No Escape (but that's okay)

Every year the day after Christmas, my family goes to an escape room. If you haven’t been to one of these, imagine being locked in a room for an hour with a bunch of puzzles to solve. The puzzles are logic and word games and math. Also, there are secret doors and boxes and keys. You can ask for clues. 

But my family doesn’t like to ask for clues. We pride ourselves on being able to figure our way out with no help, and we ALWAYS win the game. 

Okay, except for one year, which we call The Year of the Zombie. What happened was the escape room was the usual, but on top of having to solve the puzzles, there was a zombie chained to the wall. If he touched you, you were out of the game, and every ten minutes, his chain would extend by a foot. By the end, we were all screaming and huddling in one corner. And, I forgot my reading glasses. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was some of the puzzles were broken! There was no way any of us could’ve solved them! (We don’t count that year.) 

This year the twist was we were the ones chained up. At the beginning of the game, the attendant handcuffed each of us to a bed frame in the center of the room. The hour clock started ticking, and if we wanted to solve any of the puzzles or try to unlock anything, we had to shuffle around all together dragging the bed along with us. To make things even more difficult, the room was dark and there was only one small lamp, and it was hard to reach with our handcuffed hands. 

Finally, like thirty minutes in, our son-in-law noticed a key hanging on the wall, and we all carted the bed across the room to get it. It was the key to unlock the handcuffs, but it took a while to free ourselves, and the time was winding down, and we knew if we wanted to get out, we’d have to ask for help. 

Clue after clue after clue, and it wasn’t enough. We lost. This is clearly a metaphor. 

Everyone stuck together and no way out unless you admit you need help, and even then, you still run out of time. We had fun though. 

We went home and played more games. Then I worked a shift at the library, and this has nothing to do with anything, but one of our regular patrons came in to read the newspaper how he does every day. This guy and I have a history with each other. A few years ago he made a complaint that I was “very loud.” I had been helping another patron who was hard of hearing, and admittedly, I was shouting. 

This annoyed the guy who wanted to read the newspaper. After the incident, I didn’t want to deal with him, and I can’t speak for the guy, but I think he had a similar feeling about me. He would rush into the library and scuttle along the edge of the room to avoid the information desk where I was sitting, and I wouldn’t say good morning to him how I usually had. 

A few days of that, and I let it go and started saying good morning again even as he was scuttling along the wall. We did this for a year. Another year went by when the library was closed for renovations. When we reopened, the guy walked through the door normally and passed the desk. I said good morning, and he nodded, but I still felt a twinge of tenseness between us. Six more months passed. 

The other day, when I was shelving, I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and truthfully, I was relieved I wasn’t at the desk, and we wouldn’t have to go through our awkward Good-morning/nod dance, but then, the guy surprised the heck out of me by walking straight toward me. He stopped a few feet away and smiled. 

Happy New Year, he said. 

I smiled back and said, Happy New Year to you. 

He walked off to the newspapers, and I blinked at the bookshelves. I don’t know why, but I was tearing up. There is a metaphor in here too, but I will leave you to puzzle it out. 

In the meantime, I wish you too, dear Reader, a happy new year, whoever you are and where, however you celebrate, or don't. I suspect the world for many of us may feel stressful this year, and never mind the potential for zombies and crochety patrons. We're stuck with them, but we have each other too, and that is not a small thing. 

It's everything, actually.  

On the Shortest Day of the Year

On the longest day of the year, we had a party, and randomly, everyone brought pink wine. Someone made an elaborate Stonehenge sculpture out of Rice Krispie treats and it almost seemed a shame to eat it, but we did. We lit the paper lantern lights and lounged out on the patio and told each other stories. It was 9 pm and the sun was still up, and I quoted a line from The Great Gatsby that is forever stuck in my head: 

“Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.” 

We were having the party because we didn’t want to miss it. To keep the conversation going, I asked a question. The question came from a friend who had been hiking the Appalachian Trail. She said one topic that none of the hikers ever get tired of talking about is food. The question is: What’s the best meal you ever had? 

My best meal took place in Memphis, Tennessee thirty-five years ago. My husband and I were invited out to a fancy restaurant by one of his work clients. This was the kind of place that serves multiple courses and there is no rush to eat them. We had never been to a place like this, and we were trying to play it cool. We were young and silly and wide-eyed and took it for granted that we had all the time in the world.  

When we were just settling in, the waiter took our drink order and said he knew we weren’t thinking about dessert yet, but he wanted to tell us about one of the items on the menu because it would take at least an hour to prepare. He went on to describe an enormous piece of chocolate cake. Nestled inside was a ball of chocolate, and throughout the meal, the pastry chef would slowly warm the cake in the oven, and when he brought it to our table, and we slid our forks into it, the perfectly melted chocolate would swirl out onto our plates. 

Everyone at the table ordered the cake. But by the time we finished the meal, course after course after course, we’d forgotten about it. When the waiter carried it to the table, even though we were all stuffed from dinner, we gasped with delight. It was exactly how he described. That fork slide, that swirl of melted chocolate. 

The funny thing is I don’t remember if it tasted good. I mean, it must have, right? But it’s the story I love. The detailed set up, the slow build, and everything turning out exactly how you hope.   

On the shortest day of the year, I am not throwing a party. We won’t lounge outside and we won’t drink pink wine. I don’t have a quote stuck in my head about it, but if I did, it would be something along the lines of: We are here, now, all of us together. Let’s not waste a moment. 

