Jingle All the Way

"I told you it was outside, Granma," Adella said.

And so it was. Marshall's favorite Christmas book, Jingle Bugs. For two days I had been looking for the book. I had sorted through three baskets of my one hundred Christmas books. (Yes, my Christmas book addiction is due for an intervention.) I looked under the couch and in the toy baskets. But it was just as Adella said. When the snow cleared, there was the book in the middle of my front lawn. According to Adella, Marshall had dropped the book on his way to the car. If only I had listened to her. If only she had just picked it up.

I am sad. This book is important. It is the first book that Marshall will sit and read with me cover to cover. I like to think it is because Granma's lap is warm and cuddly and my engaging rendition is worthy of a Grammy. But I know it is really because two-and-a half-year-old Marshall likes to be in control. He enjoys pulling the tab that reveals Santa Bug jumping out of the chimney. He likes lifting the beautifully wrapped present flap that reveals three different sizes of Gift-wrapped Bugs. He especially loves the final page, which has a yellow, shiny Starbug at the top of a Christmas tree that flashes on and off as "Jingle Bells" plays, for we always play a little game, a sort of singing version of musical chairs. When he pulls the tab out to start the music, I sing along to the first verse of "Jingle Bells." When he pushes the tab in to stop the music, I stop singing. We play back and forth, starting and stopping, for several rounds. Because the song is cued to always start at the beginning, I rarely make it past "Dashing through the snow." Only if he is distracted do I make it to "Jingle bells." We enjoy our little game immensely. Marshall enjoys controlling how Granma responds. I enjoy sitting before a book with my grandson, my first step in teaching him to read.

The retrieved book is very wet. Two days in the snow will do that. I am sad. Very sad. I love Jingle Bugs. So much so that I replaced my original copy of it, the one I used to read to my own children, after a rather unfortunate mishap three years ago. On that fateful day, Adella, who was two, had pulled out the music tab on the final page so far that I could not push it back in, creating a "Jingle Bell" hell. It was truly "The Song that Never Ends." I tried and tried to push and pull that worn tab to stop the music. All to no avail. 

Then when I could not silence the book, I tried muffling its sound, certain its battery would soon die. I put the book between the cushions of my couch and under several pillows on my bed. I even hid it in the garage. But I could not escape the noise. Oh, the noise! So I confess that I, an avowed book lover, then committed bibliocide, ripping and stabbing the book, crushing its very innards until it was silenced.

After a day of drying, Jingle Bugs 2.0 is very fragile. We sit down to read it. Marshall unintentionally pulls off the wings of the Snowbug, and we cannot unstick the tab that moves the Jingle Bugs on the mistletoe. But the battery is still strong. Perhaps too strong. The snow has not short-circuited it. The book still plays "Jingle Bells" and its star still brightly flashes. As we play our game, Marshall pulling the tab and me singing, I begin to worry. How long will this tab, weakened by two days in the elements, last. Will Marshall repeat history and launch Jingle Bugs 2.0 in an endless round of its theme song?

I carefully weigh my options. I can distract Marshall and then hide the book. But, I think, what's a grandmother for if not to teach her grandchild to appreciate books. Or we can read the book until it breaks. But such a step risks my very sanity. 

Or I can simply order Jingle Bugs 3.0. And so I shall. True Christmas classics never die. Thanks to batteries and Amazon.

Christmas Calendar Remorse

Granma cheated. Adella asked to open a second present from our family Christmas calendar similar to the one Pop Pop had as a child--a blue Danish calendar with twenty-four red numbers and little rings for presents. Granma had missed the mark with Adella’s first present, a glitter pen. Because we were a day behind, both Adella and Marshall opened a present that day. Adella looked at the glitter pen and then at the light up Paw Patrol ball Marshall opened up. She was not satisfied. So, Adella, being Adella, asked to open a second present. Granma, being Granma, said “Yes.”

Adella tore into the second package, a small Paw Patrol coloring sheet and crayons. It far better suited her expectations. But almost immediately she began experiencing Christmas calendar remorse. I had allowed her to skip ahead, breaking tradition by opening a present two days early. One present per day was a hard and fast rule in her five-year-old mind, and she had defied the true order of Christmas.

Adella pouted in her remorse until she came up with a solution. “I know Granma,” she said. “We can wrap this and put it back up on the Christmas calendar.”

“Well. . . ,” I said.

“I promise I won’t remember what it is,” she added.

Highly unlikely. But I understood her remorse. I often experience remorse. Usually after a major purchase like an appliance, a car, or a house. Any remorse over a Paw Patrol toy, however, would be related to my succumbing yet again to a heavily hyped, mass marketed cheap tchotchke.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I am sure we will have enough presents.”

I knew what Adella did not know. First, she did not know that I abhor wrapping presents. I was not about to wrap a present a second time to assuage her remorse. Second, she did not know that the traditions surrounding the Christmas calendar are not as codified as she believes. During the busy years when her mother was a teenager, the presents almost never got wrapped and attached to the calendar. I simply threw trinkets at my three kids. Third, she did not recognize the generous margin of error in Granma’s Christmas calendar, for Adella is not at my house everyday in December. And in case of raging sibling rivalry, I have a generous stash of extra presents in my bedroom. And finally, she did not know (and perhaps will never know) that one year early in my marriage, I ate all the chocolates in an Advent calendar my mother-in-law sent me in a single sitting.

I do not know what happened to the Paw Patrol coloring sheet and crayons. It mysteriously disappeared. More than likely it found its way into one of the myriad of backpacks or suitcases that Adella dutifully totes between my home and hers. But I do know that her remorse was short-lived. Today, without pause or remorse, she gleefully opened a new present.

That Damn Car

Adella and I are cuddle bugs. We are cuddling in the comforter on Uncle Daniel’s bed with a copy of Where’s Waldo? Adella keeps poking me because I keep nodding off. She wants my help. Even after thirty years of practice, I still need a few minutes to find Waldo on any given page.

Adella keeps chattering away about her upcoming Christmas visit to Grandma Kemp as we search. Her chatter is soporific--I am battling to keep my eyes open. I am not winning.

Then Adella says it.

“I wish I didn’t have to go in that damn car,” Adella says.

I sit up in bed. I am now wide awake.

“Which car?” I say calmly. I darn well know which car. But I want to give her a chance to correct herself.

“That damn car,” she says.

No doubt about it. She has most definitely said damn. Damn effectively expresses how she feels about the interminably long six-hour ride from New Jersey to Ohio. (Sometimes eight hours, when you add in all those potty breaks.) Adella, however, does not sense the weight this word carries.

I do not want to draw attention to the word, making it all the more tantalizing. So I employ that time-honored parental technique--I choose to ignore her colorful language.

“It is a long time to ride in the car,” I say. “But isn’t it fun when you get there?”

And as she chatters about her Christmas plans in Ohio, I wonder just where she has learned this word. Adella is only five. Except for preschool and church, she spends nearly every waking moment with either her parents or me.

Adella’s foray into expressive language reminds me of a car ride twenty years ago, a routine jaunt to the preschool to drop off my three-year-old son Daniel. Startled when the car in front of me suddenly stopped short, I slammed on my brakes and sucked in an enormous breath of air. And then, without skipping a beat, Daniel shouted out from the backseat, “Damn it!” 

That day Daniel reformed me of peppering my language with an occasional salty word like hell or damn.

Where did Adella pick up her first four-letter word? Was it at preschool? Probably not from the nuns or her teachers. Another child on the playground? Perhaps. But I sure as heck know, it wasn’t from me.