The Days of Christmas

                I said I wasn't going to do it, but I did.

                I said I would resist the demands of Madison Avenue to shop early, but I gave in.

                It's not even the end of November and, much to my embarrassment, I'm almost finished with my Christmas shopping.

                I don't start Christmas shopping in the summer nor do I start at Halloween. I wait until December because I love the spirit of the holidays.

                My favorite pastime the first weekend in December is drafting my Christmas list, leisurely deciding what to get for everybody on the list.

                That's about the time my husband hauls all the Christmas decorations out of the attic, and the next weekend we head out to the country to cut down a tree.

                We let the tree sit overnight so the limbs fall a bit, and we decorate the tree on a Sunday afternoon while listening to holiday songs. When the boys lived at home, they'd spend hours shaking the boxes under the tree, trying to figure out what was inside.

                Back then, we'd spend Christmas in Louisiana, and all the Heberts gathered together for Christmas Eve. We'd attend Mass in the morning and then spend the rest of the day playing with all the new toys and visiting with cousins, aunts and uncles.

                Our tree stayed up until the needles were so brown they fell off; but by that time, we'd usually had enough of ho-ho-ho-ing and were ready to get back to the familiar grind.

                That was how Christmas used to be. That's before email, cell phones and cyber shopping became the modern way to shop. My sons now send me emails with a direct link to the gift they'd like or they text me their Christmas list so I know exactly what they want.

                Using their cyber list, I took advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales which was easy but there was little holiday cheer about the experience. And even though I want to pat myself on the back for being organized, there are things I'm going to miss about the Christmas shopping experience.

                I'm going to miss the crowds of people and driving past houses whose yards are practically dancing with holiday lights. I'm going to miss listening to canned Christmas music playing over the loudspeakers as I elbow my way through the store.

                For even though we've heard those songs 100 times before, there's nothing like humming along with "Silver Bells" while carrying bags of treasures found at stores where you know the owner instead of clicking the "order now" button with a mouse.

                Emails and text messages are efficient, but I sorely miss reading my sons' hand-written letters to Santa Claus. I miss seeing my boys' faces on Christmas morning when they dashed into the living room to see what Santa left for them.

                But maybe all is not lost. Surely I've missed a few gifts on the list and hopefully I'm not as efficient as I think. After all, there's nothing wrong with having a few surprises underneath the tree.

                I might have to browse the packed aisles of our hometown stores while listening to those familiar holiday tunes play overhead and let the spirit of Christmas wash over me.

                I'll still sit down the first weekend in December and make my Christmas list. But this year, I'll use my iPhone and key in what everybody wants so I'll have that list at my fingertips. We old-timers have to keep up with the changing times but some holiday traditions need to stay put.

          This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Happy Thanksgiving

                For 15 years,  I've had the privilege of having a column printed on Thanksgiving Day. I've written about nostalgic Thanksgivings – sitting around the huge dining room table with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins while we enjoyed the traditional Thanksgiving menu of turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes and gravy alongside traditional Lebanese dishes of tabooley, stuffed cabbage rolls and baked kibbee.

                I've also written about the Cajun side of our Thanksgiving feasts that included fried turkeys, oyster dressing and deep-dish pecan pie.

                There was the first year I cooked Thanksgiving dinner all by myself and the absolute terror I felt when facing a raw 15-pound bird, two packages of cornbread dressing and a dozen bake-and-serve rolls.

                There was the year I forgot to defrost the turkey in enough time and got up four or five times during the night to change out the water so that huge bird could go in the oven at 6 a.m.

                Over the years, you've indulged reading as my sons went from mischievous toddlers to grown men. My dad lived long enough to read some of my columns, and my mom occasionally cuts one out and tapes it to the refrigerator, right alongside the pictures of her great grandchildren.

                So in trying to think of something new to say on this Thanksgiving, something different than what I wrote in 1997, 2001 or 2008, I'm left scratching my head, discarding every story line that pops into my head.  

                It's easy to write about the sentimental slices of life – family friends, neighbors and co-workers. Little kindnesses grease the wheels – someone holding the door open for me and someone letting me merge into traffic without trying to take the bumper off my car.

                What not to write about seems easier, like my unsuccessful attempts at maneuvering a turkey, ham, apple pie and sweet potatoes in one oven in a four-hour time frame. Nor am I going to write about the sublime joy of munching on Thanksgiving leftovers while sitting watching a college football game on TV.

                I'm not going to write about Thanksgiving days from the past when the kids sat in one room and the adults sat in the other room, they having verbal fights about politics while we literally had food fights.

                I'm also not going to write about the pre-dawn Black Friday shopping trips my sisters and sisters-in-law enjoyed for years.

                What I am going to write about is what a day of Thanksgiving means. A day to give thanks for the big things like our families, our health, house, job, car and enough cash in our pockets to go out for ice cream every once in a while.

