Christmas Present

Decades ago, my mother-in-law Alberta Stornetta purchased an advent calendar in Denmark and a tradition was born. The calendar had twenty-four tiny rings to attach twenty-four tiny gifts. Alberta’s children, my children, and now my grandchildren have counted the days to Christmas by opening a tiny present each day in December. All the presents for 2019 were wrapped yesterday afternoon and it was Pop Pop’s job to get them tied to the calendar. When inclement weather prevented the grandchildren from coming for Sunday dinner, he postponed his task. 

It is the first thing Adella noticed when she came in the house today. 

“There are only six presents on the calendar, Granma,” she says.

“Don’t worry,” I reply. “All the gifts are wrapped. And you can help me put them on the calendar.”

No school today. It is a snow day. And I need her help to get them all up before the boys show up with her parents.

"Why do we always start with the youngest child?" she asks as she hands me a present for Max.

“Because Max is a baby. He can’t be as patient as you,” I reply. “Besides you get to have the special last present on Christmas Eve.” 

Not entirely a satisfactory answer. But she drops the subject. I dread the day she figures out that I send her cousin Jim, an only child, twenty-four gifts, while she gets just eight because she has two siblings. On that day, I intend to argue that she gets double the presents because her parents also have a Christmas calendar. I hope that answer will satisfy her for at least a few more years, and that by the time her math skills advance to the level that she realizes she’s still at a net loss compared to Jim, she won’t care.

She moves on. 

“I know what this one is,” she says. “It’s socks.” 

I guess I am a little predictable, I think, as I tie them to the calendar. Target predictably has inexpensive Christmas socks at the front of the store. And I predictably shop at Target each year for very predictable Christmas calendar gifts.

“Oh, oh,” she squeals as she brings another gift to me to tie. “This one’s a gift card. Let’s put it up on the third, so I can open it tomorrow.” 

Hmm, I think. That’s the first time I’ve given a gift card. Maybe it’s less about predictability and more about her ever improving ability to guess. And then I think she probably won’t be as as excited when she realizes what the cash equivalent is on the card. There was no Kristen Wiig at the Target counter when I purchased it. The salesperson stared at me unbelieving when I asked how little money I could put on a card.

“Granma, this one’s a chocolate Santa,” Adella says as she hands it to me.

I marvel at her tacticle skills. Guess she must have used a little logic as well.

“This one can’t be a chocolate bar or it would break,” she says as she hands me the largest present. Then she adds, “Oops. Guess it is a chocolate bar.”

In fact, it was Marshall’s chocolate bar. “We just won’t tell him. Perhaps he won’t notice,” I suggest as I tie it on.

“What’s this one?” she asks and I delight that I have finally stumped her. Perhaps it is interfaith confusion. It is Hanukkah geld, neatly stacked so I could wrap it.

At last, a present she doesn’t know. “I won’t tell,” I say. I am tempted to add a line from Santa in one of our favorite Christmas books, Santa Calls: “Some secrets are best left unsolved.” But I know this secret will be solved soon enough.

Then the boys jumble into the room, wet and animated from the snow. Adella and I rush to tie the last two presents on the calendar. 

And I sigh. A sigh of relief because for the thirty-sixth year I have managed to tie twenty-four presents on the calendar lovingly made by my mother-in-law. But my sigh is also tinged with sadness as I realize that Adella, analytical and observant, is on the cusp of making discoveries. Discoveries that will change not only the nature of her Christmas futures, but also mine.

Our Moment

 

When my daughter talked about not attending her graduation, I said, “No. You will attend.” That is because I am a romantic. And I envisioned a grand moment during this momentous occasion. I am also a mother who happens to believe that I play the central role in all of my children’s greatest achievements.

I, not my daughter, wanted her children to watch their mother receive her diploma. I wanted them to appreciate the achievement of their working mother completing a master’s degree in Applied Statistics that she had started while her Adella, her eldest, was a toddler and finished while nursing Max, her third child. I was looking for that grand moment.

I planned it well. We played with the children the day before graduation at Hershey Park. They swam in the swimming pool at the motel that night. And Granma and Pop Pop plied them with donuts and McDonald’s the next day in the hours before the graduation. I had prepared for my moment. Not quite as much as Chrissy. But I had done my part.

I wondered, however, about the wisdom of bringing three small children to the center of Pennsylvania to watch their mother shake a dean’s hand when I saw the sea of mortar boards on the main floor of the Penn State Bryant Jordan Center. I knew it would be a long evening. The commencement speaker was thankfully succinct, the handshakes brief, and the announcer efficient. And yet there were hundreds of graduate students.

