blind insight

Look out, Chris Sharma.

I am way, way overdue to post about Nathan's First Climbing Trip. During his Thanksgiving visit to Boulder, we took him to the climbing gym. Given his general athleticism and fearlessness, we all figured he'd take to it, but we weren't sure.

As is his nature, he was tentative at first. He didn't want to put on his harness until he saw his daddy and Aunt Mad do it.

Then he wanted to watch us climb, first. But as soon as we were off the rope, he was eagerly proclaiming, "my turn! I want to do it!" And do it, he did.

Displaying exceptional technical skill, strength, balance, and confidence (particularly for a three-year-old), he worked his way to a good 15 or 20 feet off the ground. He was very focused, and readily (and effectively) applied our suggestions for hand and foot placements.

Showing absolutely no fear, he practiced falling on the rope, then allowed himself to be lowered so he could try again (and again! and again!).

He spent the rest of the weekend boasting of his rock climbing exploits.

Aunt Mad, of course, was kvelling.

'tis the season.

Once again, the stores are decked out in green and red and tinsel and bells. My mailbox is exploding with unsolicited catalogs, and my credit card bill is aching under the combined weight of birthdays and multi-denominational gift-giving celebrations. I need to bake, shop, and bake some more, pronto.

Usually, around this time, I get cranky. The barrage of CHRISTMAS from every corner wears at my mood and triggers decades-old irritation and resentment. But this year, I'm sort of feeling immune to it all.

For one, we've done the bulk of our holiday shopping already, thanks to the screaming deals we found at the semi-annual GoLite warehouse sale and a weekend day on which we were both too sick to play outside. But more important, I think, is the fact that Christmas is now a part of my life.

Fortunately for me, Steve's version of Christmas involves very little Baby Jesus and a whole lot of good cheer, good food, and great gifts. I had a wonderful time celebrating with the Freiburger clan last Christmas, and I'm truly looking forward to this year's trip. (Also, we'll be driving the Volvo all the way to Wisconsin, which adds an extra layer of adventure to the experience. Just think - Nebraska! A whole new state to add to my travel resume.)

I still feel a few pangs of ambivalence when we put up the tree in our house, and I certainly bristle against the ubiquitude of Christmas in our streets, our shops and - most aggravatingly - our schools. But, by marrying Steve, I acquired a new set of traditions and celebrations, and I think I've finally come to accept, and even love them.

After all, Christmas (as we do it) is about gathering with family and friends, eating favorite foods, and sharing with each other gifts selected with love and care. And what is Hanukkah about (at least as we do it)? Just that, as well.

The family that plays together. . . .

After a truly wonderful week in the Midwest to celebrate Christmas with Steve's family, followed by a most lovely Hanukkah dinner with my parents, I am flush with love and happiness. Several times in the past few days, Steve and I have acknowledged to one another how extraordinarily lucky we are in the family department.

Each of us has two smart, loving, interesting, funny, engaged, mostly healthy parents. Each set of parents is well into its fourth decade of a happy, healthy, loving marriage. Each of us has siblings we like, who married or are dating someone we like. My parents and his get along famously, and our parents have wholeheartedly embraced our marriage and their son- or daughter-in-law. We've each spent a full week in the company of the other's family without going crazy (and while having a rollicking good time).

Which is not to say that everybody loves everybody else every moment of every day, or that there's never a bit of drama in the dynamic. But, mostly, the family thing rocks.

I would not have predicted this ease of familial blending. Steve and I come from very different backgrounds in terms of religion, geography, socio-economic status, education, world-view, cultural exposure, extended family, and more. His family is full of teachers and engineers, while mine is so heavy on lawyers as to be either comical or frightening, depending on your perspective. And yet, the basic values with which we were raised are quite similar, and both of us have developed close, healthy relationships with our parents as adults.

Really, though, the key to our positive family dynamics is simple: we all love to play cards.

With Steve's family, we play Sheepshead. It took me a while to adapt to the counter-intuitive card-strength system of this classic Wisconsin game, but I'm picking it up at last. Steve's octogenarian grandmother paid me an enormous compliment last week, announcing that I played a mean game for a novice. They play for real money in Steve's family, but at only a nickel a point, they haven't bankrupted me yet.

With my family, we play Shanghai, a seven-hand progressive rummy game of unknown origins (but that my dad's family has played for at least three generations). The game can move quickly or go on for hours. The competition often grows heated, leading us to institute a rule prohibiting spouses from sitting next to one another. Marriages have been saved as a result. Steve had played a similar game before he met me, and so picked up Shanghai in no time at all. He has become an even sneakier down-and-out threat than my father, and he's damn lucky my parents had already grown to love him when he started beating us on a regular basis.

