Happy Easter: Part One
On Easter Sunday, we all got together at Kris’s house. Everybody contributed food for lunch. Bun brought perfect empanadas stuffed with black beans and butternut squash; I brought oven fries, kale, and red bean dip …
Tag: holidays
A Kimel Christmas
On Christmas morning I got up really early and planted 12 Shi-Shi Gashira sasanquas under the pindo palms near our pond. I was running around in the sparkling dew, petting Maggie and Babs in between plantings and wishing them a merry Christmas. Greg was sitting …
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve was so exciting–because it was the beginning of everything, the beginning of all the fun, the beginning of all my days off, my sweet, precious vacation. I spent the morning happily cleaning up cat throw up.
Kris and I met at Mom’s house before driving over to La Fiesta to meet Dad for our traditional Christmas Eve lunch. Kris is always so funny. When I first saw her, she was rolling her eyes and she said, “Sophie and Jake are being particularly loathsome today.” And just then, as if on cue, the kids burst out of the house, screaming.
They were so excited about Christmas. They were just beside themselves with crazy joy. They were so wound up, they fought all the way to La Fiesta. Jake already had a big cut on his face–because he had fallen into his bedside table when he was “attacking” Sophie. (He loves to jump on her and grab her and wrestle with her. )
“Santa’s watching!” Kris yelled. And then when that didn’t work, she said, “I’m cancelling Christmas!” But the kids just blew her off.
Dad, Bun, and Matt were already sitting down when we arrived at La Fiesta. I sat next to Jake, and periodically he’d elbow me in the ribs with all his might.
He also hogged the salsa. He pulled the little cup toward himself and said, “Hands off!” So all the people sitting around him (me, Kris, and Sophie) were forced to eat dry chips.
Kris took a dry, crunchy bite: “Boy, this sure could use some salsa,” she said.
Jake ate a little salsa. Then he opened a pack of sugar and downed that.
“Ah, just what Jake needs!” Matt said. “More sugar.”
Dad started asking me about my trip to England, and I was doing so bad with my storytelling.
“It–it was cold,” I was said, grinning like an idiot.
But Dad persisted, asking in his cheerful, nervous way (we all get our shyness from Dad): “W–well, okay, but did you see anything?”
“We saw some . . . um . . . castles!” I said. I was being so boring. I’m always kind of nervous around Dad because we don’t see him very much. Plus, sometimes I get stage fright when I have to tell stories in front of more than one person.
I faced a lot of obstacles to my storytelling. Jake was elbowing me in the ribs. And meanwhile, Sophie sat across the table, adjusting her tie in a hammy, cheesy sort of way and raising her eyebrows at me rakishly. She perused the drink menu (she’s nine). “I think I’ll have a Lowenbrau,” she said to Kris.
But I went on valiantly, haltingly: “We saw Warwick Castle,” I said. “It’s the best castle in England. Castles are smaller than you’d think, but otherwise they really do look exactly how they do in fairytale books.”
I talked about other English things too, in my uncertain, boring way–Tudor architecture, treacle. . . .
“What is treacle?” Bun asked.
“Um,” I said, “I don’t really know.”
Then the food arrived.
“Could you please stop talking, Leslie?” Jake requested. “I’d like to eat my quesadilla in peace and quiet.”
Kris motioned for him to cut it out.
“I’m serious, Mommy!” he cried, and he broke a chip in what he obviously hoped would be a very serious, threatening way–but the salt flew directly in his eye, completely undermining his dignity. Sophie and Kris and I died laughing. He’s so little, only seven, and he has the chubbiest cheeks and roundest, bluest eyes. It’s impossible to take him seriously.
Dad is always totally oblivious of the kids and their shenanigans. He said, “So, Lez, were the plants completely different in England or did you see a lot that you recognized?”
“Don’t answer that, Leslie,” Jake said.
Kris was so mad at Jake; she was shooting daggers at him with her eyes.
“Um, I saw a lot of azaleas and rhododendrons. . . .” I said.
