Merry Christmas?

Merry Christmas?

I am trying to have a hap-hap-happy Christmas. And I cannot understand why I am not. All of the necessary elements are there – family, food, presents . . . Baby Jesus. But I swear I have been depressed and anxious all month. Why?

        1.     Gluten?
Is Gluten the reason for my season? Just read an article about gluten and how it causes all manner of ailments. Maybe my gluten-filled diet has my cells all inflamed and my bowels all inflammatory and my mouth all defamatory and derogatory.

I have a strong urge to tell everyone to leave me the hell alone.

The problem is, some of the people who I want to tell to leave me the hell alone are actually PAYING ME to listen to them. Also, many of the people who I want to tell to leave me the hell alone are related to me.

And then if the people actually do leave me alone, I am instantly panicky. Where did everybody go? Does no one love me? Why hasn't my sister called me? When is my husband getting home?

Clearly, the Gluten diet makes you anxious with people and also without them.

2.     WalMart?

WalMart is depressing this time of year. When you're in there, your eyes zip zip zip from item to item. Impulse buys abound. Don't buy the WalMart peppermint bark. You will eat it all and you will hate yourself and that won't help the BabyJesusBirthdayBlues.

You go to WalMart to buy fun stuff like presents for your nieces and nephews. Problem is regular life goes on in spite of the holidays so you also have to buy monotony – Qtips. Coffee.

Watching the Barbie doll slide down the conveyor belt right next to the string cheese is depressing. They should have a different line for people who are giddy after picking out an X Box game. Giddy people should not have to stand next to people buying dog food. It's just not right.

     3.     Warfare?

The same battles are fought every year.  First, the TV battles. Did so-and-so refer to the tree as a Holiday Tree and not a Christmas Tree?!? Who is helping us fight this war on Christmas? That pretty blond on Fox is all upset about this, which makes me anxious. What will it take to make that lady happy?

Then, the battle for TIME. How am I going to get it all done? How am I going to see all the necessary people and wrap all the necessary gifts? How am I going to earn a living during all this so we can pay off the credit card? How am I going to get the GirlKid to her party and the BoyKid to his party and be sure they have a clean shirt on and no boogers on their faces before each party?

How am I going to make the anonymous lady happy? The lady whose name is on the Angel Tree at church and has told me nothing about herself except she is a Size Medium? Does this lady have a favorite color? Does she appreciate a heavy sweater or does she find them too itchy? Does she like perfume? What about earrings . . . would she like some earrings?

4.     Bumping into a Person?

While I am spinning in place, lamenting the fact that only one Christmas tree was erected this year, and that I really am not ever going to put one in the kitchen for all the kids' artsy ornaments, and wondering if I have enough shirt boxes, enough stocking stuffers, enough time to look presentable so the ONE PICTURE TAKEN OF ME EACH YEAR IS DECENT . . . I typically bump into a person.

This person's name differs from year to year, but their expression is the same. The person is sad.  This person knows loss. A kind of loss I have been up close to and seen with my own eyes, but have not yet felt on a devastating scale. This person's Christmas will include ALL of the necessary elements, food - - classic movies - - ugly sweaters - - candles - - but they won't be stressed about it. They will just be sad.

Someone will be missing. Someone who got on their nerves every year, who invaded their personal space and talked too much. Maybe someone who created drama, or created poundcake. This someone may have been "hard to buy for." This someone may have snored in a way that echoed through the entire house. This someone took so much TIME and energy. This someone required whole milk and not 2%. This someone was helpful, suggesting ways to clean the microwave, rearrange the living room, or understand current events.

This someone is gone.

And the person who misses their someone really just wants that someone around, even if it takes TIME . . . especially if it takes time.

A Christmas Prayer

 

God, help me.

Help me remember to thank Peggy.

Help me remember to hug my husband.

And my kids God.

Oh God, my kids are noisy and smelly. They break stuff.

God they are so spoiled rotten. (Their Daddy has ruined them).

God help me, help me, help me enjoy all of my someones this Christmas.

Thank you for the someones.

And thank you in advance for January.

I do so love January.

Especially the January magazines God.

Thank you for all the DeClutter and Get Organized Themed January issues.

The photos of those organized cabinets and closets are like salve to my scattered, over-decorated and war-torn Holiday Christmas mind.

