HOLIDAY GREETINGS

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM RICK, LEE, EMMY AND BUDDY

May the new year bring all of us the opportunity to find inner peace, enough prosperity to feel safe once again, and a really good pair of slip-on walking shoes with cushioned heels.

THE ROLLERCOASTER

I started this blog with the tag line jesting of already having reached the pinnacle of being over the hill. It was meant as an indictment about how we’re now riding the downside of a rollercoaster and it’s moving at mach speed. The upside of this is the thrill you get with the downward rush, the downside is the ride is over way too quickly. I thought the tag line was a bit tongue in cheek but now I think there is more truth than fiction here. Here are some reasons why:

1. When your fourteen year-old daughter smirks at your hairless calves accusing you of shaving them and you have to explain how several decades of wearing too tight jeans has rubbed the hair of your legs. Nature’s depilatory has finally won out and now my legs are as smooth as an octogenarian’s bottom.
2. When you take-off for the supermarket because you ran out of toilet paper and all you come home with is a box of double cream filled Oreos.
3. When you think Betty White is beginning to look pretty hot.
4. When you realize you haven’t changed your underwear in two days and you don’t care because you know nobody else will.
5. When you can’t read the ticker on your 52” HDTV even with your glasses on.
6.  When the guy next door asks your partner if he can meet his dad and the dad turns out to be you.
7. When you realize you bought your winter dress coat in 1982 and you don’t consider it be vintage.
8. When you walk past a plate glass window and assume the reflection peering back at you is some old homeless person wearing your clothes
9. When you hear Phil on Modern Family refer to WTF as “why the face” and you don’t get the joke.
10. When your partner of thirty years calls you from his colonoscopy and says they found out he has cancer.

FACING THE HOLIDAY BLUES

The harsh fluorescent lights of the Walgreens drugstore made everyone look sick even when they weren’t. It was the Sunday after Black Friday, early evening. She was maybe in her early fifties, dressed in black but very stylish for a Sunday night in the Midwest. Her hair was dyed a soft red, not a brassy color red but the color of faded rose petals. It was unseasonably warm. She wore a black shawl flecked with platinum over a loose black blouse and black Argentinean gaucho pants covering the tops of her high-heeled black boots with the slouchy folds indicative of fine leather. She almost bent down to touch my shoulder but then she walked away, down the aisle of Christmas candy and outdoor lights. I couldn’t get up off the floor. I stayed squatting, my knees bent with my hind end resting on my heels, the box of lights clutched in my hands. I couldn’t believe there were still boxes with the image of our old house in Andes cleaving to the shelves of a Midwest drugstore. Each year I think it’ll be over, that the supply will have dribbled out and a new home will appear on the infinite rows of boxed Holiday lights, a newly crowned symbol of a Merry Christmas. It’s a simple image of icicle lights outlining the eaves of our old house shot with a star filter so the lights seem to twinkle. The picture was taken with a hint of snow on the ground at sunset when the sky seems painted with magenta and deep blue, a huge Douglas fir silhouetted in the background. Our antique white wicker furniture put back on the covered porch completing the vignette. I fight the urge to begin ripping the box apart, my fingers making deep grooves in the cardboard. The holidays bring with them memories, memories that now cut like knives on my attempted recovery. It seems as if hours have gone by. I had only come in to pick up some black and white film so Emmy could finish her photography assignment. I never intended to spend any time here paralyzed on the floor, held captive by a photo. A photo that unfolded like a scrapbook in my mind of past Thanksgivings our friends lined up the back staircase with sated smiles the snow circling around the kitchen windows. Then the harsh image of old toilets lined up across our front yard put there by a neighbor who wanted to see us gone. The joy that house gave us and the pain it had to endure all collided in that unexpected moment over a box of Christmas lights on a shelf in a holiday aisle in a drugstore in the middle of the Midwest. I found the strength to rise from the floor and make my way to the cashier. The lady in black stood ahead of me at the checkout counter. She didn’t look back at me clutching the film I had come in to buy perched on top of a box of holiday lights I couldn’t leave behind nor shake from my memory. It seemed better to purchase the memory and erase one more box from the shelf of regret and wait for a new Christmas where the past is the past.  

