Posts from — November 2011

Ten years ago this week, I was running on a treadmill when a news story came on the television in the corner of the gym.  It was an interview with the manager of an area soup kitchen saying that they didn’t have enough food for Thanksgiving due to the fact that in the wake of 9/11, people were giving their money to other charities.  She was worried they wouldn’t be able to put out a meal that week.

I ran upstairs and woke up Josh, who was still asleep because we took off a few days of work before our wedding.  And I hysterically told him about the soup kitchen and how we had to help or there would be no Thanksgiving dinner.  Josh did not point out how Thanksgiving turkey is pretty much meaningless to me since I’m a vegetarian.  He did not remind me of my last big idea which had probably occurred the day before.  He just nodded his head, picked up the phone, and called the soup kitchen.

The woman said she could use collard greens, and we lived next to a food store that had a shitload of collard greens.  He told her that we were on the case and I went to the food store to pick up the greens.  I cleared out what they had on display, shoving them into the provided plastic bags.  Then I went to the clerk and told him how much I enjoyed collard greens; how I wanted to make as much collard greens as was humanly possible.  I’m not sure why I couldn’t just tell him that we were donating them rather than making me look completely insane.  So he got all the crates of collard greens from the back storage of the store, and helped us bring the whole mess to Josh’s car in the parking lot.

So Josh filled his trunk (mind you, right before our wedding when I had also given him a bunch of other tasks to do) with bags and bags of collard greens.  His whole car ended up smelling like the greens — which you may believe have no smell, but you would be wrong.  When you amass that many collard greens, they sort of smell similar to earthy ketchup.

Josh drove those collard greens an hour downtown because I was too shy to go.

He didn’t laugh at me or roll his eyes or try to reason with me that a check would be easier than a collard green delivery.  He didn’t say, “this was your crazy idea; you go deliver a trunk-full of collard greens.”  No, he just gave me a kiss and said he’d see me in a bit, and he went downtown with his vegetable-laden trunk.

And that’s why I love him.

And because he can still laugh about it 10 years later.

Happy anniversary, Josh.

Photo Credit: Arvindgrover.

I’ve written a post like this every year, bringing together all the advice from the years before (my own and what appeared in the comment section) and then opening it up to additional ideas (which will be brought next year into the new post as well).  Because this time of year can be both impossibly difficult or impossibly wonderful depending on which side of the happiness line you fall, and I say that even as a non-Christian who doesn’t need to do anything more than participate in a volunteer project and eat a bunch of candy canes on Christmas.

Holidays are a lot of pressure — to get them right, to coordinate schedules/needs/wants, to navigate relationships, to travel.  For some people those pressures are additionally pressed down by the knowledge of people missing from the table — either those who were once here or those who haven’t been brought into your family yet.  And compounding it all is this ongoing message that holidays must be fun.  They must be a happy time.  That families draw together and eat a spiral ham in front of a roaring fire with a sparkling tree in the background.

For people who are happily moving through the holiday season, especially those finally celebrating after many dry years, I lift my virtual glass of champagne to you and send you off to enjoy it.  Don’t apologize for being happy — just soak in this time.

For anyone else still sticking around to read this, remember that everyone experiences something in life that makes a particular year or set of years difficult for them. That for every holiday season that you enjoy and look forward to participating in, there is also a time in life where you dread all the reminders that come with a holiday season and wish you could avoid the whole thing. And this year may be that time for you, but it won’t always be that time for you.  Things change; both for good and bad.  This too shall pass.

You can sit out of the festivities if that’s what you need to do, but a survival guide is sort of like holding your breath to eat (you know, so you don’t taste anything) when your mother asks you to try lima beans. Like slimey green lima beans, going to events is usually good for you, and it’s important to be around people who care about you when the going is tough. You just may need a trick for getting through family time just as mouth-breathing (and not tasting) works for choking down undesired foods.