                Thanksgiving is a time to ponder the experiences that make life worthwhile – the sound of children laughing, the memory of our father's voice and how our mother's hands felt when she fretted over our hot foreheads.          

                Friends who understand our humor, especially those who've known us all our lives and still laugh when we tell the same joke over and over again, are right up there when I say my prayers of thanks.

                A soft pillow to snuggle up with at night. Comfortable slippers. A hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning. Finding a pair of jeans that fit. The company of a faithful dog. An unexpected chatty email from a best friend. A child curling up in our laps to take a nap.

                It's the little things that turn into the big things that I'm most thankful for as those little things stay with us the longest and ensure life's often rocky path is a little less bumpy.

                Happy Thanksgiving and may your day be filled with a bounty of small but meaningful joys.    

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

 

 

 

Memories of playing canasta

I was waiting in line at the grocery store, and I spotted a familiar package of blue and red playing cards. For the past few years, I’ve picked up decks of cards wherever I found them because my eldest son is pretty good at card tricks.

However, I couldn’t remember the last time I actually sat down and played a card game. Playing cards as a leisure activity is in danger of suffering the same fate as playing board games, I’m afraid.

When my siblings and I were young, we’d spend hours playing Monopoly. Fights started before the first roll of the dice because we all wanted to be the racing car or the statue.

Then we’d argue over who was going to be the banker because we all had a tendency to embezzle money. We never had a clear-cut winner – we stopped playing whenever we ran out of plastic houses or the bank ran out of green $20 bills.

Another board favorite was “Clue,” but with seven rowdy children, it was tough to keep track of all the little silver murder weapons and clue cards. As a result, it was always Colonel Mustard in the dining room with the rope.

            But with playing cards, things were different because there were so many games to play with one deck of cards.

            We started off with the simple “Go Fish” and moved up to “Spoon,” both favorites because we only needed four matching cards for every person to play the game.

            “War” was another favorite because the game allowed us to fight without throwing a punch.

            My grandmother finally grew tired of the shenanigans and taught us grown-up card games, from the right way to shuffle a deck of cards to the complicated and convoluted game of canasta.

            At first, we were quite confused because there’s a long list of rules to the game of canasta, but she kept playing with us until we knew how to play like pros.

From there, we went on to learn how to play “Hearts” and a variety of rummy games, and family get togethers always involved decks of cards.

The adults played “Bouree,” an old-time Cajun game where everybody throws a nickel in the middle of the table for the kitty.

When the adults ran out of nickels, they’d play for matchsticks. No matter who won, there was always laughter and good-natured ribbing around the kitchen table.

Even when the cards were bent, we still had a use for them. Our uncles taught us how to carefully place cards together so we could build five- and six-story houses out of cards and, when we were finished, pretend we were Godzilla and destroy the village.

They also taught us how to make our own bike sound effects. They showed us how to pin the cards to the bike rims using our grandmother’s spring-loaded clothes pins.

When the cards flapped against the spokes, we sounded like motorcycles gangs. The faster we rode, the louder the “flap, flap, flap” noise.

Then toy manufacturers came out with bikes with built-in sound effects and we no longer needed the cards.

Board games were forgotten – it’s tough for a quiet game of checkers or chess to compete with the bells, whistles and lights on an electronic game.

It’s even tougher for complicated card games like gin rummy or canasta to compete with online poker or an electronic video game with music, lights, bells and whistles.

Then again, a kitchen table surround by loud Cajuns of all ages makes for some pretty colorful sound effects.

As I placed my groceries on the conveyor belt, I impulsively reached over and grabbed that box of playing cards.

Perhaps it’s time to teach my grandchildren how to play “Go Fish” and, when they're older, introduce them to the fun they can have with a bike, a clothes pin and a discarded queen of hearts playing card.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

 

As the song goes "we will survive"

                Mercifully, the elections are over. The "I voted" oval stickers are tucked away in a precinct closet until the next election, and electronic voting gadgets are carefully stored in a locked cabinet.

                Victory parties remain in full gloating mode, and those who lost are licking their wounds, planning their strategy for a come-back run or looking for another line of work.

                Voters are thrilled the 2012 elections have come to an end because we're no longer bombarded with political telephone calls or trying to see a sea of past red, white and blue cardboard signs crowded around every street corner.

                We can go back to watching television shows and complain about the number of insurance and hair coloring ads instead of the number of negative political ads.

                As much as we gripe about all that aggravation, elections put money in somebody's pocket, and those dollars help the economy. Newspapers and magazines were happy to take candidates' money as were television stations, Websites, billboard companies and sign makers.

                Pollsters were happy to cash checks for running fictitious scenarios so political action committees could see where to spend their money.

                Campaign strategists used high-tech projection software and analyzed minute details from electronic polling to tell their candidate what issue to talk about and where to spend their time and money.

