Christmas Memories

(This is the piece I read at the Christmas Readings this year-- a little dated (written ~ 2006), I'm afraid, but pretty accurate still…)

I truly love Christmas…the decorations, the presents, the baking, even the shopping. I love Christmas carols while I putter in the kitchen, and I actually sing along when there’s no one around whose ears I could offend. I like the idea that people are often more forgiving and friendly when they are decked from top to toe with packages. I like the fact that people dress their dogs up as elves, or Santa, or Christmas packages, and dress their houses up as Las Vegas. The ten-foot tall snowman reeling across a neighbor’s yard, the lighted sleigh on the verge of tumbling from a tree, the lights that chase each other round and round the porch are all incredibly garish and tacky, but they sure as hell signify that somebody is celebrating something. This is a good thing. I even enjoy the emails featuring Leroy, the Redneck Reindeer, and the schmaltzy ones that purport to make me grateful for my blessings. Celebrating loudly and visibly is an important part of the wild ride from Thanksgiving to New Years.

I like going to work and seeing a Christmas tree in the lobby, and having a children’s choir from our adopted elementary school singing their hearts out at lunch. I even like the parties we give for preschoolers, where I am up to my elbows in glue and grubby 4-year-olds, and am serving pizza and peeling oranges and opening juice boxes. I like listening to the all-Christmas stations on the radio, waiting to hear my favorite Christmas song (Bing Crosby and David Bowie doing a medley of Little Drummer Boy and Peace on Earth, for those of you who don’t know: one Christmas I got two CDs that featured the song because my kids got tired of me complaining that no one ever played it). Making people happy is part of it, too.

I like filling stockings with stupid little gifts that I know will amuse my family—or at least me. I like watching Fitzwilly—one of our favorite Christmas movies. It’s even nice seeing It’s a Wonderful Life twenty times each Christmas, and it’s still a kick to see the Grinch straining up the side of Mt. Crumpit. My favorite part is his dog Max--perhaps because I, too, often get swept up in events and end up hanging by a thread. I re-read all the Christmas kids’ books from The Church Mice at Christmas to The Polar Express, and I look at our old Christmas photo album and see my daughters grow up before my eyes, Santa by Santa.  

I like unpacking the Christmas stuff and revisiting other times and places, and reminding everyone of where we got this or that ornament: the reindeer fur elf from Russia, the Pinocchio from Italy, the cuckoo clock from Bavaria, the aluminum tinsel from Chadd’s Ford and the box of plastic chandelier prisms from that consignment shop in Springfield where the proprietor couldn’t understand what in the world I was planning to do with them. Remembering plays a big part in my Christmas.

And then there’s the cookies and the seafood soup and the barbecue and all the stories that make up the Christmas party we gave each year, for nearly twenty-five years—with one year off for good behavior. There are the friends who ask us over for gluhwein each year, and the ones who send Christmas letters and cards, whether we get around to sending ours or not. There is the solemn chant of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel  that brings back Christmas ceremonies at college, where we sang and lit candles in the darkened gym, filing out in total silence to embark on our Christmas holidays..Let’s hear it for tradition.

There are the crowds at the airport, and there’s that moment when I catch sight of my daughter coming toward me from the gate-- when I almost start to cry because I realize suddenly how much I’ve missed her. And always, there’s Christmas Eve with my family, and my mom with all our favorite cookies, and her impossible artificial tree..and Christmas morning with my husband lighting the tree, waiting impatiently for us all to assemble--and all of us in a blizzard of paper and ribbon, discovering things we didn’t know we wanted, and realizing that the most important gift is each other. Coming home and finding home are what it’s about, too.

There is a snowstorm of words about Christmas, and each word is a flurry of moments and memories. They sparkle in the holiday lights, and twinkle a moment in the eyes of believers. They wrap the day, the week, the month in a galaxy of stars and make us forget for a while that there is an everyday that owns us, and that we have a dutiful new year of resolutions and reformation ahead. Each year, we unleash the happy avalanche of celebration and joy, memory and tradition, family and home, if only for a little while. For the moment, though, it’s enough. Merry Christmas.

Tree Series: #4

There's a Pinocchio, an elf made of reindeer fur, two wooden birds, a cuckoo clock, aluminum icicles, and …a partridge in a pear tree? It sounds like the song.. but almost every ornament on our tree has a story associated with it; certainly, they each have a location that they are tied to. These are the souvenir ornaments acquired in our travels--easy to find, easy to carry home, and guaranteed to bring back memories, at least once each year.

Pinocchio came from our first trip to Italy, when Kay slipped and fell at the Fountain of Trevi, and I carried her, screaming, at least a city block with visions of fractured skulls dancing in my head. That trip was also the one where we forgot to pick up our passports from the hotel desk in Rome and didn't realize our mistake till we arrived in Florence. We were forced to rely on the somewhat dubious Italian postal service to reunite us with our passports, and American Express earned our gratitude for dealing with the police and getting them to allow us to check into our Venice hotel sans papers. We've dined out on that story for years.

The birds were from our first trip abroad (mine, at least) --to London, and I found them at Harrods, a place I had only read about. JC was less than thrilled about browsing through that amazing place, and I remember sulking along as he dragged me to Piccadilly Circus late on the night we arrived, me having had no sleep since we left home, and not being in the best of spirits. That is the sanitized version.

