For the last 7 years or so, my family and I have been priviledged to enjoy a tradition set up by a good friend of mine. Rather than spend money on gifts that may or may not be appropriate, or for that matter even worrying about getting the gifts, he treats his friends to dinner at some restaraunt. He provides the locale, and pays for everything, including the drinks. This makes for a very pleasant evening for all. The rest of us... we bring the gifts, more recently for the kids as we all now have at least one child. Some bring stuff for the adults, but mostly we're here for the grub...

Times are tough all around, and this has made the annual Christmas Dinner a slight bit different. Our friends have managed to get married, adopt a child, and buy a house all in one year. So this year, Christmas Dinner will be pot-luck at the new house. Chances are my friend will supply the full dinner (including the alcohol), and everyone else will bring the sides and desserts. Either way, we'll be well fed and watered...

This brings me to the " wrong " part of the title. I said in my last post I was going to be doing the Christmas cookies next year. Well, this morning I made a batch to be done for the next weekend of Christmas Dinner . I figure it'll be practice. I don't really have as good a set of presses as my mother's, but I have a few good ones that I used last year, so I'll do those. I'll bake tomorrow and if I have more time, I'll frost tomorrow as well. This will give the frosting time to harden to it's necessary consistancy. Then I'll wrap and bring. It won't be as ornaments for the trees, but the kids will like them.

I have to say that I missed the whole of the cookie making process this holiday season. I did make a round of Tollhouse chocolate chip, but that's kind of a cop-out for Christmas cookies. I usually do peanut butter blossoms (with the Hershey Kisses in the center, or a variation using Mini-Reeses cups), a batch of chocolate chip-oatmeal (from one of my mother's recipes called "cowboy ccokies"), and a batch of the Mailänderli. At least I'm giving myself some continuity for next year. I'm definitely going to color my heart out for this set, and I'm going to try to out do myself as far as range of color. Maybe I'll post when I'm done...

Time for another family Christmas party...

EDIT: added Cookies!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas.
Notice the dichotomy in the title and first sentence? I believe strongly that one should celebrate the holidays as one knows best. Political correctness aside, I will say Happy Holidays but personally I mean Merry Christmas simply because I'm not Jewish, don't celebrate Kwanzaa at home, and I certainly don't ring in the holidays like most Asian countries. Still it is the holiday season, and as such we tend toward those sayings that come most familiar.

My mother was Japanese. It didn't mean that we spent the holidays "cleaning the old year away to start fresh in the new year." This is a very Japanese custom. My mother was in her own way stuck between 2 cultures and she didn't care. She wanted her family to be very American in appearance as this was her adopted nation. She still bought omochi (a sticky rice-cake) and prepared a few other Japanese delicacies around the holiday season, because, as I mention above, it was what she knew best. But she baked Christmas cookies, particularly those from Switzerland ( Mailänderli , a kind of shortbread cookie) as that is where my father grew up, and did the tree and the presents for us kids. It was the person that she was.

My children will grow up cross-cultural if I can help it, but they won't know it until they are older. I still have many things that I do, that are based on my parents and growing up. I take off my shoes upon entering a house. Not because they are dirty, but it was the way I was raised. I must admit it does keep the carpet cleaner. My oldest son is consistantly told to remove his shoes after coming home from daycare. He does it without much thought anymore, but we still remind him. He refers to my father as Ojii-chan (Japanese for Grandfather) as this is how we referred to my parents (my mother was Obaa-chan, or Grandmother). This was more for differentiation than anything else. When you have 3 sets of grandparents (my wife's parents are divorced), you have to distinguish them when your children are at a young age so that they don't get too confused. My mother started the Obaa-chan custom, my wife's mother was Grandma, and her step-mother is Nana. It integrated pretty well with my oldest and he knows who we are talking about when we refer to them as such. He changes them around, but he knows better now. My youngest is starting to get to know the names now...

This is the first major holiday season without my mother. I'd like to say that I weathered it well, but I'd be lying. There were some things that just couldn't be avoided. My brother baked the Christmas cookies this year. Next year will be my turn. He managed to acquire the cookie presses that my mother bought long ago to do the Mailänderli. I'll get them from him next year. We have an Angel, Santa, a Christmas tree, and a snowman. My mother would make the dough, press out the cookies and take a straw and make a hole near the top. She would then frost the cookies in good colors, cover them in plastic wrap making sure that there was a ribbon in the top hole, and distribute the edible ornaments to friends and family. It wasn't the same... I think that next year I'll be crying into the dough and frosting, but I expect that...

My mother was an artist at heart, and I think that this is where I get my mad skillz [grin]. My brother complained that it took so much time and effort to get them done. I suppose he may be right, but he also does other things at Christmas, such as home-made English toffee. I did 3 dozen Mailänderli last year and frosted them in about 4 hours, assembly-line fashion. While my back and neck were a little sore, I felt a deep satisfaction at the looks and compliments that I got for doing it. A tribute to my mother I guess. Next year, I'm going to outdo myself with the coloring, and I think that she'll be proud. Her cookie presses are a good deal bigger than mine. I'd better start in October...

In closing, parents, don't be too worried that your kids are being commercialized by the holidays. Unless they grow up in a remote corner of the world with no access to modern conveniences it's bound to happen. And if you think that they get too many gifts, blame family. You have no control over that. Just make sure that they appreciate what they do get, and what they have. That's the most important thing in this case. As for how to celebrate the holidays... take a tip from my mother: The best way that you want and know how to...

Just a little tidbit o'ken...

