Almost Christmas

I am notoriously difficult to buy gifts for. People are never sure what I need, what I will like, or what will be exactly the right present. My mother usually buys me a bunch of stuff that she thinks I need. (I'm starting to realize this gift-giving trend of hers is feeding my fashion emergency.) This year when my mother called to complain about my lack of telling her what I wanted, I told her that it would be so easy. I'm one of those people who walks into the stores at Christmas time and falls apart at how many cute little things there are that you could put around the house. It seems like I never have enough to decorate to my heart's content. So I told her to just go to the store, pick out some really fun decorations, and then send them along.

A few days later, I received a package in the mail. Inside was a reused box that was light and packed full. I opened it up anxiously. Inside I found two throw pillows, both red with an angel covering the front, edged with frilly old-fashioned lace.


My mother included a short note explaining that the pillows had been made by a woman in our church while I was growing up, Mrs. Martin. Since I had been close to Mrs. Martin as a child, my mother thought I would like to have the pillows. She even offered to take the lace off if I thought it was too much for my taste.

As I looked closely at the stitching on angels, I remembered that Mrs. Martin had taught me to do the same on a yellow potholder I made when I was seven. I struggled to keep each stitch the same length, wishing I could make my stitches as uniform as hers were. The stitching she had done on the pillows was just as precise as I remember it being so long ago. If I took a quick look at the pillows without knowing where they had come from, I probably would have missed the huge amount of work put into the task. At one time, all that Mrs. Martin held in her hands was some raw fabric printed with angels and spools of thread. What she produced out of those materials was truly beautiful. And the process by which it became the pillows I held in front of me was a labor of selfless love.


I was very grateful to receive the pillows. I wanted to keep the lace exactly as Mrs. Martin had sewn it there. I felt like when she made them so many years ago, maybe she thought of me a few times. Maybe. Maybe she had a sense that I would get them some day.

I'm trying to remember that each act I commit has long lasting effects that even I cannot imagine. Long after I am gone, maybe someone will be blessed by something I did. Of course, it's possible that I could have the opposite effect on someone by being selfish. That's a sombering idea that makes me want to make the most of every moment of every day.

Lately I've been 'cranky,' as my family members would put it. Sure, I could give fair explanations for why. A surgery, some lingering pain, and a reminder that the holidays always makes depression worse for me. Still, when I am able to see past my own needs, I want to give back selflessly. Especially to my family. To my daughters and my husband.

Long after I am gone, I will be lucky if my great-grandchildren even know what my name was. They definitely won't know anything that afflicted me like surgeries or depression or just too hectic of a life. But maybe, maybe if there are some loving, generous, giving things I can do in my lifetime, those same great-grandchildren might benefit without even knowing it was me who made it possible. Or even who I was.

Merry Christmas, all. Make every moment matter. Peace.

Belated 2nd Blogaversery... and... more Bourbon ;)

Wow... I'm really bad. I missed the blogaversery. I find it quite odd that for the past two years around the same time, we as a family have some kind of issue with the bourbon.

Yes. I did eat the bourbon balls two years ago and I thought they were delicious. So, like any other food I like, I decided to stuffed my mouth with the deliciously goodness that I had discovered in the fridge. The first year I found them, they were in a tin box. In the tin box, there was a note that said "DO NOT TOUCH!!!" I didn't know what they were all I knew was that there were about 100 little chocolate balls in the fridge. They did taste funny but figured that it was some nice like European chocolate that my mom had used to be all fancy and stuff. Later my mom found out and she was angry. I talking about like flames in her eyes, smoke coming out of her ears, and spitting fire. My mom asked me why I had still ate some even after I saw the note. I told her that I didn't remember why. Although, I did remember, but you think I was going to tell her then??? What I really thought was that they really thought a note would stop me from eating the balls??? Please... like the bourbon balls had some like Jedi shield around them.