The elf  was from the visit to Russia, where we had accompanied JC after a dioxin conference in Tampere, Finland (the Pittsburgh of Finland, we were told…) That trip was memorable for more than just the ornament. We initially landed in Helsinki, and had been told to take a taxi to the central train station and catch a train to Tampere. Except that the train station burned down the day we arrived, and trains were simply not running. We ended up taking a bus (try this sometime at an airport where everyone is speaking Finnish and you. don't. understand. a. word. The bus sped through the night and all the signs we saw were full of 'i's and 'j's and 'k's and made no sense. Then the bus pulled up to a cinderblock structure in the middle of nowhere and everybody on the bus got out and retrieved their luggage from the storage location under the vehicle. The bus driver basically kicked us off, too, then drove away. After a while ( a long and scary 'while') another bus came along and everybody got on, so we did too. Amazingly, we ended up at a bus station in Tampere only a few blocks from our hotel, but not without a few anxious moments on our part. The Russian side-trip (to St. Petersburg) was somewhat less eventful, but still produced a number of stories..to be saved for another year.

But…you get the idea. There are chandelier prisms that I rescued from a consignment shop in Springfield to serve as 'icicles' on our tree; there are aluminum spirals that I found at the museum in Chadd's Ford, the cuckoo clock that we bought when we were tearing around Germany with the Townsleys, who were stationed in Nuremberg, the very Southern-style miniature door (decked with greens) that we found in Charleston…the collection a veritable travelogue for anyone who knows how to read the ornaments; in short, for our family.

Advent is a lot like our tree; it recaps the history, the genealogy of Jesus. It tells us the story of the people of God, Jesus' family: where they came from, the things they had been through together--and like our tree, Advent brings it all together and ties it in a bright Christmas package, filled with love. It lets us know that, no matter what happens along the way, one way or another, we will always get to Bethlehem, we will always find our way home.

Third in the Series: Being Significant

I see Santa Claus, at his desk in his striped shirtsleeves, writing carefully in his book the name of our eldest daughter, Kay--and placing a string of tiny gold stars behind it. I'm hanging yet another decoration on the tree, and one that I treasure. There is another like it, identical but for the name being inscribed: that of Sarah, replete with an equal number of stars.

That was the year that I painted. I had never had a good Nativity set, and that year, I saw one--a huge one with shepherds and kings and camels and sheep--amidst the greenware of a local ceramics shop. I splurged and bought the whole thing, along with the paint to decorate it in proper colors. As if that weren't enough, I bought ornaments: the aforementioned Santas and a couple of angels. More to paint.

Unless you've been a stay-at-home mom or dad, it's hard to understand why anyone would take on a big project in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Life is complicated enough with the baking and the cleaning and the decorating and the mailing--and always, the perpetuation of the Santa Claus myth for the little ones. I even added on a Christmas party for 50 or so people early in December. Why bother with painting a Nativity set? 18+ detailed pieces, crammed in among all the other tasks.

I like to say that projects like these were good for me because they were the only things I did that stayed DONE. Laundry? Nope. Meals? Nope. Cleaning. Baking. Repairs. Errands. Nope to the 4th power. Like every other parent of small children, everything I accomplished was temporary and essentially invisible. I ran and ran and stayed in place. But if I did something concrete--counted cross stitch, a painted Nativity scene, a journal entry--I could claim an accomplishment. And that was important for me as 'only a housewife', who was barely worthy of notice.

Whether or not I believed in my job, not many others thought it important. I played with my kids, I read them books, I took them on walks and pointed things out. We visited the library and petting zoos and playgrounds, did experiments, made finger jello, bought groceries and baked cookies, and through all this they learned stuff: that reading is important, that math is everywhere, that science can explain things, and that their parents loved them to distraction.

So here I am, hanging ornaments that I painted for them years ago: two angels, each cuddling a puppy or kitten; two Santas, each proclaiming that a little girl had earned special gold stars for being good all year. I painted them for me, too--for the mom I was, evidence that what I was doing was worth doing, even if it didn't earn me a big salary or prestigious title. I made angels. I was Santa.

Advent is a bit like that. Sometimes it's hard to see the value in our everyday. Sometimes no one sees or appreciates our efforts, and we struggle just to hold our own, running in place and getting nowhere. Sometimes, though--and Advent is a good time for this--we need to do something concrete that demonstrates (if only to ourselves) that we have significance: donate to a cause, help out at a soup kitchen, assemble a stocking for a faraway soldier, write a letter, or maybe, just think about where you are in your own journey, and what course corrections you might need to make along the way.

Paint your own Nativity set. Create a few angels.

Unexpected Grace

In the air

the red-and-green glitter

of certainty:

we crank out

all the jack-in-the-box tunes

courting the expected surprise

of Christmas

leaping full-blown

from its pretty box.

Not for me.

I’d rather Christmas

catch me unawares

with unexpected joy,

with hope dancing round

each corner, with promises

of heart’s desires found,

with children’s off-key

songs  that strike all

the right notes in my heart.

I’d rather Christmas bring me

flowers in the rain,  

hot cocoa and cookies,

friends to share them,

and finally

peace,

joy,

and love, always love

(the only certainty I need.)

