The Cat's in the Cradle and the Song's in my Head

Attachment parenting all the way, was the way we went when the kids were young. Then, when they were toddlers I reclaimed my me-time. I went out for a movie almost once a week, or to dinner with friends, or even the occasional night or two away. We hardly ever used babysitters, but my husband realized that a satisfied wife was a happy wife, or vice versa, and he fully supported all of my little escapes.

If the kids ever gave me sad puppy-dog eyes and begged me to stay I felt zero guilt, since I'd worn them in slings, nursed them forever, and let them share my bed for years and years and (in some cases) years. Other moms had a harder time pulling away for these evening escapades. Friends who worked full time. Friends who only saw their children in waking hours (as opposed to our 'round the clock snuggling). But not me. Walking out of the house was one of the easiest things I did.

But now my kids are a bit older. Old enough that I'm starting to see this part of our lives coming to an end. And walking out of the house just got a lot more complicated.

The other night I was dashing out to meet some girlfriends for a late dinner. I hadn't seen these women in two months, especially now that several of us have started to return to work. We try to get together a few times a year.

My nine year old son looked at me and said 'but you always go out, why can't you stay and watch American Idol with us?' and even though he was completely wrong about the *always* going out bit, what he said really resonated. His words may have been 'stay with us,' but what I heard was 'I won't always want you to watch stuff with me.' With his skateboard-length hair and shifting fascination from home and family to local sports teams and school chums, he looked like a kid who was about to be a teenager. The type who might really want me around, but who certainly wouldn't come out and admit it. His posture was already starting to change from enthusiastic youngster to been-there, done-that.

My seven year old daughter climbed into my lap and asked me to stay. She said 'don't run out,' but of course all I heard was 'time's running out.' She still kisses me full on the lips, and almost seems to have a magnet in her that makes her press her whole body up against me, as often as possible. But there's a look that crosses her eyes when something doesn't go her way, and the older she gets the more it seems she thinks I'm the reason these things aren't going her way. And in that look I see the adolescent she might become. And it doesn't seem to be the type who'd rather hang out with me than do anything else.

And of course, like so many things in my parenting thanks to all the little gems that have seeped into my subconscious--when I say 'later' or 'tomorrow we'll do that' or anything along those lines I feel like the lame-o parent we all grew up despising in Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle.

As a fifth grader listening to that song (at any age before turning into a parent for that matter) the dad just seemed so shallow. Now I understand him completely. He's just doing his grown-up things and loving his kid. Adoring his kid, but still doing his things. After all he had 'bills to pay.' What was the guy supposed to do? Go into foreclosure? He had a lot to do, that's why he couldn't play with the new ball. Listening to that song when I was a kid, I imagined the dad was off to play golf, or go whittle in solitude somewhere. Now I'm thinking he might have had to fold the laundry, or take the car to the shop, or return an important phone call from a relative that might end up taking so long it could pre-empt the post dinner board game he'd promised.

*Sigh*

And look at me! I'm not running out to pay the bills, I'm meeting friends for dinner. I shudder at what the young me would have thought if the dad in the song had admitted to preferring something so indulgent to being with his son instead of remaining so vague as to invite all sorts of interpretations. Or malicious grown-up-distrusting misinterpretation.

As a kid, I thought it was great that the son in the song grew up to give the dad a taste of his own medicine. 'Right on, kid!' 'Attaboy!' Now I look at my own kids and think 'cut me some slack,' 'look how much I do for you,' 'I just need to see my friends, please understand.'

So this is where we are now. I'm beating myself up with Harry Chapin. This sort of self-flagellation isn't a first for me. Remember those old commercials where you'd see footage of some adorable girl in a princess dress spinning in a backyard and then the screen would go black and the words 'killed by a drunk driver' would fill the screen? That final frame haunted me so much it was hard to enjoy their exuberant childness, since I couldn't stop thinking 'what if this film clip ends up on one of those ads?' and I'd be flooded with sadness. I'm only just now able to go back and enjoy footage of my children as toddlers, now that I know they've made it this far.

My son is only nine. My oldest daughter's seven. I know they're not exactly on the brink of being teenagers. I'm hoping that 'not now mom I got a lot to do' is pretty far off. But the Cat's in the Cradle's dad's list of offenses began when his kid was pretty young--the son had only 'just arrived the other day' and he was already catching planes--so I guess I'm just wondering if there's still some time to undo some damage while they're still paying attention.

