Holidays

I feel a little embarrassed, admitting to you all how much we've been getting a jump on the next season in the Geels home.  But there are good reasons for it: three little blond ones.

Ella, particularly, loves nothing more than to plan the next big party.  (You may remember her enthusiasm around Joey's birthday.) Picky eater that she is, she generally dismisses Thanksgiving out of hand, although I can usually get her to at least scribble picture of a turkey or weave some dinner place mats for me before the holiday passes. But Christmas...ohhh, now there's a holiday! It has everything that she loves most: gifts (for giving and, of course, receiving), wonderful crafts, catchy songs, cookies and candy, and, for good measure, elves and other magic.

But this year, I think our anticipation of the holiday is tempered with more than a little anxiety.

You see, I love the Christmas, myself, because some of my best and most vivid childhood memories circle around it...

...Singing Christmas carols: We'd have a large stack of records playing all through December, but the best part was the Magic 105.7 radio station event in Cleveland's Public Square.  We'd pick Dad up from work, and then we'd stand in the dark, in the snow, in Public Square and sing Christmas carols with the rest of the city's heartiest population.

...Making cookies: We'd bake, at the very least, a dozen dozens, all in one day.  We kept them cool in in the garage and snacked on with abandon: thumbprints, pressed cookies, almond coolies, sandies,  chocolate mocha frosted drops.  Then mom would mould the shiny chocolates that she'd give as presents each year.  She always gave us a couple, too, but those were coveted treats, particularly the peanut butter cups. Oh, those were the best!

...Trimming our Christmas tree: We were a rainbow-lights kind of a family. Dad would weave the strands into the branches, Mom would hang the tinsel, and then we kids reverently added the ornaments. And then we'd attack the rest of the house, inside and out. I loved falling asleep in December, because the red and green spotlights that my parents shone on the house would paint my ceiling at bedtime.

...Nela Park: There's an industrial park in Cleveland, now owned by GE, that always put up the most magical Christmas light displays. We'd go crunch through the snowy park each year as a family, not missing a single display. Nela Park is the only think in my life that has made me glad that I'm nearsighted. Christmas lights look incredible when you take off your glasses.

...Cartoons: Mom and Dad always helped make sure we never missed those wonderful Christmas specials. Missing them, of course, would have been tragic, since they were on only one night a year.

...Chinese Food: For several years, on Christmas Eve, we'd go to Chung Wah's for dinner with Grandma and Grandpa, and we'd eat tiny ribs and egg rolls and fried rice. (It was an immense treat: Chinese food was scarce in Cleveland in the early 80s.) A couple of times, the restaurant gave us kids little silk decorations that we put on the Christmas tree every year thereafter.

...Tower City: When we were older and Chung Wah's went downhill, we'd spend our Christmas Eve in Cleveland's Tower City. Mom would always get each of us a bag of freshly roasted nuts, and those would warm our pockets as we walked around the stores. Our shopping was always done, so we could enjoy smugly watching all of the frantic shoppers. Almost as fun as watching people run to catch the train.

...Presents!: A week or two before Christmas, Mom would lock herself in the room and hang a little bell on the door, and each time she finished wrapping a gift, she'd push it outside the door, setting the bell tinkling, and my sister and brother and I would race to see who the gift was for, and try to guess what was inside. On Christmas Day, presents were always opened one at a time, so that the fun stretched out all morning.  One year I got a string-a-long, a toy so obscure now that I can't even find a picture of it on Google.  But it was my heart's desire one year, and I still remember how exciting it was, opening that gift.

Mom and Dad definitely worked hard to make sure Kathy and Billy and I had these great memories of the season. They seemed to value consistency and tradition as they raised us, and I'm grateful: I'm sure I remember these times so clearly because the happy memories were solidified over a period of years.

