Mountains Made Low

I got back, on Saturday, from a two-day excursion to the Hocking Hills, where I’d rented a cabin for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for my family. I got there and checked in on the evening of the 24th, and my parents arrived around 1 (AM!), after attending the “late” (8:30pm) service at their church. My sister, brother-in-law, and the kids arrived around 5 on Christmas day, after spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my brother-in-law’s family. We did the gift exchange (best of this year: two positively ancient books from Mom and Dad; still didn’t top last year, though I’m not sure that anything ever can or will), watched a movie, and ate the traditional Christmas French toast on Saturday morning; then we went for a brief hike at Ash Cave, as a group. (It’s nigh impossible to go to the Hills and not hike at one of the caves, or Cedar Falls.)

Then, of course, we all loaded up and went our separate ways: Me back to Fremont, my sister and brother-in-law back to Nashville, and Mom, Dad, and the kids to Wooster where the kids are spending the week, as they do between Christmas and New Year’s every year.

It was a pleasant couple of days (except, of course, that the cold I got was NOT on my Christmas list).

Here’s the thing, though. My sister’s kids are growing up; they’re 12 and 10 now, in the 6th and 5th grades, and those are interesting ages, because they’re now pretty well along into developing their own personalities, likes, dislikes, quirks, twitches, and — most importantly for this story — senses of humor, which I’ll come back to.

This kind of makes me sad, because while I’ve been the one declaring loudly for the past year or so to anyone who would listen that they’re not little kids any more, I realized this past weekend that they’re fast turning into real people — real people whom I like, whom I love, but whom, because of time and distance, I don’t really know any more.

But it kind of made me happy, too, because of one gift I got from my sister’s family — a gift that my sister was quick to point out that the kids had picked out for me. This particular gift shows that the sense of humor — off-the-wall and outlandish as it may be — that our family pretty much shares is coming along quite nicely in the next generation. It was simple, and funny. Only a t-shirt from Wal-Mart, but it showcased the kids’ burgeoning awesomeness nonetheless. A picture of a mushroom with the caption, “I’m a Fun Guy!”

Yep, those kids are okay!

…being that it’s only June 4, but the Christmas plans with the family are already squared away. This is a new and different feeling, since we’ve often scrambled, in years past to figure out what we’re doing for Christmas along about November or so.

I, however, took the bull by the horns this year, and it’s situated — six months early.

In 2006, we went to my sister’s place in Tennessee for Christmas Day. In 2007, the fam all came to my place in North Carolina, after Christmas (on the 28th or something similar). In 2008, we were back in Tennessee, because I now rent a tiny two-bedroom house and Mom and Dad live in a tinier two-bedroom apartment.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a “Tender Tennessee Christmas” (c’mon — they live near Nashville, a country music reference was required). But I really don’t want to do that every year, even though they have the best house for it, at the moment. It also doesn’t make too much sense since all of their family (both my sister’s and my brother-in-law’s) is in Ohio, pretty much.

But since I don’t currently have the facilities to host such an event — the idea of seven people in my house, particularly overnight, is very humorous — I was thinking that another Christmas in Tennessee was where we were headed. So I did something about it.

Of course, I checked with the fam first. They all thought my idea was a good one. So I booked it.

We’ll be spending December 24-26 in a rental cabin in the Hocking Hills. And I’ve told them all (well, not my sister, yet) that the base rental rate for the cabin will be most of my Christmas present to everyone — I’m only asking them to pay the additional, per night, “extra guests” fee; for two nights that’ll be $60 for Mom and Dad and $100 for my sister’s family. Mom and Dad are more than happy with that, and I think my sister will be, too.

So the Christmas plans are on the books at this point. And we’re staying in Ohio.

Today’s my little sister’s 32nd birthday! As big brothers will, I offer something utterly puerile in honor of the occasion.

To my sister: HappyBirthday! LoveYaBye!

To everyone else: Aren’t you glad I shared this sibling moment?

I realize that I described the “best Christmas gift ever” pretty well before, but I thought I’d post a photo here for those who haven’t seen it on Facebook. So, here it is:

In the past couple of days, I’ve written a fair amount about my family’s Christmas celebration, and I’ve been thinking about my family a lot (the extended family, the immediate family I grew up in, my sister’s little family, and what I want in terms of family for the future). And I’ve found that I’ve been rethinking some things I’ve thought before about family, particularly kids.

