It all started when my older brother said something about Christmas being the only time of year anyone could tolerate Mitch Miller and my younger brother expressed surprise that Mitch Miller did anything other than Christmas.
Pretty soon we were tumbling down the rabbit hole of nostalgia that required copious Google searches and way more time than I had to spare a week before Christmas. Over the course of a few days, we dredged up every single kooky Christmas memory of our large, slightly- to grossly-dysfunctional family.
The strangest thing is that my brothers are not usually this sentimental. My mother's death early in our lives has, up until now, made looking back for them extremely painful. Whenever I'd bring up a memory of our childhood, I was warned "not to go there."
But now here I was Googling "Skittle Bowl" to send to my little brother, in memory of the gift he got one year that we set up to run "The Skittle Bowl Tournament of the World" that everyone got involved in and had my older brother posting round robin heats and statistics on the refrigerator door.
My immediate family was pretty normal, which is why at holiday time we became a magnet to the rest of the family seeking our stability. We were usually a pretty crowded household anyway, but during the holidays the traffic was phenomenal.
The result of this was that we kids never knew where we were sleeping at night until we went to bed. There was no kowtowing to fussy sleepers. We'd get a sheet, blanket, pillow and, if we were lucky, a mattress from the lawn furniture. One Christmas my older brother, a cousin and I camped out in what amounted to my mother's closet. Another year when I was ten or eleven, I found myself sleeping in the family baby crib while my two-year-old brother slept next to me in a drawer.
We did eventually fall asleep, probably as a result of the little glass of wine or beer we were encouraged permitted to drink that evening.
Oh - and forget those touching photo ops in front of the living room fireplace in red Dr. Denton's, reading A Visit from St. Nick. The living room was inhabited Christmas Eve by my Aunt Angelina and Aunt Theresa who slept on the fold out couch, bedecked in their curlers, baggy pajamas and requisite cigarettes dangling from their mouths. There was always a minor skirmish Christmas morning as my mother tried to get them up and out of the living room before we came down for our presents. Nonetheless, many of our Christmas morning photos feature a decidedly cranky Angelina hunched over in the background, coffee cup and cigarette in hand, usually yelling something at someone.
Angelina was also the source of the most puzzling Christmas gifts. She worked as a bookkeeper for an office supply store and on Christmas Eve she'd spend the last half hour before closing to do her "Christmas shopping." It's not every seven-year-old that gets a manicure set for a secretary to keep in her side drawer. My brother once got a box of carbon paper - already opened.
In my memory, food was a constant, starting Christmas Eve and all the way through New Year's Day. There was always someone in the kitchen cooking - usually my mother and grandmother, sometimes my father, my brothers or me, and never the aunts. Others would bring food from the plethora of bakeries, delicatessens, butcher shops and specialty stores that are common in an area boasting an immigrant background.
Meals were a spontaneous combustion of whatever was done cooking at the time augmented with whatever was in one of the two fridges stuffed with edibles. Or someone would pull out some cold cuts for a sandwich and several more people would join him or her, pulling out ricotta containers (Italian Tupperware) full of leftovers.
My mother always made apple and pumpkin pies for Christmas and New Year's Day, but really the holidays were about cookies. My mother and my Aunt Dotty (who officially lived with us) started on the day after Halloween and didn't stop baking until Christmas week. An entire corner of our dining room was nothing but tins of cookies. But no one was permitted so much as a sample until Christmas Eve. We'd still be eating Christmas cookies in March.
I'd go on and on about my Christmas memories, but an e-mail from my older brother just came in entitled: "What was the real name of that Baby Vomit doll you got when you were eight?"
I'm seeing more and more houses with The Look: Empty windows, a few pieces of debris on the front lawn, no cars. Soon a "For Sale" sign will go up and then, inevitably, "For Rent."
This area of the Shenandoah Valley houses a lot of blue collar families. The current wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures is caused by record lay offs at area manufacturing plants. I'm more sensitive to this since my family was among the previous wave - construction and incendiary workers who were the casualties when first victims - the subprime mortgagees - imploded after the housing bubble burst.
And the dominoes are still falling.
On my rural road, before I get to the state highway, I pass ten such houses in a five-mile stretch. I can't help but wonder where the families went. And can't help envisioning vultures circling every time I see another vacant house.
