The Plain Christmas Doll

When I was a child, we lived with my Nana because that’s how Italian people do. In order to live above your means before credit cards, extended families would pile in together and share expenses. Over time, various branches of my family got involved with possibly Mafia-related activities, like a taxi business or a storm door business, although none of them actually drove taxis or sold storm doors. It was very hush-hush what they did. But they no longer needed to live with the family. They had their own big houses with sofas and lamps permanently kept in their showroom plastic covers.

Visiting my cousins was like stepping into a fairy world of figurines, and elaborate children’s rooms with canopied beds. They had ribbons in their hair and buckles on their shoes and were dressed like little brides in their confirmation photos, even the boys. My father declined to work for the “taxi business” because occasionally someone ended up dead, so we stayed in the family house.

We shared a single bedroom with bunks and roll-out beds, while Nana had the upstairs rooms. Even though her hairdressing job didn’t seem even vaguely Mafia-related, she had the fancy furniture, the figurines and art deco lamps. Children weren’t allowed upstairs when she wasn’t home, but I would sneak up anyway because she had something even more amazing than a replica of the Pieta with a lamp coming out of Saint Mary’s back. She had little candy dishes perpetually filled with M&Ms. This was luxury beyond my imagination.

I was careful to take only one or two every time I went on a reconnaissance mission so she would not know I had been there, and this is how – while searching for the actual whole bag of M&Ms – I found the Revlon dolls.

Revlon dolls were tall with rigid plastic bodies and soft, beautifully made up faces, glass eyes fringed with thick lashes. They had grown woman figures, elaborate hair-dos, earrings, pearl necklaces, shoes and nylon stockings. They were super-sized Barbies before the Coming of Barbie. All the dolls I found had elaborate costumes – velvet dresses with feathered matching hats, brocade ball gowns with tiaras – except one. The plain hatless Revlon doll wore a simple, gauzy pink dress and white sandals.

On Christmas morning, when I opened my gift from Nana, it was the plain doll. The fancy dolls had gone to my rich cousins. Before Nana died –she lived to 96, despite chain smoking Kent cigarettes all her life  – I asked her, as one adult to another, why she had given me – the grandchild who lived with her – the plain doll.

“You weren’t used to nice things,” she said, without hesitation. “Your cousins were. I had to do better for them.” My appalled reaction didn’t faze her in the least. “When my own kids were little, sometimes I gave them nothing for Christmas so I could give my boss’ children nice gifts.” It made perfect sense to her.

I still have that sad plain Revlon doll. Occasionally I check eBay to see what I could get if I sold it, but I probably never will because it is my spirit of Christmas, it is the lesson I have never forgotten.

Don’t be like Nana.
And eat all the M&Ms every chance you get.

Good Enough

Douglas Edwards, one of the original employees of Google, wrote about the Google Philosophy in his memoir, “I’m Feeling Lucky.”

“Good enough is good enough was the standard for engineering. Those five words encapsulate a philosophy for solving problems, cutting through complexity, and embracing failure.

“If you have a [to-do] list that’s longer than you can deal with, you have to prioritize. If you give a project a quick improvement that gets you 80 percent of the way to solving the problem, you haven’t solved it, but it drops below the line, versus a project you haven’t worked on at all. Once a problem falls below the line, you should work on something else.

“At some point, all the problems that are really important are solved, and that is the definition of success.”

When I first read that, I was thrilled because that’s always been the secret of my efficiency, how I get so much done in so little time. But when I rhapsodize about my “good enough is good enough” philosophy at job interviews, I can see potential employers literally pull away, repulsed! It’s never what they want to hear. They want to hear the lie, that you are somehow so effective, you can juggle a hundred assignments and bring them all in under budget and on deadline with 100 percent perfection. Don’t they know that Google built a multi-billion dollar empire on “good enough is good enough”?

So they hire the one who tells them what they want to hear, and at every staff meeting from then on, what they hear is the project is progressing, it’s in the works, it’s very close to being done, it’s coming together, it’s moving forward. The fruit is low-hanging. And yet it never gets finished. At the next staff meeting, it’s the same status report. I’ve been in meetings where projects have been in limbo for years. Eventually, the project is just forgotten, replaced by more projects that never get finished.

Sadly, although I’m a “get it done” person, I’m married to a “it’s not worth doing unless it’s done right” person who can complicate and delay even the simplest job by adding what to me are many unnecessary steps. For example, I want the two broken rails on the deck fixed, and he bought enough lumber to replace all the rails. That was three years ago. Let’s stop a moment and reflect on that. Three. Years. Ago.

“Can’t you just find the time to replace the two rails that are broken and do the rest later?” I beg. All I want for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, my birthday, our anniversary every year is to have those two rails fixed. But…no.

“It won’t look right with two new ones and the rest of them old. I want to do it right, replace all of them all at once. Once I get the tools out, I might as well do them all.” But there’s never time in his schedule for a job of that magnitude. That would take all day, while replacing two rails would take an hour or two.

It’s impossible for him to do a halfway job, even though what I want – the broken rails replaced – would be good enough for me. Good enough is good enough. Don’t believe me? Google it.