The Happy Ghost of Christmas Past

 If I'm not on the Naughty List, I should be. I haven't posted in nearly 6 months....  Been a little busy with graduations, parties, shuffling off to Skidmore, retrieving and sending her off on her own. They say the best things to give your teen are Roots and Wings!  They may be the best but surely the hardest. New friends, new responsibilities, new time constraints and new travels alone on the highways.  So far, so good! Celebrated her 18th birthday for the first time without family. New friends took up the slack. Tattoo one and now TaTWO on her own; both meaningful and classy.

Now on to the purpose of this Christmas Eve epistle of remembrance.  Eighteen years ago this morning we lost Dad. Two of my very best gal friends lost their Dads on Christmas Eve too. I guess He had a plan for the  decades down the road.

The memories I have of Christmases past are full blown and still clearly visible. Hopefully, for many more Christmases to come;

• Right after Thanksgiving, my sister and I would find the stencils, grab the sponges, get Mom to buy us a fresh pink can of Glass Wax and head to Hewitt Bros. to "holiday up" those big windows.
• Dad would get those big old C7 lights from the attic and string them on the floor throughout the house to replace the ones that had given up from the year before.  There was "a way" they needed to be strung across the front shrubs and Mom guided the placement..(probably with a Pall Mall in hand!)
• Dad and I always went to John's Grocery and picked out our tree. Dad had the patience of Job and a multitude of needles stuck in the knit gloves he always chose to wear...(pretty sure he had many leather pairs he could have grabbed.)
• We'd bring it to the porch and he would saw off the trunk a bit and put it in the rusty red and green stand we always used. This was above and beyond as there was nothing handy about my Dad....All of his handiness came from that amazing brain settled right under that wavy head of  awesome hair.
• A few days later after the tree "relaxed", we brought it to the spot where Mom resided the other 11 months of the year...her perch in the lower bay window... I got to crawl under and fill the stand with its daily drink.
• Usually a couple of weeks before Christmas we would take our annual trip to Hotel Syracuse. It seemed like NYC to us as we drove by the stores and billboards we had only seen on TV. We'd shop in some of them, have a grown up dinner in a fancy restaurant in the hotel and retire to our room...Mom and Dad had "an appointment" at the bar and we were given carte blanche to order our dessert from room service in our very own room.
• The days just before Christmas, my Mom and her "helper" would make the Christmas spaghetti sauce for our dinner on Christmas day.  It was easy as nobody had to spend hours cooking that holiday...just throw the salad together and heat the garlic bread. 
• Christmas morning had an agenda! NO ONE was allowed downstairs until Mom and Dad had descended. Once they confirmed that Santa had indeed been there, we were allowed to slowly head down... Dad would be holding the vintage, double bulb spotlight while Mom was filming.  That spotlight is now the light over the mancave bathroom sink in my house... We were then allowed to gasp and smile and beg to go straight to the mantle but we knew it was into the kitchen for juice and coffee.  We downed those juice glasses in record time and headed to the fireplace. Stockings were a free for all...we opened all at once.  Of course, Santa had filled the toes of the stockings with oranges and the annual lifesavers, socks and a few goodies specifically for each of us.  Then off to the kitchen for breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, cinnamon buns and juice or milk.... ( coincidentally exactly what tomorrow morning's breakfast is at EIEIO.)
• We'd pick up the table, find our gift spot (where we'd place each gift so it didn't get lost or thrown out with the wrappings) and a place to sit in the living room!  Then we'd open....finally...one-at-a-time. (coincidentally just like we'll do tomorrow morning!)
• We'd have poppers (an English tradition) and don our paper crowns and read our silly jokes. The ugly, now beautiful Santa and Mrs. Claus would sit on each side of the gold angels slowly circling from the fire of a few tiny, slender candles.  After dinner we'd gather around the Organaire (electric organ) and sing a few carols. I'd actually play and we'd all sing...we were so v bad!!!! We'd end with Oh Holy Night.  Those high notes were killers but we pretty much kept straight faces and made God proud.... at least that's what we were told.
• By this time it would be getting dark and as we got older, my sister and brother would often rush off to see their friends. I would marvel at all the things I had been given by Santa, my sibs and my folks. My two all-time favorites were a Barbie house and a pink clock radio that Mom had packed in an old suitcase so I wouldn't guess what it was.