You know how much I like to throw stuff out.

And it will be good.

Amen

Meet Virginia

Ginny is coming to see me!  (Full name Virginia Wyman Lawton Wood, or Mrs. Charles Edward Wood V).  To me, she’s just Gin.

She’s bringing her husband and all those kids they have, but I am mainly excited to see my Gin.

It wasn’t always this way.  Baby sisters can be a little annoying during those first 25 (or 30) years. 

There was fighting.  Physical fighting.  Gin could make her arms turn in a pinwheel formation and leave bruises.  I was not above throwing things at her.  The last time was about 5 years ago.  I threw her suitcase at her.  It was entirely justified.  I was MAD.  (Because she was ready to go home to NC and I wasn’t ready for her to leave).

Gin made up rhymes to tell me things, like that it was time for supper:

            Ashby.  Clap Clap.

            It’s time.  Clap Clap Clap.

            For supper.  Snap.

She was always in my stuff.  And she was tiny, so she could scoot places and sneak up on you. 

There was always so much CONVERSATION.  Gin has energy, and she has lots to say.  But she’s a listener too.  So much so that when it is my turn to talk, it is perfectly ok for me to say “I have two things to tell you, so be quiet a minute.”

She’s one of the few people brave enough to tell me when I’m wrong.  Gin knows if I ask her “Am I wrong?” I really want to know the answer.

She makes me laugh.  We laugh about life.  We laugh at our husbands.  We talk about babyshit.  We talk about middleschoolgirlshit.  She has always made me laugh:



I had something to do with this because I recognize my hands.



Gin’s a grown woman now.  But she still needs my protection.  And I’ve always wanted to protect her.

I helped her fix her bangs into a perfect flower.

I taught her the 9^th grade cheerleading tryout dance before tryouts (she had to pretend that she did not know it already).

I made her do our High School pageant together.  I was a senior and she was a freshman.  We sang a duet for our talent – The Rose.  We held fake red roses.  Before our talent performance, I told Gin she better hug me when it is over and act like she loves me.

She did.

Now we talk several times a day.  The time Peggy used to beg for  - it’s here.  Peggy used to cry and say “Y’all please quit fighting!  Y’all are supposed to be BEST FRIENDS.  When y’all get old you are going to need each other!!”

God, she could be so annoying.

Now we say I Love You every day.  And no one makes us say it either.

My gorgeous sister and her first girlbaby:  Frances Ashby Wood

Fall Round Up

I’m back.

If you are wondering where I have been since August – let me assure you, I have been conquering the world.  Ok, maybe not.  But I have gained a few pounds and learned a thing or two. 

The children have returned to school.  This means I am trying to strike that careful balance working Moms know about - - the “please don’t ask me for any of my time dear teachers because I have shit to do” versus “please understand that I actually notice when my kid is not doing well and I will send you an email asking about it and I will expect a prompt and appropriately-toned response . . . but don’t be mad when I fail to brown 3 pounds of ground beef for the classroom stew.”

It’s a careful parent-teacher balance.  They need to know I care, but understand that I do not care enough to hover in their classroom and ask if anything needs to be copied.  And then they need to feel the subtle protective vibe I am sending:  

If you hurt my kid, I will cut you.

I learned that last part from Peggy.  Peggy didn’t cut up construction paper or sell ice cream cones at lunch.  What Peggy did was inject herself into crises and ensure that any resolution included a mutual agreement that everyone would leave her kid alone.

6^th grade was particularly rough.  My Maggie has entered 6^th grade this year, and it seems to be going  . . . ok.  For example, when she is dropped off at her middle school, she doesn’t see last night’s bar patrons slumping through the doors of the popular establishment across the street – aptly named Stone Castle. 

Maggie has not mentioned any classmates spraying hairspray on the floor and lighting the hairspray sheen with a cigarette lighter.  As far as I know, none of her teachers go by the nickname “Dead Eye” Duncan.  In fact, her teachers don’t seem all that creepy.

She hasn’t even mentioned PE.  6^th grade PE was the most awful thing that ever happened to 12 year old Ashby.  First, the teacher was this “lady” that spent her off hours taking up tickets at the local wrestling matches on Saturday night.  She had kind of droopy boobies and she tried to teach aerobics to us.  (Those droopy boobies were not well secured). 

