Angel Face

My kid sister loved the shit out of Christmas. You think you know people who love the holidays and get all nutty excited? Well you don't. They are probably half asleep and drooling compared to my sister and I miss her this time of year more than any other.

Because of having Down syndrome my sister never matured intellectually beyond the age of 3 or 4. So it was like living with a very little kid for 15 years. Most children grow up and stop believing in Santa Claus. They become sullen, sour and insolent teenagers and then move on to become bitter, jaded, cynical adults (or was that just me?) about everything but especially so around the holidays. But my sister didn't. She stayed a little kid on the inside and she believed in all of it.

*As a side note, in very tiny font that I'm putting at the top of this post rather than the bottom, before I dig into my sappy sister holiday post I would just like to say that although I have written posts about my little sister before I always skirted around terminology and today I really struggled up there trying to find the right words to use. My family and everyone we knew in the special needs community used to just say "mentally retarded", but I've been out of it for awhile and now am given to understand that it's not always considered politically correct, although I used to belong to an organization called ARC which stands for "Aid Retarded Citizens" - it's still called that - so I'm confused now. Anyhoo... I would just like to let anyone reading this know how much I despise the word "retard". It's never funny to me. I Hate it with a capital HATE. Even when you change the emphasis like in the movie The Hangover (which I enjoyed very much by the way ) and say "re-tard" it still sets my teeth on edge. I think that anyone that uses the term "retard" should be forced to spend the afternoon volunteering at a group home for mentally challenged adults (which you can do through an organization like ARC) with varying degrees of special needs. Get to know some of these fearless, joy-filled and loving people and use the word "retard" after that. I dare you. Frankly I think the world would be a better place altogether if everyone spent some time with people who are mentally challenged or have special needs - we all have a lot to learn from each other. Using the word "retard", no matter what the context, degrades people who are mentally retarded or whatever term you care to use. Thanks for listening. Carry on...

My sister believed in Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and pixie dust, the Easter Bunny, Batman, Superman, Isis and Wonderwoman. She believed in Mork from Ork, Scooby Doo and the Fonz. But she lived year round talking about and anticipating Christmas and Santa Claus. She believed that a bunch of reindeer flew all the way to our house and landed on our roof without ever pooping (when you grow up around animals you think about these things and you never hear about anyone getting pelted with dung falling from the sky and our dad never had to hose off the roof on Christmas morning) and that a jolly fat man in a red suit let himself in with a key left under the mat on the front porch (we didn't' have a fireplace until later). She believed it all. And not just in a quiet wishful way, but in a jumping up and down, shouting out loud to anyone who would listen kind of way.

It wasn't the kind of enthusiasm you see every day is what I'm saying.

Right before Thanksgiving one year there was a guy wearing a Santa suit and ringing a bell in front of a bucket outside of the K-Mart in our town, he wasn't even wearing a beard or anything, not even trying to look like Santa (other than the suit I guess) and my sister ran towards him, arms open and squealing with delight, looking almost like those teenage girls you see in old news footage grabbing their faces and screaming like lunatics over the Beatles. It was a little embarrassing but once we peeled her off of him he said it was the best thing that had happened to him all week and I don't think he meant it in a perverted way at all because the man had tears in his eyes and seemed pretty overwhelmed.

Nobody in my family ever made any effort to tamp down her excitement either. No, quite the contrary, we would build it all up. My mom let my sister mark off the calendar every day, counting down till Christmas starting on my birthday in July, so that by the time her birthday arrived on December 20th, she was nearly apoplectic and bursting into flames from all the hype. Not to say that it also wasn't an ongoing lesson to help her learn about counting and dates and seasons and such, but a mostly the lessons ended with, "and that means it's only this many days till Christmas!"

You might be able to tell by looking at the picture at the top of this post that my mom also let my sister be in charge of most of the tree trimming. That's our old mashed up fake tree that I mentioned in my previous post and I love how all of the ornaments are right in the middle. I would also like to point out the vomit-y blue and green shag carpeting that my mother actually had installed - on purpose - when we moved into that house.

We would get her so worked up that by the time Christmas Eve finally rolled around my sister was bloody freaking exhausted and getting her to go to sleep was never the problem you might have thought it would be.

