Damn the Elf on a Shelf

Contrary to the true spirit of Christmas, I hate Elf on a Shelf.

My kids’ father has an Elf on a Shelf, and so for a time, the kids enjoyed it down there when they would visit during the holidays. Tiny and Chicken Little wanted me to get one, but I would resist. “No,” I would say, “Let that be your father’s tradition and we can have other traditions.” This year though, I lost my common sense and decided we could get an elf. At Barnes and Noble, my son and I looked at all the boxes of elves.  We opened one and looked it over—the box had a hole cut in the plastic window so the little fella could breathe. We reached in and tried to poke it with a finger. The elf looked all skinny and shocked, with cartoonish dilated pupils and a forced smile, like a miniature crack addict in a cheap red suit. “Creepy,” said my son. So at another store, we found similar elves, but these were fuzzy. What a good idea, I thought foolishly, that way the kids will want to touch and play with it. They chose a girl elf and my daughter spent the rest of the evening embellishing her with earrings, a sparkly hair bow, and a tiny tutu for an underskirt. I had to rescue the thing from her, remind Chicken Little about her habit to glom all over things and take over, and passed the elf to Tiny for him to cuddle before bedtime.

But apparently, touching the elf is against the rules. In fact, the elf has lots of rules, and while the kids stood behind me at the store laying out who would do what with the elf and when, what they didn’t tell me until they got home were all the conditions of owning an elf as those applied to parents. As it turns out, you have to move it every night. The elf is really a stool pigeon for Santa. The elf is supposed to leave notes. And there is supposed to be some sort of scavenger hunt. Our third day of owning the elf resulted in a complete melee before school one morning, where I busted Chicken Little for fooling with the elf while the one who was actually to blame allowed his sister to take the heat.  At one point, I announced to the oldest that Mommy had a full-time job and it didn’t include time for fooling with an imaginary toy. Yes, shock, horror, and the corruption of childhood innocence, all on an ordinary Wednesday morning.

We managed to recover somewhat. Our elf has left one note. I have been kind enough to see to the elf’s comfort in our house—the providing of a Kleenex for a nose blowing, the application of chapstick, and even a refreshing yoga workout (downward-facing-elf). There will be no scavenger hunt, but the elf may make her way to the top of the Christmas tree on Christmas morning.

I see some of my friends’ elves have perused liquor cabinets and hung out in the Barbie car to pick up chicks. I celebrate that creativity. Largely, however, I am interested in getting rid of this elf. Is it flammable? Does it have a life expectancy? Does Santa ever recall his elves back to the factory? Parents have told me that they have purchased one elf per child to resolve the tensions created by owning one of Santa’s helpers. I find this to be a sad state of affairs and plan to write Santa immediately about how this recent tradition of Elf on a Shelf is really dividing households and causing pain and consternation. In the meantime, what is the elf really reporting to Santa? “All is well chez Catiche as far as the kids are concerned, but I think the mother needs to be moved to the naughty list.”

New Year's Revolutions and Other Teeny Holiday Glimpses

With the holidays at a close, there is so much I would like to write about, but can just sum up events in a series of snippets. I'll let your imagination fill in the rest. See below:

• Recently, my eleven-year-old told me she had a New Year's revolution. I corrected her, but frankly I like her version of the word better. Keeping promises can be revolutionary. Let's roll with that.

• It took me five minutes to decode my son's complaint to me this Christmas. It began with "aweeweewish." I asked him, "WHAT?" And he repeated, "Aweeweewish you wouldn't use my airpwane to wite a note to schoow." Translation: I really wish. Got it. Note to self: Ask teacher about speech therapist.

• Christmas letters that capitalize on a family's success and perfection can be annoying. The one I sent out this year was short and sweet, but what I really wanted to say was this: Child A lost her cell phone privileges due to downloading $160 worth of games and Child B lost his bus riding privileges. Here's to another year of towing the line. (There was more I wanted to say there, but my husband said I couldn't post it.) If someone sent me a card like that, I'd frame it.

