| A Winter Solstice Tale |
By: Lois Kellerman, columnist, “Mother Knows Best”
On 12/24/05
Brittany Millbrook-Henderson never liked to be late, which is why she was writing her New Year’s Resolutions two weeks in advance. She had invited her daughter, Missy, to join her in this ritual of transition.
| "Naturally, Brittany loved Missy’s beautiful gift and insisted on having all her wine poured from it. And, naturally, Missy offered to fill the decanter each time it needed replenishing." |
“Do as I do,” Brittany instructed her daughter, holding up a piece of loose-leaf paper to demonstrate. She folded the paper in half, then half, then half again so that there would be eight even-sized boxes to fill in with solemn promises.
Missy followed her mother’s meticulous motions, then smoothing out the paper, began to number each box.
“Use a pencil!” Brittany ordered with the voice of a dutiful drill sergeant. “You don’t want to have crossed-out mistakes following you into the New Year, do you?”
Missy shook her head “no” as she reached for the pickle jar full of fresh sharpened pencils.
“I hope I won’t make any mistakes,” Missy wrote in her first box.
Brittany looked over Missy’s shoulder and said, “Take out the first two words.”
“Where should I put them?” Missy asked.
“Put what?”
“Put the first two words: ‘I hope’.”
You don’t need those words. They make the sentence weak. These are statements of commitment, not wishful thinking.”
Missy knew not to contradict her mother when she was bent up double on a task. But Missy thought to herself that she might leave room to write the words “I hope” with invisible ink—made from lemon and milk if she recalled right. She would wait until her mother had fallen asleep.
Her mother usually fell asleep soon after dinner, especially if she had had two glasses of white wine. With the “Danger Corridor of Holidays” in full swing (as her mother always referred to this time of year) Missy was sure her mom would soon be slumped over in the easy chair, softly snoring. Sometimes Missy would hear her mom calling out for her own mother, or for Missy’s father so long ago gone….
The words “I hope” are usually first to go in a life bent on keeping so tidy and busy that we don’t notice the belief in something important is gone. Usually, it doesn’t disappear right away.
Sometimes it takes decades to extinguish the “I” or the “hope” or both completely. Well, almost completely. Among the living at least some bare thread of one’s self, one’s hope must dangle close enough for us to grab hold of it while, like a lazy white spider, we keep faith the cold, dark days.
Missy decided in the end, rather than use invisible ink, she would use ingenuity to slowly outwit her mother’s sorrow. This is how she did it:
She noticed that her mother’s list had included, “I will only drink one glass of wine a day.” Keeping this in mind, Missy gave her mom a Happy New Year’s present. It was a fancy glass decanter with a heavy glass stopper. Missy had arranged for her cousin Harold to buy it with savings from her piggy bank.
Naturally, Brittany loved Missy’s beautiful gift and insisted on having all her wine poured from it. And, naturally, Missy offered to fill the decanter each time it needed replenishing.
But instead of putting only wine into the decanter, Missy poured a little bit more water in every time she refilled it. To make the watering down less obvious she supplemented tap water with frozen ice cubes.
Missy’s mother occasionally complained about her “foolish resolution”. But because she had to set a good example for her daughter (who had promised to cut her cookie allotment in half), Brittany continued to consume only one glass of wine, adding more ice cubes as the liquid drained.
I don’t know if this solved all the problems between mother and daughter. In fact, it probably didn’t. But I do know this: Sometimes it takes a child to save adults from their folly.
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