Jo Mathis and her oldest daughter, Christie.

Every year, we say we’re cutting back on Christmas presents. And every year, we go a little crazy anyhow.

So December 25 has always been one big bloated day of blatant materialism. Even the dog had her own little pile, which she mounted and guarded for dear life.

It’s been great fun.

But this year, we mean it. We’re cutting back.

My oldest daughter, Christie, in fact, declared some months ago that because she had enough stuff and we all had enough stuff, she no longer wanted to exchange gifts. For the rest of her life.

She’s still very generous. It just doesn’t translate into things you buy at the mall. Last weekend, for instance, she treated her sisters to dinner at Olive Garden followed by “Holiday Nights in Greenfield Village.”

And this Christmas morning, without spending a dime, Christie will come by with a surprise gift we’ll always remember.

Fresh from an ultrasound on the 23rd, she and her husband will tell us whether they’re expecting a boy or a girl.

I’m gonna be a granny!

I know.

If you’re a grandparent, you’re thinking how much I’m going to love it. And if you’re not, you’re thinking that makes me sound very old.

As a two-time mother of the bride this past year, I knew grandchildren wouldn’t be too far behind. And I knew Christie didn’t want to wait long. The Estimated Time of Arrival is May 18, just three days after her anniversary.

My husband says I shouldn’t be writing about all this because a) I know nothing about grannihood yet, and 2) can’t I keep ANYthing private?

Actually, I do know about grandparenthood because every person I know who is one gets that smile on his or her face whenever the subject comes up.

“It’s the best thing ever. You get to love ‘em up, and send ‘em back home.”

One woman told me it’s the only good thing about getting old.

Whenever we run into our friends, Tom and Sue McCartney of Saline, they’re holding at least one of their five grandchildren. And smiling.

“We love our grandkids so much, I’m not sure I can put it into words,” says Tom. “There’s nothing I’d rather do than spend time with them. I don’t remember a time in my life when I was happier. And it gets better every day.”

I was 24 when I gave birth to Christie. And although I read all the books I could squeeze into nine months, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. What the heck do you do with a whole, real, live person?

I had told my mother not to come up from Illinois immediately after I had the baby because Gary and I would want some time alone with him or her. Little did I know my emotions would be like a roller coaster on crack. Up, down, joy, despair. Christie wanted to nurse non-stop. I wanted to sleep. Christie cried a lot. I wanted to sleep.

So I was never so happy to see anyone at my door as I was the moment my mother finally arrived with her suitcase.

“You just go back to bed like a great big milking cow, and I’ll handle everything,” she said.

Ahhh. A cow! How perfect. All I had to do was milk and sleep. And Mother would handle the rest. I think I sobbed with joy.

Especially now that I am in possession of Everything There Is To Know about pregnancy/labor/childbirth/breastfeeding/childcare, I want to be that kind of mother-of-the-mother.

I want to be a big help without coming across as a know-it-all. (That might be tough.) I want to be there to lighten the burdens of parenting – which at times is more difficult than expectant parents can imagine. And I can’t wait to watch Christie and Don fall more and more in love with their child. They think they know. But again, they have no idea.

While in many ways I’ve enjoyed parenting older children even more than little ones – a phenomena that can be spelled f-r-e-e-d-o-m – there is something yummy about those early years.

Yes, Christmas is all about family, fellowship, and spiritual connection. But let’s face it. It’s a lot more fun when shared with a wide-eyed child bedazzled by the magic.

That’s why I’m already looking forward to Christmas 2010, when the baby will have become an essential part of our lives. I want only one gift: One of those hokey World’s Best Grandma mugs. And to know in my heart I deserve it.

About the author: Jo Mathis is an Ann Arbor-based writer.

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang (photo courtesy of Mark Bialek)

“I’m not your ‘Mom!’” my girlfriend finally exploded at her kids.

The teenagers looked puzzled, “Then, whose mom are you?”

I know what she means, though. She does not want her children to call her the English word, “Mom,” but to call her by the Chinese term, “Ma Ma.” The dictionary may give the same meaning for both terms, but “Mom” does not have the same feel, the same nuance, as “Ma Ma.” My children are not allowed to call me “Mom,” either.

The question of how to address people often comes up in our family. I teach my children to always address adults as “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” “Auntie” or “Uncle” – never by their first names. In our local Asian American communities and in Hawaii, it is common to address one’s elders as “Auntie” or “Uncle,” even “Grandma” or “Grandpa.” It creates instant familiarity, instant respect, an instant family-style relationship where adults look out for children and children look up to adults.

However, this is confusing for other children who do not have this custom, who are constantly correcting my children: “She’s not really your aunt, you know.” We feel like such outsiders when this happens, like we are not wanted.

Sometimes this is confusing for adults, too. Recently, I introduced my son, Little Brother, to a friend of mine, “Uncle Joe.” My friend was taken aback, “Uncle?”