• I became a reluctant vegetarian this year and then was given a Christmas turkey by my company's president. It was delicious. Oh, and this week I had bacon. Is 6 meat-free days out of 7 ok? It's going to have to be. 

• I gave my mom a Kindle for Christmas, which is a little like giving her a crack addiction. We call each other: What did you read this week? It is so wonderfully fun, but I have a hunch nothing else is getting done at her house and her Amazon bill for books might end up looking like what my daughter did to a certain cellphone bill. At least, we are bettering ourselves with our Kindles though, as this week my mom and I read Henry James' Washington Square. I need to reread Wuthering Heights soon. It's like a nineteenth-century Jerry Springer show. Umm, bettering ourselves is a relative concept in light of that last comment.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and may this year be one that is full of goodness. I can say, as hardship has transitioned to simply overwhelming busyness, that I am about as content as I have ever been, and am looking forward to this year-- my husband's hand in mine, our children in our hearts, the idea of home as warm and comforting as ever.

Love to you--

Catiche

Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, and Do I Have Your Home Address?

Yesterday, I took a break from the latest editing gig to update a spreadsheet with addresses from three years of Christmas cards. This might actually mean that my family and friends will receive some kind of holiday note from us next December. I feel organized and restored by having completed a chore that has haunted me for so long. I have sent Christmas cards since I was 12 years old—writing the first ones to kids I met at summer camp. The last two years have been chaotic and I have sent none. Ceasing the creation and mailing of cards has felt like some kind of counter to the holiday spirit. Having lived in six states, I have friends everywhere. I loathe not being able to keep up with each one intimately; the cards, therefore, are especially important.

Each year, I used to mark on the bottom of a card to my former painting professor the words “I still paint” to let him know that he was wrong about at least one of us those years ago. Almost 17 years later (has it been that long?), yes, I still paint—not as actively as I would like, but there are still commissions and sales and the occasional lending of work for some purpose somewhere. Am I Ford Smith or George Rodrigue with financial success and notoriety? No, not yet, and maybe someday or not at all, but the point is to remind my dear teacher that his lessons were not lost on me.

The year I left my first husband, the Christmas card was a simple photo of my children. Without newsletter or further explanation, it read the following: my name restored to its original as printed on my birth certificate, my children’s first and last names, and the complete absence of their father’s name. It said everything by saying nothing, and the responses were tremendous—notes ranging from sorrow and empathy to those that read, “We saw this coming. There are things we knew that we never told you…” A friend from out of state sent a note about his own troubled marriage and an embarrassingly large check to help with Christmas that year. (He and his darling wife are still together, thankfully.)

The past two Christmases, I wanted desperately to send a letter to the world about my new family—my husband, his lovely girls, my two little ones—and I even wrote one, but I could not make myself produce copies and mail them, and we were in the middle of a stressful and distracting custody suit anyhow. I kept asking myself questions about how hard it would be to get addresses of friends from my husband, about whether or not my former in-laws would appreciate a card, and if sending some kind of printed holiday report made me impersonal. (My mother used to hate holiday newsletters and took the time to carefully pen signatures and personal notes by hand on close to 100 cards.) The first married Christmas, I felt that including pictures of my step-daughters would be to take a liberty with them that they were not ready for me to employ—their image, their snippets of life as though I had some kind of claim on them. Plus, were the cards to go to former in-laws, would they take the sight of new family as some kind of slap in the face? 

Things are different now, but last Christmas, I was overwhelmed by the craziness of having an early celebration here with all four children, travelling across three states for another Christmas with my birth family, dropping off my two children for them to have a Christmas event with their father and his step-children, and trying to complete a massive graduate school application plus keeping up with the contract work I do. I just gave up.

