Sitting Still

she's a hoot, oh for sure.

Claire is hilarious these days, and she knows it.  Every day, we have at least one conversation with her that deserves to be on the record, ranging from the thoughtful to the absurd to the outright silly. 

This evening I overheard Ron and Claire chatting in the kitchen.  They'd been doing math together, a process that is really more about Claire doing the math in her head aloud, as it is impossible for her to do anything silently.  So she'll ask you, "What's 6+2?" and you might be tempted to say, "8" but don't you dare.  Your entire role in the exchange is to say, over and over again, "What?" and prove that you are at least a mildly engaged audience for her arithmetic tricks.

After impressing Ron with her addition skills, she asks, "Who is the smartest one in this family?"  Then, without even allowing time for a response, she offers, "I think I'm the smartest one."

(Humble, that one.)

Ron counters.  "I don't know, Claire.  Your mom is pretty smart.  She might be the smartest."

(Clever, that one.  And apparently interested in getting laid.)

Claire starts cracking up in response to his suggestion.  Through the laughter that has her doubled-over, she says, "Mom's not the smartest one.  She can BARELY read a book."

When she's not doing math problems for fun or insulting my intelligence, she's obsessing about the story of Christmas.  She attends a church preschool, and they heard the story a number of times in preparation for the annual Christmas program.  Only my child, however, could take the relatively simple storyline about the baby Jesus and turn it into a full-time preoccupation.

Christmas story, the pop quiz version:

"Mom!  Who was the newborn king?  Was it: A) Joseph, B) Jesus or C) Abraham?"

[A correct answer of B) earns me a beaming smile and a round of applause.]

Christmas story, the too-many-questions version:

"So Mom, was Jesus' real dad God?  Was Joseph his step-dad?  And was Mary married to God or to Joseph?  And how did God get the baby in her belly?  Did Mary have Jesus through the birth canal or by surgery?  Why did they stay in the barn with the animals?  Why wasn't there room for her?  She was having a baby!  Did you know they wrapped Jesus up and put him in the manger?  Yep, because they didn't have a crib like Gage...."

[Look, Claire!  Cookies! Shiny things! Presents!]

Christmas story, the confused version:

"Did you know that God looks kind of like Santa? He does. But he's older than Santa.  And God and Santa?  Well, they're both older than Grandpa."

[Quick! E-mail Grandpa.  He is not, in fact, as old as God.]

We have a nativity scene that she is constantly rearranging like its better than a Barbie Malibu dreamhouse.  We also have an Advent calendar that has 25 little doors behind which you're supposed to place small gifts.  However, I never got around to filling it up this year, and Claire has so far been content just to open the doors as a way of counting down to Christmas. 

This afternoon, however, she decided that we should put something in the space for the 25th, since it's Christmas and all.  She opened her hands to show me what she though should go in there.  It was the tiny nativity scene baby Jesus in the manger. 

I think she might be taking the saying, "putting the Christ back in Christmas" just a tad literally.

But what would I know?  I'm illiterate.

oyster stew and walks on the beach: starting our own Christmas traditions

For every year of our marriage, in spite of long distances and busy schedules and being poor graduate students, my husband and I and our children always went home for Christmas. "Home" is near Phoenix, Arizona where both my husband and I were raised and where both sets of parents and all three of our sisters still live. Given that we were the only ones that left -- to Michigan, to Tennessee, and now, to Charleston -- they always had critical mass. We could travel and see everyone. It was so convenient.

Convenient, that is, for everyone but us. As it turned out, those holiday trips to Arizona were more stressful than jolly. There were insanely busy airports, pricey plane tickets, and transfers of gifts to and fro. Logistics didn't get any easier as we negotiated the division of time that was always too short between families that were always so eager to have us around. It was wonderful to see everyone, of course, but after a decade of sleeping in guest bedrooms and eating every holiday meal twice, a part of me wanted nothing more than to wake up Christmas morning in my own house, where I could eat a bowl of cereal and open gifts without having to put on a bra.

Last year, I got my wish. I was 38 weeks pregnant on Christmas Day, making our annual cross-country pilgrimage to the desert an impossibility. For the first time, we spent Christmas in our own home. This year, due to my husband's work schedule and the expense of plane travel for a family of four in a sluggish economy, we'll be doing the same.

These two years have been a great gift for our young family. They've given us the chance to examine the long-standing traditions of our families of origin and figure out what we want to hold onto or adapt to our new surroundings. For instance, my husband's family has a traditional meal of oyster stew on Christmas Eve. We've decided to make oysters a part of our celebration, but with the advantage of a coastal location that makes them fresh and local. Both of our families open family gifts on Christmas Eve and Santa gifts and stockings Christmas Day, and we've decided to do the same.

We're also creating new traditions unique to our little foursome. Gingerbread house construction has grown from a whimsical holiday activity to a competitive sport around here. (My husband took home the creativity prize last year when he turned a red food coloring mishap into inspiration for a gingerbread man homicide scene.) Walks on the beach are also a special treat for this family of water lovers. We went last year the afternoon of Christmas Day and created some gorgeous memories. We plan to do the same this year.

At some point, we will probably brave the crowds and box up the presents to share Christmas in Arizona again. For now, however, we're enjoying the chance to cocoon our little family in fleece blankets and crumpled wrapping paper, creating something new out of bits of the old.

 

silhouettes
Originally uploaded by Sitting Still.

Cross-posted at the Being Savvy Holiday blog.

neighbors, part one

We chose the house we're renting in a day.  Literally, a day.  This sounds crazy to most people, but most people don't live the nomadic life of medical trainees.  We came to Charleston for a few days, spent most of the time on the beach, and then scheduled a line-up of rental houses to look at the day before we left town.  I think we looked at three or four altogether, but the truth is that I knew this was going to be our house from the moment I saw it on Craiglist.

We live in a neighborhood that has been changing over the last five years, from what was more of a working class, primarily African-American enclave to a more middle class, ethnically diverse neighborhood.  Most of the homes are simple brick rectangles, single-story, built in the fifties with slight variations to the front so that they don't look exactly alike.  Three bedrooms, one or two baths, backyards divided by chainlink borders except for a few folks who've put up privacy fences.  Some of us have nicer gardens than others.  Some of us have toys scattered about.  No one gets too excited if you let your grass grow too long in the weeks of summer where it seems to shoot up inches in a single day.  There isn't a homeowners association with rules and passive-aggressive warnings and people all up in your business.  It's nice.  Nothing fancy, but nice.

Our neighbors immediately to the right are an older couple who've probably lived in this neighborhood as long as I've been alive.  He runs a carpeting business, she works at the local health food store.  The week we moved in, she came over to say hello and to ask if she could use our clothesline, commenting that she was "old school" about drying them outside.  I liked her immediately and told her to use the line whenever she wanted to.

About a year and a half ago, I saw her husband pull a small trailer into their backyard, and later noticed another older gentleman staying there.  I assumed he was a visiting relative and didn't think much of it.  He had a sweet hook-up in their backyard, too, with a pipe rigged to their home sewer line and an outlet for electricity.

We would see him off and on when we were out in the backyard, playing in the kiddie pool or blowing bubbles.  He always waved and hollered hello before climbing back into his trailer.  He never bothered us.  Summer turned to fall, and I started to get the sense that he was planning to stay awhile.  

Raking leaves one day, we finally had a longer chat.  He told me he was Henrietta's sister, one of seventeen kids raised nearby on Johns Island.  I told him that we were newcomers to Charleston, brought here by my husband's work.

Then I let curiosity get the best of me.  "What brought you to live in West Ashley?" I asked.

"Well," he said, taking a deep breath. "I got into a little trouble down on Johns Island.  Henrietta was nice enough to let me come here and cool off a bit."

He didn't offer any details about the kind of trouble, though previous glimpses of a flask that seemed to be tucked into his pocket or waistband made me suspect that alcohol might have been a contributor.

"Well, you don't seem to be causing any problems around here!" I replied, perhaps a bit too cheerfully, in an attempt to distract from his confession.

That was that.  He continued to live quietly in the trailer and bought a little moped to get around town.  We'd see him, scooting up to the grocery, and wave hello.  He became one of the characters in the neighborhood.  As far as I know, no one ever complained.

Recently I ran into Henrietta while she was at work, and we chatted a bit.  I commented that I liked seeing her brother out and about on his scooter, and she said that he thought he was really hot stuff riding around on it.  She explained that he had moved in as a last resort.  That when he called all those months ago, he was about as down and out as one can be, and told her that he was going to go live under the bridge.  Despite a long history of substance abuse, he said he was ready for change.  She offered her yard.  She said he'd really cleaned up his act since moving in.

Just the other day, I saw her husband pull the trailer out of the backyard.  I was sad to see him go.

I wonder when I'll hear the end of the story.

and you thought we were done talking about lipstick

After the 2008 election and its discussions of lipstick on various non-human mammals, I would have been happy not to hear anything about this colorful cosmetic again.  As it turns out, however, lipstick had just been laying low, saving up for a starring role in my life. 

Tuesday mornings I have a babysitter for Gage and Claire is at school, buying me (at $10 an hour, mind you) four glorious hours to myself.  Yesterday, I was sitting at the coffee shop, dorking out on Facebook for a few minutes while I warmed up to knock out some Savvy Source posts.  I decided that my profile picture needed updating, so I turned on the Mac's Photobooth and took a shot.

Staring at myself in the image, I realized that my natural lip color approximates one shade darker than my skin.  Since I'd put my skin color somewhere on the spectrum near baby powder white, that makes my lips barely pink.   Barely.

I posted the picture and commented that I needed some lip color.  A back-and-forth with Mr. D ensued, with a recommendation that I try red.  Since he is a man and does not understand that there are approximately 2,109 shades of red, I modified to "whorish red."  (Because if you're going to go with red, you might as well make yourself a harlot, yes?)

Later that evening, Ron was telling me about a conversation he had with a coworker.  She happens to be a lesbian.  He must have done something prissy -- which is, incidentally, commonplace for Ron, as he is very particular and clean -- when they concluded that he was not, as you might assume, a mere metrosexual.  Instead, he was deemed a "lesbian in a man's body." 

"So are you a lipstick lesbian?" I asked, curious about this new gender/sexuality assignment, considering this is my HUSBAND, you know.

"I think so," he replied.

"Wait a second.  So does that make ME the butch one?"

He shrugged. "I suppose it does."

I don't want to be the butch one.  No way.  In fact, I'm heading out right now to buy some whorish red lipstick, and I'm planning to wear it ALL. THE. TIME.