THAT AFTER CHRISTMAS EMPTY FEELING

It's the day after Christmas...actually two days after our Christmas Eve celebration when we always open our gifts.  Both kids were home, along with my daughter's boyfriend.  Our son was sort of with us, since he was connected via cell phone to his girlfriend in Canada all evening.

We had plenty of food - ham, sausage dip, shrimp mold, a veggie tray, cookies, haystacks....  And there were plenty of gifts to open.  The tree and my Christmas village (aka "Tiny Town") were lit up.  The fireplace was on - plus we had the one on TV with Christmas music, and dogs, cats, and pigs running around.  Everyone got what was on their lists, and then some.  I appreciated each and every gift I received.  And, of course, I felt guilty that my kids spent any of their hard-earned money on me.  My favorite part is watching the reactions of everyone as they open their gifts. Then the gifts are all opened - piles of trash and boxes on the floor.  Everyone "play with" their gifts, and we all finally go to bed.

Christmas Day is slow-paced - everyone gets up whenever they feel like it.  Each person - including Mom - had their favorite candy in their stockings.  Everyone pretty much does their own thing.  I played "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy" with my daughter and her boyfriend, and watched my husband play his new gold game a little.  And then I drifted back to my computer, so we were all in different parts of the house.  Then it hit me - the empty feeling.

It's kind of hard to describe.  I wasn't sad.  Maybe I was a little bored.  It's not like Christmas as a child when you had lots of things to put together and play with.  Yes, I miss my mother and having Christmas dinner with her.  I miss the big Christmas get-togethers at my mother-in-law's house.  I miss Christmases with small children in the house - and no, I am not hinting that I want grandchildren yet!  

There is so much frenzy leading up to Christmas.  What do you want - and what do YOU want?  Where can I find that?  Is it on sale anywhere?  If I order online, will it arrive in time?  What do we eat on Christmas Eve - and on Christmas Day?  What time does everyone get off work and can get to our house?  The malls, the websites, etc., etc.  At work, everyone has a reason to be a little distracted.  And the endless parade of treats!  (Yes, the good eating habits need to resume REALLY soon!)  But in one fell swoop, it's all over.  All those weeks of planning, shopping, cleaning, wrapping, and cooking are done.  Yes, more cleaning will have to ensue in the coming days - and that's nothing to look forward to!

Questions cross my mind - where will we all be next Christmas?  My daughter should be in the same place since she is still in college.  I hope she is still in a happy relationship.  My son may be moving - not just out of the state, but out of the country.  Chances are, I will be in the same job.  Will we be in the same home?  I don't know, since my husband and I long to downsize.  Who will be under our roof this time next year?  I guess no one knows the answer to that question.

Maybe I am a little sad, as these thoughts bring tears to my eyes.  Maybe I am like my mother - "If I didn't have anything to worry about, I'd worry about that!"  Don't get me wrong - I am happy my family is here with me - I love them all dearly - I am grateful for each and other moment I have with them.  It's just a case of the "After Christmas Empty Feeling" - and this, too, shall pass.... 

HAPPINESS IS OVERRATED!

You see it all the time - "I just want to be happy!"  I personally do not think that happiness is something to strive for.  Being happy is easy.  It is also very fleeting.

So many things can make us happy, but that feeling does not last very long.  It's all a part of the human condition.  

When I was younger and had to do the required reading in school, I would think how much happier I would be when I could read what I wanted.  Every kid thinks they will be so much happier when they graduate from high school, and then from college.  Then happiness will come when you get that first real job, and when you are out on your own.  Then, happiness will come with the right mate, and the first home, and then children.

Having kids starts a long string of "I'll be happy when..." moments.  The list includes the child eating "real" food, becoming potty-trained, starting school, fixing his/her own snack, helping around the house, driving, graduating high school and then college, and getting married.  But as a friend of mine informed me, when your child gets married, you still have plenty to worry about.

