I told Sophie this morning that it was too cold to sit outside and we couldn’t play anymore, and then I looked at the weather app on my phone.
It was 58 degrees.
I was embarrassed, to be honest. What a wimp I am! But also kind of amused. It took such a long time for me to adapt enough to Arcata to think that temps in the 50s were comfortable, and such a short time for me to adjust right back to Florida. But we are having a nice little burst of winter now — I’m wearing my favorite jackets every day and drinking hot tea — and I’m enjoying it, even if I am reluctant to sit outside for hours and hours. It fits so well with the time of year, to be just a little chilly.
Many of my neighbors had their Christmas decorations up even before Thanksgiving, but there are more every day. I rolled my eyes a little last week — can we not at least wait until after we give thanks? But then I decided that maybe people were just really, really ready to get into the season that celebrates light in the darkness, hope and generosity, kindness and giving. Maybe people just felt like looking forward to Christmas was easier than being thankful and the sooner we got to it the better.
In that spirit, Jamie and I bought a Christmas tree this weekend, and decorated it yesterday, when its branches had time to settle out a little. We each have Christmas ornaments of our own, so they’re blended together on the tree, mostly harmoniously. Mine are all flat wooden ornaments, mostly hand-painted, because they were what was easiest to keep during my van life. They don’t take up a lot of room. They’re all from a few specific years of my childhood, namely 4th and 5th grade, and then 8th grade and later, so they have nostalgia for me, but the nostalgia is all childhood nostalgia.
I get a good hit of nostalgia from Jamie’s ornaments, too, though, because he’s got a lot of pop culture, things relevant to my life, if not really to my childhood.
One of his ornaments, Dumbo, gave me such vivid memories of Rory at almost 3. We had the Disney videotape, no idea where it came from, and R wanted to watch it over and over again, even though it always made him cry. It was one of my first and strongest moments of mystification as a parent — that complete uncertainty about what the right thing to do was. Do I let him watch it, even though he cries? Do I make it disappear? Do I stop the movie to discuss what he’s feeling? Do I just comfort him during the movie? Is this experience, that he clearly wants to have, because he keeps asking for it, good for him or bad for him? I knew I wasn’t going to tell him that he was being ridiculous and there was nothing to cry about — it’s sad! — but avoiding that social programming was a challenge. We’re so culturally indoctrinated to try to make people stop crying, because it makes us uncomfortable to see someone crying. But I can remember holding him on my lap, his head against my shoulder, agreeing that yes, it was tremendously sad that Dumbo was being taken away from his mother, but he didn’t have to worry, because that was never, ever going to happen to him. Oh, the irony.
Jamie’s Harry Potter ornament reminded me of staying out until midnight with R and my nephew, Ty, at a Barnes & Noble, waiting for the release of the last book in the series. July 2007. When midnight finally rolled around and they started to call numbers to buy our books, the line was insane and it looked like it would be another hour at bare minimum until our set of numbers was reached. Poor Ty was falling asleep standing up, so we left without getting our books. I promised to come back the next day, but on our way home, driving through the quiet dark night with two sleepy, sleepy boys in the car, I passed an open Walmart, with a few cars in the parking lot, and thought, “hmm…” So we bought our books, yes, multiple copies, at Walmart. I stayed up all night reading and passed my copy over to R in the morning, gritting my teeth not to tell him how very unhappy it was going to make him. I knew that Hedwig’s death was going to break his heart.
And then Star Wars… I probably wouldn’t have thought of this except for the Dumbo memories, but Revenge of the Sith, the movie where Anakin kills the kids, came out in May 2005, and all of R’s friends seemed to be going. He was, in fact, invited to go on the release day by one of his closest friends and some others. A little pack of boys, all aged around 8, going to a PG-13 movie. I said no. Yes, I was the mean mom! He was not pleased. I promised him that we’d buy the DVD the very day it came out and he could watch it at home, and I also did my absolute best to acknowledge that I was making a choice that was making him really sad. He was honestly pretty great about it — at 8, he was a very rational small person. No temper tantrums, no whining, not even a lot of sulking, although he was definitely sad. I think maybe I gave him some other treat? I don’t remember the details. But the day the DVD was released, we went to the store and got it immediately, and he watched it in the tiny living room of our little duplex on Seabright while I worked on my computer in the bedroom. He kept bopping in and out of the bedroom to tell me what was happening, and eventually he came and flopped down on the bed next to me with a sigh. I asked him if he was okay, and he said, so simply, “You were right. I don’t like this movie.” I was so grateful to him for saying that. It’s hard to be the mean mom. Really hard.
Anyway, lots of memories. Bittersweet, of course, but bittersweet still has sweetness to it. And it’s lovely to have a Christmas tree. I put it on a timer, so that the lights would go on and off automatically, but this morning when I got up, it was still dark outside, so I turned the lights on by hand, and maybe we’ll just leave it on all the time. Light in darkness, that’s the meaning of the season to me.
And meanwhile, Miss Sunshine is informing me that it would be SOOOO nice to be outside. She loves this weather. She has a yogurt face right now, because I let her lick out the yogurt container after my breakfast, and it’s cute as can be. Not that she isn’t always cute as can be, but the yogurt gives her a special touch of cuteness.