LET’S JUST DISPENSE WITH MY LEAST FAVORITE holiday right up front: Christmas. it’s not that I am Grinchy, nor am I guilt-ridden over the obvious excess required to celebrate the holiday with six children—I love giving my kids gifts and paving the house with new toys that will be dismissed and forgotten within fifteen minutes of unwrapping. I love that. What I can’t bear is the escalating expectations and ultimate pressure associated with all things year-end. There is absolutely nothing to buy for these kids; we already own every version of every toy ever made, and even coming up with a decent show underneath the tree has become a hassle. How many Batman figures does Larson really need to own? My older boys are always happy with the latest video game, but that doesn’t make much of a pile, and for my little men, it’s all about the show. Clothes? Forget it, they’d kill me on the spot. Books. Sure, if you like hearing your kid groan when he opens a package. I tear my hair out trying to come up with big stuff and lots of it. Peter tries to help, but usually comes home with the Radio Shack 200 in 1 Electronics Lab, forgetting we still have the ones he bought the previous three years in the closet.
December is the month when, regardless of how equal a marriage may seem on the outside, mom is left holding Santa’s bag, or lighting the candles, whatever her religion requires. I can’t bring myself to do the Christmas card thing; I’d have to start thinking of a setting back in August. What will best represent how fantastic we are as parents and how blissfully happy our children are? A sunny beach? A pristine white ski slope? How would I get all of our children decent-looking and smiling in front of a camera? Getting six children to sit still for.2 seconds is not as easy as it seems. Then I’d need to find a stand-in for my daughter, who is never around, and spend hours Photoshopping her face onto the surrogate, not to mention Photoshopping out somebody’s pinkeye infection and the bunny ears Peik made behind Truman’s head. The entire process is just so exhausting. I have yet to organize a database of addresses, so even if I did have the wherewithal to get a card made, I doubt it would actually be sent out. I have a friend who never sends me a card for Christmas, but instead sends one on Valentine’s Day. It’s a brilliant idea; not only does she have an extra six weeks of downtime to execute this thankless task, but the card arrives after the chaos of the holidays and I actually have a moment to enjoy it. I am seriously considering Arbor Day cards.
During the countdown to Christmas break, four backpacks enter my home every day, chock-full of announcements of school fund-raisers, recitals, end-of-trimester parent-teacher conferences (why does a preschooler need a conference?), and birthday party invitations (“I hope Truman can make it, it’s sooo hard for Christian to have a Christmastime birthday”)—a constant stream of paper working its way into my house, bent and creased and greasy and each single piece expressing its claim to a pound of my flesh. And then there are all the “Winter Solstice” events at Larson’s international preschool, because God forbid Christmas should take up all of our attention: we also have to find time each December to teach our children to be tolerant of others. Don’t even get me started on all the tipping and gifting—of teachers, teachers’ aides, teachers’ assistants, nannies, mannies, therapists, parking garage attendants, postal delivery facilitators (formerly known as “mailmen”), secret Santas, and class moms. My bank is broken along with my spirit of giving.
How did spreading holiday cheer become women’s work? How many men actually make it to a holiday singalong past pre-k? And of the few who do, is it even remotely possible that they have sewn some sequins on Mary’s blue headdress or run down to the 99-cent store the morning of the big show, praying that there are three fuzzy Santa hats left?
During this hundred-yard dash to the five-minute finish line of opening presents on Christmas morning, all children lose what shreds of common sense they might have had the month before. They may spend eleven months of the year jockeying for position on my favorite-child list, but come November 30 they are gaming Santa, even the ones who no longer believe. Like most parents with children hopped up on snowman-shaped cookies and dreams of the latest iPod, Peter and I wield the old fat man like a cudgel. Every other sentence out of my mouth is a shouted “Santa’s watching you!” After many repetitions of this threat, I sometimes have to take myself into the bathroom and soak my face in a sink full of ice water to keep from going insane. Who am I? How did I become this harpy, demanding that my children answer to a fictitious red-and-white executioner?
