Santa, reporting for duty.

It has been a long time since the Wilson house was visited by Santa Claus. Not as long as you might think, since I'm 30, but a decade or so...however, when Corey decided that we would stay with our yearly tradition and spend Christmas Eve in Jena, we (I) rallied the Great Ones and commenced planning. Santa did all his shopping online and shipped it directly to Great Don's office. Cydney Wilson made reindeer food and even printed and attached a little poem. It was all-hands-on-deck, and it was amazing.

Every Christmas Eve since 1994, when my Grandmother Nelle died, we have gone to church in Alexandria and to dinner afterward. We've changed churches through the years according to the schedule. We added my dad's best friend in his bass club, Mr. Bill. We've changed restaurants. First it was the Bentley Hotel, until my mother impaled a baked potato on a fork and waved it in the air as the final declaration that the service was terrible and we would not be returning. We went to Outback for ten years, until Mr. Bill and my dad threatened to whip ass when we waited two hours for our food. Now we go to Cajun Landing, which is suitable, but not preferred.

Every year we have to leave at 4:30 to make it to church and get good seats for the 5:30 mass. Which means everyone has to be dressed and ready by 4 PM, so that we can take these pictures. This year was the first in sixteen years of family tradition my father was not giving my sister the silent treatment for making everyone late.

Landen would be repeating this face Christmas morning and would be sent back to bed to collect himself. I think he was mad because he wanted to hold Murphy.

And then his spirits were lifted because he got to hold me. They picked out their own Christmas outfits, by the way.

Dixie stayed home and watched Murphy while we went to church.

Please note, as is the custom, Murphy's wittle face in the picture. He does not like to be left out of a shot.

Christmas traditions vary among families. I know we do things differently than the boys are used to, but it did not seem to throw them for a loop. We only open one present on Christmas Eve, the pajamas you'll wear that night. Before this year, it's always been Cydney and me in matching outfits, dating back to the year of her birth. Actually, my mom and my Aunt Jean used to give my cousin Reynolds and me matching pajamas before Cydney was even born. This year, I bought matching jammies for the boys.

I know, it makes me all weepy too.

Then they wrote a letter to Santa to set out with the milk and cookies he was getting - homemade chocolate chip and teacakes - on the special plate and mug Great Clare bought special for Santa this year. The letter said "Dear Santa, Enjoy your milk and cookies. Love, Jake and Landen."

When Cydney was little, a friend of hers always used to give us bags of reindeer food, to sprinkle out for the reindeer to snack on while Santa dropped of our presents. It had sparklies in it, to attract the reindeer to it. Me, I would want something to drink if I was a reindeer, but no one encourages that. Cydney even went so far as to sweep off the sidewalk before the morning, so the reindeer food would look eaten.

And then Great Clare, who somehow retains an Avoyelles parish accent that she can present upon command despite thirty years of living in Jena, piled everybody up in the bed so she could read "The Cajun NIght Before Christmas." Cydney, Dad, Murphy and Dixie are also sitting in the queen-size bed. 



After we put the boys to bed, Dad, Cydney, Corey and I loaded up in TWO vehicles and went to Dad's office to unpack and assemble Santa's loot. Since we open all our presents on Christmas morning, Santa leaves all his gifts unopened and arranged by the Christmas tree. Two hours later, we had put this out on the living room couch. The tree looked like that when we went to bed.

A disclaimer before I start this: the shit that 7 and 9-year-old boys ask Santa for is not very expensive. Therefore high quantities are provided. I remember how, as a child, the quantity of my Christmas gifts from Santa and my parents decreased and my desires grew more complex and expensive. Corey told me it was ridiculous once he saw it all out, having not been here to endure the ordering and tracking of all of it. It's how Santa gave to me. It's how I want to give to mine.

Landen: a bike, Paper Jamz, Nerf machine gun, Transformers, movies....

Jake: a big-ass Star Wars thing, Paper Jamz, a Nerf rifle, Transformers, Legos, movies....