Hoping Jeff and my grands keep some of those goofy traditions...and if they don't, they at least remember them for the next 50 years♥

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 Couldn't believe it was time to take Senior pictures. Couldn't believe it was the beginning of her Senior year. Couldn't believe college applications went in and acceptances came back. Couldn't believe it was time for her SECOND trip abroad. Couldn't believe it was time to line Main Street with Senior banners. Couldn't believe it was the LAST day of school (elementary, middle school and high school!) Couldn't believe it was 24 hours until graduation. Couldn't believe it was over!  Couldn't believe we had one day to get to Skidmore for the Summer Institute. Can't believe it's one week before I head to Saratoga and pick up my college freshman for a few weeks off before she heads right back!!!  That's a lot of disbelief for an old gal!  

Just when it's the time in my life that I'd like things to slow down just a touch and it's still full speed ahead.  I guess I'll have time to relax when I'm in that pepper shaker. (FYI, my ashes are going in a pepper shaker so I can still attend Senior therapy at breakfast every morning.  It might be a bit quieter there but their eggs will taste better!)

I'm hoping that Bailee will learn to take things in stride, soak in the experiences, learn as much as she possibly can and take what she should seriously and what she shouldn't, lightly!  She is totally in charge of what comes next.  No more "you have tos, no more you need tos, just a lifetime of want tos. You make the decisions and learn to live with the failures and thrive with the successes. We've all been there, done that!  Now, we pass the torch....very Olympian of us!

In this book of life, we've gotten through several chapters. Some were fun, some were exciting, some were terrifying, some were disappointing and some were rewarding and others were jam-packed with joy!. Hopefully this will be a long novel of triumphs and successes. I hope to be able to hold onto this book for considerably more time. Grand events will be many and I expect to pen about each one.  No epilogs in the near future if I can help it.....and believe me, I can help it!!!!!!

MOTHER

 Mother... such a versatile word. It can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or even an adverb! You can have a lovely mother. You can mother your students like your own. You can act motherly to others' children and you can most definitely be a Mother Fu#*er! I have been acquainted with all of the former adaptations.

I was fortunate to have known my mother, two grandmothers and one great grandmother all as different and unique as their generation.  Each of those generations I would choose over the three I have been blessed to be a part of. (I know I ended a sentence with a preposition!) I wouldn't have missed any of the stress, the modernization or even the technology....mostly because I would never have been privy to them in the first place. I never complained about a phone cord or the television ending at the Star Spangled Banner or looking clean, age appropriate and dignified at school.  I loved covering my books on the first day with paper bags and polishing my sneakers often to keep them white. I never found it unpleasant to eat dinner together, wait till my Mom was seated to begin or doing the dishes afterwards. Cheerleading was the bomb.....it was our only option as a sport.. We didn't complain (much) about our gym suits because we all looked ridiculous wearing them and no one gave us an alternative.. We even knew our teachers from the students as the women wore dresses and skirts and the men, shirts and ties.  What a novel, respectful thing.

I am not begrudging now...ok a maybe a little, but life was simple! Girls were girls, boys were boys, adults were respected ....yes sometimes JUST because they were adults and possibly hadn't quite earned it.  Some of my friends were disciplined. Some were paddled, some were slapped, some were belted but I generally only needed the look.  I did however; at sixteen, wash my own mouth out with soap, Ivory in fact. It was not fun but highly recommended for the first time using the F word in front of a parent. Today, you wouldn't even be able to distinguish houses along a street surrounded by the bubbles emanating from windows and doors if this practice were still used today.  That horrible, corporal punishment  generally did the trick.... Our generation is not heavy with assholes.....I wish I could say that about the present generation.   Do not mistake my sentiment, we are still surrounded by idiots from our generation but I'm not sure that can be traced to lack of discipline.

Back to the subject at hand.... Mothers. It is Mother's Day. I had a kind Mom. Nothing overtly smoochy or lovey but kind, caring and she did her job.  She enjoyed her children and grandchildren. She wasn't a babysitter, she didn't wear an apron or bake pies but we ate well, spoke well, read well, enjoyed sports, kept our beds made and our rooms clean, did our homework on time and respected our elders!!!! 

