Silent Sunday: Waiting

the sugar plum fairy

The Nutcracker Ballet is an American Christmas tradition, one that was started by the San Francisco Ballet in 1944. In a combined fit of "getting into the holiday spirit"  and "we must take advantage of living in the city" I bought tickets when they first went on sale back in October. With the production looming, I checked the website for the time and location, not only discovered that the production is staged at the very lovely "War Memorial Opera House" and not at the Ballet itself, which saved me a panic attack on arriving at the wrong location, but I also noted the statement "Any child, who can quietly sit in their own seat and happily observe a two-hour performance without questions or talking, is welcome at San Francisco Ballet. To ensure an enjoyable and relaxed experience for everyone, SF Ballet recommends that children be at least 5 years-old to attend Nutcracker"

Since Geekygirl and Geekyboy are almost five and almost three, respectively I felt a knot of anxiety forming. Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea. I took the kids to the playground with a friend to run off some energy on the morning of the performance, but my anxiety was only heightened when my friend informed me that her little girl, also only 4, had been coached by her grandparents to tell the ballet ushers that she was five, since they were under the impression that under fives would be banished from the theatre.

We set off anyway with our underage companions. The children, prepped for several nights now with a lovely story book describing the plot of the ballet, and having enjoyed several evenings of dancing round the living room to the music, looked adorable and were full of anticipation. Geekydaddy and I also dressed for the occasion, and it felt so lovely to be all gussied up, in the glossy crowd of excited children and parents. There were plenty of under fives, so we didn't need to teach the children to fib. Of course, as seems to be the case in almost any major city, the fanciest theaters are steps away from the sketchiest neighbourhoods. We were faced with  puddles of human urine in the alley where we parked the car, and smiled shamefacedly at homeless people as we walked up the guilded steps. Ah San Francisco, city of contrasts.

The performance was magical. I'm glad we had read the storybook, mind you, as I'm not a ballet buff myself, so it helped me to understand what was going on. Geekygirl, ever the authority once she has even a scrap of knowledge on a subject, kindly, confidently and maybe a tad too loudly, explained to me what was happening. Geekyboy, kneeling on his plush seat was enraptured by the music and the dancing. However every five minutes he loudly whispered to me "Mummy. Is that the sugar plum fairy? Mummy. When is the sugar plum fairy coming?". Mindful of the age advice, I tried to keep him quiet out of consideration for the childless folk in the row in front, but when the lights came up for the interval they remarked on how sweet he was and how they used to bring their own, long grown up, kids to see this ballet. People can be so kind.

Here's a clip from the show (I didn't film it)


Still, during the second half Geekyboy wanted to dance along with the performers in the aisles, which I felt was pushing the tolerance of the more mature audience members so Geekydaddy extracted him. Geekydaddy wasn't all that impressed by it. He was reminded of the spoof scene in the movie "top secret", where the female dancer balances on the unfeasably large 'package' of the male in very tight tights! Geekygirl remained entranced though, and watched the entire performance through to its beautiful finale.

Now, every evening when we get home from preschool, Geekyboy wants to be the sugar plum fairy. Here he is in his sisters fairy dress, isn't he precious? I've taken a video too, to preserve these moments for posterity and to show to him when he's a linebacker on the football team. Or the lead in the all male version of swan lake.

Last Christmas

This is a post for Josie's writing workshop at Sleep is For the Weak. I chose prompt 4. Become the ghost of Christmas past – share a story from a childhood Christmas.

My Christmases past all seem to distill themselves into 1984. The year that Band Aid went to Christmas number one, Last Christmas by Wham came second, and I was fourteen. Maybe it is because these songs endured so well that I am so often transported back to that time during the Christmas season.

