High-level holiday negotiations

Thanksgiving is only one holiday I have to share my children.

I’m good at sharing.

It’s a trait we learn in the sandbox, and I took to it easily. I will share my home, meals, music, clothes (if you are unfortunate enough to be my size), Scotch (if I think you will appreciate it), and maybe, just maybe, if you are a person of good character and hygiene, my books.

One thing I’m not so gracious about sharing is my children on holidays.

I had to share with their father. That’s the law. But sharing with people just because my daughters are in love with their sons? Not so much.

Both kids were with their respective partners this Thanksgiving, and I didn’t like it. Not one little bit.

You think the G20 undergo high-level negotiations? You should see my family at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The last thing my younger daughter’s fiancé, the oenologist, said before he whisked her off to Long Island to make whatever kind of wine you can make in some place that isn’t Napa, is that she could fly back for holidays.

His parents, who live in Rhode Island, would alternate with us: this year they got Turkey Day, and we got Christmas; next year we switch.

Which is good, because my older daughter and son-in-law finally evened the holiday score this year, and we get them all day Christmas. Ever since they have been together, holidays have been a sticking point.

When they were first a couple, it was easy (for us): they just split up. However miserable this may have made them, we were down with it. I mean, we missed Chris, of course we did, but missing his wife also would have been too painful.

But he comes from a huge Mexican-American family with 30 first cousins. I think after awhile they started to doubt he really had a girlfriend. And once the two got married, the pressure was really on to make a joint appearance.

Chris’ family has their big gathering on Christmas Eve, so ostensibly they got the couple that night, and our tiny little Anglo family got Christmas day. Which was fine in theory, but in practice, a little sticky.

What threw a spanner in the works were kids. Go figure.

Chris’ brother had small daughters, and he and my daughter wanted to see them open their presents at their grandma’s house. So they would go there and wait for the nieces to arrive. While we were waiting for them to arrive at our gathering place so we could open our presents.

True, we were adults and should have been more patient, but doesn’t Christmas make children of us all? So we would wait impatiently, and threaten to open gifts without them (well, some of us would…)

My poor kid was torn: she would annoy us by making us wait, annoy Chris’ family by leaving early, and at some point there would be tears.

Having my granddaughter Charlotte, of course, upped the ante.

So this year they have arrived at détente. They, also, will alternate: one family will get Christmas Eve and the other Christmas Day. Exclusively. Oh, and by the way, whoever gets Christmas Eve also gets Thanksgiving, because an “eve” is not a complete day, what with people having pesky jobs and such.

So that’s the plan, and this is the year we get the younger sister and the winemaker for Christmas too. Except they are finding out that flying from the East Coast to LAX or Burbank is not as cheap as from the Bay Area, so it looks like we may just see my daughter.

And even this may prove unworkable once they tie the knot and start having kids.

I’m finally realizing why my mother’s only bit of marital advice was to “Marry an orphan.”

The politics of toys

A

Christmas Morning, West Covina, 1960
Copyright Charles Phoenix

Okay, that is not me in photo above, but it might as well be, except I had a dreaded "pixie" cut, so I had less hair. The snapshot is from humorist and pop-culture historian Charles Phoenix's website. He finds old Kodachrome and black and white slides and gives shows, where he cleverly points out details in them that no one else notices.

In 1960 I was six years old and I got this identical set of toy household appliances. They were pink (hadn't you already guessed that?), and the wringer washer actually worked. You put water and soap in it, plugged it in and it agitated your doll clothes. It was the same year I got my Revlon doll.

What brought this all to mind is my daughter's wish list for Charlotte. Like most children, Charlotte loves
watching videos and pushing buttons on electronic toys, and her mom sees the potential for addiction. Already C. is obsessed with the recent Disney movie starring Princess Tiana, which she calls "Pincess Fog," and "Nightmare Before Christmas," and asks to see them daily.

So, her mom asked for low-tech toys, like "pretend stuff, like play food or tools are good. Wooden blocks would be fantastic. Puzzles are great, too." My mom went looking for the food and dishes, without much luck.