Rentals around here are as high as a mortgage payment and usually require a credit check. The law of supply and demand has no effect as row upon row of houses sit vacant. I have to wonder what kind of bargain these owners got on the foreclosure that it's more economical for the mortgage holder - you can't assume it's a bank anymore - to have the house sit vacant than to rent it out.
So where have they gone?
A family down the road from us just disappeared. I noticed because they had a house full of teens and pre-teens and one day they were all gathered in the carport - I thought it was a birthday party or something. But the next day, the house had The Look. I asked Heir 2 if he'd seen any of the kids at school.
He shrugged. "Not anymore, now that you mention it. They kinda disappeared."
It's the language of the Dustbowl during the Great Depression: displaced families "disappearing."
Only this is 2008 and we should know better. If this were any other issue or cause, there would be support groups set up in every church and hospital. There is one for every disease and every traumatic event that can befall a human being. They have them for alcoholics, gamblers, and overeaters.
There is only one reason no one cares what happens to a family faced with foreclosure: shame and fear.
The shame is on the part of those who have lost their houses. We don't need anyone to tell us we screwed up. It's the last thing we think of at night if we're able to fall asleep and it's the first thing we beat ourselves up with in the morning. The shame silences us and makes us hide.
The fear is on the part of everyone else. Those of us who have lost our homes are castigated for "buying more house than we could afford" or for being "shopaholics" but even the staunchest fiscal conservative knows it's just not at that simple. And, because it's not that simple, it could happen to anyone - a bad business decision at the wrong time, an illness that goes on longer than expected, or perhaps just being the next domino in line to tumble.
As for me, I will acknowledge that I am not homeless only by luck of the draw. We have family around us acting as our safety net. We lucked into a landlord who saw to it that not only wasn't my family forced to separate, but that we didn't have to sacrifice our pets. I can say with confidence that my family will never be out on the street, not because of any outstanding character trait of my own, but because Dirtman and I happen to be born into supportive families.
But I don't for a minute claim any of this as a virtue. These are blessings. I had no more to do with possessing them than I had to do with where and when I was born.
So it baffles me that those who have stumbled during this round of hard times are being judged by people whose bad decisions just happen to be made under better circumstances or who lucked into a job not affected by the economy or who - for any myriad of fortuitous events that resulted in their having money when others do not - are holding their own in a time of economic upheaval.
Equally baffling are the vitriolic attacks and nasty comments aimed in our direction. Because, unlike failing banks and the auto industry, we are not descending on Congress, hat in hand, asking to be bailed out; we are not asking for sympathy; we are not, in fact, asking for anything.
We are silent and we just disappear.
I came very close to chucking the entire holiday season this year. Not only because the world economy is making it particularly challenging in terms of mustering holiday cheer, but our personal economy wasn't faring too well either.
On the surface it seems any sort of celebration would be obscene in the face of so many people losing their homes or facing the threat of unemployment.
The conundrum, of course, is that right when everyone wants to hunker down and have a quiet, frugal holiday, retailers need everyone in a buying frenzy. Retailers need you to aim for The Best Christmas Ever.
While I sympathize with this line of thinking - it's been governing our economy for a very long time - I'm still not buying. For years retailers have manipulated our fears and emotions to their advantage. Sooner or later it was bound to bite them back.
I have no choice but to scale back this year, and I have no qualms about encouraging others to do the same. It's high time we took back Christmas and turned it into the holiday it was meant to be.
But first let's address the elephant in the living room; the glib, know-it-all elephant that annually needs to point out that:
- Jesus Christ was not actually born in or even close to December;
- That not everyone is Christian but are still forced to in some way observe the holiday;
- People exchange a lot of money at Christmas;
- That most of the rituals we use to celebrate Christmas are Pagan in origin.
Quite honestly:
Yawn.
As I said, there is a lot of money exchanged because of Christmas, and it isn't all among Christians. Be thankful if you still get something called a Holiday Bonus or even an office holiday party, Christian or not.
There was, as a matter of fact, an attempt to rid the Christmas holidays of all the Pagan and Germanic accoutrement - by Oliver Cromwell. He almost succeeded too and we would be having very dismal Christmases indeed were it not for a poor romantic-headed Englishman with an ironic sympathy for the poor of his country. The Christmas we enjoy today is not so much Pagan, as Dickensian.