NEW TRADITIONS

It seems my entire family is a little short on cash these days making the holidays more worry than wonder. Gone are the days, at least temporarily, when Christmas Eve meant a room so packed with gifts the ritual of opening them would run well into the wee hours of Christmas day. Holidays were always my mom’s domain, the goal that propelled her through the year. She taught us well in the principle it is just as good to receive, as it is to give. Our personal Santa had the mysterious ability to find the exact time we tiny children were out of the house so he could fill the holiday decorated living room with packages that reached well beyond our eight-year-old shoulders. My mom would begin the planning
(and the purchasing) of the following year’s gift parade on December 26^th, not leaving a minute wasted as she boarded her buying sleigh for the next twelve months. She’d make lists of who was getting what, always making sure that everyone had the same amount of wrapped items tallied within her ruled spiral notebooks. If money was running short, it was off to the blood bank to donate a pint and pick up a few more bucks to buy what she knew we absolutely needed. Alzheimer has taken time out of the equation for her. She can no longer measure the three hundred and sixty-five days between Christmas’ and she has long ago put away her spiral notebooks, so it is up to us to carry on for her.
Our traditions are no longer about quantity but about the importance of family and who can make the rest of us laugh so hard the tears run down our cheeks or the pee leaks onto our seats. Here’s how we’re doing it this year:

Long ago my mom made patchwork stockings for all of us. We’ve managed to keep them and hang them on the mantle or along the staircase every year. Most them have our names embroidered on them but as relationships have changed we’ve had to go with pinned on index cards to accommodate the yearly newcomers. In deference to the economy we’ve each been given three names we’re responsible for letting our imaginations go wild devising the perfect gift for ten dollars or under. After the stockings have been opened there’s a small intermission for dessert before the real holiday giving begins.

Here’s where we’ve instigated the anonymous gift wars known as dumpster diving. Everyone brings a wrapped gift that they either found on the street or scooped up for less than a saw buck. All the gifts are placed in the center of the room with all of us sitting in a circle eyeing the packages anticipating which are really good gifts and which are, well, not so good. We pass a hat filled with numbers. Each person draws a number assigning him or her a position in the gift selection queue. Whoever draws number one gets to select the first mystery package and either delicately or ravenously unwrap their chosen treasure. They get to hold on to the gift of their choice until it’s number two’s turn. Lucky number two makes his selection, unwraps his gift and then decides if he likes it or not. If he decides what number one got was better than what he picked he can switch with number one and hold on to the better gift until it’s number three’s turn. Now number three and all subsequent drawers have the opportunity of surveying the field after their pick and decide if they want to swap with anyone that preceded them. The exchange goes on until everyone has picked a gift and then lucky number one gets one more chance to evaluate the plethora of bounty and make the final selection. Last year’s most desired item was the hand decorated Christmas vest complete with a three-dimensional reindeer and little felt mice. The mice were courtesy of my mom’s handiwork from decades ago.

The last exchange of the evening involves bringing all of the things you never wanted and piling them in the middle of the floor, unwrapped. The dice come out and everyone takes turns trying to roll doubles and an opportunity at snatching something off the pile whether you want it or not. The same rule applies with snatching and trading until all the refuse in the middle of the floor has been taken. Some things will make it home, some will get as far as the trash can. Other than real gifts for anyone under the age of consent the point is to laugh and enjoy what the time we have together. That’s something money can’t buy.

