The Gift

I stare at the candle holder squatting on the table like a malevolent imp. Red and blue beads glare out from behind shrouds of black tar. It was supposed to be a cool-looking, hand-crafted candle holder. Instead it has turned into something nasty. It is "The Candle Holder from the Black Lagoon". I dread showing it to my son. Nick is going freak out.

This morning when I woke I walked into the workshop to see what had been created overnight. I found a jar on the workbench, covered in gray cement. Where was the grout? I wondered.

Last night before I'd gone to bed, I'd left Nick sitting on the stool, busily hot glueing glass beads onto an empty jar. It was going to be his present to his girlfriend, Melissa. Her birthday party was the next day and he was trying to pull off a hand made gift for her.

Actually, the candle holder idea was a compromise. Originally he'd wanted to make her a globe lamp mosaicked with glass beads. I'd convinced him to try something easier, since it would require having a place to plug it in and he wasn't sure how to work the cord or whether or not the base had to be cemented, too.

All of that just seemed like a lot to work out less than 48 hours before the party. A candleholder was just about possible, I figured. Nick agreed. Before I went to bed last night I had brought in a tub of white, pre-mixed, sanded grout, pointed out the instructions on the back and left him to it.

What I was looking at this morning wasn't grouted at all. It was cemented. Seriously cemented. And it was gray. What happened?

I went into the kitchen and started making coffee. Nick walked in then, looking like he hadn't slept at all.

"Nick, have you been to bed?"

"I slept for an hour."

"I saw the jar on the workbench. What happened to the grout?"

"It didn't work. It not only didn't work, it dissolved the glue that was holding the beads on the jar. So I had to clean it off and start all over again."

"I'm sorry, Nick."

"Yeah, so Dad helped me make cement and I used that instead."

"Now what?"

"Now I'm supposed to take a sponge and wipe off all the excess cement."

"I'll help you find the stuff to do that." I felt guilty about the grout. Who knew it would melt hot glue? "This is just one of those journey things, Nick," I said, trying to find a bright spot for him.

I filled a bucket with water and found a big sponge. I put some newspaper down on the kitchen table, got Nick some rubber gloves and set him to work cleaning off the cement from the beadwork.

After twenty minutes or so, still feeling guilty, I offered to take over for a while, which is when things went from bad to horrible. As I rubbed on the bottom of the candleholder, a chunk of cement fell off taking four beads with it.

"Uh oh," I said. Nick looked over at the large pile of cement on the newspaper and said, "Please tell me the beads haven't come off."

"I wish I could."

I told him to go jump in the shower while I thought about what to do next. Cementing the thing again wouldn't work because there wasn't enough time for it to set up. We could always go buy a present, except Nick was already exhausted, and a trip to the store wasn't going to help that.

I took the jar out to the yard and used a hose to clean off the rest of the cement. Most of the beads fell off in the process. There was no way we could use the same jar again. There were globs of hot glue all over it and they weren't coming off. Plus, now that the cement was gone I could see where the grout had stained the glass already. It was wrecked.

I went back into the kitchen and scrounged around the cupboards looking for another jar with a lid. No soap. And then I decided to look in the refrigerator to see if there was another jar like this one that could be used. I found a salsa jar, emptied the contents into a mason jar, then rinsed it out, dried it and waited for Nick to get out of the shower.

When he came back into the kitchen, still depressed, but clean at least, I showed him the new jar. "You'll need to re-glue the beads onto this," I said. He nodded listlessly. He'd already decided that this nightmare was never ending. Now he was just waiting for the next worst possible thing to happen.

I decided that we'd use another craft product to put around the beads. If the point was to make everything dark except where the light would shine through the glass beads then this stuff would work just as well and as a bonus I was pretty sure I could get it to dry before the party at 3:30 this afternoon.

I told Nick what I was going to do and sent him to bed. Then I got to work on the candle holder.

Propping it on its side I took Liquid Leading and started squirting it on the side facing up. It flowed into all the cracks between the beads, clinging to the glass like it was a lava flow going around rocks in the landscape. This might turn out pretty cool, I thought. Melissa was into gems and minerals, maybe this would end up being like gemstones in aggregate. Or something.