Merry Christmas.

Second in the series: Where Did They Come From?

If you were looking at our tree for the first time, one of the things that you would notice--without fail-- is that we have a LOT of brass ornaments. This was not by design. In fact, it is attributable to a group of ladies at the Presbyterian church in Rogersville, Tennessee.

 You see, the ladies buy and personalize brass ornaments for all the children of the church each year--a nice little custom--to be distributed at the yearly Christmas program. My mother-in-law made sure that each year, our daughters were included on the list. And so, for every year from the day they were born to the year when they were no longer considered young enough to get a present, those personalized brass ornaments arrived like clockwork.

I always thought, too, that those ornaments would provide a 'starter set' for our daughters when they finally had their own households, and their own trees for the holiday. In addition, I always made sure that I bought them a special ornament of their own each year--sometimes of their choice, sometimes of mine--to take with them when they left home.

 Well, a lot of those ornaments are still on our tree, waiting to spread their wings and fly to other locations. Whether it's inertia or my own failure to pack and ship, I do not know. But I prefer to think they remain here where their stories are told each year. I doubt Sarah remembers the silver spiral that she coveted at a shop on Main Street in Fairfax one year. The Pierrots I bought when both Kay and she were part of the drama scene in high school, the pewter ornaments featuring cats (Kay) and horses (Sarah) that we bought in Germany, the snowmen, the Snoopys, the Pooh bears, the homemade clothespin soldiers from their preschool classes…I may not say it out loud, but I remember almost all of them and where they came from and what prompted their selection.

 Our Christmas tree is a catalog of who we are and where we've been. Whether it's the determination of their grandmother's relentless brass ornaments, or the souvenir ornaments from vacation travels, or the ones that indicate passing interests or permanent ones (I don't think we have any anthropological ones, and most of the legal ones were JC-related), each item on the tree has something to say. I try to give them voice each year, which is why I will never have the Martha-Stewart, color-coordinated tree of the decorating magazines. Instead, I will have the styrofoam snowmen with felt features and lipsticked lettering, the aqua-colored (with glitter) spinner from my childhood, the felt mouse, asleep in his matchbox bed--imperfectly perfect in every way.

 There's a moral in here somewhere. Our Christmas tree gives us the opportunity to acknowledge all of our experiences and the people who made them, to remember and smile, to think about where we've been and what we are becoming. What better thoughts could we have when we are preparing for the coming of the baby at Christmas?

First in a Series: Tuna Can Santa

A long time ago, in a country far away (California), JC and I were celebrating our first Christmas as a married couple in a house of our own. We had a fifteen foot cathedral ceiling in our living room,  lovely gray-green shag carpeting throughout, and a cat. No traditions, no experience.

We went off to the base exchange and bought a gigantic tree--so big that it stuck out the passenger side window of JC's Ford Torino (and that was a big car) when jammed in the back seat. I was forced to share the back seat with more tree than I'd ever seen, much less had as a seat partner. We got it home and set it up in its new stand. We had virtually no decorations.

In a spontaneous burst of craft-iness, I decided to make ornaments. Cookie-dough ornaments that represented Christmas, and also our lives. Hand-painted by me, and in some cases, hand-cut by me when cookie-cutters didn't have the proper shapes. I made Santas, camels, a lemon tree, a cat--anything I could think of--and dutifully punched holes and threaded them with ribbon. We bought a few ornaments at the exchange: a partridge with three artificial pears, I remember; JC found some tin ornaments on a foray into Tijuana (one shepherd--or king-- looked like he was wielding a hockey stick); I found some plastic 'Shrinky-Dink' ornaments at a local church bazaar--and my mom had mailed me a small box of ornaments from my godmother's tree. It was nowhere near enough for the monstrous tree we had, but lights and love cover a multitude of decorating sins. It was a beautiful tree.

The most labor-intensive of my homemade ornaments was a felt-covered tuna can with two small figures glued inside: Mrs. Santa planting a kiss on Santa's cheek. Cute, tho not very professional-looking. Our first ornament.

That tuna can has lasted for 40 Christmases. Longer than most of the cookie ornaments, though the cat and the lemon tree and maybe a camel are still hanging on. I like to think that the tuna-fish Santa is there to remind us of something that is truly important in this season: showing our love and appreciation for our families. No matter if the tree is big or small, no matter if family is far or near, no matter where we are or how lavish or sparse the gifts under the tree, the best part of our Christmas tree is those we love and remember as we gather round it. And, of course, the tuna can Santa.

Getting Ready

I’m ready. No, wait a minute...where are my keys? And my phone. Did you feed the cat?   Oh, crap! Where’s my purse? Hold on--I need to run upstairs and check if the light’s on. Has the dryer stopped? Do I have my umbrella? (my sweater, the dry cleaning, the key to the UPS box, the claim check for whatever, change for the parking meter..) Yes. I’m ready to go. Maybe.

This is the commonplace, the usual flurry of getting out the door on an average day. Nine times out of ten, I’ll forget something--or, by the time I reach the car, will have forgotten at least one of my destinations on the everyday merry-go-round we call living. Some days it’s more like a rollercoaster, but I’m still buying my ticket and hopping on the ride. Ever hopeful, that’s me.

