Living in the Nose South

What does your house smell like?

Ours is a mixture of coffee, a hint of mildew wafting up from the basement (the dehumidifier is on the fritz), fabric softener, and bergamot. You heard me. Bergamot. You know bergamot, right? I didn’t think so.

You see, here in the New South we have new smells filling our homes. Gone are the days when your house smelled like last night’s supper, at least until the next morning’s bacon began to fry in the skillet. Now, we have a growing multitude of products to help our home smell more inviting.

When it comes to homemaking, I often tease my wife for going to Martha Stewartian extremes. However, I have to take the blame on this one. I have a sensitive sniffer. Smells affect me in powerful and mysterious ways.

After a hard day at the office and a difficult commute, what I smell when I open the door affects my mood. Even if the playroom looks like Tokyo at the end of a Godzilla movie, if there’s a pleasing aroma, I can cope. Aromatherapy was invented for people like me.

I’m like those people in the Febreeze commercial where they hide all the smelly garbage in a condo unit at a resort and invite people to spend the weekend. The Febreeze plug-in air fresheners cover the smell. Don’t get me wrong: I like things to look neat, too. It’s just that I’m very sensitive to the way things smell.

So over the 16-plus years of our marriage, Carla has figured this out and tried a number of ways to keep the house smelling fresh. At first it was candles. Anything named “Yankee Candle” does not deserve space in a blog about the South, so I’ll just move on.

Then we tried sprays. Lysol sure smells clean but in that “someone just vomited” kind of way. And anyone who’s ever heard Jeff Foxworthy’s routine about the air fresheners in the bathroom “not fooling anybody” (“Walt, what have you been doing in there, arranging flowers?”) understands the depths of their inefficiency.

Carla even went so far one year as to buy these very concentrated sprays from Bath and Body Works. Maybe she just got the wrong ones, but a hit from these things could peel the paint off the walls. I have the smell of Bartlett Pear forever seared into my memory. I’m gagging a little right now as I type this.

One Christmas a few years back, my brother and sister-in-law gave us some plug-in scent warmers called Scentsy. They’re like little fondue pots you plug into the outlet and feed with scented wax bars. They are amazing and come in a variety of fragrances that help keep the house smelling good… at least until the bar has to be replaced.

Wallflowers are as lovely as they smell, in a way that begs preschoolers to play with your electrical outlets.

We’re currently using a product called Wallflowers, also from Bath and Body Works, hence my recent education on bergamot. Like all of these products, you can buy seasonal fragrances. We’ve been through the fall scents of pumpkin, cinnamon and autumn woodland and are still shaking off the residues of Christmas: “Vanilla Snowflake,” “Frosted Cranberry” and “Twisted Peppermint.” As the throes of winter gloom pin us down in our homes, we can eagerly anticipate “Honeysuckle,” “Beach Cabana” and “Watermelon Lemonade.”

Whatever their names, these aromas are now part of our daily lives in the New South. So whether your boudoir smells of bergamot or your foyer welcomes guests with lilac, the modern Southern home is a nasal sanctuary. And as ridiculous as some of the names of our new smells are, it sure beats dog vomit, dirty feet or post-burrito bathroom.

I know I am not alone in this wacky world of Wallflowers. This topic begs for an interactive component: What five words would you use to describe the way your house smells? Leave your response in a comment below, and let us all imagine the aroma you describe.

Ruining Christmas

Children are prone to hyperbole. I understand this. Overstated pronouncements barely even move the needle on my parental reaction seismograph.

But last weekend I encountered a new psychological phenomenon that both amused and confounded me. Let me paint the picture for you:

Buying our Christmas tree — Despite Barron’s best Scrooge imitation, the Wallaces proceed to checkout at Lowe’s with our Christmas tree.

Every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, our family goes to breakfast and then goes to purchase our Christmas tree. We spend the entire day decorating the house — inside and out — so that by the time our heads hit the pillow, we are ready for Christmas.

By a quirk of the calendar, this happened to be one of those years in which Thanksgiving fell on the earliest possible date. Carla and I decided that we would be OK to postpone our annual tradition by a week. Our tree is usually a pile of needles anyway by the time New Year’s Day rolls around, so we thought this might be better to preserve the tree throughout Yuletide.