A lot of what is now interpreted as "commercialism" actually started out as a genuine, heartfelt tradition. I thought of this when I noticed there was an abundance of treacley Christmas movies being advertised for the Hallmark Channel, all with suspiciously similar plotlines and requisite tinselly set design. Hallmark's annual holiday movie used to be high quality screenplays with impressive casts featuring no less than the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Glenn Close and Christopher Walken. I guess Hallmark sensed how popular their holiday fare had become and, in true American fashion, now offers up an overabundance of formulated watered-down imitations. Since they care enough to send the abysmally mediocre, Hallmark employed every out-of-work 90s sitcom actor and male 70s television actor that could remotely be decked out to look like Santa Claus.
So taking back Christmas is going to involve some digging of information because we've gotten so used to purchasing the Hallmark version of traditions. The most baffling practice I've seen was a woman I knew who annually had a florist come in and decorate her house, right down to decorating the large tree in her living room. The more unsightly "children's tree" was sequestered in the basement. We've forgotten that what made the holiday was the process, not the end result.
Finally, there is the gift-giving. I don't know of anyone who is not scaling down in this area, but I do wish we would stop with this depressing impoverished attitude and take this opportunity to re-evaluate what, exactly, a Christmas gift represents.
A Christmas present is different from a gift given any other time of year because, for believers, at Christmas a gift is a token; a representation of the gift that Christ was to the world as stated in John 3:16: For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
How does that translate into an iPhone?
Well, it doesn't. And that misrepresentation is the niggling discomfort we've all felt in previous years when, for just a second perhaps, we knew that something just wasn't right.
So this year will be very different at the Jackson house. It won't be as grandiose and decadent as some of the past Christmases. It won't be nearly as exhausting. It will be infinitely more memorable.
It will be The Best Christmas Ever.
When one is preparing a Thanksgiving feast, usually requiring preparation well in advance of the actual day, one is prone to enter into a meditative state, seeing as one has prepared, or helped to prepare, the same recipes every year for the past 42 years.
One is not permitted any deviation from said recipes lest there be an uprising of The Others who, not having witnessed new trends emerging on Food Network, demand that every detail of their November holiday resemble every previous holiday spanning over 50 years.
Needless to say, one can conjure the entirety of the aforementioned banquet with one's eyes closed and mind elsewhere, leaving one to ponder the deeper and more aesthetic meaning of said holiday.
This is to say I have the attention span of a gnat.
For instance, it occurred to me that even back in the Dark Ages when I was in grammar school, we were taught the official Thanksgiving song/poem was "Over the River and Through the Woods," in spite of the fact that the holiday is never mentioned. And, even back then, every stanza was outdated. Neither I nor my parents ever took a horse-drawn sleigh to Gramma's. No horse would have made it over the Passaic River and lived. Still, when Heir 1 was in kindergarten the teachers insisted on teaching the song to his bewildered class. I'm sure they wondered why Gramma was wearing a cap, probably envisioning a John Deere logo.
As I enter Day 2 of Thanksgiving Day preparations, now getting slightly punchy and a little bitter, seeing as everyone else around here is going on with life as usual, it occurred to me that women really get the short end of it this time of year.
Only two things are required of Dirtman each year at Thanksgiving.
First off, he must find the turkey roaster that was passed down to me by my mother. I remind him of this earlier and earlier every year. Every year he insists he cannot find it, though he is the one who stored it away. Every year we make do with the bottom of the broiler pan.
Each July, while stacking my strawberry jam, Dirtman finds the turkey roaster and puts it away somewhere he is "sure to find it in November." For 20 years the turkey roaster has traveled about the house, evading us every Thanksgiving. Come to think of it, my father could never find the turkey roaster for my mother either.
Dirtman is also required to lift the turkey out of the oven. The turkey weights about 235 lbs., because I'm convinced we need that much to feed everyone. But I never manage to carve all 235 pounds of that meat (see attention span comment above), so we end up spending the next few days tearing it Henry VIII-style from the carcass, which is hardly a sight for a holiday magazine spread on Thanksgiving Day leftovers.