The next Christmas my mom made the bourbon balls again. She put them in them in the same tin box in the fridge. Talk about some serious déjà vu. Anyways, I ate them and my mom got all pissed off at me once again. But really, she thinks that if she leaves them out that I'm not going to eat them???

Now about the empty liquor bottle. She accused me!!! I mean really, eating bourbon balls and drinking an entire bottle of liquor are two completely different things! I like the balls but I DO NOT like alcohol just because of that. The bourbon balls have barely any bourbon in them anyways. For me to drink that entire bottle would mean that I was like an alcoholic or something. I'm surprised that she didn't consider that maybe the bottle had been emptied awhile ago.

On another note, I left for my dad's house yesterday. When I arrived my sister asked me if I would play with her. I said yes. She told me that she was the princess, my brother was the hero, and my dad was the king. And guess what she told me I was...... I was the dragon. Thanks sis. I'm feeling the love.

This year, it's just about bourbon. And Grace.

Two years ago yesterday, on December 20, 2007, I started this blog with a post about bourbon balls and how furious I was at Grace for eating a slew of them without anyone's permission. That seems like an eternity ago. Let's visit an event involving bourbon that is more recent and far more challenging: what my husband found after Grace's five friends had been over for the night unsupervised.

It was an innocent enough idea. On Halloween night, Grace wanted to go out trick or treating with a few friends then come back to the house for movies, candy, and a sleepover. Our house is set up so that the den can be isolated from the rest of the house. So I welcomed them home from trick or treating at 8p or so, showed them to the den, and closed the door for the night. By noon the next day, all but one friend had gone home and Grace was cleaning up the house. Grace seemed tired and a bit irritable, but there was nothing else notable about her behavior.

The following morning when I came down for breakfast, my husband told me we had a serious situation that we needed to address. On the counter was an empty bottle of Jim Beam. The last time I saw the bottle, it was almost full. We only have one bottle in the house; it gets stored along with the rest of the hard liquor in a inconspicuous chest in the den. Grace knows it's there, but up until this point, I never dreamed she'd touch the stuff. As I stood there staring at the empty bottle, I wanted to believe so much that it was an adult that had drunk the whiskey rather than a group of Grace and friends. Unfortunately we just don't serve drinks that often; the Jim Beam comes out only once in awhile, like when I make bourbon balls at Christmas time. I could feel my stomach sinking deep into my belly. THIS was not a bridge we had ever even come close to crossing previously.

I'm not stupid or naive. Teens drink. Lots of them drink. Lots of them drink a lot. I'd be deeply in denial if I believed that there was no chance that teens might drink in my home if left unsupervised with alcohol. I wanted to believe that Grace would never touch the stuff and never let her friends touch it either if she could keep them from it. But as Sherlock Holmes says, "once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." The whiskey didn't vanish or evaporate. It didn't get up on its own two legs and walk out. Someone drank it, and no one who would have drunk hard liquor in high volumes had been in the house for months as far as I could remember.

So we brought it up over breakfast. It didn't go well. Grace was angry, upset. She absolutely denied knowing anything about the bourbon. She pitched a hissy fit. Her irate, insistent refrain was, "I can't believe you'd think that I would do something like that!" Despite all her protesting, I wasn't convinced of her innocence at all since she'd pulled this kind of a fit before, lying like mad, in order to cover lesser transgressions.

Then finally when I had given up hope and started to accept that my young teenager was drinking and lying, she said, "It could have been one of your friends! What about M?!?" Indeed, M had visited for a week this past summer. I had told him to make himself at home during his stay, our home is your home. He spent the week trying to quit smoking. As a result, he ate ravenously...and he helped himself to plenty of hard drinks after work day hours were over. As soon as Grace brought it up, I realized that there was a good likelihood (actually, a much better than average likelihood) that the bourbon had been consumed by M.