I had started a new school that year, and I bought my new friends a wall calender of the Band Aid group as a present. I had rushed to Woolworths to buy the single the minute it was pressed, and actually have a very early edition of it that lacks the group photo on the back. I watched the video again today to enhance the nostalgia, and instead of the warm fuzzy feeling I expected, instead I noted for the first time how few women were involved. If such an effort happened today it would surely have far more female artists. I was struck by how times have changed, and how long ago 1984 really was. On the other hand if it was made today many fewer of the men would be wearing full make up. Whatever happened to the concept of eyeliner for men becoming mainstream?

I forget now exactly when my sister and I were deemed old enough to attend midnight mass on Christmas eve, but I'm guessing that by 1984 we did. I was never a particularly religious kid, but I loved singing. My sister and I would get lightheaded trying to sing "Gloria in excelsis deo" without taking a breath, or attempting the soprano harmonies for the "sing choirs of Angels" verse of "oh come all ye faithful". Furthur into the decade we would hit the pubs before mass, no doubt enhancing our vocal skills.

Though old enough to have a little sip of baileys after mass in 1984, I was still young enough to hang up my stocking. When I say stocking I mean an actual sock. No custom made velvet sock shaped bags entered our home, Father Christmas stuffed gifts (always starting  with a satsuma orange deep in the toe) into a woolly 'over the knee sock'. Do you remember those impractical items? For some reason we were not allowed to wear tights with out school uniforms, so we wore long socks held up with an elastic band around the thigh, the chilled and blotchy upper portion of which was displayed between one's hitched up school skirt and the top of the sock. I hear parents today dispairing of their teen daughters clothing, but really parents, do you remember how we used to dress in the early 1980s? New clothes featured heavily in our Christmas gifts from our teen years onwards. I remember a soft jumbo corduroy pencil skirt in black that I wore with a fushia printed black jumper, and a pair of winkle picker toed black suede stilletos. Lovely!

My mum and dad still live in the home where we grew up, but since living in America these past fifteen (really, how can it be fifteen)? years I have been home for the season precisely once. It is a time of year when I wish that I could just pop back for the day. I would show my kids the remaining tree ornaments that have survived from my youth, the ones we would carefully unwrap with excitement year after year, arguing over who got to put the long, delicate pink one on the tree, while we played a mixed Christmas tape, recorded from the top 40. I'm wondering now if my mum's carefully made starfall decorations, the ones with threads of foil stars handing from a cane circle that hung from the light fixtures in colours that perfectly matched the purple, turquoise, silver, red and gold carpets we had back in the 1980s, are still around in any form. Bringing out these ornaments was the mark of the beginning of the season, they gave the house such a festive feel and we always felt so sad when the house was returned to its ordinary unsparkly form on January 6th.

Mum and dad's home contains the ghosts of so many wonderful Christmases past. One day I will take the whole family home to share my childhood memories with them. On Christmas morning (after breakfast of course) we will let Grandad lead the way into the closed living room. He will carefully open the door while the children gather behind. They will be so excited, trying to peak, just slightly worried that Father Christmas may have forgotten them this year, and just when they can barely contain their anticipation he will throw open the door and shout "he's been"!

a moment to breathe

Today we got a day off work. Well, our department had a holiday outing in the late morning, so after a couple of hours in the office we headed over to "the palace of the legion of honor', an art museum in the city to look at the "japanesque" exhibit, featuring works on loan from the d'Orsay in Paris. What a treat, to wander around a gallery admiring intricate woodprints form centuries ago.

After a civilized lunch the rest of the day was our own. I decided to pop over to the little British Grocery store that lurks behind Safeway, next to the city pound. The basement of a small house, it is one room that stocks everything the expat Brit needs, from baked beans to marmite to double deckers, hobnobs, lucozade and robinson's barley water. Of course at Christmas it also has mince pies, pud and birds custard. We have a potluck party at the office on Thursday, so I thought I'd treat them to some Mr Kiplings mince pies, my oven being broken, I have a perfect excuse not to attempt to bake any myself.

