TREATS AND TREASURES

Even more than Halloween, the Christmas season has always been one of treats and unexpected surprises.  When I was young, it was the orange at the bottom of the stocking, the paper bag of nuts and chocolates from Santa when he came to our city park, or Santa peaking in Grandma’s window.

With age and time, the treats have changed.  Some are still small – sugared nuts from a neighbor or a bag of “White Trash” from a friend.  (If you’ve never enjoyed this particular snack, you’re in for a new “treat.”  I’m including the recipe below.)  But the treats that surprise most are those that have the strength to pull at your heart and not let go. 

Tim and I just returned from a trip to Iowa.  We collected our children from their respective colleges and ended up at my Mom’s.  It was a treat to eat pizza at Zeno’s.  Zeno’s opened in Marshalltown, Iowa in 1952, so essentially I’ve been eating there my entire life.  Even though my husband grew up in Chicago with Chicago-style pizza, he is a Zeno’s convert.  Nearly every Iowa trip includes a stop at Zeno’s.  It’s a treat – pizza and décor that doesn’t change. Memories emanate from 1970’s dark wood paneling, flood over the balcony, and fill the booths below. 

It was a treat to see aunts and uncles and my Gram.  Their lives are so different from when we spent every Christmas Eve on the farm, when the smell of pine and Grandma’s goose cooking filled each room and Uncle Leon’s laugh resonated above all others

It was a treat to see my brother and sister and their families.  I am reminded of Christmases past, when my siblings and I were young and we would tumble down the oak staircase in a furious rush on Christmas morning, when our children were young and Mom’s house was a swirling mass of babies crawling amid torn wrapping paper.  Now it’s a houseful of adults; when did that happen?

Tim, our children, and I have returned to San Antonio.  Having the four of us together is a treat. It doesn’t happen very often any more.  Life is taking us in new and differing directions.  When Molly joins the working world next year, our time together will be limited to corporate vacation time, but this year, we have a month and I am thrilled.  So I grab this opportunity to have my children in San Antonio for the holidays and hold on tight.  I want to enjoy this new city with them, to enjoy this new house, to enjoy being together.  I delight in memories of Christmases past – Molly climbing into her Little Tikes' car much like Fred Flintstone and John hugging his Lego Star Wars AT-AT kit like it was life’s most precious gift. – but new memories and experiences are equally dear.

Happy Holidays to you and yours from me and mine!

We have more holiday treats to come – a wine-tasting with new friends and a visit from Tim’s sister and her husband.  They are as anticipated as previous Christmases when we made road trips to Chicago because Tim’s family was anchored there or old friends filled our days with games, shopping and laughter.

Unexpected treats and treasured memories – the heart of the holiday season.  May you and yours relish these as I relish mine; they are what makes the season bright!

WHITE TRASH

5 c. Cheerios

5 c. Corn Chex

1 – 14 oz. bag of M&Ms

10-12 oz. bag of waffle pretzels

1 container cocktail peanuts

2 -12 oz. bag of white chocolate chips

3 T. oil

Melt chocolate and oil together.  Pour over dry ingredients.  Mix thoroughly.  Spread on to waxed paper (about 3-4 cookie sheets full).  Cool.  Break apart and put in containers.

LIFE IN HIGH CONTRAST

When I was growing up, our television set had a contrast button.  Unlike the high-tech video displays today that do the “thinking” for you, televisions of my generation had to have their brightness, tint, contrast adjusted manually.  I enjoyed watching shows with the contrast turned on full.  Now, I’m living a life in high contrast – Texas life as opposed to Midwestern life.

The differences surrounding holidays are particularly apparent.  I handed out Halloween treats, wearing shorts and flip flops.  I know this may seem like a small thing, but I remember trick-or-treating in Iowa wearing a turtleneck and long underwear under my costume or in severe years, being upset that no one would see my costume because a winter coat was covering it. 