I was quiet for a second. I didn't apologize, I just thought for a second. Did I owe Grace an apology? All I did was ask her what happened to the whiskey and she threw a huge temper tantrum. If she was the kind of kid who was always forthright and honest with me about everything, it would have ended there. I would have trusted her and thought of what else could have happened. But Grace has lied to me before. Suddenly, I realized what the biggest problem we had was. It wasn't teenage drinking; it was lack of trust based on a history of dishonesty.

We talked for a few minutes longer at the table about how this whole episode illustrated exactly why it is so crucially important for Grace to NEVER lie to us about anything, no matter how small. Not about a bad grade on a test, not about losing something valuable, not about eating candy in her bedroom after hours, not about ANYTHING. For years I have been telling her that if I can't trust her, all is lost. Finally we had a crystal clear example of why that is the case. My guess is that this episode finally made the point clear to her. Never, never lie. I don't care what you've done, I don't care if you've killed someone, just don't ever lie to me. If there isn't trust between a parent and child, everything else about the relationship will become painfully difficult.

As I'm looking back on two years of blogging, I'm realizing I've grown a lot as a person, a woman and a mother. It's taken a lot of difficult moments to grow, some that I'd rather not ever go through again. Now I've grown to the point where I want my teenage daughter to learn from me by reading and writing with me. At this point, I know I still have growing to do, but I hope to do it in a more interactive way with my oldest daughter.

Grace is going to comment on this after a bit in order to give her two cents worth on the event. I'm probably as anxious as all of you are to hear what she has to say about it.

Regardless, I am reminded at this time that part of why I started this blog is that I love my daughter dearly. In order for me to show that, we have to traverse very bumpy parts of the road. All of you out there have helped me and her through some of these patches. As we keep traveling along, I know there are many more bumps to come. But I don't look at them with quite the same dread I used to. I am cautiously optimistic that all will turn out fine if the two of us keep holding hands during the journey.

A story of a boy torn between two worlds

It's that nine-year-old boy, Sean Goldman, who's living in Rio with his stepfather and his mother's family. His dead mother. I'm not sure whether this current event has caught the attention of others as much as it has ours here at my household. (For those of you who don't know, my husband is Brazilian and our younger daughter has dual citizenship.) If you don't know about the story, here's the latest on the story as reported by cnn.com.

I started thinking, what's my take on this? Do I go with the biological mother (who's now dead) and her family since I'm a biomom myself? I go with her because she's someone like me who braved the storm of being a single mother because her spouse was doing things she thought were bad for her child? Or do I take the side of the biodad, thinking that a biological parent should always have custody before a stepparent? But then it gets complicated, see, because I would want my husband, my oldest daughter's stepfather, to have some say-so in her life should (God-forbid) anything ever happen to me.

(Don't even tempt me for a second to go into the issues of international affairs between the US and Brazil because I will not go there.)

So. Lots of you out there have been a single mom. Or you're a biomom who's been remarried and have watched your spouse and your child have to navigate the treacherous waters of establishing their relationship. Or you're the stepparent to a child you care deeply for, and maybe your bio-counterpart isn't so happy to have you in the picture. I want to know what you think about this whole thing.

My deep hunch, from the beginning, is that this American father will regain sole physical and legal custody of his son, leave Brazil for the US immediately upon gaining that physical custody, and never travel south of the border again. So the kid loses the relationship he has with his now-deceased mother's family. And the stepfather will be left way out in the cold. Because legally...whether you're in the US or in Brazil or in China or wherever...stepparents don't have the right to step over the wishes of biological parents.

Think long and hard about it before you answer. As you can tell, I'm torn. If something happens to my ex-husband, I would never be obligated to explain my actions as a parent to anyone ever again. I could tell Grace's stepmother to kiss off and that would be the end of the story. The down side to this, of course, is that my ex-husband could legally do the same to Grace's stepfather in a similar circumstance. So I'm finding myself back to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I'm not sure how the Golden Rule applies in the case of Sean Goldman's parents.

As a last word, I'm going to check out the Brazilian news sources when I get a chance today. I'm curious to see how this whole story is being reported there. If I find out anything, I'll include more here. But until then, chew on this and give me your comments to chew on as well.

