No one in our immediate family got an e-reader this Christmas. Ours is still a Kindle-free zone. One person did get an upgraded laptop but otherwise it was a pretty old style gift exchange. Several books made out of paper were received, including a world almanac, that old indisputable resource guide that can tell you what TV shows won an Emmy in 1967 (The Monkees and Mission Impossible) and how many Buddhists live in Europe (1,820,000).

Communication-wise, we are a family of cautious progressives. While we are not techno-phobes you will not find most of us first in line for the latest Apple gadget. We do text. We forward instant photos of dogs and grandkids. We know each other’s in-house network passwords. There is a strong Facebook contingent. And a couple of Flip owners.

Some are geekier than others. I’m still learning how to best play my smart phone.

Take the other day when our daughter called my cell to alert me to a mix-up in our Nutcracker tickets. We were in separate cars en route to the Paramount Theater in Oakland. Her programmed ring is a quacking duck which I chose when I got the phone because her four year old is partial to ducks. So a phone that quacked was a natural. But that was the problem. It is so natural that I didn’t hear it ring in my purse. I do, however, recall hearing what I thought were Canada geese flying overhead as we drove down 101.

No matter, we straightened out the ticket issue at the theater but I decided that was enough of cute and changed her special tone to the old fashion phone ring. The one that goes brrrrringggg!! I had the same communication problem with another daughter whose ring tone was a cricket noise. She went to college in the Midwest and what’s more Midwestern than crickets? But while the tone is sweetly sentimental of warm nights and front porches it doesn’t get my attention. I changed her to the old fashioned brrrringgg, as well.

That’s one ring-a-dingy, two-ring-a-dingy.

My husband’s ring is a motorcycle which can be amusing when you’re sitting at lunch and suddenly a Harley roars up. But it’s potentially risky if you don’t recognize it for what it is and suddenly hear what sounds like a motorcycle driving into the side of the car which happened when my daughter was driving and my husband called on my phone and the thing went vroom-vroom and she screamed, “Oh my God.”

For that daughter I have a barking dog ring which works fine except for setting off the real dog.

Phones used to be simple tools. They stayed in one place, usually attached to a wall. They didn’t sound like anything but what they were. And they didn’t do anything else except let you talk.

On the way to the Nutcracker one family member, a newcomer to the ballet, used his phone to Google the plot. Inside the theater several whipped out our phones to take photos. Emails were checked from the bathroom line.

In the land of the Nutcracker no phones rang. Toys came alive because of simple magic not because of a computer chip implanted in their bellies. Nobody Skyped to see what the Sugar Plum Fairy was up to.

We Skyped to relatives in the Cayman Islands on Christmas morning. Everyone gave a jerky wave and asked about the weather. That’s an amazing piece of technology. It makes you feel like you’re almost in the same room, although it can’t approach the intimacy of sitting on the couch, snuggling up to your own flesh and blood. Then leaning in close to bump phones and later, perhaps, share a charger.

I snuggled in for a winter afternoon read with The Lake Shore Limited, by Sue Miller – the kind of book where you’re 50 pages into it and look up to realize the room and your tea have gone cold. But maybe just another 10 pages.

I’d been looking for a book like this, one that includes a strong, realistic woman of my generation. Someone you recognize, not a stereotype. And a type not found as often as you might expect, given that middle aged and older women still buy the most books.

One of Miller’s main four characters is Leslie, a woman whose body has gotten a little heavier, hair turned silver and whose mouth she worries might be turning into her mother’s frown. She also has her longings, flaws and fantasies, along with a reasonably contented white middle class life and a long time marriage. She has strong political opinions – an ardent Hillary supporter – and a sense of humor, amused to be asking for two senior tickets at “No Country for Old Men.”

Her life has included disappointment and great personal loss but when we first meet her she is thinking about how important it is to live with a “sense of possibility.” Possibility continues to be a theme in the book and it’s a subject I’d love to explore more with a woman like Leslie, or, for that matter, with Sue Miller. The author, who has always written about her generation, is now in her 60s and seemingly knows well this complicated chapter of life. Her male characters in The Lake Shore Limited also have age-relevant regrets and desires.

