M.I.C.K.E.Y. M.O.U.S.E.

Holiday shopping brings back memories, though this particular memory springs from a summer time shopping trip to Marlowe Heights, Hecht's specifically. (Rest assured this story makes its way back around to this holiday season.) As far as I was concerned, as a kid, Hecht's was better than the Sears Roebuck Dream Book. Three stories high, Hecht's had several gift shops, a card section, clothing for various budgets and tastes on multiple levels, kids coats, adult coats, a baby section, a jewelry section, a toy shop, furniture, and even a small lunch counter. Hecht's was our local Macy's.

My mother didn't drive when I was a kid, raised as she was in Belfast, Northern Ireland where transportation was a a step away onto a bus or tram. And when my father, a sailor, was sent off to sea on the U.S.S. Independence to document a long mission, Joyce Donaldson--a neighbor and a good friend of my mother's--gave mom driving lessons. Money was tight and mom needed a job to help make ends meet--that is to say, put food on the table--, and given where we lived (Suitland, Maryland just outside of D.C.), the lack of public transportation, and the unused family car (a beautiful, turquoise-colored 1961 Plymouth of some sort) sitting outside our apartment building, Joyce was a godsend. Heck, Joyce was a godsend in many ways in our lives back then.

As it happens, Joyce and my mother, with my mom at the wheel, decided to drive beyond the confines of our little town to Hecht's as a part of their efforts to increase mom's comfort behind the wheel under increasingly stressful road conditions. They'd pulled into an odd left turn lane that was separated from the D.C. bound traffic by an island as it curved across the south bound lane. They were in the Plymouth, the 2nd car stopped at a light. The light turned green and the first car proceeded toward the shopping center. The car had no sooner straddled the intersection when an another car sped through the red light and smashed into it. This was in the day before seat belts, and the scene was horrific, traumatizing. And from what I understand from the retelling, it appeared that everyone in the car with the legal right-of-way was killed instantly. Mom put off getting a driver's license for another 13 years. (My mom saved me from the knowledge of that horrific event until the day I asked her many years later why she never got her license "back then.")

So, for the rest of my childhood most of our shopping trips, when my father was unavailable, were joyous affairs, without a squabble. Meaning, my mother was on her best behavior because these trips were peopled by at least one friend of hers--someone who could drive--and usually one or two or more of their children in tow. My mother kept me in line by saying in her most pleasant voice, "Do you need to go to the Ladies Room?" That was my mother's secret code for "And when we get there I'll give you a reason to cry if you don't STOP DOING THAT IMMEDIATELY!"

Joyce was a frequent driver and shopping companion, but on this day my mother and I were accompanied by Vivian Donges and two of her five children. Vivian had lived next door to us in Naval housing in Connecticut and had recently moved to the Maryland area.

We were on the first, and perhaps my favorite, floor in a section where the big black and white blocks that made up the floor gleamed from constant polishing and would have been perfect for sock skating had our parents allowed such behavior. But on this day, I was in sandals and for whatever reason Vivian's children had no interest in me, which if I remember correctly, was the same attitude they'd taken when I'd lived next door to them. They were a group of siblings who were decidedly into their own. And, well, to be fair to them, I was all of seven, had undiagnosed Asperger's, and lived in my head much of my time.

So there we were, our mother's gabbing and the two Donges kids amusing themselves, quickly striding through the women's section to who knows where. I fell behind just a step or two because, well I couldn't pass up the lure of that dazzling floor. As they hummed near me, I concentrated on stepping only on the big black blocks. Suddenly it grew quiet and I looked up and found myself all alone, save for the one clerk at a check out station. And so I reported myself lost and started to cry.

Next thing I know, I'm on the third floor in the "Employees Only" section, sitting comfortably in an office with a police officer feeding me an ice cream cone and questioning me, "What's your name kid?"

I swear to goodness I told him my actual first name (you know, the name I used to have before I changed it to Claire in 1995--the one I wrote about in What's In A Name?), but the next thing I know, over the loud speakers a woman is saying, "We have a lost child in the administrative offices on the 3rd floor; her name is Annette, Annette Prideaux." Well, the woman making the announcement was all the way in another room and what was I to do as that falsehood was repeated over and over again? I was eating an ice cream after all and being chatted up by a nice man in uniform.