The Disney "Pincess" tea set that started it all.

I had seen a Disney princess tea service for four in a Big Lots ad, so I went in looking for it and struck the motherload. There, I found a cooking utensil set, a box of pots and pans, along with the tea set. 

Look, it even has pot holders!

I found a gigantic set of play food, but it included junk food, so I opted for a smaller one that only had fruits and vegetables in it. My daughter is very particular about what she feeds her family, and tries for 100% organic. 

Play food in a plastic shopping basket.

After I check out, I'm looking at this pile of pretend domesticity (which I would have loved at that age), and it hits me: I know Charlotte loves to imitate mommy, but is this the message I want to send? That she should prepare for a life of cooking and cleaning? If play is about rehearsing future careers, shouldn't I buy the astronaut Barbie instead?


The idea of stay-at-home moms is rather a sore point between my daughter and me. She accuses me of not valuing what she does: staying home with her daughter to give her the best possible beginning in life. Nothing could be further from the truth: I admire her, if only because I was constitutionally unable to stay at home. 


Our little family really needed me to work, but I suppose we could have made sacrifices and muddled through, as so many families have. My daughter and son-in-law have to do without a lot of luxuries to survive on one income.


But after being the sole support of my household for years, I was suddenly unemployed when we moved to Lake Los Angeles. I was isolated in the middle of nowhere with no car, and two kids: a two-year-old and a four-year-old. No adults to talk to all day, and an endless round of breakfast, lunch and dinner preparation and clean-up. I was washing load after load of cloth diapers and hanging them on a line every day because I didn't have a dryer.


I couldn't find a part-time job fast enough, which is how I ended up carrying a .38 as a security guard at Edwards AFB. Not exactly stimulating, but it got me out of the house.


I never bought my children play stoves, washers, or refrigerators. They had dolls of course, closet floors full of them, but I never bought them cooking or cleaning toys, because I wanted them to believe they could be anything they wanted when they grew up. Yes, including wives and mothers, but I consider those roles to be states of being, not substitutes for meaningful, paid work. You stay home for periods of time for caretaking, but not your whole life.


Call me a product of the 60s, but I don't believe that keeping house should be exclusively women's work. Men should help cook and clean, or the couple should hire help. Staying home to raise children is admirable, but it's a life passage, not a lifetime career. After you've dedicated your life to your children, what do you have left when they leave you? If you're encouraging them to live up to their potential, shouldn't you be modeling that behavior?


At least I'm not as rabid a feminist as this person. She actually deconstructed a toy ad for gender-specific messages, and what she found was fascinating and not very pretty. I believe in unisex toys, and that boys should be allowed to play with dolls and girls with trucks, but I also believe that you can't fight nature. Boys like to blow shit up sometimes, and girls like to dress up from time to time. 


And after all, I am rather fond of the color pink.


If you want to take me to task, leave a comment.

Pots and pans. The author had a set of authentic RevereWare, with the copper bottoms, when she was a child.

Night at the dancehall

Detail from frontispiece to Thomas Wilson's Correct Method of German and French Waltzing (1816), showing nine positions of the Waltz, clockwise from the left.

You might notice that there are no pictures in this blog. That is for a very good reason: I don't want any photographic evidence. My husband and I took our paltry dance skills out on the town, and got schooled.

I'm not sure what we were thinking: we haven't danced since our wedding, and we were barely getting by then. Plus, performing on a dance floor that belongs to you (okay, it was rented, but still) is way different from a place where people are serious about ballroom dancing.

So, after six weeks of no practice, we have completely forgotten the foxtrot and the swing (on any coast), never learned the cha cha, and are left with a rusty waltz, tango and rhumba. Then we decide to drive down to Granada Hills to a weekly dance with live music.

The dance price includes a lesson at 6:30 (they were doing some very tricky cha cha steps this night), and boxed wine, soft drinks and snacks. Then about 8, the dance floor opens. These old people may look frail, but I'm tellin ya, they'll mow you down if you don't get out of their way.

