… the musings of an overly organized thirty-something, married, southern librarian turned stay-at-home-mom with too many opinions, too much ambition, just enough kids, and a stubborn, mouthy, redheaded country boy to accompany her through life.
The year Jake and I got married, we spent approximately $400 on Christmas decorations. At 32, Jake had been a bachelor his entire adult life. His duplex barely had furniture, let alone holiday decor. I, however, made a deliberate effort to enjoy my single girl apartment to the fullest every year, by gleefully putting up the hot pink, six foot Christmas tree I got from Borders when they went out of business. When we married, Jake and I… compromised I suppose, though the process didn’t seem quite so simple at the time. Ultimately, I sold my glorious pink tree on Facebook Marketplace, Jake accepted an agreed upon amount of glitter, and we invested in classic decorations to be used year after year. I bought fabric, sewed a matching tree skirt and his/her stockings, had our names embroidered on the latter, and we celebrated our first Christmas as husband and wife.
The next Christmas was our first in our own home and the only thing we were missing was stocking holders, a purchase I approached with the same long-term intentions as the previous year’s decor. Though Jake would eventually realize my tendency to buy holiday items months in advance was not just out of excitement, but an understanding of availability, in 2018, we were not yet there. So it happened that, as late as December, I hadn’t bought stocking holders for our new mantle. Since Hobby Lobby stops receiving Christmas inventory in October, I couldn’t find a matching set there. Angry at Jake for making me wait so long, I dragged him from city to city, visiting Target after Target, to collect six identical holders. Surprisingly, he humored me, though he couldn’t understand why I needed so many. Though we’d previously talked about having three children, maybe four based on gender, I was holding out for the latter. I’d always wanted two boys and two girls. If I was fortunate enough to get my way, it seemed disproportionately important to me at the time, that we not have to repurchase our stocking holders. If I didn’t get four or we changed our minds, I figured we could always use the extras for the pets.
After two cycles of back-to-back pandemic IVF, Jake and I found out in 2020 that we were having twins. Our difficulty getting pregnant meant that these might be our only children, despite having frozen embryos. Still, when I bought the fabric for their stockings, realizing the dye lot was slightly off from ours, I not only purchased enough for four, but cut the patterns in advance. Just over a year later, I got the news that I’d need one more stocking, having naturally conceived our miracle baby. So it was, last Christmas, I saw five out of my six stocking holders filled above my fireplace. In both the world of infertility and the general public, I had the perfect family with my two girls and one boy… but I still had one more stocking holder.
I thought I’d change my mind, y’all. Everyone said I would. After one child, I’d only want two. After two, I’d be done. After three, I’d realize we were already outnumbered and couldn’t even fathom another. I waited for the feeling that four was an idealistic dream, that my family was indeed whole. It never came. In March, when my Thomas was barely four months old, I broached the topic with Jake, unsure how he felt about the issue. We’d already scheduled an embryo transfer the day I found out I was pregnant. That embryo was a child we had planned to have and raise. Under those circumstances, a fourth was unlikely, if only for financial reasons, but Thomas’s conception didn’t cost us a dime. If we’d once agreed to consider four solely based on gender, how could we give up an embryo that we’d originally planned to have as part of our family? I did try to avoid emotional blackmail while discussing the topic, but as I held my tiny son, I burst into tears at the thought of never meeting the child I might have held had things been different, at the thought of things having been different and not having my Thomas. After a month or so of consideration, Jake agreed. He wasn’t far from the age we’d agreed we’d no longer intentionally get pregnant, so it was now or never. We would proceed with a frozen embryo transfer, or FET, over the summer and find a way to pay for it later. I quietly told myself that if it failed, I would drain my retirement using my remaining embryos until I had my fourth; the max number of children we’d ever planned for or thought we could handle, two more than we were ever recommended to attempt after the complications during the birth of our girls. Only then would I donate my frozen embryos to another heartbroken, yet hopeful couple, who desperately wanted a family.
I shared pieces of my FET story as the process unfolded. It was far more difficult than I ever expected. In fact, had it indeed failed, I’m not so sure I could have gone through it all again. The birth control hormones alone had me completely off-kilter. The estrogen pills made me utterly insane… and possessed my little Scarlett with at least six demons the day she got ahold of one. Poison control assured us she would be fine as her head rotated 360 degrees. The progesterone shots weren’t only painful, but made me unbearably sick and caused nerve damage I still feel today. I went through it all, with three under three at home, who had no understanding of Mama’s sudden short temper or erratic tears. I gambled $5,000 on one modest income for a family of five… all for a 50/50 chance of success… and it worked.
