O took the news stoically at first and tried to inspire his sister’s smile by making goofy faces and performing antics with the pizza crust in his hand. His efforts were in vain. She retired to her room to weep and process. The sounds of her sobbing called into question the whole damn thing for me, the selfishness of two parents parting. But O remained tear-free for hours. He has seen and heard this coming for miles. He has witnessed our fighting. We have addressed the fact of our conflict and the possibility of our separation as a solution with him. He has had time to cry about this already.

In hindsight, I wish we had handled the parting differently. While there was no way to make it easy, we could have been more thoughtful. In the effort to explain his leaving, their father mentioned the word “months” which instantly sounded like an eternity hanging there in the space between us. “Months” in the life of a child is something akin to forever. I so wish we had said, Dad is leaving for the week and will be back Saturday, no more – no less. This is the truth. They probably don’t need to know much more beyond the week to week since we don’t know much more ourselves.

In hindsight, we should have made certain his departure was during school hours. We should not have made them witness to our grief. But My Better Half was anxious to get the show on the road. Living here with the knowledge he’d be leaving eventually was wrecking its own havoc. And it must have been torture – this imminent departure from the people he loves all in the effort to find a way back to them – permanently. I think he wanted to begin the process of settling into a new purgatory while waiting for things to magically heal, while hoping for some sort of divine intervention on our family’s behalf. No one ever imagines slipping so far down their own life that happiness is suddenly out of reach. How could it have gotten so beyond us? So beyond me?

And what’s the old saying? When it rains it pours -pours down waste pipe overflow from the second floor bathroom through the light sockets in the first floor office, soaking the rug, flooding the basement on the night two parents decide to part ways. It was almost biblical, the timing of this plumbing failure. O and G and I, stood watching the deluge. And O, as if inspired by the waterworks, finally gave in to tears. He let the crying take him where no nine year old should think to go, My life is terrible, I want to die, everything is awful…my house, my parents, my lack of friends. G piggybacked on this profound depression and began to agree that her social life at school was sub-par, that her life at home was unacceptably sad without her parents being together and happy and living in the same house with working plumbing and shared bedrooms. She rejected the possibility of two homes in close proximity, equal visitation, Daddy-days and Mommy-days, she rejected this quaintly presented notion outright. She could see immediately that nothing this complicated could turn out so easy and sunny and sweet.

And so the three of us fell asleep in my giant bed, trying to find some comfort in the proximity, alien and empty, listening to freezing rain lash at the windows, a sound quite like loneliness.

I was cynically sipping a little alcoholic grog and watching Comedy Central in my bathrobe, when it hit me…I AM the spirit of Christmas, at least in this household. So I put down the beverage (which really wasn’t a good idea at 11 a.m. anyway) and changed out of my pajamas, but did not remove my Ugg slippers (they do have rubber soles for outdoor use, ya know) and climbed into the SUV that was fairly humming with anticipation in the driveway, keen to its task of wheeling down the interstate to Target, AGAIN, in less than 24 hours since its last visit to the Big Box. (It’s possible that the hum I speak of is an indicator of something altogether more SINISTER ticking like a time bomb in the engine and has associations with the four or five dashboard lights that are now constantly illuminated warning me of airbag failures and low tire pressure and potential explosions, but I’ve decided to just ignore all that until I get this Christmas thing worked out.)

So me in my Ugg slippers and my ailing Honda Pilot made it back to Target to wander the aisles looking for the perfect display of Christmas cheer and, ultimately, I got me some of those white, dangling, light-up stars to hang from the porch that faces the street.

They were easy to assemble. They are big enough to be seen from the street through the tangle of woods in front of our house. And they really are lovely. All white and festive and pure. But now I can see how the Christmas light thing really snow balls. Every time I drive up to the house I think, “Oh, Cute Lights, but wouldn’t it be cuter if there was another four or five or fifteen strands of white Christmas stars hanging from the second story roof line and wound round the front columns and maybe at the back door too.” One measly strand of stars just doesn’t seem enough, feels kind of miserly and half-baked and now I’m afraid I’m going to have to spend the weekend wrapping the house in twinkly lights just to give those stars some company because my star strand, as seen from the street, while quietly beautiful, is kind of making me feel lonely and sad all over again.

No Ugg slippers this time…it’s work boots, and gloves and staple guns and extension cords. I’m in need of a light extravaganza, some riotous blaze of holiday magic. Here’s hoping they’re having a sale. Here’s hoping I don’t fall off a ladder and break a vertebrae in pursuit of more LED administered holiday cheer.