Maybe I should just hunker down in the house for awhile and be soaked up by these children. Maybe the movies that are in the theaters now can wait. Maybe my friends will still have the same fun gripes and energy for me in fourteen years when my youngest is off to college. Maybe we can wait and get together then. We're gonna have a good time then.

Four Wives

When I started to write for nycmomsblog I was offered an advanced copy of a novel--Four Wives by Wendy Walker. It was my first official 'perk' as a mom-blogger (unless you count the awkward event hosted by an office supply chain in which I was served pinot noir and bruschetta and shown their new line of paper shredders and GPS systems) and I happily accepted it. Full disclosure. I didn't think I'd be sitting down to write a review of it, even before I read it. I've never been moved to write a book review. And unless I've had a particularly awful experience with some kind of place or product, I'm not generally moved to write at all. I was just kind of intrigued at the thought of having a piece of fiction sent to me, just because. Besides the only things I write about are things specific to my own life as a mother. Even if I loved the book I couldn't imagine a scenario where I'd be sitting down to rave about it. I couldn't imagine that it would affect me the way it did.

At first, the author's name didn't mean anything to me, but when I got the book in the mail and looked at the author's picture, I realized I recognized her. I met Wendy over twenty years ago. We were in the same wedding party. My biggest memory of her is that she drove to the wedding in a day from somewhere down south and she showed up with a half-sunburned face and a sunburned arm and we were all to wear strapless gowns. I haven't seen her or heard anything about her since then, and that was probably, like, 1991.

The cover of Four Wives is a shot of a red bikini top floating on the multi-blued surface of a swimming pool and I was surprised to think that the Wendy Walker I remember would write a trashy novel. The Wendy I remember was determined to fight stereotypes about women and sex and I have a vague memory of a story of her protesting certain gender-based dress codes at some powerhouse Wall Street company where she used to work. Sheeplike in my desire to be accepted in my first few years in the workforce, this story of her strength and resolve made a huge impression on me.

Optimistically, I took Four Wives with me on a two-week tropical vacation. I've carted many books around with me on many vacations (Middlesex got a free trip to Berlin a few years ago, and I never even cracked the cover) and was hoping that I'd have a chance to read it. Thanks to children with serious jetlag and way-early bedtimes, I had plenty of time. And then I realized I was wrong to judge this book by its cover (forgive me for the obvious, but there's just no better analogy).

The first few chapters are named for the main characters: Janie, Love, Gayle, and Marie, and the book moves along swiftly. Janie's having an affair, Gayle's hopelessly rich, Love's consumed by her new baby Will, Marie's working to juggle work and home.

Initially the women are all recognizable. We've all read about adulterous moms, wealthy isolated women, strung-out moms, and the disenchanted moms aiming to have it all. And as in familiar beachy books, the plot clips along easily--one bite-sized chapter after another. I thought I'd polish it off quickly, but I soon slowed way down. I realized I couldn't gloss over any of the descriptions. They were loaded with insight. And I've been thinking and talking about many of Walker's observations ever since.

In her introductory chapter, Love goes to her baby's crib in the night. He's crying, clearly hungry, but she's supposed to be sleep-training him. All of her daytime promises, and the 'rules' go through her mind. "Why had raising children become about denying them the very things they craved?" she wonders before caving in and nuzzling him. It's something I've considered many times. Bringing babies into the world only to start toughening them up right away has always seemed so cruel to me and has, fortunately for my kids, informed many of my parenting decisions.

But it's the next line that really resounded. After berating herself for being 'a complete failure' for nursing him instead of leaving him to cry it out, she settles "into the state of defeat--a familiar place now."

The familiarity of the feeling of having failed is an enormous idea for me as a mother. It's almost as though I walk around hoping I don't fail at something (please let the children behave in the restaurant, please let my daughter share with Fifi, please let my kids show gratitude at Christmas time) there's that moment when something hasn't happened--when some vile behavior on a child's part seems to shine light on my horrible parenting--that just ends up feeling comfortable. Ahhh, that's how it should be, I'll think. Finally letting go of the tension of hoping things turn out well. Sometimes being in the worst case scenario feels safer (like when my 9 year old said "I already have this box set!" when he opened a gift last month, "I already have this one!" he kept repeating, since saying it once wasn't enough. What happened to all that prompting I did?--what happened to 'remember to be grateful and if you already have something, just smile and say thank you'). The thing's already gone wrong. No worries anymore. The familiar feeling of failure. It's something I know well, now that I'm a mom.