Today, few can say that they got the family of their dreams, as they compromise for their partner, who wants fewer children… for their career, because childcare costs are too high… for a poor economy, because they fear they can’t afford it… and of course, due to infertility, because they’re lucky to have children at all. With that in mind, I am so truly fortunate to be able to say that, although we never tested our embryos and couldn’t have known gender, we’ll be getting the two girls and two boys of which I’ve always dreamt. In April, Violet and Scarlett will be thrilled to greet another baby brother, two months before they turn three. Thomas will have his buddy, his teammate, his partner in crime only 16 months his junior. I’ll have been pregnant every year since 2020 to have four under three for a total cost of $35,00 before labor and delivery fees. I already know it will all have been worth it, though, because I’ve already filled those stocking holders with my fourth and final Christmas stocking… which cost me just $5,000.
On February 13, 2020, Jake came home from his consultation with a urologist with bad news. In the exact words of a medical doctor, when asked point blank if he could get me pregnant, my husband was told “Miracles happen.” Now, y’all, I might get most of my knowledge of MD’s from random episodes of House and Scrubs, but it’s my understanding that they don’t heavily advocate for miracles.
There was a lot of technical data and explanation involved, of course, but the condensed version was that Jake and I were unlikely to conceive naturally… ever. At 32 and 35, this meant IVF was our only option, unless we wanted to take on the gamble that is adoption in the U.S. We did not.
Exactly one year from that fateful day, after back-to-back rounds of pandemic IVF, Jake and I spent Valentine’s Day weekend iced in, painting one of our spare bedrooms pink. As far as we were concerned, that urologist was right. Miracles do happen. Through the work of God and science, we brought home twin baby girls in June of 2021. Though we’d planned for more children, medical complications suggested it would be unwise, so we spent the next several months trying to come to terms with the possibility that our family might already be whole. Comparatively, we were lucky. Healthy twins are the dream of couples suffering infertility. Still, we hoped for good news from the cardiologist as we tentatively planned to move forward with a frozen embryo transfer. Indeed, we got our “cautious green light”/”yellow light”… exactly four days after finding out that we were already pregnant.
It was on May 5th, 2022 that I begrudgingly took another pregnancy test during the girls’ naptime, knowing the fertility clinic would make me take one the next week regardless. I sat on the toilet lid, Googling uterine cancer and early menopause as possible explanations for a late period, only to glance at the $1 test before trashing it… and receive the news that an entirely unique miracle had happened. I’d spent over a year rolling my eyes at anecdotes about the daughter of a cousin’s neighbor who got pregnant naturally after years of infertility. Now I was that obnoxious anecdote. Two rounds of IVF, $30,000, and an extremely rare postnatal heart condition aside, I was pregnant… and despite all my stress and worry, it would all go smoothly.
After declaring the silver lining of infertility to be the ability to avoid holiday birthdays, December 6th, 2022 saw the scheduled birth of my utterly perfect Thomas. It was night and day compared to the horror that brought the girls into the world. Jake and I woke that morning, dropped the girls off with Gigi and Papa and checked into the hospital. Folks, a scheduled C-section gone right is like having a tooth pulled. I was ushered into a room, given prep instructions, and wheeled into an operating room. An epidural numbed me up and after some anxious moments, I heard the little cry that sounded exactly like the quacking of a duck. My son had arrived and I was not so near death as to barely notice. Jake was asked if he wanted to cut the cord, a privilege he did not have as his wife nearly bled out during the birth of his daughters.
Nurse: “Daddy, would you like to cut the cord?” Jake: “What? No, that’s okay. You can do it.” Me: “Yes! He wants to cut the cord. Just cut the damn cord, Jake.”
The nurses handed me my beautiful baby and I held him all the way back to the room, staring into his eyes the whole time. Funnily enough, I’d worried endlessly that I’d struggle to connect with a boy. I’d so desperately wanted a girl, that after a year and a half with two of them, I feared I wouldn’t really know what to do with their brother. I needn’t have even considered it. After years of scoffing at the entire concept of love at first sight, I’d finally discovered it in a 6lb 3oz baby boy.
