Dearest Family and Friends, New Year’s 1999
Bet you thought we weren’t going to send a holiday letter this year! Ho-ho-ho not us! Rain or shine, wind or snow, here it is.
This has been one of the more stressful years in our collective memory. Daria’s year has included going back to school for elementary teaching credentials, taking a rewarding but demanding program at USD, which includes tutoring in the classroom three mornings per week. I’ve done my Language Arts practicum in son Jake’s classroom, and it’s been wonderful to have extra time around him. But not being the innately teacherly type, the whole thing has not exactly been easy.
Add to that that we’re doing a major house remodel, putting a basement under our house. It is an utter nightmare, which we’re still in the middle of … the phrases “fear of house caving in” and “money pit” come to mind. When it’s safely over, maybe we’ll be able to talk about it, if we survive and/or live that long.
So why don’t I get some help in my hour of need? Well, I spent a lot of time this year hiring and training live-in’s and housekeepers who didn’t work out. (Just what one needs when one is in a desperate time-crunch.) First there was the ethereal-looking angel who moved in to save us, but far from helping us, HUGE amounts of food started disappearing, and it turned out she was bulimic. Then there was the German student who was supposed to live with us for 15 months and help out while he worked at the Waldorf School as an alternative to military service. The only problem was, he didn’t like doing childcare or housework. There were several others too.
So what’s Daria’s good news? Well, no matter how aggravating life is, I have Nina, my own personal Bobby McFerrin*, telling me, “Be happy, Mommy!” (*creator of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” one of my least favorite songs.)
Mike’s good news is that his boss was transferred! Enough said. Some of the more challenging moments of Mike’s job life this year have been traversing the Coronado bride on a catwalk, and ascending a 140-foot gasoline refining tower (not being a lover of heights). Mike has also had several cases involving major burn victims, which have weighed quite heavily upon him.
As for home life, we won’t even talk about his unrelaxing birthday trip to Rosarito Beach (we talked him into taking us along), his lonely make-up birthday trip to Mazatlan, or the aborted trip to Phoenix. What else is there? Let’s see … Taking care of kids … cleaning up … driving around looking for our escaped dogs … But oh yes, there was:
Mike’s excellent adventure:
Mike went to Anaheim for his umpteenth District Manager interview. He decided to take the train, using his voucher from the last train screw-up that left him stranded. For some pathetic reason, there is no return train to San Diego until 7 p.m. on Friday afternoons. So Mike waited interminably — the 7:00 train was also an hour and a half late – managing to go out for a shrimp cocktail and even attend half a baseball game in the interim.
Finally, the train got going, but it was not meant to be. After a mere six miles, it ground to an unexpected halt. Numerous police cars came screeching up, followed by a hook and ladder truck, the Jaws of Life, and a Life Flight helicopter. It became apparent that the train had run over someone (though there was never any explanation). The train had to be jacked up and it took an hour and a half to extract the person’s hand.
Oh well, it was better than his last train ride, in which somebody was murdered near the track and the train was delayed for 5 ½ hours.
But Mike’s home life sustains him …
Jake (having just watched a nature program on TV): “Mom, you know how Daddy’s always so lazy, just laying around in bed while you do all the work?”
Daria (not sure this is an accurate characterization): “Ah, okay …”
Jake (very excited): “Well, lions are the same way!! The dad is just lazy, and lays around all day, and the mom takes care of the babies, and does the hunting…”
And then we have Nina to make Dad happy…
Mike has had an exhausting day driving to and from the Imperial Valley, and has gone to bed early, for once.
Mom: “Nina, when we’re in the bedroom, be very careful not to wake Dad up!”
Nina: “Okay.”
In the bedroom, Dad coughs slightly in his sleep.
Nina (in her most piercing, drill-sergeant voice): “Dad, cover your mouth!”
But ultimately, his own lucid perspective sustains Mike…
Mike, to Daria: “Have you ever noticed how when people say, ‘Have a nice day!’ they really mean that there’s something wrong with you?”
Though I can be quite overly sensitive myself, I replied, “Only Mike Doering could imagine that someone has bad intentions in saying ‘Have a nice day’!”
He then proceeded to demonstrate how that phrase could be said, with the appropriate tone of voice and inflection, to imply that a person is miserable or crazy and should really try hard to have a nice day!
And of course we then managed to get into a fight about it.
Nick, our oldest, has changed his name to Dominic. He’s still called Nick, but now he has a more unique and alliterative full name than Nicholas. Nick is now attending Harborside School, a private school downtown, which he loves. It’s a traditional school, but has special art, music, Spanish and P.E. teachers, lots of field trips, a very low teacher-student ratio, and so on. Although he had a great year at Waldorf in 3rd grade, he didn’t want to continue there. I guess the philosophy ultimately wasn’t a good fit for him. Some of Nick’s activities for the year have included taking tennis lessons, and starring the in the church summer musical as Joseph (of the many-colored coat).
We had a rough few days around the time of Nick’s birthday, though. Daria had baked a beautiful cake, lovingly decorated it, and loaded it into the back of the car to take to a birthday singalong. Then, in a moment of insanity, the distracted parents allowed Nina to play in the car unsupervised. The next thing we knew, Nina had managed to jump into the back of the car, landing squarely on the cake!