I’m also behind on almost everything else. There are outstanding bills left to pay, the bedrooms haven’t been dusted and vacuumed in over a week and the downstairs, while clean just last Sunday, is already sullied with the clutter of school papers and muddy rubber boots and pet hair and the grime of three meals a day at the bottom of the kitchen sink.

Our dear friends who moved to California last summer are back to town for a brief visit. They will come for dinner tomorrow. I have a meal to plan and prepare. This weekend we are off to Cape Cod and I’ve agreed to handle Saturday’s cook out, steak and Italian chopped salad and a birthday cake in celebration of our hostesses’ 35th birthday. And MBH and I will have been married eleven years on Friday and, of all our eleven years, this month just happens to have been our hardest yet, leaving us both unsure about whether to celebrate this one or just ignore it. And I’m in charge of planning third grade field day which falls on Friday of next week. And, did I mention that I drank way, way too much wine last night and have all this to tackle while trying to keep my head from wobbling off my fragile neck.

Forgive me the lame post. You know what I’ll be doing today. Wish me great efficiency. I know I’ll feel better when the fire-breathing to-do list has been slayed.

Having grown up in these parts, Patriot’s Day has always just one of those holidays that is part of a long weekend, a long weekend in which my parents always did copious amounts of yard work and rototill-ed the garden and planted spring peas. But My Better Half, never having heard of Patriot’s Day before moving to Massachusetts a few years ago, insists there must be something more than gardening to the regional affair, something that has to do with Miles Standish and Paul Revere and the Red Coats, or, at the very least, Tom Brady’s being beautiful. I just nod my head and say, “Sure, honey. You must be right,” and return to raking out the garden bed at the base of the front stoop. It’s not that I’m too lazy to google the origins of the holiday, it’s just that there are a zillion yard-related things to get accomplished before the lilacs pop and the leaves flush out on the trees. I assure him that I can properly celebrate the heroes of The Boston Tea Party and the Patriot’s Offensive Line while working the leaf blower.

And while this regionally observed holiday may strike outsiders as odd or, at least, undefined, I suspect that every area of this country has its own unique celebration noted and observed by its endemic people. It’s what makes us so diverse, these different celebratory occasions. For example, while Massachusetts has spring peas and the Boston Marathon in mid-April, Kentucky has the Derby in early May. And, because I embrace differences and appreciate a good holiday as much as the next person, I’m planning a dinner party to coincide with this year’s Run For The Roses.

And even though I am, through and through, a Yankee, I plan to mark the occasion with some good Southern cuisine. My friend and neighbor, a Louisville native who will be attending the event, has loaned me her Kentucky Heritage Recipe Book for menu planning purposes. As it turns out, within its dog eared pages is some sort of secret code to the workings of the South.

All people embrace a holiday with good old over-eating. Each regional celebration has a menu so purposeful and explicit that outsiders can’t possibly understand or fully appreciate the significance of the cuisine to the inherent importance of the event. I know this with certainty after pouring over the pages (mouth open, eyes wide, stunned and amazed), of every recipe in the Kentucky cook book; all of which contain some iteration of bourbon, cheese sauce, pecans, mayonnaise, coconut and lard. Apparently it is the unique combination of these six ingredients by which a dish earns its revered status as truly Southern fare.

And while I know that the British have Spotted Dick, which, as an adult I have come to realize has less to do with a sexually transmitted disease and everything to do with dried fruits and suet (which may be just as gross), I did not know that the South has Bishop’s Whipple which, surprisingly, is not a major surgical endeavor designed to circumnavigate a clergyman’s intestines but, rather, some sort of dessert with dates and pecans and, of course, bourbon flavored whip cream.

The Derby dessert course apparently must also include the requisite Bourbon Macaroon Mold with its layers and layers of coconut cookies doused in bourbon and served chilled with bourbon whip cream. And, just in case the guests are having trouble keeping their party on between the mint juleps and the sweets, there is the Beer Cheese spread which is made with two pounds of “rat” cheese and garlic “pods” and a forty of Pabst’s Blue Ribbon. While I think guests are encouraged to spread this Beer Cheese on crackers, the recipe leaves the exact purpose for the cheese open to interpretation. Perhaps Beer Cheese is used as sauce for the mysterious main course called Scrapple which is made by boiling an unidentified cut of pork down to a state of utter gelatinouity. The meat falls away from the bones, the fat is skimmed and cornmeal is added to the unidentified pork broth and allowed to thicken into a porridge like consistency and then is poured into a mold and allowed to congeal. Once solidified, the unidentified pork porridge is sliced and fried in lard and served hot to guests who are so freakin’ sideways with Bourbon and Beer Cheese that they fail to see this Scrapple as possibly the most disgusting culinary invention of all time.

