Tag Archives: Christmas

Silver teacups and Princess Parties

Posted on December 6, 2011 | 3 comments

In case you are still staring at my words from yesterday morning in disbelief… I am back again to blow your mind.  I don’t just love my mother-in-law.

I love my ex mother-in-law, too.

It will rain on my car every time I wash it for the rest of ever because nobody gets this lucky.  I didn’t get one great mother-in-law.  I got two.

The day we found out Emily was going to be a Girl I think the Carter’s outlet in Williamsburg got a phone call.  Ready the pink clothes!!!  Pam is on on her way!!  Em’s dad is one of three boys.  And one of many male cousins. And finally the Worthys would have a GIRL!

Like many first time moms I had all kinds of ideas about how I was going to dress my little girl.  She didn’t need to wear pink just because she was a girl.  She would have a yellow bedroom.  And I would never velcro a bow to her head, even if she looked like Charlie Brown.  I stuck to my guns on a few things.  She had a yellow bedroom.  And she never did have a velcro bow.

But there was  a day in the early fall when I was nesting something fierce and doing baby laundry, preparing my home for this little girl that would change my world.  I opened the lint trap in my dryer and I laughed.  I called Pam and I said “You win!!  There is PINK lint in my lint trap.”

I had a beautiful baby girl.  That wore a lot of pink.  And it didn’t kill me.  Or her.

Merry Christmas, Pam.  Since your retirement and move to Arizona we see less of you but your presence in our life is strong.  We had Grandmama Pam’s Sweet Potato Casserole for Thanksgiving.  And I think I will have to master your Chocolate Delight here pretty soon.  Through the magic of Skype we got to see your Santa dance and sing and I was reminded of the first Christmas that Em could walk.  It was cute the first hundred times she pressed the button.

A silver cup engraved with Emily’s name hangs from our tree.  It was a gift from your father, Pop-Pop, when Em was born.  It was too sweet to put away in a box of baby memorabilia, too precious to leave out all the time. So I put it in with the Christmas decorations.  Every year it reminds me of your grace.  You loved me and your son enough to encourage us both to love ourselves and each other enough to move on and let go.  I am forever grateful that I didn’t have to let go of you, too.

Grandmama Pam's Princess Party. Just a year after Em was born Pam got another Princess, Lily!!


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Christmas, Up to 11

Posted on December 5, 2011 | 4 comments

Taking a break from the ornaments to give a quick run down on yesterday’s Super Fantastic Family Christmas Celebration.

It was September when MQD bought tickets to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  So we had been looking forward to this afternoon for a long time.  We got dressed up in our Christmas gear. 

Snowman outfit for Emily. New Christmas tie for MQD.

Red feather headband for me.

I was hellbent on this being a Fancy Good Time.  I wore heels for fuck’s sake.

I really don't need to remind you that I am 34 weeks pregnant, do I?

If you’re not familiar with TSO they are a progressive metal band formed in the early 90’s.  Think rock opera meets epic Christmas music.  Add some pyrotechnics and a LOT of hair flipping and some girls in glittery cat suits and a light show.  And then turn it up.  In between the face melting guitar riffs and the explosions and the lights and the super fantastic vocals add in…. about two and a half hours of what feels like a strange Christmas special on a cruise ship.  Or a fundraiser for public television?

Yeah.  That was probably not where you thought I was going with that, huh?  It wasn’t exactly what I expected, either.

But don’t get me wrong. My face was melted.  Angus Clark spins his hair while playing what looks like a Flying V (upon googling I find it is a Japanese made Jackson Randy Rhoads, but you get my point.)  From a hundred yards away it is a sparkling V shaped guitar being ravaged by a man that belongs in Pantene commercials.

Chris Caffery, their front man, made me feel a little bit like a 12 year old me had I had the chance to see Sebastian Bach in his Skid Row days.  He was pretty, even from a distance.  His hair spinning is unrivaled and his vocals make you want to simultaneously drive too fast and make out.  Bang your head and slow dance.  It’s that beautiful place where glam metal and real music meet.

And Roddy Chong is incredible.  My two years in the elementary school orchestra never taught me to play violin while running back and forth across a catwalk suspended from the ceiling.

Image Courtesy of RoddyChong.com

And the lasers.  The LASERS.  Until Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon Lasershow tours at Christmastime it is the only laser show you are gonna get to take your family to see in lieu of the Nutcracker or The Rockettes.

There was fire.  Tons of fire.  And big, huge teeth-like stage apparatus shooting that fire with screens above it featuring menacing creepy red eyeballs. At one point there was a thousand marching nutcrackers, over 30 feet tall, made out of a million tiny red points of light.  And lasers going everywhere.  And that ruled.  Emily said later “This was the best day I have ever had in my whole LIFE!”  This was after telling me that “kind of a lot of live real rock stars have long hair, Mom.”