We also had to play basketball, which was just unacceptable to me.  Why anyone would want to simultaneously move their feet and hands with a dirty orange stray ball was beyond me. 

But the worst part was we had to “DRESS OUT.” 

Dressing out meant that in the morning you put a change of clothes in a Limited bag (it had to be a Limited bag), you took that bag into a very old locker room that had SHOWERS in it.  You figured out a way to change your shirt into your “workout” shirt without anyone seeing your AA bralet.  You laced up your Reeboks (which were OK in 6^th grade, but in 7^th grade I was told I was wearing Fagboks).

You did this while trying to avoid eye contact with the bullies.  At least that is what the smart kids did.  The smart kids made themselves invisible. 

This kid did not.  If a bully (there were a few of them) was staring at me, I’d say “What do you think you’re looking at?”  For some reason when I said stuff like that all my friends would scatter.  And I’d be left staring a very large 6^th grade girl in the face and trying to figure out what I had done wrong.  One way to ease the tension was to give the bully a quarter or let her borrow my hairbrush or my deodorant.  Sometimes though, there was no real solution.  Like the time the bully said she thought she heard me mention her mother’s name.  I said “What are you talking about, how the hell should I know your mother’s name!?”  She said she heard me say her mom’s name and it was Vicki.  I said “I have never even said the name Vicki in my whole life!!”

And she punched me.  Because I said her Mom’s name.  (It was Vicki).

So Peggy is a praying woman, and she likes to pray at the right time of day.  Even today, if I have a big hearing, she will pray for me during the time of my hearing (What time is that hearing Ashby?  I will pray for you then).  That night I asked Peggy to pray for me at 10:00 AM, because that was when I had PE and Vicki’s daughter was going to kick my ass.  When I told her I needed her prayers, instead of agreeing like she always does, she became instantly angry.  And apparently drove up to that Middle School to unleash some Peggy terror.

Because the next day, I was assigned a new duty in PE.   Instead of dressing in the locker room with the bully-whose-Mom’s-name-is-Vicki, I was assigned the job of watching my classmates leave the locker room and giving them a grade demerit if they had not properly dressed out in “workout clothes.”  This meant I had to ensure these 12 year olds had put on tennis shoes and changed out of their jeans.  Only when this was finished did I change into my workout clothes, alone, in that creepy 1960’s locker room with SHOWERS.

Guess who never changed into proper attire and tried to get away with wearing jeans during aerobics?  You guessed it, Vicki’s daughter. 

We made a quickly negotiated deal.  I like my deals quick and dirty still today:

No demerits for Vicki’s daughter.  Ever. 

No ass kicking for Peggy’s daughter.  Ever. 

Do you believe in ghosts?

I believe in them - I think there are a few categories:

Ghosts you Pay to See

I have been on two ghost tours.  The first was in Charleston.  We were there for a bachelorette party, and it seemed like a good idea to eat, drink, and then meet this random lady on the corner of a street downtown, and wander around Charleston with her.  We paid for this.  She was on a brochure in our hotel lobby.  So she had to be LEGIT.

We ladies were a little bit toe-up.  But the tour guide, well, in retrospect I can now say it:    she was high on crystal meth.  It has taken years of domestic litigation for me to recognize the symptoms.  She had scabs on her face, her skin was sort of gray, she was super thin and hyper – and she pointed this light thingy in the dark and said “looky, there goes a ghost right there!”  Her accent was not Charlestonian.  It was more Pelionian or Swanseaian.

The second ghost tour was in Savannah.  Bret was with me and he was no fun at all.  He is the second most skeptical man I know.  They put us in this old house, turned the lights off, and played a tape from that Paranormal Activity show.  I thought it was awesome.  Bret thought it was dumb and wanted to go back to the hotel.

Ghosts You do Not have to Pay to See (Yet)

The bests ghosts are pro bono.  In high school, my cousin Brian agreed to take me to see the Land’s End Light in Beaufort.  This ghost is famous.  It is either:  (1) a dead slave crawling around looking for its head that popped off;  (2) a dead slave walking to the hanging tree, but still with his head;  (3) a dead confederate soldier crawling around looking for its head that popped off (4) a union soldier;  or (3) swamp gases.