And if the Scrapple fails to get their attention then the Scotch Eggs are sure to rock their inebriated worlds. I will let the recipe speak for itself, just as it is written on page 18 of The Kentucky Heritage Cookbook:

Boil desired number of eggs hard. Peel and cut into halves. Remove the yolks, mash and season lightly. Refill the whites and press halves together firmly. Cover tightly with country sausage meat. Roll in egg and crumbs and fry slowly in deep fat. Drain and place on rounds of toast and surround with cheese sauce. (I shit you not – deep fried sausage coated deviled eggs on toast with Beer Cheese sauce.)

And if, after all this culinary celebration, there are a few stout and hardy people still standing on two legs rather than squatting on piano benches and crawling to refill their high ball glasses, there will be a refreshing Reception Salad (involving cream cheese, pimentos, pineapple, jello, celery, pecans and, of course, bourbon whipped cream), that is sure to be the straw that broke the race horse’s drunken, lard-heavy back.

G sat close, absorbing the warmth of the popping fire. She crouched, rocking back on her rubber garden-boot heels and asked questions about the invention of fire and the purpose of stars and the reason for the strange colors she sees on the back of her eyelids even when her eyes are shut tight against the flames. She barely took a breath between queries, a stymieing slough of innocent wonderments for which I had no absolute answers. I just stood quietly off to the side feeding the hungry fire, one limb after another. I added a large severed branch from the old beech tree that lines the drive. The gnarled tree-arm was still holding on to all its paper thin leaves. Like delicate black butterflies, they quickly darkened and broke free of the fire. Floating on warm drafts of rising air, they spiraled and danced, filling the sky with their funereal confetti, the burn of one dead tree rising like hope and then falling about our shoulders like the end of something beautiful.

After a satisfying trip to the gym this Saturday morning, I finally created that room of my own, the one that Virginia Woolf has declared a necessity for all female writers. She also mentioned that cash money is a must have for wanna-be writers. One out of two ain’t bad. So I’ve carved out the sacred space where my muse and I can reside; far, far away from the dining room that has long been my makeshift office. It’s not perfect. In fact, it’s almost laughable with its pink moldings and fuschia chaise lounge we’ve been meaning to recover since our move back in ‘06. But it was previously sort of vacant and wanting, playing host to only the cat box and a carton of old tax returns, just asking for something of importance to take place within its four walls.

The armoire that takes up the majority of the room is a lovely antique piece we inherited from my Mother-in-law but one of it’s mirrored doors has fallen off it’s hinges and is now leaning there like wreckage. The desk I’m using is a folding metal table meant for setting up bar at a holiday party. The whole thing wiggles and shakes every time I pound the keys, making the computer screen jump and shimmy, creating a lasting sense of vertigo. I’m dizzy after only ten minutes of writing. I guess the chaise will come in handy. I can lay down occasionally in order to recover my sense of equilibrium.

The only desk chair available is the old red kitchen clunker we used to use before we had counter stools. The cats have ruined the caning and the vibrant fire-engine red stain is all wrong but it’s solid and low enough to slide beneath the vibrating Fold N’ Table. So it’ll do for now.

(The list of desirables increases day by day by day. It now includes a proper desk and chair added to the original list comprised of a new bathroom on the second floor, a new coffee table after O’s Wii accident, and new dining room chair upholstery after my cousin’s three year old released her bladder all over the camel sueded seat.)

I have rescued my favorite lamp from the attic where it has patiently waited for me to reclaim it. It’s opaque fragile whiteness, it’s grasscloth shade, outclass everything else in the room. My Better Half has warned me that this burst of light, floating on the temporary bar table, is an accident waiting to happen. He predicts that it will topple into a thousand shards of milky glass. I am ignoring him because I just need something beautiful and entirely mine in the space I’m trying to claim for myself.

So here’s to new beginnings and a room of my own – cats and kids forbidden, husbands only when invited. May the real writing begin.

(P.S.Update: As soon as I downloaded Starlight and went to sync my MP3 player, the whole thing imploded and is now blank and unresponsive. I threw a little tantrum and whined to My Better Half enough to inspire his having a look. He has declared the thing DOA. This is the second MP3 player that’s given up the ghost on me. My Nano seized up after a run through the washing machine. I’m having some really bad luck with the fragile personal tunage. I may never go to the gym again. I just can’t endure a workout without the steady beat. Once you’ve had it, there’s no going back. Crap, another thing on the list of desirables. When does it end?)

Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, Feliz Navidad and all that good stuff. Picture me here, in my living room, basking in the glow of the tree and sipping a little souped up nog. Hold that picture for a few days. It’s a good one. One I wish were close to the truth of what’s really going on here. The snow is lovely. That’s a start. But, when admiring that photo of the winter wonderland outside our living room windows, you must also imagine the fresh hell of ice dams on the roof, causing all melt water to pool and course into the window frames, collect in the sills and pour over onto the hard wood floors. You must imagine me discovering this interesting and disastrous winter effect only minutes before my son’s class party is to take place and the in-laws are to arrive by plane from Florida.

Gasp. Make that a thermos of souped up nog!

Yesterday, 7:30 a.m., I received a call from my son’s teacher – Mr.S. There are few people I care to talk to at such an early hour. He is an exception, an affable, boyish, disorganized exception. He was calling to say that the party I had planned for the class will have to be rescheduled due to his forgetfulness. It appears the children have a school sponsored sing-a-along, the timing of which completely conflicts with our holiday fete. Usually such a snafu would have me cursing the ineptitude of the teacher at fault but this is Mr. S, so I calmly said, “It’s not a big deal that I now I have to call 25 parents and beg their forgiveness for changing the party time just two days in advance. Actually, it’ll give me a chance to connect with other Mom’s and Dad’s. It’s a blessing, a total blessing.”

With my forgiveness apparent, I could sense his relief. He explained that he has been tired and less than productive lately. He has had trouble keeping appointments and remembering scheduled events. A few months ago, he and his wife purchased their first home. And have spent every minute of their free time and every spare penny renovating the top floor as an apartment. They need to take on a tenant who will pay rent and help them pay their mortgage. The renovations have been costly and excruciatingly slow as they have only weekends to devote to laying new floors and replacing windows. He and his wife are exhausted and broke and losing faith in their ability to get the project done before the holidays. His despair, when he mentioned that he had little to give his most deserving wife this holiday season, was palpable and true.

He explained, rather sheepishly, that his plans for a X-mas gift for her are, in fact, a little home spun. He floated his idea out there as if hoping I wouldn’t laugh or scoff or otherwise deem it foolish and pathetic. Instead, hearing the earnestness in his voice, I wanted to sing out – “Oh, young love, Oh, the Spirit of Christmas. I am restored.”

Without a penny in his pocket, he will develop and draft a blue print for an artist’s studio. He will build this little space entirely devoted to his wife’s artistic gifts in the basement of their new home. He will deliver the scrolled plans, all bows and promises, with an IOU to begin work on it as soon as their tenant is installed in the upstairs apartment. I said, “This, Mr. S, is an excellent plan.” It’s so Gift of the Magi, so perfect with the spirit of Christmas. And like the character in the O’Henry story, his name is Jim. And his wife is Julie which isn’t exactly Della but has the same number of letters. I am so happy for this Julie who has a husband who gets it. And, simultaneously, I could die, pining away with wishing for someone to make ME a writer’s studio in the empty upstairs bedroom that has been home to only the cat litter-box for two years.

I can only hope that his wife has not sold her paint brushes on Ebay in order to purchase him a new belt sander of nail gun. Because, let it be said, “…that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.” (O’ Henry)

All the grim excitement was obscured by the hemlock trees, the dense hedge between our yard and the Harrison’s. So thorough and opaque a barrier that I have, in two years, exchanged ten words, maybe twenty with the people next door.

I dash to the second floor to get a better look. A woman, maybe Mrs. Harrison, but I’ve only met her once so couldn’t say for sure, slightly gray, wearing a wool pea coat and holding her purse across her chest, walks carefully up the icy walk and disappears into the house. The ambulance moves off slowly, no sirens, lights extinguished. And it looks convincingly like the final moments of someone else’s tragedy.

Later a light goes on in the room above the garage. A single lamp, perhaps to read a book by while she eats her dinner in her lap and tries to forget the heart attack that has taken her husband just four days before their daughter is due home from Middlebury for Winter Break; just eight days before Christmas, on an afternoon that is sunny but bitingly cold. After dinner, she will try for rest in the bed that was theirs. And in her fitful sleep her feet will seek the warmth where he had lain and find it cold.

She will invite the golden retriever to join her in the bed. The dog will be confused, having been relegated to the oval carpet by the foot of the stairs for nine whole years. She will stroke the dog’s fur and find it soothing.