But this week, Advent has begun. We are getting ready for Christmas, for the arrival of our favorite guest..and no matter what the kids tell you, it’s not Santa or elves or reindeer. I am about as ready as I am on my everyday trips, which is ‘not very’. I’m ready to light the candles (they are in the top drawer of the china cabinet--way in the back: three purple, one pink, right by that circular glass candle-holder..) and I know where to find the prayers for each day, I think. 

But those are not the important parts. They are things. Anyone can gather up things and put them in their places and follow the procedure. Light the candle, Say these words. Unimportant. The real readiness is within--the place where all those butterflies live, the ones that flutter around, muttering about cards and presents and mailing deadlines and parties and dinners and cookies and decorating. Clearing out the butterflies makes room for a baby and his story, makes room for the small kindnesses we need to show each other, makes room for looking at the world with the love and mercy that we sorely need to show all year long. 

Forget the damned keys, the phone, the cat, the purse. Leave behind the to-do lists. Focus on the day, the sun, the clouds, the sheer opportunity of today and the hope that comes tomorrow and every day that follows. Look around and see all we have to be thankful for, and all we have to give. Look ahead for the coming of the baby this Christmas and welcome him--and all his creation-- with kindness and love and mercy. Get really ready, inside, outside, all around.

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

Revisions: poems celebrating (?) our return from our cruise, yard work, and my 65th birthday (upcoming)

Coming Home

First, there is the mail,
a sea serpent of mail 
that slithered through the slot,
oozed across the foyer and
down the stairs
seeking the depths
where dwells the unspeakable
catalog.

The voicemail next:
importunate, insistent
robotic cheer--
politics, prescriptions,
sales, reminders
of missed opportunities
and appointments
preying on the guilty
conscience.

Last, the list
assembled on the plane:
the flotsam and jetsam 
generated by departure,
postponed calls, deferred bills,
the pieces you’d hoped 
would go away if you
closed your eyes
and lulled the inner voice
(your responsible self)
with dinners and music,
plied it with drinks
and seduced it with sun.

You were a world away:
you’re back now, Sisyphus,
and life goes on.


Squirrel and I

We are digging frantically
he and I
burying things in cold, cold dirt:
he, acorns; I, pansies.
He’ll forget, in winter’s blast,
exactly where he stashed them
will rummage and search
the beds in much the same fashion as I
forgetful, rummage for my keys.
I at least know where my pansies are.

And in spring, equally astonished,
we prize our little resurrections:
Pansy faces grin in surprise,
broken free
from frozen burial
and his unintentional seedlings smile 
sunward: incipient trees 
with promise
of autumn fruit.

Acorns and pansies.
The cycle of
life eternal.

Improbabilities

I should not have gone to college
should not have caught 
that glimpse of grad school, should
have been satisfied with
the bachelors and settled 
for less, for the job next door that,
expressing interest, was not interesting
enough 
to capture mine.

I should not have moved
away, away to horizons
new and blazing blue: 
Charlottesville, California,
Virginia, Washington,
should not have been
a scientist, wife, mom, or teacher,
techie, trainer, meeting
maven, director, writer,
poet.

I should not be this me at all,
but I am improbably all
these threads in a strange   
and wildly-woven fabric: 
wooly bumps and silky
slubs and jacquard patterns
warp and weft historically defined,
suspended on the loom,
still a work in progress.
Life.

I've been away, but I'm back now. Almost. In the interim, there has been a cruise. Aruba, Cartagena, Panama, Costa Rica, the Cayman Islands...then a drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Tampa--and at last, the flight back to reality, to home, to the everyday. I can't say I am sorry.  It's been a packed two weeks, and our return will be equally packed with all the stuff we put off till "after": after our trip to San Diego, after the kids got off to Scotland, after this trip. It seems our entire summer was fraught with 'after's this year, and I'm anxious to get back to  a normal scheduling process.

But, before we do that, I need to sort through the memory books for the past few weeks, and tabulate a few of the thanks I am feeling. What better time than November to take a hard look at all that we have, and compare our mountains to other people's more modest molehills?

At the risk of being shallow--and I often am--thank you for air-conditioning, for wheeled suitcases, for clean streets, for clean water, comfortable housing, for the ability to travel, for the good health that allows us to climb stairs, to walk easily, and to carry our own luggage. Thank you for eyes to see, and a brain to appreciate the history, the meaning, and the beauty of all we witness. Thank you for the neurons that make the pathways that connect experience with knowledge and that allow us to see wonders of nature and technology and achievement and be inspired.

The catalog of experiences this past month runs from butterflies to aloe vera, from forts to religion, from palm trees to divi-divis,  from emeralds to native crafts...we saw banana plantations and birds, iguanas and monkeys and sloths. And the Panama Canal, hewn with pick and shovel a hundred years ago, and still operating under  a century-old technology. Imagine that scene in 1914: imagine the awe and wonder of the connection of two oceans by the sheer determination and back-breaking efforts of an army of men who conquered not only land and sea, but disease and privation to fulfill a dream. Imagination: something else to be thankful for.  Experiencing  the canal crossing was a memory worth having.