So we spent the Saturday after Thanksgiving catching up on laundry, tending to the lawn, buying groceries and treating ourselves to an outing to the $2 cinema to catch the runaway blockbuster of last summer “Diary of Wimpy Kid 3: Dog Days.” Nothing gets you in the Christmas spirit like a summer movie.

The kids seemed to cope with this change of tradition OK until the following Saturday. We went to our closest IHOP, ingested copious amounts of pancakes of several international varieties and set out to buy our tree. This is where things began to go off the rails. The IHOP is literally in the parking lot of Home Depot. Naturally, we thought we’d just pull around, pick out our tree and be on our way.

The problem was that for the last four or five years, we have purchased our tree from Lowe’s, just a few miles down the road. When we announced we were going to Home Depot, we encountered resistance.

“Why are we going to Home Depot?”

“Because it’s right here. It’s more convenient.”

“But this isn’t where we buy our Christmas tree.”

“It’s the same thing except the building is orange instead of blue.”

They were not convinced. We piled out of the minivan and entered the huge tent outside the lawn and garden section filled with Christmas trees. As the aroma of Christmas permeated the air, our children began fussing. I looked over at our oldest who was doing his best “I just lost my best friend” impression, and I listened to the two younger ones debate Home Depot trees vs. Lowe’s trees. That’s when it came.

“You are ruining Christmas for everyone,” Barron said.

I laughed out loud.

“Seriously? We are ruining Christmas?”

“Yes! First, we didn’t decorate for Christmas when we were supposed to. Then we went to the wrong place to buy our Christmas tree. This isn’t the way we do Christmas.”

Still chuckling, I loaded us up in the van and hauled the family down the highway to Lowe’s.

As the day went on and more and more of their expectations went unmet, their emotional dam burst that night before bedtime. Barron was particularly affected by it.

Because we weren't doing Christmas "right," Barron took over and tried by force of will to get us back on track. — Because we weren’t doing Christmas “right,” Barron took over and tried by force of will to get us back on track.

After much reflection, here is my analysis of the problem: A good many of us have wonderful childhood memories of a few magical Christmas celebrations. Those four or five years, or fewer, make such a profound impact on us, that we are conditioned to expect every Christmas to be just as magical as those. As soon as the first stanza of “Jingle Bells” hits our ears, we revert into children, happily baking foods that we know will kill us, purchasing gifts we know we can’t afford, filling our schedules with parties and activities that we know we can’t endure, all in the vain attempt of recapturing our fleeting childhood Christmas experiences.

There is a time between adolescence and parenthood in which Christmas becomes disconnected from its roots. Blame it on Santa if you want to, but the absence of children makes Christmas different. So when we have children of our own, we relive our childhood through them, rekindling our excitement through their anticipation and impatience.

I’m not ready to pronounce this a bad thing. It just is. Dealing with unmet expectations at Christmas is a rite of passage. We all have to go through it. Barron may be confronting that this year, but I predict he will have many more years before he feels the same expectancy as he felt in his early childhood.

Our house still isn’t decorated for Christmas, and lest we risk ruining Christmas for everyone forever, we have to get caught up tomorrow. I am willing to play along and help our children have our “traditional” Christmas.

My real objective, though, is to help them break through the trappings of Christmas and uncover the largely ignored truth of this holiday. Our Savior was born because God loves us. The earlier in our lives we learn to focus on this dimension of the holiday, the sooner we experience true joy at Christmas.

So whether you have a Griswold Christmas, a Ralphie Christmas, a Peanuts’ Christmas or even a Grinch-Stole-Christmas Christmas, I sincerely wish you a Christ Christmas. That’s the best way I know to avoid ruining Christmas.

What are your Christmas traditions? What activities do you engage in every year to recapture the magic? What is it that if you skipped it would ruin your Christmas? Leave a comment and share your story.

Get thee to a pumpkin patch

As temperatures down South dip into the 40s and 50s, tasteful seasonal decorating requires at least one nice gourd on the front porch.

Carlton offers his little pumpkin — Carlton found the perfect sized pumpkin for him at Berry Patch Farms.

Some of you have been so eager for fall temperatures that you ran out and bought a pumpkin when they first arrived in stores or when the pumpkin patches first opened in late August or early September. Sadly, those early pumpkins are now rotten piles of mildew and orange goo or have long since been discarded.