I don't know if everyone worries as much as I do.  As my mother would say, if she didn't have something to worry about, she would worry about that.  So maybe it's hereditary.  But it seems that life has been SO full of hurdles in recent years.  And with each hurdle, as I worry myself crazy, I think that if I can just get over that hurdle that life will be so much better.  And it is - very temporarily because there are always more hurdles, obstacles, and challenges.

I am not saying that being happy is a feeling that should be dismissed.  It should be treasured.  But no one can count on remaining happy.  If ignorance truly was bliss, you know I would be praying for ignorance!  Life happens. And with it comes a roller coaster of emotions.   And take my word for it, not even anti-depressants can keep you from feeling the wide range of emotions that life deals you.

My wish...my goal...is contentment.  I am trying not to focus on all the life dreams and goals to find happiness.  I want to shine a light on all of the reasons I should be content - I am married to my best friend; I have two great kids; I have a roof over my head and food to eat every day.  Maybe it's like counting your blessings.  But I want to start counting contentment.

SMELLS LIKE...LIFE

I remember reading years ago that smell is one of the biggest memory triggers. I have found that to be true. My mother had a cedar chest that she stored blankets in during the warmer months. She would add moth balls in there also. I have always loved the smells of cedar and moth balls. (I don't think kids today have ever heard of, much less smelled, a moth ball.) 

When I was a senior in high school, a local furniture store gave each student a small cedar box that could be locked. I loved the smell of that box!  I kept cards and letters from family and friends in it.  I think I still have it somewhere.

An unpleasant "smell memory" from my childhood was that of beer. My half-brother would visit on rare occasions. Whenever he did, he would bring canned beer with him and would proceed to down one after another. To this day, I hate the smell of beer.

My father loved ANY kind of cologne, or "smell good," as he would call it.  Brut was his favorite, but he wasn't picky. If he was going anywhere, like to church, he would douse himself in it.  If my mother or I got any kind of cologne or perfume that we didn't like, he would happily take it.  I also associate the smell off Campho-Phenique, a pungent smelling over-the-counter antiseptic liquid. He believed that it could cure anything (kind of like Windex in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), so he put it on any cut, scrape, etc., etc.

During summers at my grandmother's house, one of my favorite smells was a clean, soapy one from the bathroom. There was only one bathrooms, and after anyone bathed or showered, that fresh smell lingered a long time. That may be why I still like clean scents in lotions.

Other wonderful smells from childhood include honeysuckle.  There were vines of it growing on my walk to and from school.  Roses are also in there because my mother grew them.  So many roses you buy today have no smell at all.  My mother was a wonderful cook, and the smell of her fried chicken, or the Thanksgiving turkey baking were intoxicating.  I fell in love with the smell of cloves as a kid.  I made a "Sweet Pete" once where you take an orange and poke whole cloves into it to make it look like a little head and face. It was a homemade air freshener.  For a while, Lifesavers had a clove flavor that I loved.

One of my favorite smells is that of break baking. When I used to work downtown eaaaarly in the morning, I would drive past a bread factory. The smell of that bread baking was intoxicating.  One of my favorite grocery stores that is no longer around would bake French bread. If I smelled it. I had to have a loaf. The second I would get home with it, I would slather a slice with butter and eat some.  Okay, several slices!

Of course, lots of foods have memorable smells. Who can resist the smell of bacon frying, or fresh coffee grounds or coffee brewing, or anything sweet and decadent baking?  And let's not forget the smell of hot, buttery popcorn in movie theaters.

Some places have smells of their own.  You can't mistake the disinfectant smell of some hospitals.  And I think it's forget-me-nots that I always associate with funeral homes. I am not sure why coffins need to be surrounded by such cloying scents.

When I became a mother, a plethora of smells were associated with a new baby - some pleasant, and some not so much. Nothing smells sweeter that a freshly-bathed baby. One of my memories of new motherhood that I share with other new mothers involves my infant son's first day at the sitter's house while my husband and I worked.  It was very hard to leave my tiny little man in someone else's care. When I picked him up after work, I held him close and sniffed him. He smelled like the sitter's house...not bad, but not my house. I cried all the way home.  (That story got twisted by my son years later. I was filling in for a radio morning show host while she was on maternity leave. My son still swears that I said, "He cried as big as a house." It doesn't matter that the statement makes no sense.)