So here are my new thoughts. I’m thinking that I’d like to have kids; it’s not a deal-breaker, either way, but I’d like to. I think I put myself down, a while ago, as having been “talked into” having kids because I was reacting against a number of different pressures in previous relationships, and I was running from all of that.

But here’s the thing. I love my niece and my nephew, and even though I see both the upside and the downside from my sister’s perspective (and the perspectives of many of my friends who have kids), I think I want that.

Another thing that crossed my mind is that, at my age, it can be difficult to meet women who don’t have kids—not impossible, but difficult. And I’ve had a problem, in the past, with the idea of “another man’s kids.” But that’s changing, too; I can see it. Particularly if those kids’ mom is the right woman.

Probably the biggest part of this change is watching my brother-in-law with my sister’s kids. Their biological father is not in the picture, and my brother-in-law is really great with them, and he gives them the dad that they haven’t really ever had—even when their father was around. He loves them, has made a commitment to them (in the wedding ceremony) when he made a commitment to my sister, and accepts them as his own children (his parents, too, treat these kids just like all of their other grandchildren). When I see them together, I think that I could do that, too, and shouldn’t let that possibility be an obstacle in my life, either.

So there it is. I guess this is just another part of getting to know myself, huh?

Back in the summer, when I was contemplating, then planning, then completing my return to Ohio, one of the things that weighed heaviest on my mind was the fact that my parents are now in their mid-60s and both my sister and I lived 7-8 hours away driving. Not that there’s really anything going on with them that means someone should be close, but my sister and I had talked several times during my one-year sojourn in the mountains about the fact that we didn’t like both of us being that far away.

Dad retired about four years ago. He did that at the time that my sister and her kids were living with him and Mom, and he became a full-time nanny. That was, anyway, how he described it, and spent a lot of time with those kids. When they moved away, and Mom and Dad moved into town, it was a major change for Dad, and it was hard on him. But they’ve made do because of Mom’s work—she’s been managing a Christian bookstore for about 5 years or so now (she was the Assistant Manager before that).

But that’s changing.

Mom’s store is closing, a casualty of the hard times in the economy generally and for this chain of bookstores in particular. She’s been offered an Assistant Manager job at another store in the chain, but she’s not sure she’s going to take it, or going to keep it for long if she does take it. She’s eligible for full Social Security benefits on her birthday in July.

And here’s the thing: if Mom and Dad are both retired, there’s nothing really keeping them where they are. And their grandkids are down here in Tennessee. I learned on Wednesday night from my sister that Mom and Dad are thinking about moving down here when their lease is up on their apartment this summer. And I talked a lot to Mom about it today. It makes sense. These kids have been a big part of Mom and Dad’s lives, and vice versa.

Mom said today that she was feeling a little guilty about it because she knows that being closer to them was part of my reason for moving back to Ohio this year. I said that it was, but that she shouldn’t worry about it because the reason wasn’t specifically so that I would be close to them, but that someone would. If they move down here, that task is just as accomplished. And I like my job, and I’m mostly content with my life right now (Mom remarked today that I’ve been happier the past few months than she’s seen me in a while; she’s right).

So I don’t know what will happen, but I made clear to Mom and Dad both today that they don’t need to worry about me in the equation. I’m convinced that, if Mom retires, moving down here will be the best thing that they could do. I’ll even help them move. It would be good for my parents, good for the kids, and my sister and brother-in-law would just have to cope (and it would be mostly good for them, too).

My niece was around when Mom and I were talking about this today, and she said, “If you move down here, Grandma, all we have to do is convince Uncle Mike to come here, too!” She’s a sweetheart, that’s for sure. But we’ll focus on Grandma and Grandpa for now.

I’m in Tennessee until Sunday. My sister and her family moved down here 2½ years ago, and for the foreseeable future, this is where we’ll “do” Christmas (they all came to my house in North Carolina last year, but now that I’m renting a 2-bedroom house and Mom and Dad are in a 2-bedroom apartment, they’re really the only ones with a house big enough for all of us—more on Mom and Dad’s situation soon, I’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on, I guess that happens when I don’t blog for a few days and spend those days with my family instead…funny how that works).