Iris, our dance teacher, did a lot of talking about the "line of dance" and how you had to keep moving in a counterclockwise motion on the floor. She even tried to give us a taste of it by insisting we foxtrot in a circle. But nothing she said prepared me for the sheer terror of trying to hold on to your little bit of floor, not get run over, not bump into anyone else, and attempt to make a decent showing of your available steps.

We don't really know how to take our dancing out into traffic, so we contented ourselves with dancing in the middle of the floor, sort of a "kiddie pool" if you will. Of course, you often had couples using it as a passing lane, so we weren't really even safe there.

There were a couple of Antelope Valley people there that we recognized: a former coworker, and the attorney who did my parents' living trust.

Everyone was very nice to us. There seemed to be lots of regulars greeting one another, and cake appeared for two women who were celebrating birthdays. The atmosphere is part senior gathering, part high-school dance, and part ballroom dance classroom (without the glare of overhead lights).

If you prefer age-appropriate clothing on women of a certain age, steer clear of this place. There were great-grandmothers in skirts that barely covered their asses, and lots of rhinestone and sequined dresses and shoes.

One senior whipped off her coat, displaying a silver and black bubble-hemmed mini dress. She proceeded to dance with the partner she brought with her. Well, actually she did most of the dancing, moving around him, gesticulating in a very dramatic fashion, while he moved in place.

There were varying skill levels demonstrated on the floor, and a few fantastic couples meant to inspire us —or serve as a rebuke for not practicing— I'm not sure which.  One Filipino couple in dramatic costumes danced like they were patiently waiting for "So You Think You Can Dance" to call, although they never smiled.

That was in contrast to the middle-aged guy in the Capezio jazz shoes and aloha shirt dancing with a woman in a super-bright skirt. They grinned the whole time, like they were having the time of their lives. He even tried to do some Lindy-hop lifts, a valiant, yet unsuccessful  effort. Not that it was all his fault, if you know what I mean.

The really talented couples were good about teaching steps to others. They would switch partners with another couple and show them moves.

Everyone dances with everyone, and if you leave your dance partner unattended, he or she is likely to be swooped up by someone else. But it is a curiously non-sexual atmosphere. Previously in my life, the combination of dancing, music, and people of the opposite sex spelled romance, or at least hooking up. But this seems like a meritocracy: no matter what you look like or how old you are, it is your dance skills that make you popular.

The band called a "mixer" dance, with women on one side of the room, and guys on the other. They pair off and dance down the middle of the room, then part, and get back in line to await another partner. It allows couples to dance with other people, and unaccompanied ladies to have a partner. We couldn't participate, because we can barely dance with each other, let alone other people.

My husband looked at the line of ladies waiting their turn at grabbing a partner during the mixer and said: "Oh God, it's like junior high all over again." Yes, yes, it was, and some scars never fade, I guess.

A "no-sew" Halloween

Charlotte's mom helps her "fly" in her butterfly/fairy Halloween costume

'Twas was the night before Halloween and I wasn't up to my eyeballs in spray glitter, tulle, pipe cleaners, and satin. What had gone wrong?

Actually, what little All Hallow's Eve spirit I had was sucked right out of me by on Oct. 2 wedding, a New York City honeymoon and the grading of 110 college essays. My daughter had quite rightly talked me out of making a costume for Charlotte. She said I should take a break this year, and my husband agreed with her.

Charlotte in 2009, her first Halloween, in a costume made by her doting grandmother. Photo by Little Blue World Photography

Last year I made a devil suit for Charlotte, because it was her first Halloween, it suited her behavior, and well, making costumes is what I do. I love nothing better than to dress up and pretend to be someone else, unless it is transforming my children. My kids had a dress-up box that will only be rivaled by Grandma's (that's me!) treasure trove.

