One of this year's ubiquitous Christmas sensations was The Elf on the Shelf, both the book and the merrily grinning little doll. I spied the pointy-eared gent lounging on mantels on several friends' Facebook pages and peering at me from the shelf of a local candy and gift shop.
The Elf is a high-level operative on Santa's pre-Christmas reconnaissance team. His job is to spy on kids and report all naughty or nice activities back to the head office for appropriate gifting reward (Legos) or punishment (Fruit of the Looms). I'm happy to report that Santa is an equal opportunity employer--there also is a female Elf on the Shelf, with a skirt that, inexplicably, is sold separately.
Fortunately, I am an adult, free from the pressure of elf surveillance. As far as I know Santa remained blissfully unaware of my chronically unmade bed, liberal use of profanities, and consumption of chocolate before dinner. How else to explain the fact that I, who should have been number one with a bullet on the naughty list, was rewarded with a Christmas filled with good cheer, fabulous food and gifts, and best of all, the presence of my three favorite people on earth: my children, Jessica, Daniel and Melissa?
Although I frequently see Jess and Dan, both of whom live in Marquette, seeing the complete sibling trifecta has become an occasion now that Melissa attends college in Minneapolis.
Melissa arrived home the Saturday before Christmas, hours ahead of schedule, surprising me and the two dogs. Melissa was pounced on the moment she entered the door. Such a flurry of jumping, kissing and yelping! Oh, and the dogs were pretty excited to see her, too.
Thus we careened toward the holiday, cramming tree decorating, last minute shopping trips, and gift wrapping into the final days leading up to Christmas.
Any parent of adult children will tell you the best Christmas gift is having all of your kids home for the holidays. The second best gift? Having vacation time to recover from Christmas.
I spent much of the remaining week after Christmas camped out at one end of the sofa, with Melissa camped at the other end. We made ourselves an upholstered nest with blankets, pillows, books and snacks. We watched T.V., read, talked, laughed, petted the dogs. In short, we did very little. It was bliss.
Of my three kids, I've spent the least time doing nothing with Melissa. Dan and Jess are, like their mother, content to while away an afternoon in stillness, recharging the internal battery. Melissa, on the other hand, is a goer and a doer, and has been since the moment she mastered the use of her hands and feet. "Let's go do something fun!" she would exhort us as we buried ourselves in our newest library books. Not that she doesn't appreciate a good book, but her preference has always been do first, read later.
But these past few months have been strenuous ones for my go and do girl. Challenging classes, volunteer work, a part-time job, and the loss of Bridget, her beloved little black cat, were a drain on Melissa's seemingly indomitable spirit. She needed to recharge. As luck--and my accumulated vacation hours--would have it, we were able to recharge side by side.
I've always envied, and sometimes been exhausted by, Melissa's full throttle energy. I'm ashamed to admit it sometimes made me impatient with her, and I know that being a firecracker in a family of candles, as well as being younger than her sister and brother by six and four years, respectively, often made her feel like the odd Pascoe out.
I admire the gumption and can-do attitude that led her, as a little girl, to make a custom-fitted construction paper superhero costume, complete with cape, for one of her baby dolls; and to make from scratch, without so much as a recipe, a passable loaf of home-baked bread. She saw a chef make it on T.V., and thought she'd try it herself.
It's that kind of confidence, coupled with a compassionate heart, intelligent mind and a wonderfully skewed sense of humor, that brought her a large circle of friends throughout her public school days and gave her the ability to launch a new life for herself far from all that was comfortable and familiar. And as she's entered young adulthood she's caught up with her older siblings. They're on an equal footing now when it comes to discussing music, books, current events, and how silly Mom is, always reminding them to "Walk carefully, it's icy outside," as if they've never before set foot outdoors in the winter.
When Melissa left for Minnesota on January 2, we were recharged, ready to face the world again. It was hard to say goodbye--but saying it, letting our children move away from us into their own handmade futures, is the whole point of parenting, after all. It makes the time we do get to spend with them, doing something--or doing nothing at all--a gift of inestimable value.
Deb Pascoe of Marquette is a freelance writer and a peer recovery coach for Child and Family Services of the U.P. A former columnist for The Mining Journal, her book, "Life With a View ," a collection of her past columns, is available in area bookstores.