After we went to bed my dad would eat all of the cookies she'd left out for Santa except for one that he would leave behind with just one bite taken out. My mom would make sure that some of her toys were left unwrapped and set up to look as if someone had been playing with them already, like a dollhouse all set up or one time a new record player was left turned on with a record spinning on it all night (needle off of course), so that it looked like Santa had just left before he got caught in the act of playing with her stuff.

Maybe lots of families do these kinds of things. I hope you'll feel free to tell me about some of the goofy stuff your family did or does in the comments. My parents used to do it for me too when I was little enough to still believe, but they got to continue to do it for a very long time afterwards and I think that must be pretty special. Eventually I got involved in it too. I was all quiet and cool at school (I believe I mentioned something earlier about sullen and sour), but at home I would do anything to get my sister started. Not that it took much more than asking her how many days till Santa comes? or singing carols at the top of my lungs to get her to start squealing.

Have I ever mentioned that we were not Christians? I'm not sure how relevant that is to my story here, but we weren't anything. Maybe you could say agnostic, but my mom never wanted to put a label on it. We ended up celebrating Christmas in a non-Christ kind of way. We never talked about Jesus, but we had a tree and presents appeared under it on Christmas morning. She put up mistletoe, served eggnog and baked cookies.

I think my mom really liked Christmas and after she left her church continued to celebrate it in ways that incorporated her own favorite things about the holiday without having to think about or explain the religious portion of it to me and maybe also to herself, since she stopped putting out the gorgeous hand painted porcelain nativity set that she had inherited from her grandmother when I got old enough to start trying to apply logic to the story and began asking the tough questions about Christmas. If Joseph isn't Jesus real daddy then was Mary married to someone else before Joseph and got a divorce like the Shapiros?

All of our holiday fervor was fueled by our love for my sister and for me it still is. I love Christmas. There I said it. Even though she's gone now and Christmas will never be the same without her, and surly as I've become, I've managed to hang onto a bit of that joy that was always in the air around her and hope that you and the people you love, whether you believe in Jesus, Santa or Mork from Ork, can feel it too.

Merry Christmas.

If you're interested, here are links to some of my other posts featuring my little sister (they aren't quite as sappy as this one):

Cat-like Gag Reflexes

I'm Sure Your Family Is Weird Too

Deep Thoughts

Scare Tactics for Teens

Nostalgia Saturday

I was an Electric Company kid. I loved and watched Sesame Street too, but when I look back on it I think I probably watched the Electric Company throughout a much longer period of my childhood and I even remember watching it in school during inside recess.

Anyhoo... the other night I watched a little one hour documentary that I recorded on PBS. It was called The Electric Company's Greatest Hits and while watching this show I laughed and cried and sang along to all the old songs that I hadn't thought of for so long, but are so embedded in my brain there is no way I could ever have forgotten them.

I'm pasting a few of them here just in case any of you were Electric Company kids like I was and I hope you enjoy them as much as I always have.

tion


Tom Lehrer's LY Song



Tom Lehrer's Silent E Song

The Bickerson's Get a Tree

We were all set this past Saturday and had planned for weeks to drive to a place about a half an hour from our house and cut our own tree. As we were getting ready to leave, hacksaw in hand, I looked around our living room, and remembered the last tree we had in 2004 and I got really sad and changed my mind.

I was sad because my old Ollie cat died (above are two pictures from our last Christmas with him - he loved me and hated that damn train), sad because there won't be any presents to put under a tree this year, sad because Aunt Jessie died, sad because the train set is broken, sad because there is a treadmill in the middle of the living room now and putting up a tree would be a terrible pain in the ass. Just sad.

And then today when I was writing this post, not even really planning to publish it, just feeling sorry for myself, I had a change of heart, and made my grumpy old husband get his ass off the sofa, put on a hat and take me to get a tree.

I felt kind of bad at first, because he is the frequent victim of my precarious mood swings, but then I was simply annoyed.

He groaned when pine needles got all over his car. He complained when we brought the tree into the living room and huffed and puffed as I was still deciding where I wanted it to go. He snarled when pine tar got all over his hands. We turned into the Bickersons again.

Him: This is such a pain in the ass. Why are we doing this? Saturday you said you thought it was a pain in the ass too. Why are you doing this to me?

Me: Are you quite through?

Him: I just don't see why I have to do this stuff when this whole thing is your idea...

Me: Can you just shut up and do what I tell you to do?

Him: We're not even Christians. (It's true, we're not, but I love Christmas.)

Me: I don't care.