When the air gets that hint of cool crispness, the first line of a poem by James Whitcomb Riley that I memorized in elementary school invades my mind: “When the frost is on the pumpkin…”

We haven’t had a frost yet, here in Atlanta, but now is the right time to get a pumpkin. If you still haven’t made your pumpkin purchase for this fall, here are few pointers to keep in mind:

1.) Pumpkin patches are fun. In my mind, the more authentic the pumpkin patch, the better, but we’ve seen everything from a random assortment of pumpkins laying out in a field to a church selling pumpkins from their front yard to the grocery store to Stone Mountain’s annual Pumpkin Fest where pumpkins are tucked in around the granite boulders. Pumpkin patches are usually accessorized by hayrides, corn mazes and an assortment of fall foods. To make things easier for you, I’ve found a website listing pumpkin patches throughout the Peach State.

Harris with a big pumpkin — Harris likes his pumpkins a little bit bigger.

2.) Purchase pumpkins where you buy your fruits and vegetables. At most of the pumpkin patches I’ve visited, you spend all your money doing the ancillary activities so that by the time you’re ready to pick out your pumpkin, you can’t really afford a nice gourd. Here’s a hint: you can buy the same size or larger at the grocery store for a fraction of the price of a pumpkin patch pumpkin. I apologize to all the pumpkin patch fundraisers out there, but I am duty bound to report this consumer fact to all of my loyal readers… well, both of my loyal readers.

3.) Pick a pumpkin that wasn’t picked in July. The firmer the pumpkin, the fresher the pumpkin. If it gives when you press on it, then it’s ready for the compost heap, not for carving. And if carving isn’t really what you had in mind, there are lots of varieties of guords that may meet your needs better. You can learn more at this site.

4.) Roast the seeds. In elementary school, I had a teacher who handed out roasted pumpkin seeds as rewards. Perhaps I have too much of a psychological investment in pumpkin as a result, but roasted pumpkin seeds are at least as good as sunflower seeds without all the spitting of hulls. We have trouble getting the process right and typically burn ours, but according the pumpkin recipe page, 225 degrees for an hour should do the trick.

Wallace family — Doesn’t the fall just bring out our family’s togetherness?

5.) Start a family tradition. You don’t have to sit in a pumpkin patch at midnight on Halloween to have a great time with gourds in the fall. Every element of the pumpkin process from the selection to the carving makes for great photos and even better memories.

Growing up, my family never really bothered with pumpkins, but Carla and I have purchased at least one pumpkin every year since we had kids. Some years were so busy that we didn’t bother to carve them, but having pumpkins is one of the highlights of our family’s fall activities.

Better get your pumpkin today. The pickins are getting pretty slim at the farms and patches. Pretty soon, all that will be left are the rotting, decaying or mishapen pumpkins, and no one wants a misfit pumpkin on their front porch.

Where do you get your pumpkins? How many do you buy each year? Do you roast the seeds or try to use the entrails for pumpkin pie? Don’t hold back! Share all your pumpkin secrets by leaving a comment below.

O Christmas tree

“How about this one?”

I held the 6-and-a-half foot Frasier Fir at arm’s length, shaking it vigorously so the branches would fall into a more natural position.

“Nope. Too skinny,” my wife said, frowning and shaking her head.

“You keep rejecting these trees because they’re too skinny. I’m starting to get a complex,” I said with a Vanna White sweep of my hand toward my own slender physique.

Barron helps me pick a Christmas tree — The one on the left lost out because it was too skinny.

This year’s Christmas tree selection process went about the same as it has for the last several. Every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we load up the family in our minivan, go out for a big breakfast at Waffle House or IHOP, then head to the most convenient tree farm with the best selection – Lowe’s.

I’m sure there was a day where good Southern folk went into the woods to select their trees, cutting them right where they stood. Those days are rapidly fading into memories.

My wife’s father, who grew up on a farm, loves to tell about their annual Christmas tree selection. It involved a lot of sweat and, occasionally, some blood and tears.

The only tears in our selection process come from our 3-year-old when his brothers won’t push him around on the rolling skid.

Growing up in Dallas-Fort Worth, where there ain’t but so many trees to begin with, this wasn’t an option for us. We went the live tree route for several years, until we figured out that my brother always seemed to be sick during the entire Christmas season. Turned out he was allergic, so we switched to an artificial tree.

