Last week Josie had her Christmas Concert at School. She goes to a private school so they still have Christmas Concerts, not Holiday Concerts or Winter Concerts. At her school they are rather inclusive, as the concert involves not only Christmas carols but traditional Russian dances, Mexican folks songs and dances, drum compositions, Hanuka songs and a Kwanzaa song or two. The darn thing lasts for weeks.
As I walked into the church the school Principal greeted me. "You don't have too many of these left, do you?" she asked. "No," I replied "But I've been coming to them for a long time."
Back when Tyler started preschool, I loved the Christmas concerts. That was in 1986. They've gotten stale on me.
I found a place to sit that had decent light and whipped out my needlepoint. I had a small piece that I worked on throughout the show. The gal next to me, a tall, lovely, perfectly groomed young mom, played tetris on her cell phone the whole time. I used to love tetris but I had to give it up because it made my painting arm sore.
The next night, Jay had a basketball game. It was fun but it was cold, late and the Mavericks sucked. Saturday afternoon they played again and they played so well it was hard to believe they were the same team. We were up by twelve when I had to leave the gym to take Zack to work. After I dropped him off I had a choice; turn left and catch the rest of the game, then go to evening Mass at Basilica, or turn right and go home, put on my jammies and bake some Christmas cookies.
Everyone who knows me knows what I did.
I have a very low tolerance for socializing. Two and a half nights out in a row are waaaay too much for me. Even though I knew there was a party later (my lovely niece turned 21) and that all the rest of my family would be there, I just didn't have it in me to be out in public any longer. I had to get back to my lair or go mad.
I don't know if there's a term for the opposite of cabin fever. All I know is I suffer from it, constantly. I'm not agoraphobic, I have no problem being out and about. But if I do it for too long or too often, I get jumpy. I crave solitude like a vampire craves blood.
Sunday, Jay and I dropped Zack off at work then joined Mr. Curry for brunch at the Uptown Bar and Grill. After that, we went to Menard's and bought a fan for the bedroom, and quarter round trim and crown molding for the two rooms with new ceilings. We didn't get home until 3:00. Jay watched football and I went to work.
I didn't notice that the phone hadn't rung all day.
Not until forty minutes past the time Zack usually calls for a ride home from work. Then it finally hit me not only that he hadn't called but that
nobody had called since ten o'clock the night before. So I checked the phone. Cordless phones are nice but they do have a couple of big drawbacks. In addition to never being able to find the things, there's the little problem of electricity. If you lose your electric power, you lose your phone. That never happened in the old days. We hadn't lost power, but somehow the phone charger had gotten plugged into an outlet that didn't work. We'd been without a phone for 22hrs. Jay checked his cell and sure enough, two missed calls from Zack.
Zack had gotten off of work at the usual time and called home. He'd called repeatedly to no avail and finally called his Dad's cell. No answer. He'd called his sister, several aunts and his grandparents, trying to find us. Finally, he walked home.
He's done it before. It's one of the most beautiful urban treks in the world; around Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet. At five miles, it's a good stretch of the legs.
But that was last summer when the sun didn't set until after 9 and frostbite wasn't a concern. On Saturday night, he had no hat, no mittens and he wasn't even wearing his heavy coat, as walking home hadn't seemed to be in the cards. At least he wasn't lonely.
At one point, he was talking to his grandma on his cell phone and she offered to drive into town and get him home.
"No thanks." he told her. "I'd rather walk home and then burst into tears and make my folks feel really bad."
By the time we realized we'd been incommunicado, he was two blocks from home. He was pretty darn cold when he got here, but he didn't burst into tears. He stomped downstairs and put on six layers of polar fleece and a hat. His plan to make us feel really bad didn't work out as well as he'd hoped, either.
I felt terrible but his Dad just said "Why didn't you take the bus?"
The next day my Mom admitted to me that part of her thought the whole ordeal was worthwhile because when Zack got home, he called her to tell her that he got home safe and that he loved her.
"Of course I love her!" he said "She offered to come give me a ride home and she lives in
Minnetonka!"
I guess I can kiss the Mother of the Year Award goodbye.
Again.
