365 Nights Page 12
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.
I vaguely recalled in the back of my mind all that advice about how couples have to very conscientiously come together as a new and different family unit, but I didn’t wanna! I wanted to do it my way. And my way is my family and my version of Christmas and my chaos. And it really stank that I didn’t get my way. In the end, we agreed that we would open family gifts on Christmas Eve and that Santa would be wrapped. As a concession, Brad promised to wrap all Santa gifts, down to a tube of toothpaste for a stocking stuffer. This effort required a different set of wrapping paper kept hidden away under lock and key lest smart little minds think, “Hey, that’s weird, Santa has the same wrapping paper as Mom!” We’ve been wrapping Santa tediously—large and small—for the last eight years, and while it certainly is a tradition now at our house, it still feels a little . . . bit . . . off.
The pressure of Christmas and the psychotic need to adhere to what we know (even if it’s dumb and restrictive and doesn’t make a lick of sense) and to resist what we don’t know run deep in us all. Wrapping Santa . . . spending every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter at your grandmother’s house . . . decorating the Christmas tree. We all carve out our own truth in life, I guess, much like my grandparents did. Because all families are flawed and dysfunctional and often crazy—despite their picture-perfect holiday cards. And really, that is all we know. And if the flaws and dysfunction and craziness are deeply rooted in affection, love, and gentle humor—then isn’t that all that matters? And this year, we’ve added a new tradition of sorts to our house: Every night the Christmas Tree Stud and Charla Scrooge crawl into bed together and have a warm, cozy, sexy cuddle. And when we don’t, that’s when things feel just . . . a little bit . . . off.
JANUARY
New Year’s Resolutions and the Seven-Month Itch
“Brad, it’s not like I minded, but do you think it’s strange that we didn’t do it on New Year’s Eve? Isn’t New Year’s Eve like the mother of all ‘if we’re gonna do it, New Year’s Eve is the night’ night?”
“Oh, I don’t know. New Year’s Eve is so overrated,” Brad said dismissively. He continued, “When you’re standing in a mud puddle, picking at a wedding cake comprised entirely of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, it kind of kills the mood for anything but a warm bed and lots of Tylenol.”
�
�Well, New Year’s does seem like an important ‘have sex’ event,” I argued, feeling off-kilter. In the past, I would have felt obligated to have sex with Brad on New Year’s; now I’m out of whack when we aren’t having sex on New Year’s Eve. Is that crazy, or what?
“Are you kidding me?” Brad said defensively. “We have such an unbelievable sex life right now, even I’m amazed and I’m living it. Needing to have sex on New Year’s seems kind of amateurish.”
We did not have sex on New Year’s Eve. All over the world, frisky drunk people got lucky, but my husband cashed in his sex-every-day chip for some hard-earned sleep.
New Year’s Eve was rung in at a wedding. Our invitation was a bit of dumb luck, but it enabled Brad and me to continue the long-standing tradition of spending New Year’s Eve with my mom and dad (and my brother and his wonderful wife). Before you start snickering about a grown woman who still likes to ring in the New Year with Dick and the ’rents, I’d like to note that hanging out with my parents is always an upgrade for Brad and me. We travel in style, we always have a great time, and I’m one of those people who find their parents and their parents’ friends a whole lot of fun.
Last year, we ended up at a black-tie affair at my parents’ club with about forty couples over the age of eighty. We were mildly amused but also somewhat embarrassed, until my sister-in -law convinced us it was just like being on a cruise ship. We just needed to focus on our table—the Captain’s Table, of course—and no one else mattered. And once we changed our focus, my brother and I continued our long-standing tradition of our New Year’s Dance-Off, where we compete for top honors in front of a team of judges made up of parents, spouses, and me. And once again, big sister won.
So in light of the previous year’s debacle of “let’s pretend we’re on a cruise ship and it will all be okay,” a New Year’s Eve wedding did promise to be wonderfully romantic—black tie, dancing, friends, family, and a Krispy Kreme wedding cake. But it was not meant to be—cold rain of biblical proportions blew sideways into the wedding tent (yes, friends, this was an outdoor wedding in the mountains in January, and no, I don’t know what they were thinking either).
With a heated tent the size of an Olympic skating arena, a live band, and clever catering, it was an entertaining evening . . . until nature intervened. Between the cavernous party tent and the Porta Pottis was an area that collected rainwater at an alarming rate. I know what you’re thinking—black tie and Porta Pottis, just don’t mix—but these Porta Pottis were little chalets, complete with running water and a small, fogged-up mirror in which to check exactly how heinous one’s hair looked after running from the car to the church, from the church to the car, and from the car to the reception tent in sideways rain. (For the record, I did look pretty heinous with my hair frizzed out and damp strappy party shoes, but who cares what I looked like? I’m not the gal in white, and she looked terrific and amazingly dry.) On the way back from his own lively jaunt in the pouring rain, Brad made a misguided step into a mud hole so deep it sucked off his shoe. After limping around the reception with his wet pant leg slapping back and forth like a broken windshield wiper, he couldn’t wait to get home, out of his wringing wet tux and soggy wingtips, and into bed. He was sleeping like the dead before I even finished toweling off. So there was no scoring that night, but a nice little snuggle to regain body heat, and some roof-raising snoring. (Ah, love.)
