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By SARAH SMILEY
Rethinking Polygamy
Last week's Christmas festivities taught me a few things. Granted, maybe I'm a little slow to acquire this knowledge, but something tells me it's never too late to better understand sibling rivalry, toys made in China, and polygamy.Sibling Rivalry
Ford and Owen were born two years and two days apart. When they were much younger, this seemed like an eternity. Ford was learning to ride a tricycle when Owen was learning to crawl. Ford was wearing Superman underwear while Owen was still in diapers. Ford liked superheroes; Owen liked Blue's Clues.
As the boys get older, however, the years and the differences between them seem to diminish. This makes things difficult for Santa, who ends up buying two of everything, even when one should be enough. You see, Santa knows that a good gift is made excellent when you don't have to share it with your brother, and that sometimes moms would rather give in to the excessive than spend her days refereeing fights over the toy electric guitar.
"But that's life," says Dustin, who, it should be noted, did not have a brother and never had to share. "The boys need to learn how to share. We're not buying two of everything."
And I say, "OK, are you staying home to deal with the fights? I didn't think so."
So I - oops, I mean, Santa - set out the boys' presents, making sure that everything looked fair and equal in size and quantity. At one point, Santa even was tempted to break out a ruler and measure packages for absolute certainty.
Then, on Christmas morning, even though my boys spend all the other 364 days of the year fighting, Ford and Owen were perfect angels to one another, reminding me again that the true meaning of Christmas has nothing to do with presents at all.
Toys Made in China
"Have you ever noticed that toys made in China have more plastic ties than the toys made in Hong Kong?" Ford asked. "Do you think that means the ones in China are better?"
I don't know about any correlation between how many plastic ties are used to package a toy and the quality of that toy, but I do know that someone in China was laughing Christmas morning when they thought about me untwisting all those gray ties. A few years ago, the ties were only twisted. This year, some of them were twisted then bent, then wrapped around themselves, through a whole, and pushed back down. Some toys even have plastic bolts in them that require a screwdriver to unfasten.
A parent could spend all morning just trying to get a toy out of its packaging, causing the excited child to believe that the cheap toy actually is more special than it really is. Let's face it, that might be the real reason for the plastic ties.
And Polygamy
My mom, dad and grandmother, whom I call Doris, arrived the day before Christmas Eve. Or, as Owen, calls it, "the day before the day before the night before the morning that I've been waiting for since last Christmas."
In the days leading up to my family's arrival, I was struggling to get everything done. It took me Monday through Thursday to clean all the bathrooms. It took six days to vacuum four rooms. Meanwhile, laundry piled up in the hallway and the dirty dishes spilled out of the kitchen sink. As the only woman in a house full of males, I have no real helpers when it comes to doing chores. Sure, in theory everyone should help me despite their gender, but if I want things done right, it's usually best to do them myself, if you know what I mean.
So there I was, just one pile of laundry away from wanting to bang my head against a wall, when my mom and Doris arrived. With less than 48 hours to go until Christmas, we had a lot of work to do. Yet, within a relatively short amount of time, the three of us made dinner, cleaned up dinner, washed and folded five loads of laundry, fed the baby, clean the baby, bathed all the children, washed dishes, made a pie, swept the floor, cleaned the living room, and packed all the men and boys' clothes for our upcoming vacation (that's three suitcases). And the next day, we did it all again.
I was able to complete in record time the amount of work that usually takes me a whole week, thanks to two extra sets of helping hands from my female relatives. It's enough to make me think that maybe polygamy isn't such a bad idea after all. I'm just saying!
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Sarah Smiley is the wife of a Navy pilot and daughter of a retired Navy pilot. She is the author of "Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Wife" (Penguin/NAL), and her syndicated column "Shore Duty" appears weekly in military and civilian newspapers across the country. Read more about Sarah at her website, www.SarahSmiley.com.