By the time I finished outlining all the pretty glass beads, I'd started to realize that the difference between this stuff and the cement was that with the cement, and the grout, for that matter, what you ended up with was a fatter looking jar, with pretty colored bumps in it. A uniform thickness all around. It looked regular and crafted and nice.

What you got with liquid leading was something that looked malformed and lumpy and evil. And there was nothing I could do to make it look any better. I briefly toyed with the idea of removing all the liquid leading again and just leaving the thing to be a glass jar with beads on it. But that would be even further away from what Nick had wanted in the first place. I just hoped he wouldn't be too disappointed when he woke up to see what had become of his gift for his girlfriend.

By two o'clock I couldn't take the suspense anymore and woke Nick from a sound sleep. He sat up in bed, nodded when I asked him if he was awake, then fell over again. A half hour later I told him what time it was and he panicked, getting dressed, running his fingers through his hair, getting dressed again. I hesitantly asked him if the candle holder was going to be okay and he looked distractedly at it and said, "What? Oh, yeah, that's fine, Mom," and went back to hunting for the perfect black tee. "Are there any of my shirts anywhere that are clean?"

We ended up putting the jar in a gift bag with a cushion of tissue paper over the top. I warned him to tell Melissa not to squeeze it for at least 24 more hours to give the stuff a chance to harden up. "Yeah, yeah," he said, and then it was time to go.

Later when the boys came back from the party, I was in bed, so I didn't get a chance to ask how the gift had been received. I had to wait until the next day. When I saw Nick at breakfast I asked him how Melissa had liked it. "Oh, she liked it." "Really? What did her mom say?" "Frances? She said it was 'interesting looking.'"

Art is a process, just like life. It's not what you end up with, it's what you learn while getting there.

Nick is lucky to have a girlfriend who likes him enough that even when she's presented with a black lump of goo masquerading as a candle holder all she sees is that he cared enough to make something especially for her. And I'm lucky to have a son who loves me enough that even when I mess up his life all he sees is that I meant well. It's a gift.

Nick Armstrong, boy of steel

One day, when Nick was a sixth grader in middle school, he came home and I asked him how it went.

"I'm sore."

"Really? Why is that?"

"Well, we had to do the President's Physical Fitness test today in P.E. and so Coach told us all to do 25 push-ups. And I said, 'Twenty-five? That's not hard. I can do fifty!' and Coach said 'Oh, you can, can you?' and I said, 'Yes, I can. As a matter of fact, for seven points, I can do 150!' and Coach said, 'Okay. But if you don't do 150 then you lose 7 points," and I said, 'How about 300 push ups for 20 points?' and Coach said, 'You're on!' so then I did 300 push ups."

"You did 300 push ups?"

"Yes, I did. And Coach said, 'Well, Nick, you sure surprised me. I didn't think you could do it,' and he took out his little notebook and wrote down 'Nick Oliver - 120 points' in it. Some kid wanted to give me a high five but I had to hit his hand with my head because I couldn't lift my arms."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, Mom, I managed to get up off the floor without using my arms, but when I got to the locker room, I couldn't get my padlock open to get my clothes out. I turned the combination using my teeth and I was trying to push it open with my nose but I wasn't having any luck and some kid came in and saw me and asked me if I needed any help and I said, 'Sure,' and he opened my padlock and I got my clothes on. Then I backed into my backpack and ran for the bus."

That night I gave him an ibuprofen and made him soak in the tub. He slept like a rock. Next day when he came home I asked if the kids had started calling him "Pushup Boy" and he said, "No, Mom. They're calling me 'Armstrong.'"

Rock and Load

It's Saturday morning and I'm listening to my son doing color commentary on the state of the refrigerator.

"This is disgusting. Yuck. Who put this in here?"

He marches out of the kitchen and thrusts a half empty can of green chilis toward me.

"Mom, are we saving this?"

I don't want to crush my child's newly found zeal for search and destroy style housekeeping, but I happen to know that my husband put this can of chilis in the fridge, doubtless planning to use it for some culinary masterpiece in the near future. If I tell my son to throw it away, my husband might be annoyed. I weigh my husband's probable future irritation with my son's overwhelming need to use the bulldozer approach to cleaning the refrigerator, i.e., everything not nailed down gets pushed into the nearest garbage can, resulting in an appliance that is sparkly clean, fresh smelling, and above all, emptier than when you started.