And that's why I'm anxious: each year, I've tried to give the kids consistent special memories, too, with what Seattle has to offer. We see the Macy's parade each year, and the Garden d'Lights, and the Bellevue's Snowflake Lane. I put the kids in charge of hanging the ornaments, just as we did. But, of course, everything will be different this year.  We'll have no Grandparents or Aunts or Uncles around. We'll have no Christmas tree. We'll be living in hotel rooms from December 21st through the end of the year.  So how do I insert some continuity and familiarity for the kids?

The kids have their worries, too, particularly about the Big Man Himself.  "Mom, are you sure Santa will be able to find us if we're staying in a hotel? What if it doesn't have a chimney?"  Thankfully they're not aware that Santa doesn't even bring presents to Switzerland on December 24th...they have other traditions here.

Nonetheless, Santa will be still find us. And, to help reassure the kids of that, yesterday Alex and Joey and I picked up some stockings while we were out. And this afternoon I gave the kids a pile of sequins and told them to decorate them as they liked. They glued everything on, and I reinforced them with thread this evening, in front of the television.

Alex spent a lot of time on his creation, pawing through the sequins and separating out piles of the ones he liked best. But he kept his stocking deliberately minimalist, as is always his style, but with a rainbow, as is also his style.

Ella, conversely, tried to make her stocking look like the ones we've always used for her, a stocking from a Bucilla pattern that I stitched for Ella for her first Christmas.  She worked with what she had, and made a Christmas scene.
But Joey's might be the most fantastic of all: he was hooting about all of the different funny sequins in our bag, and deliberately choosing the least-Christmasy ones as a cheeky joke.  Ella and Alex, of course, were totally encouraging him on: "Look, Joey, do you want to use this butterfly? What about this baby bottle?" Joey's favorite feature of his stocking is the headless skeleton, which he finds hysterical.









I'll grant you that perhaps Halloween sequins are more appropriate to this time of year than Christmas ones.  Just today, we had one last influx of Halloween fun. Alex's little friend Lon found out that Alex's candy haul this year wasn't quite up to American standards, and felt sorry, especially, that Alex didn't get many lollypops.  So this sweet little guy sent my kids a box of his candy in the mail, including about a dozen lollies.

A most excellent mail call

I have mixed feelings about this photo.
Germs, yes, but it's also awfully cute.

After celebrating for a few minutes, the kids got down to the very important business of dividing the candy.  They decided to take turns choosing from the pile. When negotiations were over, Alex had a pile of lollypops, unadulterated by any chocolate, while Ella (most fortunate, in my opinion) had laid claim to all three Reese's cups.  Alex went to work immediately on his thank-you card.

But I suspect that's the last we'll see of Halloween. And you already know about my struggles with Thanksgiving. But apparently I almost overlooked another very important holiday.  When Dennis came home from work today, he mentioned that it was National Soup Day, and, in celebration, the Google cafeteria served something like twenty different kinds of soup for lunch.

Now, this morning I took Joey to the mall, mostly to look for a roasting pan for my turkey.  Out in front of the mall, they had a huge tent set up, and they were, it seemed, passing out samples of soup.  I read the banner, and I thought it said "National Soup Day," but then my second immediate thought was "Cheryl, you're a fool. They have some strange holidays here, but they couldn't possibly have a 'National Soup Day.'"

So I was too insecure in my German to deserve soup, but I did get a different treat this morning. Our closest mall, Sihl City, has a drop-off childcare center for children aged 3 to 12. Joey's finally over the limit, so I thought we'd give it a try.

It turned out that Joey had the entire four rooms, as well as the staff, all to himself this morning. I suppose that makes sense: all kids aged four and up were in school, so there was a very slim population of children who could potentially go and play.

I never did find a roasting pan, but I did spend a lot of time, childless, in a toy store, and took advantage of that fact to finish up all my Christmas shopping for the kids.  And there was even time to read a chapter over a latte and a brownie.  And when I went to collect my happy son, his ninety minutes of playtime cost less than my coffee.

So that was a bit of a holiday, too.