As were all the others. The rain forest boat cruise--the prototype for Disney, only with real animals in real trees. The stories from our guides. The recitation of working hours and requirements. The beaches, the buildings, the images…it was an education and an inspiration.

And now, we are home--faced with an election and the myriad of after-trip errands and must-dos that inevitably follow absences. Somehow we landed in the middle of fall, after extending our summer with this trip. It's chilly, and we have engagements to keep and appointments to make and we need to get used to doing our own cooking, cleaning and entertainment again. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and Christmas hard on its heels. Time to focus; time to write and stop making random lists here, time to take a good look round, decide on a course of action, and then, pursue it.

It's good to be back.

Saying "Uncle"

(I am not a student of government; I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of what goes on in the higher (or lower) echelons here in Washington. This is just my gut reaction to the goings-on we've been subjected to in the past few weeks...)

Okay. I'll say it. "Uncle". That's what you say when you have had enough and just want the game to end, isn't it? I am tired--very tired--of this particular game. And discouraged and dispirited and despairing.

I grew up in what I believed to be the greatest nation on earth; we were the envy of the world in high ideals, ambition, and achievement. When other countries faltered, we were there to shore them up with our support, both physical and financial--and military, if it came to that. We were, if not the savior of the world, at least a force for good therein.

We have taken a beating. The years have not been kind. Today we find ourselves beset on every side. Instead of being the big brother the world could depend on for help, many countries find us to be interfering and pursuing our own interests at their expense. Perhaps we are, to some degree, but I still think the American people see themselves as being helpful, supportive, generous, and ready to defend the underdog. The world is growing up, though, and like rebellious teen-agers, countries are rejecting anyone who helped along the way. Us. We are now the bad guys, to be avoided and thwarted at any cost. We are the enemy (although we can still keep that disaster aid and financial support coming..)

And now, it's not just other countries who have decided to wallop us into submission: it's our own politicians. It is difficult to assign responsibility here, and I'm not sure I want to. I am a lifelong Democrat and a supporter of Obama and his hopes for America. His leadership makes me proud to say the pledge of allegiance, proud that we have an intelligent, articulate man in the White House--and proud that Americans were far enough removed from the trials of the '60s to actually elect a black man to our highest office.

Perhaps that was a pride that came too early. It seems that the divisive Congress now in session is unwilling to support President Obama in any program he espouses. I do not understand how this can be happening. I was taught in my civics classes in grade school that we the people have a government with three branches, which, with their system of checks and balances, prevent us all from going to hell in a hand basket. Congress initiates and passes laws; the executive branch approves (or alternatively, rejects) those laws; the judicial branch reviews and interprets them. And, with all three of these branches working in concert, we as citizens have an orderly and dependable government that is responsive to our changing needs. Change may depend upon the somewhat slow pace of the election cycle, but I have always trusted that the will of the people would prevail eventually. Our election process (and the representatives and the president and ultimately, the Supreme Court) is the primary tool of the people that ensures the orderly process of government and has made us the proverbial city on a hill that others have aspired to. Nowhere is it said that one branch or another could hijack the process and hold the citizenry hostage to accomplish its own agenda.

Our tools have been turned against us. Somehow Congress has lost the concept of collegiality and has turned into a kindergarten classroom of selfish children, who have forgotten why they are there. There appears to be a new mutant version of congressman that appeared around the last election: one who doesn't understand the job, who thinks that personal beliefs and/or prejudices supersede the oath of office, who repeatedly takes the short-sighted view of whatever issue, ignoring and/or not caring about the country at large in favor of pleasing a limited constituency as narrow-minded, self-serving and intransigent as he. The common good has fallen victim to personal advancement and self-aggrandizement.  Stubbornness and unwillingness to listen have sabotaged the discussion and compromise necessary for any form of legislative process. As a teacher, as a parent, I find myself wishing I could sit these children in their respective corners until they learn to 'play nicely' with one another. Or maybe clean up the mess they've made.


The idiocy and small-mindedness of the shutdown is only compounded by the arbitrariness of the actual  effects. The barricade of trails and monuments, the litanies of what's open, what's closed, the focus on Congressional perks that have not been cut off vs. the ones of the general public that have, the interviews of those who are impacted, the interviews of determined congressmen and the equally determined opposition, the inexplicable feeding of the divisiveness that is at the root of the problem.

If as much effort, as much print, as much airtime went into encouraging cooperation and compromise as has gone into undermining those attitudes, we might not be where we are.


The irony of all of this is that no one is winning--least of all the citizens who elected this gang. The politicians have their onscreen moments, the media have their proverbial field day, newspapers have plenty to write about and all the human interest stories that the public can stomach...but the public has smaller (or non-existent) paychecks, fewer benefits, even the loss of recreational facilities like our national parks. Our slowly-recovering economy is heading, lemming-like, for the cliff yet again--and no one seems to be listening to the Cassandras who are prophesying dire results. No one seems to be listening to anything anymore: not each other, not the warnings, not the bells that may be tolling the end of life as we Americans know it-- and have known it, for at least my lifetime. We are betrayed, and we are the betrayers. We have taken all our gifts and all our ideals and all our hopes for the future and turned them into a circus for the world to ridicule. We should be ashamed. I know I am.