I was pretty creeped out to go see this ghost, but my cousin Brian was kind of a badass kid.  He knew how to operate most any vehicle, he shot and killed things and fished for big live animals in the Maye River.  Brian drove me around in a gocart when we were little, then a golf cart when we were a little bigger, then his own car when we were 12 or so.  Then he taught me to drive on Hampton County dirt roads and didn’t even laugh when I wisely noted “Did you know if you give the car more gas it goes faster?”

So Brian and I loaded up in the car and drove out to the site.  His version of the story required us to knock on the door of the church before we drove down and parked under the “hanging tree.”  Problem is, I really don’t think we knocked on the right church door.  This was the church we were supposed to go to:

I don’t think our church looked like that.  I think the church we knocked on was constructed in the 1980s.

So anyway, we knocked on some random church door and we got back in the car and we parked under the hanging tree. 

And we turned off the headlights and we waited.  And y’all, we saw it.  This light came bouncing down the road.  It was not a motorcycle.  It looked like this:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubEX-mSy5TI&feature=related

(this link has a video of some really smart southern people and the Land's End Light).

Except our light changed colors before it disappeared.  It was thrilling!

A few years later we decided to go back.  This time though, we took my sister and some other people.  I am not sure who all went with us, but if I had to guess it was Brian’s friend Nick. 

Brian’s friend Nick was loud.  He talked about that duo Kriss Kross and how the lyrics needed fine-tuning:  “Kriss Kross will make ya’ JUMP JUMP . . . A rattlesnake will make ya’  JUMP JUMP . . . two-boys-with-their-clothes-on-backwards will make ya’ JUMP JUMP.”

It just wasn’t the same.  We just weren’t reverent enough for the head-or-no-head dead slaveorsoldier/swamp gases.  I tried to get Brian to tell our story to our new companions, to set the mood.  But he wouldn’t.  In fact, if you ask him today about the Lands End Light, he acts like he doesn’t know what you are talking about.

One of the most fun pro bono ghosts is Alice.  Alice died over a 100 years ago of a broken heart.  Her mean Daddy wouldn’t let her marry the boy she loved.  So the deal is, you walk around her grave 8 times – either forward or backwards, or both.  Then you stand there and Alice tries to take off your wedding band because she’s jealous.

So Bret and I, and my sister Ginny and her husband Kick, and his sister Sarah and her husband Chris - - we all went to Alice’s grave.  Ok, I will admit, when we did this, we were all grown ups.  We were all well educated, and most of us had master’s degrees.  And I even had a KID.  No matter, we wanted to see a ghost.  Or at least Sarah and I did.  So we walked around this grave, we walked forwards and backwards . . . and nothing.  I think it was Kick’s fault.  Because he is the MOST skeptical person I know.  He has a special facial expression that means “No.  I think not.” 

I have seen this expression when I talk about the aliens.

Family

But I have actually seen two ghosts who were family members.  I don’t like to think of them as “ghosts” – because that implies they were creepy in some way.  Really, they were just checking up on me.

When I was super pregnant with Maggie, I saw my paternal grandfather at the foot of my bed.  I don’t remember him, he died when I was little.  But he was there clear as day.  He was kind of pacing, looked a little worried (I had been sick).  But it was definitely him.

I had also seen my Noni.  My Noni passed away in May of 1999.  It was too soon.  We had only just begun to form a real-life friendship.  We had been shopping together and watched Titanic on VHS (turned up REALLY loud – she was hard of hearing).  We had argued about politics and Days of Our Lives.  She had an immense dislike for the internet.  She just knew people would start naming their children somethingsomethingDOTCOM.

She had expressed her dismay at the colors of my bridesmaids dresses – “navy may as well be black and you may not have black bridesmaids dresses it will look like a funeral.” 

Noni - far right, in an appropriate bridesmaid's dress.

If Noni disagreed with you, she said so.  She would say "I know you think you're right but I KNOW I'm right."

She could be so infuriating.

And then she was gone.

5 months later, Bret and I were watching Real World and I felt just gross.  Something was wrong.  My body had been poisoned.  There was no way I was pregnant, because you had to try for like 6 months to get pregnant.  I made Bret go buy a test. 

While he was watching TV I learned the truth - - all those warnings Peggy gave me . . . she was right.  Forget all those other girls, Ashby had to be extra special careful:  

I could get pregnant by kissing too much, or lying down on the sofa with a boy, or accidentally brushing against someone in the hallway at school.

