365 Nights (15 page)

I pushed. “What exactly do you believe?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. And he really meant it. This was before I knew that part of being Episcopalian for many was the grand vagueness of God—He could be different things to different people. And part of being Baptist, as many know, was the grand, unerring specificity of God.

So it turned out that we were more far apart than I thought. I was growing agitated. I mean, what's so hard about articulating what you believe? I blurted out, in my Baptist way, “Honey, I need to know if you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and personal Savior.”

Huh? I had no idea where
that
came from. It was like in that exact moment I was channeling my grandmother, the one who doesn't believe in drinking or dee-vorce. I had alarmed him and surprised myself. And I don't blame him. I mean, if you aren't used to this kind of vernacular, it can sound strange. There I was, thinking I was marrying an “unbeliever,” and he was thinking I was some kind of zealot. Apparently there was a wider gulf than expected—while Jesus should have been the common denominator among Christians, even Jesus is open to interpretation for Episcopalians. Brad did acknowledge he believed, at least in the abstract. Now it's all okay—we've bridged the gap and we're Methodist.

While I was surprised about negotiating religion in such a forthright way, I was expecting a certain amount of give-and-take when it came to merging his family and mine. Actually, I thought it would be a lot of take—me taking every opportunity to be with my family and not his. Which isn't fair, really. Brad has a perfectly nice family. But nobody can really appreciate the thinly veiled comment that you “marry the whole family” until you are married and you realize that you're now related to a whole new set of crackpots, and you don't find them nearly as interesting or tolerable as the bunch of crackpots that you are related to by blood. And at the very least, all the crackpots from
your
family like everything the same way you do. It's like when you're twelve, and you go to a sleepover at your best friend's house, and everything is different. The house smells strange, their habits are different, and they put onions in their scrambled eggs. And although you're having fun, you're so relieved to go back to your own familiar home and scrambled eggs with cheese.

When Brad first introduced me to my future mother-in-law, I thought it would be easy to win her over, but I was wrong. I would impart a wee bit of Southern charm, dotted with lot of polite “ma'ams” and exclamations of “You don't say!” But as we both started to dig a little deeper, I sensed this wasn't a sure thing. And this threw me off, because I generally do well on first impressions (it's those second and third impressions where it all goes downhill for me). So I found out that she likes to watch those ten-part series about the Civil War on PBS whereas I . . . well, I know who won the Civil War. She likes to read biographies on Thomas Jefferson and then discuss how Monticello was an intersection of architecture and horticulture unrivaled even today. Me? I only read fiction—preferably modern. She likes to
finish
the crossword puzzle
every day
. Me? I like Sudoku, the easy ones.

While she would never admit it and I can never be sure, I think she was a little unimpressed when she learned that I had gone to a public university. I mean, it's possible to see someone actually shudder, right? Despite the fact that UNC Chapel Hill is an outstanding and very competitive institution, and while there I attended one of the top five journalism programs in the country and later managed to get a job at a top public relations firm in New York City and actually pay my bills (well, most of them).

She attended a private college: Vassar. Her father, Yale. One brother is a doctor and the other a lawyer. Her sister also went to Vassar and works at Harvard, and she married a guy who heads up the graduate physics department there. I mean, these are some seriously freaky smart people. I was
way
out of my league and far away from my homespun Christmases at Grand-ma's house. But I will tell you that despite being so genetically gifted, many smart people have not a lick of common sense to even come out of the rain (present relatives who live in Boston and teach or work at Harvard excluded, of course).

I will tell you that while dining with the Harvard contingent one evening in Boston, and hearing about Brad's uncle's research into a fifth dimension (and no, this is not the coming of the age of Aquarius), I was the only one who knew what a Möbius strip was (present smarty pants who head up or work in the physics department at Harvard not included). So for one infinitesimal (that means tiny) moment, I felt a sense of smugness only really weirdly bright people can feel. It was new and it was fleeting . . . and I liked it. I chose to believe that these blue-blooded Northerners were appropriately impressed that this red-blooded Southerner schooled in the halls of a public institution knew about the Möbius strip, which by the way appears to be a two-dimensional object that is really only a surface with one side and one boundary component. Ladies and gentleman, your tax dollars at work.