As Christmas approaches, I am startled by the juxtaposition of Dickensian street lights dressed for Christmas standing next to palm trees and the snowman lawn ornaments gracing lawns that will never know snow, let alone men made of snow.  (Sean at the bank is moving to Chicago this month.  He figures he is in for a “real treat,” as he has never seen snow.  Poor guy, he has no idea what’s in store!)

San Antonio, like the rest of the country, recently experienced a cold snap.  There was no frost or ice.  Definitely, no snow.  As I peer out the window, the only indication of cold is the fact that the swimming pool jets are running 24/7 to keep the water moving so the lines won’t freeze.

My senses don’t know what season it is.  The trees, the grass, the plantings are still green.  There was no sudden frost, then a swirl of autumnal color, leaves dropping and drying in massive swarms.  A deciduous tree is rare here.  Sightings are reason to pull the car over to the side of the road and take a second look.  The flowers in my backyard are still blooming too, even the one that my mother announced, when she was here in September, would be considered a weed in Iowa.  Hey, with the heat and the drought of a San Antonio summer, anything that will grow is planted!

The high contrast, the yin and the yang of it all – life here and life there – the differences enthrall me.  There will probably come a day when they won’t.  I guess that’s the day I’ll officially be a Texan (egad!)

THAT GOETTSCH JAW

Before I could introduce my husband Tim to my father’s sister, he took one look at the woman and said she must be Aunt Gilda.  My jaw dropped.  How could he possibly know?  When I suggested he must have heard someone call her by name, Tim said simply, “She had to be a Goettsch.  All the Goettschs have the same jaw.”  The jaw in question dropped further.  What?  Tim shrugged, as if I’d surely noticed.  “That square Goettsch jaw.  You can’t miss it.”

Since his comment, I’ve become rather obsessed with the jaws in my family – comparing, contrasting - and wondering if all those jaws that look like mine, hurt like mine.

My siblings and I - for jaw comparison

With the culmination of the chaos that has been my life the last couple of years came a diagnosis – TMJ or temporomandibular joint disorder.  The jaw clenches or the teeth grind in reaction to stress.  While I’d been living with a couple of years of extreme stress, I suspect that I was aggravating my jaw even before the experiences of recent months.  I was always the typical eldest child – wanting to be in charge, taking on responsibility, striving for perfection in an imperfect world.  I had to excel or die trying.

If you’ve never experienced TMJ, in a word, it’s painful – brutally so.  Suddenly, your jaw feels like it’s made of lead.  Rather than a natural extension of your face, the jaw is heavy, moving awkward and painfully.

Since the diagnosis, I have seen a dentist, physical therapist, ENT, oral surgeon, and acupuncturist (not my best decision – ouch!)  After using drugs and exercises to alleviate the pain with limited success, the oral surgeon finally said that I needed to get control of the anxiety that was plaguing my brain and manifesting itself in my jaw.  I needed to find a way to master tension, rather than becoming slave to it.  With that in mind, I’ve started seeing a counselor.  I’ve never done this before.  I didn’t know where to begin and even after several sessions, I never quite know how to talk to her.  So far, it’s a lot of confirmation, “Geez.  You deserve to be stressed after all you’ve been through.”

Duh.  OK.  But now what?

She likes to remind me to “let go” of things that threaten to unnerve me.  Like Richard Carlson prompts:  “Don’t sweat the small stuff because it’s all small stuff.”  Intellectually, I know that; I’ve always known that.  But, like so many things, it’s easier said than done.  For me, it’s an ongoing battle I rarely win.

In hindsight, there are so many things I should have let go of before they became punctuated by stress and I lost sleep to them – grades, relationships, jobs.  Why is hindsight always 20/20 and the here and now 30/60?

Anxiety that I couldn’t talk myself out of or was too young to understand the needlessness of has taken its toll.  My health (most specially my jaw) is paying the price.  Some day, I will have to have surgery, but for now it means no more sub sandwiches or quarter pound burgers; I can’t get my mouth around them.  More importantly, however, when anxiety threatens, it’s a painful reminder to “let things go.”