The Burrow

Her birthday was December 26th.  No wonder her son, whose birthday is January 2nd, and she didn't care that much about celebrating the event.  The big deal had already happened. For each of them, I think, that was the way it ought to be. She was a presence, my mother-in-law.  A great athlete in her youth, and her son's youth, by the time I met her she was on her cancer/heart/macular degeneration way toward the end.  I never ran the bases in Awful Arabs vs Terrible Turks family baseball games in the backyard, but I heard tales of her smacking the ball far enough for the littlest one, who grew up to be my Big Guy, to make it all the way home. Home was what she made.  G'ma kept us fed and clothed and I always knew I was loved, but home for me was overlaid with a patina of angst, of worry, of waiting for the next shoe to fall.  According to TBG, home for him was safety and comfort and laughter.  It was his mom. He remembers her sitting at the breakfa...

December 1st is the start of my favorite time of year. For some reason, I channel the stress into more vigorous elf-ing and suddenly I'm smiling instead of grumbling. It's all about the love. Nannie is my inspiration, my role model, my raison d'etre in the Christmas department. And yes, I know that raison d'etre means reason for being ..... it's totally true that I would never have come up with the concept on my own. Growing up on the Jewish end of the street, surrounded by Jewish friends and relatives, participating in Jewish festivities, I never missed Christmas at all. Never lusted for a Christmas Tree, never begged for a Chanukah Bush, never felt excluded or deprived. Santa didn't ask if I was Jewish; I sat on his lap and enjoyed the experience but I didn't mind that he went to Rita's house but not to mine. G'ma let me put snowflakes on the window with decals and some spray-on goo that left dandruff on the rug for months beyond its useful...

Houses with steps are lots more fun than houses without steps. This was pointed out to me by the Big Cuter as we were moving from a multi-level home where his window opened out onto one of the rooftops. How, exactly, did I propose to provide him with a similar opportunity in our new digs? Granted, the chance to scare your parents half to death while you know you are perfectly safe is one of the true pleasures of childhood. Still, I can't say I was all that sad to remove the temptation. Houses with steps can have closets hidden underneath the staircases. Not front-hall closets or linen closets or clothes closets, but closets that hold treasures. Nannie and Grandpaw's was stuffed with carefully folded wrapping paper from celebrations held before the Cuters were born. But in and around those stacks of paper were board games we'd never seen before in boxes which had been repaired with glue and tape and string by Nannie's mother. There was a bag of marbles. The pick-up s...