That characteristic became a little exaggerated in later tellings.  I wasn’t ever very tough by the standards of most people in the world.  And the contrast with my siblings (of whom, let’s admit it, our older sister was actually the toughest) helped my toughness profile considerably.  But whatever my success in staring down pain, it did instill in me an impatience for whining and theatrics when it comes to plain old suffering.  I haven’t always been successful in passing these prejudices onto my kids, but it’s not for lack of trying.

Anyway, last week I had to take Rex and Molly to the hospital for some blood work.

They both have some serious food allergies and it was time for an analysis to see if they’re getting better or worse.  We scheduled it on a Saturday so Macy wouldn’t have to do it, as I have an easier time restraining screaming children through painful medical stabbings than she does.  As we left for the hospital, Lucy came out and told Molly not to be scared, that it’s “just a pinch and then you giggle.”  Molly is two and a half.  She had no idea what was coming, but she conjured some scenario that would make her giggle.  I let her hold onto her fantasy.

“. . . Actually, Molly, it’s much more likely that you’ll scream in terror and pain when the needle enters your arm.  But yeah, you might giggle instead.”

At the hospital, Rex, who is seven, volunteered to go first, to show Molly how to be brave when a large hollow needle is stuck in one’s arm.  I went to sit in the victim’s chair and hold him in my lap, but he declined, opting to sit there all by himself as an added show of bravery.  The phlebotomist jabbed the needle into him and I took in a vicarious sharp breath.  Rex, knowing that Molly was watching, minimized his reaction and stared straight ahead while the tube running out of his arm ran dark viscous red.  In a few seconds I was holding a cotton swab on the gusher and it was Molly’s turn.

Rex was feeling a little too nervous to stick around for Molly’s turn, so he quietly excused himself.  I sat down in the chair and grabbed Molly to pull into my lap.  She said “no, Dad, I wanna sit in the chair by myself.”  I knew she couldn’t possibly mean that, so I persisted.  So did she.  But I wasn’t going to let Molly just sit in this big chair all by herself, free to flail around once the needle pierced her chubby arm.  We argued to an impasse.  She was very firm with me, and it became clear that if we were going to get the blood, I needed to let her win this one.  What would possess a toddler to do that?  The phlebotomist quietly said “well I’ve never seen this before,” as Molly climbed into the big blue chair by herself and volunteered her forearms across the padded bar.

I sat beside her, a little useless, but with my arms wrapped around her shoulders, holding both her arms for the crisis to come.  Having watched Rex, she was fully aware of what was about to happen now.  I saw Rex peek his head tensely through the doorway and then withdraw.  The lady readied her needle and I grabbed Molly’s head to turn it away from her arm, toward me, so she wouldn’t see the needle sliding into her flesh.  She shook me off and stared at her arm.  Poke.  The metal tube slid into her soft tissue.  I tightened my grip.  We all waited for the response.  Molly kept staring, and I felt a slight flex in her shoulder.  That was it.

But we didn’t strike a vein.  So the needle probed around in my two year old’s arm.  Both Molly and I stared with scientific interest as the metal pivoted around in the hole in her skin, looking for a vein.  It took around 30 seconds of feeling around, severing fat and skin, to finally hit a line.  Molly didn’t react.  Not a word, not a sigh, not a sound.  And not a hint of a movement or recoil as she watched the whole grisly process.  As the blood slid into the bottle at the end of the line, she exhaled a little laugh– just a tiny giggle.  It took a few minutes to fill the bottle, but she sat perfectly still the whole time.  Then we put on the band-aid and walked out of the room.  Rex had wandered in surprised when he didn’t hear any crying.  He and I just sort of exchanged incredulous looks as Molly toddled out under her own power.  Rex made me go back and ask if there were any treats for the victims, but there weren’t.  Then we walked out of there with two shiny new band-aids.  I almost felt a little cheated not to have had a single tear to wipe away, or even a shudder to stabilize.

I don’t know what makes a kid do that.  She could have just as easily decided to make a huge painful production of it all, and on a different day she probably would have.  But for some unfathomable reason, she decided she wanted to be tough that day.  Something made her kick me out of the chair, and made her hold in her breath when she got stuck.  I would so love to know what it was that made her do that.  But whatever it was, I tried not to overpraise it too much.  I love that she’s tough, but I don’t want her to feel like she has to be for me.  But still, now I know I got a tough kid.  It’s not the most important thing in a kid.  But I’ll take it.  Especially in a chubby two year old girl.

Tough Guy

In other words, Rex is an adult.  Okay, not a normal adult– he’s one of those hyper-competent, always-in-motion adults.  If life is a school, Rex is on scholarship, in the accelerated track.  Which is kind of unexpected, given that his parents live more at an enjoyable half-speed than full throttle.  As an adult, the high speed individual can be scary and intimidating.  But we’ve got some time to figure that out before Rex ever gets to that point.  When it’s a little kid though, it’s pretty fun to watch.

Rex doesn’t have a career to focus on, or exams to tear through, so he directs his considerable concentration on more childish endeavors. Two years ago, he took note of my ability to whistle, and he tried it himself.  Couldn’t do it.  The next day I came in on him practicing whistling.