Every page yielded some gem like that. The plot served a fine purpose of moving things along, but I hardly needed it, so satisfied was I just scouring each paragraph for some wise observation, some new phrase to chew on.

I soon realized I was in good hands with Walker. I was surprised too, to find out that some of the men in her book were in good hands as well. Having been introduced to the world of the suburbs through the eyes of the less-than-satisfied wives, I was prepared to meet a cast of buffoons for husbands. Easy punching bags, given the backdrop of struggling women married to moneyed men with expensive toys. But that wasn't always the case.

When Marie and her husband Anthony have a dispute about cereal boxes he'd left out on the counter after breakfast in the morning (a dispute he only realized he was in when he came home from work and found the cereal boxes STILL sitting out in the kitchen) the fight feels as though it'll be stacked in her favor, but really isn't. Her 'I am not your maid' offense is soon matched by an earnestly presented string of things he points out he's done for her in the wake of some of her oversights, and I recognize the same kind of stale-mate I often find in my own marriage. There's no right or wrong, just a series of things that annoy me, or my husband, and that can set off another oft-repeated tension-filled back-and-forth if one or the both of us is feeling unhappy or unconnected or un-something else.

In my own marriage I've got the 'guy' role. I could walk around a shopping bag for a week, honestly not noticing it at all. Then my husband will come forward with some massive complaint about the bag that's been in the middle of the living room all week, and how he's been waiting for me to move it. My feeling in these moments is that if he's the one who's been noticing the bag, he should be the one to move it. Of course he disagrees, so annoyed at my claim that I didn't realize it was there--a claim that baffles me, since there's usually some glimmer of remembering having seen it, just not focusing on it (one of my big m.o.s as a mom is that a kid will have lost something and I'll come up with this dubious answer 'I remember seeing it in some really weird place and thinking that it was in a really weird place but I don't remember where I saw it.'--so there really is some strange seeing-but not seeing kind of thing going on. Imagine being married to that). This infuriating cycle will probably repeat itself forever, serving as a barometer for other things in our marriage--how generous we're feeling towards each other, how well-rested we are. Sad, but true. But wonderful to see so realistically portrayed in Four Wives.

I won't give away anything else about the book. But suffice it to say there's a particular reason I feel wonderful about it that I can't say here without spoiling the ending. I heartily recommend Four Wives. It's not a trashy read like the cover suggests (was there even mention of a red bikini or a swimming pool in the book?), but one full of helpful insights on marriage and on mothering, one written by the Wendy Walker I remember being so impressed by so many years ago.

Waiting for the Flu

You know the ad where the mom is sick but still has to take care of her sick kids and her sick husband? I don't want to be sick like that.

I want a good old-fashioned, laid up, splayed out kind of sick.

The kind where there's NO question as to whether or not to get out of bed, whether or not to call in sick, whether or not to continue to try to hit the regular day time marks--making school lunches, getting dressed, meeting the school bus, writing thank you notes for christmas gifts that were opened, say, a month earlier.

That's what I want.

I know *intellectually* that I don't want the stomach flu that's going around my school. *Intellectually*, I know it's an awful thing. I know that if I end up getting it I'll be miserable and think I'm going to die as my stomach gets turned inside out in every way possible again and again and again, and I'm not going to be able fathom how I could have ever welcomed the torment.

BUT! part of me craves it. Too sick to do anything but maybe catch up on some of my recorded shows...or to (finally!)plow through the Freaks and Geeks box set my tenant loaned me two years ago. Not to mention a head start, maybe?, on losing a few of the seventeen (yes, seventeen) pounds I gained in the last year--a final year in the house, in close proximity to our fully-stocked kitchen, before sending my youngest off to school and rejoining the work force.

A good friend with one child and a high-powered job considered having another baby JUST for the maternity leave. I get that. Just a chance to step out of it all and hole up for a little while. She ended up with shingles and was miserable. But maybe just a little bit well-rested? I remember bringing her a sandwich and eating with her on the stoop, in the sunlight, in the middle of what would have been a work-day. That's a nice alternative to getting everyone up and out and returning home after dark.

No new babies for me. But just a mini-three day respite. I'd like that. I think.

And, again, none of this wishy washy can I ask for the day off of everything kinds of walloping colds. The real thing. The obvious thing. But not over this three-day weekend please, and not on a Friday. Tuesday morning'd be just fine.