Mike came outside to find the whole family standing around the car crying. Nick was howling copious tears over his ruined cake; Nina was crying and screaming “because her shoes had cake on them,” and Mom was alternating between crying over her ruined cake and laughing at the ridiculous scene.
We bought another cake and had it decorated on the way to the singalong, only to have our friends lament that we hadn’t brought the original cake, so they could see it!
But Nick’s real birthday party was a trip to Lake Arrowhead to visit the “Santa’s Village” theme park in its final season, since it was due to close for good after 40 years. I had never been there before, and it was an appealing place. But imagine a scene like Disneyland, only with a foot or two of snow. Trying to push a stroller through the snow … Waiting 20 minutes for rides in the snow … Waiting 45 minutes to buy hot dogs in the snow. We loved the first half-hour or so, but then our feet started to freeze. Soon the children were howling to go home, and we left after lunch. Mike teased me about how on the way up, driving through the sparkling snowdrifts, I was exclaiming, “This is so great, let’s spend the night up here, and stay another day!”
Jake is an excellent student in the first grade. At home, he spends most of his time doing elaborate and amazing drawings, and then labeling them, now that he’s learning to write. Some of his favorite subjects are people, police and military paraphernalia, Jesus and the devil. He is also quite the collector: Beanie Babies, Pound Puppies, trolls, and jewelry are among his treasures.
Jake still loves animals. Our oddest pet story of the year began when my mother decided to eat some organic spinach she’d bought about a week previously. She dumped it into the sink to wash it, and a little green frog jumped out! She caught it and gave it to Jake to keep as a pet. We couldn’t believe it had survived a week in the refrigerator, but I guess that was preferable to life with us, because it soon succumbed.
Then there was the period when Jake decided to become a naturalist, and started pinning dead butterflies and other insects that he’d found on a bulletin board. The day after a major pinning, a caterpillar, which had been pinned on the wall with a thumbtack for a whole day, started wiggling! Jake was prevailed upon to release it.
How do the boys get along these days? Well, the word “whatever” has gained a special place in my heart, as they seem to have adopted it as a face-saving method of capitulation. Typical dialogue:
Jake: “You (insult, insult)!”
Nick: “You (insult, insult)!”
Jake: “Whatever.”
Nick: “Whatever.”
At the age of three, our Nina is the ultimate party girl. She goes around reciting a list of her favorite places: “Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Chuck E. Cheese, Family Fun Center,” and various parks. She’s loves school, teasing boys, visiting friends, and being naked. But I guess I must have done something (in another life perhaps) to deserve the endless round of insults I get from her. She routinely calls me “Butt-head,” “Poopsy peep” and worse. But on the more rewarding side, she appears to be training as a stand-up comic. She makes up funny words, affects various accents, and has us in stitches.
A day with Nina:
We went to a birthday party at the Children’s Museum. After a short time, Nina peed a big puddle in the puppet play area. She refused to budge from the spot, but I fortunately found somebody to watch her while I got some spare clothes from the car. Next, as I started to change her, a big turd fell out of her pants. Oh great. It got thrown in with the dirty pants. As I put the new pants on, getting more exasperated every moment, all Nina could do was scream “It doesn’t match!” “It doesn’t match!” I tried in vain to assure her that purple pants and a red shirt were fine.
Then on the bookmobile bus, she started yelling that she had to take her underwear off. Okay, whatever. Within seconds she was buck naked, and refusing to wear anything, while the birthday boy’s little brother looked on with saucer eyes. We had a furious fight over getting dressed, I threatened to take her home, and she finally agreed to wear the purple pants only. But for the rest of the party, she kept trying to pull them off.
But then, other birthday parties present real problems:
At a party next door, Nina came to Mom with a beautiful piece of birthday cake covered with whipped cream and strawberries, crying uncontrollably. She could barely get out between sobs, “Dee gave me a … a … a … piece of cake … with … with … with NO BLACKBERRY!” Oh, woe is us! The situation was quickly remedied.
But at least we can always depend upon going to church to give us that sense of peace, perspective, and sacred space in our lives … for example:
One day after church, in the parlor, Nina said to me pleasantly, “Mom, there’s something I want to tell you.” I asked her what, and she screamed at the top of her lungs, “You’re a stupid brat!” People turned and looked at us in shock. She then kept wanting to repeat this little dialogue. After protesting in vain, I decided it must be something she needed to get out of her system. But I told her, “You’ll have to go somewhere else if you want to scream insults at me; people don’t want to hear this!” She insisted on going into the little kitchen that adjoins the church parlor, but it turned out that the little room just amplified the sound. She kept screaming at me, over and over and over!
All we want for Christmas is for our house to not cave in. And to not completely crack up from the strain of house, school and kids. Then of course there is the knowledge that even if we were dying in the streets, our kids would probably still be bickering, and demanding, “I want this, I want that!”
Have a safe, joyful and prosperous New Year, and remember, “Have a nice day!”
Daria Doering 
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