I asked her why it was the best day of her life, considering she had cried through about the first twenty minutes because it was too loud, even with ear plugs.  And she cried for about ten minutes in the middle, because she really had to pee and I mistakenly thought eventually there would be an intermission.  “I have never been that scared of anything in my life” was her reason.    Fair enough.

But in between the face melting guitar and the fire… it was like that moment on a cruise ship where you wonder if you are drunk or bored.  But you know you kind of want to take a nap.  There is talent.  And spectacle.  But you’ve just had a huge meal and forty five drinks and you start to wonder how long this show lasts.  But you’re really glad you came.  Really.  You are.

Like so many things that MQD and I have done together we sat back on the couch last night, laughing.  I said “We can add that to the list of things I don’t think we need to do again, but I am really glad we did.”

How are you celebrating Christmas with your family?  I hope it melts your face.

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In Laws & Tradition

Posted on December 5, 2011 | 4 comments

If you blog or put yourself out there on the internet in any way at all you are quite likely aware of the way that you appear to a reader, be they casual or committed.  Often bloggers are criticized for being one-dimensional, only putting certain parts of their personalities out on display, some only the very best, some only the trainwreck that is their “personal” life.

I do my best to give a pretty well-rounded view of me, of who I am.  Not so much for a reader, but because my primary purpose in keeping this record is for my own benefit.  I will be able to look back and see what I hope is a realistic picture of the past.  Even if I do choose the images, the words, the stories to remember.   I make an effort to focus on both the good times and the bad.

The last year has held more good times than any year previous, in spite of the fact that I have led a pretty charmed existence all things considered.  But I try not to make bold statements about the greatness of my life, lest they bite me in the ass.

But I can say this was confidence.

My mother-in-law is better than your mother-in-law.  Without any grandstanding or superlatives I can likely convince you that I am right with one sentence.  I really like the little gifts she has surprised us with.  You know how your in-laws come to visit or you go to see them and they say “Oh, I picked these up for you” and you smile and make a mental note  – Every time they come to see me I will use these atrocious potholders.

But not me.  Nope.  MQD’s mother has been generous all while understanding that he did not marry a 20 year old bright eyed college girl.   I have opinions on things, some of them steadfast.  For chrissake she asked me what kind of toilet paper we like before she grabbed some the last time she ran out to the store.

She asked me if I was a Wreath Person before placing an order for a Holiday Wreath.  I am so totally  a Wreath Person and anxiously awaiting its arrival.

When we were in Boston this summer Ginger said “Oh, this is for you guys, you can put it anywhere, maybe your mantle.”  Gasp.  My mantle?  A girl’s holiday mantle is like the centerpiece to her holiday decorating. She can’t be serious?!

And I LOVE it.  Five months I waited to take it out of the plastic.  14 letters spelling out MERRY CHRISTMAS.  There was no way for her to know that I kind of love anything resembling vintage type set letters.  Or that I prefer colored decorations to brass.  And yet it is perfect.

We still need to get the garland for the mantle.  And hooks for the stockings. But I couldn’t wait any longer.  So much of Christmas to me is about unboxing the things that I have loved for years and years, the traditions.  It is a pleasure to put up a new decoration. One I will unwrap joyfully each year and remember, this was from our first married Christmas, in our new house.

Merry Christmas, Ginger. May I never have a box in my hall closet labeled Crap To Take Out When the In-Laws Visit.  Cheers!

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Bird Party Redux

Posted on December 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Which one do you like better,” she asked.  “Mine or Mom’s?”  MQD had brought us both home an ornament as an early Christmas surprise.

Ever the diplomat MQD answered, “I like them both, for different reasons.”

Ever the six year old she asked again “But which one do you like better?”

MQD did not reply.

We ate in silence for a moment.

“Which one of us do you like better?” I asked, ever the smartass.

And all at once, all three of us began to laugh.

It was spring in my old apartment.  Em was still sleeping with me nearly all of the time.   We had a rule.  No getting out of bed until the sun is up and you hear the birds.  Some of my favorite times were those early morning conversations.  Before we got out of bed.  One morning she told me she heard the birds.  Only Em pronounced it then (and still does) “boids.”  I asked her what they were doing out there.  “Havin’ a boid pahty.”

There is little in this life that makes me smile more than a bird party.  But the three of us, sitting around the dinner table, laughing.  That even puts a bird party to shame.  And let me tell you… birds can get down.  Merry Christmas, Birds.

