Overheard

Gabriel: I'm cold. I want hot chocolate.

Lana: What hot chocolate?

Gabriel: It's a drink. A warm drink. For drinking in the winter, when it's cold outside and you want something to warm you up inside. I need something to warm up my inside, cause it was so cold at my soccer game. But, it's not winter yet.

Lana: What winter?

Gabriel: When it snows and gets real cold. Oooh, and, in the winter, we go to talk to this...person. His name is Santa, and if you are good, you can tell this person, Santa, what kind of toys you want, and he brings some of them to the house, on Christmas, if you've been good. It's awesome. We have to be good, though.

(Gabriel runs to coffee table to grab a picture of himself on Santa's lap and shows it to Lana.)

Gabriel: Here, this is Santa. This is me and Santa. In Christmastown.*

Lana: Why I not in this picture?

Gabriel: You weren't here yet. But, THIS year, we'll get a picture of ME and YOU talking to Santa.

Lana: Yeah! A picture of ME and YOU and Daddy and Mommy! Talkin' to Santa. Awesome!

Gretchen

*Gabriel believes that Frankenmuth, Michigan is actually called Christmastowne. This is because we have always spent Thanksgiving there, and on the Friday after Thanksgiving we take him to see Santa, who is just sitting in the town square. For this reason, Gabe started calling Frankenmuth "Christmastown" when he was about 3 years old.

Halloween Hi-Jinks

Yesterday afternoon, Lana and I were waiting for my prescription* to be filled at Mega Grocery Store Chain that is Not Wal-Mart, and we had about 20 minutes to kill.

We wandered around the store for a few minutes, and I just let her look at whatever she wanted to look at (with the exception of a rack of birth control products in the health and beauty aisle, which I think she was drawn to because the boxes were so many different colors. I am sure that the marketing geniuses at Trojan and Lifestyles would love to know that their boxes are eye-catching to four-year-olds, but, I really wasn’t ready to have “that talk” just yet.)

We came to the “seasonal” aisle, currently decked out for Halloween, which I had been vaguely trying to avoid because Lana is totally a Sugar Addict (as am I), and I didn’t want to have to have a fight about the fact that we were not going to buy a gigantic bag of fun-size Nerds. (Mostly because, if we had a giant bag of fun-size Nerds six weeks before Halloween, they would be LONG GONE before Halloween arrived, which really isn’t something that anybody in my house needs. Talk about a sugar rush.)

In the middle of the aisle were two of those giant inflatable items. You know what I am talking about – recent additions to holiday decorations, also used for sporting events? This is what I mean - http://www.inflatableseasons.com/ ). Anyway, there were two of them: one kind of like this http://www.inflatableseasons.com/4-ft.-Ghost-coming-out-of-Pumpkin-p-16239.html and one kind of like this http://www.inflatableseasons.com/Skeleton-Head-Hard-Shell-Mini-Tornado-Globe-p-16230.html except that it had a spooky looking house inside instead of the skeleton head.

Lana was fascinated by the ghost coming out of the pumpkin, because, well, she’s four and it was a giant inflatable pumpkin. And also because about once a minute, the ghost would settle back down into the jack-o-lantern and then pop back up again. It was a jack-in-the-box-jack-o-lantern, if you can imagine.

She stared at it. She was TRANSFIXED by all its air-blown glory. At first she just stared at it quietly, and then she made a sound, a sound like, “oooooooooooooohhhhh” - a sound of complete and utter delight.

One of the store employees walked by and said, “Do you like the pumpkin?”

“Shesh” she breathed, almost reverently. (This is how she pronounces ‘yes’ – I don’t know if it’s a speech impediment or a by product of the fact that she is still learning to speak English.)

“What are you going to be for Halloween?” the store employee asked.

Lana looked up at me, confused. (We haven’t really discussed Halloween with her. This contact with the giant inflatable jack-o-lantern-jack-in-the-box was her first exposure to the concept.)

Lana looked at me for an answer to the employee’s question.

“This is her first Halloween,” I said.

The employee looks at me like I’m nuts.

“We adopted her from Vietnam eight months ago, so, she’s never seen Halloween before.”

“Oh,” the employee said. “Well, this is sure going to be fun for her. What about Christmas? Do you think she celebrated Christmas before.”

