Hypocrite’s Almanac

Don’t get me wrong. There are some cute things about the holidays. I love babies in striped tights and dogs in Santa hats. I like how pretty the menorah looks on the eighth night and the breakfast sausage my mom makes on Christmas morning. So heart-warming… yet why on the day after Halloween do I always seem to wake up with a sore jaw. It could be from all the Bit O Honey’s I shoved in there the night before. But no. It’s more likely the increased grinding due to the anticipation of all the buying and wrapping and good memory making for my kids that I have to do over the next two months. It’s like I’m about to take a two month long shower of business, anxiety and regret that I’m not better at doing all the crap I have to do. So if you’re like me you need some coping mechanisms and strategies to make it through to Groundhog Day, well, you’re in luck. Years of experience have schooled me on a few survival tactics so I don’t get picked off by the holiday freakout sniper that lurks deep within my skin. You should follow these tips. Now, I won’t, of course, because if I did, what kind of hypocrite would I be?

1. Don’t get carried away with gift giving. One year I went a little loopy. I baked. A lot. And went to the container store and found little cookie tins and had my kids decorate labels. One snowy afternoon before the holidays we passed them out to the mail carrier, the guys at the parking garage, my kids teachers and the girls at our local coffee shop. We were met with pure unadulterated joy and gratitude which rendered my kids and me warm, fuzzy and holiday spirit possessed. Cut to the same time the following year: sinus infection, totally overcommitted and panicked about getting everything done in time for family visit to grandparents. I do not bake. Kids do not decorate labels. We do not cookie-gift the people in our lives that we appreciate. And I feel like poop. Although no one says anything, they might as well be screaming in my ear: “Where in the Hell is my cookie!?!” Lesson: If you have extra time over the holidays, resist the urge to go all Martha Stewart-y. You’ll become known as the cookie lady. It’s not a good thing.

2. This is not the time to diet. I swear to you, no one looks for love during the holidays. Singles seeking romance close up shop for four weeks as they muddle through to New Year’s. Even the recently coupled don’t log a lot of action hours in bed. The holidays are stressful times and most of us react to stress by putting large quantities and varieties of stuff in our mouth holes. Eggnog and goose. Fruitcake and stuffing. Glogg and chestnuts. These are not sexy combinations for your GI tract. You need to survive this period. Get in touch with your animal nature (minus all the hot animal sex). I hereby give you permission to stop shaving (everywhere), showering, and flossing. And ladies, forgo the Spanx. Let the flesh hang. No one’s looking—they’re too busy stuffing rum balls in their mouths. But… you gotta wear something. What!?! Next holiday tip, please!

3. Find yourself a holiday uniform. One of the biggest holiday stresses can be dressing yourself appropriately for the different events you’re required to attend. I have found that choosing one versatile outfit to wear to all parties is the way to go. How about a red jumpsuit with a red and white striped scarf? Or a blue canvas poncho with silver piping on the sides? You need festive, utilitarian and comfortable. One outfit, if chosen wisely, can be all that. Wear the same thing everyday for four weeks. Zip it up right before thanksgiving and pry it off New Year’s Eve. You could even do a striptease for Ryan Seacreast as the ball drops. What a great way to re-introduce yourself back into the dating world.

4. Give money to organizations that help people. Now, I’m no fan of people in general but I am not immune to the thought that Christmas sucks when you’re poor. I don’t mean, “Wish I could meet my friends in Mexico for New Year’s” poor. I mean Bob Crachet/Tiny Tim no-turkey poor. Give money to our local food bank and find the Toys for Tots place as soon as you can. I’m not here to make you feel bad, I’m genuinely happy about the new boots that you got half price. You deserve them. But since you had a little luck, give a little luck to people you’ll never meet. By now, you should have learned that no one deserves to be poor, especially children. Yeah, this list, particularly this number four thing, is a kind of a bummer – but think about kids, hospitals, land mines, and last wishes for just a second, write some damn checks, and move on to number five. Number five is much more fun.

5. Acquire a crush. A holiday crush is fun and inexpensive. Pick someone randomly that you see from time to time. It could be on the bus driver, the florist or the man who lies on the sidewalk with his head under the mailbox. You never have to act on it or tell a soul, the point is to let the crush thaw your frozen heart for the season so you don’t get all Scroogy. Allow it to work on your creative spirit. Write a song, construct a sculpture, choreograph a dance. Set your imagination free. Wonder where your crush is when you’re not seeing him/her. Read things that you would love to share with your crush. Go window shopping for the perfect present and then imagine how he/she would react when you gift it. Warning: Some of this imaginative play can make you Crazypants. Know the limits of your sanity. Most likely your crush does not want a shirt made out of your hair and fingernails. This is only a simple diversionary tactic to survive the holidays. January 2 your crush is rendered null and void. You can then pretend that she/he doesn’t exist and enjoy the lack of fallout.