Jake elbowed me in the ribs again, nearly knocking the wind out of me. He kept leaving the table in a huff and going to sit with “the classy people” (complete strangers). Well, he didn’t really sit; he just strolled around the restaurant, his head hanging shyly. (He’s very shy, except around the family.)
I droned on about England, and Jake came back to the table in a different frame of mind.
“Now where is this England place?” he asked cheerfully, conversationally, munching on a chip.
“Right over there,” Matt said, gesturing to his left.
“All I see over there is a fireplace!” Jake cried.
“Jake,” Kris said, “don’t play the fool.”
But that’s what I love about Jake. He’s always playing the fool, entertaining us.
Our table was the craziest table in the whole restaurant. We started opening presents, and the wrapping paper was flying. Jake and Sophie had made Dad some very large, awesome cards. Jake’s said, “Marry Christmas!” It was his best card yet, done in several colors. (Usually Jake just picks up a gray marker and sticks with it. )
Matt was observing the whole chaotic card-opening scene, and he muttered to me, “Somebody needs to tell Jake your dad’s already married.”
Jake and Sophie gave Dad a picture of themselves. And Dad gave Sophie a knit hat with owl eyes, and Jake an entire set of Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.
Sophie put on her owl hat and for the next five days I never saw her again without it. Jake started reading his books aloud to us at the table. Then he remembered La Fiesta’s spacious, empty patio, and he dragged me outside to play tag. I was all dressed up in fancy shoes and a skirt, but there I was, chasing him madly around the tables. His cheeks were bright pink. Sophie joined us.
“Sophie’s playing!” I cried.
“You got your facts wrong,” Sophie said in her sassy, faux-tough-girl way. But I tagged her, and we ran around under the patio’s giant lemon tree, which was like a huge umbrella (it was ornamented with big fat golden real lemons).
Bunny came out too and wanted to take pictures of Jake and his new books. (Sophie ducked back inside.) Jake posed for one picture. “Okay,” he said to Bunny, “now you’re playing tag.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Bunny said sweetly, teasingly. “I thought I might take a few more pictures of you.”
“Me too,” I said. “I’d love to get some more shots of you reading.”
“Nope,” Jake said. “You have to play.”
Bunny took some pictures of the beautiful lemons dangling above our heads (it was such a sunny, dazzling day). But Jake was losing patience: “You said you would play, Bunny.”
“Did I?” Bunny said in her teasing, coy way.
“Yes, you did. I heard you,” Jake said. His cheeks were so flushed.
Bunny and I took just a few more pictures, and Jake somehow managed to fall over backwards in a chair. Then a table fell on top of him.
“Are you all right?” I said.
Jake was so embarrassed. (He’s so little and clumsy–and so proud.) He tried to cover for himself. “I was just trying to get your attention!” he cried.
“But are you okay?” Bunny asked.
“No! I’m bored! I want you to play tag with me!” Jake yelled.
“But I don’t know if we should really be playing out here, actually,” I said. “It might be dangerous. You know. Furniture is falling.”
Jake crossed his arms and stuck out his bottom lip. Then he stormed off after issuing these parting words: “I don’t know why I should hang around you selfish people if you’re going to be so selfish!”
But five seconds later he was back, trying not to smile: “I’ll give you one more chance, Bunny!” he cried.
So we played tag again and knocked over a few more tables.
“We’re going to get kicked out of here,” Bunny said.
Jake was mad when we tried to bring the game to a close. “Stop being so selfish, you selfish people!” he cried. “Why did you even ask me to come out here on this patio if you’re not going to play?”
“Uh, we didn’t actually ask you to come out here,” I said.
After a while we said our farewells to Dad, and Kris, Sophie, Jake, and I went back to Mom’s house. There, Jake and Sophie opened their presents to each other. Jake gave Sophie a big fuzzy hot pink and green pillow from Justice, and some nail polish that will change color with her mood. Sophie gave Jake a cuddly frog-shaped pillow. (Jake loves frogs.)
They were both so completely happy and satisfied with their gifts.
I said, “How did you guys know the perfect thing to get for each other?”