And, while we're on the subject, does anyone actually go to the table with the whole bird and carve it there? That's the Norman Rockwell version, isn't it? Did anyone ever actually do that?
When we carve the turkey it requires layers of paper towels on the counter and a haz-mat suit for the carver. I can't imagine that mess on the damask, if I was dumb enough to use damask with the Jackson apes. . . er. . . family.
I'm nearing the end of all the preparations I can do ahead of time. All this pre-holiday frenzy is so that Thanksgiving morning I can watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade without worrying about getting everything done.
Don't tell anyone, okay? The reason I watch the whole stupid, over-lip-synced, over-commercialized, over-the-top parade is for the brief, 30-second moment at the very end when Santa Claus goes by.
I cry like a baby. I don't know why. It's the same every year. Same recipes, same songs, same poems, same traveling turkey roaster and the same parade.
I wouldn't dare change a thing.
We all know one: people who need constant praise and approval. High maintenance black holes of validation neediness, they suck all available energy into the vortex of their insecurity.
One person like this at a party makes for an early evening. Two people like this in the same room cause fights. Three or more makes up a cable reality show.
How about an entire culture of attention seekers? I'm convinced that is what we've become.
This thought occurred to me over the course of these past few weeks when we were asked to attend a few ceremonies recognizing our youngest son, Heir 2. No, I'm not going to bore you with an annoying list of his accomplishments, valid or otherwise, because this is part of my point. Such programs are common when you are a parent since the educational system is convinced that every child must be praised and recognized every time they remember not to punch in the face of someone who looks at them funny or for every sneeze they remember not to spray all over everyone.
It is my particular opinion the rise of this sort of thing occurred along with the popularity of personal computers. Suddenly official-looking certificates could be printed out at a moment's notice, causing a sudden increase in awards ceremonies.
So far the only positive reaction to this glorification is that the kids are happy to be released from their classes. I remember leaving one afternoon ceremony as the students were being let out of school for the day where the parking lot was littered with "award certificates" folded into paper airplanes. Kids can smell a con.
Even worse than this is the insinuation of Hollywood-esque recognition being meted out like cheap candy at a firemen's parade. It's one thing to recognize Merle Streep as a superior actor by giving her with an Academy Award for her work in Sophie's Choice. It's another to find some hormone-soaked population mix to bestow any kind of award to Jessica Simpson, thereby encouraging her continued participation in the entertainment industry.
It's baffling to me why people are awarded for simply doing their job. I'm not among those who spontaneously jump to my feet and applaud when someone announces they're a teacher or a doctor or a nurse, mostly because, having worked at a bank, I know they wouldn't have done their job if I hadn't done mine - payroll.
Nothing annoys me more than trying to find a close parking spot at a store with notoriously poor service and seeing the only convenient spot is labeled "Employee of the Month." And it's empty - the Employee of the Month having called in "sick" that morning, I suppose.
Parents of school-age children fall into this category too. Having already blown the cover off the whole Mothers' Day racket, I will continue to point out that having shot out a couple kids does not a mother make, so spare me the "most important job in the world" platitudes and I'll take a comprehensive health care plan over that sad-looking certificate, thankyouverymuch.
I was particularly befuddled by one ceremony we were invited to attend as parents of Heir 2. It was during half time of the high school football game and somehow connected to the marching band, of which my son is a member. At this particular ceremony our names were announced, at which point Heir 2 left his post in the band formation and was handed a rose which he handed to me. Then, as the announcer talked about Heir 2's plans for the future (none of which include marching, a band or music), my son escorted us out onto the field where we stood while other senior members of the band and their parents went through the same ritual.
Our conversation on the field went something like this:
Me: I didn't realize you were that accomplished a drummer.
Heir 2: I'm not.
Me: So you were a good leader...
Heir 2: Nope.
Me: So why are we here?
Heir 2: I showed up for all four years of marching band.
Me: . . . because you got into games for free.
Heir 2: Aren't you proud?
Me: And the rose?
Heir 2: You're my mom. And you let me be in the band.
Me: . . . because you got into games for free.
Heir 2: You're a saint. Well. . . you never beat me over the head with a blunt object.
So there you have it. I let him show up for band and I never beat him over the head with a blunt object.