Though the hospital stay certainly left something to be desired, we were sent home after only three days. The girls stayed with Gigi and Papa for another night, while we enjoyed our first and only night with just one baby. I’ll tell you, having one newborn feels like playing with a Tomagachi in comparison to twins. I got a good night’s sleep while Jake stayed up with Thomas. Then they both slept a good while during the day, while I snuggled my baby. Our girls came home the next evening and it was seemingly love at first sight for them, too, as they both immediately reached to grab their brother’s head. There was never any real jealousy, just adoration. They bring him toys to keep him entertained. They hug and shush him when he cries. Violet would give him every bottle if she could. Scarlett loves to make him belly laugh. They both strip and jump in whenever they realize it’s Bubby’s bath time. In our precious son, Jake has his future gaming, hunting, and fishing buddy. I have my mama’s boy, because despite “Dada” being easier to say, Thomas’s first and only word thus far has been “Mama.” He lights up whenever I enter a room and the feeling is mutual. He is cherished by all.
The first year with Thomas has been full of snuggles, giggles, and the most adorably ineffective tantrums, during which he looks like a cuter version of the Chucky doll. He is just like his dad, even keeled and easily amused. I won’t say Thomas has completed our family, but I will say he’s filled a hole I didn’t even realize had been forming from the day I learned I wouldn’t be able to have a child naturally. I can’t believe I’ve been so fortunate to have the elusive miracle baby after IVF. I wasn’t sure I’d ever have another child at all after the birth of my twins. Today, I have a virtual clone of Jake and it took no drugs, shots, or invasive procedures to bring him into the world. I was able to experience pregnancy and even childbirth, to some degree, just as they were meant. I have the son I could once only theoretically imagine wanting. After one year… even after one minute with him, I could not, nor do I want to, imagine life without my Thomas.
It’s a Wonderful Life has long been one of my favorite Christmas movies and remains so, as our holiday film selection becomes increasingly over-saturated with emphasis on a depiction of Santa Claus, that no more resembles the historical Saint Nicholas than Disney’s Pocahontas resembles the 17th century twelve-year-old of the Powhatan tribe.*
This is a 12-year-old.
As a religious person, the overwhelming focus on Santa, by others of the Christian faith, baffles me. I’m not even sure I want to do the Santa thing, because I feel the emphasis has become so skewed in favor of a cartoon character and materialism over the birth of theMessiah. Several years ago, I told my grandma Kay that I wasn’t playing Dirty Santa at the family party.
Me: “It’s just not fun for me and it’s expensive.” Grandma: “Well, that’s what Christmas is about, you know… giving each other gifts.” Me: “No, it’s not. Christmas is about Jesus and family.”
My 82-year-old grandmother told me Christmas is about things, y’all. That should horrify you, even if you’re not religious. Santa can go jump in a lake.
So, I’ve really grown to appreciate the old Christmas movies that aren’t afraid to broach faith, family values, and societal responsibility, like Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, and It’s a Wonderful Life. Despite this, every year, as I watch this favorite Christmas classic, I have some… issues… with George Bailey and the fact that he’s… well, kind of a tool by the standards of his time and mine. I’d even go so far to state that in 2023 George Bailey would fit several of the prevailing stereotypes of Millennials that I’ve been hearing all of my adult life. For example…
He’s selfish.
The opening scene of It’s a Wonderful Life, depicts three stars discussing a man on earth who is dangerously close to taking his own life. Ultimately, Clarence AS2 (Angel Second Class, which doesn’t even make sense as far as acronyms go), is assigned to intervene, as we listen to the prayers of George Bailey’s family and friends, one of which clearly declares that “He never thinks about himself.”
Never thinks about himself?!?!? The only truly selfless thing George Bailey does in this movie is to save his brother when he falls through the ice, ultimately losing his hearing in one ear, an action and a consequence he never again mentions. As wondrous as that behavior is from a teenage boy, it’s also the moment little GB peaked. Just a few weeks later, we see him arrive late to his after school job in a drug store, before providing terrible service to the only customers present.
Violet: “Help me down?” George: ” Help ya down?!?!”
