Ho! Ho! Ho! Slaphead Mofo!

Never Done: Christmas eve with Steve, Julie, and Leigh
Tshuve: Pajamas for Christmas

Josh and I flew to Boston to spend Christmas with my family in New Hampshire. I was all geared up to write about My Very First Full-Body Pat Down (having decided I didn't want the dose of radiation from the scanner) but apparently TSA isn't too worried about the people flying out of JFK -- we just went through a regular detector, and no pat down.

All cleared, we ran into Felix and Christina in the Jet Blue terminal, and hung out for an hour, talking about film and collaboration and how to stay warm in a winter house with no insulation and just a wood stove and no hot flashes.

The flight was on time, everything went smoothly, and when we arrived in Boston, my uncle Steve was there to pick us up and bring us to New Hampshire. On the way home, we stopped at Shaws to pick up the Christmas salmon, and ran into my cousin Judy and her daughter Madeline in the fish department.

Once back at the house, we jumped right in to help with food prep -- and excorticated (I had to look that word up -- what we did was so much more than peel and section) a dozen oranges and a dozen grapefruits for salad, boiled a dozen eggs for garam masala deviled eggs, made a raspberry sauce to go on poached pears (more on those tomorrow), and caught up with my aunt Julie and cousin Leigh.

Until it was time to go to dinner at Villa Banco in Nashua -- a double Never Done, since I'd certainly not been to that restaurant, and also I have never spent time in Nashua. My uncle and I once met with MoveOn people in a parking lot in Nashua to get out the vote for Obama and local democrats in the 2008 primary, but after our orientation, we were sent to his town of Hollis to door knock. I loved door knocking with my uncle that day. I loved being a progressive team, 75 and 45 years old, and getting to see my uncle in his town. He is on the school board, and volunteers at the library, and knew most everyone we met that day, and if he didn't, he knew who knew them. But that was in Hollis, not Nashua.

Downtown Nashua at night is beautiful in that New England small city way. A long main street lined with brick buildings, and, it being Christmas time, white lights. Even though I'd never been there, I got the feeling I often get when I'm in New England -- a feeling of cultural and aesthetic home. I don't have to know the place, but I know the place. (Whenever I come to New England I get confused about why I live in New York, but that's another story.) After dinner (I also feel in my cultural home when I get to eat lobster -- and got it with shrimp and crab and scallops and pasta, no less!) we were sitting in the cold car when my uncle asked me, "What does that bumper sticker mean?" I craned my neck and saw it: SLAPHEAD MOFO. I didn't know what slaphead was, but I said, "Well, mofo means motherfucker." At first he didn't believe me -- and pointed out that it should really be "mofu" -- but Leigh backed me up on it, and he believed her. Then Leigh looked up slaphead in the urban dictionary and found out it basically means "du-oh" -- like when you slap your head in a stupid moment. So we figured out that a slaphead mofo is a stupid motherfucker. Then we found that Slaphead Mofo is some kind of mountain biking community with a confusing website. (Kronda? Can you explain?) Then Leigh mentioned that she had to tell her mother the other day what a firecrotch was. Steve didn't know that either, so Leigh explained it's someone with red hair .... It's hard to explain, but when you're with your close family, and you're talking about motherfuckers and firecrotches, it is strangely comforting. I settled into the back seat, very happy to be with my clan.

And speaking of comfort, when we got back to the house, Julie came out with presents for everyone, and explained that they have a Christmas eve tradition -- they each get a new pair of pajamas, and she had included me and Josh. Mine is a beautiful black and white brushed cotton patterned pants with a black t-shirt top that fits perfectly. (Julie is an amazing shopper.) This is not the first time I have received pajamas for Christmas. I also did in 1981, when I was on my exchange year in France. I was accustomed to wearing a t-shirt to bed, which I had been doing since I had arrived there in August. At Christmas time, my host family gave me a pink nightgown. At first I didn't appreciate this gift -- I didn't like pink, I didn't like nightgowns, I didn't need a nightgown. I am pretty sure (and I really hope) I didn't say any of this gracelessness aloud, but instead I started to wear the nightgown, and after a while I fell deeply in love with it, for its own sake, but also because the gift felt so caring. I also came to understand that they might not have felt so comfortable with me in my t-shirt and underwear, and that it might have been a gift for the whole family. It was one of those growing-up lessons; after that I always traveled with appropriate pajamas.

So it was a day full of never-done activities, but none as meaningful as just being together with my family on Christmas eve.