Where's my certificate?
Not since JFK's Camelot has a happy presidential issue been as newsworthy as the choice of what puppy the Obamas are going to choose to assuage their guilt over not spending enough time with their kids during the past endless campaign.
The reasons people decide to own a dog are just slightly less neurotic than their reasons for having children. But we'll leave that little age-old dilemma to Malia and Natasha's future therapists. I'll stick with what I know, which is dogs.
The Obamas' decision to acquire a dog was as inevitable as the Washington Nationals languishing in last place. With few exceptions, every administration has had some sort of canine affiliation, whether notable for its brevity - as in the case of the Grits the dog being kicked out of the Jimmy Carter White House by Amy Carter's cat; or its popularity - as in Franklin D. Roosevelts's Scottish Terrier Fala, who received so much mail he required his own press secretary.
The Clintons arrived at the White House with only Socks the cat, but soon acquired Buddy, the chocolate Labrador Retriever, probably as the result of a focus group's determination that the public overwhelmingly approved of dog ownership by a U.S. president.
So the promise of a puppy in the White House was a pretty safe one for the Obamas to make to their daughters. Would that Michelle Obama had put as much thought into election evening couture.
The breed choice, however, is proving to be more controversial than any ACORN connection ever was. A public choice of a breed of dog is a minefield of political correctness and diplomacy. The Obamas are about to learn their first lesson about dog people: we are opinionated, easily offended and rabid in our defense of what we believe. One go-round with dog people and Barack Obama will be more than ready to take on Kim Jong-II, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Bill O'Reilly.
Just about every dog organization has chimed in on this opportunity to publicize their cause, breed or agenda, from the American Kennel Club to its nemesis, the PETA-funded Humane Society of the United States. Naturally, the politically correct thing to do would be to choose a pound puppy, an idea that was nixed on account of Malia Obama's allergies.
Naturally the Doodle People - people who breed dogs they insist on calling "hybrids" that are actually really, really expensive mutts - have chimed in with their suggestion. I'm sure somewhere in the massive Obama machine there is some wise person to tell him that not all "Doodle Dogs" are hypo-allergenic; that one dog in a litter will be allergy-free while the same litter will contain a dog that looks nothing like its mate and sheds twice as much as my mother's faux-fur coat. That's the way it is with litters of mixed-breed dogs.
Sadly, my beloved Australian Shepherds are out of the question, as my office floor will attest. I have adopted a policy of not vacuuming up all the fur shed and just allow it to felt into a rug as we walk on it. It's not hypo-allergenic, though. So when the Obamas visit, Malia will have to wait in the car.
I equally don't recommend the other breed I own, the Parson Russell Terrier, unless the Secret Service wants to monitor the breed most likely to stage a coup.
Oh - and as for the Peruvian Hairless Dog that is under consideration: Hell, no. 
. Trust me, these are not cuddly dogs. Petting a Peruvian Hairless reminds me of when my Uncle Vinnie used to get us kids to spread suntan lotion on his back. (That memory made me throw up just a little.) We don't need a First Dog that looks like an internal organ (sorry, Peruvian Hairless people. . . ).
But I'm sure every breed club in the country is lobbying for their own. Your breed in the White House guarantees a demand for more litters nationwide, which isn't always a good thing for the breed, but certainly a boon for the breeders.
I have no opinion about what dog the Obamas should adopt. But I do hope they take the advice from Doggyspace.com and start their own blog on behalf of their new pet. In that case, I'd like to formally offer my services as Official Presidential Canine Blog Facilitator - or whatever Obama calls his other bloggers-for-hire. Certainly there are funds in his coffers to pay me. And I'll even promise to appease Sarah Palin by only blogging when dressed in street clothes.
Of course I haven't been the most avid Obama supporter. But, then, I certainly wouldn't be the first person to be won over to the Obama camp by the promise of cash.
I'm not quite sure what to talk about since for the last two and a half years, everything we've said or done or thought about has been through the window of Tuesday's election. It seems rather anti-climatic that when the sun came up this morning it was in the usual way, rather than, say, looking like one of those resurrection graphics on those tracts handed out by the homeless guy outside the Smithsonian Metro station, only with the visage of Jesus replaced by that of Barack Obama.