I made dinner (roast chicken and mashed potatoes), had a glass of wine and we watched the news before I went to the basement to fetch the box of ornaments and lights. Turtle made himself comfortable in the tissue paper as I decorated.

When I was finished decorating the tree I made MDH come and check my work, expecting a grunt and more grumpy attitude but he totally suprised me when he sniffled, misty-eyed and said:

Him: You're just determined to make me love Christmas aren't you?

Me: I thought I told you to shut up.

He loved it and so do I.

Then I made him take all the empty boxes back downstairs and vacuum up the pine needles.

That's our tree in it's new spot next to the fireplace with a little reminder of old Ollie on the mantle.

Deep Thoughts

Today's post requires you to know 4 very personal facts about me.

1. I am adopted. My mother, who I bitch about in many posts, although I love her awful, is not my biological mother. My father is my biological father, but the woman I refer to as my mom legally adopted me when she married my father. Dad and I were a package deal. I was 2 when they married and went on their honeymoon with them. That previous sentence is not a fact you need to know for this story, it's merely a cute tidbit of Lady trivia...

2. My sister, the daughter my father and adopted mother had together when I was 3, was born with Down's Syndrome. She lived to the age of 15 (due to the many heart problems that can be part of the "syndrome") but until her death remained intellectually somewhere between 3 and 4. My parents had genetic testing done after she was born and were told that they would never have a "normal" child together. So my sister and me were it for them, kid-wise.

3. Today it's nearly unheard of, but in the 70's it was not uncommon for children with "defects" such as Down's Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, or Autism to be institutionalized. There was much turmoil among our extended family because my parents chose to keep their child at home and raise her themselves with as much outside help as was available at the time. My sister was never hidden away or a source of shame as some in our family believed she should be.

4. My sister was the joy of all of our lives and made every day worthwhile. Eventually even the malcontents in the family were won over by her brand of crazy loving charms and all of people who had argued for her to be sent away ended up apologizing to my parents sooner or later.

And now on to our story...

My parents had only slightly different expectations for each of us. I was expected to be smart, pretty, and nice, in exactly that order. My sister was expected to be able to memorize her phone number and address, and be pretty and nice. My mother's biggest fear for my sister was that her public behaviour would be ugly and nobody would want to be around her or us as a family. As a result, my sister had impeccable table manners. (I on the other hand was constantly falling short of expectations and was once banned from the dinner table for burping "Please pass the salt, daddy.")

My mother's expectations for my sister drastically changed the day she found out about a man named Leslie Lemke. Leslie Lemke had autism and CP, was blind and brain damaged, but was discovered one night by his adoptive mother playing Tchaikovsky's Concerto no. 1 on the piano after having heard it on TV earlier that day. Turns out the kid was a savant and had been harboring secret talents all those years. He had perfect pitch and could play any song after hearing it once. Cloris Leachman played his mom in the movie of the week.

Secretly my mother started to look for signs of the savant in my sister. She never said a word about it to anyone else. She told me years later that at the time she would have these vivid dreams in which my sister would talk to her in full sentences and they would have long beautiful conversations. She dreamed my sister could read music, play the guitar and sing. In each of these dreams my mother was able to pull some magic trigger or lift a curtain to reveal these hidden talents and release my sister to the world. She could never remember when she woke up what it was that she had done to free my sister.

These dreams must have been very frustrating for my mom. She was fiercely proud of my sister and would not allow other people to feel sorry for her or help her with tasks in which she appeared to be struggling like zipping up her jacket or tying her shoes. "Don't help her, she's knows how to do this", she would say. We would stand and wait as long as it took for my sister to accomplish these things on her own. She didn't want the help anyway, she'd say "I not a baby. I do it."

One summer evening my family was all together on our back patio while my dad was grilling dinner. My mom and my sister were sitting together on one of those cheap fold-up chaise lounges. Mom was laying down and my sister was leaning against her with her head resting on mom's chest. I was about 13 and my sister was about 10. Mom and I were talking, I don't remember what about when my sister piped in (I think she was feeling left out) and said, clear as a bell;

"Mommy I think in my head."

My dad turned around from his grilling and we all stared at her.

My mom took a long time to answer and finally said, "Well, what do you think about my love?"

Regardless of expectations I think we had all at some point wondered what she thought about and I for one, could hardly wait for the answer.

To my delight and my mothers disappointment she matter of factly said;

"Monkeys and birds."