There is a video of this. There is also video of us waking the boys up at 7:30 and sending Landen back to bed because his appreciation of his Santa stuff was in the negative numbers when he first woke up. He wanted Santa to bring him the Nerf rifle, until he realized the Nerf machine gun was automatic, and then all was right with the world.



The hands-down winners of the Christmas giving are the exact Harry Potter wand replicas Corey and I gave the boys - Draco Malfoy for Jake and Neville Longbottom for Landen. They've been sleeping with them since they opened them Christmas morning. My parents got the boys a tent. When everybody is visiting, we run out of sleeping room. The solution to this was to get a tent that would fit in the living room, and some big plush sleeping bags. Check and check, Great Don and Great Clare. After we put it up Saturday night, they barely came out of it until we took it down Monday afternoon.

Their sleeping bags have their names embroidered on them, and they also got little lantens to keep in there. Roughing it means they had to watch Despicable Me eighteen times on the portable DVD player. It's clearly so hard to be an Allbritton boy.

The boys did beautifully through Christmas. The only tears shed in our family at Christmas were mine, and I take that as a blessing. Each of them lit a candle and said a prayer for Erin before Christmas Eve mass. At their appointment with their therapist yesterday, Jake said he didn't get sad about his mom at Christmas and Landen said he was more happy than sad when he remembered Christmas with his mom. She said they're both really happy right now, and this is what she was hoping for once their dad got home. They were both open and talkative in their last session with her, which is sometimes hit or miss. Getting him home just in time for Christmas has been the most joyous distraction from what had the potential to be a very empty holiday.

My Homecoming King: A Photo Essay

"Reunited" is not to be confused with "reintegration." There's so much to new-learn or re-learn about each other - how to work the washer and dryer, what Jake's current favorite sandwich is, Corey's new slang. This is not about reintegration. This is about the day (Saturday) that we picked the paterfamilias up from the designated armory and brought him (and three duffles, two packpacks and a computer bag) home for good. 

That morning was a little stressful because the bus left Camp Shelby with the soldiers an hour or more earlier than scheduled, so we all had to get up earlier and get dressed quicker and we made it to the armory to wave our signs with about ten minutes to spare.

You can't tell, but mine was glittered.

When he got off the bus, walking up to greet us.

I let the kids hug first. I'm selfless like that. And I don't want anybody rushing me to move on when it's my turn, like they stand at the door and try to hurry you out of the bathroom. This is Landen.

And Jake.

*WARNING: Public Display of Affection Following*

I had the bestest surprise in tow. Corey's younger brother Zack asked if he and his wife Brittany could come over from Florida and surprise Corey when we picked him up. I thought it was amazing that he asked instead of declared and knew that Corey would be so floored that they made the trip. We got his mama to come too. They drove all night and arrived at my house at 4:30 Saturday morning, napped a little and stood out in the cold with me waiting on the bus.

I know what it feels like to be a wife seeing your husband step off a bus into safety at the end of a year-long absence. I imagine seeing your son home safely and reunited with his wife and children is just as satisfying!

Brittany is a TROOPER and took one for the family in a big way. She's 32 weeks pregnant with a baby girl and endured eight hours in a car to come see her brother-in-law. She's also one of those people who shows no signs of pregnancy from the back. I have to make a concerted effort not to be mad at her for that.

So, what does one do with a little freedom and the comforts of home and kin? Your first day, you might have The Grumpy, be easily irritated and out of sorts. This could also be because you got schnockered with your buddies and did not sleep the night before.

You may take a shower and put on your favorite t-shirt to play some Guitar Hero with your kids and brother.

You may, for some reason your wife does not understand, CHOOSE to eat ramen noodles for lunch. 

You will definitely drink beer at whatever time of day the mood strikes you. Apparently Blue Moon is the ideal compliment to ramen noodles. 

You may wonder why your kids have two Batmobiles or how playing with your toys on the floor causes one to put their bedskirt all askew (that's actually probably me). Upon seeing you, your anxious older son may instantly stop absentmindedly rubbing his lip raw and being angry with his stepmother for no apparent reason.