On Saturday, I said good-bye to a very important person in my life, my mother. I suppose I said good-bye 3 weeks ago on the day that she died, but I don't think it hit home until this day. The preparations were exhausting for my family, as they were in charge of doing all the setup since I live farther away than all of them. Still, it was no less exhausting for me. I spent the better part of that 3 weeks preparing to say good-bye. It's hard, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If the time comes for you to say good-bye in the manner by which you are reading, I wholeheartedly recommend that you try to avoid it, unless you like putting yourself through the whole loss over again. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to know that I can still feel. And, for the future, remember who my mother was.

I have been compared to an ice scuplture by friends as I can seem very unemotional. This is simply not true. I am a very private person. My strongest emotions are reserved for those closest to me, all other simply don't need to know or see my innermost feelings. That being said, I'm going to post a transcript of my good-bye, simply because I think some people would like to know... and because I think it's probably one of the most heart-felt things I've ever presented.

Please be kind. What you are about to read is a transcript from my mother's memorial service. I recorded it with a MP3 player's voice recorder function, because I have never kept a record of my speeches before. When I speak, I tend to put an order of things in my mind, and rehearse the broad strokes of it back to myself. I don't prepare cards, and I don't read from a pre-written statement. These I consider to be narrowing and too defined for what I usually want to sound like. My speeches are usually one-shot deals, only remembered in the graces of hindsight. This one more than any other I wanted to hear back as it truly sounded. You'll hear me refer to Brad, the chaplain who spoke at the service. It's probably a good thing, because none of us in the family was is any state to do so. He was a nice person, for someone at a distance from the family, but he did what I don't. Scripted. Not that this is a bad thing. He was not invested in the family, and therefore needed some reminders of what he was to say. I may at some point actually post the recording (which is only my speech), but not until I've tweaked it so that it's a little clearer in some places.

Without further ado, here it is...

Ah… there we go… alright… [sighs]
They say that a memorial isn’t really mourning a loss more than celebrating a life. That being said, good or bad, I tried to think of ways to kind of describe my mother and I really, um, had a hard time…. I mean, Brad has given a lot of good details and I wanted to be able to sum it up, maybe in a few brief succinct… succinct sentences that maybe I could do it. I found I couldn’t, really, unless I did it this way, so I’ll go ahead and say this:

My mother was… a hard woman.

And this isn’t a disparaging remark by any means because you have to look at the root word behind that: “hard”

“Hardened” for instance, because well, she grew up in the wartime and post reconstruction Japan area. My mother would tell me “Better eat all of the rice on your plate,” and I’m like sitting here thinking “but Mom, I’m done!” She’d bring up the fact that during the war, her mother would, or her father would pretty much disparage her for leaving food on the table much as I did, by picking up indi… the individual grains of rice and finishing them himself. So in that way, I guess she is hard.

“Unyielding.” Well, unyielding can mean a lot of different things in the sense of hard. My mother was steadfast and stubborn and stuck to her guns, and no matter what, she wanted to make sure that we had what we needed… and in some ways she wanted to make sure she got her way, but I think any of us who know her, that, knew that she pretty much found ways to do that…

Hard, um… hard as in determined. Determined to make sure… well, determined to make sure that, I guess, rules were followed. Certain things to be said about my mother, she would, uh, she had rules… I spent the better part of 18 to 20 years trying to get away from them… and I’ve spent the last, uh, 3 wee… 3 weeks realizing that I follow them now more than I ever have…[sighs]… Pardon me a second…

Ah… I don’t know if my brother was going to tell this story, but I will… uh, the rules of, per se… we lived in Ohio for most of my formative years, junior high and high school at the very least, and a fairly modest sized house I could say. Modest is a good word for it, with a large living room that, that rivaled two thirds that size of this area, that’s pretty nice for a house in Ohio. But it was a living room, and it was a meeting room and it was a gathering room for, for guests, and, and, and people and my mother kept it pristine and beautiful, as she did a lot of things: Gardening and everything else. My mother would vacuum meticulously and she would follow a very set pattern. She would start by the back windows, working her way acrost, and then come closer and closer, and work her way back acrost again. One would think this pattern was an aesthetically pleasing thing… no, it was another rule…Boys stay off the carpet, because if you don’t I’ll know! [laughter] The pattern is disturbed… I find myself following the same pattern, when I do, uh, vacuuming in the house. Just something I guess I grew up with.

To say my mother was a hard woman is just not a bad thing, but we can also go to the flip-side. My mother was soft… my mother was soft-hearted. Um, the cat that, that Brad had mentioned was, there was no way she would have never let that go, and pretty… sure enough, pretty much 3-4 months after the fact rather than her boys taking care of the cat, she was. Soft-hearted… that she was.

Soft as in tender. And this is probably the last thing that I’m going to share before I put down the mike and just take a drink for myself. I remember living in a, the first house, one of the first houses we lived in, in which we actually owned in Ohio off of Stallo Road, I’m sure my father and brothers remember that. I remember… I remember being upset, and I remember being upset at my mother, for no other reason than, I don’t know. She did something that upset me. “I’m running away! I’m going to run away!’ How many people with kids have… have heard that one before. I stealthily stole away into a closet… my older brother Pete’s because I figured she wouldn’t look there. And… waited. I heard my mother crying in the distance. In my tender youth I didn’t know she was faking it [laughter]… because when you’re 5 or 6 you hear crying, someone is upset. So I came out, and jumped out in front of her and said “Mommy, I’m back!” And she, uh, gathered me up in my, her arms, as she would when she was feeling that tenderness and everything was OK… Well… Mommy, I’m back and she’s not here, so I’m going to leave you with that…

Thank you for joining us today… it means a lot to mean and I’m sure it would have meant a lot to her. Thank you!

My mother is rolling in heaven to know that such a fuss was made over her. She told my father that you should be nice to someone before they die, because afterwards, it doesn't do any good for them. Too bad, Mom. Memorial are for rememberance and if I have anything to say about it, you'll be hearing from me for a long time.