George: “Make up your mind yet?” Mary: “I’ll take chocolate.” George: “With coconuts?” Mary: “I don’t like coconuts.” George: “Don’t like coconuts? Say brainless, don’t you know where coconuts come from? [pulls out a National Geographic magazine] Look-it here, from Tahiti, the Fiji Islands, Coral Sea.” Mary: “A new magazine! I never saw it.” George: “‘Course you never. This is just for us explorers. It just so happens I’ve been nominated for membership in the National Geographic Society.” ::puts coconut on the ice cream, anyway::
Spoiler alert: by “explorers”, he means “men.”
Rest assured, my girls have already received a lecture about falling in love with boys who call them “brainless.” Immediately following this scene, we see George approach his boss, Mr. Gower, who’s just lost his son to the flu epidemic of 1919 and is drunk, devastated, and ill-tempered. Realizing that the impaired pharmacist has mistakenly filled some capsules with poison, George risks his ire to correct him, ultimately taking quite the boxing of his sore ear. We’re lead to believe that this is another truly honorable moment; but I think it’s worth considering the fact that this kid just showed up late to work and treated Mr. Gower’s only customers like dirt, prior to pestering him during his grief. While he might not have deserved to be hit, it was a reprimand appropriate to the times. Furthermore, I’ve worked with teenagers and I just don’t consider it a stretch to think that any one of them would speak up if they thought someone was about to poison some children, no matter the consequences. I feel like the average American is only impressed by this “heroism”, because they have such devastatingly low expectations of teens.
As the movie continues, we see George grow into a man…who speaks incessantly about what he wants. Even his last words to his father, for which he shows no remorse, are entitled declarations about how he deserves more.
– “Oh, now Pop, I couldn’t. I couldn’t face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office…Oh, I’m sorry Pop, I didn’t mean that, but this business of nickels and dimes and spending all your life trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe…I’d go crazy. I want to do something big and something important.”
After his father dies and the board votes to keep the Bailey Building and Loan open, in response to George’s passionate defense of the community, they only have one condition: George must stay on and take his father’s place.
– “Let’s get this thing straight. I’m leaving! I’m leaving right now! I’m going to school! This is my last chance! Uncle Billy, here, he’s your man!’
That’s right. George’s first consideration when his father’s legacy, his community, is on the line, is what he wants. The next four years apparently offer little growth, as he tells Mary, the night he calls on her:
– “Now, you listen to me. I don’t want any plastics and I don’t want any ground floors and I don’t want to get married ever, to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do!”
“He never thinks about himself”? That’s the entire premise of the first half of this movie. All George Bailey does is think about himself, about what he wants, what he deserves, because…
He’s entitled.
As a millennial, I literally hear about the entitlement of my generation, weekly… but no matter how many participation trophies I received as a kid (because I certainly didn’t earn any legitimate ones), I have never, in my adult life, compared to the entitlement of George Bailey.
In 1940, only 5.5% of men had completed a college degree, compared to 3.8% of women, not because it was a time of equality, but because a college education was so incredibly rare.* That’s eleven years after George sits at his father’s table, in his very nice middle class home, and tells him he’s better than the Bailey Building and Loan, a year when only 68% of American homes had electricity.* Just weeks later, after his father’s death, George even ridicules the man’s failure to have paid for not just his, but his brother’s education.
– “You are right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap penny-ante building and loan, I’ll never know. but neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was… why in the 25 years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself, isn’t that right Uncle Billy? He didn’t save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me.”
He does so to a room of men who likely went no further than the 8th grade, themselves, because in 1940 less than 25% of Americans had completed high school.* If you’re wondering why all these stats are about 1940, that’s because prior to that year, the surveys weren’t interested in levels of completed schooling, but literacy. A healthy chunk of the country couldn’t read the day ol’ GB haughtily declared he was turning down the position of executive secretary of his own business to go to college.
Yeah. I’m entitled.
It’s not just his demand for a college education that made George Bailey insufferablyprivileged, by the standards of that time and this one, but his general disdain for his hometown. I get it, he wanted to travel the world, in a day when men were lucky to have jobs at all, but the lack of exoticism in Bedford falls certainly didn’t earn the level of contempt George had for it.
– “It’ll keep him out of Bedford Falls, anyway.”
– “Homesick?!? For Bedford Falls?!?
– “… stay around this measly, crummy old town.”