                Email and the Internet have been prime players in elections for the past few years. Email blasts from friends and political groups filled our mailboxes. YouTube videos used patriotic music and spliced together videos to make candidates look worse than slimy geezers who take candy from babies.

                This time around, Facebook and Twitter became major players as people tweeted and posted about candidates, battling and spreading lies, innuendoes, gossip and slogans.

                The presidential debates struck me as which man could get the sharpest jab in. Forget answering our questions about the economy, jobs, pollution and other issues that are tops in our minds. The debates were simply opportunities for one-upmanship.  

                Now it's all over. The airwaves are filled with pundits analyzing why Romney lost and Obama won. We'll be looking at analyses and reports for weeks; and every time a major election comes around, we'll endure experts rehashing and dissecting this election and this campaign.  

                And then the presidential campaign of 2016 will swing into gear as potential candidates attempt to make their voice heard in the wilderness as the whole process starts all over again.

                A few years ago, I remember seeing a young Bill Clinton and Al Gore standing on the stage accepting the office of the presidency and vice presidency of the United States.

                I was terrified, thinking we were turning the reins over to two green-behind-the-ears guys who wouldn't have a clue how to run this country.

                But like their politics or not, the United States survived, just as we lived through sub-par presidents like Zachary Taylor and Herbert Hoover.

                We survived Richard Nixon whose paranoia caused most Americans to lose faith in the White House. We survived Andrew Johnson who mismanaged Reconstruction after the Civil War.

                We flourished under presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who laid the groundwork for the United States. We came to admire Abraham Lincoln who fought for equality.

                As Mitt Romney said in his gracious concession speech, "I believe in America." So do the millions of people who cast their vote in the 2012 election process.

                For the next four years, Mr. Obama is the president of the United States, the commander in chief. No matter who you voted for, it's time to move forward. We Americans do that quite well, and we'll survive or triumph, not only for the next four years but for decades to come.  

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

How the mommy tables have turned

                The parenting lifecycle is anything but straight forward. Once our children are placed in our arms, we diaper and burp, feed and clothe and watch them feverishly for any hiccup in the road.

                Along with those parenting jobs, the long-term assignment of teacher kicks in. We teach our young 'uns to pick up their toys, share with others and say "excuse me" when they burp.

                As they get older, the mentoring continues –how to ride a bicycle, how to drive a stick shift and how to buy life insurance.

                For most of their lives, parents remain in that advisory role.

                Unless children grow up to be smarter than their mom.

                That's what happened to me.

                My Aggie boy is a whiz with computers and especially the Internet. He knows I like watching movies but I can't always get to the Cineplex. He told me about an online movie channel, and the site offers a variety of movies I can watch on my computer monitor.

                I lost the password we'd set up, so I called him and he gave me the password over the phone. my handwriting is sloppy and every attempt I made the next night met with an "incorrect password" prompt. I tried everything – uppercase, lowercase and then I just gave up.

                Exasperated, I sent my son an email listing the password and asking if it was correct.

                His return email was quick and short – "Do not ever email passwords. I will call you."

                I slapped myself in the forehead, and my reply note was apologetic. After I sent the email, I sat in front of my computer and realized the tables were turned.

                We'd crossed from "you know everything, Mommy" to "you're an idiot, Mom" line.

                About the time I turned 12, I knew my parents didn't have all the answers. I wasn't upset about this revelation. Instead, I began to see my parents as flawed human beings who were doing the best they could.

                I did everything to try and keep my sons from seeing me in that light. Unfortunately, real life stomped all over that fantasy, especially as they saw me lose my car keys on more than one occasion, lock myself out of our house and fumble my way through directions for the VCR and then the DVD player.

                Forget learning the subtle differences between a Blu Ray and a regular DVD or understanding how fiber optics work. My boys knew these facts like they knew all the hiding places for my extra cash.

                But I still felt I had the upper hand. I knew more about pop culture, cooking and the best way to remove grease from a new shirt.

                Over time, though, my Aggie boy had slowly coaxed those secrets out of me, and he was probably on par with me in the kitchen, if he hadn't surpassed me.

                In gentlemanly fashion, he didn't lord his superiority over me. If asked, he'd clean up the hard drive on my computer, rearrange my electronic photos into a more searchable system and send me links to birthday gifts for everybody in the family.

                As I look back, all the signs were there that he'd surpassed me on the information highway. It was inevitable. He's more of a Mustang and Camaro type of guy and I'm still puttering along in the Edsel.

                Still, there's a few things I know he hasn't figured out yet – how to hem a pair of pants, how to shoot the moon in a card game of Hearts and the best way to carve a Thanksgiving turkey.

                For the time being, I think I'll just keep those secrets to myself. A mom, even one who's in the slow lane, has to have a few aces up her sleeve.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.