I guess smells will be triggers for my whole life. I love my husband's cologne spay (that I picked out), the smell of the salty breeze at the beach, the smell of gardenias like the bush I used to have, the smell of hot chocolate.... Life is filled with smells at every turn.

THINGS WE TEACH OUR KIDS

In the South, we are known for a lot of saying that we tell our kids. "Were you raised in a barn?"  "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!"  "If you break your leg, don't come running to me!"  And the list goes on and on.  But what I find fascinating are the unique things that parents say to or teach their kids.

Of course, we all like to hear stories about ourselves.  My father said that every time the TV show "Lassie" would go off each week that I would cry.  He would reassure me that "Lassie" would be back next week.  My father, who most likely had some Cajun blood, truly loved Cajun people - heck, he loved people.  He really enjoyed telling stories about the way Cajuns would say things.  Instead of saying, "I am going to let me horse, that is currently inside the barn, go outside," my Daddy said that the Cajun version was, "I'm gonna turn my horse inside out."  

My mother also told me stories about things she had told me when I was little.  She said that I witnessed a lizard eating a fly and I started crying hysterically.  My mother, thinking quickly, told me that the fly was a cookie bug, so it was okay.  Logical or not, it worked.  In the evenings when we would hear the crickets all chirping together loudly, she told me that it was one cricket's birthday and the rest were singing to him.  That was the basis of a children's story I wrote (that remains unpublished).

My mother's stories continued when my children came along. When she would fry eggs, she would take the egg shells and through them in the garden, to put calcium back into the soil.  My son asked her why she did that.  Again, always thinking, my mother told him that's where eggplants come from!  He's 23 now and I THINK he knows the truth now!

Of course, it continued with me.  Tyler would see squirrels and was interested in them.  I told him not to get too close because squirrel would run up your pants leg.  He left the squirrels alone.  And I do not think that he has an irrational fear of squirrels.  No harm, no foul.

Years ago, Steve Martin had a comedy bit where he talked about wanting to have a child just so he could teach him the wrong words for everything.  "I've got a great trick to play on a three year old kid. Whenever you're around them, talk wrong. So, now it's like his first day of school and he says to the teacher, 'Mambo dogface to the banana patch?'"  Funny concept.  Now, I never did that!  I have always been a stickler for grammar.  But my Southern roots do break through from time to time.  I remember once when Tyler came home after using the word "reckon" in a sentence, such as, "I reckon I'll go with you."  His teacher told him that wasn't proper English.  He told her, "My mother says it!"  Guilty.  I also say, "Fixin' to."  No shame in my game.

SUMMER IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS

I remember when I was a child and summer seemed to last forever. I spent a lot of time watching TV and playing with the neighborhood kids.  And every summer, my family would spend two weeks at my grandmother's house in North Carolina where my mother grew up. In fact, back then, summer seemed to last so long that I would get totally bored. Of course, those were the days before cable television, laptop computers, and video games.

When my kids were little, summer was fun. They would play in the sprinkler or in their inflatable pool (until their father blew it up with water dynamite!). They would go to camp at their daycare where every day promised a new adventure - swimming, bowling, video games, field trips - they were worn out by the time they got home. It was great - no homework to do, which was a break for me, too!

When the kids got a little older, summers meant summer reading lists.  Summer reading lists meant I would harass them all summer about getting their books read.  "Read a little at a time - don't wait until the last minute," i would nag, not that it ever worked.  Many times, I would read their books before they did, and once they read them, we could discuss them.

When Jess was in 4th grade, she was finally diagnosed with ADD. I knew there was something going on, but didn't have the knowledge to pinpoint it.  (That subject will have to be a future blog entry all on its own!) Thanks to an observant teacher, and then a psychologist, we found out what was going on.  One thing I found out is that Jess learns better from hearing books read than from reading them herself.  So, I would find some quiet time with her and I would read "doses" of the books to her.  She remembered it so much better, plus we could talk about what happened.