Your youngest son may never stop talking unless he's using the bathroom, eating or sleeping. And you may deposit all the random items you encounter during the day on your dining room table, much to the chagrin of your wife. 

Your dog might roll himself up in your poncho liner and take long naps that way. 

You may demand your niece come over for a sleepover so all 70-pounds of her can curl up in the bed between you and your wife. It would be unacceptable for her to sleep anywhere else. 

So we're on Day Five and The Grumpy went away. We went to the boys' Christmas parties, finished their Christmas shopping, bought Corey a new car and made chili. We're still sorting through where to store all the extra stuff. 

We're all exhausted. It is 8:52 PM. Bedtime for the boys on non-school nights is 9 PM. It's been quiet upstairs for a while, and when Corey went up to their room to check, he found that the boys had put their pajamas on and put themselves to bed. 

.....

One perfect fit

Since Corey’s been gone, I have developed The Insomnia. The causes seem obvious. It’s a story as old as time itself. Husband is deployed to a far off land where you have to carry a weapon everywhere and wife is left home to worry. That same childless wife is stressed shouldering the responsibility of raising two children upon the death of their mother. At least I get a week off. I am in awe of the men and women who do this every day with little or no help, because I need the week off to do the parental things I do not have time to do on my week on and to get ready for the next week I have them. We should be throwing money and resources at single parents to help ease this stress.

I’m down off my soapbox.

Our story, Corey’s and mine, is very tangled and complex. One that started at a young age and was volatile from the beginning. I did not want to start dating him, because he was the best friend I had and I knew he was limited in his relationship abilities. It stimulated me to flee the state to escape our traumatic breakup and the subsequent destructive decisions I was making as a result. My friend Kiyana teased me all that time that every guy I was attracted to resembled him, all those years we were apart. I made some good relationship decisions, non-permanent as they were. His story of what he was doing while we were apart is not mine to tell.

I knew all along that we would meet again, and that we would grow old together. I thought it would be when I was much older. I thought I would find a partner and have a family and through some tragedy or dissolution, we would find our way back together. As the events actually unfolded, people were hurt and lies were told but eventually, I think, we both reconciled what we had done and made amends to those we hurt. We honestly could not help it. It was immediate and consuming, and some of the details are secrets we share with only each other.

The initial reconnection was occasional emails catching up on life, which turned into how we had failed each other when we were younger. There was a line that could not be crossed and we respected that line. There came a time when it was okay for phone calls, and then we decided to meet for lunch. We met at a Chinese restaurant near his office, and when I saw him, it was the first time I had laid eyes on him in six years. Our course was set from that single lunch hour and into the future.

It was like I’d had some kind of transplant, like a part of me that had been broken and caused a lot of suffering for myself and others was removed and replaced with a functioning, healthy, productive organ. He has been a part of me, in love, turmoil and exile, since I was fourteen years old. He was what I looked for in everyone else, the love he could not give me. So having 7,000 miles between us is why I cannot sleep.

I sent him a card about midway through this deployment. It said simply “not having you would be like not having a forehead. I'd still be able to do stuff but I'd definitely feel like I was missing something.”

I’ve written before about the abrupt and paralyzing loneliness that has washed over me at the most inopportune times. It passes and activity resumes, but the heft of those few moments has always left me shaken and unconfident. Now, there’s a trepidation about him coming home for more than a vacation. The changes the boys and I will have to make in our routine to adapt to his return as the head of our household, a post I’ve bitterly managed in his absence. The things that bothered us during his two-week leave will be permanent and require a resolution. The balance of power will shift. We will be sort of strangers to each other, sharing a love and a home and a family and a bed, which maintains a familiarity, but the patterns are so, so different.

Except that we’ve been apart before, not sharing any moments at all, for a long stretch of time. And when we were reunited, we knew to say to each other “this means we will be married.” That concession was effortless. The bond between us is so strong it has the power to reconfigure us to fit to each other, regardless of how long or wide the distance between us.