Shakes on a Plane

In conversations about flying--when friends are detailing their fears, rational and otherwise--I'm the Miss Mary Sunshine who proclaims "I LOVE to fly." I do love to fly. I always have. Airports smell like possibility to me. It's the only time I let myself buy People Magazine and eat unlimited Peanut M&Ms. Fig Newtons become a fruit product--something healthy for the flight. I love the surge of take-off, the familiar bounce of landing. I've been in planes that were struck by lightning, and white-knuckle turbulence. And I still love to fly.

And that's why it seems so significant to me that I was so terrified on my flight home the other day.

We'd settled into a red-eye from Honolulu (New Years Eve no less), returning from two weeks away from home. Back in March when I booked the tickets and paid with them using points from my credit card, it had seemed like a good idea to find the cheapest cheapest fare (since anything more expensive, times five, adds up to a whole 'nother vacation for us). And I booked us through Houston--with a two-hour layover, before continuing on to Philly, an airport which, oddly enough, pops up on kayak as being in the New York Area.

We'd handily survived the two daytime planes out to the islands--even though the video portion of the in-flight entertainment system had been down and the kids had been up. Turns out you can play 8 hours of electronic solitaire.

The flight was packed--a large family reunion of large people was squished into the chairs ahead of us, a sure sign that I'd be chewing on someone else's reclined seat-back the second we hit the right altitude. After stumbling awkwardly through a PG-13 movie that was completely inappropriate for my 9 year old son--black rectangles attempted to hide simulated blow-jobs, exposed breasts, semen collection from a stallion (!), etc.--I'd switched to the Nanny Diaries, and everyone else in the family dropped off to sleep.

Somewhere over the Pacific our plane made some strange grinding noise--and it sounded like an engine kicked into some other type of laboring-extra-hard gear. You could feel the whole plane rattling and struggling in the new bass hum, and those of us who were awake exchanged nervous glances. And that's the first thing that scared me. If I've ever though a spot of turbulence was too much I generally find relief by looking at my fellow unfazed passengers. But everyone who was awake was clearly fazed. And since we were all sitting with sleeping loved-ones, we had only each other to scan for worry, and because we were strangers, we sort of half-smiled too.

To make matters worse, the cute little cartoon airplane that insisted on showing us exactly where we were on our journey on the screen at the head of each section of plane was just surrounded by blue. Nothing but ocean as far as we could see. Then it tried to be helpful by showing us a new zoomed-out view. Now we could see that, not only where we surrounded by blue ocean, we were as close to LAX as we were to HNL. Other helpful information followed--we were 3 hours and 13 minutes away from our place of origin, we were 4 hours and thirty three minutes away from our destination, it was 14 degrees outside. Benign stuff like that that suddenly seemed significant.

Grinding along, with nothing but ocean for hours and hours fore and aft, my insides hollowed out and my fingertips got cold. I looked at my sleeping family and wondered how two parents are supposed to save three children. A shiver of helplessness sliced through me.

A few days earlier we'd been whale-watching off of Lahaina. It was my first opportunity to be seasick since having children--and the nausea kicked right in (despite the fact that I'm a mom and my body should have slipped into some mind-over-matter vomit-proof gear like it's proven it can do when handling some of the ickier parts of parenting). I worked hard on the boat to tamp down my sick-feeling and as long as I focussed hard on it--or rather focussed on not focussing on it?--I was kind of okay. Then one by one my daughters started to feel ill. My oldest wanted to go downstairs where it would rock less, and I was completely unable to escort her there (what kind of mom am I?). So my husband took her while I stayed up top with my toddler. We were fine until she started to say things I was feeling like 'stop talking to me' and 'I just want to look at the floor' and, again, 'stop asking me if I'm okay.' I started to imagine what it would be like if she got sick. I knew I'd get sick too. I'd be completely unable to help her. It was such a helpless feeling, sitting there wondering how likely it was that some stranger would run towards us eager to be of assistance, and to feel so unable to be the one who could do it. My m.o. in this type of situation is to walk myself through the worst-case-scenario. In this case of course she and I had both thrown up, all over ourselves, and would eventually be back in Lahaina, wearing brand-new tourist clothing. She'd be in a grass skirt with a coconut-shell bikini top, and I'd be in an XL BadAss Coffee tee--the one with the cartoon donkeys pulling their pants down--and a fringed, floral sarong. We'd survive. It'd be gross, but we'd get through it.