Steve and I are hugely competitive with one another over games, deriving no joy from our spouse's success at our own expense. Some might think this a negative, or a relationship red flag. But in each of our families, cards and games provide a healthy outlet for competitiveness and aggression. Our parents have been playing cards against one another for almost 40 years each, taking great pleasure both in winning and in beating their beloved. It has worked for them, it has helped us stay close to them, and we have every intention of carrying on the tradition.

Memories

At my grandmother's funeral in New York, and then at the memorial service we held locally at my parents' synagogue, I shared some of my favorite memories of her. Here are the two best; I think they beautifully capture both my grandmother's fabulousness and the wonderful relationship she and I shared.

1. From ages 13 to 15, I was something of a punk rocker. At 14, I sported a lovely little burgundy mohawk. I wore bizarre, mostly black clothing, dozens of rubber o-ring bracelets interspersed with rhinestone bangles, combat boots, a diaper pin through two piercings in one earlobe, and rather bizarre makeup. It was the mid-80s. You get the picture.

This story must have taken place in 1985, my sophomore year in high school. It was the first day of Rosh Hashana, and my grandmother was in town for the holiday (as she was almost every year, from my early childhood through 2004). My father and I were chanting the Haftarah portion together, in Hebrew, before the whole congregation. I was wearing some sort of oversized blouse, a wide metal-studded belt, a great deal of strange jewelry, a long black skirt slight high on either thigh, fishnet stockings, and boots. And the mohawk.

My grandmother, for some reason, was standing in the back of the sanctuary while I was chanting. A woman about her age was standing near her. She approached my grandma and said, "isn't that your granddaughter?" When my grandma replied that it was, the other lady said, "does it concern you that she's dressed so strangely?"

My grandmother gave her a whithering look, and said, "she's standing on the bimah chanting the Haftarah. What's to be concerned about?"

2. I spent the 1990-1991 school year in Strasbourg, France. At some point during the year, a friendship with a guy from my college began to take on a long-distance air of something . . . more. His letters were becoming increasingly amorous, and at one point he wrote that we were perfect for each other, perhaps even destined to marry. Not long after I received this disconcerting declaration, my grandmother came to visit me in France. One night, as we sat in a lovely cafe together, I told her about the boy and his letter.

My grandmother listened, then asked me, "do you want to marry him?" I sputtered, reminding her that I was only 20 years old and had no intention of marrying anyone just then. My grandmother declared, "well, if you think you want to marry him, you better sleep with him first!"

Goodbye, Flo.

Three months ago, I abandoned ship, leaving a plea for good thoughts directed my grandmother's way.

Last night, she died.

I spent last weekend with her, in New York, chatting a little when she had the energy, stroking her back a little, and mostly just sitting ineffectually by her bed or roaming the city trying to wrap my head around her rapid decline. I am so very, very glad that I was there.

I've tried to compose my thoughts a bit to write something eloquent or meaningful or reflective, but they're not coalescing into anything readable. I'm sad, and disappointed in all sorts of selfish ways, but also relieved for her (because the bedridden, edema-bloated, impossibly weakened woman lying in that bed was hardly even a shadow of my fiery, fiesty, life-loving grandma), and for all of us (because the protracted decline of someone you love is painful, frustrating, and even angering, and it is incredibly difficult to live in a hold pattern).

She slipped away last night, we think painlessly and because she was ready, without saying goodbye to any of us. She was unsentimental, and would have hated to suffer through dozens of teary farewells, and so, I think, she picked her moment and let go.

Goodbye, Grandma. You were my one and only everlovin' g-ma. I miss you so much.

For Flo.

When I leave for a trip, I always forget something important and remember at the last minute. It doesn't really feel like vacation until I've raced back into the house to grab that one oh-so-necessary thing that of course I'd managed to leave behind.

Here I am, running back in and throwing the lights back on, with one last thing I have to tell you. Remember my amazing, wonderful grandmother? Who, at 95, was still going to work several days a week, living a full and independent life on the Upper West Side, and dazzling all of us with her razor-sharp wit? Suddenly, she's not doing so well. In a matter of weeks, she has become home-bound, exhausted, and in constant discomfort. We're not quite sure what's causing her decline, but it has been rapid and terrifying for her and those who love her.