6. Sneak naps whenever you can. Checking out during the day is a great stress eliminator. Take a short nap right after breakfast. Cereal in the teeth, the morning news and the weather report dancing around in your consciousness—a pretty great predictor of what the day has in store. Let that dirty day start without you. What’s that? You have a job and there’s no time for a morning nap? Then a tiny rest after lunch is a must. Finding a place to sleep in our busy, noisy city can be difficult. Waiting rooms in hospitals can be wonderful places for quick pick me ups. If you have some business in Red Hook, IKEA is the perfect location for a holiday blues busting siesta. At IKEA in the early afternoon a full or queen-size bed can be commandeered with little effort (read: none). Crate and Barrel on Houston and Broadway is can work but their high ratio of sales staff to customer begs you to be quick about it. I’d recommend a couch nap there.

7. Ignore the holidays completely. Though impossible for those with kids, it is an option. My friend Amy will attempt holiday denial this year so I’ll have a front row seat to gauge its effectiveness in stress reduction. It’s very salmon-upstream-y to ignore the holidays – difficult but not impossible. The poor thing spends a lot of time in Midtown so she’ll be busy crossing the streets to avoid the windows at Sak’s and Lord and Taylor’s not to mention skirting around that pretty large decorated evergreen at Rockefeller Plaza. But I predict Amy’s downfall will happen at a Christmas party after throwing back a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau. She’ll unconsciously be pulled to the piano to rescue the day by belting out the chorus of “What Child is This?” She’s a very good singer. I think she’ll be just fine if she doesn’t end up on YouTube ending her well-publicized denial experiment quite, well… publically.

Good luck with all this. I wish I could tell you it’s all going to be okay but I don’t know that and never will, because I’m not going to follow any of this advice myself. So just try to lay low. Have a very Merry whatever you celebrate. And if you’re ignoring the whole thing completely like my friend Amy, happy last month of the year. See you next time.

Like the last couple columns, this one is in two parts. I told you I was going to be more organized last time but because I’m a hypocrite and promise breaker I just can’t stay on one topic. I also think I should just shell out the co-pay for the ADHD formal diagnosis. That might make my life easier. I joke about it enough. It would be cool to be certifiable and get a bunch of people off my back at the same time.

Man, the summer took a lot out of me. I’m a parent and I can’t afford camp the whole summer so I had to run what I call “MommyKampf” for four weeks. The activities vary from a trip to the Museum of Art and Design (one of the greatest museums in the city, by me) and a picnic lunch in Central Park to lying on the dirty carpet in the living room sorting buttons and eating the leftover Halloween candy which was just found in a keepsake box meant for first locks of hair and pre-school paintings. Kampf, like any poorly run camp, is subject to the whims of its director. If it rains, we watch too much television and fight. If it’s too hot, we fight and watch too much television. Kampf is not perfect but it’s our camp and we don’t have to bother ourselves with updating a fancy website chock full of glowing testimonials. But since you asked, here’s a quote from one of our loyal campers: “It was pretty fun. I mean, sometimes it was super boring. But I liked when we did stuff. I liked hanging out with the dog and watching television. That was the best.”

Here’s what I learned at camp and what I am here to teach you this column. Teach your kids stuff. I don’t mean why Venus is Hotter than Mercury (totally true, dude). I mean teach them how to do useful stuff around the house. As MommyKamf ran on I got a little snappy and would yell out commands I remembered from my youth such as “Make Your Beds, Load the Dishwasher! Empty the Trash Cans!” At the end of the day, none of these chores were done and I demanded an explanation. I was met with blank faces. Then it hit me. My kids didn’t know how to do anything around the house. My bad. I had been too busy explaining the lifecycle of a walrus. Instead I should have taught them to stop and smell the laundry.

So this past summer I found myself giving morning classes in Home Maintenance. The bedmaking class was the most successful. They adopted the “make it while in it” approach with enthusiasm. I also threw in the “put your pajamas under your pillow” bonus lesson which they also seemed to enjoy. We practiced our new skills every morning. After that routine was established I began offering a whole host of electives: Feed the Dog (in two easy steps), Laundry Sorting 101, Glass Cleaning (with emphasis on mirrors). All classes went remarkably well and when put in weekly rotation everyone seemed a whole lot happier knowing what was expected of them.