Perhaps you are celebrating today. Or, perhaps, you are annoyed. I certainly hope, whether you backed the winner or loser, you are being gracious about the outcome. I will almost sell my first-born to purchase a one-way ticket for the first moron who sneers about moving to Canada because his candidate lost.
It is, perhaps, an old-fashioned idea, but I've always had a certain amount of respect for the office of the presidency, no matter who occupies it. Granted, over the centuries we've had our share of . . . um. . .characters. And, believe me, I've been a victim of presidential policy more times than I've benefitted.
But I am in awe of the process and its relatively peaceful outcome. I am in awe of the fact that there are two people willing to risk the biggest, most public of all losses and always do so with class and dignity. For that reason, I can't hate a president (though I can pray to a merciful God for deliverance from incompetence).
I always feel patriotic when I vote. We vote right down the street in this little tiny village where everyone knows everyone. But I've voted in larger precincts and it's always the same: a certain solidarity among Democrats, Republicans or Independents (and around here we know who is whom); a sense that this is our country at its best, hanging chads and all.
What I do hate to see is the steady growth of lawyers getting involved in the process, even before the election begins. I have visions of my homey, community-run election atmosphere turning into an obstacle course of bureaucratic hoop-jumping requiring the sort of lengthy certification and approval processes that cause volunteers to get annoyed and quit, resulting in local jurisdictions having to hire election officials that, in the end, I'll have to pay for.
Actually, I am sort of keeping watch out my window because I'm pretty sure in the desperate last days before the election either Obama or John McCain promised to come over and mow my lawn. It was promised somewhere between assuring a cancer cure by 2011 and healthcare coverage for each and every citizen, funded by newly-philanthropic pharmaceutical companies, by next year. I'm pretty sure that's what I heard. The visions of a rosy future were coming fast and furious when the election was coming down to the wire.
I always enjoy election day, but I'm downright amazed by the day after. Things go back to normal and normal is good. Normal is stable. Normal is safe. Everyone talks about wanting the election to be "exciting." You want exciting? Take up an extreme sport or cover an election in a tiny South American country. I want my government to run as smoothly and quietly as possible. It's something we take for granted, a governmental transition without gunfire and no more bad tidings than between any other friendly adversaries.
Perhaps I've come to terms about what it means to be in the segment of the population that knows whatever programs are implemented by whoever is elected, we'll be paying for it; we don't make enough to take advantage of any serious tax write-offs; and we make too much to take advantage of any services offered. So it's the same-old, same-old here in the crock-pot and mini-van belt, though lately the belt has gotten considerably tighter.
If I don't sound particularly happy or sad about the election outcome, it's because I have faith in the basic structure of our government (Dirtman points out that McCain's view of the U.S. economy in the same light was the very moment his campaign "jumped the shark," so to speak.).
As much as Obama backers are convinced that Jan. 20 will be some sort of exorcism of Washington, D.C., the same system of checks and balances will be in place to make sure that even the most possessed Republican will have a tiny say in what goes on. And, if that bothers you, I've got still another kid I can sell to buy you a one-way ticket elsewhere.
There we were, Dirtman, Heir 2 and I, sitting in an auditorium listening to how we would have to go about funding Heir 2's college career. We were sitting among 75 other people who, like us, had failed to save the requisite amount of money and were now scrounging about for the financing of their child's future.
Sure we'd all read the warnings. Some of us may have even taken a stab at putting aside a little bit here and there. Some of us did, but had to dip into it for whatever reason. We were not sitting among "poor people." These were average income families.
I'm sure a financial planner would have scolded us for having not planned for this back when our children were born. These days there is an angry financial planner screaming in my brain constantly. I call him Al.
Was it so much, Al sneers, to stash several thousand away every year if it meant peace of mind after your son's high school graduation?
What was that, Al? Several thousand? A year?
Ummm. Yeah. Several thousand per child per year. Average college costs are over $120,000. Maybe you should have thought of that before you selfishly had that kid in the first place.
Oh and, by the way, while you're at it, you need to save up six months' salary in case you're put out of work...scratch that...make it nine months considering the current job market. Oh, and don't forget retirement because you don't want to be a burden to anyone, do you? And these days company insurance plans don't cover every possibility so either subsidize what you've got or save up for whatever isn't covered.