But my shining moment of being fully embraced as a member of this freaky smart family did not last. I knew I was in a losing battle the year Brad's mom brought some pictures to share of the Harvard Family Christmas. In one photograph, the Mensa Gene Pool had gathered in the kitchen baking (because isn't baking really all about physics?), preparing their annual holiday cake, or something like that. Said cake was, and I'm serious as a heart attack, shaped like Albert Einstein's
head.
They used coconut for the hair and mustache, and I recall they had written E = MC
²
with licorice at the bottom of the cake. It really did look like ol' Al, and the entire clan thought it was hysterically funny and wonderful—so much so that they gathered for a family photo around that kooky coconut cake and e-mailed it to the rest of the family, who also thought it was hysterically funny and wonderful. Wow. Please note that my aunt makes a killer coconut cake that requires much labor, four cake pans, and poking holes in the top of it with a wooden spoon handle so all that divine coconut icing stuff can seep down into it. One year she did liken it to a bunny at Easter, but that was it. Yes, I was a square peg in a perfectly round and brilliant hole.

But I like my mother-in-law, I really do. And I know that she likes me, as I am the mother of two of her favorite grandchildren. It took some time for us to get used to one another. But she is so head over heels in love with my kids that she is blinded to my many and deep flaws. Nothing else seems to matter except that I brought forth to her these two wonderful children.

You will not be surprised to know that there are never more than six or eight people (mostly adults, so it's pretty easy to make the cut for the adult table) at Brad's family gatherings. We eat politely at a dining room table formally decorated with nice linen, fine china, sparkling crystal, and sterling silver. There is some sort of roasted meat, a starchy casserole, a vegetable dish, and some very appropriate bread of some sort. There is wine (yippee) and a pie (usually store bought, which is so
wrong
!). Everyone participates in the same scintillating and high-brow conversation at the same time, and no one is yelling or laughing too loud or asking for an extra helping of pinto beans in a coffee cup (sprinkle some butter and cornbread on the top, if you don't mind). You can't get lost in the shuffle in this small crowd, and you certainly have to pull your own weight in conversation.

Brad could not be more at home at this table, and I could not be more homesick. And while there are not tons of divorced people in his family, there are some. Brad's parents, for example. In fact, Brad's parents chose Christmastime to tell him and his two siblings they were getting a divorce. He was nine. While they all knew it wasn't Ozzie and Harriet around the Muller household, it still came as a shock. All three children reacted as you would expect—tears, disbelief, uncertainty. Yet somehow this experience never took the joy out of Christmas for my husband. He clung to memories of jumping on his grandparents' bed. Emptying stockings on Christmas morning. The big family breakfast. The mountain of presents that seemed to take hours to open. Somehow, he managed to hang on to some semblance of his holiday spirit. Maybe that's why he is the Christmas Tree Stud.

So whether there are six or sixteen gathering at the holiday table, we all have visions of a Christmas celebration with the perfect sheen and patina. We spend weeks planning the menu, wrapping the gifts, and fluffing the house. And of course, finding the perfect holiday card to send to more than two hundred of your closest family and friends. The whole holiday family photo card has become its own cottage industry, and is reaching new and ridiculous heights (not to mention expense). Parents are scoping photo ops throughout the year . . . “Collage” cards are my favorite to receive, as they invite you to take a trip(s) with the family: Here we are at Disneyland at our behind-the-scenes tour of Cinderella's Castle; then off to Aspen to ski (yes, do note the black diamond signage in the background); oh, let's not forget the beach where we parasailed for the first time; here we are swimming with endangered orcas; then here are various candids of our incredibly successful and well-adjusted kids at various sporting and athletic events (soccer, baseball, jazz, and swim team). And let's top it all off with a great church photo just to showcase how good the kids look squeaky clean and holy. Yep, no matter the season, here we are in all our picture-perfect glory. We choreograph not only the most perfect holidays, but also the entire year.