Back in the saddle again

Well, hm. Here I am. It's been awhile, hasn't it? My lengthy absence requires a few cursory notes and then I'll be on to the business at hand: blogging for the day.

Grace's foray into the world of blogging has been a trip for me, as it has been for all of you, I see! She is an honest and forthright person, with me and with the blogging community, so I think that makes her an exceptional writer within the venue. For instance, I told her she needed to moderate her comments and she did so by checking the site throughout the day. Then I asked her if she wanted to have comments forwarded to her email address so she wouldn't have to check the site so often. Her response? "Oh God, NO! I don't want all that mail in my inbox!" I'm guessing she doesn't want to friend any of you on facebook either. But you can always try....

And another thing about Grace. Try as I may, I cannot bring myself to call her Gracie outside of the context of our home. Yes, everyone calls her Gracie. EVERYONE. It's rather classy, I think. But I just can't call her Gracie in written form. So, she is Gracie, yes, but I as her mom will continue to call her Grace. You all out there can call her whatever you like.

Sunday is the second blogoversary of Comparative Childhood. That's something cool. I'm finding it kind of hard to believe that I've been doing this so long already. (Maybe that explains the almost 2 month leave of absence I'm just now coming off. Just an idea...) I'm going to have to talk to Grace about what we should do now that this is "OUR" blog.

Sunday is also the day we will be celebrating our family Christmas. Grace is leaving on Monday evening to visit with her father for the holidays. She's currently trying to negotiate an early return on December 30th so that she can host a New Year's Eve party at our house on the 31st. But that requires a bunch of teenagers to be at my house on New Year's Eve. And of course since it's New Year's Eve, they'll be around until midnight. And then later too, of course. And then there's the question: will their parents be willing to pick them up at 1 or 2a New Year's Day? Of course not. So we'll be having a sleepover? Oh lordy, yes, it seems like we may. However, neither Grace nor I have run this by her stepdad yet and gotten a green light...

But back to the point: family Christmas on Sunday. We'll be having honey glazed ham, because I'll be damned if I'm going to make ANOTHER turkey, and for three people, no less. Grace is convinced this will make our Christmas less than traditional. I feel like telling her to go get rifle, go out to the woods and shoot us a wild goose with some shot. Traditional, my foot. YOU'LL HAVE HAM AND YOU'LL LIKE IT.

More importantly, I'll be scheduling posts for the next couple days and probably relying upon Grace to moderate comments. Because (get ready)...

I'm having surgery tomorrow.

No really, I am.

I was in denial for awhile, there. I still am, actually. I'm still not fully grasping that I really am going back to the hospital to have my fourth surgery in 18 months. No matter, it will happen whether I'm accepting it or not. Something is going awry in my uterus. It looks like it's most likely "retained product of conception," as my doctor put it. And just so I can head you all off at the pass, no, "retained product of conception" does NOT refer to Stella. I've had some infection going on since she was born and after three rounds of antibiotics, it was clear that a little more investigation was in order. Whatever it is they can see on a scope doesn't appear to have any "depth" to it, so they assume it's a piece of membrane or placenta left over. Strange, I thought, since I had a cesarean (they usually do a pretty thorough job of 'getting it all out') and since the site of the muck is not anywhere close to the site of the placenta. But still, my surgeon hopes it comes out easily.

So there you go. I'll be at the hospital most of the day tomorrow. I'm having a spinal rather than general anesthesia, so hopefully this will lead to a shorter time in recovery before we come home. I've been pumping milk for Stella just in case I have get something in me during surgery that she can't have. And one more hopefully...hopefully I'll feel good enough to enjoy pizza and movie tomorrow night because did you hear that Domino's Pizza reworked their recipe and they are testing out the new kind in our region exclusively before launching it nationally?

Alright, then, now I seem to have gotten back on track. I'll put up some more lovely musings shortly. I have missed you all sorely. It's good to be back.