Now don't forget your insurances: Life insurance in case you die and long term care insurance in case you live but feel like dying.
Al, umm...you do know that most of us only make about $65,000 household income. That doesn't leave all that much for . . . today.
Then your job is to increase that income - something you should have thought about long ago when you made stupid choices like family over working overtime. This is your time of life to work and sacrifice, not go on vacation or eat whatever you want or wear new clothes. I'd suggest a second job.
But, Al, I've already got a second job - it's called housework.
Oh, come on. Everyone has housework. Delegate! Multi-task! Work harder! Be honest - you haven't been the thriftiest person have you?
Well...
Have you? You've eaten out? You have cable television? You've gone to first-run movies?
Well, yeah . . .
Ah-hah! So, all those things add up. All those weekends you wasted taking the kids to museums and then out for fast food, you could have been working and stashing that money away. I notice you have some free time between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. that could be put to better use. Then, of course, there is another way to increase your income.
What's that, Al?
Education. Go back to school.
If I could afford to go back to school, Al, I could afford to put my kid through school.
It's immaterial to me who makes the money, so long as someone is bankable enough to make my advisory skills necessary.
But what about 'living in the now,' Al?
The what?
You know, 'the now.' That's supposed to be the healthiest state of mind. How am I supposed to 'live in the now' when 90 percent of my income is going toward a future I can't even be sure will exist?
I don't know what you're talking about: The Now . . . sounds like psycho-babble to me.
You know, Al. I think that's why the whole world is about to have a nervous breakdown: The place to be is The Now, yet the social and cultural system is set up to keep us constantly living for the future. You wouldn't happen to have a sideline business selling insurance, would you Al?
Hey - I've got a kid to put through college . . .
Two years ago I posted a column here about my mother and her beans. During the oil crisis in the 1970s, my mother's method of protecting us from the economic collapse she was positive would transpire was to buy tons of dried beans.
I am quite sure any day now that John Edward will call me up to tell me he's channeled my mother, who is pushing aside all the other spirits just to say, "I told you so." (She will also add, as she's fading away, "...and get that hair out of your eyes.")
I come from a long line of wary, frugal women. My grandmother, having been widowed in the midst of the Great Depression, raised six kids on her single income as a milliner. My uncle swears they "never knew there was a depression."
My grandmother's method of feeding an army on a tight budget was mixing pasta with just about any vegetable you can imagine or, as you might expect, any legume she had hanging about the house. In my family, dried beans are heirlooms.
My grandmother's real secret weapon was a legendary cabbage dish made in a huge lasagna pan. I know it featured breadcrumbs and was baked in the oven. But the amazing thing about this dish was its ability to expand in your stomach and make you feel full. I will have the decency not to mention the aftermath of such a fibrous meal, but it was good - well, it wasn't horrible. I never watched the creation of this dish or got the recipe, to the relief of the rest of this household's residents.
I have my own tricks of culinary frugality. When we homeschooled the Heirs we were a single income family on a civil servant's pay, so economy was a way of life. Back then our "vacations" were contingent on where the Commonwealth of Virginia decided to send Dirtman for a conference and "eating out" meant opening up a cooler in the back of the car and having a roadside picnic. I recall one trip to Pennsylvania where Dirtman, the Heirs, my brother, my nephew and I all shared the same hotel room paid for by the state during a national soils conference. We ate out of a cooler full of sandwiches. The big feature of the trip was the swimming pool and that the room had cable featuring Cartoon Network.
In frugal mode, the first thing to go is cold cereal, which is a financial black hole. Cold cereal and milk evaporate in this house. So cold cereal is replaced by rolled oats, stone ground oatmeal and farina, all bought in bulk. Milk is mixed with dried milk in a 1/1 ratio. This practice has drastically reduced the traffic in the kitchen at ten o'clock at night and also reduced Dirtman's waistline.
Like my mother and grandmother, a lot of the money-saving methods I used back then stayed with me when our finances loosened. We continued to buy in bulk and scratch cooking continued simply because it tastes better. A lot of my grandmother's thrifty recipes are now featured in tony Italian restaurants for not-so-thrifty prices and so I've always been able to entertain without breaking the bank.