This year, I now can print labels off my Excel spreadsheet (the original file was lost to a hard drive crash). I have reconnected with a handful of former in-laws, whom I missed dearly once I was able to let go of so much bitterness. I think that, the world of Café Catiche aside, there is a gift in the electronic publication of a more personal note about my family’s accomplishments and events. But most of all, what I want to say is this:

Yes, we think about you. We send you this note because you represent various chapters in our life and we are grateful for you. We can’t afford to send Christmas gifts to everyone, but we can tell you how we are doing, send a picture for your fridge of the lovely clan we have evolved into, and most of all let you know we love you and your memories stay with us. We wish you love and happiness; success with work, school, and/or childrearing; peace in your family; and for you to be the great spiritual connection that helps keep others grounded in unfortunate times.

It’s February—nearly March, really. I suppose with the remaining months in the year, I can manage this, but I am already a month and a half behind on birthday greetings. And yes, I have been working fastidiously to rectify this matter. My sister was the only one to receive her Valentine’s note (a gift of pedi socks, actually) on time. My youngest step-daughter will receive her Valentine on Monday. And so it goes, and so it goes…

A Christmas Star

Everything I write today fails to communicate any measure of grace, wisdom, or humor on my part. I have written much, and deleted much. So, in light of a heartbreaking conversation I had with my little girl, I will leave you with this tidbit, a shining star in your own dark night:


Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas to all those who seek to bestow upon children a world of magic, miracles, and generosity. Merry Christmas to those who tend the sometimes wounded soul of a child, mend it, or lift it for even just a moment. May you embrace Wonderland, the kind of place where snowflakes dance in frozen perfection, bottomless hot chocolate cups steam in flawless spirals, and candy cane gift wrapping dresses boxes of toys and treasures. May a man in a crimson, fur-trimmed suit glide through the night, across treetops and rooftops, down chimneys, and into your waiting heart. May it all be possible, again and just once more, this night that we await: Christmas.

Long live Christmas, for its stillness and peace, the celebrated moment of one particular child’s birth, and the reminder that one man can change the world for the better. I send you blessings for new beginnings, a comet to blaze across your cobalt skies, and all the love in the world.

Merry Christmas to you.

Handmade for the Holidays

Each Christmas, I make a handmade gift or two, and I encourage the kids to do the same. This year, I decided on hats for a string of little children in the family. As I sat, head bowed toward the whirring sewing machine, my little son wandered into the room, watched me in wonder, and then retrieved his big sister’s pink Barbie sewing machine. Tiny pushed papers under the battery-operated safety needle and “sewed” to his heart’s content. He used each scrap that he completed to giftwrap one of his toy cars for his father. When he was done, he showed me a softball-sized wad of crumpled paper, bits of masking tape pasting loose ends in place. He must have labored for forty-five minutes in near silence. I have never seen him work so hard nor so quietly.


His sister sat not far from us, also fairly silent. Spread on the floor about her were around a dozed projects she had crafted—little paintings or ornaments from plastic gimp. She clumsily wrapped each one, tied them up with ribbon and strips of fabric or old bows. By the end of the evening, she had a pile of Christmas cheer. Later, I fingered the bows and the awkwardly folded packages, and considered the tenderness in which these precious items were created and wrapped.

My favorite gifts have always been the handmade ones. My cousins in Ohio labored each Christmas to produce beautiful crafts that I still have or still remember fondly. One year, they painted wooden ornaments and personalized them with our names. Another year, they made fabulous watermelon-slice placements—complete with painted seeds. Sorrowfully, the flood that followed Katrina took the placemats.

Last year for my parents, I sewed pillows with pictures of my children on them. Another year, I made tied-fringe fleece lap blankies. For my first ever married Christmas at the tender age of twenty-three, I made salt-clay angel ornaments for my husband.  The egg carton angel from first grade--I still have that, too, and enjoy displaying.

Some things last, some don’t. But the memories I have of holding those finely crafted items in my hands, of enjoying them on the tree or table or wherever--that lasts forever.

Happy holidays!