UNDERWEAR DEFICIENCIES

Yesterday I went to my first circuit training workout. The kind of workout meant for people with more stamina than brains, the kind of workout where your sweat really stinks, the kind of workout that wipes out every worry about your to-do-list because it’s overshadowed by the pain that has seized every sinew in your musculature. This wasn’t just sweating to the oldies. One of my sister, Ebby’s, best friends is a woman slightly younger than I am who managed to survive raising a set of triplets now in their early thirties. Not only did Carla survive the rigors of child raising but where others have resorted to letting motherhood enlarge their cabooses Carla still maintains the body of a woman her daughter’s friends would envy and her son’s friends would hoot at behind his back. It turns out one of their kids is a bean counter by day and a tri-athlete dominatrix by night and weekends. This whole circuit system was Laura’s idea and for some inexplicable reason her bother and her parents have volunteered to be her guinea pigs trainees. Why Ebby got involved with this is still unclear and why I decided to go along, I can’t explain. Maybe it was the thirty-four inch waistband I’ve been forced to invest in, maybe it was my secret desire to apply for Survivor, or maybe I was trying to capture a second shot at my glory days. Take your pick, I’ll admit to any and all of the above.

I should have realized I was way out of my element when getting ready I discovered I didn’t own a pair of sweat pants. Now I do exercise on a semi-regular basis but it’s usually on my mini-Stairmaster in my underwear in the privacy of my bedroom. Only Matt and Merideth are privy to my moaning and groaning. Group workouts were never my thing. I rifled through Rick’s drawers until I found a pair of sweatpants that fit once I loosened the drawstring to its maximum extension. I had just enough room left to tie a single knot hoping it would hold. What I didn’t take into consideration was what I put on underneath the sweats. Living on the poverty line has forced me to give up my Calvins and buy my underwear at Wal-Mart where I can get three pair of China made u-trough for the price of one leg of most name brands. The problem with these non-union mid-length tightie whities is they tend to loose their elasticity after a dozen or so washings. Although, even with the elastic deficiency they tend to stay in place with a snug pair of jeans, but with a pair of loose sweats…not so much. I didn’t understand this until Laura, our tri-athlete task-mistress, barked out our first assignment: a run around the block, a half-mile trip to horror. Laura was kind enough to let us walk up the initial hill and sort of get our swagger going, but then the jog began. I was okay for the first hundred yards but after that I could sense a bit of slippage happening under my sweats. Now this was the first time I had met Carla’s kids so modesty wasn’t going to allow me to stuff my hand down inside my sweats in a nasty attempt to grab my underwear and hook them back up to where they belonged. Besides the knot I had tied was so tight there wasn’t room for my belly and a searching hand and arm as well. By the time I had rounded the next corner I had dropped to last place and my underwear had dropped to knee high. I was a homeboy in disguise, and my pants were quickly approaching the ground. My running had slowed to a waddle as my knees were now locked in 100% cotton bondage. Finally I realized the sweats had pockets and if I stuffed my hands in the pockets I could just reach the top band of my underwear. I was now running knock-kneed and bent over in a ridiculous game of pocket pool. Any attempt at proving age is not a barrier to physical fitness was washed away with the pathetic image of my Quasimoto form limping along the streets on North Madison. All my fellow athletes were kind enough to bow their heads as I made the last breathless turn into the driveway. How I would survive the circuit workout that stood ahead of me was almost more than my embarrassed butt could handle. Next time I’ll remember why god invented jock straps; of course, I don’t own one of those either.