I’ll offer up the same advice I gave the last year three years with additional notes from comments that came on those old posts:

• Create your own incentives and treat getting through the holiday season as your job. Pay yourself in whatever will make you happy. For instance, after a trip to the local mall to have your picture taken with your niece and Santa, pay yourself with a manicure. Attending the holiday party from hell may win you an entire bar of chocolate. It’s worth setting up small incentives and budgeting for your own happiness because it can be something to focus on during the task at hand.
• You know the idea that you can take a large school and make it small but you can’t go the other way around? Flip that concept when it comes to the holidays: take a small part of the holiday and make it big. Focus on something that you can do and make it your contribution to the holiday season. If you know celebrating Christmas will be too much, make sure you throw yourself wholeheartedly into helping prepare Thanksgiving (and then develop an unfortunate case of the stomach flu on December 24th). If you can organize the family gift but can’t fathom how you’ll do Christmas dinner, make sure you send out an email to your siblings early asking for photos of your nieces and nephews so you can design a great picture calendar for your parents. And then skip the ham.
• Do all your shopping online instead of subjecting yourself to walking past the displays of toys and Christmas baby clothes at the store. Keep it simple this year – you have a lifetime to plot out the most fantastic gifts of all time. This may be the year that you need to buy a DVD or book for each person your list and be done.
• Leave a note in your pocket: write a note to yourself, ask a friend to jot something down, trade letters with your partner, or simply leave a list of names (therapist, fellow bloggers, the friend you’ll drink with the moment you get home) in your pocket to touch as a reminder that someone has your back when you begin to feel overwhelmed at the holiday table. I can’t be with you at your Christmas dinner (the whole Jew and vegetarian thing aside, I just don’t think your family is going to be cool if you drag along a random blogger), but I can give you a note right now to keep in your pocket. Simply print this out and whenever you get overwhelmed, touch it and remember that there are people out there who get you. And change the line about mini hot dogs if you’re a vegetarian:

Hey Sweetie:

I know it was really hard to come to this party/dinner/get together but now that you’re here, you’re even closer to it being over. Try to enjoy yourself, but if you can’t, nip into the bathroom for a cry or bury yourself at the buffet table and do nothing but eat mini hot dogs for the rest of the night. There is no shame in enduring rather than enjoying and you need to do whatever you need to do to get through this without ruining any relationships. Make sure you take time for yourself today/tonight after you get home. I’m here on the other end of the computer if you need me.