As if all of the above weren’t enough, in the middle of the month my children are handed over to me for twenty days of “school break,” backpacks now stuffed with “projects” and “homework” to be done during our holiday “downtime.” Because, of course, there is nothing a child wants to do more than spend a vacation working. Talk about a busman’s holiday. Seriously, can we stop with the break projects? Does my six-year-old really need to make a photo collage all about him? Must my ten-year-old sculpt clay figures of middle grass prairie life? Yes, I know that education is an ongoing process and that without my careful tending they will slowly forget everything they have learned in the past few months, but if you’re so worried about them then don’t give them to me for twenty straight days. When the nannies and teachers and therapists all disappear on me, I find myself in the dubious position of having to take care of my own kids. I have to walk away from my career and go on sabbatical, completely and without reservation, in order to satisfy all the sugarplum dreams of this pack of wolves. They have been promised so much by the media and by the world at large that I am nearly blinded by the crush of responsibility. They have to be fed, for one thing, and entertained, for another. Why add algebra?
Because of the exorbitant cost of traveling at Christmas, it has become our habit to head for the local “mountain,” armed with ski passes bought at a discount during the off-season. One year, I was too pregnant to decamp to the country for the holidays. The more babies you have, the faster they deliver, so my doctor wanted me in town in case the little one decided to pull a baby Jesus on us. We cobbled together some decorations from the 99-cent shop (my Christmastime go-to), and put up a tree in the apartment. The questions about how Santa would get in without a chimney went unanswered, Christmas passed, and for months the tree stood in the corner. Many months. We had found some energy and focus back in February to take off the decorations, but now the bare tree stood there, taking up precious urban square footage. I would like to blame the new-baby tumult, but the truth is that getting rid of a tree in New York City is not an easy feat. The Parks Department will pick them up and make them into environmentally friendly post-holiday mulch, but pickup is only on certain days, and I never seem to get the memo.
In the country, we just drag our tree outside and burn it. This sparked an idea. It occurred to me that I had never used a fire extinguisher and that perhaps it would be good to know how one works—you know, in case of an emergency. So, in the ultimate what-were-you-thinking moment, we gathered around the city tree, Peter included (so I can’t be the only adult blamed for this), and someone held a lighter to a dry, crackly branch. It wasn’t me, as I was tasked with actually putting the fire out so I was standing by with the extinguisher locked and loaded. I’m a pretty good shot with a rifle; how hard could this be? The moment the first needle caught fire, the entire six-foot tree exploded into flames. Why this result was so unexpected is a mystery to me even now, but it caused me to scream and at the same time completely forget that I was the one assigned with putting the damn thing out. I grabbed the extinguisher and aimed it at the coniferno. It stopped burning as quickly as it had started. As I looked around at the apartment, I realized the true lesson of how fire extinguishers work, and why they should be used only in case of emergency: the entire apartment was covered in a fine white powder, every crack, every crevice, every curlicue of my husband’s grandmother’s elaborately carved French provincial armoire.
“Ai-ai-ai,” Zoila said as she looked upon the scene, shaking her head and no doubt wondering at how we can create a fresh new hell for her at every turn.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a Zoila upstate to deal with the magnitude of our collective messes, so during the holidays most of the crime scene investigations are handled by yours truly. As you can imagine, it is a constant job, with armloads of toys to remove from one part of the house to the next, and countless hours spent washing clothes, dishes, and weenies. The kids do seem to have a good time, but there are a few fundamental problems for me. First and foremost, I am a warm-weather gal, and I fear the cold the way some people fear man smell, or taxes. Temperatures in the below-zeros are commonplace in the Berkshires. I don’t care if my children get frost-bite—they can still grow new toes—but me? There is only so much time a woman with my taste in shoes can spend wearing Uggly boots, and at about an hour I pass my limit. The occasional stroll out to the pond on a weekend is one thing; hanging out on a snow-covered mountain all afternoon quite another.
These ski vacations hold little interest for me because I don’t ski. I don’t understand the appeal of a sport that often results in tearing something that makes your knee stop working. Best-case scenario, I am careening down a mountain at high speed, out of control. Worst case, I am on my ass, cold and wet. And why would I willingly engage in a sport that requires me to wear puffy clothes that make me look fat? I much prefer the cute white pleated skirts suitable for summer sports, or the regal gear worn for riding. Naturally, because I can’t leave the house for fear of the cold and hideous footwear, I am stuck cooking and cleaning, two activities I also try to avoid. I do feel a responsibility to put in equal time—Peter gets the boys to the mountain every cold morning, so the least I can do is have something warm waiting for them to eat, even if that means throwing something from the bottom of the freezer in the oven.