This “crummy old town” has an indoor swimming pool under the high school gym. The only rundown house is eventually transformed to a glorious Victorian mansion by Mary Bailey, herself, with just a little elbow grease. Even George declares the falls are beautiful in the moonlight, when he tries to petition Violet to climb Mount Bedford. The dystopian version stillhas a successful library.
The citizens of Bedford Falls aren’t completely without their struggles, of course. George mentions to Sam Wainright that “half the town” was recently put out of business when the tool and machinery works was closed down. Does that stop him from criticizing anyone who works for Mr. Potter, though?
– “In the whole vast configuration of things, I’d say you’re nothing but a scurvy little spider… and that goes for you, too!”
Well, George, not everyone was just handed their father’s business, at 22. Zetus Lapetus, much of this movie took place during The Great Depression! Choosers were literally doomed to become beggars, which brings me to my final point of our “hero’s” entitlement. George Bailey was 12 in 1919, born in 1907. These years weren’t exactly known for the wealth of choices they provided. Throughout the entirety of It’s a Wonderful Life, however, George is constantly choosing his path. He chose to stay and run the Bailey Building and Loan after his father died. He chose to give his college money to Harry and let him take another job, when he was more than willing to take over. George chose to marry Mary, immediately after stating that it wasn’t what he wanted. He chose not to invest in Sam Wainwright’s business despite the fact that he’d apparently saved two thousand dollars for his travels. That’s thirty thousand dollars, today and ol’ GB chose to forfeit it to keep the Building and Loan open.
In a time of rampant polio and domestic violence and 25% unemployment, George had the luxury to choose his path and each and every time, he was an absolute martyr about it. He didn’t do these things, because he was selfless. He did them because of societal expectation, because of his image, and we know this, by his perpetual bellyaching, because…
He’s ungrateful.
It’s been argued that this was the point of the movie and I’ll allow that. However, in the opening scene, it’s heavily implied that George Bailey is only presently forgetting how good he has it, as he faces financial ruin and scandal on Christmas Eve. I mean, who wouldn’t see the brown spots on their lawn, in that light? For our “hero”, though, the grass has perpetually been greener. The entire movie highlights his general unhappiness and lack of appreciation from the moment he sits in his father’s home, served by a maid, and insists he can do better for himself. He somehow begrudgingly inherits his own business and marries a beautiful woman, who’s been in love with him her whole life. He has a respectable excuse to avoid the war and make beautiful babies, yet still finds something to complain about, while other men are dying and losing limbs. All the while, Mary Bailey remodels their home, cares for their children, and runs the USO, without a word of complaint. You the real MVP, Mary Bailey, because if this movie is an accurate indicator of your husband’s daily behavior, I’d have smothered him with a pillow in the first month of marriage. I mean, you could have been a librarian.
As the years go by, George Bailey lives in a beautiful home in a wealthy little town. He’s a respected member of society, by everyone from the town tramp to the bartender to his arch nemesis’s financial adviser. Still, his days are ruined by such inconsequentials as a loose newal cap on the staircase.*
Dude, even Zuzu was like, “Paste it, Daddy.”
Is it that much of a surprise, when things really go sideways and he says:
– “…It’s this old house. I don’t know why we all don’t have pneumonia. Drafty old barn! Might as well be living in a refrigerator… Why do we have to live here in the first place, and stay around this measly, crummy old town…”
– “Wrong? Everything’s wrong. You call this a happy family — why do we have to have all these kids?” (“all these kids” cost some people $35,000)
– “What kind of a teacher are you, anyway? What do you mean, sending her home like that, half naked? Do you realize she’ll probably end up with pneumonia, on account of you? Is this the sort of thing we pay taxes for, to have teachers… to have teachers like you… stupid, silly, careless people who send our kids home without any clothes on?”
That last little remark earned him a busted lip, and despite the general disagreement of the community of Bedford Falls, I’d say it was well-deserved. It’s at this point, that Clarence the angel reminds George Bailey just how good he has it, with a glimpse through the most self-centered lens of all time. Looking into the eyes of his loving wife, adoring children, and loyal friends wasn’t enough to convince George that life was worth living. Nope. He could only see value in his life when someone put a gold star next to his every good deed. His existence was only worth the effort, once it was proven that just by being alive, he changed the world for everyone he knew. Folks, if that ain’t a participation trophy…
Belle of the Library 