I then went to the post office to mail my gifts to family in England. The queue was winding out of the door into the somehow festively drizzly street, but since I was, remarkably, in no hurry, I quite enjoyed my wait. There was a camaraderie in the disparate crowd, united by the need to send gifts to loves ones far away. I saw packages addressed to Brazil, to Paris, to Beijing. Maybe I was under the influence of my recently dowloaded Glee Christmas album, but as I stood there I pictured people all over the world opening gifts, knowing someone here in San Francisco was thinking of them, was prepared to stand in the rain for half an hour to make sure that gift made it to its destination.

Christmas can take a working mum to breaking point. When life is a carefully balanced house of cards the extra demands of the season can feel overwhelming. Even a supposedly pleasant thing like a holiday party invitation becomes simply more items on the to do list; book babysitter, buy tights with industrial supportty top so that party dress fits, get hair done....

I'm almost there though. I've reached the point where I can listen to my holiday music in the car without it bringing on feelings of panic. The cards have almost all been posted, the gifts almost all purchased. Just the daycare party and the work white elephant potluck to go, and maybe I can even relax.

How about you. Are you ready?

I'll leave you with my new favourite Christmas song of the moment; Mercedes from Glee singing "Angels we have heard on high".

picture perfect

A few weeks back, on a wonderful trip out to Chicago I was chatting with fellow bloggers Nappy Valley Mum, Iota, Nicola, ExpatMum and Califlorna about Christmas cards, and a question came up. "do you make one of those 'American' photo cards of your family, and if so, what do your British friends think of it? Is it considered horribly naff?" I confess that I do make such a holiday card. I posted about last years here. It had not, until that moment of conversation, ever occurred to me that this was an American phenomenon, or that it might be considered tacky and narcissistic.

I personally love to receive such cards, or a school photo enclosed in a card, or a even a round robin letter (especially those unintentionally amusing ones!).  Kids grow so fast and we live so far away from friends and family. Thinking back over the years, I realized that I was an early adopter of the concept. Long before there were multitudes of online photo companies offering competing card designs, and before we even had kids, I turned a photo of Geekydog in the snow into a holiday note card using the then brand new "Snapfish" web store.

This year we had a November snowstorm up in Tahoe. Perfect for getting cute seasonal pictures of the children for the annual card, I thought. I was thwarted however by Geekyboys distaste for being outside in it. Thirty minutes of snow play later I had a reel of lovely shots of Geekygirl, and this single sorry picture of geekyboy!

The following weekend, with a little puruasion and some sledding, he adjusted to the snow and I managed to get a couple of decent shots. Then, that same evening, overtired and amped up, Geekyboy slipped in the bathroom and blacked his eye on the side of the tub. Once I realized that he was OK, just very bruised up, my first thought was "Thank goodness I got one decent picture for the card before he looked like a battered child"

Here is a preview of the card I made this year, with the help of the 'tinyprints' website. I put quite a bit of time into selecting the photos and choosing the card, and I have to say I'm quite pleased with the result.

Do you make cards like this? I'd love to do an informal survey!

PS, this is not a sponsored post but I do know someone who works for tinyprints, and I was very happy with their product.

The cat who (almost) ruined Christmas.

On December 23rd Geekdaddy and I got home from work nice and early. He was in charge of the Trader Joes grocery bulk run, I was in charge of picking up the expensive sundries at Whole Foods. While the children ran around filled with excitement we packed the car. We have a Subaru Outback wagon, a decent sized vehicle, especially with the added roof pod, but now that we have two kids I finally understand the point of those ginormous "Ford Exxon Valdez Excursion" SUV's. We were headed up to Tahoe for Christmas and New Year, ten full days off work to spend with the family and the animals. We intended to pack our two cats, our dog, the kids and clothing and groceries for the duration into the trusty old wagon. By 8pm we were ready to hit the road, but we were missing one of our feline family members.