I, as a Mom, had wonderful successes and monumental failures. I own them all 100%! You read everywhere that a mother's love is unconditional. Mine is not!  That's as honest as I can possibly be. What you see is what you get.  Mother's Day is fine just as it is today in 2024. I have no mother, grandmothers or aunts with whom to celebrate. That's ok... I have great memories of all of them. I have friends who are some of the most wonderful moms I have ever been blessed to know. We are all different yet all the same.  They are celebrating today in a way that makes them happy ad fulfilled.  Me too! I was treated to breakfast by Jeff and Jett and now I am in my lovely home writing, which I love, reading which I love and will dine on cheese, crackers and a bloody mary once the clock strikes noon.

Who could ask for more! Happy Mother's Day to me!♥

Slacker

 Haven't penned a thing (but checks) since December. I must not entirely let my brain turn to mush.  Names fail me, words fail me and sometimes what the hell I'm doing fails me but an idle mind is not a good thing in your 70s!

 It seems as though the past couple of months have literally zoomed past me.  My chores are few and not much different than they have been but I seem to be bogged down with a major case of rumination.  It can be terminal if you let it and I have not found an elixir that helps...till now.  Last marking period grades for my "dependent" were awful.  A sheer lack of ambition is the only cause I can nail down. This gal is SOOO smart and it kills me to see the possibility of throwing away what she previously worked so hard for..(I know, I ended a sentence with a preposition!)  As I constantly ruminate about the whys, I constantly ponder the WSSDs (What should Sandy do)  After many cases of rolling eyes, snide remarks, slamming doors and huffy attitudes, I've decided that harping is NOT the answer. It is so disappointing to me that studies are not a priority.  "It's different now...it's not the 60s!"  No kidding... All the things she has, I had....except screens. I'm pretty sure what saved us (the gals of the 60s) was that spiral cord that only reached so far.  And it wasn't tucked away in your bedroom, a bathroom, your car, your classroom or even the living room... It just hung there on the kitchen wall where everyone passed by, everyone could hear and you couldn't take stupid pictures of yourself and share with the world every 5 minutes. Last night she had mere seconds to grab a shot and she snapped a photo of the ceiling...WTH! It wasn't important what she was snapping...just that she got it in in time... I am so confused.

So back to the fix, the elixir.  It most likely will not make things better for her but for me.  Once the epiphany hit me, I immediately felt lighter...literally!  I'm no longer cleaning the empty cans and dirty dishes from her room! laundry is her problem, no work clothes...too bad. Homework not done..her problem. I refuse to worry my way through what little time I might have left. I handle 100% of the household obligations ✔ I see to it that all the bills are promptly paid on time✔ I try to remember to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, marriages and graduations for all those I care about✔ and I watch and read whatever I want whenever I want.  I am nearly 72 and I can and I will!!!! Attaching worry to all those things will only shorten the days ahead and make them unhappy... I don't have time for unhappy.  

Please don't think that my sassy dependent makes me unhappy all the time.... There is so much more joy than sadness but it is often carrying disappointment too. I can't fix that. That will only come with making mistakes and learning from them. If I could flip my 71 back to 17, I'd work my ass off to get outa Dodge (or Locke.) I'd have stayed in college and pursued what I wanted and not others. Don't get me wrong, I loved almost every experience I ever had after high school... I had a couple of fantastic jobs, traveled a bit, met wonderful guys that will forever be etched in my mind and a few in my heart and did the things that were scripted for the 70s. Maybe not exactly as they were written but close. In retrospect, had I pursued what I wanted, rather than what was expected, I think I might be freer, happier and more content than I am today.  Just sayin'

So, she now has to form her own path, decide what and who goes with her on that path and where exactly she hopes to arrive...That's pretty tough when your frontal lobe has not yet completely formed but generationally, it's been accomplished and hopefully she will will get it done.

So, for now, my chores are mine, her chores are hers and with the help of prayer and hope, a film crew from Hoarders will not pull in the driveway in the near future. Basically, I'm too old for this...period!