Kids actually like responsibility, and they also like being rewarded for it. Some parents do sticker charts and allowances. I prefer to borrow the old school phrase “earn your keep.” In the New York Magazine article about how parents hate their lives (I don’t, by the way, but I act like I do to get dates) it wasn’t too long ago that people had kids to get a little help around the house/farm/family business. Now, kids are like safety deposit boxes in which parents cram unfulfilled dreams, not too mention a ton of money to teach them stuff they never learned (e.g. karate, macrobiotic cooking, and Mandarin). Because we have a limited budget we’ve opted out of classes and substituted in “duties.” I decided not to call our new activities “chores.” “Chores” has a ring of medieval drudgery to it and “do your duties” has alternate connotation that any seven-year-old can appreciate. I even get the giggles when I shout it from my post at the kitchen sink. Try it with me. “DO YOUR DUTIES!” Fun, right?

Summary. Teach your kids stuff that helps you around the house. Everyone will be happier or at least you will be. And kid knows when mommy is happy she makes cookies or orders in Thai food. Sometimes she’ll even drink two beers at dinner and forget to make you brush your teeth. End of segment.

Segment two stems from the heaviest of hearts. Just as we were hitting our stride in the summer, we got sucker punched. A tragic sudden death—our beloved Gramma, my husband’s mother—brought us to our knees. The loss was epic for us all. She was a loving mother, a non-judgmental mother-in-law and the model grandmother. She could weather a 45-minute phone call from a toddler or a three-hour bounce house birthday party without a single complaint.

When death comes without warning, before mourning can begin, the shock must dissipate. This is a very painful process akin to the chemical-like burning experienced when frostbite toes thaw. After they hit room temperature, our hearts then had to reconcile the tragic loss of a mother and a grandmother so deeply beloved. It sucked big time. It was and is a long and involved process.

Rumi said “The cure for the pain is in the pain.” And the pain is very real. When you lose someone dear to you, your chest feels constricted as if your heart is encased in concrete and has forgotten how to do its job. We were lucky. We had great support of family and friends. Sometimes people can feel like warm blankets wrapping you up, keeping you safe and warm. I have never been the one inside the blanket before. I was always the outsider, tentatively offering a weak “if there’s anything I can do, please call.” Death is one of the few things that connect us all. But if you haven’t experienced a significant loss it’s hard to know how to help those who are suffering.

Having been a mourner I thought I’d write this column about the crap you should not do to help those left behind. I’ll also add the stuff that helps too.

Here’s stuff that I thought was useless and sometimes maddening: Any unsolicited therapy type advice. (This goes triple if you are just a business associate.) If you have suffered a loss, and did most of your mourning while watching Doris Day movies don’t presume what worked for you will work for the mourner. Stop telling us how to mourn. I’m serious. Stop talking. Our hearts are aching and you are making us mad. Offer your sympathy then send a plate of cookies to the house later on in the week.

The “better place” line. Maybe, but who the hell really knows? If it was a sudden death, it probably isn’t true. In our case, it’s unimaginable. She was adored by friends and family and had a great dog/house/car. She loved her life. Where’s better than that?

Telling the deceased grandkids some crazy story about where their Gramma is now: We told our kids that Gramma is dead. She’s not coming back. Then we answered questions, which were few. If you tell a four and seven-year-old that Gramma is now a star in the sky looking over them every night to make sure they are good girls and boys you will have to field the following questions:

Which star is she? Can she see when it’s raining out? Stars die. When will her star die? When it does, will there be another funeral in space? Does she know the moon? Do they have parties? That’s a lot of questions when you’re dealing with a lot of details already. Don’t offer explanations to the kids at the service. You might think you’re being helpful, but you’re not. Let the parents deal with the kids in their own way. That being said, do ask them about their Barbies or Silly Bandz.

Here are some things that were very helpful during the difficult time: Small diversions. Babies are great. So are puppies and invitations to weddings. Anything life affirming. Flowers, not so much. If you want to send flowers, send money instead to the dedicated charity. My mother-in-law’s charity was the ASPCA and when someone donates, we get a card with puppies and kitties looking out a window. This makes me smile.

Food later on in the week. You get tons of food in the beginning and then nothing. It’s nice if it’s spaced out a little. The amount doesn’t matter. Twenty servings of lasagna are nice but so is a loaf of banana bread. Seriously. It’s a huge comfort to know people are still thinking about you when you’re still thinking about your loss.

Space. If you don’t get called back or experience erratic behavior from a mourner, do not assume you did something wrong that needs apologizing or processing. Lower your expectations. Mourning takes time. Check in every once in a while but be gentle. I’m sure you know this intuitively but everyone mourns in their own way so it bears repeating. I often write this column as if I’m talking to a room full of idiots. I can’t help it, I’m a bitter jaded hypocrite. Not that you could tell by this month’s column. Death has dwarfed my tendency to do one thing and say another. Life is precious. Hug your family and friends while you’re all still here.

Cripes. Got all soft on you there. Summary: 1. Teach your kids to do stuff so you don’t have to. 2. Life is short. See you next time.

Hypocrite's Almanac

Holiday Survival Tactics

Teach Your Children Well