That’s right, he whistles all during basketball games now.

He asked for a few pointers, which I gave him (having been a whistler of some note in my younger days).  Two days later, Rex could whistle.  I was pretty blown away.  Later, he noticed that his cousin Nate could snap.  Rex grilled me about technique and flexed his fingers against his thumbs over and over.  It took him two weeks of constant effort, but pretty soon, Rex could snap as well as any adult.  We found a sloppily written list of a bunch of his friends’ phone numbers by his bed one night, and he told us he was just trying to get them all memorized.  They were memorized a few days later.

The obsessions took a turn for the unsavory when he discovered his friend’s gift for arm-pit flatulence.  Rex spent the next week and a half with his arm up his shirt, just getting his reps.  I bet he hit 1,000 attempts before liftoff on that one.  But he did it, and instantly began teaching all of his cousins (for which my brother in law is still cursing me, for some reason).  Now he’s on to advanced simulated stinkering, using the back of his knee as his instrument.  It’s pretty amazing to watch.

When Rex was about two, we had a little storybook that told the story of the Three Little Pigs.  When the pig with the brick house prevailed against the wolf, all of the pigs agreed together that “Hard Work Pays Off.”  That’s been kind of a motto for us in raising our kids, especially Rex.  If he ever whines about a project, I’ll say “Rex, hard work . . . “  and he’ll half-heartedly say “. . . pays off.”  And now he’s living the motto.

We set up a basketball hoop in our driveway not too long ago.  Rex and I go out and shoot hoops together pretty frequently, and usually end with a competitive game of HORSE.  At age seven, he’s pushing me.  So I usually pull out all the stops and start shooting from long distance, where I know he can’t compete with me.  You may think this sounds a little cruel, but you’ve never known what it’s like to lose to Rex.  It’s not like just throwing a game to some kid or something.  Anyway, after a few easy victories, I noticed that Rex was spending more time on his own out in the driveway.  A week or two later, for our next game of HORSE, Rex was ready.   I got him on a few straightforward jumpers.  Then Rex lined up at an angle behind the backboard and swished it. H for me.  He stood behind the base of the standard, eight feet behind the board,  threw it high up in the air . . . and swished it.  O.  He climbed up a slope under the neighbor’s cherry tree and tossed a shot through a fork in the branches.  R.

The assassin

He skunked me.  With a new repertoire of trick shots from out of nowhere.  He figured out that he couldn’t beat me straight up, so he just put in the work to master a bunch of shots he knew I couldn’t make.  He must have worked on those shots every day.  Since then, I’ve upped my game, found a few tricks of my own to stay competitive.  But man he makes me work for it.  Still, the extra hours shooting with my eyes closed, and through the aspen branches will be worth it.  Hard work pays off, right?  Rex taught me that.

I’m glad I read the box before throwing it out. It came with an important warning:

In case you can’t read it: “WARNING: This product contains (a) small magnet(s). Swallowed magnets can stick together across intestines causing serious infections and death. Seek immediate medical attention if magnet(s) are swallowed or inhaled.”

Now I’m honestly kind of tempted to have Rex swallow these darts to see if they stick together through his intestines.

Awesomest warning ever.

On the day before Christmas, the day Rex turned two years old, he and I went out all bundled up to deliver small gifts to our neighbors. Few people were home that morning, so after letting him knock on each door for a while, I’d hand him the small bundle of treats to be left there, and let him place them on the doorstep. The first time he did this, he seemed hesitant to just leave the treats there for absent people— treats that might be greatly enjoyed by a two-year old who was entirely present. Nonetheless, he did as he was asked, stood up, and off we went to the next house. As we rounded the walk from that first house though, he stopped and turned to view the goodies once more and quietly said “Bye-bye tandy.”

This sad scene was played out three more times that morning. At each house, Rex would get a bit sad that these treats were being abandoned, as if to express to me what a good home he’d be willing to give them. And each time, he submitted, surrendering the candy to another impassive doorway. It made me sad that today, his birthday and the day before Christmas, I was forcing him to march around in the cold and give all these delicious treats to other people, and that once we were finished there would be nothing left in our bag for him. But we had to get them all delivered, so we soldiered on through the snow.

Finally, Rex had delivered everything, and our bag was empty. The series of sad farewells had taken a small toll, and I wished I could explain to him the beauty of giving, and how much we get back when we give to others. That wasn’t really a lesson he could understand.

As we walked home, I noticed a crowd in the street ahead of us, surrounding a car stopped in the middle of the road. When we got closer, I could see that the car was a convertible, and it carried a very jolly Santa Claus perched on the back seat as if in a parade. Santa passed out presents to the group of kids gathered around the car, and then drove forward down the street. Another group of people had assembled a few houses down, and Santa pulled up to them just as we did. Rex was excited to see Santa (as long as we kept a good distance from the big red scary guy), and got pretty chatty, talking about him. Santa had presents for all the children of that street, pre-arranged by the parents who had invited him.