Pop Pop, Christian, the kids and I had a nice little perch in a handicapped balcony in the arena, which was designated for families. It had room for the stroller and gave the kids a little more room in which to move. We handed the kids electronics, doled out Sour Patch Kids (their favorites), and fed the baby a bottle. And yet, the line of graduates slowly moved forward like an interminably long inchworm. A surfeit of scholars. And Chrissy was in the last row of master’s students.

We made multiple trips to the bathroom, walked the baby back and forth, and got sodas from the concessions stand. My romantic vision quickly began to evaporate as I toiled in the trenches of childcare. The incongruity of hot dogs and pretzels amidst all the pomp and circumstance blew away any remaining glints.

Then Chrissy stood up. She turned. She waved. And Adella saw her. Adella waved back. I waved. For that brief moment we all connected, mothers and daughters. And I had the moment for which I had come.

Our moment was oh-so-brief. We then had to listen to the names of the doctoral students, and we made a few more trips to the bathroom and concession stand. We soldiered on. And by the time it was all over, we marked the occasion with obligatory but far too perfunctory photos, for Granma and Pop Pop still had to drive across Pennsylvania that night. The kids went back for one more night at their country home, as Adella calls hotels, and for a morning of splashing in the pool.

Driving that Tesla still requires some effort and thought and Pop Pop and Granma, who did not arrive home until 2am, were both very tired this morning when we got up at 6:30 to go teach.

“I’m glad we went,” Pop Pop said after a shower to wake himself up. “It was important to recognize Chrissy’s achievement.”

I, too, am glad. I think. If I weren't so tired, I would revel in the memory of my brief and fleeting moment. One that took years for which to prepare. 

Yes, it was a moment to remember. I think. I am very tired, my mind is foggy, and I'm rushing to make it to my substitute teaching assignment. For you see, while Chrissy is taking a well deserved personal day with her family, I'm still taking care of her kids--her students, that is. Gotta get that BC Calculus quiz printed off before class.

Congratulations, Chrissy.

Do You Know Where Your Son Is?

There was an insistent, authoritative knock on my hotel room door at 7 o'clock this morning. The kind of knock that is accompanied by a police officer shouting, "Open up. This is the police."

Startled at the clatter on this fine Saturday morning, I suspected it was not the police. For I am no criminal. And my three children, two in-laws, and four grandchildren were all sleeping in adjacent rooms. All part of an after Christmas visit to Great-grandmother Stornetta in Annapolis, Maryland.

I sprang from my bed and flew to the door in hopes the knocking would not wake the other guests. Alas, too slow. A second pounding resounded through the hall.

I threw open the door.

There was Jim, my robust, four-year-old grandson, his rocket ship and astronaut in hand.

"Good morning, Granma," he said sweetly. Then he ambled in. It was as though we were repeating a daily ritual.

"Hmmm," I said, with just a more pronounced hint of suspicion in my voice.

He put his rocket ship on the coffee table, knelt down next to it, and set about the business of playing. His astronaut danced in the air around his spaceship.

"Hmmm," I said, this time with a bit of disapproval. My "granma sense" was tingling.

But Jim was tone-deaf.

"Granma," he said, "Can you put this piece away for me. I don't want to lose it."

"Jim," I replied, addressing the matter head on. "Do your parents know where you are?"

"They told me I could come to your room," he replied, quietly, his head down.

My "granma sense" was more than tingling. It was shouting. I suspected that his parents had granted their permission yesterday afternoon, not this morning. Justine and Nathan reside in a different time zone, and they like to slumber late when they are on vacation. I knew they must be nestled in their beds dreaming of empty nests. Or a least the advent on Kindergarten.

I texted them, letting them know I was in possession of their son.

"Hmmm," I said again when there was no response. I decided to let sleeping parents lie.

So they slept and Jim played on. Until he got hungry. Only then did I notice he was shoeless.

I called Nathan. My phone rang several times until it went to voice mail. I called a second time.

"Mmrphrmp," Nathan finally said. Clearly he did not appreciate being so rudely torn from his dreams.

"Do you know where your son is?" I asked. I sounded a bit like the judgmental television announcer on those old public service announcements that used to run at 10 pm, asking parents if they knew where their children were.

"No?" he said, wary of my question and unsure of his answer. He knew Jim.

"Well, he's with me," I said. "And if you give me his shoes I will take him to breakfast."

So after the shoes were passed through the door crack, and after they were donned, Jim and I went to breakfast. Merrily Jim ate his way through eggs, three sausage, two cups of cranberry juice, and a waffle. (He does love his breakfast.)

And as I nursed a cup of orange juice, intermittently cutting a sausage or pouring some syrup, I had an epiphany about those ubiquitous hotel door latches, high above a child's reach. Indeed, when a Stornetta is in residence, those latches are not intended to keep burglars and criminals at bay, nor to allow one to prop open the door in order to quickly grab a bucket of ice from the machine down the hall without having to use a key. Rather the purpose of such latches is to keep Jim in.