I recall feeling exactly this way a long time ago, just prior to our move from Grand Rapids to Ludington, except that it was a house I was emptying instead of a refrigerator. I'd been upstairs cleaning the attic and stumbled across a large sack in one corner. Inside the sack were rough pieces of alabaster, pink and white and gray-veined, ranging from a few as small as a baseball to some as big as a loaf of bread.

Maybe it had something to do with being hot and dusty from hours of clearing the detritus that had accumulated after twelve years of cohabitative bliss, maybe it was because I knew that I'd only scratched the surface of what still needed to be organized, maybe it was because I distinctly recalled having moved this same sack of rocks at least three times in the last seven years, but right then I knew I'd never hated anything as much as I hated those rocks.

It didn't matter anymore that I and my husband had driven six hours to collect these very stones, sacrificing an entire afternoon to climb around on quarry piles in the hot sun, determined to find the perfect raw material for sculpting candle holders, incense burners and miniature busts.

That day in the attic I had exactly 72 hours before I had to pile everything we owned into a 24-foot truck. The contents of that sack were no longer potential art projects, they were a bag of rocks that weighed about thirty pounds and they represented everything I hated about moving.

I hated having to organize and pack up our stuff in order to move it when it was only going to get unpacked and disorganized the moment we reached our destination. I hated making choices about what had to go or stay and I particularly hated making choices about someone else's belongings, which these rocks technically were. They weren't just my rocks. They were my husband's rocks, too.

That's why I decided to do what I did. After all, he was already at the new place, possibly working hard and not having to pack up the old house. I was resentful about the whole arrangement. Also I was getting help loading the U-Haul from my brother and already was having a hard time justifying the bajillion books that were coming with us. ("Don't they have books in Ludington?") How could I possibly explain a bag of rocks? ("Marie, did you know that this sack has rocks in it?" "Yes." "Don't they have rocks in Ludington?")

Decision made, I crashed the sack down three flights of stairs and dragged it to the curb for the garbage men to take away in the morning. If I didn't accomplish anything else that day it was fine, because the bag of rocks was gone and that was four square feet of misery I wouldn't have to cram on the truck.

The next day on the phone, my husband asked me if I'd remembered to pack a certain bag of rocks. Naturally I told him that I had no idea where they were. Thinking about it fifteen years later, I'm sure I'd throw them away and lie about it again, no problem.

Now my son stands in front of me with can in hand. He's transferred his irritation with me for giving him this particular chore to the refrigerator itself and his body is stiff with that air of righteousness that's so conducive to a good cleaning session. I know exactly how he feels.

"Go ahead and pitch it," I say. "I'll think of something to tell your dad."

Take note

I was dropping off my daughter, Alice, now a freshman in high school, at her soccer game. Getting out of the car, she stopped dead and said, "Shoot! John's here."

Since I knew she and her friend, John, had had a recent falling out, I asked her if it wasn't a good thing to see him today and tell him how she felt.

She gave me an exasperated look. "No, it's not a good thing, Mom. I wanted to talk to him on the phone. I don't want to talk to him right now because I don't have my notes with me."

Notes?

A few nights ago, she sat on my bed and, aware that my eyelids were at half-mast and falling fast, quickly recited her to-do list for the next morning. "I have to get up, go downstairs and put clothes in the dryer, take a shower..."

Here I interrupted, "Dad will put your clothes in the dryer tonight if you ask him."

She considers this and finds it acceptable. "Okay. I have to get up, go downstairs and get my clothes out of the dryer, take a shower, get dressed, dry my hair, pack my stuff, eat some breakfast -- I know you're tired, Mom, but I'm not going to talk long, I'm just going over my schedule right now for tomorrow morning -- and then get over to Bridgette's on time for once."

She looks at me every couple of seconds while ticking off points on her fingers to make sure that my eyes haven't slid sideways to the pages in my book. I'm not really having any trouble resisting the urge to read while she's talking because I've only just started this book and it hasn't gotten good, yet. Normally, I'd have to close the book to keep from irritating Alice but tonight it's more fun to leave it open, the pages a subtle threat in the competition for my attention, and see how many times I can make her check to see if I'm listening. Two, so far. She's getting pretty good.

