The Christmas Opera

Merry Black Friday!  I've never shopped on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  It's a tradition I don't want to break, but good for all you who go out and have a fabulous time getting good bargains.  I learned a few years back to shop online.  And I do shop locally, too.  I try to do my part in keeping the dollars in Christmas.  Since we're now in the season, I have a few memories to share, not all here.  One of my (and my sister's) bestest memories is the "trimming the frickin Christmas tree fit," an opera of many parts performed by our mother.  The overture began with the tree shopping and much cursing.  I don't ever remember finding the "perfect" tree, only one that screamed "THIS WILL WORK."  The never ending music (a true blessing) that played in our house all day long provided the arias.  It was the recitatives that truly lit up the house with Mom's particular Christmas spirit.  Every box of ornaments that was brought out from under the steps also brought out the anger that lived within my mother's soul.  "YOU GIRLS GET DOWN HERE AND GET TO WORK!!!!!!!!!!!  YOUR DAD IS NEVER HERE TO HELP ME AND THIS IS THE LAST YEAR I'M PUTTING UP A TREE!!!!!!!!  I'M SICK OF THIS!!!  %^&$%&$^@%#$@" Never mind that my sister and I never knew when she was putting up the tree - we were supposed to read her mind, and her anger.  Never mind that our dad was at work - he was also supposed to read her mind and her anger.  Mom's rage was never far from reach and the smallest infraction of the multitude of crazy personal rules residing within her could throw it on the floor.  We danced like our feet were on fire when this happened.  And as children often do, we would try to solve a confusing family puzzle by making things happy.  In the frickin Christmas tree fit, we would rush to help trim the tree, put out the presents, clean up any mess, distract in any way (my personal favorite), do anything we perceived would put an end to another act in this opera.   There were always too many acts and sad endings in the operas performed in our house.  For a couple years, there was a break.  The fabulous, sparkling, silver aluminum Christmas tree with blue ornaments and revolving color wheel came to live at our house!!  HOORAY!!!!  It was always perfect and in our eyes, we were sooooo Jetson!  No one we knew put up an aluminum Christmas tree.  It stayed for a while, then went into the attic until I retrieved it about 10 years ago, displayed it in my house for old times sake, and a few weeks ago, my sister became the new owner of the most beautiful tree in the world!  I know she'll display it well.  In an odd twist (and there are so many in my family as we really are pretzels), my mother has always declared she loves Christmas.  And I do believe that.  She loves giving presents and watching people open them, she enjoys all the fun, music, family gathering, and purpose of Christmas.  She just can't control her demons.  But isn't that the stuff of good operas??

Ha!!!

I've told ya'll a little bit of my childhood environment, but when I think about it, I realize it's probably like everyone's childhood environment - a mix of emotions, attitude, thoughts, actions, everything that confuses and messes with a child's mind.  My childhood was a maze of contradictions that came with no map.  Now I do acknowledge that many, many people had a childhood that makes mine look like a happy fairy tale, but as everything is relative, I can only address mine and how it shaped my life.  One trait I learned very early was what I call reading the mood of the house.  It was one of my survival skills in dealing with my mother.  I could quickly know if any given day was going to be good or bad by observing her for a few minutes in the morning.  And like most children growing up in the 50's, my sister and I were at her mercy because our dad worked and she raised kids.  Well, she raised kids when she wasn't entertaining her friends, on the telephone with her friends, dealing with her own crazy mother, or cleaning. Within seconds, I could tell when she was mildly upset, bigtime upset, or going over the edge upset.  We would do whatever we could to try to get her to maintain some sort of calm, but that was wasted effort.  In an odd contradiction, she really did enjoy laughing and did (and still does) have a sense of humor when she's feeling well.  I'm really thankful that I learned to read my mother because it taught me to read everyone I meet.  I'm quite good at reading facial expressions, body language, and spoken language.  I'm almost never wrong brag brag about people I've met and this skill has helped me a lot throughout my life.  Yes, I've made mistakes by allowing a few people to bully me into friendships.  Of course, they didn't turn out to be friends and I was young and stupid.  Now I'm old and stupid and I make less harmful mistakes, like putting ice cream in the microwave instead of the freezer and throwing out important papers.  And now that I'm older, I always follow my instincts on everything and it pays off nicely.  And I love to laugh, too.  My entire family loves to laugh.  My dad loved to laugh and loved a good practical joke, my kids and their spouses are funny, my sister and her family are funny, and the huzbin is REALLY funny.  He truly does make me laugh a lot and sometimes we laugh so much, we have trouble breathing.  He's that funny!  Laughing is important - it will make you feel better.  If you have trouble laughing, text the huzbin.  He'll make you laugh.  Or call my mother.  But call me first so I can call her and read her mood, then let you know if it's safe.