Looking for My One Per Cent

One part in a hundred, that would be one per cent. Anyone would conclude that that is not much. A local art gallery is devoting an entire exhibition period to that theme, however. Choose and expand upon the concept of one per cent of anything. Now, since this is an art gallery, one would expect it to be a study of the minutiae of the visual world. Were I an artist, I would cut myself a little cardboard window and start looking at things: the heart of a flower, the end of a banana, the pebbled surface of a blackberry. Or, were I a photographic artist, I'd narrow my viewfinder down to locate texture and detail in a larger picture. I am reducing my field of vision.

But I am not that kind of artist. I am a writer and a poet and my work every day is to routinely seek the one per cent-- or even less. I zero in on a single facet of the life I have been given and examine it, hoping to use it to make sense of the rest, the enormous thunderstorm of thought and experience and sense information that rains in on me each day. Studying a single raindrop, I try to see the universe.

Regret and Rejoicing

There are times when I regret having given up our suburban quarter-acre: in spring, when the tulips and daffodils pop up in the woods behind the house and the dogwoods are dotting the woods with pink and white; sometimes, in the summer, when folks are hauling in fresh tomatoes from the garden (and even, maybe, the zucchini); in winter, when I used to go out and cut greens for the house--holly and ground pine and magnolia branches. I had a garden that I could count on--and, when I found a new plant that flourished there, I was delighted to have added it to the somewhat haphazard design I'd established.

But, in the fall...I am now so grateful for my 20x20 bricked-in patio. No leaves to rake, no mulch to spread, no lawn to mow, no acres (well, it always seemed like that) of frostbitten plants to slimily tangle around my fingers as I tried to clean up beds for the winter. In the fall, I can walk down to the river for my autumnal color fix. I can go to the nursery and replace my summer geraniums with chrysanthemums, and my pinks with pansies or ornamental cabbages. I can even (after a couple years of failure with assorted other plants there) water the sedums in the Wooly Pockets on my wall, stick in a couple mini-pumpkins and call them finished till Thanksgiving.

My various pots of spent lilies and other assorted perennials now host purple fall asters, and the foliage of my baby nandinas is turning bright red. The nameless shrubs that someone else trained into tree-shapes against the back wall are producing orange berries. (And no, they AREN'T pyracantha. I've questioned nursery people and have heard everything from euonymus to bittersweet--it's a mystery!) And all through this, I am within hearing distance of my fountain, burbling away in the middle of the patio, with the occasional bold bird swooping down for a drink or a splash. If my gate is open (and it is, so I can haul my hose back and forth) neighbors (walking dogs or themselves) almost always have a word or two to say about the flowers or the wreath on the door. Putting my 'garden' to bed is no longer a solitary chore--dirty, cold, and wet--but sort of an extended tidying up: an outside room that needs clutter-removal and sprucing up so that my winter windowscape will give me a lift instead of a dose of depression.

Today was the day. All that's left to do is a quick sweep of the bricks, and a wipe across the shed door to remove my dirty handprints. When the chrysanthemums and asters are done, I will cut them back, leaving my rosemary bushes in sole possession of the assorted pots and urns that surround the fountain. I will plant a few bulbs and protect them (somehow) from the depradations of the squirrels. But, for now, I will have a cup of tea--maybe outside in my rocking chair, with the fountain and birds for company.

Tomatoes!!!

Tomatoes

Globes, teardrops, kidney shapes, pears..

scarred, pleated, cracked with brown,

gold and green and mottled red,

striped and parti-colored,

that peculiar green tomato smell

(the smell of a summer garden)

rough, fuzzy stems,

yellow flowers;

sun and earth and seed and memory:

heirlooms.

**************

Brandywine, Marvel Stripe, Black Prince, Cherokee Purple, Flamme Orange, Green Zebra, Lemon Boy, Vintage Wine, White Beauty, Sun Gold, Beefsteak, Indigo Rose...If you thought that lovely romantic names were the exclusive province of roses and beautiful flowers, think again. Then add to scent and color the sense description of taste. It is tomato season.

A walk through your farmers’ market doesn’t do the tomato family justice. Beguiled by the smell of tomatoes, I’ve picked up the occasional beefsteak or even a nameless red tomato, and sliced it or fried it or layered it or basil-and-mozzarella-ed it without grasping the spectrum of flavor available. No more.

This week, we experienced a tomato tasting and lunch at our friends’ house in Palo Alto.  I have been an on-again, off-again gardener all my life, planting the occasional pepper plant or cherry tomato seedling. I do better with herbs. In small pots. But Ann and Allen’s garden shows what avid gardeners can do: assorted beans, berries, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers growing vertically, horizontally, and every way from upside down to sideways--in beds, in boxes, in pots, in the ground. Marvelous.

Even more marvelous was our sumptuous lunch: salad greens with a king’s bounty of various items from the garden; there was also hearty bread and smoked duck and olives and mozzarella--and raspberries for dessert.

City-dwellers that we are, we forget the taste of authenticity. Granted, the relatively recent farm-to-table movement seems to be working at whittling the distance between growers and consumers, but seeing farm-to-table reduced to backyard-to-table was inspiring, to say the least. Popping sugar-sweet cherry tomatoes (ahem--or Sungolds!) has to be a lot healthier than popping potato chips. Thanks, Ann. Maybe next year, I’ll work on a pot or two of edible beauty instead of those mundane flowers.