Love,
Mel

• Pick and Choose: there is no rule that says you must attend every event during the holiday season – even if you’ve gone to everything in the past. If it’s going to cause more grief than it’s worth, just attend the event. But if you can get your partner to “surprise” you with a holiday trip, all the better.
• Book: I actually include a lot of ideas like these in Navigating the Land of If to get through life in general; not just holiday. I’m just saying.
• I will tell you the only trick I have up my sleeve: the holiday card. Most holiday cards we receive are either generic package-of-12 types or pictures of kids/families. We send out cards every year that routinely get responses that it was the best card they’ve gotten all year, or sometimes the best card ever. Sometimes one fabulous photo of us in some fabulous locale; sometimes a whole series around the world (which it will have to be again this year). We used to just have a normal photo card, but now we include a newsy update of career progress and travels. The people with kids (or limited funds, or limited outlook) say, “Wow, your life is amazing. I’m stuck here at home.” I’m not trying to make them feel envious of us, but envy is way better than pity. –Baby Smiling in Back Seat
• All of our friends have been sending photo X-mas cards in the past years. In previous years, we’d send an awesome vacation photo. Like- heh!- we still had fun this year!–Mrs. Spock
• One tip I figured out early on: If you can’t shop online & have to go to the mall, find out what hours Santa will be there — & then go when he’s not around. There won’t be as many kids & babies around to deal with then. –The Road Less Travelled
• I manage to work in a reference to Katie in every edition of our Christmas letter … usually in relation to our volunteer work. But I like being able to remind people that she was real & is still a part of our lives. My Christmas card itself usually has either an angel or Classic Pooh theme (which was also the theme of her nursery). I know other people who use angel stamps on their cards as a subtle reminder of their lost baby(s). –The Road Less Travelled
• This year I solved my problem in the cowardly fashion … I offered to work. I work at a domestic violence shelter, which is open 24/7 … So I figure I might as well. I can get paid double time as well, so it’s all sorts of awesome. –An Unwanted Path
• I started listening to holiday music in August this year. I’m using it as my own private technique for connecting with the joy of the season early enough that I won’t suddenly get trampled in the crush of child-centric images, events, and conversations coming my way during the actual season. I want this year to be different! –Lisa
• Instead of focusing on what I can’t handle, I’m heading into the season excited about the possibilities of the new traditions TH and I will make this year. I’m just going to roll with the punches. If I’m really excited about putting up the tree, we’re going to do it and not wait. If I can’t handle being around our nephew, TH can go and I can stay home. I’m not going to force myself into any situation, and I’m just going to accept where I am and be there. –Kim
• I just bought three bottles of my favorite wine yesterday to take to my mom’s… and I don’t plan to share any of it. –Guera!
• I think I’m going to plan something for just me and my husband so we’ve got an event during the holiday season to look forward to. It’s either going to be going out to a really nice restaurant or going on a trip (or possibly both!).  —Sushigirl
• I’m a big fan of lights. Lights inside and out of the house. But putting up the tree where cute handmade kid ornaments should be was always too hard. So I just put up lights – it goes back to finding out what you can do to enjoy the season and doing it. —BigPandMe
• Two years ago at Christmas right after my 3rd miscarriage I was in a really bad place and dreading the holidays. My mom suggested that instead of our normal Christmas Eve meal we make homemade Chinese food – egg rolls, stir fry, etc. It turned out great and for whatever reason not having to face the traditional meal made it so much better. Don’t get me wrong – it was still really hard – but I got through it and was happy that I spent time with my family instead of avoiding the whole holiday. –Becky
• And “work” can also mean volunteer work. Nobody is going to get mad at you for selflessly devoting your time and skills at a soup kitchen instead of sitting around the family table (or for rushing from the family table to do said work). Or they might, but they’ll end up looking like the bad guy, not you. —Bea
• Remember it’s just a day. It has now power. You don’t have to enjoy it. Lots of people don’t. —Mali
• Sometimes things suck, and sometimes, you have to feel what you’re going to feel while things suck. That it’s okay to mourn and it’s okay to cry and it’s okay to not pull yourself up by the bootstraps based on someone else’s timetable rather than your own. And that sometimes, when you push yourself to do something, you find that you actually derived a great deal of peace from the experience. Such as sitting down at the Thanksgiving table when you’re sort of dreading being around people. –Me (from last year)

How do you get through the holiday season when you’re feeling less than your best?

Updated with an additional video at the bottom

We obviously went to bed too early this weekend because we totally missed the Adele sketch on Saturday Night Live.  If you did too, Jezebel has a video clip of the sketch of people crying over Adele’s “Someone Like You.”

Come on, admit it, you’ve bawled your eyes out listening to that song.  I remember the first time I heard it — Josh called me across the room to see the video because a friend of his had linked to it on Facebook. (Though the video I remember had Adele sitting on a chair alone in an empty room — does anyone know what I’m talking about?)  I got to the second verse and then started crying like it was the day before my period, and the ridiculous part is that I’m freakin’ married.

Other things that induce a good cry: The Velveteen Rabbit; when all the students stand on their desks during Dead Poet Society and say, “captain, my captain;” the life montage at the beginning of Up; the post-death scene in Bridge to Terabithia; the pre-car scene in The Confessions of Max Tivoli; and talking about the French revolution (sorry, that last one may just be me, but I’ve never been able to teach the French revolution without dissolving into tears).

What do you use to induce a good cry?

Update:

I had to include the commercial I mention in the comment section below.  I’m bawling again after watching it so I could get the embed code to add it to the post.

I was not planning to read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson at all.  I mean, yes, perhaps, at some way distant future date if it became available on Overdrive, but certainly not now in the middle of all the hoopla about the book.

The twins and I were early to meet Josh for tapas so we ducked into the library to see if they had the soundtrack to Evita (all part of their much dreaded musical theater education — dreaded both by them as well as Josh, especially when I pop Chess into the CD player).  And there, positioned right by the door, staring at us as we entered from a display case was Steve Jobs’s piercing stare.

The Wolvog immediately let out a breath and quietly said, “Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve.”

Which sort of decided it then and there.

We are reading it together, by which I mean that I am reading it after he goes to bed at night and then telling him stories in the morning.  Relaying Jobs’s stench from his lack of bathing coupled with his fruitarian diet, and stories about the Woz (which often strike me as a better personality match for my son; they both have the same sweet temperament, wondrous view of the world, and a fondness for dogs), and all the kismet moments that shaped the computer industry.  Discussion about adoption plays heavily in the first 100 pages of the book due to both his own adoption as well as the daughter he had with Chrisann Brennan.

I thought I would place my thoughts here.  The Wolvog and I are reading it together, but if you want to hear the story, you can figuratively read it with me too.

Special

As we walked around the library holding the copy of the biography, people kept saying to us, “you are so lucky!  That just got put out ten minutes ago.”  It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  The librarian finally finished logging the new book into their system, she set it on the shelf, and I walked in at that moment.

I’ve never really had people comment on the luck of our library borrowing choices, but as I carried that book, I felt like I had a spotlight shining on me.  It actually made me feel fairly uncomfortable; maybe not the first time someone said it, but certainly by the third time.

So it was interesting that one of the first ideas covered in the book is the idea of being special.  The concept of specialness, and do people enjoy feeling as if they’re set apart; even when the apartness comes from something such as intelligence or luck.

While other people in the book hypothesized about how Steve Jobs’s birth and adoption shaped his personality, Steve Jobs himself dismissed their theories.  And frankly, I’m going to go with Steve Jobs — the adoptee — on this one and believe him (I know other people are second-guessing him, which seems sort of strange for one person to say that they understand more about the other person’s life than the person who lived it).  He didn’t feel the adoption itself shaped him at all, but rather being told by his parents that he was special, that he was chosen, that he was waited for and loved beyond belief — that is what he felt played a bigger role in how he saw his place in the world.

In the book, Isaacson writes,

Jobs dismissed this.  “There’s some notion that because I was abandoned, I worked very hard so I could do well and make my parents wish they had me back, or some such nonsense, but that’s ridiculous,” he insisted.  “Knowing I was adopted may have made me feel more independent, but I have never felt abandoned.  I’ve always felt special.  My parents made me feel special” (page 5).

The book continues to talk for many many many more pages about how that concept of believing he was special affected how he interacted with others, how he believed in himself, and how he convinced others that the impossible was possible.

At the same time, I have read on plenty of donor-conceived and adoptee blogs (and I’m sure, in the future, IVF-conceived childrens’ blogs) that being told you are special can be damaging.  That it can make a person feel apart, and not in the good way that Jobs describes where he feels more loved, more cherished than other children.  Apartness can sometimes simply feel alienating.

I can sense from the twins that uniqueness has both a push-me-pull-you effect: they love being twins and different from all the singletons, but they don’t like being different from all the singletons.  They like to hear stories about their preterm birth and the NICU days, but they don’t want their friends to know about it or see pictures of them from that time period.  They don’t really know yet that children are conceived in other ways than in a fertility clinic (oh, this is the fantastic side effect of having non-sexually conceived children.  You can tell them how they were made without ever having to mention sex), but they have been told countless times how much they were wanted, how hard we wished for them, how long we waited for them, and how much they are loved.  There has not been a day of their life that has passed without the two of us uttering the words, “I love you” to them.  We tell them they are brilliant and funny — we tell them that they are great writers and artists and computer programmers.

Because all those things are true, and I don’t think there are real benefits from withholding effusiveness.  Which is not to say that there can’t be damage from that effusiveness, but I don’t think the opposite is true — I don’t think there are actual benefits from not complimenting your child.