Like I said, I left Fremont on Wednesday morning and made the 7+ hour trip down here, then spent a pleasant evening with my sister and her family. Dad was involved in the Christmas Eve festivities at their church in Ohio, so they couldn’t leave on Wednesday. Instead, they left at about 3 am on Thursday.

Christmas morning, the kids got up—my nephew was awake at 5:30, my niece being two years older and slightly more jaded about Christmas morning slept til 7:15. Neither kid, though, felt the need to wake up the grown-ups right away, even though my sister was asleep on the couch in the living room. The kids knew the deal. Early in the morning, they were allowed to open their presents from Santa; they had to wait for Grandma and Grandpa to open their presents from the family. So open their Santa presents, they did. Not waking any adults until my niece woke up my brother-in-law to help her take her American Girl doll out of the box.

I slept til about 8. Then we were all awake, the grown-ups began consuming prodigious amounts of coffee (we’d all been up until about 3), and we made breakfast. Mom and Dad arrived at about 10, raising the head-count in the house to 7. We ate breakfast, then opened family presents. The kids’ big present from their parents this year built on their big parents present from last year: last year they got the Wii, this year they got Rock Band (my brother-in-law is a drummer, so this is right up his alley, too, and he’s discovered that putting the drums on the hardest setting is a lot, but really not quite enough, like really playing the drums to the songs).

The rest of the day was spent reading Chirstmas books, playing Rock Band (of course!), napping, and seeing what can be made out of the Legos I gave my nephew. And there was Christmas dinner (early afternoon), which encouraged the napping even more.

Also encouraging the napping for me was the fact that they don’t really have winter here, so I was hit by a batch of unfamiliar allergens and my body took extreme and violent exception to something in the air. Hooray! (I antihistamined that into submission—it took til this afternoon, but I think it’s worked!)

Today was mostly a bum around the house kind of day for most of us, but my sister and brother-in-law were gone all day, hitting the after-Christmas sales, doing their shopping for his family, and looking for a new outfit for my sister for Sunday.

This evening, my brother-in-law’s parents and his niece (16) and nephew (14) arrived (that’s 11 bodies in the house in case you’ve lost track). We played a spirit game of Trivial Pursuit, with teams: the two grandmas were a team, my sister and brother-in-law were a team, my niece and I were a team, and my dad and my brother-in-law’s niece were a team. They don’t any of them really like playing Trivial Pursuit with me (except my niece when she’s on my team), just as they didn’t like playing Scrabble with me earlier in the day (is it my fault that I know that ab, ma, pi, and st are all words in the Scrabble dictionary?—my first move was to play amps directly above the word bait that my dad had played.

I surrendered the guest room to his parents (my folks bunk up with the kids when they visit—it’s like a giant slumber party), and the new kids got put on the couch and futon in the family room.

This is when I decided to escape. There would have been an air mattress it it for me, but I decided that it would probably be better for everyone’s sanity if I removed myself not only from the sleeping equation but also from the 11 people, two showers, 1 50-gallon hot water tank equation in the morning. So when everyone else was getting ready for bed, I booked a room in town, and when they all went to bed, I escaped.

I felt a little bad because I think my sister’s kids were afraid that I was leaving for real, but I reassured them, and I made sure that I left a bunch of my stuff at the house, bringing only the necessities with me to the motel.

There’s really nothing planned for tomorrow, but I’m going to go back over to the house and spend the day again. We’re all staying until Sunday because my sister’s family is becoming members of their church on Sunday morning, and for the kids this means getting baptized. This, to my parents especially, is obviously a big screaming deal. I was in trouble when I had originally planned to leave today. So I’m staying, too, leaving after church on Sunday to go home.

I’m enjoying the family time, for the most part, but this evening (about two hours worth so far) of being alone with the tv on for background noise, and being able to write a little bit in the blog has also been wonderful.

And I don’t think I explicitly mentioned it, but Shelby and I kicked butt at Trivial Pursuit!