That night while I slept, I dreamt I was in Estill. 

I was walking down the street holding someone’s hand.  It was my Noni’s hand!  Her hand was soft and warm. 

I looked up at her and said “Guess what Noni?!”

“What, Ashby?”

“I’m PREGNANT Noni!”

And she said . . . “Well, I already knew that, but I thought you’d want to tell me yourself.”

Zen Peggy

I learned everything there is to know about crisis response from Peggy. 

Though Peggy can lose her marbles when the new plaid sofa is not upholstered correctly, or she can’t find her diamond rings again and she is convinced someone came in the house and stole them, or when Wes gets food on one of his new ties, or she is late for a church event (Dammit kids, get your white asses in the car you are making me late for BIBLE STUDY!)  . . .

she transforms into ZenPeggy when a true crisis arises.

Everyday Crises

If you choose to birth three children, there will be everyday drama.  Like when I was in middle school and had a zit.  See, my zits were rare.  I didn’t have one of those gross-crater-faces, and I didn’t have blackheads.  What I had were single solitary welts.  The welts usually appeared someplace central, like the top of my nose, or between my eyebrows.  And I just knew that these welts were an invitation “Mock Ashby!  Look how ugly Ashby is!!” 

And I would cry.  How could I possibly appear in school like this?  I would sob and beg not to go to school.

Peggy knew the first way to avert an everyday crisis was to throw money at the problem.  Peggy bought me this skin-colored zit cream that was supposed to cover and yet simultaneously dry up, scab, and disappear a zit all at once. 

The effect was disgusting.  First, because my skin is the color of white vinyl siding.  There is no variation, there is no shadowing, it’s just white.  So if you dropped a smudge of Clearasil medium tint on a zit between my eyebrows, it looks like I have run into a clay doorknob.

The second way to avert an everyday crisis is to try at-home remedies.  Peggy swabbed the zit with rubbing alcohol.  Then, she iced it. 

If those home remedies didn’t work, she’d put some prescription strength pharmaceutical-sales-rep-sample of hydrocortisone cream or maybe prescription strength pharmaceutical-sales-rep-sample of hemorrhoid cream on the zit. 

(In my household, prescription drug gift-bags were considered home remedies).

If money or home remedies didn’t work, she would impart wisdom:

Ashby, no one in your class is going to notice that zit.  Everyone is thinking about the zit on their own faces, or how they have B.O., or how bad their hair looks. 

No one is thinking about you. 

Now get your ass to school.

Crisis averted.

Quiet Crises

Once Peggy was driving up a hill in Greenville.  It was a high-traffic area, and she was in a rush.  Peggy has things to do.

She got to the top of that hill and something told her to pull over and stop. 

This was the same voice that told her to marry Wesley Willingham Lawton, Jr. 

It was the same voice that warned her that filling out the birth announcements for my little brother before he was born was probably a bad idea – since Mary Margaret Lawton came out with an extra accessory.

So she stopped the car and pulled over on Faris Road.

And a few moments later, through her windshield, she saw a woman slowly climbing the hill.  The woman was panting and carrying something heavy.  The woman was exhausted.  The woman was walking as fast as she could but her fast was not fast enough.

Peggy rolled her window down “Can I help you?  Do you need a ride somewhere?”

The woman told Peggy that she did, in fact, need a ride.  That she was late for work, she had no ride and her job meant everything to her. 

This woman had lost all hope as she climbed that hill, but that she prayed to God – to please help her.  So God interrupted Peggy’s train of thought:

“must plan Sunday School lesson, must buy Will new jeans – why oh why has he already ruined the jeans I just bought him?  I need to go back to weight watchers and quit eating slime.  Ashby has been so awful lately do we need to get her professional help?  Will she ever stop behaving like an ever-lovin-bitch?  Ginny talks and talks and talks and now she wants to have a friend over this afternoon and that will mean two little girls talking and talking and talking and I don’t know if I can handle it . . .

Is Days a re-run today?”

And God said:  PULL OVER.

After Peggy took the lady to work she went about her day – she bought some ice-milk, rented some movies, took some film to be developed at Graham photo, and picked a fight with the guy at the Chrysler place.

