Holidays

I recall an after-Christmas sermon once when the minister talked about what it was like getting back to the regular routine after the holidays.  He said something about women had to get back to the pots and pans.  When he said this, my first thought was, “BACK to the pots and pans?  I didn’t know we’d ever left them.”  An honest mistake, I guess, for a man to make; maybe the holiday rush means we don’t cook as many sit-down meals at home, but we spend lots of time baking, not to mention making casseroles for tons of special events (does the phrase ‘bring a dish to share’ ring a bell?).

A few years ago when my niece was telling me about a guy she was dating, I made it clear the importance of having a partner with culinary talents. 

“This guy I’m dating is really cute,” she told me, smiling with a dreamy look in her eyes.

“Can he cook?” I asked, glancing over at her.

“He made Dean’s List last semester,” she offered.

“Great, that’s great,” I replied, nodding my head.  “But can he cook?”

She furrowed her brow and shrugged.  “I don’t know.  He’s a terrific soccer player, though.  He’s one of the top players in the intramural league.”

“Um-hmm.  So if you were on one of those bachelorette game shows where you get to pick a guy, and it came down a handsome, athletic, smart guy or one who was a fabulous chef, you’d take the handsome guy, right?”

“Sure, who wouldn’t?” she responded.

I patted her on the shoulder, touched by her innocence and naivety – she who was unmarred by years of marriage and countless hours spent over the stove.

“Just wait until after the honeymoon, Sweetheart, and then you’ll understand,” I explained.  She’d know soon enough what it was like for the guys to watch football on Thanksgiving while the women bustle around the kitchen.

Let’s face it:  most of the responsibility of creating the holiday atmosphere is up to the lady of the house.  The cooking, the decorating, the shopping.  Yet, men do pitch in when it comes to putting up the Christmas tree and hanging the outdoor lights.  This is an especially challenging task when our next-door neighbors have set the bar in our neighborhood for outdoor decorations, even outlining their steep roof with strings of multi-colored lights. 

“How did he get those up there?” my husband, Kevin, marveled when we first saw the display this year.  In past years, we just did the ‘white light thing’ and hung some clear lights from the porch along with a candle in each window. 

But our neighbors were raising the bar; we knew we’d have to ‘upgrade’ a bit   when Jason, our five-year-old, became totally in awe of the colorful lights on our neighbor’s house.  He asked sadly, “Dad, when are we going to get lights like that?”

So off Kevin went to Home Depot and Wal-Mart.  I took our three sons to run some errands, while he worked, not arriving home until dark.  As we drove around the curve in the road, I caught a glimpse up ahead of red and blue lights on our house.  “Wow!” Jason shouted when he saw the strings of lights lining the top of our porch and the lower part of the roof.  Our two older sons suppressed their laughter, realizing their Dad had not ventured to the very top of the roof to outline the entire thing like our neighbors.

But when Jason got inside he added, “But Dad, their house has lights all over it.”  So Kevin was off again to buy more lights, a longer ladder, and a contraption that allows you to crawl out your upstairs window and somehow reach the outer edges of your roof with a metal extending arm. 

By the time he got back, rain was falling. The roof was slippery, but he climbed up there anyway.  He sat on his butt, sliding cautiously from side to side as the rain poured down.  I called ahead to the emergency room and let them know we might be coming later.

Holidays involve a lot of sacrificing for the ones we love, and nobody does that more than parents.  In the end, it’s worth it, though, when we sit beside them at the holiday services, hearing their young voices rise with the notes of the songs; when they light candles and the flickering candlelight dances on their faces, reminding you briefly of the babies they used to be; when they bound into the living room on Christmas morning, their eyes sparkling.  It’s all worth it.

I just hate to tell my husband that our neighbors have added a Santa and his sleigh to their rooftop.

Sharon J. O’Donnell is an award-winning newspaper columnist, who specializes in  humor columns.  Since 1998, Sharon has been a columnist for The Cary News, in Cary, NC (just outside of Raleigh) and has won awards for those columns.  She has also written for Good Housekeeping, The News & Observer, and Blue Mountain Arts greeting cards. 

Sharon is a 1984 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (she used to live in the same dorm as Michael Jordan!!) with a degree in print/broadcast journalism.  Since then she’s worked in radio promotions, special events planning, public speaking, and public relations.

Her current project is a humorous book of essays about what it’s like to be the only woman in a houseful of males, dealing with a husband, three sons, and a male dog. 

Sharon also writes fiction.  In 1997, her novel manuscript, Hand-Me-Downs, was a finalist in the Heekin Group Foundation’s James Fellowship for the novel-in-progress division.  An excerpt from her current novel-in-progress, Bluebirds Fly, was published in the Sunday Reader section of The News & Observer, the Raleigh paper, in December of 2002.  In the spring of 2003, she won third place in the short story division of The Paul Gillette Memorial Writing Contest, sponsored by the Pikes Peak Writers Conference..

Since 2000, she’s taught narrative writing through week-long writing residency workshops in schools and is a writer-in-residence through the United Arts Council.  She has also done public relations consulting that has resulted in successful media coverage for various programs and events.

Jacob’s Ladder, a volunteer group she helped start in honor of her nephew who underwent a successful bone marrow transplant in 1993, won a national award called the HOPE award in 1997 for raising testing money and promoting the bone marrow registry to minorities.

She lives in Cary with her husband Kevin and their three sons ages 14, 11, and 5 (ages of this writing in late 2005).

Her Websites are www.momsofboys.org and www.sharonodonnell.com.