So now the sleeplessness may be the anticipation of when he’ll leave there and start his 10-day-ish journey home to us. And the moment after a couple days of relishing the joy of being together, when the four of us will look at each other and understand our adjustment period must begin. We’ll all hurt each other’s feelings and he and I will seriously disagree and stay up late to settle the issue. It is all necessary, even the insomnia, as it is a part of this path we unknowingly agreed to follow when we spoke our first words to each other in the band room at Jena High School.

My first step in accepting this loving challenge is to wash all his clothes that have been growing stale in his dirty hamper since he was home in September. This means I will violate our agreement to not do each other’s laundry (he hates the way I fold.) It must be done, because it smells like really old man in there.

Safe travels. Where there are seatbelts, use them to buckle up. I love you.
.....

Haul out the holly!

Put up the tree before my spirit falls again. Fill up the stocking, I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now! For we need a little Christmas right this very minute, candles in the window, carols at the spinet....

I may not have mentioned that I. love. Christmas. I admit that there were some years in my 20's when Santa quit coming and the quantity of my gifts drastically reduced and I was asking for housewares and linens and not fun things like gadgets and Barbies. Then small children re-entered my holiday season and lifted my Christmas spirit, which was already obnoxious, to a whole 'nother level.

My children are struggling to find their Christmas spirit. It's a tough year. We're making the best of it.

Confession: when I met the realtor to look at this house for the first time, I envisioned its Christmas regalia. It has a bannister that begs to be draped with garland finery. Sadly, I spent so much money moving into the damn thing that I have a very small Christmas decorating budget this year. I decided to start with the door. I love wreaths. Before my time in this house is over, ever room in this bitch is going to have a Christmas wreath specifically designed for it. My mother did it. Still does. Some traditions deserve to survive the generations.

I was going to do multiple wreaths and garland and lights around the door. Then I realized that I live in a cul de sac. No one "happens" to be driving by my house, and we don't even use the front door. I chose this year to make a substantial investment in a Statement Wreath. This is a wreath within a wreath with glitter and sparkles and ornaments and sticks and maybe some pinecones. You have to make a coordinated effort not to dodge it with the left side of your body to not run into it when you walk in the door. Me loves it. Please note that sad little doggy in the window wondering why his mommy is standing in the street.

I was also hugely motivated by this mantle. I've wanted a mantle for oh-so-long. This is garland with red and silver ornaments stuck in it (inspired by Pottery Barn and constructed by moi) with silver glitter bubble lights (another Wilson childhood tradition) and red glitter bows.

Corey HATES glitter. HATES it. But he left me here to do all the cleaning and cooking and fixing and hugging and kissing and decorating and shopping and wrapping so he can live with the glitter and LOVE IT.

Arkansas Emily got these lighted gift boxes in her house and I coveted them with my whole heart, as I have copied many items she's acquired during the course of our friendship. My obsession with blue china monkeys is entirely her fault. I recently scored some blue china dog bookends just like the ones she has in her kitchen. Boo-yah. So I went and got myself some lighted gift boxes (glittered) when I found some on sale. On the table is a wreath (glittered) with a curved hurricane and a battery-operated candle with red and green (glittered) twigs in it.

Corey and I dated from 1995 to 2000. That first Christmas in 2000 I was living alone in my great apartment on Kenmore Avenue and I put these big C-9 bulbs around all my windows. I would sit in my rocking chair, listen to "Please Come Home for Christmas," drink hot chocolate, stare at my lights and cry. They've been in every window of every apartment I've ever inhabited. I insist on keeping these lights as part of my Christmas decorating. The argument is that the boys (maybe just Landen) love them. So they're up in the sunroom. Please excuse The Signs That People Live Here, aka my sister's shit all over the room.

My mother started a Santa Claus collection for me. These are two of them. I only have four. I have discovered, at 30 years old, the Macro feature on my camera.

Sunday night, the three of us hauled over to the Johnsons to make gingerbread houses. I have never made a gingerbread house. My poor mother did not encourage crafts growing up. We had a tendency to make a mess and she did not encourage us to or provide us with the resources required for activities that would likely make A Big Mess for her to clean up. I once removed the finish on our formal dining room table with nail polish remover giving my young self a manicure.