“I just saw the pillow,” Jake said, shrugging in a sweet, humble-but-proud sort of way, “and I thought, ‘Maybe Sophie will like this nice pillow.’ That’s how I did it.” (Jake was so proud of his gift to Sophie; Sophie is really the most important person in his life.)
The kids stayed at Mom’s and “snugged” on the couch with their new pillows. And Kris and I drove around to secondhand stores for a while, looking for bargain outfits.
Then we came back and we made a Christmas Eve feast: vegan chili, potato soup, homemade crackers, crescent rolls, cornbread, and all kinds of Christmas cookies. We also served Rob’s vegan sweet potato pie. (Rob doesn’t spend Christmas with us, but he did leave us with pie.)
Oh, I forgot to mention: While we were cooking, Sophie transformed into “the burrower” again. The burrower is a crotchety, testy, mostly mute little creature that Sophie invented. She bares her teeth and makes little threatening boxing motions with her small, clenched fists. You never know what might set the burrower off; her mood swings are completely unpredictable
I played the burrower’s unfortunate owner, brought to ruin by this very unruly pet, and I sought the advice of Bunny, who played a famed (in her own mind) burrower trainer. The trainer was very full of himself and kept talking about his wide experience.
“Now, sir,” Bun/the trainer said to me, “what are your ambitions for your burrower? I’m the world’s foremost trainer of burrowers. Perhaps you recognize me. I’ve been featured on the cover of Burrower Fancy 10 times.”
“I–I just wish my burrower wouldn’t break all my furniture,” I said meekly. “If she would only leave me a chair to sit on, I would be content.”
Sophie, the burrower, made little boxing motions at me. She wrinkled her nose in a menacing way.
“And–and maybe if she wouldn’t spit out all the food I give her,” I said, “maybe that would be nice. Then the house wouldn’t get so messy.”
Sophie broke character and said, “Let’s say you have a clip of the burrower spitting out the food.” And then she spit a pistachio across the table.
“You see?” I said to Bun, the famed burrower trainer.
“Well,” Bun sighed, “I may not be the man to help you. Your ambitions for your burrower–they’re rather, uh, . . . limited, in my opinion. Now you see, I work mainly with circuses–renowned ones–and the better-known fairs and sideshows. I don’t simply teach burrowers to behave, you understand; I teach them to perform. On stage. Tricks, specifically.”
“Tricks?” I said.
The burrower snarled at the trainer.
“Yes,” the trainer said. “I’m talking tight-rope walking, juggling. Trapeze. There’s solid demand for burrowers in the circus–especially your Russian circuses. Not to mention the lucrative sideshow circuit.”
“Do you think my burrower could be trained?” I asked. “Do you think she has potential?”
Sophie bared her teeth at the trainer and growled. Then she broke character again: “Tell the trainer I like to steal,” she said. “Tell her I’m good at it.”
“My–my burrower is wonderfully gifted at stealing,” I said. “She–she always steals my paycheck. Every week. That’s why I’m so hungry and dressed in these rags.”
“Well, sir,” the trainer said, “today is your lucky day! There’s always a need for pickpockets at the circus!”
“W–would this be a full-time position?” I asked.
“Twelve hours a day!” the trainer cried merrily.
“And the rest of the time?” I said. “H-how would my burrower be occupied? Burrowers are such lively and intelligent creatures–they do need to be occupied, I know.” (I was trying to placate my burrower, who was presently hissing at me.)
The trainer replied cheerfully, “She’d be confined to the boxcar in chains!”
“Well, that would save my furniture a lot of wear and tear,” I said.
The burrower was squawking and making an angry face. She smacked me with a baguette.
“And, sir, I’d never see her again?” I said hopefully.
“Not unless she escapes,” the trainer replied. “And in that case, I’d suggest you change all your locks and hire a bodyguard.”
After Kris and Phil and the kids were gone, Bun, Matt, Mom, and I sat around in Mom’s cozy little TV room, talking about old Christmas memories. Matt told us some funny things about his family.
“We always went to midnight mass,” he said.
“Did you dress up?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, “but then you’ve got to remember that I didn’t own a pair of jeans until I was in the sixth grade.”
His parents were pretty tough, I think, and strict. They were good Catholics.