“Would you prefer Mr. Grimm?”

“Oh! In that case, ‘Uncle’ would be fine.”

As a child, I always felt very uncomfortable whenever Caucasian adults insisted that I call them by their first name, but I felt even more uncomfortable disobeying the adult. I never knew what to do. As an adult, I feel the same discomfort when Caucasian children call me by my first name, but I know for them it is a sign of familiarity and friendship, so I do not say anything.

However, when a Chinese American boy I know suddenly starts calling me by my first name, I have to stop him: “Look, you can’t call me Frances. It makes me crazy. Call me Kai-Hwa Ah-Yi.”

The boy actually looks relieved. “I didn’t really feel comfortable calling you that, either, but that’s the only name I know for you.”

“Ok, if you have to, you can call me Frances Ah-Yi, but you have to add an Ah-Yi (Auntie) to the end. And not only for me, but for all Ah-Yi‘s.”

I once heard Salman Akhtar, an Indian American psychoanalyst and poet, lecture about how he sometimes encourages patients to say what they need to say in their own language. Even if he does not understand that language, their meaning comes through much clearer than in their stilted English. He went on to say that although the word “Sweetheart” is fine, it simply is not the same as…and then came a string of the most beautiful words (in Urdu) that I have ever heard.

Even though I was simply sitting in the audience, I melted completely. That is the power of using the right name in the right language.

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Ann Arbor and Hawaii. She is editor of IMDiversity.com Asian American Village and a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her website at www.franceskaihwawang.com. She can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.

"You'll need a partner for this one." Bob Schoeni and Gretchen Spreitzer demonstrate a stretch during the group warm-up session.

On Sunday, the northeast corner of Burns Park was already teeming with humanity at 1 p.m. That was the start time that Ann Arbor Active Against ALS [A2A3] had scheduled for its kickoff fundraiser: a family field day. David Lowenschuss, one of the organizers, pointed out Bob Schoeni for us among the crowd waiting for the formal start to the festivities on a crispy overcast day. Schoeni had provided the impetus for the formation of the A2A3 nonprofit, when he was diagnosed with ALS in July.

A few minutes later, when Christopher Taylor took the microphone to help get the field day fun started, the gray skies had gone from spitting a few misty drops of rain to a steady sprinkle. It was hard to escape the conclusion that it was really raining. Added to a breezy day that saw temperatures in the low 50s, the rain meant that Taylor’s declaration, “It’s a beautiful day!” easily drew the chuckles it deserved from the crowd.

When Schoeni took the mic, he talked about the importance of the support from family, friends, neighbors – because of the hard evidence that showed that it actually lengthens lives of ALS patients. He thanked everyone for the support he’d already received, saying he was sure it had already added days, weeks, months, even years to his life. But ALS is a disease with no known cure or treatment. So was this another case of a guy standing in the rain declaring that it’s a beautiful day? More on the rain and that question later. First, a bit about the guy and the activity that filled the afternoon.

Bob Schoeni led off Sunday’s activities with some stretching exercises. Taylor had joked that stretching exercises were important to an injury-free day of activity – something that their insurance carrier would appreciate. Some of those stretches demonstrated by Schoeni were solo enterprises, even though they were done in a giant group of a couple hundred people: windmills, jumping jacks, torso twists. But other stretches involved partnering up – finding somebody to lean on. For those, Bob teamed up with his wife, Gretchen Spreitzer.

Soccer clinic with coaches from WideWorld Sports Center.

Bob told The Chronicle that he and Gretchen, when they were graduate students at the University of Michigan School of Business, hadn’t really experienced Ann Arbor as a community. They’d been focused pretty squarely on their studies. After graduating and living for a time in sunny California (Los Angeles), the place they picked out to raise their children was Ann Arbor. Asked why – when they presumably knew about the cold of an Ann Arbor February – Schoeni looked around the park and said, “This wouldn’t happen in L.A.”

What was happening was this: kids and adults were playing kickball, running obstacle courses, hula-hooping, participating in clinics for football and soccer, enjoying tasty baked goods, gobbling up grilled bratwurst, drinking hot chocolate – all to launch the fundraising efforts of A2A3. Those efforts will continue past Sunday partly in the form of various coaching programs. If you have a personal training goal – run a 5K under 19 minutes, complete a 10K, do 50 push-ups – A2A3 can provide coaching and training, plus support for fundraising connected with that goal. The idea is that as people complete their training goals, they collect the cash that others have pledged, and funnel it to A2A3.

The mighty right foot of Vivian (we believe that's her name) sends the ball skyward.