Serious Crises

Once when I was little, Mom and Dad and I were on our way back from the mountains.  Mom and Dad owned a (haunted) mountain house back then – more on the haunted part another time. 

We were winding our way down the mountain roads, slowly turning left then right, when I heard Peggy say:

                Wes, that was an accident.  Stop the car.

Mom and Dad pulled over on the side of the mountain.  They told me to be still and quiet.  And they left me in the car. 

I didn’t see an accident, and I was too young to know what “accident” meant.  All I know is, they were gone for a bit, and then Peggy came running back to the car.

She got our towels out of the trunk.  And she ran back to this thing called "accident."

I never asked her about it later.  I never asked why she insisted they stop for strangers, or why towels were needed.  But I will never forget her demeanor that day. 

Stopping for the car accident and helping the people who were hurt was a decision she easily made, no different than other swiftly-made decisions:  like the time she stretched scotch tape across Ginny’s bangs and cut the tape off, a new method of trimming hair in straight line. 

Or when I was 2 years old and I WOULD NOT SHUT UP about wanting my ears pierced, so she poked a safety pin through both my earlobes.  

In Peggy’s mind (and now in my mind too) in a crisis, whether yours or someone else’s, you don’t sit around and ponder whether you will be “welcome.”  Welcome is not a concept for consideration. 

You don’t worry about how “uncomfortable” you may feel – or how you might really just make them feel uncomfortable so maybe it would be best not to go. 

Priorities are instantly rearranged and renumbered, like on Netflix.  You stop the car, you go to the scene and you apply pressure with a towel. 

Or, you drive your car to the strange hospital, you bypass the giftshop because no one really wants that crap, you ride the elevator to the appropriate hospital floor.  You open the door, you sit in the uncomfortable chair.  You show your face.  You hold someone’s hand. 

You say all the wrong things or nothing at all but you show up. 

And that is 80% of crisis management Peggy style. 

The other 20% is luck – being lucky enough that someone tells you about the crisis at all.

Linen Button Downs, a Woozie, and a Pirate

I took a break from busting up marriages and driving back and forth to Publix to go on a few recent trips.  First, Bret and I celebrated our 15^th wedding anniversary at The Cloister at Sea Island.

Have you ever been?  You must go.

No, let’s try that again.  Have you ever been to The Cloister?  (Now pinch your nose and tilt your head back.  Kind of talk in the back of your throat.  Use your best Charleston accent – or a fake British accent works too – Yoouu Muusst Visit the Cloister).

When we arrived, there was a little guy on a golf cart waiting outside.  God must have told him the Joneses were coming, because he had our room key and everything ready.  God knows rich people appreciate this kind of thing, and since we were pretending to be filthy rich for a weekend, God played along. 

When we got to our room, which was unbelievably large and glamorous, I noticed someone had spread rose petals all over the room.  It caused a zap in my brain – near the part where the OCD monster lives.  Then, the butler asked me if I would like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times with my breakfast. 

I had already decided I was not going to clean up those rose petals, and being asked to choose between newspapers was just too much decisionmaking on vacation, so Bret and I got the hell out of there and went to the outdoor bar, where we met Dr. and Mrs. Burns.  Dr. Burns is retired doctor.  I know this because EVERYONE addressed him as Doctor Burns. 

But, I found Mrs. Burns much more interesting.  She was probably in her 70s.  She was fabulously dressed.  Mrs. Burns showed me some “jokes” she had printed off her email account.  Mercifully, they were actually funny.  I was scared they would not be because the bar TV was earnestly set on 24-Hour-Fox-News (which is what I think is funny). 

Mrs. Burns was drinking Chardonnay.  I do not know what kind, they did not tell us.  In fact, the bartender mentioned that this was a 5 Star Hotel and they did not carry Kendall Jackson Chardonnay.  It was beneath them.

So Mrs. Burns and I drank fancy Cloister Chardonnay, but hers was special because she drank hers from a Woozie:

Rich people like Woozies, Lilly Pulitzer swimsuits, and linen Ralph Lauren button downs with no undershirt.

The Burns couple got to talking about their children, and I learned one was a doctor, one was a lawyer, and one was a CPA.  After they briefly argued about where their daughter went to medical school (Mrs. Burns was convinced it was MUSC, Dr. Burns was certain it was Mercer, you would think they would know – I assume they paid for it), I asked Mrs. Burns, so what was your secret?  How did you turn out such great kids? 