Then in high school, my son did marching band and my daughter did Colorguard.  So they each had band camp before school started.  Plus, Colorguard practiced all through the summer.  Louisiana is known for hot, humid, rainy summers, so that always made it fun!

As they each got to about 16 years old, then they discovered summer jobs.  It was very cool to see them take responsibility for going to work whenever they were scheduled, and learning to manage their money.  Spending money is a lot different when you think about how many hours you had to work for it.  My daughter was the real go-getter - she would have two summer jobs.

In college, we made it clear that school came before jobs...that school was the primary job always.  Come summer, we encouraged part-time jobs, especially if they wanted to go anywhere or do anything!  Most of the time, Tyler had rotten luck.  He would go on interviews and be told how wonderful he was.  They would say that they will call him in a few days - if not, he should call then.  And they wouldn't call.  And he would call them.  And he would be told that someone would call him back, but they never did.

Jess always had at least one summer job.  And she is quickly learning that if you go everywhere and do everything, your account gets depleted fast.  So right now, she is in the process of trying to rebuild her funds - for more summer adventures and for her first apartment in the fall.

Now that Tyler is a college graduate, he is already learning a harsh reality of being an adult. Each weekday during the summer, while the neighborhood kids are sleeping late and playing all day, he has to get up early and work for eight hours.  Being a grownup is highly overrated!

COLLEGE GRADUATION...REALLY?

Last month, my baby boy, Tyler, finally graduated from college. He was on the five year plan.  Tyler was my gifted kid who taught himself to read at the age of four.  He could spell any word, and read thick novels by second grade. But when he got to about 5th grade, schoolwork got harder, and he didn't feel like trying very hard. He was the boy who should have had a 4.0 in high school.  But he was somewhere in the middle of the rankings.

Tyler took the ACT three times. He got a 27 the first and second times, and a 30 on the final try. He was awarded a distinguished freshman award and a marching band scholarship, plus he was accepted into the Honors College.  He also got the top level TOPS award from the state that paid basic tuition plus a stipend. But before marching band camp was into the third day, Ty decided he hated marching band and didn't want to do that. And he decided that he no longer wanted to major in music - that his passion was Physics.  His father and I scrambled to line up financial aid that we wouldn't have needed if he stayed in marching band, and were supportive of his major change.  If I had a do over....

Tyler and his roommate spent a lot of time gaming.  I'm not sure what else they did, but going to class and studying wasn't high on their list of to do items.  Tyler finished his first semester with a .1 grade point average. You can't do much worse than that. He got rid of the girlfriend who was a large part of the distraction, changed majors to Marketing, and did better semester number two. His TOPS was gone, never to be regained. His scholarships were gone forever.  But Tyler hung in there, through Latin, French, classes he liked, and classes he hated. He changed majors again, to Moving Image Arts, which we just started calling film to make it easier for other people.

In his final year, he had a Capstone Project to do, a group effort. In essence, his group wrote, produced, and edited a film. They had to line up actors, find a musicians, shoot, get voiceovers done, and have a finished product to show an audience at the end of the semester. As always, I fretted and sweat with him, worrying about whether or not the film would get finished. As passive as my son can be, he did persevere and wound up with a film. Will it be nominated for an Academy Award? Not just unlikely, but no way! But that's okay because in my eyes, he got the big prize - his bachelor's degree!

I think I was more excited that he was about the actual graduation ceremony. Okay, I know I was. And I even got teared up a couple of times. This was the moment I had waited five years for!  I told him a number of times - you may not appreciate that piece of paper right now, or a year from now, but there will come a time in your like when you are glad that you worked to achieve that degree. For days afterward, I would wake up in the morning and it would hit me all over again - I was the mother of a college graduate!