I will admit that some of my more radical ideas from back in the day have been banished by mandate from our table forever. I was forced to vow never to serve a casserole featuring TVP (texturized vegetable protein) ever again. Deer and rabbit have also been banned. And I'm not permitted to forage for greens anywhere but an officially designated garden (women of Italian extract find it difficult to walk anywhere without scanning the countryside for edible greens. It's in our DNA and a great comfort to know that, in a pinch, we can always resort to grazing).
So far I've managed to disguise the increase in bean consumption. I don't think anyone has caught onto the fact that what I present as "dip" is, in fact, bean dip - is, in fact, (though I'll deny it if mentioned in front of Dirtman or either Heir) hummus. "Hummus" is considered something only eaten on the west coast by liberal nut cases. That innocent can of chick peas has absolutely nothing to do with hummus.
Meanwhile, I surreptitiously stockpile my bags of dried beans for when things get really bad. So everyone knows where to come when they're starving and, of course, they are more than welcome. So long as I can serve from upwind.
Things around the Jackson household have been pretty tense lately as we near the finalization of our bankruptcy. This general aura is not helped by the daily reminders of doom and gloom predicted in the news.
My usual response, in the good ol' days when my backbone and ego was still intact, used to be a forceful command of, "Enough!" as I'd snap off the television and come up with some ridiculous scheme that, while most likely unable to be executed, at least got everyone out of the funk they were in and thinking outside the box.
But, frankly, I'm exhausted. So you can understand why it's harder these days to channel my inner Pollyanna. But channel her I do, even though right now, every penny must be accounted for, every expense justified to the world at large, every thing we do or say judged through a filter called "bankruptcy."
Naturally our finances past and present are under scrutiny. This is a grueling process. There may be some people who are blasé about such a rigorous procedure if the payoff is that they "get away" with their debts. But if you have a shred of a conscience, this is a painful and degrading exercise. Old wounds are opened and all your vulnerabilities laid bare to the judgment of people you've only just met. I never vomit, but I did - twice - the bathroom thankfully near. I rarely cry, but I did.
Perhaps the fact that my nerves are wound so very tight, now, several days later, a new emotion is creeping in as news of the economy sinks in: anger.
When our bankruptcy becomes final we will be picking up what's left of our life and trying to piece together some sort of future for ourselves. I accept this and, as I usually do, have found a way to be happy about it. Maybe that's just nature taking its course in helping me to survive or maybe I'm just too damn stubborn to let something as prosaic as money get the best of me. I've always fancied at least martyrdom or at best old age as my ultimate downfall.
I was really beginning to feel myself in union with the financial world as one by one the blocks of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG came tumbling down. I was all set to sing "Kum-Ba-Ya" with their executives; to call them "Brother;" to offer them my shoulder to cry on as they contemplated the mistakes they'd made that I was sure must be tearing them up considering those mistakes led to the domino effect to end all domino effects.
Only when I called, no one was home. They'd all headed off on junkets to spiffy spas in California or to spend their $14 million severance packages. I'm getting the feeling accountability is not a requirement in the higher tax brackets and I can't help being just a little bitter about it.
Yes, I'm also being bailed out and I'm thankful that this option is open to me; that there are no longer things like work houses and debtors' prisons where my family and I would suffer a Dickensian fate, only without the happy ending or cute ruffled wardrobe. I am grateful every day that, in spite of everything, I can still watch the seasons change on the Blue Ridge mountainside; can still be nuzzled by all six of my dogs at once; can still be doubled up in laughter every single day during dinner with my sons. I take nothing for granted anymore and am fully aware I enjoy these things only through the accidents of birth and time.
I can't help but wonder, though, when your income is in the millions and you have a severance package in the multi-millions, can you even fathom what thousands - millions now, perhaps - of people are going through down here at the ground beef and potatoes level? As you receive your massage or putter along in your golf cart, what do you think of people like me, or do you at all? Are we all just a "consumer base" that should have been more responsible for ourselves? Do you even make the connection between people like me whose bad decisions led to personal bankruptcy and people like you whose bad decisions led to corporate bankruptcy - and global instability?
I know it's selfish and impossible and probably undeserved, but I need to see you as contrite and repentant as I am. And I think I need to see you cry.