Meanwhile, my mother and Vivian were frantically looking for me... all the while ignoring the announcement about Annette. Finally, Vivian's panic decreased long enough for her to catch the butchered pronunciation of "Prideaux" in the announcement. I can only imagine the steam that escaped my mother's ears at that moment... right before she burst out laughing in relief.

You see, I was IN LOVE with Annette Funicello of the Mousketeers. I loved her so much I'd wished my parents had named me Annette. (Me and probably a couple million other little girls like me.) And while I swore that I did not give the police officer that name, there was no conceivable way he could have mixed up the name I once had with the name Annette. They weren't even close. Not by a mile.

The Hecht's administrative staff were in stitches. And after my mother gave me a good talking to for lying (without a trip to the Ladies Room), the relief turned into laughter and the day was deemed an all around success. In the years that followed, my childhood turn at being Annette became family legend.

I'm sharing this particular story with you because I have recently been doing some Christmas shopping on my own... on eBay. You see, I've been making peace with my sometimes painful past and also remembering fun times and I'm celebrating ALL that by purchasing used and gently loved ornaments for my Christmas tree. Let's just say my Christmas tree and I are getting intentionally personal. And in my search for ornaments to remind me to laugh at life's absurdities (it's only life after all), I serendipitously happened upon a Mickey Mouse ornament and knew I had to have it.

In the years to come, you may hear some of the stories behind many of the intentioned ornaments. Meanwhile, these ornaments are making me laugh, healing my soul, and restoring my spirit.

It's weird I know to be speaking about Christmas tree ornaments and the healing of my soul and the restoration of my spirit in the same sentence, particularly in light of the war on Christmas. Having been reminded repeatedly to keep the Christ in Christmas on Facebook, I'm not certain if that warning is intended to admonish me not to use the phrase Happy Holidays--a phrase I think is just fine and dandy and wonderfully inclusive--or if it's intended to remind me to actually keep Christ in Christmas and not focus on the rampant materialism of the season. Also, Christmas tree ornaments are material, worldly things and as such are probably not what most people think of when they think of soulful healing and spiritual restoration.

Yet, as someone with Asperger's, I like to make ideas, lessons, and healing concrete, 3D if you will. I like to gaze upon or hold my life lessons in the palm of my hand. And after all that's happened since I became totally disabled--the disappointments, the betrayals, the drama--, I've learned a lot and I'm in a really good space right now, laughing heartedly (and not bitterly) about all that has occurred in my life, and not just since I became disabled. I feel reconciled and have the need to memorialize what I've learned and also re-remembered. (Re-remembered because it seems that there are some life lessons that you have to re-learn and remember over and over and over again.)

I've re-remembered what I'd actually not forgotten but was no longer connected to on a gut level because I was, well, shell-shocked. Life is tough. Life is not fair. What goes around does not necessarily come around. And life, when it's not being ironic, is often absurd, which is why "Christians invented hell; so they could send OTHER people there when they die."

Many thanks to my friend, the minister, who reminded me of why hell was invented, and for giving me the material for my subsequent incarnation of her observation: "The reason Christians invented hell? Justice is not served here on earth." That bit of dark humor reminded me of perhaps the most important lesson of all: The only karma I need to worry about is my own; that, and my duty to love life back.

As long as I can be that realization--life, when it is not ironic, is often absurd--, I can manage and learn from what's happened and will happen in my life. That is, I can be reborn. Who I am, my love of life, my connection to the divine does not hinge upon my getting what I want in life, though I want those ornaments. If I could paint or sculpt, I'd be painting or sculpting the lessons I am memorializing with Christmas ornaments. But I can do neither; hence, the ornaments--3D representations of understanding, forgiveness, laughter, and love.

Life is short, you never know when your next turn or the next right thing you do might be your last. So put your mouse ears on and enjoy the ride while you can, and may we all be forever blessed with the healing nature of laughter.