Within two weeks, Tyler had a job interview with a company that develops and produces video games, and about a week after that, he started his first week of training. At the end of the week, he had to pass a test to stay on. He passed! The company offers a year contract and then decides whether or not to keep the person on staff. So Tyler is back at home for now so he can save money. Once he is a full-fledged employee (with great benefits!), he can look ahead to his own place. But for now, I am happy to have my boy back home.

Now, if I can just get his younger sister through college....

MORE OF MY WRITING: "I Get Kidnapped All

           I have written a number of short stories, primarily for a local writing contest.  Only one made it even into the finals - but it made it all the way to the magazine.  Anyway, I thought I would share another "losing story" with you. In this one, we were given several starting lines to choose from. I don't think this is the complete story, but it'll give you a taste....

   

            I get kidnapped all the time.  Well, not literally, but it sure feels that way.  And it’s been going on for a long time.

            When I first got my license as a teenager, my mother would get me to run to the store for her, or drive Granny Ethel to her doctors’ appointments.  If I fussed in the slightest, she would say, “Driving is a privilege, not a right.  You can just hand those keys over to me.”  And, of course, like the captive slave that I was, I would do whatever errands she had in store for me.

            Who would have thought that I would wind up married to a woman who can’t drive.  In this day and age, I can’t imagine anyone not learning how to drive.  Polly is such a control freak about everything else in her life – you would think that she would want control over her transportation, too.  But I guess she did.  She had control over me.

            While most men spent Saturdays ensconced on the couch, watching whatever sport is in season on TV, I would spend the entire day chauffeuring Polly from place to place.  She liked doing the grocery shopping on Saturday, so we would head to the Piggly Wiggly, then bring the groceries home.  As soon as they were put away, Polly wanted to hit the sales at the mall.  I would rather have my fingernails pulled out one at a time with rusty pliers than roam around the mall on a Saturday afternoon!  Teenagers were everywhere, loud and rowdy.  I would shuffle after Polly from store to store while she tried on clothes, picked out new sheets, and smelled every candle and lotion on display at Bath & Body Works. 

            One Saturday, I noticed some of the husbands relaxing in the sitting areas that I am sure the mall set us with men in mind.  They might be surrounded by shopping bags, but they were sitting still, comfortable, waiting for their women folk to finish with their errands.  So I decided to take a seat, too.  It didn’t take long for Polly to realize that I wasn’t trailing along behind her like a shadow.

            “What do you think you are doing,” she asked sternly, arms crossed and foot tapping. 

            “I thought I’d just camp out here until you are done with your shopping.  That way, you can take your time, and you’ll know exactly where to find me.”  I should have known that wouldn’t fly.  So, I had to do my own version of the walk of shame – I had to slink away after Polly while the other men sat there, either mocking me or pitying me in their hearts and minds.  I was once again held hostage by my wife.  I followed after her like a prisoner in shackles.  I was half tempted to start singing the blues.

            It wasn’t always the mall.  Sometimes it was the pet store, where I followed Polly as she picked out treats and toys for that snarling, yapping fur ball that she called Fifi.  Fifi was a Pomeranian that probably weighed 8 pounds, but that dog hated me with every fiber of her being.  And the feeling was mutual.

            Other times, it was the discount store to find big discounts on name brand products, or the nursery so that Polly could pick out seasonal flowers and shrubs (making more work for the prisoner), or the book store so that she could scoop up the latest trashy romance novels.  But all of those were heaven compared to the hair salon.  At the hen house, as I preferred to call it, I was not allowed to wait in the car.  Polly wanted me inside with her while she and the other biddies gossiped about everyone in town who did not happen to be in the salon that day.  I tried to pass the time reading magazines, but Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping were not my choices of reading material.  After the grooming and gab fest was complete, I was obliged to tell Polly how beautiful she was.  It was expected.

            When we finally got home on Saturday evenings, all I wanted to do was a good dinner and to watch TV – anything at all! 

GETTING READY FOR THE COUSINS' REUNION!

I grew up basically as an only child.  I wanted more than anything to have brothers and sisters.  That is one reason that I did not want to have just one child myself - it can be very lonely.  And it can be extremely painful when making tough decisions later on.  