Alice is proof that we're all individuals. If I hadn't been there I would swear that she emerged from another woman's womb. One lesson that I've learned as a parent: just because you and your spouse combined to create this person doesn't mean that this person is going to be anything like either of you. Although, come to think of it, Alice is a lot like my husband, Steve. Just not like me.

I've learned more about what my husband is like from watching Alice. He craves order and routine, like Alice. Schedules and having a plan B when plan A doesn't work out is how they operate. Funny how I can sympathize with my daughter's struggles to make sense out of chaos but I have no patience with my husband's same problems. I keep thinking that he ought to be over these petty difficulties by now and should just be more like me, more a live-life-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type person. I cut Alice more slack because I reason that she's relatively new to this living and learning stuff and it will take her longer to realize she ought to be more like me.

Alice is everyone's idea of the perfect daughter. She cleans her room three times a week. She mediates fights between her two younger brothers. She helps her friends' mothers when she visits someone else's home. Actually, I taught her that one.

"If you want to be invited to someone's house more than once, be especially nice to their mother. It doesn't matter whether the kid likes you or not. You might be that kid's best friend in the world, but if her mother doesn't like you, you'll never be invited back to her house again, ever."

Since about third grade, whenever I go to pick her up from this or that house and chance to speak with her friends' mothers, they all tell me the same thing. "Alice is such a nice girl. She helped me clean up after the party. I told her she didn't have to, but she insisted. She's wonderful!" I always nod and smile, guiltily suspecting that I've trained her to be everybody's favorite drudge.

So what am I hoping to train her to be? Well, I'd like her to be confident in who she is. It's hard not to criticize her efforts. Criticizing is my worst fault when it come to my children. The problem is that I want them to be perfect. Not like me.

I recently ordered a book that talks about how adolescent girls change as they grow to be women. They stop being outgoing and carefree and fun and devolve into opinionless, mindless, gutless nothings. I read this book and casually, I thought, asked Alice if she wasn't experiencing pressure to conform more to what's considered proper behavior in girls her age. She stared at me for a long moment before arching an eyebrow and asking me, "Have you been reading teenager books again?" Then she picked up the book from whence stemmed my concerns and started reading it herself. Now and again she'll point out some behavior of her friends' that she disagrees with and which is, coincidentally, outlined in the book. She's always triumphant about the fact that this book describes her friends and not her. I'm just happy one of us is reading it.

Alice is bright, funny and gifted. I marvel that she's my daughter. I somehow feel that I don't deserve to have her. I'm afraid that there will be a price to pay for all this delight, although I'll admit that there are times when this house is too small to hold two femmes on the rag at once.

Last Friday night, before the homecoming parade in which Alice was to take part, she experienced a major meltdown and dragged me, kicking and screaming, into her personal pit of despair. I resisted, of course, but it was futile.

In between clothes changes she cursed whoever had mislaid her favorite pin-striped men's suit (I didn't mislay it, I gave it to Goodwill), dissolved into tears once, begged for help twice and stared at me in disbelief when I suggested that it didn't matter what she wore because her friends would be happy to see her however she showed up. "No, they won't."

Eventually, after trying on nearly every article of clothing in three different closets, hers, mine and the boys', she finalized her costume for the parade -- a brown suit and fedora. I smeared a black mustache on her upper lip and then drove her two blocks to where the parade was supposed to start. She hesitated at the car door. "I can't see them!" referring to the freshmen float. I'd reached the end of my mothering rope. "Get out," I growled. She got. Later, when she came back home she hugged me and apologized for going off the deep end and I said I was sorry for losing my temper.

It's really pretty easy to get along with my daughter. I just have to be prepared to drop everything and listen to her when she's ready to talk to me. Usually, it's when I'm at my lowest ebb, say around 10:30 at night, or when I'm in the middle of a work crisis, juggling three clients at once. It's a kind of testing, I know. And no more than fair considering what I routinely put her though when she's reciting lists to me. My mother says I'm getting exactly what I deserve. Someone just like me.

Marie Marfia
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