As much as I love my husband, once the novelty of skiing with his children wears off he reverts to wandering around inside, looking for something to “fix.” I find myself wondering around day ten of Christmas break whether he has any errands that will get him out of my hair. I think he must feel the need to get away from me, also, because he starts to focus on minutiae that he otherwise tends to overlook.
“Look at the bottom of these pots,” he says a day after New Year’s. Yes, I actually tried to cook real food for New Year’s Day, and these are the thanks I get.
“Okay,” I say, not looking up from my computer, where I’m trying to sneak in a little work so I’m not swallowed up the following week.
“These are expensive pots,” he continues. “If you don’t scrub the bottoms, this gunk will get cooked on and become impossible to remove.”
“Peter, are all the children alive and accounted for?” I ask, glancing up at him.
“Well, yes,” he says, still holding the offending pot bottom up.
“I think we need milk. And see if you can’t run past Big Y and pick up some pot scrubbers while you’re out.”
“I’ll be right back,” he says, conceding the point. Our condition can only be accurately described as too much togetherness, or overwhelming Christmas spirit.
When Peter returns a couple of hours later, he’s brought me a surprise, entering the house loaded down with Kmart bags.
“Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” I say, taking the bags from him and peeking inside. We have an annual tradition of buying up all the reduced-price gaudy ornaments that Kmart has to offer.
“Look at these.” Peter pulls a box of large round red ones with flocked snowmen on them.
“Fantastic,” I say. “Let’s hang them up!”
He grabs a couple more boxes and walks out the kitchen door, while I race down the hall to the gun cabinet to retrieve my personal favorite, a high-powered German pellet rifle, and a box of ammo. I run back into the kitchen and open the window over the sink. By the time I get my rifle loaded, Peter has hung about twenty odd-size ornaments fifty yards away on a nail-studded plank designed for this purpose.
“All clear!” he yells, running back to the house to join me. I can’t tell you how many houseguests have enjoyed this activity. Even the kids get into the action with assorted BB guns. Before you know it, every window on the north side of the house is open and tiny Santas and reindeer are being blown to smithereens. When the last one has been dispatched, Peter turns to me, my very own Mr. Smith & Wesson, gun still slightly smoking.
“Good work keeping the kids alive,” he says, and gives me a high-five.
Just barely alive. Little did he know that while he was out, the four elder boys went a little stir crazy; in their moment of severe cabin fever, they decided to collect all the cardboard boxes from the various presents and construct a giant fort in the kitchen. I was getting Finn up from his nap when I heard yelling from downstairs.
“Fire in the hole!” Pierson shouted, and though I know he is prone to drama, I raced back down, a half-naked Finn on my hip. Smoke curled out of the kitchen and I got there just in time to see Peik throwing water on a black chunk of cardboard and Truman slapping the same area with a wet dish-towel. Pierson stood in the corner, fire extinguisher sort of at the ready. Though, like his mother before him, he didn’t have the sense to actually point and shoot.
“Who set this on fire?” I demanded. They all just stood there, a tableau de Noël,
“It wasn’t me!” cried Pierson.
“Spontaneous combustion?” Peik managed. They all looked at him, nodding in agreement, and then looked back at me, praying for believability.
“I have read Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” I said, looking each of them dead in the eye. “And I know for certain that spontaneous combustion only happens in obscure English villages. You’re all guilty, but I’m going to turn my back and the ringleader can put his matches on the table.” When I turned around there was a box for each boy. Perhaps I should have tried to teach them something while I had them, after all. Like, “Let your brother take the fall,” or “Don’t play with matches.” I really felt sorry for them in that moment. What they really needed was to be back in school. Fast. By the time the holidays were officially over, every last one of us was happy to see the last of the others.
SINCE I MOVED TO THE NORTHEAST, I’M NOT REALLY THAT INTO Easter. I generally try to avoid it altogether. In my opinion, Easter should look very springy, and when the temperature is thirty-seven degrees and my kids are running around in fleece instead of pristine white embroidered short sets, it just doesn’t feel right. My kids know that they have a day off from school, but they don’t seem completely clear on the difference between Easter and Passover, though they’re aware that we aren’t Jewish. I can usually avoid having to fill baskets on Easter by just not mentioning that it is Easter Sunday. This only works if I can prevent the kids from noticing that It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown is on and if I can keep them away from the Peeps display at Rite Aid. Otherwise, I’m busted and have to search the basement for baskets and scrounge the kitchen for candy.
Halloween is the big holiday in our family. It’s the perfect example of how a low-expectation event can blow away the most jaded partygoer if you put in extra effort and preparation. We have amassed a cache of Hollywood-prop-room-worthy decorations and begin putting them up around October 1. Enter our loft on any day thereafter, and you are likely to find me on a ladder, hand-sewing formations of life-size rubber bats to the sprinkler pipes that run along the ceiling, or strategically placing rotting rubber corpses.
For some reason, my boys have no interest in my design talents and want to wear store-bought costumes, but my own is carefully crafted. I wear an iteration of the same theme every year: the mad scientist’s creature. One look at Peter should tell you who plays the mad scientist. All we need to do for him is throw a lab coat over whatever he happens to be wearing on October 31, tease his locks up a little bit higher, and voilà! The execution of my getup is slightly more complicated, as it requires three main components: an elaborate wig, a latex dress, and a pair of freaky white contacts.
I care so deeply about this particular holiday that a few years ago I had myself fitted for top-grade, straight-out-of-a-horror-movie zombie eyes. These lenses white out my irises completely, except for a small black spot in the center to see through. Their design is very clever—imagine a white doughnut painted on a contact lens—and the effect is ultra creepy. I can see perfectly with them in, and they are comfortable, but I have one problem: I cannot get them either in or out by myself. For all the gory and disgusting things I can put up with around me for this occasion—the fake blood, the bowl of “intestines,” and so on—I am grossed out to the point of fainting by the idea of my finger making contact with my eye. This year I went upstairs to my neighbor’s apartment and she slipped them in, amid much blinking and tearing, but clearly I couldn’t go see her at one A.M. to ask her to take them out. I slept in them and tried to get them out by myself the next morning, to no avail. Peter is equally as eyeball averse as I am, so I needed to find someone less squeamish.
“Mom, really, I’ll make my own breakfast,” Truman said as he bumped into me in the kitchen. “I can’t look at you.”
“Truman, do Mommy a favor and help her get these things out?” I pleaded. “I have a meeting in an hour, and I can’t show up like this.” I rolled my eyes for effect. He backed away, forgoing food and practically running for the door.
I would have asked his older brother, but one look at Peik’s nails after a night of partying suggested otherwise. I finally tracked down Peter. Not only had I run out of boys, but also, I figured they’d had enough of me and my costume needs after the annual get-Mom-into-her-latex-dress event the afternoon before.
Many people have a favorite Thanksgiving dish; for me it wouldn’t be Halloween without latex. My dress this year was black, knee length, and backless, with long sleeves and buckles at the neck and waist. I bought it at a fetish shop in the East Village, one of the last New York neighborhoods that hasn’t been sanitized of its sex shops.
Wearing latex is quite ritualistic, and latex garments are difficult to get into. First, you cover your body with baby powder, sprinkling the inside of the garment as well. Then you step into the dress and sort of roll it up—hoping to align it properly, because it is nearly impossible to reposition once on. Once you’re dressed, there is baby powder everywhere and polishing to be done. The boys, each equipped with a handful of silicone gel, rub me down until I shine like a brand-new sex toy in a Times Square window (before Disney, that is). I can only wonder what lasting effects this activity will have on their sexuality, but I figure they will end up in therapy for some reason, so why not make life interesting for their eventual shrinks? You spend that kind of money, someone better be entertained.
Halloween starts about an hour after I don the giant albino Afro wig and six-inch Jimmy Choos. I now clear seven feet easily. As long as I don’t drink, I won’t need to pee. Mayhem breaks out at about five, when packs of kids large to small arrive. The undead fill our loft to the rafters, and even those who dare to show up without costumes take on an eerie glow in the strobe lights and artificial fog. Kids eat way too much candy, and adults drink way too much liquor, as evidenced by the inevitable “Thriller” dance performed by the entire crowd.
This year Peter and I broke free around nine, leaving the kick-out and cleanup to Nicole and Alicia, much stricter and more capable enforcers than we’ll ever be. I was quite excited to be invited to a fancy party to benefit Central Park. I have to say my husband and I really stood out in a sea of Sarah Palins: Sarah and John, Sarah and Bristol, Sarah and Moose, Sarah as beauty queen, and countless pigs in lipstick. I had carefully placed a top hat on my ’fro, making me pretty much the tallest dominatrix in the place, as well as the shiniest. Peter led me around the venue, in all my fabulousness, and still the only comment I heard repeatedly was “Do you think that’s his real hair?”
THE ONLY OTHER HOLIDAY WE CELEBRATE ON ANY REGULAR BASIS IS Thanksgiving. After our full-on approach to Halloween, and before the oppressive approach of Christmas, I choose to get as far under the turkey radar as possible. Thanksgiving is supposed to be about giving thanks, but everyone knows it is really about food. As you probably know by now, I hate cooking and am not especially fond of eating, so I’ve found a way around slaving over a meal that no one in my family is particularly interested in. Luckily, here in the city we have an amazing grocery-delivery service called Fresh Direct. My family would starve without this modern convenience: with just a few magical clicks of my mouse, I order a meal to my specifications, and the very next day Delivery Dude shows up at my door with a fully cooked Thanksgiving dinner, complete with side dishes and zucchini bread. They even send along a little meat thermometer in case you’re feeling guilty and want to overinvolve yourself in the reheating of the fully cooked bird. Years ago, Cleo was horrified when she arrived home from boarding school to find our first feast-in-a-box; she announced that even though the Thanksgivings up to that point had been inedible, this was just “wrong.” Her longing for June Cleaver has finally subsided, or maybe she has given up, and now the arrival of the Dude is not only a given, but a time-honored family tradition.
WE DID TRY AND ENGAGE THE HOLIDAY IN A REAL WAY ONCE. WE live three blocks away from Macy’s, but usually don’t go to the big parade—as soon as we moved into the neighborhood, we discovered it is basically a made-for-television event, with camera trucks completely corralling the store itself and for twenty blocks up Broadway. Only if you’re well connected can you get the premium bleacher seating, but even for that you have to be there a good two hours before the parade even starts, and Thanksgiving is typically the nastiest, coldest day on the planet. What child will sit still, packed in amid total strangers, for three hours waiting for a giant Clifford to float overhead, when he can watch the same thing in the warmth of his own home mere minutes away? That having been asked, one year Peter summoned his courage and took four of the boys to see the various acts practice the night before the actual event. I was unpacking dinner for the next day and also obesely pregnant with Finn, so Peter dared this outing alone, depending on the slightly older boys to help keep track of the much younger ones. Larson, three years old, highly speech impaired, and lightning fast, waited for Peter to turn his head and slipped away. Panic ensued, with Peik stopping every police officer he could find, Truman shouting Larson’s name over the blasting loudspeakers, and Pierson just plain freaking out, which is a mystery to me because he never seemed to care much about the child before he was lost.
“Which superhero was he wearing?” Peter yelled at Pierson, holding him by the shoulders while clutches of families squeezed by, using this moment of confusion to slip in front of the Shelton pack for a better view.
“I… don’t… know!” Pierson sobbed.
“Think!” Peter commanded. “Was it Spider-Man or Superman?!”
“Spider-Man on top, Superman on the bottom!” Pierson finally managed, relieved to have contributed in some way.
“Dad, look!” Truman shouted from the top of the bleachers, pointing toward the middle of the performance area. Peter, Peik, and Pierson all scrambled up to see Larson, in the middle of a clutch of majorettes, surrounded by a giant marching band pumping out a brassy version of “We Are Family,” having the time of his little unintelligible life. One of the cops waded into the swirling instruments and pompoms, picked him up, and hoisted him onto his shoulders as the crowd went wild.