WHEN I CAN NO LONGER HEAR HIS VOICE

Every night before I fall asleep I say a little prayer and list all of those people important to my life. I hold the sound of their names long enough for their faces to materialize behind my closed lids. It’s a form of meditation, a way to slow down the adrenalin rush of the day, a rush that can make falling asleep weigh like a failure for the night.  As the minutes pile up on those nights when sleep keeps running away and leaving me with its angry sister, insomnia, I try to push away the intruding worries and focus on those things that transport me to a place of peace. Sometimes I focus on a trilogy of images that always make me smile: Emmy dancing down lower Broadway in the rain, Stephania, our Italian hostess’ smile, and Dorothy Lyman’s red velvet cupcakes, the ones with a single red hot jelly bean perched on top. I’m also not above using the simple mantra l learned from Elizabeth Gilbert in “Eat Pray Love”, Ham-sa, “I am that”. There are times I am that desperate to think as a part-time practitioner I can numb myself to sleep through spirituality. This hardly ever works. It’s like suddenly praying to God for a miracle when you’ve lived the majority of your life believing yourself to be an atheist.  And then there are times I return to the visions of those I love, the ones I started out with in my beginning prayer. When this happens it’s no longer about falling asleep. It’s about memory. It’s about engaging their assistance in fighting evil, the evil that comes from those nighttime battles where negativity and a sense a failure pound on your castle walls crumbling the ramparts of your self-confidence. It’s when I become a little kid and look to Mom and Dad to shield me from harm, now a mother in the midst of Alzheimer and a father dead almost twenty-five years.

Last night was one of those nights. The battle was raging out of my control. I couldn’t see the progress we were making. It was covered in a thick blanket of fog. My mind was my enemy catapulting thoughts of despair at my sleepless self. When the red velvet cupcakes and Ham-sa had lost their strength and succumbed to my angry mind I tried to pull up my dad and dress him in armor to defend my self-esteem and ward off the evil thoughts of self- destruction. I called him into battle. I heard my voice plead with him for protection. His visage stood there dressed in metal and chainmail but his response was barely a whisper. I couldn’t hear his voice, not with any clarity. Age and time where colliding. I realized that his memory was beginning to slip away. I was losing his sound. I could still see him, his thin-lipped smile and wire-rimmed glasses. I could see his flattop haircut saved from the military look his generation held onto even in old age. But the audio track I had been able to play of his laugh and his selective wisdom was playing like an old record all crackly and scratched. Modern technology had given me photos I could go back to, to reinforce his image. Memories of events could still play over and over again, but his ability to tell me what to do was fading away. I was slowly losing the baritone of his sound, the one thing I really wanted. How long do we get to hold onto that part of a person? Was twenty-five years the limit? How long will my daughter be able to hold on to me after I’m gone? Will it be long enough? Will she even want to ask? I hope so, and I hope I’ll be able to respond.

A SIDEBAR ON THE WAY TO SUCCESS

We’ve been friends with Jaye for years and we’ve known her husband, Joe, for as long as Jaye has known him. We were kids together. Jaye and I went to the same college, passing each other in circles of friends we had in common but never finding the time to be introduced. It was only after we all found ourselves in New York working for an industrial showbiz production company that Jaye, Rick and I became friends. We all worked the twenty hour shifts of twenty-somethngs trying to climb our way to our fates.

After Rick had escaped the A/V production business and become a graduate of the interior design educational system and Jaye had found Joe, the love of her life, our lives collided again. Jaye needed design help and asked Rick to be her guide. Now two homes and a pied-a-terre later we are still meandering hand-in-hand through a never-ending design journey.

As happens with many long-term relationships the net of acquaintances brought in expands as new introductions multiply into a greater circle of new friends. Jaye has three nieces, her sister’s daughters, two of which live in Wisconsin. Tracy is here in Madison and Joy is in Milwaukee having just passed the bar she joined a law firm located there. Joy is also getting married in June 2011 and true to her generosity Jaye has involved herself in the wedding planning. Here’s where we come in. True to our inability to understand that maybe enough is enough and since the wedding is going to take place here in Madison, we have offered our services playing the role of flamboyant wedding planners. We thought we needed another line to add to our business cards along with interior designers, event planners, graphic designers, home and garden retailers, design bloggers and now wedding registrars. What the heck.

So if you get a chance please go to this site:

http://www.madisonmagazine.com/Madison-Magazine/Shopping-Style/Wedding-Contest/

and register to vote for Joy so she can win the wedding contest sponsored by Madison Magazine. It would be great publicity for us and a real kick for Joy and Steve. Oh, by the way, Steve’s last name is Page and Miss Joy Schnackenbeck couldn’t be more pleased.