Summer Doldrums

How else can I explain the lack of output? I haven't written anything since my last poetry workshop at Chautauqua, in spite of resolutions to the contrary. I seem to have been adrift on a sea of ennui. But that luxury is about to end.

There is one week until we depart for San Diego. One week to prepare ourselves and the house for the onslaught of the granddaughters, who will be arriving before we return. There are rooms to clear, beds to make up, toys and books to rescue from closets, and plans to be made for their visit. And, since this visit is the last one before they depart with their parents for Dundee, Scotland for two years, there are a lot of other preparations to be made: storage space to secure, preparations for the transport and storage of their car, carseats to maneuver into back seats, and realignment of our Netflix queue to include the latest and greatest in kid TV.

And so, my current wish list includes a few days with tolerable levels of heat and humidity so that I can reclaim the sidewalk from the weeds that have staged a coup there. I'd like to cut back the plants on the patio so they can revive themselves in my absence with some new growth. I'd like a good rainy day or two to wash off the dust and give everything a good long drink of water. And I'd like the painter who painted my gate to come back and deal with the mess he made: the gate has blisters the size of my thumb that swell and deflate at random in various places. It looks diseased. Last time I let any painter other than Billy near my house!

But, so it goes. Before we know it, it will be fall. I don't know whether to be glad or not.

Chautauqua, Year 2

It's a different world. Last year, when I described my first trip to Chautauqua, I talked about Brigadoon. There is still some magic associated with the experience, but this year, it is easier to define. There are things that happen at Chautauqua that CAN happen elsewhere...but it is far easier to let them slide in my daily life. At Chautauqua, you stop long enough to get in touch with yourself and with the world.

At Chautauqua, I look. I look at houses, at gardens, at the lake, at people. I actually see--and speak to--people I see on the street, and they respond with a smile, a pleasantry, sometimes even a conversation. I complimented one lady on her garden (it had to be her own, as she was dead-heading the flowers and sweeping the curb..) and we had a pleasant conversation about her daughter's wedding, the 'flower-towers' that she had planted this year, the mysterious ailment that had plagued impatiens recently, and her assertion that the gardens didn't look quite as good this year as last.

The gardens and the houses are enough to look at, in themselves. Victorian gingerbread and vibrant paint, gardens that subscribe to the Victorian ideal of excess, old-fashioned flowers from your grandmother's garden: hydrangeas and daisies and Queen Anne's lace, begonias and bee balm, coleus and gladioli. Wicker furniture on generous porches with vases of flowers connecting them to their surroundings. And people on those porches, with lemonade or iced tea or something a little stronger, watching the passing parade.

If you are a people-watcher, Chautauqua is heaven. There are people bicycling, jogging, riding scooters, strolling, bench-sitting..There are people with dogs, people in the amphitheater, the Hall of Philosophy, people on their way to class, or enjoying a cup of coffee or an ice cream cone on Bestor Plaza. I saw a man pushing his dog in an umbrella stroller one morning; I took his picture, but didn't ask  him why. Though I'm sure he'd have told me. In the middle of the plaza, there was a girl playing the violin--beautifully, I might add. Maybe she had an open violin case inviting tips--I don't know. I was too far away to do anything but hear the music.

Listening is part of the experience too. There's the singsong chanting of the newsboys selling the Chautauquan Daily. "Chautauquan Daily, full of knowledge! Chautauquan Daily, send me to college!"--or whatever rhyme they've devised for the day. Some even wear the knickers and vest and caps of Victorian newsboys. And the carillon marks the hours down by the shore--hymns and popular songs at specific hours, bells for the hours and the half-hours. Early in the morning, the most notable thing is the ABSENCE of sounds. It's quiet. No cars, no airplanes, no hubbub...but birds, and the sound of fountains..

This would be quite enough to make a vacation, but one of the most Chautauquan of experiences is thinking. There is food for thought around every corner: lectures and classes and religious services, an orchestra, a choir, an opera, a dramatic group, art galleries, a library, a bookstore, a Literary Arts Center with brown-bag lunches with resident poets and prose writers. There are authors and diplomats, teachers and musicians, children and adults, ballerinas and artists...whoever and whatever you'd want to see, they are there. And they are there to join the conversation with anyone and everyone who makes Chautauqua their home, whether for a week or for the summer.

I brought home pictures, I brought home ideas, I brought home memories. I stopped, I looked, I listened, I learned. I am far richer for the experience.

The Single Best Moment of Your Life

Writing a blog means never letting a stray thought go by without evaluating it as a possible topic...and writing and saving at least a subject line for a potential blogpost. And that is why I am here. When Andy Murray got his Wimbledon trophy, the picture prompted some news person to ask his readership to post pictures of the single best moment of their lives.

The request snagged my attention, and, as such things do, forced me to think about what picture I might post. I zipped through the posted pictures and was unsurprised to see wedding and baby and graduation photos, some with annotations of physical and emotional circumstances that raised the ante to 'best' rather than simply momentous occasions. None, however, prompted me to the 'Aha! That's it!' response I was looking for.

