The Reindeer Sweaters

Looking through a collection of old photographs of my Grandfather, I stumbled across a snapshot of him wearing one of the reindeer sweaters.





I had always assumed that those matching powder blue and white sweaters belonged to my parents first, having seen them in old photos of Mom and Dad as newlyweds. Now I realize that, even then, they were hand-me-downs. They were kept in a box of 'snow clothes' for our occasional winter trips up to the family cabin near Lake Arrowhead. In that collection were old fashioned jackets, mittens, boots, hats and various other bizarre cold weather apparel alien to our warm Southern California lifestyle. When we were up in the mountains, we would dig through the box trying on various articles of clothing, looking for a good fit. During this process, Mom would chatter away about whose boots those had been or whose hat that was and as those histories were recounted, regrettably we paid little attention. We were too keenly focused on colors and styles, fighting over especially interesting items - like the sweaters with the reindeer on them. Being big enough to wear those coveted sweaters, much too large for the little kids, marked our passage into adulthood. Over time, they became itchy and less pliable, much like our aging bodies. They had been worn by a doting father and his lovely daughter, next by a youthful couple unaware that they would one day parent our rowdy brood, then by an older brother and sister who were caretakers for four little sisters, and lastly by twins, who felt that logically the matched set go to them. The reindeer sweaters are long gone - preserved only in an occasional photo. Their woolen fibers have stiffened and crumbled into obscurity, but are forever woven into our collective memories.

Catch of the Day

Our Family would often go to the tide pools after church on Sunday afternoons. We wore our beat-up old tennis shoes and carried buckets in hopes of bringing them back brimming with treasures. The rocky ponds were filled with creepy gooey sea life, an occasional sea slug, but mostly anemones. Our local variety was a dull grey green in color and had hundreds of wriggling tendrils. When we dropped a pebble in them they would close up around it trying to swallow it - which naturally led us to try larger stones on bigger anemones, leaving them struggling under way more than a mouthful - ah the cruelty of youth. Sea urchins were everywhere, a deep purply-red in color, their mostly empty shells eaten out from the underside. We'd sometimes take them home and boil them in bleachy water to kill the remaining smelly innards, leaving us with a nice shell for our collections. Our buckets would fill up with all manner of creatures picked up with the scientific zeal of 10yr olds. Once home we would lay out our display of prizes on the sidewalk to admire. We would play for the rest of the day with any live crabs we managed to smuggle home. Building walls with blocks to form a racecourse, we'd goad them on cheering and screaming and poking them with sticks. We regarded them with fascination and fear, never daring to pick them up with our bare hands. Getting them to grab onto a stick was our technique for moving them around and threatening younger sisters by waving the scary sea spiders in their faces. If they let go and got loose, we all scrambled to safety, rescuing out bare toes from those treacherous pinchers. During the week they would mysteriously disappear from their corrals in the yard - usually right after trash day - by then we had usually lost interest anyway. At that time I was in my Marine Biologist phase, obsessed with the sea and all of it's strange inhabitants. I remember coming up with the idea of splitting anemones for a science project in Jr.High. My premise was that they might be able to regenerate from pieces - like starfish are able to re-grow a lost leg. With the feverish perseverance of a 12yr old, I cut them apart by endlessly sawing back and forth with one of our hopelessly dull kitchen knives. They lay in pieces, limp and suffering at the bottom of the tank. They sat for weeks in a salt water aquarium with the filter bubbling, ugly and smelly and doing nothing. Creepy and repulsive as they were, I still have pangs of remorse about what I did to them in the name of 'science'. I watched and waited, taking daily notes, eventually concluding that they did not possess the same capabilities as starfish and at long last they were joyously disposed of by my Mother. How she put up with my research I cannot imagine. It didn't end there - years later my youngest sister boiled down a horse leg in the kitchen to study the bones for a class. The tradition continued when my own daughter dissected a road-kill possum for a college course. We cooked the skinned carcass down in a canning pot on a Coleman stove OUTSIDE on our deck. I was not going to do it in our kitchen - Mom's spirit guiding me against going down that road.

Moustache Night

Like my Grandmother before me, I had two daughters a little later in life. They are close in age, but wide apart in temperament. They cope with life's adversities, picking and choosing differing weapons from their arsenal of responses. The elder is prone to swift untempered reactions, while the younger one diplomatically bides her time and moderates her replies - perhaps as a result of years of witnessing the consequences of her sister's rash outbursts. Attempting to assemble some very upscale hanging lamps inherited from her elder sister, daughter number two sat up in her room sweating amidst a pile of wires hangers and folded paper shades. The instructions were long gone. Usually the whiz-kid of the family, she sat alone seething with frustration and disbelief - she had been beaten by a lamp. Fortunately her sister was living across the street at the time and was summoned over to assist in sorting out the tangled mess of parts. Up the stairs stomps elder sister, grumbling about this disruption of her personal life. Her upper lip was etched with marker and we stared at it surreptitiously, afraid to comment lest we irritate her further and trigger a sudden and premature departure. All too aware of our guarded curiosity she announced, "it's moustache night", in the same way one would say "it's Saturday" - and promptly, deftly assembled the mass of parts into several fixtures, turned and disappeared across the street.

Bad finger

One afternoon during her first year of elementary school, my daughter came home and gravely took me aside to reveal some new found knowledge. Holding out her chubby hand and speaking in a lowered, reverent, confidential tone, she said - " Mom, did you know that one of my fingers is a 'bad' finger?" One of her ten fingers was arbitrarily singled out to be given a life sentence by some ancient schoolyard morality codex. The finger that yesterday was an innocent appendage today has been branded as corrupt and evil. What crime did it commit? It will look just the same as it did yesterday, but from this day forward it will forever bear a stigma and serve as a reminder of lost innocence.