He told us his family’s Christmas Eve snack was always “Velveeta on Ritz crackers.”
“Was the Velveeta melted?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said.
Mom remembered how her family always went to midnight mass, too, and then when they got home and all the nine kids were in bed, her mother (playing Santa) would put up the Christmas tree all by herself and decorate it and set out all the gifts.
“She didn’t start putting up the tree until one o’clock in the morning?!” I said. “She must have been up all night!”
“Well, people didn’t have so many decorations back then,” Mom said. “But we had some. So yes, it must have been a lot of work.”
“You never saw the tree until Christmas morning?” I asked.
“No,” Mom said, “but it was wonderful walking in there like that and seeing it all decorated.”
“It didn’t give you a whole lot of time to enjoy the tree, I guess,” Bunny said.
“No,” Mom said. “But my father wouldn’t have had it any other way. He was cheap, and if you waited till Christmas Eve you could get your tree for next to nothing. Now it might be a pretty cruddy tree, but . . .”
Mom was being so much fun, talking and laughing. We went out driving around to look at Christmas lights, just like we did in the old days, when Bun and I were kids. We drove through Huntington Estates, an ordinary subdivision that, each December, transforms itself into an enchanted Christmas village. Houses were outlined in lights, and fairy lights streamed down from the dark live oak branches like magical moss. We were oohing and ah-ing.
“Isn’t it great that it never gets old–looking at Christmas lights?” I said. “That you’re always amazed and delighted no matter how old you get?”
We went to Oven Park next and walked around in the lighted gardens–and I thought the same thought I think every year: that maybe heaven is like Oven Park at Christmas, full of glittering lemon and grapefruit trees, camellias draped in fairy lights, and music.
Mom’s Christmas Date Balls
On Saturday Kris and Sophie had a Christmas crafting party. It was a freezing, gloomy, dark day, so it was so nice to spend it inside Kris’s warm, cozy house, which was all decorated with lush garlands and wreaths and a big sparkly Christmas tree.
Tree-Trimming Party
Mom had a tree-trimming party on Friday night. The usual folks were there—Mom, Kris, Sophie, Jake, Bunny, Matt, and me. I was one of the first to arrive. I came over right after work and the living room was already full of the old, familiar boxes of ornaments.
A Pumpkin-Carving Party
Jake was the judge of our annual pumpkin contest. Guess whose pumpkin won first place.
Friday night was Mom’s annual pumpkin-carving party. I came over after work, carrying two pumpkins, and Mom’s house seemed so inviting. There were bowls of Halloween candy on the table—orange saltwater taffies and gummy mummy pops. A big pot of sweet-potato soup was simmering on the stove, and Pillsbury crescent rolls were browning in the oven. The tablecloth in the dining room was black lace and looked like a fancy spider web. . . .
Everybody was out back at the picnic table, already hard at work carving. Mom was wearing one of her many Halloween T-shirts. This particular one glowed in the dark. “I have three Halloween T-shirts,” Mom said proudly. “And do you know I’ve worn every single one this year!”
Mom had made all the ladies special fall aprons to wear while we were carving. Sophie got one too, in a cheerful harvest print. She looked so cute, hard at work in her apron, the dotted horsemint and swamp sunflowers blooming all around her, lush purple and gold, glowing in the sunset.
Sophie was being so good, working so hard; she had the great idea that her pumpkin was going to be throwing up. She’s so funny. She is the cleanest, tidiest child who generally hates to get her hands or feet dirty. But then sometimes a strange mood will come over her and she can’t resist rolling in the mud . . . or reveling in pumpkin guts. That’s what happened to her at the party. The mood came over her. She had a whole bowl of pumpkin guts that she was going use to make throw up, and she couldn’t help continually squeezing the guts and rolling them into balls and throwing a few of those balls at whiny little Jake. . . .
