Reach For the Moon and Wear the Right Shoes

This time of year triggers a range of emotions and a slew of family traditions.  I love them all.  As we bring to close another year and chapter of our lives, I realize that time is the most valuable commodity we have and sharing time with others is the best way we can spend it. 

The holidays bring this sometimes hidden truth to light.  They make us spend time with one another by shutting down the outside world and stopping our busy lives. 

During this time, I sit back and try to mentally capture the moments for recall later.  Moments like my son watching satellite images of Santa on Google earth.  He walks over to me and states matter of factly, “Mom, Santa has entered North America.”   And then the next day opening gifts, he nods assuredly, “Yep, Santa is correct.  This is exactly what I wanted!” 

In each of these moments, I search for the perfect symbol to sum up the year.  It has been a year of ups and downs, a year to be remembered.  But, what is going to help me remember it all?  What moment in the happiest time of the year? 

The answer comes when my son unwraps one of his many presents.  They are moon shoes.  Without hesitation he starts to strap them on his socked feet.  This does not work so well.  One jump and a moon shoe goes flying off his foot… he hits the ground with a thud, his arms flailing.  But, he is not easily defeated.  He leaves and comes back wearing snow boots.  Desperate times calls for desperate measures… and snow boots.  Now we strap them on really tight.  He bounces up and down moving around the room.  His hair flies up and he has a huge grin on his face.  “Mom, look at me!  I’m flying!”  This is the perfect toy for my son.  He is always reaching for the stars and the moon and Google earth if he has to.      

It is the moment I will remember most this year.  Bouncing on moon shoes symbolizes what so many of us should be doing with our lives.  Instead, we walk around and let worry, hesitation, and regret creep into our minds.  But, we can’t afford to let time pass us by.  We have to jump at every opportunity and get excited about what we can accomplish in the year ahead. 

Moon shoes are a lot like life.  You have to strap yourself in tight and wear the right shoes.  But, when you do these two things and dream big, like my little six year old does, lord knows what you will fling yourself into next. 

The year of 2011 will be the year we propel ourselves into what we love to do and reach for the moon.  It is the year we remember that time is all we have.  We only live once, so we might as well strap on our moon shoes. 

Cookies and the Friends They Make

Last Monday night, my sisters and friends gathered together for our first annual Christmas cookie making night.  I brought ingredients, wine, my 6-year old, and cookie sheets.

This event takes place at my Sicilian, outspoken and wonderful friend, Dominie’s, new house.  She has organized the event.  Her brand new kitchen is just waiting to be baked in.

I pictured us up to our elbows in flour, chatting, drinking, and gossiping about the latest and greatest reality shows on Bravo.

One problem. 

No mixer. 

I start to panic.  Oh no.  We have ten sticks of hardened butter, eggs out the whazoo, flour getting ready to be up to our elbows and no mixer??? 

She shrugs casually, leaning back in her chair drinking vodka and Diet Sunkist, and exclaims unashamedly, “Ladies, I am not domestic.  I have my cookies in the refrigerator, ready to go.”  They are ready-to-make chocolate chip cookies.  And here I am thinking we are going to make batch after batch of my mom’s tried and true Christmas cookies recipes. 

I try to act calm.  But, I could kick myself for not foreseeing this dilemma.  Of course my well groomed, sensational, always going out to eat friend does not have an electric mixer!  She has arranged this “cookie making party” to enjoy her friends and create a new tradition.  I have gone into this event with the intent of making a hell of a lot of cookies!   

I can now picture us stirring vigorously with sweat beading on our foreheads. 

But, once I calm down, I realize we are making progress.  Turns out cookies can be made without electronics (with the exception of an oven).  We did it by hand.  We defrost the butter and stir away in the one bowl my friend has.   

I start to have a great time. 

My son is helping out – putting the Hershey kisses on the half baked peanut blossoms.  I am sharing the advice my mother always said about Spritz cookies - don’t overbake them! 

And I realize that cookies are a lot like good friends.  When you have the right ingredients, you don’t need an electric mixer to make it work.  In fact, they are better mixed by hand. 

My mom used to say that good friends are like well-tilled soil.  It takes a while to get it ready to be planted in.  You have to have a history.    

This is what we were doing with those cookies.  We were slowly pouring in the sugar, baking soda, salt and flour, so that it would all mix up well.  We were making history and sharing a tradition. 

As we stir, we learn more about each other.  We have more time, of course, without a mixer, and we can hear each other.    

This is what friendships need.  Time, stirring, the right ingredients put in the bowl in the right order, and occasionally a Hershey’s kiss planted on top. 

As we pull our cookies out of the oven, I realize that each type of cookie mirrors our different personalities.  My friend Megan’s cookies are experimental.  She substituted chocolate chips for chunks and nuts for marshmallows.  (We all thought they were the best.)  My friend, Dominie’s were unconventional, as she decided to forgo the traditional slice and bake method for cookie dough and press the entire slab of batter into a pie dish to make one giant cookie.  She’s always making something grand out of something ordinary. 

My one sister’s cookies were perfectly prepared peanut butter blossoms – petite balls, rolled in sugar and dotted with a chocolate kiss.  My other sisters’ cookie was the famous Spritz cookies – seemingly ordinary dough rolled into a cookie pressing machine and coming out nothing close to ordinary, in perfectly shaped Christmas trees which are then decorated with sprinkles and red hots. 