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Honest you do…

Posted on December 2, 2011 | 5 comments

In our wedding ceremony I included a bit about how I knew that MQD was “the one.”  I said it was our first Christmas together.

She realized that Mike listened to her. All of you that know Kelly know that this is no small task.   As you can imagine this was both exciting and terrifying.  She opened her Christmas presents and saw that each item was chosen because Mike had heard her.   A big bottle of Delirium Tremens, her all time favorite beer, a package of Nutter Butters, her all time favorite cookie, and an ee cummings compilation.  Her all time favorite poet.
He did it again.
The listening.
He was late coming home from work this evening and I asked him where he’d been.  He smiled that sly Christmas-y smile and wouldn’t tell me.  I assumed he’d been Christmas shopping.
With both hands behind his back he told both Emily and I to pick a hand.   She chose first and he said “Nope, wrong hand.”
I’ll cop to getting slightly more intrigued.  These were specific surprises, one for each of us.
Mine was a  key.  An ornament.  Many years from now it will be the ornament that MQD gave to me the year we bought our house.  The year that we were married.  It is perfect.
We don’t always talk about what I write here.  Sometimes I am not even sure he has read it.  But tonight I had one of those Sam Cooke moments… the moments where he sends me.  He is reading.  He is listening.  Message received.  Loud and clear.  Ornaments are important to his girl.
And he found me the perfect one.
Merry Christmas, MQD.  It was only three years ago that I knew.  When I “found myself wanting to, marry you and take you home.”
And now here we are.  Home.

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Nassau and The Worst Day Ever

Posted on December 2, 2011 | 1 comment

An ornament we brought back from our honeymoon for Emily

On our honeymoon we were going to go para sailing.   MQD was excited.  So was I.  It was a very honeymoon thing to do.  I had a picture in my head, of the day, of us, holding hands high above a beautiful beach and crystal blue water.  The sun on our faces, smiling.

Only it was windy that day.  And they canceled our excursion.  There was a temptation to try and “do” something else.  Something special.  We strolled around Nassau, hand in hand.  Looking for something “to do.” We went in and out of a few shops, we thought about buying a watch.   And we laughed about how this was “the worst day ever.”  And that our honeymoon was the pits. We bought a Christmas ornament that says “Nassau” for Emily.

The dates that MQD and I plan have a way of not working out.  We have abandoned more concerts halfway through, or not gone at all, choosing instead to stay at dinner an hour or two longer, just talking.   He likes me.  And I like him.  It’s easy to have fun when you’re with your best friend.  I hope I look at him just like this for many, many years to come.

Honeymoon, May 2011

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Disco, the ornament not the music or the nap

Posted on December 1, 2011 | 3 comments

I have a tendency to attach a tremendous amount of meaning to the most trivial of things.  I remember where I got them, who I was with, how I felt.  This item, a lighter, a tshirt, a coffee cup, it becomes a touchstone to that moment in time.

It is only very occasionally that I have had something for a long time and I don’t have any recollection of where it came from.

I know I have had this disco ball ornament for a long time.  I know I bought it for myself. I can vaguely recall taking it out of the box.  I am not much of an impulse buyer of things like ornaments.  Again, always so sentimental, my ornament collection is largely made up of memories.

I know it hung on my Christmas Tree after Em and I moved to Chapel Hill and then hung from a teeny hook in my living room for the remainder of the time we lived in that apartment.  I remember it hanging on my first big Christmas Tree in our house at the beach.  And I am fairly sure it graced the tree in my dinky little duplex the first year I lived in Kill Devil Hills.

Going back in time to Williamsburg and the Christmas Trees I had in college, I don’t think I had it then.  Those years were full of disco naps and a tree decorated in Happy Meal toys.  But I don’t think I had a disco ball.

 Strangely, I can’t be sure.

Merry Christmas to you, mysterious Disco Ball.  And thanks very much to the Kelly of Christmas Past that had the good sense to snag you off the shelf.

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Counting down the days…

Posted on November 30, 2011 | 6 comments

The countdown is on.  To Christmas.  To Baby D.  To figuring out how to be a work from home Mom of two with a new house she loves.  I fear without a little direction my musings over the next few weeks could be more of a report.  There are x number of days until Christmas.  The following parts of my body are either leaking or aching.  This is what I am afraid of today.  And this is what I am excited about.

While that all sounds fabulously interesting I though I might use some of my favorite Christmas decorations and ornaments to tell the story of the 25 days leading up to Christmas.  I can’t promise that I don’t sneak in a little “Here is a snowman, see his big fat ass, that reminds me my hip aches and my boobs are dripping” but I am gonna give it my all.