But this? Would someone offer to help us? Would I wake them up first? Tell them what was happening? Would it be obvious what was happening? Was there really a life-vest under my seat? Would my three year old agree to wear hers? Would someone know how to turn the yellow slide into a rubber raft? Would we all fit on the yellow slide rubber rafts? I'd refused to go into swimming pools in Hawaii because they weren't heated. How cold would the ocean be? Do people ever get rescued from plane-wrecks in the middle of the ocean? I couldn't remember.

Oddly enough, my thoughts turned to my electronics. Should I tuck my mini digital videotape into my bra? Footage of my seven-year old daughter wiggling on stage at the Luau? Should I swallow my memory stick? 600 pictures of proof that we'd had a great vacation? Would these finds bring comfort to our family and friends? Do they ever find the bodies of people who drown in the middle of an ocean? Do they do autopsies on floaters?

These are the thoughts that I tried to hold at bay while keeping my eyes glued to Scarlett Johansson and Laura Linney. Eventually a flight attendant started to move a cart down the aisle and I searched her face for fear and found none. Surely she had family too, reason to worry if there was reason to worry. Laura Linney fired Scarlett Johansson around the time I started to feel better. At some point I became one of the sleepers too.

We woke 'in the morning' to yummy banana muffins and gorgeous streams of airplane-window shaped sunlight. Cheerful ovals of impossibly bright light danced around inside the plane as we neared Houston, banking this way and that, circling the airport. The kids stretched themselves awake and murmured about what a quick flight it had been. The middle of the night middle of the ocean panic seemed like fiction.

Tray tables were locked and upright, seatbacks were raised (some not as soon as I'd have liked), and we began our descent. The plane angled down, down, down and then there was the lovely rubber squish-thud of the wheels hitting the runway--familiar engine shifts began to happen and then--just as quickly as we'd touched down--all of a sudden--the engine gunned up, and the plane's nose lifted up and we took off again steeply sharply. A rushed and upsetting take-off that sloshed all of our stomachs, and then some sloppy but no doubt important tilts and angles and we were up in the sky doing a slow loop around the airport. No one said anything for a few minutes too long. Then the pilot came on and told us in relaxed-pilot-speak 'Well folks, you can see we're in the air again...had to lift off to avoid a plane that hadn't left the runway yet...we'll bring it around and touch 'er down again.' Something like that.

My husband gave me an eye-roll indicating that he was sick to his stomach. My three year old began to vomit, most of it into an airsickness bag. Once we got her settled down using the babywipes that I swear I'll continue to carry with me for the rest of my life, my seven year old began to throw up too. I pressed the call button hoping that, in addition to bringing us extra barf-bags and plastic bags and paper towels, the flight attendant would bring us some sort of big-eyed sympathetic wasn't-that-just-terrible kind of expression. But we only got the bags and towels.

A few fellow passengers mused about what had gone on--of course being trapped in the middle section of the plane we'd had the worst view of it so had no idea how close our call had been. But mostly there was silence, and we did land again (and I tried to start one of those rounds of applause but no one joined in), and then we were spilled out into the airport. No knowing looks or nods from any of the crew. Just poker-faces and professional nods as we deplaned.

My seven year old threw up a few more times in the terminal. And then we were blended in with all the other people connecting from other places, whose planes hadn't almost exploded in a fireball upon colliding with a plane that hadn't left the runway, and then we were blended in with all the other people just arriving at the airport--who had had good night sleeps and who thought it was just an ordinary day. And the grouchy flight attendant on our next flight seemed annoyed when I asked for extra barf-bags just in case and he seemed inconvenienced when I asked if my daughter could sit next to me instead of off on her own like her boarding pass indicated. And that flight was uneventful and everything was back to normal.

My mind moves now to the $5 dollar tiki statues the kids bought with their spending money only hours before the flight. Ku the god of strength, and perhaps more importantly, Lono, god of luck and protection were swaddled in tissue paper in my son's Naruto backpack. Maybe they deserve to be unpacked and placed in positions of honor somewhere in this house.

And of course I'm glad I didn't eat my memory stick.

The House without a Christmas

It's hard to believe that it's almost Christmas. You'd never know it in our house. No nativity scene on the mantel, no Christmas Tree, no ornaments, no wreath on the door, no tacky white deer turning his head blandly this way then that in our front yard, no oversized nylon Santa-shell waiting to be plumped up with wrapping paper, no stockings, no nothing. We completely blew it. The only sign that anything out of the ordinary is going on is the smattering of Christmas cards taped to our parlour doors-but without all the other accoutrements of the holidays-to-be they just look like the doors usually do in January, when we've taken everything else away but haven't yet had the heart to remove these pictures of the children of far-flung family and friends.