Hours later we hit a sugar high, enjoying the company and cookies.  I had come into this night with purpose – to make plates of cookies to give away and enjoy at the later date of Christmas.  But, that expectation, along with the one that we needed a mixer, went out the window.  We were chowing down and not thinking about the future.  I think it was Megan’s chocolate chocolate cookies with marshmallows that did us in.  They did not last a full 24 hours at anyone’s house.  Like good friendships, these cookies were made to be enjoyed in the moment. 

That night, I learned that friendships are funny things.  And so are cookies.  You can’t preordain their destinies.  All you can do is mix the ingredients and wait for them to bake. 

Tis the Season

Two weeks before Christmas, I walk into American Eagle at the crowded mall with my son, two stepkids and husband.  We stroll through the aisles, and I overhear a store associate similar in age to my step daughter compliment her black studded saddlebag purse, “I love your purse.  I saw that when you walked in…”  she exclaims.  I smile to myself, “Oh, that is nice…”  

Minutes later another store associate compliments my husband on his hair!  “Sir, I like your hair… I like how it’s all spiky.”  “Now this is weird…” I think to myself. 

“Wow… they are really nice here,” I announce to the troop as we exit the store.  My husband responds, “Yeah, they are trained to do that.” 

I didn’t think I heard correctly and repeat the question in my head aloud, “They are trained to give conjured up compliments?!”  “Yep,” he answers. 

I don’t get to the mall much, but when I do, I never remember sales associates shelling out compliments just to make the patrons feel good about themselves so they spend more money!!  They are actually looking around trying to figure out what to compliment shoppers on so they stay longer at their store. 

This begs the question, “Why do people give compliments?”  No wonder society has become cutthroat and jaded!  Because we have turned something so simple and benign like a compliment into a devious mechanism for monetary gain!  What?!?!  

Now compliments have an ulterior motive?  I have to wonder why this surprises me.  I suppose many people give compliments for ulterior motives.  I know my own son sometimes says, “Mom, you’re the best mom in the world!” simply because he wants a chocolate milk.  It never struck me as odd before.  Walking out of a store where we were peppered with flattery in less than five minutes now makes me feel like a victim.  Maybe that’s what flattery is – another form of victimization.   

Here we are shopping for Christmas – where the “reason for the season” is sharing and giving with the people you love and we fall prey to what seems like an emotional robbery.  People probably really fall for this.  I know I did.  I took a compliment for face value.  “Wow… that’s nice that my step daughter can feel good about the purse she picked out…this will really help her 15 year old self esteem.”  But, it’s a sham.  The blatant hypocrisy stuns me. 

Around Christmas we all say “Tis the season.”  But “Tis the season” to do what?  To shop?  Spend money?  Eat?  Drink?  Be merry?  And why does the word “merry” only pop up around Christmas?  Possibly eggnog and yuletides are the only recipe for being “merry,” but that’s beside the point. 

Like the sales associates at American Eagle, the holidays have become a little too “staged.”  We’ve all been trained to meet certain obligations, buy the right gifts, get out the holiday décor and then collapse from exhaustion.  Tis the season! 

It’s no wonder the meaning of “tis’ the season” eludes us at times.  We are too busy untangling the white Christmas lights we should have replaced last year.    

But, I refuse to be a victim.  I want to buy gifts that truly compliment people and say, “I appreciate you and thought you might enjoy this.”  I want to be an idealist and believe that it’s not lost to training agendas of teeny bopper chain stores.   

Tis the season to be merry.  And to shop, eat, give, and love.  And I intend to do just that.   

Love You Forever

Did you ever notice that during the holidays, everything speeds up?  The month of December whirls by…We count the days…  configuring how much time we have left to get everything bought, wrapped and ready.

 

With the influx of new clothes and gadgets we will accumulate this year, I decide to root through our existing bins of forgotten paraphernalia in the basement.  Knee deep in old sweaters, I rescue one of my son’s books called Love You Forever.  It’s about a woman who sings to her son a lullaby…

I’ll love you forever

I’ll like you for always

As long as I’m living

My baby you’ll be. 

As her son grows up into a teenager and then adult, she still finds time to hold him and sing him this song.       

As the mother grows older, she needs to be held.  Her son is there.  He holds her, rocks her and sings her the same song he heard in his dreams.

He carries this tradition on with his child and the story begins again. 

This book reveals a central theme that we all need in life… to have and to hold.  We all need to be held.

But, in the times where we have the best opportunity to hold each other and share life’s cherished moments, we let the speed of the season take them away.  

Gifts get frantically unwrapped… Food gets gulped down… families rush off to church services or another family gathering.  And this cycle repeats itself!      

It is the day where we hold more new things in our hands than any other day.  We stack things on the ground by our feet because we cannot hold them all.  I have countless pictures of my son holding things… new toys… many of which I found in the bins in the basement.  But, do we hold each other?

I read my son this book, Love You Forever.  He wants to "snuggle,"  his excuse for not going to his own bed, and I am glad I conceded.  It's nice to hold him when he is asleep. 

This year, I want to celebrate a holiday of moments… not a holiday of momentum.  I am looking forward to time with family and friends… giving, sharing, and holding moments of life together.  Moments to have and to hold.