The year my father sold the house I grew up in my brother and I sat on the floor in the basement.  One at a time we went through boxes of ornaments.  One for me, one for Scott.   Together we divided up our childhood, one we shared.  I eagerly await the day he and Lauren (and Baby!!) return from Hawaii so we can share a Christmas together, our families.  And so I can sneak a peek at the ornaments on his tree, the ones I have long since forgotten.

The first ornament I chose in the Great Ornament Trade of 2005

To kick things off, an all time favorite ornament.  I love this picture. This is an ornament my mom made I’d guess 1982ish?  Mom and I are wearing clown costumes she made for Halloween in 1981.  Later the clown costumes were resurrected for  the Clowntastic Event.  The Clowntastic Event was an elementary school party rivaled only by the Wild Rumpus the following year.

Kelly, 1982

 I am reminded of being just about this age often lately.  The other evening Em and I were laughing on the couch, about nothing.  The same laughter that I share with no one else besides my mother.  There is an easy laughter I share with her; there is nothing unsaid, nothing to question, just pure living in the moment.  A moment that brings us both to tears laughing from time to time.

As a kid I thought that my mom did it all for me.  That she was a Mother, and a Mother only.  And as I lean back against the couch and laugh with Emily I wonder if Em has any idea what a genuinely good time I am having. I look at this picture of Mom and I in our clown suits and I wonder how it is that I didn’t see that smile.  Not the smile on my face, but on hers.  We had such a good time.  We still do.

Someday Emily will realize that while I do love her madly it wasn’t always to put a smile on her face that I suggested we got out for a few, just us.  Or snuggle on the couch and have a Ladies’ Night.  I just like her.  She cracks my shit up.  Sometimes I hang out with her for me.  I suppose I could just tell her.  But that would ruin the whole Mother of the Year thing I have got going.

My clown costume has long since been passed on elsewhere, but Mom's makes an appearance from time to time. Not long before MQD and I were engaged it came out for a night of gin and tonics and dominos.

 

Looking at this succession of pictures, you can see it happen.  How the daughter becomes the mother.  In the first picture, there we are.  Two distinct clowns.  In the second, Mom’s hair  bow becomes my tie.  In the end her costume has become mine.  But I am still wearing the same Raggedy Ann-esque wig from the very beginning.  This is either an allegory for something very deep or it is much, much simpler.  My mom and I are a couple of clowns.

25 days until Christmas Eve.  And I’d guess about 25 more years before Em realizes she is turning in to me.

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The Book of Love

Posted on November 29, 2011 | 20 comments

It’s no secret I am a bit of a sap.  When we packed away the many keepsakes from our wedding I was careful not to put them all in to a box.  A box we’d not see again until we sold our house or Emily had a hankering to take a nostalgic walk with me.  All too often we box up our most precious things to “keep them safe.”  I contend we should use them.  Touch them.  Let them remind us of the days long gone.

Our ringbearer carried our wedding rings on a little plate.  A plate that says “With This Ring.”  (Purchased on Etsy from Paloma’s Nest!)  I’d considered framing it in a shadow box, but instead decided to slide it in to the box of Christmas ornaments.  Every year we could take it from it’s little box and I could tell the story of how this was the bowl that held our rings before we were married, just days before (or after!) Baby D was conceived.  We would hang it on the tree and smile at one another.  Sneak a kiss amidst eye rolls and ewww’s from the kids.  (I had this all planned out,  I am both a sap and a planner.)

This year we opened the big box of ornaments and it was on top.  Em carefully removed the box and said “Mom, you should do this one” just as MQD said “Be careful with that one.”  I carried it in to the kitchen to shorten the long red strings we had used to tie our rings to it. This was when my plan started to go awry.

I dropped it on the floor in  the kitchen.  And fell to my knees as though Lee Harvey Oswald had shot it from my hands.  Stunned.  Sobbing.  Em rounded the corner and began to cry hysterically.  MQD followed, fully expecting to see a dead animal, I am certain.  One we own.

Four, maybe five seconds, I cried.  And then I stood up.  And pulled my shit together.  This was not a sign.  Our marriage did not crumble on the floor in the kitchen.  We are tougher than a ceramic plate.  And we have Liquid Nails.  I might have cried a teeny bit more as I got the glue out from the laundry room cabinets, behind the door.  Where Em couldn’t see, my face tucked in to MQD’s neck.  I think I said something profound and explanatory. Something like “I am so fucking sentimental.”   And then I got to gluing.