Our kitty cats have been with the family longer than I have. They are 12 years old, The orange one is a homebody who has not ventured much beyond our backyard since sustaining a nasty bite on the tail when he was a kitten. His silver brother is a roamer, but usually comes home at 5.30pm on the dot for dinner. However, that evening, as we waited and waited for him, car packed, everything ready to go, he failed to show his furry face. The kids wild excitement turned to misery as we explained to them that they would have to go to bed, as we needed to wait for the cat, but that we would lift them, sleeping, into the car once he was home, and that they would probably still wake up in Tahoe. They did very well with this change of plan, I was expecting tears and wailing.  I was close to tears and wailing myself though as 11.00pm came and went.

We decided to put ourselves to bed too, resigned to the fact that the damn cat was probably not going to return. He has gone for days on end in the past, so we feared that he had decided to take another walkabout. The presents were already in Tahoe, lack of car space meant we had taken Santa's bounty up the previous weekend, so having Christmas at home instead was not an option. But our remaining options; finding someone to take care of the cat at such short notice, if he even came home, or leaving him at large for ten days were both difficult to contemplate. I tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

Then, at 11.45 we heard the jingle of a bell and our roaming kitty leapt in through the window! Thanks goodness we hadn't been able to sleep or we may have missed him. We locked down the house to keep him in, set our alarm for 4.30am, and at that ungodly hour, finally got on the road. This cat is preparing us for the kids teenage years.

We arrived with the whole day of Christmas eve ahead of us, the reprieve from disaster had filled me with energy and I knuckled down, with Geekygirls help, to decorating the tree, making mince pies, preparing the Danish dessert "rice a'lamande" and icing the Christmas cake all with my Christmas playlist blasting unashamedly. ('The Wiggles' do a really good version of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer). The Geekyfamily are still in the process of establishing our own holiday traditions. Geekydaddy grew up with Danish traditions; dinner and gifts on Christmas eve, the piece de resistance of dinner being the rice pudding dessert. I have made this for him every Christmas since we have been together, and this has become an intrinsic part of our Christmas. I confess I far prefer it to the British pud. With our kids  this is about the only Danish thing we have maintained, apart frm the delicate ornaments my mother in law gave me for our tree. We are perpetuating the Father Christmas/Santa Claus myth, this being the first year Geekygirl really got excited about it.

Stockings were hung, the first slice of Christmas cake was left out for Santa, along with a couple of carrots and a glass of wine (Geekgirl's suggestion, we asked her what she though Santa would like to drink, and the smart girl suggested a glass of red!) and the excited kids were herded to bed. Geekygirl was overtired from the early morning, and  anxious about the day to come. I think she was genuinely worried that she hadn't been good enough for Santa (and the point is debatable!), so ended up with three time outs before bedtime for calling Mummy a 'poo poo head'. But sleep finally won, and after the seventieth "I'm not tired" her head at last hit the pillow.

This was the point at which I realized that one critical item had been left behind. Every Saturday when we shop at Trader Joes, Geekygirl had been reminding me that Santa should bring her one of the bags of gold foil covered chocolate coins that hang by the till. Geekydaddy had picked some up weeks ago, and hidden them in our kitchen. And there they still were, 150 miles away, in San Francisco.

I was so angry with myself. What kind of mother forgets a much desired item from Santa's list? It isn't as if Geekygirl had even asked for many things, her list read "Chocolate money, Ariel costume, little Aurora doll, and a 'my little pony'". For all I knew, the chocolate money may have been the most important thing from her point of view, though I, considering it more of a sundry stocking filler, had not packed it with the other gifts. Still, I arranged the remembered items, and soon the tree and fireplace were swamped with gifts, from Santa, from relatives, and from Geekydaddy and I (some presents come from mum and dad, the way our family did Christmas presents growing up, causing me to figure out at a precocious age that Father Christmas and Mummy had the same handwriting. Santa used block capitals on Geekygirls gifts to be on the safe side, and used different gift wrap). I toyed with the idea of writing a note from Santa apologizing for the missing money, explaining that he had brought Chocolate buttons instead, thankfully I did have some of these handy, but Geekydaddy smartly vetoed this, figuring that with all the other gifts she wouldn't notice. He was right, thank goodness.