I’ll make you a cup of tea and we’ll cozy up inside and watch the sun slip down at 5:10 pm. I’ll ask you to tell me a story about what you love about today. 

And you will.

Hurtling through the Holidays

...and my to-do list was spooling out in my head, all the million little things to do. The presents to buy, the meals to plan, the Christmas cards to send out, the house to clean in preparation for guests. But the usual urgency wasn’t there. I was nursing a cold on top of a cold, and then I gifted that to my husband, and we were both trudging around the house cradling our Kleenex boxes. 

We joked about not putting up the tree. I mean, why? In a few weeks we’d be taking it down. But then I don’t know what happened. We hauled the Christmas stuff up from the basement. We watched Diehard. (Yes, it is a Christmas movie.) We bought presents for the family we sponsor at our local community center. Both kids needed winter coats and it was killing me how cute the little coats were. I played the Charlie Brown Christmas music and set the pot on the stove with the orange peels and cinnamon sticks. 

This is one of the ideas in the Hygge book that my daughter gave me a few Christmases ago. Hygge is a Danish thing where, instead of fighting the winter season, you go All In on it. You can do this by either hunkering down cozily with blankets and books and warm beverages and fragrant scents wafting from a pot on the stove, or else, you can bundle up and go cross country skiing. Needless to say, I lean more toward the hunkering down option. 

I crossed Christmas cards off the to-do list. How I accomplished this task was I decided not to do it. I read a book. I listened to a podcast about the history of Santa. I lost myself for an hour, scrolling through pictures from Christmases past. Most of the Christmases past are a blur. I wasn’t a person who lived in the present. I was planning and whirling and out of breath. Sometimes I hid in the bathroom. 

After, I would remember with an ache in my heart all the lovely moments I’d only been half paying attention to. 

The years whirred by, but something nice: the lovely moments added up. I have thousands of them now that I can revisit whenever I want to. But what I want is to make more lovely moments. And I want to be there, fully present, for each one. 

Yesterday it snowed again, and all of the plans we had for the weekend flew out the window. We took a walk during the height of the storm. There’s a small, newly planted tree at the end of our street by the Starbucks. Last summer a truck plowed through and tore up the sidewalk. There were weeks of construction, but somehow the new sidewalk got torn up again, and the whole thing had to be redone. When it was finally finished, someone planted the small tree. 

It looks like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, my husband said, when we clomped by it in the snow. We should decorate it. 

I laughed because I was thinking of the mysterious Yarn Bomber lady who lives in our neighborhood and sometimes, overnight, she will decorate a light pole with a colorful, knitted sleeve. 

What if there was a Christmas Bulb Bomber, I said.

What if it was us, my husband said. 

Why not? 

How you stay present is you stop thinking for a second and take the world in through your senses. Cold wet snow pelting your cheeks. Flakes on your tongue. The crunch of boots. The smell of coffee drifting out of the Starbucks drive thru window. 

Silver bulbs dangling on the branches of a tree. 

    

Shoveling Out

It snowed hard one night, and in the morning, I had to dig my car out. This was a heavy wet snow, a good five inches, and not expected (by me. I think other people expected it) so, first, I had to figure out where my winter boots were and where had I thrown my hat and gloves? I half slipped down the back steps in pursuit of the snow shovel, which was somewhere in the garage. 

We can’t park our cars in the garage. We have a single car driveway that takes a sharp turn, and parking back there would be a constant struggle (for me), but also, it’s where my husband has set up his woodworking shop. Anyway, there was a lot of snow to clear, car-wise and driveway-wise, and forty-five minutes flinging snow around was not how I had envisioned spending my morning.  

What I had imagined myself doing was writing. What I’m writing about is the past. In the past it is sunny and warm. I am five years old and living at a campground. I am not a person who romanticizes the past. But spending several days back as my five-year-old self, roaming around the campground where we lived for a summer, has been a nice break from reality. 

There’s a pond to splash in and woods to explore. A playground and camp store where you can buy fudgesicles for a quarter a piece. We live in a tent, but it’s a big tent. Enough space for all of our sleeping bags, plus my baby brother’s playpen. 

What’s I’m trying to do is unwind time, trace it all backwards to some perfect point before things went wrong. I call my aunt who lived with us at the campground to ask her what she remembers. My aunt is like me. She remembers everything. 

I used to think this was a gift, but now I’m starting to wonder if it’s a curse. My aunt tells me stories about who she bought the tent from and the time a skunk wandered into the campsite and how she liked to read her book in the afternoons while my baby brother napped and my mother took my other brother and me to the pond to swim. 

I have a clear memory of the two of us running down a hill with our towels flapping behind us. Another memory of sitting at the picnic table, coloring in our coloring books while it rained on the blue tarp that stretched over the campsite. I turned six that summer and celebrated my birthday under that tarp. Someone gave me a Barbie camper, and I drove it around and around the picnic table. I don’t know what any of this adds up to. 

I was happy at the campground, therefore, happiness is possible. Happiness is possible even though my family had been kicked out of our rental and had nowhere to live for the summer. Five-going-on-six-year-olds only know so much about the world. But in other ways, they know things adults have forgotten. This all made more sense in my head while I was shoveling the walks and scraping off my car. 

The driveway went clean, and not really thinking about it, I started shoveling out into the street. A foot on my shovel, a jab of the blade through crust, another clump added to the pile, layer upon layer of snow. 

Not entirely dug out. Maybe it will never be entirely dug out. But cleared enough to move past.