At the time I thought this was a fantastic answer but had no idea that my mother seriously believed this was the moment when my sister's genius was sure to reveal itself. In my mind that was genius and it still is. Today my mom sees this incident in a more positive light. At the time she was very upset as she realized that my sister didn't possess any savant-ness.

Now in our family we refer to day dreaming or general mental drifting, affectionately as Monkeys and Birds.

Up top is a picture of my sister and me wearing matching double pony tails and outfits, hand sewn by our mother. We both have crooked bangs. I'm wearing my Clint Eastwood squint as per usual. If I could I would go back in time and explain to this child why she must demand sunglasses and maybe even show her a picture of her 40 year old self getting botox.

AKA OSU Beats Northwestern 27-16

Five years ago this very day, in the park down the street from our house, I wore an itchy white dress, 10 pounds of makeup and hairspray, stood in front of a rather large group of friends and family and held my darling MDH's hand while we recited lesbian inspired wedding vows (no mention of Jesus but lots of equal partnership kind of stuff) to each other with the aid of a Unitarian minister.

Yes. Today is my wedding anniversary.

Highlights of the day include:

• OSU Fans (which certainly don't include the Bride) RSVP'ing at the last minute until they know what time the game will be.
  
  


• When original hired musician backs out at last minute (like a fuckin' weasel), Groom's friend Jimmy and his big blond pompadour offer to play Hawaiian Wedding Song on ukulele.
  
  


• Hawaiian Wedding Song turns out a beautiful and unique choice, tearfully appreciated by Bride and Groom.
  
  


• Jimmy and his ukulele make Bride's uncle Paul laugh so loud it overpowers the music on the wedding video.
  



• Idiot cousin allows her 4 year old to run around like an animal and dig his filthy fingers into wedding cake.
  



• Bride's newly fused ankle swells to blimp-like proportions. Bride says "fuck it" and changes into white Nikes, photo op incites crowd.
  
  


• Father of bride get so choked up he forgets his beautiful speech and lovingly blubbers incoherently for 5 minutes.
  
  


• Father of Bride and Bride jitterbug together all afternoon.
  



• Idiot cousin who RSVP'd for 7 doesn't show up, leaves entire table empty.
  



• Professional pastry chefs and good friend couple mysteriously absent from festivities. Bride and Groom later discover wedding cake baker wife had severe allergic reaction to the lemon leaves used to mold cake decorations. Chef friends spend entire day in OSU ER.
  
  


• Idiot cousin's 4 year old unfortunately not allergic to lemon leaves.
  



• Groom gets hammered and invites 30 people to the newlywed's home after the wedding for "par-tay!!" on the wedding night.
  
  


• Bride becomes livid as couple set to leave for honeymoon the next day and has no food or libation.
  
  


• Bride orders 5 Sicilian style pizzas and 2 cases of beer from carry out down the street.
  
  


• Bride becomes pissy when par-tay guest asks why she is serving on good china and not paper plates. Replies snippily "Because I wasn't expecting to entertain guests on my wedding night".
  
  


• Bride becomes pissy when Grooms frat buddy makes fun of her for writing "Wedding Day" on kitchen calendar. She protests, "Go fuck yourself, I was excited!"
  
  


• Bride ends up having a great time in spite of herself, forgives Groom and all others. Remembers day as being one of the happiest in her life.

Sad Songs & Waltzes

Somehow my iTunes got all buggered and I hadn't noticed but there was a lot of music that was available on my iPod but not in my iTunes music library. It was fairly easy to fix. I had to move some files and then reassociate those songs with the file location.

In the process though I ended up listening to snippets of quite a lot of my music. I tend to focus intently on this kind of activity and lose track of time and things that are going around me. I forget to eat (hence my handle and why I don't own a game system) and go to the bathroom etc..

When I woke up from this task a few hours had gone by and my nose was all sniffly and I noticed a pile of wet kleenex next to the keyboard. I had been crying off and on throughout the entire thing. Weird. But not because I was particually sad or anything like that but because of the music. I scrolled back through the list of songs that I had been dicking around with and listening to and it made sense.