If you're the praying kind, would you mind saying a few for my grandma? And if (like me) you're not, could you at least send some strong, healthy thoughts her way?

OK. I'll be going now (but I think I'll be back again).

Clue No. 8*

Who are we?

If you still don't know, click here.

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*If your initials are not SJC and it is not your 60th birthday today, ignore this post and pour yourself another glass of eggnog. We will soon resume our regularly scheduled programming.

And next year, we're celebrating Festivus.

Tonight (if, in our lousy state of ill-health, we feel up to it), Steve and I will light Hanukkah candles, then open a bottle of wine and put up our Christmas tree. This will be a first for me - a Christmas tree in my very own home, twinkling gaily while the Hanukkah candles flicker. I have run through a huge range of emotions over this prospect, but finally I'm content with it, and I'm truly excited about the fun of decorating our first tree in our new house.

Steve has been respectful of, even enthusiastic about my celebrations. He has asked to hold the shammes and light the candles in our menorah every night this week, and last night he was humming along perfectly while I chanted the Hebrew blessings. He's participated unflinchingly in the mandatory song-before-present requirement, and I believe he ate seconds of my mother's latkes on Tuesday.

So it seems only fair that I show similar ardor towards his traditions. I'm there now, I know, because the sight of our fuzzy St. Nick's Day stockings on the mantel made me smile last night. But because I've spent so many years fighting against the ubiquity of Christmas and battling to keep it out of my schools and workplaces, something about allowing a tree in my very own home felt like capitulation. After considerable soul-searching, I finally concluded that my ambivalence about having a tree and celebrating Christmas with Steve stems from the barrage of Christmasness that assaults me at every turn (as Bart Simpson puts it: "Christmas is the time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ"). But celebrating the holidays our way, within the privacy of our own home, is exactly what I believe people should be doing. And so we will.

Because neither of us is particularly religious, we each view the holiday season as a time for joy, celebration, quality family time, and good food. But despite the non-religious nature of our respective celebrations, I have no desire to "blend" our holidays. I prefer, instead, that we keep Hanukkah and Christmas as distinct celebrations, different in purpose, observance, importance, and commercialism. I hope that in doing so, we can revel in and build on the best that each holiday has to offer, and perpetuate many of our families' traditions while creating new ones of our own. With the old rituals, like giving socks for one night of Hanukkah and filling stockings with goodies on St. Nick's Day, we pass on to each other our family lore, and preserve our heritage for (theoretical) future generations. And with the new ones, we begin writing the story of the family we are becoming together.

I am already growing attached to these traditions-in-the-making, like "sexy gift night" during Hanukkah (no, mom, I'm not telling you what we exchanged for this), and our new red, wooden, heart-shaped picture-frame ornament, which will be the first we place on the tree tonight. Whatever their roots or symbolism, they all have the effect of filling our home with love and happiness and providing us with opportunities to pamper one another. There's really no downside to that. Even if Santa Claus doesn't bring me a KitchenAid mixer.

From generation to generation.

We should all look this stunning at 95:

And be this joyous at 1:

But I wouldn't want to live there.

Early reports indicate that Steve passed the family test with flying colors. "Charming," "sweet," "completely at ease," and "smokin' hot" "adorable" were among the reviews. Could he formulate sentences beyond "baw!" (ball) and "mo' eeee!" (more please), Nathan would have pronounced Steve his favorite uncle-to-be, although he might have prescribed a few remedial peek-a-boo training sessions with hilarious Great Uncle Mark. Steve even survived his first foray into the family roasting tradition, belting out our bastardized version of Copacabana without (much of) a trace of embarrassment (Her name was Flora/she was from Brooklyn/She was the youngest girl of nine/she grew up mighty fine).

When we were not eating and schmoozing with the fam-bly, Steve and I had a little time to explore the City on our own. One night, we started in a creperie, moved to an Irish pub, and wrapped up the evening with fresh, hot doughnuts and coffee at 2:30 a.m. The next, after a bit of quality tickle time with His Nathanness, we headed out to see a fantastic band at an intimate little venue in the Village, then scarfed up real New York pizza as a late-night snack. And on Sunday, after a hearty diner breakfast in Chelsea, we took the subway uptown, then savored the spectacular late-fall weather by walking clear across Central Park, luggage and all.

As happy as we were to return home to our mountain views and quieter streets (and to a house with more than one bathroom), we both felt invigorated by New York's hustle and bustle. It's a great place to visit . . .