As I handed Barron two trees to hold so I could get a good look at them side-by-side, I couldn’t help but wonder how families made these decisions when trees were still attached to the ground. Friends who grew up going to a Christmas tree farm describe how the family would split up, indelicately yelling across the farm when they had found one, playing a waterless version of Marco Polo. The advent of the mobile telephone changed all that, but they confess that they do miss the hollering part.

By the time we settled on our tree – a nice fat one – tied it down to the roof of our van, got it home safely, whacked off a few branches from the bottom so it will fit in the base and put it in its proper place in our living room, it didn’t look the same. It’s lost a few pounds. Apparently, like some of us, it was carrying all of its girth in those lower branches.

Our Christmas tree — The finished product

Because of relatively low ceilings, the 6-and-a-half footer is all that will fit in our living room, but with lights and ornaments, it was transformed. Never mind that its needles began falling before the first strand of lights was affixed, our tradition is our tradition and we stand by it.

“You know, it wouldn’t matter if we waited a week to get our tree,” I said, unwinding the cord on the vacuum to get up the needles. “They still cut all these trees in October.”

But the tree turned out to be beautiful, and with each personalized ornament, the telling of the story behind it, the excited skipping about and the breathless and repeated asking “Is Christmas this day?” I saw just how important this symbol is to our family.

Though they may be updated from time to time, traditions add meaning. Here’s hoping your traditions make your Christmas season meaningful.

How do you pick your Christmas tree? What are the characteristics you look for in a tree? Where do you get your tree? Have you gone artificial? Do you have a pre-lit tree? Share your tree traditions and memories by leaving a comment below.

Center of attention

The only two homes I have owned – or, more accurately, been on my way to owning – have had a fireplace. And with the fireplace comes the obligatory mantel.

Fireplace and mantel — Our lovely yet forlorn fireplace and mantel.

I will explore the wisdom and necessity of setting wood ablaze inside your home in a different essay, but today I am concerned more about the sociology of home spaces. There seems to be a waning tradition of gathering around the fireplace in the home and sharing family moments together.

This seems particularly out of fashion on 90-degree days in the South, but seasonal timing notwithstanding, the mantel doesn’t seem to have the same place of honor that it once had in the Southern home.

It has been replaced.

Sorry, mantel, you responsible older sibling who was trusted to hold our most precious heirlooms and photographs. There’s an exciting little baby in the house now that’s stealing all of the attention that once belonged exclusively to you. You have been superseded by a younger, hipper piece of furniture that appeals to our societal ADD deceptively offering the antidote to our every need: the entertainment center.

There was a time in our home that my wife’s taste was to keep that unsavory device known as the television hidden completely from view, unless you were watching HGTV. Then, you
could retrieve the television from its secret location and watch it.

We have several pieces of elaborate furniture once designed to hold clothing now providing cover for the design-challenged box of nonstop noise and images.

But the television has come out of the closet.

Christmas of 2009, we received a new flat screen, high-definition television as a gift from Carla’s generous parents. It wasn’t grandiose, and it wasn’t the top of the line. It was a nice television that helped us move closer to the digital age. We are not early adopters
technologically by any stretch of the imagination.

This new flat screen, like all of the TVs before it, was tucked neatly away in a cabinet, an old wardrobe Carla picked up at a junk furniture store in Macon for $10. It still had the bar in it from which you hung clothes, presumably.

Our dream for our playroom and its multiplying toys was shelving. One cannot possibly think of shelving in the New South without visiting Ikea, so over the course of several years and a number of on-again, off-again flirtations with storage units at the Swedish home store, we settled on a Hemnes TV unit with Hemnes bookshelves and a bridging shelf.

Entertainment center — Our 'media solution' from Ikea and its load of magical items to hold our attention.

Now, our flat screen television, DVD player (no Blu-ray yet!), VCR (still), digital cable box and Wii game console all sit front and center to capture our undivided attention. And we have plenty of shelf space for books and games and bins of art materials and DVDs and puzzles and on and on and on.

I’m not counting, but I’d guess that we spend about two and a half minutes a year in front of our stately mantel with its plates depicting Georgia history and about two and a half hours a day in front of the “media solution.”

Todd Alcott’s poem “Television is a Drug,” which my videographer friend Beth Fulton set to video last year, says it all: “Look at me!” the television cries.

And in the New South, we happily comply.