Elf 101: Sometimes, You Need a Little Help

So, it's Day One of the elves. Ben is, of course, beside himself with excitement, checking on Mikey all day. When he awakens at 1:15am (yes, you read that right), he's laughing, pointing, jumping up and down. Finally, FINALLY, the day he's been waiting for. Keep in mind--we have been crossing off days on the calendar for this. It is big time stuff. Somehow, we get him to go back to bed (Eric and I hadn't even been to bed yet; that's a cleaning story for another time), and we smile, "Awww, he still loves the elves..."

5:00am. Listen, we're on vacation here, dude. Plus, your dad and I decided to clean out 35 years worth of hoarding last night. "Mom, why aren't the girls up? We should get the girls. They want to see the elves, too." I magically convince him that waking Sleeping Beauty 1 and 2 would NOT be a good idea and that maybe he should just crawl into our bed for a bit. Thankfully, it's still dark out, so he does go back to sleep for a little while, but not much.

Enter Thanksgiving dinner into the picture, and I realize why. Dinner Rolls. Plain old dinner rolls. You've had them every year at Thanksgiving, right? Everybody does. Yeah, everybody except little boys who have two personalities: one-a sweet, excitable kid on an all natural diet (Dr. Jekyl); two-an evil, vulgar maniac who has inadvertently eaten an artificial additive (Mr. Hyde). We had been sharing a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' home, the kids excited and playing with everything in my parents' house, the Lions actually winning the ball game, my mom's turkey and stuffing a moist delight. Before we ate, I even joked to my parents' priest (a calm, quiet 65-year-old woman who never had children), "Yup, this is my son on an all natural diet," because his normal voice is still quite loud (just not evil or vulgar). As we ate, Ben asked for another roll and--because it was Thanksgiving and we never have rolls because I am now gluten intolerant and he loves rolls and never gets them--we said sure. Picture that giant red X that comes up on "Family Feud" when somebody gives a dumb answer (but the family still tells them "Good answer, good answer!).

Before we left, the squabbling had begun, Ben was stealing books from Becca and giving Emma's name several syllables. In the car, he screamed when Emma looked at him, and said he was going to pee on his elf. Dinner rolls. Damn.

So, today. Well, yesterday, now. He has some fights with Emma, a massive temper tantrum in his room (wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, not grilled cheese), throws some toys, tells me "You are a very, very, very, very, VERY mean mom," and gives me a jab when I squirt him with water from the sink (because he wouldn't wait for me to stop scrubbing dishes to open the box of Annie's Organic Cheddar Bunnies-kind of ironic when you think about it). Anyway, not his best day. Not his worst, but definitely not his best.

Enter 3:00am. Our elf hunt begins. As we enter the kitchen hand-in-hand (Dr. Jekyl is back), he mentions, "I might be stuck," remembering his transgressions of the day. We turn on the light and he stops in his tracks. "Yup," he says, bottom lip quivering, "I'm stuck." He literally lies himself face first down on the kitchen floor and sobs. Great, heaving, a-loved-one-has-just-died sobs. I try to pick him up and console him, but he says, "No, Mom, we've got to go find the other elves," a brave solider in the line of battle. We hunt the living room, the bathroom, his room. He stops every so often, cries a little, wipes his tears (and blows his nose, since I have also shared this lovely cold with him), and keeps hunting. We find Bernard and The-Elf-Yet-to-Be-Named (Becca's) cuddled together in the laundry room on the shelf with the cookie jars, tucked in between Batman ("Because you're a friend, and you like Batman, and, as of today you're off the team.") and Mickey Mouse. Again, my sweet baby hits the floor.

This time, he lets me pick him up, pour him into my arms, and rock him. We fit together like puzzle pieces, and I am reminded of the time he spent in my womb, crammed into any empty spaces he could find, as our blood flowed in unison. We rock and rock, I wipe the tears from his face, and I repeat over and over, "What are you thinking, Bubba? Hhmmm? Can you tell Mom what you're thinking about?" He really can't. There aren't words.