A2A3, in turn, will send that money to organizations like ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI), which employs 30 full-time scientists working exclusively on treatments and a cure for ALS. Amy Whipple, who is midwest regional director for ALS TDI, was on hand for the Burns Park fun. She said that research on ALS fell to organizations like ALS TDI because it was an “orphan disease,” meaning that the roughly 8,000 people diagnosed each year with ALS did not represent a large enough number to make it a financially attractive proposition for Big Pharma. Whipple was joined at the park by her cousin, Dan O’Connor, who is an undergraduate studying business at UM. O’Connor and Whipple had lost an aunt to ALS.

O’Connor is thinking of applying to graduate school in business. Chatting with O’Connor, Schoeni asked him what subject he thought he might like to specialize in. While he’s not firmly decided, O’Connor said he was thinking about the public policy end of things. “Hey, that’s my area!” exclaimed Schoeni, and told O’Connor he should get in touch later, because he’d be happy to talk to him about it. So Schoeni is not exactly shutting things down – he continues to add people and work to his world.

That same spirit of continuing to stretch himself was reflected in Schoeni’s turn on the kickball diamond. He tried to stretch a sure single into a double. Although he was thrown out on the base path, he had a smile on his face as the ball bounced off his back.

Calin St. Henry explains the obstacle course. He was assisted by his colleague, Trevor Ford. After running that event, they had to go work at Zingerman's Deli and Quizno's Subs, respectively.

Through the afternoon, the rain gradually abated. Around 4 p.m., the scheduled end of the event, and as the fun started to wind down, we had a chance to focus briefly on one of the tunes that had been pounding out of the PA speakers all afternoon: Elvis Costello’s “Forty-Five.” We asked Joel Dalton, who assembled the four hours worth of music onto an iPod, if it was just the same mix he used for the Burns Park Run.

No way. The soundtrack for the run is running-specific, Dalton said, and there are some tunes selected partly as a function of the morning-time start. We didn’t have a chance to press him for details on the selection criteria for the A2A3 event, because we didn’t want to miss the root beer giveaway. The remainder of the root beer (from a keg provided by Morgan and York) was being given away free – it had not been a popular drink on a cold November day.

But Costello’s song “Forty-Five” was probably a good note to wind down the day. In those lyrics, he riffs on the various interpretations of “forty-five” – from the year 1945, to the vinyl records that used to spin at 45 rpms, to chronological age. Next year Bob Schoeni will turn 45. And no, he’s not a guy standing in the rain declaring it’s a sunny day. He’s a guy running around in the rain, declaring it’s a sunny day, then watching the clouds part to let some rays of sun through. For the record: at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 2, the northeast corner of Burns Park was bathed in sun.

Editor’s note: In the month of November, Ann Arbor residents can help the A2A3 cause by mentioning A2A3 when making purchases at the following area retailers – they’ll donate to A2A3 the indicated percentage of their sales during the given time period:

Nov. 3-9
Nicola’s Books [5%]
Morgan and York [5%]

Nov. 10-13
Learning Express [20%]

Nov. 19
Running Fit [5%]

Nov. 1-30
Arbor Vacuum [10%]
Better Health Store [10%]

More Photos:

An actual play run from the wishbone formation. Coaching that part of the clinic was Tony Bertoia of the Washtenaw Junior Football Association. He joined his brother, Mike, to staff the clinic. Tony and Mike used to play softball with Bob Schoeni. And David Lowenschuss' son, Cooper, played on Mike's team this past year.

Bruce Crankshaw executes the spin-around-with-your-head-on-a-field-hockey-stick maneuver. Bruce's wife Molly teaches Sophie Schoeni in third grade at Burns Park Elementary.

Bob Schoeni gets put out in a game of kickball trying to stretch a single into a double.

The mighty left foot of David Lowenschuss, an organizer of the event, launches the ball into low orbit.

Photography of people wearing name tags proves ineffective as a way of putting names with faces. Kevin Ross with his two nieces, Clare and Ell-...? Kevin's wife, Suzanne, is president of the A2A3 nonprofit's board. Kevin has coached with Bob Schoeni and described his style as "naturally supportive."

Root beer comes in a keg when you get it from Morgan and York. Manning the tap for what would become a free root beer giveaway by the end of the afternoon is Steve Norton.

Elmer Spreitzer, father of Gretchen Spreitzer (wife of Bob Schoeni) and Rob Martin. Martin was high school friends with Spreitzer and Schoeni in Bowling Green, Ohio. He brought the grill and the brats – donated by Johnsonville – from Bowling Green, where he lives.

Plenty of baked goods for sale. Just to the right, apple fritters from Paula's Place. Out of the frame just to the right of the fritters were brownies from Zingerman's.

Brian Goldberg hands a cup of hot chocolate to son Zachary, who asked: "Can I get my money back if I don't like it?" A moot question, because Zachary declared that he loved it.

Possible reasons for Sophie Lete-Straka to be sad: cold, rain, lonesome, sleeves too long, 2-6 so far ...

Reasons to be glad: Hanging out with Dad – Eric Straka. Bob Schoeni was assistant coach of Sophie's sister Miranda's soccer team.