It's what we do

We just finished all our holiday cards this weekend.  I'm behind on all things Christmas, and still need to bake and figure out many of the presents, so I was tempted to skip cards altogether.  But Quinn wanted to do them.

Quinn likes lists and excuses to hand write things and organizing stuff into piles, so holiday cards are right up his alley.  I decided if he really wanted to help it would be worth going to the trouble.  We talked about what to make and settled on an origami star.  YouTube showed us how to make one, and we got to folding.



In the past when we've done our little home assembly line process of putting together holiday cards I thought of it in two parts: The making of the actual cards, and then considering whom they are for and what to put inside.  It never occurred to me that the second half of that process would be done by anyone but myself, but the part that most interested Quinn was addressing envelopes.

Mommy's Sweatshop: Music Tree Edition

We got a late start on anything Christmas because Thanksgiving ran long and birthday season ran late this year.  But I think I have all the presents ready, sort of.  (I just bought a sweater that I can't decide whether to give to Ian or  keep for myself and tell him it's from him.  We don't normally get each other anything, but it was a really nice men's sweater marked way way down so I couldn't resist.  Maybe he won't like it and he'll just give it back to me?  Anyway...)


Despite a more packed schedule than usual (I played a performance of the complete Messiah in a town more than half an hour south of here and those three-hour rehearsals plus commute on top of my normally packed schedule about did me in) we did manage to make our holiday cards and get them out on time!  Unfortunately Mona was knocked flat with a fever for several days and Aden's been playing catch up on homework, so Quinn was my lone helper in Mommy's Sweatshop.

We painted cards with watercolors, then glued trees cut from music paper to them.  Mona was delighted when she saw the finished cards and said, "Ooh, it's like the notes are ornaments!"  Which is exactly what I was going for, so that made me happy.

The Personal Touch, or Just Touched? (Babble)

It took an entire day, but I finished all our holiday cards this weekend.  When we have time I run my own little sweatshop (fueled with Christmas cookies) and the kids help me crank out about 90 cards to send.  Last year we did potato print trees decorated with stickers (and if you didn’t see the post about it the first time around, it’s worth clicking on just to scroll down and see the hilariously horrific card Quinn accidentally came up with).
 
When we don’t have time to make our own we do a photo card of the kids or the whole family.  This was a busy year, so we hired my friend Carol to come photograph us at home, which worked out well since the kids really wanted our new dog in the picture.
I think in the era of email and texting and facebook and people feeling hyper in touch with phones on them all the time, holiday cards have lost a lot of significance and many people no longer bother.  I understand that, and would never resent anyone for not sending us a card, but I like to send them.  To me it’s important.


Several months back I read a piece on Motherlode that I believe was about gifts and/or thank you notes.  (I would link to it except I don’t remember enough specifics to do a useful search in order to find it again.)  The post basically asked why it is that in most families women are the ones tasked with finding gifts and writing thank you cards.  I thought it was a good question, because those sorts of formal nice touches in the service of connecting people do tend to be neglected more by men than women.  I know in my home if I don’t do them, they do not get done.

As often happens the most entertaining reading was in the comments, and one man’s writing in particular really bugged me.  He essentially said that if women feel like wasting time by preparing little gift bags and writing notes it was no skin off his nose but that it was a pointless exercise.  He made it sound silly.  But it’s not silly.  People need connections for fun, comfort, happiness, safety, support, protection, and meaning.  Those connections are what make up our lives.

The gender component of this is interesting to me.  I think it comes down to the fact that typically a man’s status is based more on measurable accomplishments, and a woman’s on the success of her relationships.  For many of the couples I know it’s the woman who tends to be in charge of the social calendar and who keeps a running tally in mind of what kinds of interactions are taking place among family and friends.  I do think women in general are more attuned to this than men (although there are certainly exceptions) and monitoring and maintaining relationships of all sorts is something women place a high priority on.  This instinct makes sense to me because physically women are more vulnerable than men on average, and to counter that women tend to prefer groups.  Maintaining connections is a way of securing a group.

So how do we maintain connections between people?  By acknowledging that they matter to us and there are many ways to do that.  One of the ways I like to do it is with holiday cards.  I hand write each and every one.  (The only exception was during Ian’s first deployment when everyone wanted an update about how he was doing in Iraq and the kids were 5, 3, and a month old and I had to print out a mass letter because there are limits to my ambition.)

I like going through my address book and stopping to think about all kinds of people from different points in my life.  I want them to know I still think of them, and that the role they played or continue to play in my life means something.  I like to think when they see their names written in my own cursive hand that they feel that connection, that they know I was thinking specifically of them.  My list includes childhood friends and old professors, relatives both near and far, neighbors and business associates.  It’s a list of my life from many angles.

Some people I never hear back from.  Every year I weigh certain names in my book in front of me and decide if they are people who maybe don’t want to hear about my family anymore.  When the effort to maintain even a slight connection is entirely one sided it’s hard to know.  But then I will cross paths with one of these people unexpectedly, and I’ve been surprised when more than one of them has said they’ve kept every card we’ve ever sent, and they can’t wait to see what we’ll do next.  So I think it’s worth the effort, even in cases where I’m not sure.  The effect is sometimes made more lopsided by the fact that I blog.  I’ve had many people apologize for not doing more to stay in touch and say they have a false sense that we are because they read my posts and feel up to date about my life.  They forget that I’m still in the dark about what’s going on in theirs.

The man on the Motherlode thread who thinks his wife’s pretty gift bags and thank you cards are frivolous is wrong.  And the part that bothered me was that he’s likely benefiting from his wife’s work in that regard and not giving it the proper respect.  Those aren’t just gift bags and notes, they are ties to other people.  Ties that are kept active and relevant and alive through something as simple as hand written cards.  Does he expect a safety net to be in place among the people he knows in case of an emergency?  In case he’s ill and needs help?  To rejoice with him in his triumphs?  To care that he exists at all?  That doesn’t just magically happen.  That takes some investment and effort, and different people find ways to do that differently.  It sounded to me like he was mindlessly reaping the benefits of someone else’s work and that on some level he felt entitled to those benefits regardless.  That’s arrogant, and I’m hoping in real life he’s less so.

Every year I wonder if I’m crazy to bother with all those cards.  And every year I conclude no and sit down to address dozens of envelopes.  I don’t expect my children to carry on the exact same tradition themselves, but I hope they each find a way that works for them to take a moment at least once a year to acknowledge the special individuals in their lives in a personal manner.  Accessibility is not always the same as being in touch.  Meaning requires intention.  A day is not much to spend, really, in the service of maintaining those connections.  Especially if it can be done with something as simple as a pen and a roll of stamps.

(Family portrait by Carol Kraco)

Spite and Malice (Babble)

That’s the name of our family card game:  Spite and Malice.  It’s one of those family traditions that’s so ingrained you sometimes fail to recognize that it’s not something everyone does.  Sort of like when Ian and I were in Germany together and the meals at the youth hostel were exactly like what my German grandma always served us, and for the first time I realized I’d been raised on ethnic food.  It had always just been food.
Spite and Malice is pretty simple, although without cards in front of you the explanation might sound messy.

Each person has a stack of 21 cards he or she is trying to get rid of.  You get five cards in your hand and there are four discard piles in your own personal foot near your stack.  You get rid of cards by making and replacing four stacks in the center that everyone plays on that build up from from ace to queen.  Kings and Jokers are wild.  The distinctive thing about Spite and Malice is the deck is as big as you want it to be, usually at least four decks mixed together, so it’s the perfect game for using old decks that aren’t complete.  My grandmother played bridge for years, so she was always adding decks as they got dirty or too old to the Spite and Malice pile.  I have some of her cards mixed into our own Spite and Malice deck.

Some of my favorite memories are of sitting around grandma’s kitchen table playing Spite and Malice with any family who were up for a game–usually my grandma, my mom, my brothers, an aunt, a cousin….  My dad had the infuriating habit of not turning over the next card in his main stack after playing the one on the top, and just playing things out of his hand or foot which don’t really matter.  The only cards that matter are the ones in the stack you are trying to get rid of, but he’d play blindly for awhile, not knowing what card he should be working toward, and invariably when he finally turned that card over it was the perfect thing.  Maddening to watch, I must say, but it kept us laughing.


It’s the kind of game where there is always something going on, but not so much that you can’t talk the whole time.  That’s the beauty of it.  It doesn’t take concentration, so you can think about the game or not and it’s all fine.  It’s something to do while you just laugh and enjoy being together.  Which is a pretty lovely result for a game with such a cruel sounding name.

This weekend I finally taught it to Aden.  I think I was a little younger than she is when I learned it, but because grandma spent her last few years in a nursing home Aden didn’t have the advantage of growing up around that kitchen table which was the accepted venue for Spite and Malice.  Pulling out cards and boardgames isn’t as natural as pulling out laptops in our home, I’m afraid.  Although there are moments when we are faced with each other and need to think of amusing ways to pass the time where cards and games are the best possible thing.

Aden was very excited to learn Spite and Malice.  I can’t remember the last time I played, but it felt good to be dealing out cards from the giant deck.  At first Mona was upset that she wasn’t being included, so I told her she could help me while I taught Aden.  I really just wanted to get one kid good at it before trying to teach it to the next one.  Mona wiggled around next to me and was enthusiastic for about ten seconds and then drifted off to do something else.

Aden caught on quickly.  About halfway through we stopped playing with open hands so I could walk her through what we should both be doing, and were able to just play.  I’d forgotten just how much fun that game can be.  Of course, the fun is really all in the company, and Aden is wonderful company.

My hope is to play with Aden a few times a week before my grandmother’s memorial service in December so that by then she’s a pro.  When we travel to Ohio to say our goodbyes I’m going to bring my Spite and Malice deck and see how many relatives I can get interested in a game.  I can’t think of a more fitting tribute to my grandma than to have us sitting around a table together, playing our family game, and talking.  She’d have loved that.  I’m just sorry she never got to play with my daughter.