She had named the dog her ‘pet-peeve’. She had laughed and told friends about his shedding and his propensity to lift his leg on the living room couch. She had never considered herself much of a dog person, a pet person, really. She once would have been entirely content to be canine-free. But she can see the future, a dog in her bed, a dog for whom she must remember to wake and administer pills for arthritis and eczema. The orange-yellow pill bottles lined up in the medicine cabinet, each one labeled Peeve Harrison, two tablets daily, to be given with food.

It’s deciding to make holiday cookies with the kids. Beginning the project with visions of iced snowflakes, all delicate home spun decoration, and Santa’s with bright red frosting, the fur lined coat made of carefully piped frosting, his boots black with tinted sugar and, instead, having your children insist on making only gingerbread men so they can remove their heads and create homunculous-people, cookie freaks with eyes where their necks should be. It’s pulling out the camera to photograph the whole floury, freakish cookie mess to find that the digital jobbie reads ‘ERROR’. You remove the battery. You turn it on and off. You knock it firmly on the counter and still, it reads ‘ERROR’. You realize all of X-mas will go undocumented because nowhere in the 1200 page manual does it reference the ‘ERROR’ problem. Not in Japanese or German or Spanish or Dutch.

It’s hosting a tree trimming party, setting it up to look just as it does in the magazine spread, pineapple glazed ham and garlic bread crumb macaroni and cheese, a roaring fire and a lifetime’s accumulation of ornaments waiting to festoon the tree. And finding that real, non-magazine spread children are actually suspicious of garlic and sharp cheddar. Real non-magazine spread children whine for hot dogs and don’t give a damn about the provenance of each tiny ornament as they tear into the box spraying tree trimming materials across the living room. Ornaments shatter, cast aside for the dog to consume. No child wears a bow tie or knickers, instead there are faded jeans and torn sweat shirts. There are uncombed hairs and unbrushed teeth and some eight year old’s condemnation of Ella Fitzgerald’s version of Winter Wonderland. “Who’s singing this garbage? It sucks,” he says. He is your son, apparently deaf, who dares to insult Ella on X-mas.

It is four dozen mint chocolate cookie bars baked, frosted and chilled, forty copies of the recipe painstakingly made into paper stars for the cookie swap party that is, hours later, canceled. A snowy winter’s night. Impassable roads. A day’s labor all packaged up and nowhere to go but into the freezer.

It’s buying a garland of white spruce and weaving it round the banister. Adding twinkling lights and a gold leaf swag. Admiring the fresh greens for only a day before the needles start dropping, inciting thoughts of flammability – the whole house torched for the love of one god damned festive banister. It is removing the holiday fire hazard some ten days before X-mas and clogging the vacuum hose with pine needles. It is hauling the Electrolux Diplomat all the way across state borders to have white spruce needles removed from its internal organs.

It is renting the modern Peter Billingsley classic, A Christmas Story, with the glee of finally being able to share the Red Rider bee-bee gun and the belching furnace and the little brother dressed up tight as a tick in his snow clothes with your own children, only to find your youngest unmoved by the comic brilliance. She says over and over again, “When is it going to get funny, Mom? You promised it would be funny.” And your oldest child asks pointed and uncomfortably mature questions about the narration, “What does he mean when he says ‘like sex illuminated in the window, Mom’?” “Oh nothing, honey,” you’ll say and find him googling ’sex’ later on because you wouldn’t answer his simple question.

It’s ‘Dreaming of a White Christmas’ right along with Elvis and Bing and Frank and Billie Holiday before you realize that a white Christmas translates into two snow days with the kids home from school, house bound due to frigid temperatures; several horrible icy wipe outs while carrying boxes addressed to family that live in Florida and Georgia (they have no idea); one bruised and swollen elbow having been pinched gruesomely between the heavy sliding doors of your ancient garage while trying to find the snow shovel; and a driveway that could be used for speed skating drills but, instead is the harrowing, slick trail of death you must brave each day on the way to school, to the gym, or to the mail box.

It is expecting that people show some self restraint and leave the boxes that UPS and FedEX insist on leaving at the top of your driveway-of-death well enough alone, but instead find that someone grinchy has actually begun stealing them. It is eight days before Christmas and panicked re-orders and phone calls are made to complain to package delivery services about theft and liability and the tears your children will weep on Christmas when their gifts from Santa never arrive.

And finally, it is taking the kids to the library and checking out Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol to be read in front of the fire at night, only to find that the late 19th century masterpiece is too dense, too inaccessible. The kids are confused by intricacies of past, present and future. They give up and have fallen fast asleep on the couch by the time you utter the famous phrase, “What’s Christmastime to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books, and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!’” And just a little bit of you agrees.