Here in sort of alphabetical order by artist (according to the file names not the iTunes names) is a list of songs that make me cry like a baby girl baby even if I just hear a snippet:

• Until You Come Back To Me - Aretha Franklin


• Prettiest Eyes - Beautiful South


• Must I Paint You A Picture - Billy Bragg


• Hesitating Beauty - Billy Bragg & Wilco


• Sad Songs & Waltzes - Cake


• Heaven - Cigar Store Indians


• Mint Car - The Cure


• American Dreaming - Dead Can Dance


• Our Love Is Here To Stay - Dinah Washington


• Squeeze Me - Dinah Washington


• Man Out Of Time - Elvis Costello & The Attractions


• Tampa - Gipsy Kings


• Polkadots & Moonbeans - Hot Club of Cowtown


• Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans - Miss Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers


• Horizon - Let's Active


• Wildwood - Paul Weller


• The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - The Pogues


• You're My Best Friend - Queen


• I was going to say Grey Gardens, but the entire fucking Poses album makes me cry - Rufus Wainwright


• Overjoyed - Stevie Wonder


• In Love For The First Time - The Style Council


• You're The Best Thing - The Style Council


• World Before Columbus - Suzanne Vega


• Earn Enough For Us - XTC

I'm sure there are plenty more, these are just the ones I just happen to listen to today.

Oh yeah, enjoy the picture at the top of the pretty floating lady. She makes me cry too if I look at her long enough.

Fluffy Bunnies & Big Toothless Grins

Since my last few posts were about violations of my person and personal space such as mouse invasions, back-yard trespassing joggers, and accidental spit drinking, I thought I should take a break from my recent outbreak of rage. Although, I have to say, I've enjoyed sharing all my drama on this blog tremendously.

You may not have been able to tell it from my posts, but I have a really great life and am generally an upbeat kind of person. I whine a lot about not having a job, but have you noticed that I haven't mentioned anything about taking a job bagging groceries at the market down the street or flipping burgers? We are financially stable on one income and that's nothing to bitch about. That'll be #1 on my list of things I'm thankful for and happy about. Here are the rest in no particular order:

2. The opening of Fresh Market in Grand Rapids - at last! One stop shopping for duck confit and chocolate croissant.

3. Indian Summer - it seems like the leaves are taking their sweet time to change color and drop, which keeps me shielded that much longer from our neighbors out back. We're talking picture windows and a chain link fence. Each autumn our leafy subterfuge falls away with all of our privacy. If you click on the photo to the left you will more clearly see the picture window in my dining room and the vegetation that prevents us from having to speak to our neighbors all summer. You're probably thinking - buy some curtains Lady! Well, I will when they do. Until then we will just have to take a chance on seeing each other in our underwear while we're brewing coffee at 6am.

4. Good Friends - (as opposed to bad ones?) I've got some and have finally met some new ones here in Michigan since I quit working. I have time for them now that I'm not taking off all over North America every week. I didn't know how badly I needed them. You guys know who you are too. I also want to give a shout out to my old friends who have never abandoned me so far away. I love you all so much.

5. Loving Partner - I'm already getting mushy here, but I've never felt more loved and appreciated by any other human being, including my parents. Not only am I loved and appreciated, but I can give it all right back to him. He makes me laugh too -

6. Treadmills - this amazing device allows me to move my body at controlled speeds and inclinations for a length of time of my own choosing in the privacy of my own home. Insert joke about loving partner here.

7. iPod - makes the treadmill more tolerable and if the right music is playing enables me to stay on the treadmill for periods of time extended beyond my normal 45 minutes. This makes me feel like a rock star. An aging, pot-bellied rock star in ripped and paint splattered sweat pants, but rockin' none the less.

8. Ankle Fusion - this life changing (although sometimes controversial)surgery has made all the walking on treadmills and anywhere else, like across a room, possible . Living a pain free life is nothing short of miraculous.

9. Other peoples children - I don't want to be a mom and never really have. I've reached 40 without having children because it hasn't ever occurred to me to do so. But that doesn't mean I don't love kids. I'm the auntie of all time. That's Sammi, rumored to have been conceived at my wedding by my friends B & C.

10. A tie between DVR on my TV and being well dressed (ripped sweatpants don't count because I never wear them outside of this house) - I leave you here so that I may watch last nights episode of What Not To Wear.

I am considering re-titling the post below:

A Very Long Post About How I Accidentally Drank Spit & New Work Rules

What do you think?

UPDATE 9/23/07 12:28PM - My husband has asked me to amend my previous statement that we are financially stable on one income. Apparently all this time I have been deluded and we are one Target trip away from living in a van down by the river. Goodie! More things to bitch about.