THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601160088
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: In Passing
SOURCE: Joan Stanus
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
This year, I didn't wait for New Year's to make a few resolutions.
I made a promise to myself early last fall that I wasn't going to get stressed out during the holiday season.
And I didn't.
Even though I hadn't done a lick of shopping by mid-December.
Even though I had several large writing and research projects due that month.
Even though my ``perfect'' sister-in-law and her family came for a five-day visit over Christmas, their first in more than four years and just a few days before our new living room furniture was scheduled to arrive.
Even though my new plaid, custom-made draperies didn't match and were still being repaired by the seamstress the week before Christmas.
Even though the new living room sofa we ordered had a serious flaw in it.
Even though the Christmas tree my husband and children lovingly selected had two trunks, scraped our ceiling and was seriously bald.
Even though the door of my oven refused to seal shut, creating havoc with any baked goods I attempted to make.
And even though both my children, my husband and I got sick with weeklong bouts of the flu.
I even stayed calm when I lost my voice two days before Christmas. Frustrated with my attempts to croak out ``O Little Town of Bethlehem'' after a frigid family outing to see Regent University's living Nativity, my kids finally asked me to just shut up. Although wounded a bit, I took it all in stride.
But what finally sent me over the edge, nearly wrecking the glow of Christmas that glimmered among the chaos, happened late Christmas Eve.
With the children all nestled and tucked in their beds (the 4-year-old passed out from coughing all day and the 6-year-old finally ran out of cookie fuel), Mom and Dad had settled in for a few Santa chores with Nanny and Aunt Jan helping. Drinking eggnog, we merrily pulled out the toy robot, a cargo-carrying airplane, a Pocahontas doll, pirate castle and all the other toys we had accumulated in the days before Christmas and started unpacking, assembling and testing batteries.
The first glitch came when trying out the matching Walkman radios. One worked fine, the other was broken.
``Who's getting the broken one?'' my husband ventured.
With kids who fought over M&M pieces, this was dangerous territory.
Then we tried writing a Yuletide message on the dry erasure board attached to the front of a new puppet theater Dad had made the week before. Washable markers, we discovered very quickly, were a no-go.
We tried to get Baby Tumbles to tumble. She wouldn't. We spent hours ... I mean hours ... setting up the ``Goofy Golf'' game my 4-year-old son had his heart set on, knowing full well it would be squashed in about two seconds on Christmas morning. It was a nightmare.
Aunt Jan and Dad put their heads together on that one. The Christmas spirit was fading fast as I listened to them bark at one another in frustration over the countless tiny pieces, incomprehensible directions and flimsy construction.
But the near breaking point arrived when we opened a box to assemble a giant cargo plane for our motor-crazy pre-schooler. Instead of the necessary eight pieces, there were only three. For the first time, I noticed the side of the box had been crushed.
I began to freak.
``Oh, no. It was one he really wanted. If he doesn't have this one, it will ruin his Christmas. AHHH!''
My husband, still reeling from Goofy Golf, looked at me as though he wished I would lose the little voice I had remaining. I was definitely getting out of control.
Never mind that it was near midnight on Christmas Eve, I called Toys R Us.
``Surely, they'll still be open,'' I told my skeptical husband.
They weren't.
On the one radio that did work, the Christmas classic ``Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer'' suddenly began to play.
I had a flash of an idea.
``Let's put a note on the box that says the reindeer ran over the plane, and to get Mom and Dad to check with the elves later this week about getting a new one,'' I groped. ``At least we can still put the plane out there, he can see it, and know he'll get another one.''
By now, whipped with the flu, sick of assembling and anxious for the little sleep we would get that night, everyone wholeheartedly agreed. Checking with the elves at their mythical fix-it center became the blanket solution to all the broken toys - now becoming a neat pile in the living room.
We wrote a lot of notes that night . . . and I calmed down.
Christmas, at least in my mind, was saved.
I went to bed with the holiday and my resolution in tact.
Next year, I'll still make a holiday resolution. Calming down and enjoying the spirit will again be the main theme, but I'm adding some amendments. At the top of the list will be not waiting until the last minute to check out toys and fully thinking through any stories you might concoct about Santa, the elves and those reindeer.
After all, how do you explain to two small children that Rudolph isn't always so bright and that after a little eggnog it's possible Santa crashed into the side of the house? Better yet, try explaining why kids can't accompany parents to the elves' fix-it center, why elves couldn't fix that cargo plane after all and just exactly what an elf really looks like?
It's enough stress to bust even the most committed resolution. by CNB