“Probably not,” I said.

“Well, if she’s that impressed with the pumpkin, I think she’s going to be REALLY excited when Christmas rolls around.”

I think the employee might be right about that. Very, very right.

Gretchen

*Evidently, one of the reasons I have had NO SUCCESS in losing any weight is because my thyroid has crapped out. Which is why we were waiting for a prescription to be filled.

Daniel McNeal

(I wrote this last year on September 11 - which is why it references 5 years instead of 6...I wish I had something more to add on the subject that I've written more recently, but, I just don't have it in me right now.)

In March of 2002, I celebrated my 30th birthday.

I was still reeling from the horrifying year that had been 2001 – the accidental death of our friend Tad, in July of that year, the death of my grandpa in November, 2001, and, of course, September 11.

I was struggling with writing my law review paper. I was slowly losing my sanity because my two year old baby still was not sleeping.

I think, truly, that I, like so many other Americans, was experiencing some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I was depressed on that day in March that was my 30th birthday. When my mother called to wish me “Happy Birthday,” I gloomily told her that I “so depressed.”Instead of responding as one might expect that she would (i.e. “You’re depressed? I’m the one who’s old enough to have a daughter who is THIRTY”) she instead said,

“Think about the people who didn’t get to turn 30 today.”

I said, “What?” And she said, “Think about the people who WOULD have been 30 today, but for 9/11 or car accidents or leukemia or what have you. You should celebrate turning 30 today, because the alternative, is NOT EVER turning 30. You see?”

I fixated on this question, of who was not turning 30, and through some quick research via the Social Security Death Index (an index of people who are dead, who had social security numbers), I found that the answer was EIGHTY-SIX. Eight-six people, who had U.S. social security numbers, who shared my exact birthday, did not get to turn 30 in 2002.

(It’s likely that there were some other Americans, who shared my exact birthday, who passed away before adulthood, and they are not listed in the Social Security Death Index, as they did not have social security numbers. Unlike today, not all children born in the 1970s got social security number the same year they were born. At that time, the IRS didn’t require social security numbers to claim a dependent on their taxes. This did not happen until 1988, and, as a matter of curiosity, on April 15, 1988, some 7 million American children disappeared, due to the fact that they never existed at all: http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/dependents.asp )

One of those eighty-six people who in particular stood out, to me, was a man named Daniel McNeal.

I didn’t know Daniel McNeal, and it’s unlikely that our paths would ever have crossed. But, he was born on the same day as me, in 1972, and he died, five years ago today, on the bright sunny morning that was September 11, 2001.

While I sat in a lecture on Trust and Estate Law at a small Midwestern law school, Daniel McNeal was on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center Tower 2. He had recently been promoted to a position of Vice-President. And while it appears that he did attempt to escape from his office on the 104th floor, he did not make it out of the tower alive.

Daniel McNeal will forever be 29.

I think, in a way, Daniel McNeal makes this day that much more horrifying for me. His is an identity for my collective grief. I didn’t know him, but, we shared something – the day we both came into this world. And Daniel, who should have celebrated his 30th birthday in March of 2002, on the same day as me, did not get to blow out those thirty candles. He didn’t get his “free birthday dessert” at any number of chain restaurants. His mother didn’t get to call him on the day she gave birth to him thirty years earlier. He didn’t get any of those things. Maybe, perhaps, if 9/11 hadn’t happened, it’s wholly possible that Daniel McNeal would have met his end in any other myriad of ways in the five years that have passed since that horrible morning.

But maybe, just maybe, but for Osama Bin Laden, Daniel McNeal would be just fine this morning. Maybe he would have had a cup of coffee and some Raisin Bran and hopped on the subway to the World Trade Center station. And the rest of us 260 million Americans would not have the occasion to be caught up in the grief of remembrance today…

I think of this man, this man I did not know, this man whose name I WISH I had never come to know - because the fact that I know it is solely because he is no longer walking among us - each year now, on my birthday, and again on September 11. Daniel McNeal, I wish I could tell you, five years after your death, that we caught the man who stole your 30th (and all subsequent) birthday from you. I wish I could give you that piece of information, and I can’t. But, I hope you rest peacefully, Daniel McNeal.

Gretchen