Pitiful, I know.

Growing up you could spot the holidays coming from weeks away. Easter was a house-full of hard-boiled eggs and vinegar smells, or sticky turkey skewers lying around from the blown-eggs we were going to decorate and hang from an egg tree. Little vignettes of bunnies hauling eggs or of chicks in easter bonnets nestled in plastic grass covered our end tables. And my mom didn't have to run out to Duane Reade to buy new Easter Baskets every year, since they had their own shelf in her holiday closet.

You knew the fourth of July was coming when the red, white, and blue crepe paper arrived, so we could start to decorate our bikes for the local parade, and when the sugary smell of my mom's flag cake (a long rectangle of artfully dyed cake arranged so that every single slice contained a complete American flag-yes, really) filled the kitchen.

Even Thanksgiving, which is usually a day-of kind of holiday, meant a wicker cornucopia of gourds and Indian corn as a centerpiece for our kitchen table and a smattering of pilgrim figurines on the fireplace.

Of course I grew up in Who-ville, a town with a three-story high Christmas Tree, full of colored lights that could be seen from miles away, caroling parties, and elementary schools that basically turned us kids into holiday-decoration-generating machines. The homework one year was finding as many words as we could from the phrase Merry Christmas. Just try that one in a public school in Brooklyn-one that doesn't even make a big deal out of birthdays lest they offend any of the Jehovah's Witnesses in the building.

True, it was a simpler time. My parents weren't crawling into bed at 9:15 exhausted from hour-long commutes. And getting to the Holiday decorations in the basement didn't require tiptoeing through a tenant's apartment.

But I'm feeling pretty bad about it.

Of course, there's a 'reason' for all of this Christmaslessness (full disclosure: finding 'reasons' for my bad behavior is a talent of mine). Way back in March it seemed like a great idea to plan a Hawaii vacation. I got caught up in thinking that Hawaii is so far away it would only make sense to go if we could go for two whole weeks, and since no one joneses for tropical weather in the summertime, I had to figure out which week of school butting up against a school-break is the most disposable. So I cashed in all of my membership rewards points and bought tickets to Hawaii-the kids'll miss the low-academic week of school before winter break, we'll stay with a friend in Maui for a week, see cousins in Honolulu. Mele Kalikimaka. A no brainer.

So we planned it back in March, and rested on it all year long, anticipating our new improved Christmas-on-the-go. What a great way to do Christmas. We were going to take it on the road, have a free-wheeling time with friends. Perfect.

And then came the details. To haul all the gifts over there or not? To only give small disposable things or to go whole-hog? To load up on 99c store items for stockings HERE in Brooklyn-99c store mecca-OR see if they have them over there? To bring gifts for all of the people we'll see over there? Or not to busy ourselves worrying about gifting cousins we never acknowledge at holiday time? To cart along an extra empty bag for bringing stuff home? Or to deal with shipping things from Hawaii? To have Amazon do free-super saver shipping and mail stuff there? Or pay more for two day shipping and send everything here? To bring real New York-city style foods with us to the islanders out there? Or to just bring our own New-Yorky selves?

Untangling 50 yards of Christmas lights would seem a bit like fiddling while Rome burns, given the scope of all these other preparations. Digging out the North Pole sign instead of digging out the bathing suits? Hauling home a wreath instead of running out for snorkel gear? Urging the kids along with their advent calendars instead of encouraging them to sort through what to bring in their carry-ons?

I had hoped that this trip would simplify Christmas, instead of erasing it. We wouldn't be tempted to go overboard with gifts since one of the major gifts would be the trip itself (sounded really convincing in March, but doesn't seem so sound in the face of all the commercials being forcefed to my kids courtesy of Nickelodeon and Disney). At this point though the only big day I'm fretting over is the travel day (a 5:30 am flight from Philly connecting through Dallas also seemed like a good idea back in March).

The friend we're staying with assures us that her halls are decked and I'm certain that Maui will be merry. But I worry that I'll always look back at this month and wonder why we didn't see fit to do any decorating at home.

And while I know the experience will be magical in many ways, it's hard to forgive the fact that we didn't put an ounce of magic into the every-day part leading up to the trip. I'm only realizing now that all those weeks of pine-scented twinkling-tree blinking-yard anticipation just might be the most exciting part of Christmas day.