“What do you think of this?” she asked.

I had my head down trying to sort out what seemed like a byzantine list of options. To assemble my custom burger, I had to choose from five different categories of exotic ingredients. I was overwhelmed on page two of a four page menu.

 “It’s a lot to read,” I mumbled.

“Not the menu,” she barked, “This. What do you think of this?”

I looked up. She was nodding her head and waving her large hand with glittering fingernails toward my son and his boyfriend. She pointed directly at each of them in response to my blank expression. “This,” she repeated, “What do you think of this?”

The waitress was about my age and six feet tall. She was a powerful mix of broad shoulders, pink sequined sweater, bejeweled cropped jeans, an Adam’s apple and impossibly high heels. Her sassy tone barely masked an intense weariness of stupid people. She was staring at me, waiting.

We were at a diner that called itself the “Gayest Place to Eat” in our city. My sister found it on the internet and thought it would be fun for us to have lunch there. So here we were, my sister and I sitting on one side of the booth and my son and his boyfriend on the other. We had been laughing over the menu, teasing my son that he should order the “gayest” drink or the “gayest” appetizer. All four of us were trying to outdo one another in creating the perfect combination of entrée, side and cocktail from the endless flow charts. We had been oblivious to the waitress until now.

Although she had startled me, I knew by this point that she was not asking about the menu. But I didn’t have a ready answer to her question. No one had asked me this before. My son came out at the end of his freshman year of college. He is a very verbal person and we are close to him, so there was no long, drawn out secret and reveal. He talked to us a few months after he knew and we shared in many early and ongoing conversations; listening as he worked through his own understanding and self awareness.

I confess my initial reaction was not tidy. I was a liberal parent forced to apply her declared values in an actual and not theoretical situation. No one rehearses for this. He told me at 10:00 p.m. one night. I said a bunch of ridiculous things (“Will you still bring someone home for Christmas?”) and left on an airplane the next morning. I flew three hours in a daze and then sat in a parking lot for three more hours. I catalogued all the narratives that might be shifting, all past and future decisions, calculating exponential loss and fear and worry.

Then I thought of my son. Was he any different than he had been at 9:59 pm? Was his future any less dazzling? I could see him in my mind, the delightful boy he was and the amazing man he was becoming. His story, the one he would write on his own, was just getting interesting. My part in his story had evolved into a more supporting role, but the script to our relationship hadn’t changed. In fifteen hours I had moved through a million possible scenarios and ended up the same proud mom of the same great, gay kid.  

The waitress was still looking at me expectantly. I thought later of all the things I should have said: clever things, Eleanor Roosevelt things, enlightened-earth-mother things. But this whole reverie was happening in seconds and too soon after my menu confusion. So I blurted out: “I think it is wonderful.” She made a “humph” sound and glared sternly at the boys. “You are young, pretty and lucky. You have no idea what it was like” and walked away.

This was good because I really had no idea what I was going to order.   

Many years later, the whole hero topic is complicated. I realize that even extraordinary humans are a blend of good and bad. They save the world by day but by night, life goes on: bills, bad relationships, wrong turns, mental illness, real stakes and deadly fires. I see with adult eyes that the lives of my idols were difficult and full of hard choices. This jaded perspective is exacerbated by the flag-waving, yellow-ribbon casting of all soldiers, regardless of their actual duty or performance, as national heroes. Why does putting on a uniform make you great? It all feels diluted. I try to convince myself that there are also daily moments of valor like letting another car merge or offering to split the last snickers bar. But the child I was, who hid imaginary Jews from imaginary Nazis in her imaginary annex, would scoff at this definition as well. Not being a jerk doesn’t make you a hero either.

This week my sister called and told me a hero story. She is a family practitioner who works at an urgent care clinic. She also works for Doctors without Borders and has expertise in tropic medicine and underserved populations. When she is abroad, she rides around in dugout canoes and sets protocol for cholera epidemics. When she is home, she gives people Tylenol and tells them that the virus will run its course in five to seven days.

Several weeks ago one of her colleagues saw a ten-year old boy with an ear ache. He had a ordinary ear infection and was prescribed an antibiotic. A few days ago he and his parents were back, now seeing my sister. A teacher had noticed redness on the boy’s face near the ear. My sister asked if he had completed his medication. “No,” the mom said, “he didn’t want to take it.” When my sister examined the ear, she realized that the infection had developed into a condition uncommon in countries with widespread immunization and antibiotic programs. She called an EENT doctor and suggested he see the boy that day. She was told to give him more amoxicillin and make an appointment. She called the ER and was grilled on what she had done or not done, what she knew and what she didn’t. Finally, my sister lost her formidable Sicilian temper and bullied an ER doctor into meeting the boy and his parents at the hospital as quickly as it took to drive there.

The next day my sister received an email. The boy did indeed have the rare infection, which had progressed into a brain abscess so severe, they had to perform emergency surgery. Had he not been treated immediately, the boy might have died within hours.

I cannot stop thinking about this story. It has all the elements that intrigued me as a kid. My sister risked her reputation and within her own context, fought ferociously for what she knew to be true. She did not give up. She advocated for someone unable to advocate for themselves. She saved a life. She was rather nonplussed about the whole thing afterwards. Her nurses told her later that most doctors would have inadvertently sent the boy home. Why didn’t she? My grown up cynicism recedes as I add an inspiring epilogue. Heroes simply do what needs to be done when no one else will do it. There, my teacher will love it.

Next year that same little boy will be in sixth grade. My guess is that if asked to write a paper on “heroes,” he will choose firemen, his grandma or Jesus. He won’t realize that this homework opportunity is possible because a feisty doctor would not take no for answer. He will just shrug at the instructions and get to work.  