Being an only child made our family's summer vacations all the sweeter.  The first two weeks of every August, my father, my mother, me, and whatever dog or monkey we had (yes, I said monkey - traveling with him was interesting - but that is a story for another day!) would head to Western North Carolina to my grandmother's house, where my mother grew up.  

Many times, we would spend the first night at my aunt's and uncle's house in Georgia.  My aunt and mother - and me - all had the same sarcastic sense of humor, so I adored being around Aunt Iris.  My Uncle Leo knew my father's love of cattle horns and snake skins, so he was my father's "enabler."  Once, we had to stop to get a snake skin off of a snake that had been run over on the road.  I was squirted in the eye, which scared my mother immensely, but I suffered no consequences.

The next day, it was on to my grandmother's house.  She lived on 80 acres in the Smoky Mountains - sheer beauty!  We stayed in the big, old two-story house that had no air conditioning - not that you really needed it in North Carolina, even in the summer.  There was one bathroom.  The stove in the kitchen was a wood-burning one.  The floors were wood - not the pretty hardwood, but very rough, rustic wood that never really seemed clean no matter how much you swept or mopped.

It sounds rather primitive because it was.  That didn't take away from the fun I had there each summer.  The house had a big front porch which was great to while away the afternoon on.  And there was a bucket of cool water with a ladle, so you could get a refreshing drink anytime.  The washer was also on the porch....  The house also had a tin roof.  Since we were there during the rainy season - it rained each and every afternoon - the sound of the rain on that roof was musical.  We always had the best meals - homemade biscuits with each and ever meal. Lots of fresh vegetables straight from the garden.  And cow's milk directly from the cow - though I could never stand to drink it.  When my grandfather was alive, he would go to town to get homogenized milk just for me. One of my aunts worked for the local dairy and she would bring ice cream treats for us.  I can still taste the chocolate-covered cherry ice cream on a stick!

The best thing of all was getting to spend time with my cousins, especially Audrey, Jan, and Jill, since they were all within a year of my age.  It was the time before laptops, video games, and cable television. I always was treated to a stash of comic books for the drive to North Carolina, and they enjoyed those.  We had marathon sessions of Monopoly.  We picked blackberries that my mother and aunts would preserve and make cobbler from. (We'll skip over the snakes that we had to beware of.) We played in the creeks and in the red clay.  We picked and ate grapes that grew on each side of the house, feeding the peels to the chickens.  The wasps like the grapes, too, and I got stung right below my eye one year.

Since Audrey lived close to my grandmother's house, we spent the most time together.  We also spent a lot of time at her house.  One of our favorite things to do was make mud pies. Audrey and I were mud pie aficionados - we made beautiful masterpieces!   I loved the basement of her house - since we don't have them in Louisiana, I thought that was a fabulous thing.   We would sometimes camp in the woods by her house in a crude little "shack" that I thought was simply wonderful.  The next morning, we would cook breakfast at our campsite.  I had never been camping, so it was a great adventure for me.  Audrey was the person I still credit with teaching me to make cinnamon toast.

My mother would take my cousins and me to the amusement parks and mines in the area. It was a blast.  I didn't get to do these kinds of things at home very often, plus to be able to go with my cousins made it even better.  And of course, you couldn't beat the scenery!  Taking sky lifts to the top of the mountains or riding rides to peeked over the edge was both thrilling and a little scary.

Those two weeks in North Carolina meant the world to me.  The night before we left to come home each year, I cried all night.  I didn't want to go back to being the only child with no cousins anywhere close by.

Now, as I get ready for a big cousins' reunion in North Carolina - or I guess it could be just a "union" in some cases since I have not met a lot of my first cousins once removed, and a lot of the cousins have not met my husband or kids - all of these memories come flooding back.  After we get together to talk and hug and eat, we plan to caravan to the family property we all have fond memories of.  And I may just cry before coming home again this year, but at least, thanks to my husband and kids, I won't feel alone when I get back.