On the way home, however, in the back of my brother’s “come to the Dark Side” minivan loaded with four other people, we had a backseat smooch session like we were teenagers. This, I had to admit, was not normal behavior for us. In the past it would have been a warm embrace and a meaningful peck and let’s call it a day. But it seems that touch begets touch, and regular intimacy makes everything nice. So this little high school moment was a great way to ring in the New Year—a little whipped cream to top off the already sweet holidays. In fact, intimacy every day makes everything sweeter . . . even on those occasional days when my husband takes a pass in favor of a boozy night’s sleep. But imagine the bride and groom and the pressure they will forever feel to have sex on New Year’s Eve . . . because it’s their wedding anniversary and the eve of a new year. I mean the stress of a celebration à deux.
We had entered the New Year cold, wet, and hungover—not an ideal start. So after we returned from the wedding, it was time to hit the ground running. New Year = New Me! Although this sounds inspirational and fresh, really, I was falling into a pattern often repeated. I got busy setting unattainable resolutions, again, and Brad vowed, again, not to make any at all. Brad leads his life on the straight and narrow, which means he doesn’t fall for wild makeover ideas or wacky resolutions. This makes him a wee bit of a killjoy when it comes to brainstorming resolutions that we can pick and execute together. Me? I’m bouncing off resolutions like a pinball: “Let’s give up red meat!” I would exclaim. “Let’s journal every day together!” “Let’s start a supper club!” “Let’s meditate together!” “Let’s take a landscaping class!” “Let’s give up television!”
“Hey, why don’t we just have a lot of sex?” Brad wryly suggested. Party pooper . . .
We’d had six months of sex almost every day (I’m still trying to get over that New Year’s thing), and had become the poster couple for predictable sex: mostly at night, after the kids had gone to sleep, or in earlier hours, depending on our families’ schedules, or before a date night out. Perhaps we could have pulled out a copy of the Kama Sutra looking for some inspiration to mix things up a bit. But I think we were too exhausted by our busy lives now pumped up on daily sex steroids to care, although my husband would never, ever admit it.
Since July, we had gone from 0 to 100 miles per hour in the sex department, and I worried whether it was even possible to keep things exciting and new. In the old days, PG (pre-The Gift), that something new was actually just having sex. The bitter truth now seven months into it was that I didn’t have the energy to create any huge, romantic encounters to kick things up a notch, and lead us out of the land of run-of-the-mill sex to the kingdom of earth-shattering, knock your socks off, wake the neighbors that was so awesome! That kind of encounter would be really great to have, just as having a mouthwatering three-course gourmet dinner every night would be terrifically sinful and decadent . . . but it’s just not gonna happen. Because when I suggested sex every day, I envisioned it being short, sweet, and well . . . sweet. Not long, sweaty, and labor-intensive (which kind of sounds like childbirth, actually). In our hectic lives, who has the time for that kind of creativity . . . or work?
I rationalized: Wasn’t just having sex, basic and routine as it might be, good enough? Brad certainly wasn’t complaining. It’s like the wonder of getting basic cable when you’ve had only three channels for most of your life—it’s still an upgrade, right? Besides, I had all these other resolutions distracting me . . . creating award-winning photo albums for my kids to treasure for the rest of their lives, learning how to work my new kick-butt KitchenAid industrial mixer (with so many weird attachments it could have sex with my husband), losing weight (again), and eating better (as always).
So I guess when scrapbooking and losing weight began to take up more space in my mind than canoodling with Brad, it was official. Raise the flag, folks: We had hit the seven-month itch. Intimacy is no longer interesting and I’m not really interested in making it interesting. Which begs the question, can you have too much sex? Is it like diluting lemonade with too much water; it’s not as satisfying? If you eat a pound of M&Ms, does it make you not want to eat M&Ms for a while?
Some would argue that, for men, sex seems like such a necessary physical relief that it never could be diluted. Some husbands claim that they might suffer and die from DSB—otherwise known as Deadly Sperm Buildup—if they don’t get some action. Now I’d like to know what these husbands (not mine, mind you) think might happen—would their heads blow off their bodies? Would they suffer from that other urban myth (you know what I’m talking about)? Would they s
tart bleeding out of their eyeballs? Please. On the flip side, experts contend that guys can have too much sex and girls can’t. Really? I have a hard time believing that, but this study is referencing the physical implications of having lots and lot of sex (which impacts guys’ anatomy), not the complete and utter emotional drain of having lots and lots of sex (which clearly impacts me). Intimacy every day is good; at least it has been so far. But I have to admit that it’s getting harder to do all that I have to do every day and still have enough energy to tackle a little session with Brad.
So, I decided to try and mesh my New Year’s Resolutions with my own Sexual Revolution. Since January is the month of fresh starts, of atoning for holiday sins and getting healthy, eating better, and losing weight, this seemed like a logical step. To keep me going, I set out on the path to find out just how sex could make me accomplish almost all of my goals (except for getting my kids’ scrapbook done). Was it possible that daily sex could make me slimmer, happier, and healthier? Could I knock out all my resolutions with one well-executed nightly encounter? Well, I would find out. And in the meantime, just to be safe, I joined a gym along with the rest of America.
Being a woman with a part-time job, full-time kids, husband, house, and the unrelenting gift of intimacy . . . and now a workout appointment, I couldn’t really dive into any scholarly Ph.D.-level research. I didn’t have the staff, the grant money, the laboratory, the university library, or six years of free time to find willing participants to pull levers, get wired up, and answer copious amounts of questions. Instead, I had a mom’s best friend: Google, for online research; a DVR, to capture those three-minute chunks of bullet-pointed wisdom from the morning TV shows; and a husband, with whom I was having sex every day for a year (who needs lab rats?). Based on these piecemeal and hackneyed bits of research I could cull during my spare time, I discovered quite a bit: