Cheaply made fiber glass ornaments, it turns out, make extremely good imaginary grenades.
We may not agree on much but this is something I am confident my younger brother and I can both attest to.
As my mother’s obsession with Christmas ornaments grew to an appetite that outpaced the yearly creative endeavors of the best and brightest at Hallmark, so too did the tubs of unused cheaply made second rate fiber glass ornaments cast to the far flung reaches of the attic.
No matter the cost in terms of the casualties – time, emotions, good will, relationships – my mother insisted on the importance of our holiday family bonding routine, the dreaded and somber ritual of constructing and decorating the Christmas tree.
The morning after Thanksgiving was like a metronome. Cue the Christmas music to ‘get us in the spirit.’ This was followed with my mother’s child-like cajoling to incite my father’s compliance with the task at hand. When the desired results did not happen as quickly or with as much enthusiasm as she expected, her whining would ensue to motivate movement. Quips and incendiary sarcasm would reign down on the women and children below as my father ceremoniously heaved boxes down the ladder from the attic, making his holiday spirit clear for all to see.
As any well trained soldier will acknowledge, it’s often prudent, in these early moments of war, to keep quiet and to assess your surroundings. While my brother and I were not especially well trained, at least not in any kind of formal sense of the phrase, we were savvy enough to understand the importance of situational awareness. After checking in to make our presence known, we would lend a hand, open a box, carry a tub, give our obligatory verbal consent to being ‘in the spirit,’ and then dodge the ‘friendly fire’ spewing from my parents’ mouths toward one another.
As they were embroiled in their customary holiday spirit readying, the cases of neglected matte green and red orbs begged to be attended to. These poor souls were much like the long lost soldiers scattered and left behind on distant fields in the outer corners of the world. My brother and I were really on a rescue mission. Some might call us heroes, my parents not being among those people, but I think we were just playing our small part, returning the dignity and honor due to these mass-produced bulbs conscripted into my parents’ holiday maneuvers.
These ordinary red and green spheres did not possess any special skills nor could they boast about any plans for moving up in rank. They did not sing and dance at the touch of a button or flash with extra twinkle after my father donned his cap as an amateur holiday electrician. Without any of this appeal they lost my mothers favor and attention. Perhaps these dedicated troops drew the subconscious ire of my mother as a reminder of the days when the holiday spirit department was not so ravenously funded as it was in its heyday. Who knows the reason, surely she would not even if asked. This was a loss for these quiet, sturdy and compliant service members. This was a key victory for my brother and I.
We couldn’t risk telegraphing our plans so we fine tuned our sibling telepathy over time. Eventually, with nothing more than a glance and nonverbal cueing one can only develop on the front lines, we could motion to one another without a single movement. Stealthily and swiftly we would set out, usually in a staggered format, pacing our departures to limit any kind of half-hearted parental redirection. We would each grab the ammo entitled to us and navigate to our respective bunkers.
From our separate lookouts, my brother and I waited, holding our breath and listening for the perfect timing. As the crescendos of Mariah Carey and my parents’ verbal spats reached their fever-pitch, the built up kinetic energy within our bodies spilled forward. The cacophony of holiday songs assaulting the radio waves and marital discord was the perfect soundscape for my brother and I to lob our volleys toward one another’s camps.
It was a sight to behold as streams of red and green glistened through the air, the light of more sparkly bulbs refracting off their surface. We’d dodge and duck as we peered over our defenses trying to scout the other’s positioning. We’d analyze and trace the trajectory of the throws to triangulate the coordinates. We’d listen for any noises that could help construct the picture. If one of the trusty grenades made landfall near the buffer of blankets and pillows it made a very different sound than when it landed on carpet. The real aim was to get a direct hit. Nothing would bring more pride than the sound of that perfect little thud when the Christmas grenade bounced off my brother’s body – and even more satisfying when it made contact with his enormous head.
And it was that beautifully hollow thud that drove my bloodlust. I yearned to hear it and revel in its manifest destiny. The urge for this conquest burrowed into my mind and led me to take a course of action Patten surely would have cautioned against. On one of the last handful of Christmas holidays before I left my childhood home, the thirst for empire building was too strong to deny, causing me to act on a whim and to rely on poorly vetted intelligence.
In a foolish attempt to gain ground, I thought to take a shock and awe kind of approach coupled with some clever deception. I reasoned that if I lofted one of my Yuletide grenades in the air whilst charging directly toward my brother I’d surely catch him off guard. He’d be busy studying the grenade, trying to obtain helpful reconnaissance, only to have the grim realization that I was bolting headlong into his bunker. I felt immense pride and joy as I imagined the look on his surprised face to see me crashing over the walls of his fortress. The thought of relishing that sweet thud up close and personal sent the delight of the holiday spirit through my bones.
Taking the time chart out an appropriate course of movement may have spared me the pain I was about to endure. Even just a small departure from the direct path I pursued may have led to realization of the glory I dreamt up. The concept itself was not the problem. More so, it was the developmentally appropriate lack of foresight that did me in. Adolescent executive functioning, restlessness, and a healthy dose of hubris conspired to thwart the blueprints in my mind.
Somewhere in between launching my decoy above my brother’s head and cocking my arm back to deliver the true detonation I had a sobering realization. By this point in the holiday preparations the battlefield had already been littered with red and green Christmas casings. The tools I once employed for my gain and conquest were now lying in wait, little Christmas land mines intent on maiming me while in pursuit of my territory. Somewhere in between this flicker of insight and attempting to abruptly halt the advance, I heard the sound.
This was not the thud I hoped for. This sound was not one of those helpful noises gathered in espionage. No, this sound was a sharp and awful crunching. It was shrill like the blaring of alarms when setting off a tripwire. It sent a seething white hot signal of pain to shock my poorly orchestrated coordination into surrender. In a matter of seconds my moment of glory went up in flames, reduced to a pile of seething ash as the cheaply made fiber glass ornament burst into shards of shrapnel embedding themselves, exploding like hundreds of tiny bombs into my bare foot.
Predictably, though also surprisingly, the tumult caused by my purple heart moment invoked the attention and rebuke of my parents. Successively they chimed in to offer the most gentle and constructive parenting interventions in their respective toolboxes. My mother voiced her concern in a sweet, quasi-angelic voice, “boys, what the hell is happening down there, you better not be ruining my ornaments.” Upon inspection of the incident, my father’s sage and tender advice followed, “of course they break, they’re fragile, what did you think would happen?”
At a time like this, even misinformed and aggressing wounded parties should be cared for and tended to with tact, poise, and compassion. Brave warriors risking life and limb deserve the keen eye, steady hands, and hard earned acumen of our frontlines very best healthcare workers. My mother possessed none of these skills or traits. However, desperate times call for desperate measures. And, if all is fair and love and war, who am I to question the wisdom of the Geneva Conventions? My mother was, however, raised by a nurse. My father also happened to have a father who died while donning the uniform. So in a stretch of logic, my mother was more appropriately credentialed than one would surmise upon first glance. Just one glance further, however, would be enough to disrupt the fragile illusion of competence. Her acutely irritated tone, rolling eyes and hostile bedside manner made me question whether it would be best to carry on and tend to my wounds in private, or perhaps not at all.
By the time I had the thought to tourniquet my own leg, it was too late. My mother had already firmly gripped my leg and dunked my shrapnel laden appendage into the slightly too hot to feel comfortable bucket of the finest tincture of dish soap and tap water she could concoct. As she maneuvered my grizzled foot into the soapy water, the suds turned red. It’s unclear to me whether it was simply this ghastly sight, the sensation, the feeling of defeat or the realization that our Christmas battles may be concluding with this decisive blow, whether it was just one or an accumulation of factors, within a matter of moments my vision narrowed, sound became muffled, and by knees buckled causing me to collapse into a heap on the bathroom floor.
As I came to, sensations slowly returned and came into sharper and sharper focus. The cold tile floor beneath, the droning of Christmas carols on the radio downstairs, and my mother’s sensitive instructions for my outpatient care, “get up, stop pretending.”
While I laid in my bed and tried my best to stop pretending, I took the liberty to add to the care plan. I began to consider how it was that those responsible for my care and feeding became such helpful, nurturing saints. I began to consider the deeply profound words my father had just uttered, “of course they break, they’re fragile, what did you think would happen?”
I thought about my mother. In one moment she was blissfully conducting the orchestra, moving through the stanzas of our shared holiday music. In the next, she was conscripted as my trauma nurse. I thought about her own mother who was conscripted as a trauma nurse. A trauma nurse tasked with healing irreparable wounds incurred to herself and her three children, all under the age of 7. Irreparable wounds caused by the death of a husband, a father. A death that transpired during a routine maintenance check of an aircraft. A routine maintenance check that was conducted while covering for a colleague who was out sick.
A random act of service that ended the life of a man. A man who, at the age of 19, found the corpse after his own father’s suicide. A random act of service that irreparably altered the life of a conscripted trauma nurse. A conscripted trauma nurse raised by an alcoholic.
My response to my father’s rhetorical question about the cheaply made fiber glass ornament? It was nothing profound. I stuttered and said, “I guess I thought they were strong. I guess I thought they were durable. None had broken so far. I guess I thought it wouldn’t happen. I guess I thought it wouldn’t hurt like this.”
Like fiber glass ornaments, childhoods are durable and remarkably resilient. Like fiber glass ornaments, under the right pressure and impact they can shatter. And like grenades, when they do shatter they fragment and disintegrate. They splinter into colorful shards.
#Parentify me Capin’
Mind Nomad Writing 