After a while, he goes solemnly into the kitchen, turns the light back on, and faces his elf. "Mikey," he says, his voice breaking with emotion, "I'm just so sorry. So very, very sorry." He wipes his face with his sleeve, and starts to trek back to bed. "Hey, Mom," he stops, "remember how last night he flipped over [when we couldn't get him to go back to bed Eric flipped the elf over to make him look tired] and then when we got up he had flipped back up? Maybe if I'm good now--really, really good--he'll be able to move a little. Like, fly to over there. You think so, Mom?"

I "#!$?ing" know so! "Maybe, Buddy. I know Mikey knows you're really sorry, and that today's going to be a great day."

"Yea." He stands and nods, staring at his elf, a footie-pajamaed Rodin's The Thinker, pondering how to make this right. "I'm sorry, Mikey," he whispers again, and retraces his steps toward his bedroom.

As I tuck him in, heartbroken, I think about all the stupid mistakes I make in the day, and I'm on anti-depressants. I say snotty remarks that come off way more mean that I intended. I bark at the kids, push the dog out of the way with my foot. I envy other people their seemingly perfect lives and ignore the little hiccups in life that come their way. I spray my son a squirt with the dish sprayer instead of taking the box of crackers and putting them back in the cupboard. Nobody's perfect, even on a great day. I want to be the tough mom, the one who makes him stick out this lesson, but I can't help but think as I tuck his Spiderman sheets around him that, maybe, he's gotten what he should've out of this, and somehow, I want to make it better.

As miracles would happen, he had fallen asleep on the couch last night, and we hadn't given him a sippy cup of water to put in his bed. "Mom, can you get me a water?" I consider it a sign from the angels.

I saunter into the kitchen, make a big play of noisily getting the cup, the lid, the water--and I move that damn elf over to the other shelf in the kitchen. Then, I run into Ben's room.

"Ben-Ben, Ben-Ben, you're not going to believe this!"

"What?" he is upright in bed, straight as a rocketship, ready to blast off. "Is it my elf?"

I grab him and we run together into the kitchen. He turns on the light and--SHAZAM!--he sees the empty shelf. "Ahh!" he screams (somehow no one else is awakened) and he turns. It is just as he thought, Mikey has moved--just a little, just across to the other shelf--but he has moved all the same. "Oh, Mikey! Thank you!" he says, and moves toward his elf. "I love you, so so so so much, Mikey." He turns and the light behind his eyes is blinding.

As I tuck him in for the second time, he is beaming, wiggling, gleeful and hopeful and full of the knowledge that he really can do the right thing. We talk about how everybody makes mistakes, and that sometimes you just have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again. Maybe it's lost on him, maybe he gets it. Maybe some people will think I cheated him out of an important lesson. But, as I kiss his cheeks, I know that I will sleep well, having taught my son the TRUE meaning of Christmas: God's unconditional love.

"Mom, did my elf move?"

When my husband was growing up, his parents bought two little toy elves, and used them to con their children into behaving through the holidays. Apparently, they should have patented the idea, as "Elf on the Shelf" has now taken off like wildfire. When our oldest daughter was young, we bought her a little elf--to whom she gave the name "Bernard" like the head elf off of the movie "The Santa Clause"--and we would move him about the house each night if she was good, keep him in his place if she made bad choices. We'd catch her staring at him for long amounts of time, hoping to catch a blink or a slight shift of an arm, but she never touched him. Em knew that, if he got touched, Bernard would lose his magic and have to go back to the North Pole.

My niece, eternally the bold one, touched her elf (poked is actually a better word, I believe), which sent not only her elf but those of her brother and sister off to Santa's workshop. I think the other two stopped talking to her for a while--not that Gracie cared--and eventually they were all given a second chance.

Emma once asked, after having a lengthy conversation at school with a child who did NOT have an elf, why we were so lucky. "Grandpa used to do Santa's taxes," Eric told her, and that satisfied any curiosity she may have had about whether this elf stuff was real or not. She would still stare for long periods of time, and sometimes I would even catch her whispering to Bernard, perhaps trying to justify any deeds for the day. Yes, Emma deeply believed in her elf, and in the magic of Christmas. I thought I had really seen what it looked like to fall in love with Christmas hook-line-and-sinker when I watched Em with that elf. Until Ben had his fourth Christmas.