Next year when we take this little ceramic bowl out from its box, there will be two stories.  The one about how this little bowl held our wedding rings.  We will still sneak a kiss and smile.  And then the three of us, Em, MQD and I will look at the baby and I will say “I dropped this bowl on the floor the Christmas I was pregnant with you.  I was all butterfingers and bat shit crazy.”

Marriages and families and even keepsakes are just one story piled on top of another.  Some good, some not so good.  But it’s a great book.  So you just keep on reading.

The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It’s full of charts and facts and figures
And instructions for dancing
But I—
I love it when you read to me
And you—
You can read me anything.

~Peter Gabriel

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Day 59: Are you psychic?

Posted on December 17, 2010 | 3 comments

Day 59’s challenge asks you if you have psychic powers, and suggests you try and move an object with your mind.  I have been writing this post in my head for a week, but I couldn’t quite post it.  Because it wasn’t and still isn’t wholly true.  I was going to use my “psychic powers” to lift the big black cloud that is hanging over my head.  And I thought for a day or two I had done it… but nope.  Back in full force.  The holidays are hard on everyone, nothing new there.  I am staying home this year, with MQD and Em and I am thrilled to begin anew, new nuclear family holiday, new traditions.  But I am sad all at the same time, sad that I will be missing my family, sad that  MQD will be missing his, worried that the Christmas we make for Em will not be “enough.”  Even though I know, cognitively, that makes no sense at all.  She has only a few years of Christmas expectations, I have thirty some and it is me that I fear disappointing.

Something about walking around feeling like you have it all for a few weeks… I suppose the letdown of “holy shit, is this it?” is inevitable.   But I don’t even know if that’s it.  I am just cranky.  Blue.  Sad.  Irritable.  Part of MQD’s  christmas present says it has been delivered, according to Amazon and it’s not here.  So I cried.  And resisted the temptation to break shit.  That’s not like me.  I roll with it.  That’s what I do.  But underneath the sad and the scared and the insecure and the holy-fuck-it’s-freezing is something else… and I can’t seem to tease it out.    It feels like anger.  Or at least that is how it is manifesting.  I am being short, snippy, rude to the people I love the most while I maintain my cheery disposition for everyone else.

I carried this feeling for ages in my twenties, that no matter what was happening on the surface, underneath I was unsettled.  Fearful.  Sad.  I am angry with myself now for feeling robbed of enjoying this time.  A time when I have nothing but love and joy surrounding me… how dare I rob myself and those around me of that?  It is self-indulgent and childish, and I so wish I could just “get over it.”    But to someone who has never felt it, it is impossible to explain.  It’s like being nauseous.  When you know you won’t really puke.  Only I feel like I might burst in to tears. I am constantly choking it back.

And in case all this drivel wasn’t whiny enough my back is aching daily again.  It makes me feel old and broken and impatient. So the radio silence of late… I don’t have much to report.

So what am I going to do about it?

  1. Get some exercise again.  Regularly.  Move the blood.  Maybe it’s silly, but I can’t help but feel like when I have no energy or bad energy that moving it all around will help reorganize things in that old body of mine.
  2. Mind my mouth, keep at this.  At least now I hear it, and I apologize immediately.  Next step, just shut the fuck up if I have nothing nice to say.
  3. Trust.

And with all the psychic power I can muster… I am gonna try and move this out

and see more of this.

Ahhh, but at least I have my sense of humor.  When all else fails… at least I can laugh at myself.  What song is playing?

Try to stop my hands from shaking
Something in my mind’s not making sense
It’s been awhile since we’ve been all alone
I can’t hide the way I’m feeling
As you leave me, please, would you close the door
And don’t forget what I told you
Just cause you’re right, that don’t mean I’m wrong, another shoulder to cry upon…

Sad state of affairs when your problems are so simply spelled out by a 1986 Billboard hit.

But it’s true.  I don’t “want to lose your love”  and it has “been awhile since we’ve been alone.”  I don’t expect MQD to fix it.  And I thank him regularly for his  patience.  I know he didn’t “do this.”  But he fell in love with me just the way I was, which was sad, impatient, broken and scared.  I need to remember I was also hopeful, renewed, optimistic… even then.  I’ve come so far.  Now is no time to go backwards.  One foot in front of the other.  And if I am angry… I am angry with myself. For not being mindful of the joy  and the love that I live every day.

I think if I can attack #1 (exercise) with a vengeance and really focus on #3 (trust) that #2 (my shitty disposition and accompanying smart mouth)  will solve itself. And then maybe I can land a Date with that sweet boy that asked me to marry him. And sit back, with a smile on my face, my little lady asleep upstairs with visions of sugarplums dancing in her head, and start getting my Christmas on.  Because seriously, Bad Mood, roll out.  I don’t have time for you now.

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