Jake was having a bad day. He was cranky because he got up too early, so he kept getting in trouble. In fact, he spent most of the pumpkin-carving party pouting. There is this place in Mom’s yard that we always called The Secret Garden (it’s overgrown and hidden away), and Jake spent a large part of the party pouting there, sitting under the giant oak leaf hydrangeas with his arms crossed and his bottom lip sticking out. Kris kept trying to appease him. She played tag with him while the rest of us carved. But he was never quite satisfied. He kept accusing her of cheating and “not even caring.” His accusations were completely groundless and quite hilarious. “You cheated and you don’t even care!” he’d cry, truly outraged. “You do not even care, Mommy!”
He kept getting bored and wanting to start some new activity. “Hey, who wants to have an egg race?” he cried in a hopeful sort of way.
“Uh, I think you’ve got your holidays confused there, Jake,” Matt said.
“How about you have to run carrying a tub of pumpkin guts on your head?” Kris suggested. But Jake didn’t like that idea. The smell of pumpkin guts makes him gag.
Sophie was being so serious about her carving. She and Bun and I sat in the grass together, working.
“Did you know that Martha Stewart is available on demand?” Sophie said. I loved the way she was making such polite, ladylike conversation. “She’s got some great ideas for Halloween. “
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, um, you can make these eyeballs out of golf balls. You just take some, like, construction paper and cut out the pupil . . . and the iris. . . . And you can draw, like, veins. . . . They’re really cool. . . .”
Bunny told us how she and Matt like to pretend their cat Jelly sells things on eBay–stray socks and bits of string and other stuff she finds in corners and carries around in her mouth, then hides in the fireplace.
Matt joined us and said, “What was that funny thing that happened this week that we wanted to tell Leslie about?”
“I don’t know,” Bun said. “I already told her about Jelly’s eBay site.”
Matt thought for a minute. “. . . Well, that was our week!” he said sheepishly.
“But, man, was it funny!” Bun said.
Then Jake ran up and punched Sophie in the stomach.
“Stop!” Sophie cried. “Mommy! He punched me in the stomach!”
“Okay, Jake!” Kris cried. “You’re going home! I warned you!”
“I’m not going home,” Jake said with a sort of forced nonchalance.
“I warned you,” Kris replied.
“No, you didn’t,” Jake said.
Kris rolled her eyes: “You don’t remember the entire ride over here?”
Apparently the two of them had been going at it all day.
Bunny was very nervous about her pumpkin. She always wants her pumpkin to be scary—every year—but it always turns out cute. This year she was determined to carve a scary pumpkin. She made sketches for about an hour before she even made the first cut. She gave her pumpkin a scar and one shrunken eye. But somehow, amazingly, it still looked jolly.
“Oh, how cute!” Rob said, and then he saw Bunny’s face: “I mean, scary. That is the scariest pumpkin!”
Rob’s pumpkin was a triumph as usual. He spent about five minutes on it and it turned out truly bizarre–and truly inspired! It looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, or maybe like Igor of Frankenstein fame.
It was so neat seeing all the jack o’lanterns lit and lined up on the picnic table, glowing in the dark. It was a perfect fall night, warm with a full moon.
After we hogged out on Mom’s sweet-potato soup, warm pasta and spinach salad, crescent rolls, kale chips, and baked apples, we played a game of ghost in the graveyard, a game we knew was doomed because Jake was in such a crazy bad mood. It was fun to be running around in the shadows, in Mom’s jungle-y yard. But Jake was not to be trifled with! On our first round, the boys were hiding and the girls were chasing. I came upon Rob and Jake in the darkness, and I could see that Rob was carrying Jake. Then, suddenly, Rob threw Jake at me, crying, “Here! You can have him!” So I tagged Jake and tickled him, and Rob ran away into the night.
Well, of course Jake started crying. He was crying so dejectedly, saying, “It was a trick! Rob played a mean trick! It isn’t fair!”
He went in the house and sat crying with his arms crossed, and Rob had to go in and apologize and explain that he was only trying to be funny and promise that we’d do that round over and that it didn’t count.
So Jake came outside again, cheerfully talking trash with tears on his face. And we played again, but Jake was soon sobbing even harder than before. See, he ran to the Adirondack chair instead of the swing so Sophie tagged him, and he said, “It doesn’t count, Sophie. I already made it to the base.”
And Kris said, “Um, the swing is the base.”