Can I pin down the single best moment of my life? There have been many that I remember vividly, so I suspect that they would be in the running, but...'best'??? Hard to categorize all the moments and arrange them from worst to best.

Wedding, yes. The birth of our girls, yes and yes. Our granddaughters, yes and yes, squared. The first smiles, the first recognitions, the first laughs..yes, oh lord, yes. Our first house, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and..well, you get the idea. The unforgettably happy and momentous teaching moments. Garden moments. The double rainbow moments when Nature overwhelms you: the golden light of a sunset in Venice,  Lake Louise, the day it went from frozen green to brilliant blue overnight, glaciers calving on our Alaska cruise, the blue Caribbean..The wonder in our daughters' eyes when they experienced Disneyworld for the first time, being part of one of the famous marches on Washington in the Vietnam era, the awe of being in Westminster Abbey amidst the resting places of the great, or seeing the heavenly colors of Sainte Chappelle; Monet's Waterlilies at l'Orangerie, standing in the silent square before the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg near midnight, or on the field at Gettysburg or Antietam in summer heat, being where history was made in so many places, at so many times..these are all moments worth remembering.

But it is impossible to winnow them down to a handful, far less a single moment. So, if I can't have one, I will take them all. All the moments of my life are singular, are the best, are the most memorable, the most wonderful, whether they be the ones I spend at my laptop or scrubbing floors, or fixing dinner. I wish that I could live that way, celebrating all my moments as if they were the single best moment of my life.  A circumstance devoutly to be wished. Carpe diem. Live the moment.

Take the picture, because today's the day, and this, right now, is the moment.

Mediocrity

Oh no! In today's newspaper (excuse me, today's FB pronouncements...) I saw that Kroger has purchased Harris-Teeter. Kroger...the store I remember as that none-too-clean grocery store in Charlottesville that was my last choice for grocery-shopping. Kroger...known for maximum coupons and minimum quality.  And now, they will own Harris-Teeter, my favorite non-neighborhood shopping destination that does it all: good produce, good meat department, good selection, good house-brands, good prices--and samples! Don't forget the free samples! And above all, purveyors of Mary T's frozen tea biscuits that are good enough to pass for (and perhaps are better than) homemade. I am officially depressed. Particularly since a new Harris-Teeter is on the verge of opening a new store in Old Town this fall. I have been patiently waiting for the grand opening since the first shovelful of dirt was moved. And now...Kroger!!!

Perhaps you think I am making too much of this. Perhaps I am. But I am getting tired of mediocrity in my world. There seems to be a serious dearth of truly GOOD things, and an alarming increase in the mediocre and/or sub par. I find myself latching onto anything that exceeds the (low) bar of acceptability. Why else would I watch endless crime shows if not to avoid the tsunami of 'reality' shows on TV? Detective shows at least employ a modicum of thought and generate interest in the outcome of the story.

This morning's TV page in the Post touted an extreme makeover of a 300+ pound young woman, which entailed a trip to Chile to find her birth mother. What???!!!!???? And a show that falsely contains in its title the word 'entertainment' insists on regaling me with stories and interviews of people who are famous for being famous. My interest in Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, the left-behind family of Michael Jackson (who apparently are all engaged in self-promotion) and the many and varied antics of assorted B (C, D and below)-list celebrities (who could POSSIBLY call them 'personalities'?) fails to meet even my lowest measurable level of brain activity.

Were it just TV that exhibited such a fall from grace (remember The Twilight Zone, Playhouse 90, All in the Family, The Cosby Show...) we could manage. However, movies have adopted another path as well. Spectacle. Apparently, explosions are necessary. Perhaps there is an unemployment issue or an under-representation of special effects artists in Hollywood, and each movie is forced to include at least five technically-demanding explosions in order to provide equal opportunity employment. Or maybe the viewing public is perceived as having the attention span of a gnat, and explosive effects are needed to keep them awake and aware of the screen in front of them.

Restaurants also are getting wilder and wilder, if not necessarily better. For myself, I'd prefer my ice cream without herbs, my food cooked instead of raw, and maybe, less focus on creative mixtures and more on quality ingredients. I enjoy innovative cooking now and then, but I'd like to find something on a menu that is comfortingly familiar.

Stop for a moment and catalogue the mediocrities in your day: the misspelled words, the technological glitches, the potholes you bounce through, the bad service at the department store, the countless mini-annoyances and disappointments of going about your business. It could all be so much better if there were an effort to achieve excellence, rather than a satisfaction with providing the minimum. Where have we lost our aspirations? When did we come to the decision that things were 'good enough'? Why did we all stop trying?

Okay. I am admittedly being a curmudgeon, and am prone to exaggeration. The fact is that we are all party to this trend toward the lowest common denominator in society. We accept it as the norm and are not writing scathing letters to the networks and movie studios and are not raking newspapers over the coals for their inattention to grammar and spelling, their bias, and their extensive coverage of violent events. We are not out campaigning for the few good and true politicians we believe in, nor are we supporting with our efforts the good works of organizations that are struggling mightily to keep their heads above water.  Some of us are--but nowhere near enough.

I suppose we are getting what we deserve. Mediocrity. In spades. Goodbye Harris-Teeter. Hello Kroger.