When he finished with them, he looked over at us– the strangers on the street, standing and smiling at the display of neighborhood cheer. He reached into his sack and pulled out a little bag tied with ribbon– stuffed with cookies and a big candy cane. He tossed the bag to me and smiled, and then the car drove off to the next house.

Rex took the bag from me and started talking about cookies and candy canes. As soon as we could get it open he got several into his mouth at once. As we walked home, I thought about the nice little lesson that was probably lost on Rex. Still, it meant something to me. After a whole morning of giving that involved no small sacrifice for a two-year old, Christmas delivered on its promise. Santa came, and we received in proportion to what we had given. Maybe someday I’ll tell him this story when he can understand it. But right now, there’s no lesson he understands better than candy canes and cookies from Santa himself.

(All grown up, and still just as excited to see Santa)

A lot of recently returned LDS missionaries will tell you that the best Christmas they’ve ever had was one on their mission. 10 out of 10 of them are lying. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mission, and was VERY successful. No, I’m not going to tell you how many conversions I had because that would be tacky. We’ll just say it was 5.1 times the area average.

My first Christmas as a missionary found me working as the designated “Car Fleet Elder,” due to the fact that my rotten companion, who was a few months away from going home, refused to do missionary work. So they put him out to pasture in the mission office, and I had the misfortune of having to tag along with him.  I have warm memories of vacuuming floor mats and changing oil during the ’99 holiday season. Elder B., if you are reading right now, I want to thank you for ruining 3 months of my life. But I digress—I started this post with the intention of talking about my best Christmas memories and we got off track.

The thing I remember most fondly about all my childhood Christmases is the traditional routine just preceding the grand unveiling. Christmas Eve brought a big Thanskgiving-like dinner, a reading of Luke 2, and the viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life. Afterward, all 6 kids would sleep in the bedroom of the oldest sibling still at home. I spent most of the night restlessly watching the digital alarm clock crawl from the still-exciting 12:00’s to the bleak 4:00’s, then drifted off before the 5:00’s popped up. I would be shaken awake at 6:30 or so to the squeals of delighted older siblings.

We then went upstairs, each wrapped in our own family-made quilt. We were restricted to the living room while Mom and Dad finished setting up in the family room. I disliked this part because of the painful anticipation, but also because I disliked the living room in general. Nothing good ever happened there for a special little boy afflicted with A.D.D. Piano practice, hour-long Family Home Evening lessons, meetings with a creepy old lady trying to motivate you to stop wetting your bed by giving you Strawberry Shortcake stickers, and one-on-one parental conversations about awful topics like puberty. These were the ugly ghosts haunting that living room, and I had no use for the place.

After an eternity of 10 or 15 minutes, we were allowed to enter the room of lights and lucre. For some reason our presents were never wrapped, but were naked in shiny, giant piles. This seems odd to me now, but I liked it that way as a kid. It was all business. Each kid’s pile was always in the same place, so we knew exactly which part of the room to sprint to without so much as a scan to see whose pile was whose. One year the folks accidentally switched my pile location (I was around 10) with my 4 year-old sister’s, and I ran right up to the little play kitchen and My Little Ponies. It didn’t occur to me that this pile didn’t belong to me. This was my spot; that much was immutable. I was baffled but managed to fake excitement about my little plastic kitchen for a good 20 seconds until a higher authority realized what was happening.

I never really knew what gifts to ask for, so the folks had to wing 80% of my presents. I recall Ryan being the same way. He just needed a few things from Deseret Industries to replenish his perpetually wrong-decade wardrobe. Not Davis though. No, greedy little Davis would have a typed list worth 5 or 6 times the allotted amount, requesting things from stores existing only in Paris and New York. A big percentage of my take was always a surprise, and I was usually very pleased. The biggest, best surprise of all was a guinea pig, which was awesome until he died a couple months later when I left the bedroom window open for a few hours. Apparently, all that fur and fat is only for show.

After rifling through our loot, we would play with our toys, the two sisters and Davis would try their new clothes on, then we all gorged on cinnamon rolls and orange juice. After a few hours we would head up to visit both sets of grandparents in Ogden, which we called “Hog Town” because it sort of rhymed and mostly because it seemed like a funny thing to call it.

My  maternal grandparents hand-made many of their own elaborate Christmas decorations, so their house was a lot of fun that time of year. My favorite part of the decor was a big motorized iceberg set that would lift an endless line of little plastic penguins up an escalator thing and send them sliding down to the bottom. My paternal grandparents lived in a big, funky old house near downtown. That house always felt cozy to me, and those two were good times to visit. One recurring memory of these visits is of Grandma passing around a used gallon-sized ice cream bucket full of strange, old-person cookies. I wondered what possessed the elderly to have such weird tastes and why an otherwise socially masterful woman failed to notice the bucket coming back with nearly the same level of cookies as it had before being passed through 48 people, year after year. After hours of cousin play, we returned home, played some more, then went to bed, secure in the fact that we had tons and tons of time until the resumption of school and real life.

Those are my favorite memories. Feel free to share some of yours.

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://www.dontdodumbthings.com/2009/12/21/christmas-remembrances/feed/ 16