Christmas morning arrived, at about 6.30am, which is basically when we get up anyway with these lark-like little ones. Our bedrooms here in the cabin are loft style, so we peeped down into the living area, and sure enough, Santa had been! "I saw a tiny flash of light last night" Geekygirl informed me "So I think I saw the reindeer"  The frenzy of unwrapping began. Geekyboy picked up on his sisters enthusiasm, though I think she "helped" open most of his presents for him, and for the animals too.

Geekyboy is of the age where I get to choose all his gifts for him, and we decided that he needed one of those wooden train sets, and some Thomas trains. I had intended to get one for Geekygirl at some point (we strive for gender equity in the toy box), but her desire for all things princess kicked in early. Santa did sensibly buy her a train and some carriages though, since he correctly predicted that the train set would be a popular gift with both children. The requested Aurora doll was one of these three inch high plastic dollies that come with changeable clothes. I had picked up one of these (Belle) as a bribe sticker chart present back when she was barely three, without realizing the changeable dresses are made of latex. Now, you may not be aware of the fetish, but there are adult women who dress in exotic latex gowns. I can't look at Belle in her yellow sparkling rubbery gown without thinking of how much my friend Cynthia would love one in adult size, and I find the little rubbery outfits vaguely unsettling.

But, Santa was asked to add to the collection, so I picked up Aurora. I recalled while in the store that Geekyboy is also rather fond of princesses. In fact he was able to correctly identify and name the Jasmine, A'roo-rah, Cinda-ella and Snow White figurines before he could identify his colours. He often brings me Jasmine in her latex pallazzo pants and says to me "Mummy, Jasmine pants off!" and I can't help but giggle.

Geekyboy also has a penchant for Ariel, so with slight hesitation I picked up the little mermaid doll for his stocking. I examined my own prejudices as I stood in line; I thought it was important that I buy trains for my daughter, but felt slightly odd about buying princesses for my son! We progressive parents tend to focus on "de pinkifying" our daughters, worried about the anti feminist message, but perhaps we have it all wrong, maybe we should be pinkifying our sons instead!

We packed a lot into the day, managed a cross country ski since the skies were blue and the snow crisp and fresh, with the kids napping in their sleds. I was very proud of our dinner; chestnut stuffed trout, sprouts with balsamic reduction, and crispy roast potatoes, followed by the Danish dessert. Then we watched one of their gifts, the DVD of Raymond Briggs 'the snowman". Geekygirl was captivated "they are flying over the whole world" she exclaimed. "Big Whale Splash" said Geekyboy. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was bawling like a baby at the end. Not just because the snowman melts, but because the film is so beautiful, and because it reminded me of the UK home.

Christmas always makes me homesick. In the fourteen years I have lived over here I have not once been home for Christmas, despite the fact that the Christmases of my childhood were universally wonderful. My parents still live in the house we grew up in, packed with warm memories, and celebrate every year with my brother and sister and their families, who live much closer than I do. Our Christmas lunch would last for hours, we would sit down at about three in the afternoon, and would still be at the table at 10.00pm, playing "taboo" after rather too many glasses of wine. At some point between courses we would start the round of phone calls. My mum is one of eight, my dad one of four, and everyone had to be called and thanked, the phone passed around the table along with the wine and port. These days I'm the one on the other end of the phone.

The advent of Skype has brough my family closer though, our kids got to chat with their cousins and their grandparents.  Through facebook and twitter I have entered the living rooms and admired the Christmas trees, joyful children's faces, and amusing anecdotes of so many friends, and the distance doesn't seem so great.  Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you all.