Lest I seem a hypocrite, we do send out a holiday card, with just one photo, of the kids only. But I always wondered what it would be like to send a holiday collage card of “Real Life with Charla.” The photo collage would consist of the following:

Here is Mom cleaning up cat barf off the living room carpet and yelling that if the litter box doesn't get changed this instant, the cat will go “bye-bye, and for real this time!”

Here is Mom taking out the garbage and recycling bins in the rain. She is in clogs, a floral house robe, a few odd hot rollers, and a beach hat (to camouflage the rollers, of course) and looks so stunningly ridiculous that running into the Neighbor She Would Most Dread Running Into is practically a given. Oh look, there she is now.

And here is Mom half-dressed and late for church and arguing with her family whether we will stay for Big Church or just go to Sunday School. Say Cheese!

Happy Freakin' Holidays. Love (A Little), Char

I was thirty-three years old before I woke up in my own bed, in my own house,
my own
house, with Brad and my daughter, on Christmas morning. It was “Brad's year” for Christmas and we would see his family that afternoon. You would think I would have treasured this long-awaited day as if it were that special Christmas gift I never received as a kid. (Remember the 10-speed bike, Mom and Dad?) But in many ways it was disappointing—the quiet was deafening when I was used to opening presents among a cacophony of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Breakfast was a tad boring when I was used to a table crammed with people, eggs, ham, bacon, biscuits, and way too many jars of homemade jam. While I was thrilled to be with the people whom I loved most—my husband and daughter—I was a holiday chaos junkie and I needed a fix. Even Brad felt it was a little anticlimactic. After all, there are only so many pictures you can take of a two-year-old tugging at wrapping paper who is more interested in the box and bow than the toy that came in it. It was all just a little . . . bit . . . off.

One of the very few fights Brad and I have ever had was about Santa. It was our daughter's first Christmas and we were working on Santa and his presentation. Because as we all know, presentation is
everything
, even for an infant. “Well, when are we going to wrap everything?” Brad asked one evening before the Big Day.

“Everything is already wrapped,” I replied.

“And here is the Santa stuff,” I said, pointing to a pile of unwrapped gifts in the corner of the guest bedroom.

“No,” he said. “We need to wrap Santa. Everyone always wraps Santa.”

Are you
high
? No one, I mean
no one
in
my
family or in
my
circle of friends from
my
town or living on
my
planet (called Earth) wraps gifts from Santa. What a colossal hassle! What a waste of drugstore wrapping paper! But apparently, in the World According to Brad, all Santa gifts are wrapped, including tiny little stocking stuffers . . . down to a tube of lip balm, thank you very much. I was dumbfounded. I could not get my head around the logic or the need to wrap Santa's presents. I mean, isn't that gilding the Santa?

“Hon,” I said, trying my best to bring some common sense to the discussion. “We don't need to wrap Santa. After we open gifts on Christmas Eve, Santa's unwrapped presents will magically appear under the tree for Virginia and she'll squeal in delight when she enters the room, and we'll capture it all on film for future generations. It will be great.”

Brad sat up straight, and got that weird chin-jut thing going that tells me I'm in for a long night on this one. “For starters, we
don't
open presents on Christmas Eve, and second, we wrap
all
of Santa, and third, we all come downstairs and each calmly empty our stockings. Then we break for a family breakfast, and then we open the gifts under the tree, and then we head to church.” I eventually stopped listening. I couldn't
believe
I had married a man who had lived this way! I mean, who orchestrated Christmas at his house—Stalin? It all sounded torturous and miserable.

And while I had some idea we would have to negotiate things like finances and religion, who knew Santa tradition was a religion all its own? I mean, I could have told Brad I was naming our daughter after my ex-boyfriend's golden retriever and he would have put up less of a fuss. “So if you don't open gifts on Christmas Eve, what do you do? Wait,” I said. “I don't really want to know.” It probably involved shoveling snow, cutting wood, or knitting scarves for prisoners. Well, in
my
family, we open all family gifts on Christmas Eve, open Santa gifts (sans wrapping paper) on Christmas morning, and that's that.