow that almost glows in the sunlight. When the leaves begin to lazily waft to the ground they go from the yellow to a rich tawny gold where they collect in an almost perfect ring around the base of the tree, like a skirt that’s just dropped from a waist. 

 

I insist we leave the leaves where they fall and will eventually break down over the winter. It’s only natural.

 

Happy 50th Anniversary to Us

I was once asked,  “What’s your greatest accomplishment? What are you most proud of?” 

My immediate response was, “my marriage”.  The person asking the question responded, “Wow, your face really lights up when you say that.” 

 

I never really looked at my marriage as an “accomplishment”, but in the grand scheme of things, compared to what some other people experience in marriage, we have been very lucky and blessed that ours seems to have been relatively effortless. It’s not that there have never been bumps in the road and rough patches, those times where you look at one another and think quietly but smarmily to yourself, “GAWD, I can’t stand that you are breathing the same air as I do.” That is the reality of what happens when you live with someone. A person can not share a bed and a bathroom with the same person seven days a week for years and expect to always think they are the best thing to come along since unlimited texting.  We’re only human. And let’s be honest, only one of us is scrubbing the toilet and shower!

 

There is some personal sacrifice in every relationship and a great marriage is no exception. The ‘rough’ patches were brief and ended up being the glue that we didn’t know we needed at the time. Stuff happens. Time might heal, but moving forward as a team and a united front is one of hallmarks of our marriage. It hasn’t been hard. 

We were children when we got married. At 18 what could we possibly have known what life had ahead for us? What did we know about real life? When it’s said, “ignorance is bliss” I think it was our ignorance that became our bliss.  

 

On another occasion, a friend whose marriage was coming apart and soon ended asked, “Don’t you wonder just how long it’s going to last?” Well, no. It never really crossed my mind that being married was on some kind of time clock. 

 

Without knowing it early on, we nurtured our marriage like a family member. We ‘took care’ of each other and each other’s feelings. We were blessed with good health for the first thirty years and when illness paid us a couple visits, we took turns in stepping up and taking over the other’s role of caretaker, without pause.

 

Marriage is never a 50/50 proposition. If you’re lucky it can be 60/40. Sometimes, you get the 60. Sometimes, you give the 60. Then there are the times when it is 90/10, hopefully those times are few and far between, but it happens. Nobody is exempt. 

 

Our 50th anniversary is here. We both expressed that saying we’re married for fifty years sounds a lot longer than it feels. 

Awesome! That feels like 50/50!