A Really Good Scent

Growing up, our mother wanted us out of the house as much as possible.  Her OCD forced her to clean every day and she simply couldn't allow kids running in, out, and around.  Her method was to feed us breakfast, throw us outside, lock the door and threaten us with our lives if we came back before lunch.  Sometimes she didn't let us come inside even then.  Sometimes she packed our lunches and we walked or biked to our neighborhood playground and ate there.  If we ate lunch at home, we were tossed back outside, door locked, and allowed to freely roam the neighborhood or, in the summertime, stay at the pool all day.  I remember riding my bike for miles.  If mom knew the places I roamed, she would have had a fit!  Therefore, many lies were told.  And you know all about the lying because we walked that road a month or so back.  Mom also liked to take us to the library because she perceived it as a safe, educational dumping ground.  We would get dropped off, enter the building, climb the steps to the children's department, and get lost in the fantastic, magical world of books for several hours.  I loved that place.  I could have gone there every single day of the week.  Miss Brown was the children's librarian and she was always excited to introduce a new book.  She also had a knack of knowing what you might like to read, yet she also enjoyed challenging you to check out a book that would be above your reading level.  The library was an old building and the children's room was a very large, high ceilinged room with a wonderful scent - the scent of books.  To this day, I sniff books and magazines before I read them and yes, I get odd looks when I do this in public.  In the summertime, there were large fans blowing hot air through the room, but I didn't care.  I was too wrapped up in roaming the shelves, looking for the perfect books to borrow for two weeks.  Once I got the books home, I would read after supper and at bedtime.  Every now and then, I would sneak and read under the bedcovers with a flashlight.   I participated in the library reading program every year, and one year I won an award for reading more books than anyone else in my school.  My mother was too busy cleaning to come to the ceremony, but I still have the pin and certificate to prove that I can read and did read all those books.  To this day, I love children's books, particularly the old ones, and I love great illustrations that accompany a good story.  I found an illustration a few years back and felt the need to draw it.  Does anyone know his name?  He's just so cute!

Cold Weather

Today is sunny with clouds and very breezy, not in a good way, but in a cold way because it's November.  I've never enjoyed the cold weather because it makes me freeze to the bone.  I wear layers of clothing even inside and that does help.  I'm terrified of being the old lady in the nursing home who isn't warm enough.  Note to my children:  I will need socks and sweaters/sweatshirts/sweatpants and I will need them all the time.  Never mind that the nursing home thermostat is set at 78.  That's not warm enough.  I will be freezing.  Now I feel much better knowing that my needs will be met.  When I was a little girl and the world was a very different place, girls were not allowed to wear pants to school.  We wore "school dresses."  School dresses were very different than "party dresses" or "church dresses," as both these categories were always frilly and fancy.  School dresses were always cotton, and usually some dark color of plaid.  They always had collars; some very large, some not so large and they always had a sash that tied behind or a belt of some sort at the waist.  I remember in vivid detail some of these dresses, because in the late fall in West Virginia where I grew up, the snow would begin falling and it did not stop falling until March.  And every now and then, it would refuse to give up even in March.  And my little girl friends and I would be sitting in a classroom in our plaid cotton dresses.  Freezing.  The schools I attended were heated by coal furnaces.  And almost daily our teacher would ask one of the kids in the classroom to please go to the furnace room and ask the janitor to stoke the furnace.  This was always a treat because our janitor (I don't think that's the occupational term any longer, but back then he was the janitor), Mr. Fields, wasn't always easy to find, so that meant you were allowed to freely roam the school building in search of Mr. Fields.  That generally allowed 15-20 minutes of thinking your were quite biggity because you were on a mission to find the most important man in the building - the man who controlled the heat, among other things.  Eventually, Mr. Fields would be found and within 60 minutes or so, the heat would rise and we who wore the little cotton dresses with little cotton slips underneath could endure a few more hours of school without shivering.  Did I mention these dresses almost always had short sleeves?  The only thing "winter" about them was their dark color.  If I remembered to complain to my mother, she would send me to school with an additional layer in the form of a cotton sweater.  It was a rough world, friends.  If the weather was extraordinarily bad, like 2 feet of snow, then we could wear pants, but they had to be removed the minute we arrived at school.  School was never called off.  And God forbid the power going off because we didn't go home.  We sat and continued to work and as the room began the big cool down, we donned our coats.  And we worked until it was time to go home.  I remember these bad, cold days.  Now that I think about it, maybe that's why I'm concerned about the nursing home....