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You know the sweet Nutcracker story? Herr Drosselmeyer gives Clara a Nutcracker and her brother Fritz is so jealous that he breaks it. The same thing happened at our house when Milo broke Annabella's wooden Nutcracker. Like Drosselmeyer, I mended it and I thought I'd done a pretty good job, until this morning when the Huck broke it in two pieces and then stabbed Milo in the cheek with it.
Santa Claus.
A parent's perpetual lie? A commercial invention? An accepted method of December bribery? A child's first act of faith?
I have friends whose children ask questions about Santa Claus; questions ranging from the logistical, "How does he get to all of those houses in one night?" to the graphological, "Why does he have the same handwriting as you?"
Annabella doesn't ask those questions and I know she got that from me. I've always been inquisitive, but I'm also willing to accept any crazy answer in order to continue to believe.
Take, for example, the fact that my (jewish) father used to dress up as Santa Claus every year and hang out in our living room on Christmas Eve. I never doubted that he was the real thing even as I sat on his lap and listened to him talk in his Santa Claus voice which, by the way, soundly suspiciously like the Bilbo Baggins voice he used while reading me "The Hobbit."
When I was 6 my sister stopped believing. She was 10 and in order to keep her from telling me the truth they let her dress up as an elf and be part of the show. When I asked where my sister was, they told me she was taking a shower. I honestly don't remember this making me doubt their story. I remember being upset that my sister was missing the visit from Santa Claus. What bad timing she had!
There's no story attached to the year that I stopped believing in Santa Claus. And for that reason, I don't think I'm lying when I tell my children that Santa will bring them presents on Christmas Eve. When we recently moved into a new house without a fireplace, I asked Annabella how Santa Claus was going to get in and she's the one who suggested the heating vents.
I think there's a little bit of bribery and a little bit of commercialism in Santa Claus, but mostly I choose to believe that it's a child's first act of faith. Because, "Faith," as Miracle on 34th Street tells us, "is believing in something when common sense tells you not to."
Last week I found myself speaking to a 12 year old girl I know who announced in total seriousness, "All I want for Christmas is my dating privileges back."
While my first response should have been, "You had dating privileges," it was actually, "What did you do to get them taken away?" She said, "Nothing," and I believe her because she is the kind of 12 year old that you believe. Then she added, "My parents just changed their minds."
She said this last part with such disbelief that I knew that that was what bothered her the most-- the fact that her parents have the power to discipline at will, without giving her any reason at all.
I try really hard to be a consistent parent, but it's a conversation like this that makes me realize how easy it is to be consistent about not drawing on your face with magic marker, not flinging your bowl of scrambled eggs across the kitchen, or not trying to eat the Christmas lights off the tree.
All I want for Christmas is for our problems to stay this uncomplicated.
A good friend of mine once told me that when her children were my age she wanted to put a bumper sticker on her car that said "Honk if your child has been bitten by my child." She told me this in response to my utter embarrassment about my own boys being biters. Her daughter is now one of our trusted babysitters and I see her son in town all the time and even if he's surrounded by his friends, he will always stop to say hello to our family. All evidence shows that they've grown out of their biting stage.
And still I doubt that Milo and Huck ever will.
They've only bitten a few other children, but they've certainly left their marks on Annabella, their father, their grandparents, their babysitter, and me. These days their bites are reserved mostly for each other. At any given time both of them will have bite marks covering their bodies. And I'm not talking vague red marks. I mean actually dental record scabs.
I know that a lot of kids bite, but I always assumed it was because they didn't know how much it hurts. The same can not be said for Milo and Huck who are just as likely to be biter as bitee.
So for now I wait, calmly, but firmly telling them "no biting" 378 times a day, holding and hugging bitee, so that biter does not learn that biting gets him attention, and being ultra-vigilant every time we're around other children.
Check back with me when they're graduating from high school and I'll let you know if this strategy has worked or not.
Annabella was using the bathroom the other day and started pulling a massive amount of toilet paper off the roll. We were at the gym where they had one of those big dispensers with more than one roll in it.
Me: That's too much toilet paper. You need to save some for your great grandkids.
AB: (With a so-frustrated-with-her-mother's-ignorance look) I don't have any great grandkids.
Me: You might someday.
AB: Well, then they can use that other roll.
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