dis⋅il⋅lu⋅sion .ment (or) Santa Ate My Cookies

First, I want to state that I am completely aware that what I am about to tell you isn't normal. So let it be known that we don't do it with our other children unless they ask. But Chloe has wanted us to "home school" her all week since school was canceled due to snow. (Any of you who know me in real life know that homeschooling? Not my cup of tea. Unless is means "Hey, Sweetie, come here with your book and sit next to your mama while I read." Parallel reading: it's a good thing.) So on Monday, I took the novel Chloe has been reading and made a list of vocabulary/spelling words from her current chapter that I knew would be a challenge for her, and I made her look them all up in the dictionary, write out a definition, and use the word in her own sentence. One of those words was "disillusionment." The dictionary definition she found was rather inadequate: "a freeing or a being freed from illusion or conviction; disenchantment." Commence a ten minute long discussion of disillusionment with an eight year old.

Since then, it's been on my mind. Some examples from my own life, in no particular order:

dis⋅il⋅lu⋅sion .ment

1) When I was ten, I had a friend named Patty with tight blond curls that she kept short like the little orphan Annie and freckles from one ear to the next. Her mother was a very large woman who lived in the kitchen--I swear, that woman baked things the way mine read books. They had one of those little cylindrical noise-makers on their counter that was painted with cow spots and actually mooed when you turned it over. Patty's mom used to bake us these puffy treats she called "Homemade Oreos." If my ten year old version of heaven had a taste, I imagine it was those cookies against my tongue. I never forgot those cookies. A few years ago, I did an intensive Google search for a recipe and came up empty. Fast forward to this week: a friend on Facebook posts a picture of her daughter standing IN FRONT OF A PLATE OF PATTY'S MOM'S COOKIES. I asked her what they were. Apparently, they are this easy recipe she got from a friend who calls them, of all things, Homemade Oreo Cookies.

Guess what I made last night? That's right.

Guess how they tasted? Eh. Okay. Little rich for my taste. Too cream-cheesy in the middle. I should have left them to my imagination, because they did not live up to my memory of them.

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2. I remember believing in Santa Claus, and I remember not believing in Santa Claus. But I don't remember how I got from one to the other, so I don't think it was a very traumatic transition. But vivid in my memory is the moment my little brother Quinn, three years my junior, learned the truth. He was five, and his best friend across the street (Matthew Hardin, you out there somewhere?!) had learned from a friend and school and revealed the shocking news to Quinn. Quinn cried for a long time. I can see him still: on my mom's lap, being rocked like a much younger child, sobbing because this magical being he believed so wholeheartedly in turned out to be a Great. Big. Lie.

(Hey, mom! I think this is the moment that set the seed for my doubts about God. Way to go. I know this would break your heart if you weren't an avowed atheist today).

Chris and I decided when we were married that we wouldn't do the Santa thing with our kids. For some reason, this memory of my brother was just too traumatic. That, and I have a dear friend who shall remain nameless (hi Nameless!) who claims she believed in Santa until she was an early teen and had to ask her father: "Listen, I'll have kids of my own someday soon. I need to know the truth." So our kids have been raised going through all the Santa motions while being periodically reminded that this is just a fun story but isn't really true. One year Chloe got angry at us every time we told her it was just for fun, so we had to back off and let her go with it. She's past that now. But our friends are less than happy every year when it's our children who tell their children the naked truth and send them crying to their mother's laps the way Quinn did that fateful year.

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3. My old mentor, Ron Carlson, at our first meeting when I started my MFA in fiction writing:

Ron: "So, you just got married?"
Me: "Two weeks ago!"
Ron: "What does your husband do?"
Me: "He's a student, too."
Ron: "What is he studying?"
Me: "Music Theory and Composition."
Silence.
Ron: "Your parents must be just thrilled about that."

It took me awhile to noodle through his comment. Two artists = very little money. That's all fine and dandy when you are young and childless and in graduate school. Next thing you know, though, you're both in the business of education and collecting book royalties that pay for little more than the stamps for your Christmas cards, and you're having a Little House on the Prairie style handmade Christmas.

Still? I wouldn't trade it for the world.