Which is along way of asking how does one know which way it will go?  For Steve Jobs, he says that hearing all his life that he was special and wanted and chosen gave him the confidence to plow ahead, charting his own course rather than taking the familiar road of a standard engineering path.  I might not have my iPad if Clara and Paul Jobs hadn’t conveyed that idea to their son.  And at the same time, for so many children, they have the opposite reaction.  They talk about the burden of specialness.  The apartness that comes from feeling the weight of their parent’s love, especially when they were brought into a family after a long wait or in a unique manner.

And without knowing how it will go, how do we know how loudly to turn on the message?  Do we whisper it?  Say it in a normal tone of voice?  Scream it like Clara and Paul Jobs?  Not say it at all?  How do we know when we also hear that volume counts — that the amount we say things can shift a life in one direction or another?

One Friday night, we went to a new restaurant in town to pick up dinner to go.  When they first opened a few months ago, there was nothing vegetarian on the menu.  I am not exaggerating: there was no salad, no side dish, no appetizer — not one thing on the entire menu that was vegetarian.  I wrote the restaurant owner and received back a message saying that he just didn’t care whether or not vegetarians came and ate.  I’m assuming he changed his mind after four months of being in business because he added three vegetarian options to his menu this week: a salad, a soup, and an appetizer.  We went over to get dinner as a sign of support — a thank you for changing your menu and accommodating non-meat eaters.

Dinner to go was fine.  We both got the soup, which probably was good in the restaurant, but became gummy and clumpy on the transition from restaurant to home.  ChickieNob tasted it and loved it, so I told her I would take her to dinner there two days later on Sunday (though we wouldn’t do carryout again).

Sunday rolled around and we got ourselves together for dinner.  The Wolvog couldn’t eat anything on the menu — not the vegetarian options nor the meat options — which is usually the case when we eat out.  At most restaurants, we bring him his own dinner in a bag, explain why to the waitstaff, and order our meals while the Wolvog eats his sandwich.  We have never run into a problem — from small establishments to big chain restaurants.  So far, everyone has been accommodating and understanding.

Until Sunday night.

I made his sandwich and put it in the bag and returned for the second time in the same weekend to the same restaurant.  It was dinner time; two tables had patrons and the rest were empty.  We started to sit down, and I explained to the waiter that my daughter and I would be ordering full meals, but my son couldn’t because there was nothing on the menu he could eat.  The waiter shrugged his shoulders and told us that he couldn’t allow my son to eat his meal because it was against the restaurant policy.  I politely pointed out that it wasn’t a health code violation to bring in outside food in our state, and I wasn’t doing it to be rude — he literally couldn’t eat one thing on their menu but my daughter and I wanted to patron their restaurant.  The waiter shrugged again and told me that we could eat our meal now and the Wolvog could eat his meal out of the restaurant later on (you know, because small children are excellent at waiting an additional hour to eat).  The manager stood there too and agreed with the waiter.  When I told him that we wouldn’t be able to stay, we again got a shoulder shrug and a goodbye.

Restaurants are private businesses and should set their own boundaries.   This obviously isn’t the only place in town to eat, and we’ll be fine giving our money to other businesses instead of this restaurant.  The restaurant suffered more than we did — we went to a different place and got a fantastic meal that all of us could eat.  The restaurant clearly wasn’t busy and lost out on the money from having a table filled, even if only two out of the three people were ordering main dishes.  But still, the ChickieNob is upset that this restaurant is now an impossibility when her brother is in tow (and I don’t think I would patron it regardless due to the way they refused to accommodate) and we lost out on the convenience of having a restaurant to patron that’s nearby vs. driving several miles to get to a similar restaurant (one that serves the same type of food but has multiple vegetarian options and not only allows my son to bring his sandwich, but gives him a pair of chopsticks to pick it up with so he can feel like the rest of the family).

You can obviously sense my take on things, but what do you think?  It’s not really a case of right or wrong, but perhaps poor business practices vs. demanding customer.  What would you do in this situation?  And where is the line — when is it okay to make these types of special requests of a restaurant — if ever?  Is it only okay for allergens, or do swallowing issues, religious reasons, or trying to stick to a diet count?

More questions appear (from me and others) in the comment section below.