She said:

“I told them to hang their own shingle.”

Well, I’m a lawyer.  “Hang your shingle” has a special somewhat terrifying meaning to lawyers.   Mrs. Burns did not know I was a lawyer, so I asked her “What does hang your own shingle mean to you?”

She told me that education was the most important thing.  Mrs. Burns told me that she taught her children to learn a skill, so no matter what happens, they are not dependent on others for their livelihood.  Her kids would be responsible for themselves, and “hang their own shingles” if necessary. 

This was a variation of the same advice Peggy gave me when I was a little girl.  Peggy told me: 

Ashby, you do not know what life has in store for you.  You do not know if you will marry, or if you do marry that your husband will take care of you.  Or, what if you do marry and something bad happens?  What if he passes away?  What if he leaves?  You have to learn to do something to take care of yourself. 

You need to learn to be more than someone’s wife or some kid’s mother.

But you also need to take tennis lessons.  Because the good girls know how to play tennis.  And you will never meet a good man if you do not know how to play tennis.  Now stand up straight and hold your shoulders back.

A few weeks later, Bret and I took the kids on a cruise. 

This was ever so slightly less fancy than the Cloister. 

First, we slept in a closet.  It was a comfortable closet, but it was definitely a closet.  Also, the amenities were different.  The Cloister had the most luxurious soaps and shampoos  (I stole them all).  The Cloister had a little bowl of chilled cucumber slices for my tired eyes. 

On the Carnival boat, our amenities included a Bic razor, Arm and Hammer whitening toothpaste, and Breathe Right Nasal Strips.

If you do not believe me, here is a picture (I stole those too):

The Carnival Cruise prefers Breathe Right Advanced Nasal Strips because it opens the nose more completely.

At the Cloister, we had great food.  Dinner was a highly choreographed affair.  We had two waiters who appeared on either side of our table and simultaneously glided towards us, placing silver covered plates in front of us. 

We sat right in front of that fireplace.  I dared Bret to request some ranch dressing so he could dip his food.

Then the waiters simultaneously lifted the silver tops to reveal a tiny mound of food.  A moment of silence.  Then, one waiter would quietly describe what we were eating.  The food tasted better than anything you could imagine.  The food was crazy delicious.

It was glorious.

The Carnival Cruise had an ice cream machine.   We allowed the kids unlimited access to this ice cream.  And they ate it 3-4 times a day.  There was also an unlimited pizzeria, and lots and lots of booze.  The Carnival foisted booze on us at every turn.  Booze in cute cups, booze in plastic fish with a straw out-the-mouth, and tangy Chardonnay in plastic cups (Chardonnay should not be tangy).   All we had to do was give them our room key-they even added the tip in for us so we didn’t have to make a decision!

Since everyone on the cruise had booze and ice cream to numb our senses, entertainment wasn’t really a big deal.  Instead of a chilled bottle of Champagne in our elegantly appointed room (The Cloister), we had a towel animal.

Also, there were random photo-ops, like the time we left the dining room and a Pirate appeared.  There was no pirate theme on this boat, and no talk of pirates, so we were confused.  Also, this was a pushy pirate – he said “Smiley-Smiley!!” and after the photo was taken he shoved us aside and said “now GO!”

It's kind of menacing how he holds that plastic sword under my babies' throats isn't it?

Maggie learned to do the Thriller dance on the cruise.  She also helped me pick out some DUTY FREE(!) perfume.  Despite his best efforts, Houston did not once break his arm while running across the slick deck, skipping along the edge of the boat, or slinging himself down the spiral slide.  The kids sang karaoke – and they chose my going-to-court themesong, Fighter by Christina Aguilera, which pleased me.

We stopped at Nassau and the kids decided to try the dual slide. 

Bret and I watched them climb the fake Mayan Temple together, wait in line together, and giggle.  We watched our babies simultaneously board the top of the slide, and effortlessly glide to the bottom.  There was a moment of silence when our babies were dropped in the bottom of the pool.

Then they simultaneously lifted their heads above water and shouted “we want to do it again!!” Their joy was crazy delicious.

It was glorious.

Yes, she is going to be taller than me.  But I am meaner.