I keep a lookout for the modern mature woman character just as I once did for the modern young working mother character and the modern middle aged journalist character.

I like reading books set in unfamiliar, exotic territory but when it’s my world I want my women recognizable.

Here are a few other books on my shelf whose women are older, believable and sometimes funny as hell.

Nuala O’Faolain’s travel writer who moves to the country in My Dream of You.
Mary Gordon’s struggling artist who in her 50s meets a Prince Charming who provides love and lunch in Spending.
Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge who was often unlikeable through a lot of her years but became less a grump and more sympathetic as she got into her 70s.
Linda Olsson’s Astrid and Veronika, women of two different cultures and generations who share meals and secrets and try on swimsuits together.

Contrast them with the older women M.F.K. Fisher writes about in the story The Weather Within in her collection Sister Age. She describes two sisters traveling on a boat going to Europe. She labels them elderly and refers to them as nice old ladies. And they are in their 60s. True, Fisher was writing from the standpoint of a much younger woman and it was decades ago but this is how she described them:

“They dressed in good black or navy blue clothes for dinner… and their hair was soft instead of in the tight waves of most elderly middle class American women. They were dainty, their nails lacquered with an almost colorless pink and their stockings very fine. All in all, they were as nearly invisible as one can be after 65 and still breathe and defecate and chew.”

Oh dear, if you have to be aging isn’t it better to be doing it now?
Now, tell me your books that do justice to women of a certain age and attitude.

After Thanksgiving dinner and a wintry walk our daughter announced to her four-year-old that the holiday season had now officially begun and she could therefore watch The Snowman. I was so hoping for this.

I saw this sweet little movie for the first time last Christmas with this same little kid and if this was going to be a family classic I wanted a front row seat. While everyone else moved into the kitchen we popped in the DVD, she wrapped her pink spangled tights around me and we settled in on the couch.

If you haven’t caught this fantasy charmer based on the children’s book by English author Raymond Briggs you’re missing a dreamy escape from the crazy season. The Snowman has been around since 1982 and what did my wondering eyes discover on Wikipedia but it’s already considered a classic. That’s another good reason to have grandchildren. Traditions just keep coming and some of the best ones start with a story.

The tale is about a little boy and a snowman that comes to life is told without dialogue or narration. It’s almost a silent film, except for the haunting music Walking in the Air which plays when snowman and little boy fly off over the sea and up into the mountains.

My granddaughter doesn’t question the possibility that snowmen know how to fly but she did want reassurance that he wouldn’t let go of the little boy’s hand. I was thinking the same thing myself since I’m kind of a scared-y cat when it comes to heights but we agreed that snowmen and children take care of each other.

When I was a little girl I got hooked on the Macy’s Day Parade, and watched it every Thanksgiving morning from the same wingback chair that now sits in my living room. I watched it even when I went to college. I watched it even when I had kids and they went to college. Actually I only gave it up a few years ago. The magic wore off. Except I do miss seeing the Rockettes float.

You can get very jaded about the holiday and for me the thrill is gone when you hit the mall. I’m happy for store owners but I’m still trying to figure out why people decided it was okay to go back to binge shopping again this year. I don’t know anyone who’s feeling any more financially secure this December than last.

But our 4-year-old granddaughter is not demanding her own smart phone. And her baby brother is only one and much more into magic than merchandise. Next week when they’re over we’ll unpack the wooden manger scene, the reindeer with the missing antler and get out the box of snow globes from Chicago, Munich and Boston.

Not known for my baking except for one rum cake a December, I will never be remembered as the Christmas cookie grandma. But I can really get into stringing lights across the porch and putting candles in the window and stomping through the mud at a tree farm.

There’s more. My granddaughter doesn’t know it yet but she’s going to her first Nutcracker this year. I know it’s fashionable for some grown-ups to scoff at the predictable dueling mice and dancing bonbons but I want to be with her when that tree grows to the ceiling. And then when the Snow Queen appears in her silver tutu and all her little snowflakes twirl on stage and it starts to snow….
If this kid’s anything like me, that’s the part that will have her coming back every year for more.

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