Charlotte's mother in a mouse costume I made in 1988, when she was four. Her sister, Lotte's aunt, is dressed as a devil, like Lotte did last Halloween

In fact, I've actually already started the box. My then-fiance ran across a bag that had scarves, belts, and costume jewelry in it. He asked what it was, and I replied: "Leave it alone! It's dress-up stuff for Charlotte."

Wise man that he is, he didn't point out to me that Lotte wasn't even walking yet, let alone changing her clothes. I've been waiting for this child for a long, long time.

I've loaned out some of our old costumes to people with children over the years, if only to justify having them hang around for years between children and grandchildren. I have a particularly nice pink satin unicorn, with a very full pink-tulle mane, that my youngest daughter wore to kindergarten and has served other little girls. (If a little boy wants to wear it, that's okay, too.)

Charlotte and her "lolly."

I've loaned out the Dorothy (Toto not included), Red Riding Hood, Tinkerbell, and the grey mouse. I couldn't loan out Sally from "Nightmare before Christmas" because I made it out of non-woven interfacing so I could paint on it, and it disintegrated.

Former syndicated columnist Judy Markey, who was MY generation's Erma Bombeck, once wrote that making elaborate Halloween costumes was the working mother's way of assuaging her guilt. Like, okay, I can't come to every school event, and/or bake cupcakes, but here you go, child, let me slave for weeks over your Halloween costume to make up for it.

Markey said that in her day, most mothers didn't work outside the home, yet kids went to Woolworth's to buy "cheesecloth jammies" with the name of the character one was supposed to be, emblazoned on the front, which came with a cheap plastic mask. They were merchandised in flimsy boxes with clear windows on the top, so you could see what the costumes were.

It's true; I distinctly remember a Casper the Friendly Ghost costume, and one that simply said "Princess." Very generic, not like Disney Princesses. Just "Princess."

The princess mask showed a blonde (of course) head of hair, with a golden tiara on top, and very long eyelashes at the top of the eye holes. These days, we're so safety conscious that we don't dare send our kids out in masks. They might fall down, or walk out in front of a car.

Come to think of it, there might just have been some competition involved: whose child had the best costume, and whose work-life suffered the most from making said costume.

Before I had a grandchild, I often borrowed some for holidays. One year, my son-in-law's niece expressed a wish to be Violet Baudelaire, a character from the Lemony Snicket books and movie, "A Series of Unfortunate Events." There being no pattern from Simplicity or McCalls for this, I was intrigued, and put one together, Frankenstein-like, from other patterns.

I got the movie from Netflix, and did some research. For Violet's fishnet sleeves, I bought children's tights and cut the toes out of them. Why anyone would make black fishnets for children is beyond me. Perhaps to accompany the French maid's outfit, that I had to explain to my 10-year-old the was "inappropriate." YOU try explaining that particular sexual fetish to an elementary-school student.

It's ugly, I'm tellin ya.

Charlotte's cousin Mikala in a Violet Baudelaire costume, the oldest sibling in the "Lemony Snicket" series of books.

My younger daughter recently retired her gothic-princess prom dress to the dress-up box, along with a sexy fairy costume I made her to wear to work a few years ago. The black gauze wings are long gone, but how hard is it to find wings? The gesture was every bit the putting away of "childish things." She can't fit into the corset anymore, so she's passing the torch.

This year, with sewing out of the question, I stumbled onto a sale at JoAnn's Fabrics and picked up a pink tulle and stretch velvet number that the package said was "a fairy," for six bucks. It looked like a princess to me, and we really tried to sell it as such, but Charlotte put it on and said emphatically, right away, "Fairy!"

So, I had to go to Walgreen's the night before Halloween to find fairy wings since, as her mother says, "She's going to be telling people she's a fairy, anyway." The best I could do was butterfly wings, but they matched the pink dress.

Charlotte came by to have dinner with us, and we got to see her in her costume. Then she went off to a "Trunk or Treat" at her cousin's church, and by all accounts had a great time.

So we drank beer, opened the door for our whopping two batches of trick or treaters, and watched the World Series. It was the most laid-back Halloween I've ever had.