I have no response to my aunt’s accusation that I read old books for a living just to make her feel stupid. I don’t know what to say when my drugged-up grandmother tells me I remind her of a granddaughter she had. I have no response to my cousin’s declaration that he intends to forcibly impregnate his child bride as many times as physically possible in the coming decades in order to prove that God loves him.

The nice part, however, is after we’ve left, and gotten home, and my parents are tired of yelling at me for not being more charming, and they suddenly realize they might be the lucky ones.

I hope you all had a beautiful holiday season. As for me, I’m just looking forward to 2012.

We own about a million Christmas CDs. We have a version of nearly every holiday song ever recorded by any creature (including cats and the Partridge Family). The rest of the household plays these covers, mostly atrocious, with delight. I only listen to one CD and this is it. Over and over. For me this is the only soundtrack for Christmas; for the rest, turning it off and rolling their eyes is part of their seasonal entertainment.  

Pan lives in our house but no notices him until he puts on his antlers. Every year at least one visitor says, “Is that an elf? Or more bluntly, “What is that?” To which the family nonchalantly says, “Oh that’s just Pan” and keeps on chatting. 

This is Devil Santa. No one is really sure where he came from or when, but he is always positioned on the tree in a way that highlights his evil nature. When the boys were little, Devil Santa was creepy. At some point they accepted him as an essential balance to all the otherwise irrepressible goodness.      

The Christmas we lived in Japan we could not pack our usual “stuff” and had no money to buy replacements. So we decorated our tree with origami cranes, washi covered eggs and kimono scraps sewn into shapes. This star is the last remnant of that tree, hand sewn from a flea market obi.

During the holidays I attempt to make every gift we have to give in three weeks. The sewing machine hums every night until I have my seasonal nervous breakdown and put it away.  

I like Jesus stories and accordingly I sing lots of Medieval passion play carols, tell supernatural saint stories and display a few nativity sets. This one we bought on a family vacation to San Capistrano, California. With misty reverence I told the boys about the returning sparrows and their magical haven.    

The first year after we were married, my mother-in-law sent me what would become an annual gift of Spode Christmas Tree dinnerware. Her mother-in-law had also given it to her throughout her life. At first I was skeptical, the pattern seemed a bit old fashioned. But as time has passed and my husband’s cooking skills rival those of any Top Chef, our holidays are all about beautiful food. And we eat everything from December 1 until December 31 on these plates. 

We have read this book on Christmas Eve for twenty-five years. There is a point in the story where everyone in our family cries. Triggered by kites and bones and fruit cake, this moment captures the cumulative emotion of the year in one cathartic, collective sob. Then we eat shrimp.    

Last week was my husband’s birthday. In our house it is a tradition to make breakfast in bed for the person of honor. For twenty four years we have done this, and for twenty four years my husband has endured his turn at the festivities with grim resignation.

There are two kinds of people in the world, people who love their birthdays and people who hate them. I love mine, my husband hates his. I start telling people a month ahead, counting down the days. My husband just shrugs when asked and changes the subject.

I love my birthday for reasons that range from shallow obvious to true confessions.

First, I am always the one to make a fuss over something. I am tickled by daily wins, mini milestones, any excuse to celebrate what feels like progress. Over time I appreciate the rituals and markers that represent lines in our life’s sandbox, offering vantage points to look backwards and forward. Birthdays are a year’s culmination of such moments and provide a collection of snapshots to sort and reminisce. My mother made me my own pot of homemade spaghetti sauce for my sixteenth birthday. My coworkers once bought me a giant cookie with my name misspelled in frosting. My son boxed himself as a gift. Every memory burns as distinct as each yearly candle.

Birthdays have a magical “all about me” factor. I am a woman with little sense of entitlement, a helper, the oldest and most parentified of children. I am one of those self deprecating people who responds to a compliment by insisting “this old thing?” or “it was on sale” or “I look fat” or “seriously, yours is so much cuter.” My birthday is the day I dig deep below the socialized layers of “no, no, you first” and allow my inner diva to sing her aria, “I was born today!!” It is indulgent, freeing, a sparkling tiara perched on my head just one day a year.

And I get presents on my birthday. I love presents.

My husband hates any fuss he isn’t in charge of, moves through time fluidly, unfettered by time lines and never, ever wants to be the center of attention. Presents are problematic because he is an ascetic and wants for nothing.

There is also the age thing. I love getting older. I fully expect to live into my nineties and I imagine endless golden years of crocheting afghans and sewing doll clothes. I tell people proudly of my solid middle age status. I look better and sound better and act a million times better than I did when younger. I was tortured in my teens, awkward in my twenties and angry in my thirties. My forties have glimpsed the “I don’t give a shit” light at the end of a long neurotic tunnel. It is not that I don’t try hard anymore. I try hard at things I enjoy and know I am good at versus what I think I should do. The want and the should are merging. Such is the gift of aging. When people say, “Are you turning 39 (wink, wink) again?” I say, “Thank god, no.”

My husband hears a clock ticking.

This birthday business is tricky. It has streamers leading into many different issues, touching on whether we prefer to process our movement through life privately or socially; whether we need one whole day a year to consider our existence or just small increments every time we jog around the park. Do we wrestle with mortality or bask in the immediacy of carpe diem? Do we like cake with raspberry filling or butter cream?

My husband was a good sport all day. He bravely faced the giant Mylar smiley face balloon at work, the over budget presents and my gleeful happy birthday chorus every 20 minutes. He was more than relieved to wake up the next day to his normal anonymous indispensability. He will need time to regroup, my birthday is less than three months away.