We went over there so that I could make a gingerbread house for the first time in my life and the boys could play with Jed and Wyly.

This is Landen's house, which he abandoned after the roof was done and Amelia gave him a door and a window.

This is mine. I enjoyed this so much. I even made a cobblestone path. We will be doing this every year. Except Jake, who wanted no part in gingerbread house decorating. Too old or his aversion to icing? He didn't specify.

Growing up, we always had a fake tree. I loathe the process of unflattening each individual branch to make it look like a tree. In high school, Cydney and I decided that once I could drive us over to the Lowe's to get a real tree, we would have a real tree. There were some grand misadventures in the years that we did this. My mother hated it. Once in protest, she didn't water it and when we came home from DC and college respectively, it was brown and dry and dead. We bought a new fake tree after that.

While I love the look and smell of a real tree, I loathe putting lights on the motherf**ker. And then after a couple days, the bastard started drooping with the weight of my hundred-or-so ornaments. I had to rearrange some things and add some large-scale items (balls and poinsettias) to keep the shape. I love my tree. I'm paranoid that it's not going to make it through the month, though.

Putting a tree in the corner of the room is the lazy person's answer to looking like a lot of effort went into something. It wouldn't fit in front of the window with the layout of our room, which was fine by me, because then I didn't have to decorate all sides of it. The back is blank.

This has nothing to do with Christmas, but it's from this last weekend and I wanted to share it. I was not invited to the He-Man Woman Haters Club slumber party. Boys only. 

And yes, they are sleeping on hot pink sheets. I protest my exclusion.

.....

Are you my mother?

When Jake and Landen and Corey and I moved into an apartment together and the boys got a room, I brought this book home from my parents’ house and put it in their bookshelf. It was one of my favorites when I was little. When Erin died, I removed it. It was going to be hard enough for us all to put one foot in front of the other without wobbling or toppling over. I did not want them to see the word “Mother” on the spine of a book or read about a bird that lost AND THEN FOUND his mother.

Corey Daniel Allbritton loves his children and me most in the whole wide world. One of his strengths is that he shows us every day who were are to him. But as Corey prepares to make his journey home to his family, I have been reflecting on where we three wanderers have been in the seven months since Erin died – who we were as individuals and as a family then, and who we are now, these people he is coming home to. They are two children waiting painfully for their parent, and I am seeking to find my appropriate place in this family. Am I their mother?

I get confused reconciling the difference between mom and mother. Best I can tell, a mother is who creates and births a child. For the most part, we hope our mother is also our mom – who tends to our needs and kisses our boo-boos. Remembers where we were every second of every day and catalogs the funny things we’ve said along the way. Takes pictures of every school play and baseball game. Knows the injury behind every scar and how she felt when we got it. Runs interference when we piss our dad off. Goes without sleep when we are sick and hurts when we hurt. If it so happens she cannot finish her job as our mom, she will make sure the people who will care for us know how to give the second-best kisses, take the second-best pictures and say the second-best right words.

I knew when Corey left for Iraq that Erin would go to heaven before he came home, and that the boys would be left in my care. Knowing for as long as I did, I got to watch them, to STUDY them, to find predictors for what their grief and ultimate resolution to the death of their mother would be.

Landen is a pretty typical boy, where extraordinary and exactly-what-you’d-expect combine to form the perfect balance of predictable and peculiar. He loves to eat, to sleep, to play, to laugh and to fully experience every bodily function available to him. He’s also very quick, smart, sly, to the point and incredibly funny. He’s an open book. He does not hide things well, least of all his feelings. He feels physical and emotional pain immediately and intensely and shows it. He likes alligators not girls, cars not church and builds helmets and weapons out of his Tinkertoys.