When Ben was a toddler, then two and three years old, he didn't really get the elf thing. Not that it was his fault; he didn't really get the whole "walking on two legs" thing then, either. But his fourth year, shortly before he turned four, Ben's world exploded. The morning after Thanksgiving, Emma got him up and pointed out the elves (one each for her, him, and Becca). The previous year, Ben had been into "Toy Story," and had named his elf Woody. Upon seeing the elf this fourth year, he immediately decided that Woody would like to be called Mikey, after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (because what cowboy doesn't have a Ninja Turtle hiding deep inside him somewhere?). Ben watched Mikey all day, waiting for him to move. He brought him toys to see, told him stories, sang him little songs. He didn't want Mikey being bored, sitting there in the same spot all day.

That night, I was awakened by a little hand shaking my face. "Mom, did my elf move?" It was Ben. Now, my kids do not get up in the night. I mean, maybe they wake up in the night, but they are just plain not allowed to come in our room and mess with us. Momma likes her sleep. If Momma don't sleep, well, it's ugly. So, Ben may occasionally have a nightmare or a bathroom incident, but he is quickly scuttled back into his room. It's always an "emergency" if you come into our room. It is not, I repeat, NOT to pull me out of bed to go look for some stupid stuffed toy.

"What?" I replied, groggy, and certain that I had heard him incorrectly.

"C'mon, Mom, get up. Did my elf move? We gotta look." He was pulling on my arm now, and heading out the bedroom door. He is freakishly strong in the night when I am still half-asleep.

"Dude, we are not-- Benjamin, seriously. It's 2:36am, Buddy. We are not looking for that elf!"

But we did look. We looked in the kitchen, the laundry room, and the bathroom. The elves, per tradition, had started out in the kids' stockings, so we knew they had moved. The search was on. That first night, they were in the kids' bathroom, hanging upside down from the shower curtain.

"Mom," Ben was gasping with laughter, "look at Mikey! He's so funny!"

Yeah, so funny I want to punch him in the throat.

But, then I did look. I looked at my son, at the glow behind his eyes, at the way his cheeks filled up when he laughed, at the pure joy in him. It was the joy of Christmas. Sure, it was the joy of Christmas at 2:36am, but it was the joy of Christmas just the same.

When Ben and Becca were infants, one of my favorite times with them was nursing in the middle of the night. It was special when I fed Emma then, too, but I was a single mom so Emma and I were always alone, and it wasn't quite the same. When I was up with Ben and Becca, the whole rest of the house was asleep. It was like a secret club to which only we belonged. We would rock, watch bad TV, and I would tell them about what the world be like as they got bigger. It was nothing short of magical.

By waking me up and bringing me on his elf quest, Ben had brought that magic back to me. I so remember being a young child, wiggling under my covers, hoping that I at least looked asleep so that Santa wouldn't pass by our house. I remember hearing my Grandpa McCord playing a tape (of course, I didn't know it was a tape at the time), of the reindeers' hooves on the rooftop and the jingle of the bells on their harness and thinking, "We have GOT to get home!" I remember writing letters, making wishes, thanking Santa when I opened that special gift Christmas morning. I remember believing so hard, loving the magic, feeling "in love" with Christmas.

So, each night last year between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, I got up at whatever godforsaken hour Ben came in, and we would hunt down the elves. Occasionally, someone's elf hadn't moved, and we'd discuss what the person had done to cause that. He would always, always remind me, "Mom, you don't touch the elves. It makes them lose their magic." We would creep through the house, sometimes just using a flashlight, and hunt those little guys down. Every time we'd find them, we'd laugh. "Mikey's so silly, Mom," Ben would say every time, and my brain would record it to play back someday when he was 16, and too old for silliness.

Thanksgiving is this Thursday, and I've been waiting. We actually had to cross off days on the calendar for Ben and make a little box around "elf day," he's been anticipating it so eagerly. I don't know who's looking forward to it more, Ben or me. Will my little boy still be in love with the magic of Christmas? Will he still include me in his gleeful elf hunt? I'll have to wait until 2:36am Friday to see.