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.