He was four when I met him and when his mother got sick. Whether it was his youth or his innocence of the negative, he was least affected by Erin’s deterioration. His understanding of her illness was what he could visually observe, and to him the seriousness of her illness was that she struggled to walk. And yet, we could all predict that this child, who wanted to be in whatever room his mother was in at almost all times, would be the first to recover from her death. He first broke about a month after she was gone, but recovered quickly and then had a bad month before school started. He’s doing great right now – recalling events and moments with his mother with laughter – but I think he will struggle again after the first of the year, when his birthday rolls around. His seventh birthday was the last one she celebrated. Turning eight without her is going to be difficult.

Jake is a yes-means-no boy, very tender, brilliant and utterly complex. He requires more effort than Landen, who is very affectionate. We have to seek Jake and give him attention, because he does not make his needs known as his brother does. Even though no one was talking to him about it, Jake could sense how sick his mother was and how dire her circumstances. I only now realize how much he understood. Jake is precise but not open, controlled yet temperamental and aloof but aware. He wants so much to be too tough to cry, and often his sadness is released as anger. Jake idolizes his dad and Erin’s dad, and his awe of them inspires his interest in history and combat and soldier-y things.

Jake has struggled since the first day he learned his mother was going to heaven. He would fight about going to visit her in her final days, not because he did not want to be near her, but because he did not want to be exposed to the alien in his mother’s dying body. That was not his mom, and no one could not make him see that frail patient as Erin Allbritton. She died right before his ninth birthday. We had a big party at one of those places with all the bouncy houses and every kid in his class came. He ran and he played and he opened all his presents, the model of good behavior, which is unexpected when he’s over-stimulated. We all remarked at how well Jake kept it together and seemed to enjoy his birthday. What fools we were. I look at those pictures now, and I see pain all over him. He was hurting so much, and it is only studying him through a lens that I can see the damage.

I knew that Jake was going to resist me and Landen would be the first of the two to accept me as more than a stepparent. I remember the come-to-Jesus we had in Izzo’s Illegal Burrito, following the fit in the drive thru at Wendy’s the night before whereupon Landen told me that he was mad at me for not being his mom. What I said then was that I wasn’t their mom or Erin Allbritton. We weren’t that similar and I would be doing the wrong thing to try to be her or to take her place. All I could be was me. I asked them to please not be mad at me for not being Mom, but to please tell me whenever they thought I was not being the very best Nell I could be, because they deserved the very best Nell. And they’ve lived up to that promise. Children keep us humble and honest, for sure.

I’ve heard Landen refer to me as his mom. My sister says he’s said Mom in reference to me before. He does not correct people who do not know us when they call me his mom, though I do. He’s even asked if he could call me Mom. Jake corrects “mom” with “stepmom” before it’s all the way out of the stranger’s mouth. He does not like me to exert my dominance over him by referring to myself as his parent. He is very clear that I am Nell, and he told Landen it was weird to think of calling me Mom. I told both of them that day, a couple weeks ago, that I would never force them to call me one or the other. They should call me what they are comfortable calling me. I am who I am regardless and I love them all the same.

Jake very clearly does not want me to be his mom. I am his stepmom. He remembers more of his mom than Landen does, and he wants his mom, not his stepmom. Not to say that we do not love each other very much. Jake is a child who tells us he loves us several times a day but it’s what I see more than what I hear that give me the confidence I need to parent him. A couple weeks ago I met Jake, Landen and their grandparents at church for Landen’s first confession. I saw them when they walked in the door, though it took Jake a minute to find me. He had seen me that morning, but when his eyes met mine he broke out in a broad smile and a fast walk to get to me and hug me.

Am I their mother? The answer is no. Their mother was Erin, stoic and strong with piercing eyes and a general flourish about her whole entire self. They have a mother, and she is sending them bursts of love from heaven. I am as little or as much their mom as they need me to be. That is not to be confused with being as much mom as they want me to be, for who wouldn’t rather their mother than their stepmom? In this period of grief and discovery, I straddle the line between Mom and Stepmom, and always remind them who is their mother.

Do you know who I am? she said to her baby. Yes, I know who you are, said the baby bird, you are not a kitten. You are not a hen. You are not a dog. You are not a cow. You are not a boat, or a plane, or a Snort. You are a bird, and you are my mother.

.....