And Jake said, “You said the chair was!”
And Kris said, softly, “Uh, I actually said it was the swing.”
And so Jake started crying and crossed his arms again and ran away. “You lied about the base, Mommy!” he cried.
And so we had to comfort him and apologize and do that round over too.
And this time we let him get to the base. Nobody dared to even touch him! Bun tagged Matt and I tagged Rob, but we let Jake go so he’d be happy. And he was happy for about a second, celebrating and talking trash. But then he began to get a nagging feeling. He began to feel that maybe his victory was a hollow one. He said softly, sadly, putting his head down, “Mommy, I don’t feel like I really won in my tummy.”
Rob tried to comfort him and help him ease his conscience. He tried to get him to settle down and watch a kids’ show.
“I don’t remember being like that as a kid,” Kris said to me later. “I know I must have had temper tantrums, but I don’t remember it.”
“Oh, I do,” Rob said. “I had them all the time. There are even pictures. Yep. It’s well documented. It was a problem.”
Jake stayed at Mom’s to rest while Sophie, Bun, Kris, Rob, and I took a walk in the nearby cemetery (Roselawn Cemetery). Mom gave us flashlights to take along. Of course, they were all kind of weird and old. One was a tiny dental flashlight. (Why does Mom have a dental flashlight?) Kris got that one.
“What?!” Kris cried. “Mom gave me a flashlight that you have to keep pushing in the whole time?! It shuts off immediately if I stop pushing the button.”
“Kris,” Rob said, “that’s really not the weirdest thing about that flashlight.”
We were walking down Mom’s street, Avon Circle, the street where we grew up.
“I don’t really have a lot of confidence in the battery situation here,” Bun said. (When we were kids, a live battery was always tough to come by at our house.) “We better turn off our flashlights if we want them to still be working by the time we get to the cemetery.”
As we walked in the moonlight in the cemetery, under the gothic old live oaks, Kris told this funny story about Jake: “Today Jake told me he thought it would be a good idea if we started praying together as a family. ‘It’s fun!’ he said, trying to persuade me. ‘I especially like that almond part!’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I guess we better start learning the basics. . . .’”
The moonlight was so magical. The full moon was the same color as the softly shining tombstones, only brighter. And the trees were so huge and inky, dripping with black moss. We talked about scary dreams we’ve had lately, and Bunny remembered her childhood spent playing in the cemetery. “It was a happy place to me,” she said. “It was never sad or scary.”
When we got back to Mom’s house, Sophie taught me how to make a koala bear out of modeling clay while Jake played on Mom’s computer and acted very anti-social (“Jake won’t even talk to me,” I kept teasing).
Sophie was a very patient teacher. “Now you want to take a piece of clay about this big and turn it into a little bowl,” she said in a cheerful, encouraging voice. “Actually, you need to make two bowls. . . . Um, you might want your bowls to be a little thicker. Yeah, that’s good. Good job. . . . And now you need to make a little coil for his foot. Do you know how to make a coil? Do you want me to make one for you? It’s really easy. There, now you’ve got a foot. See? . . . Okay, and now you need to make some little balls for his eyes. Like this. You might want to make them a little smaller. . . . Hummy, do you have a strainer?! . . . We have to use a strainer to make the hair. Do you want a little hair or a lot of hair? You can decide. It’s really up to you. . . .”
Mom packed my finished koala in one of her funny old Cool Whip containers so I could take it home. Mom finds so many uses for old Cool Whip containers, it is truly amazing. In general, you can’t leave her house without a Cool Whip container full of something. That’s because Mom is so generous, even more giving than the Giving Tree–really.
When Jake realized the party was wrapping up, he was full of regrets. “Oh no! Mommy!” he cried. “The party’s over and I was bad the whole time!”
He cried a little on the way home.
Sophie, master pumpkin carver
Sophie’s barfing pumpkin
Clay koalas and a baby, made by Sophie and me
Kicking Off the Halloween Season
On Saturday at 4:00 I had my long-awaited Halloween baking party. Yes, I know. It’s not even October yet. But our family starts getting excited about Halloween in July! So this party seemed a long time coming.
