Status Report

So the first weekend of the 2008 holiday season is almost gone.

How’s it going?

Actually, not too badly – thanks for asking.

Perhaps confession is good for the soul.  Admitting my long standing antipathy toward the holidays in my last post was cathartic, as in “there I’ve said it…my name is Becca and I hate Christmas.”

So I marshaled my emotional resources, pulled my self together and (so far) made it through the weekend with a minimum of angst.

Whew.

I’ve accomplished a few things, which always makes me feel better.  Things like getting a head start on my next big project for work and assembling all the photos for the annual Magic and Molly calendar we give as gifts to all the members of the Magic and Molly fan club  ~ don’t laugh, they have quite a legion of admirers here in the neighborhood.

We made some decisions about our travel plans for the holidays, something we’d been dithering about for the past month.  We usually drive to Florida for an extended holiday, taking the pups with us.  This year, with our kids away in Thailand for the holidays, we found ourselves vacillating about the trip.  When our friends invited us to join them at their timeshare in Las Vegas early in January, we decided to use our vacation days that way. 

I tried not to overeat, which isn’t all that difficult because I really don’t like turkey all that much(another confession!)  My mother’s homemade carrot cake presents a different story altogether, and I have been indulging my sweet tooth unmercifully.

I watched a movie last night (Sex and the City– adored it!) and a fabulous documentary about an insider’s tour of the White House on the history channel tonight. 

And then, I put up my Christmas decorations.  It’s my tradition to “dress the house” on Thanksgiving weekend, a tradition that stems from long years of December weekends filled to the brim with concerts, leaving no time for decorating.  Although I have nothing on my personal musical calendar this year (a totally amazing occurrence) I decided to continue the tradition.  It felt good to get out the tree and the mantel decorations, the garlands and angel collection, and sit reading in the warm glow of all the little white lights.

So I’ve made a pretty good start to the holidays. As I wrote on my Facebook page…”Becca is cautiously optimistic.”  About lots of things 🙂

How about you? How’s your holiday weekend going so far?

And for all the members of the Magic and Molly fan club – here’s a sneak preview of the calendar pics for 2009!

Sorry Grateful

Many of the high school students I accompanied had a real fetish for the music of Stephen Sondheim.  Knowing he wasn’t one of my favorite composers, they would sheepishly hand over their music notebooks open to a tattered Sondheim piece.  Several of the boys latched onto “Sorry Grateful,” a song with a melodic line and rhythmic feeling which are just as odd as it’s title.  Even though I heard the song dozens of times, I always cringed at the juxtaposition of these two words.  “Sorry” and “grateful” never seemed to work together in my mind.

Today, though, I feel as if they finally make sense to me, this odd combination of emotions piggy-backed on top of each other.   Perhaps I’m feeling sorry enough for myself this Thanksgiving Eve that I can tap into the memory of adolescent angst which serves as a magnet for introspective songs like these.

You’re always sorry
You’re always grateful
You’re always wondering what might have been…

You’re sorry-grateful
Regretful-happy
Why look for answers
Where none occur?

You always are
What you always were…

Confession time.  I’m one of those people for whom holidays are simply – alright, I’m going to say it – agonizing.  I fall into a huge, funkous depression every year around this time, and it lasts clear through until January 2, when I heave a big sigh of relief, pick myself up, dust myself off, and start living again. 

This may have its roots in the horrendous holiday celebrations I was forced to endure when my in-laws were still around.  My father in law, an evangelical charter member of the John Birch Society, usually launched into his “Armageddon” speech right about the time we passed the first platter of turkey.  My mother in law would do her best to quiet him, which usually involved her own brand of excoriating criticisms and declamations.  My husband would continue eating through gritted teeth, until, grim faced, he would push angrily back from the table.  “Enough!” he would  shout.  “I can’t take this anymore.”

Ah, yes.  Sorry grateful.

My anathema toward the holidays could also stem from a regrettable pattern of childhood illness which always found me laid low at Christmas time with bronchitis or asthma.  Whether it was the cold weather, the forced air heat in the furnace, or (as my mother insisted) too much excitement, I was inevitably too sick to attend the annual Christmas party with all my paternal aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Unbeknownst to my mother (whom I’m sure thought I was just as glad as she was to be spared this hoopla) I was heartsick every year when I had to stay home in bed while my dad went off alone to the party.  I didn’t care so much about the sackful of presents he brought back for me…I wanted to be right smack in the middle of all those noisy kids and laughing adults.  Instead, I was tucked safely into my bed at home, slathered with Vicks while the vaporizer chugged and hissed, filling the room with hot, moist steam.

Ah yes.  Sorry grateful.

Where’s the grateful part? you ask.  Well, I’m aware I have a good life – always have.  I’m grateful for my health, my relative wealth, my home(s), and most of all, the people who love me.  But every holiday season, I go looking for something that just isn’t there.  A sense of well being or belonging, a feeling of excitement or anticipation – all the things that the world prods us to hope for during this season.  I keep hoping it’ll turn up, but it never seems to be there.  This year, with my family more fragmented by distance than ever, that elusive spark of holiday happiness seems completely out of reach.  More and more, I feel myself turning inward, longing for a closet to crawl into for the next six weeks, so I can come out into the clean light of a new year with all that holiday nonsense cleaned up and tossed in the dust bin where it belongs.

Sorry grateful. 

All of life is an alternating pattern of sorry grateful, everyone knows that, and Stephen Sondheim was only one of many composers who capitalized on this dichotomy.  I really want to be happy during the holiday season, I’m really sorry that somehow I just never can be.

And I’m truly grateful when it’s over.

Realizing Life

So it’s snowy, blowy, and cold here in Michigan on this Monday afternoon.  I’m home now, so I don’t altogether mind this weather, and in fact am rather comforted by the ability to stay indoors with my dogs and potter around the house for a change.  Of course there were places to go this morning – a quick trip to Joe’s Market to get some pears for my salad lunch tomorrow, a stopover at the Classical Bell rehearsal to fill in for a friend during their last hour.   But then, I was home, not gone long enough even for Magic and Molly to miss me, for they were still curled up in their sleeping chair by the window when I came into the house.

I really enjoy the particular way snow illuminates a room – it casts such a sparkling, clean glow on everything, especially when it’s first falling.  For some reason it makes me sentimental, and today I’m recalling other snowy days in my life, when there was a small boy in the house to entertain and nothing but time with which to do it.  I’m sure it seemed as if I had pressing concerns in those days, but now looking back, there was really nothing more important (or there shouldn’t have been!) then reading the pile of picture books we kept on the coffee table or helping him arrange his fleet of Matchbox cars around the perimeter of the bed.  There were no reports to write for work, no music to learn, no one who needed transportation to a store or a doctor’s office. 

Life was simple then, and I just didn’t know it.

Friday night I attended a high school production of Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s classic play about life in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire at the turn of the century.  The play was unusually well done by high school standards, and I felt that most of the main characters really “got” the message Wilder was trying to convey about the precious nature of everyday life. 

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” Emily Gibbs plaintively asks from the grave.

Probably not.  Certainly most days I am mostly irritated by life…by the constant running to and fro, the endless worries about health and money and the state of the world, the forever nagging feeling that I should be doing something other than what I’m doing, should be more productive, more effective, more proactive.

So this afternoon, instead of persisting in a mad dash through Monday, I consciously slowed my pace to match the gently falling flakes of snow, settled into my chair with a blanket and hot tea, spent several minutes scratching Magic in that favorite spot behind his ears, gave Molly equal time by rubbing the nape of her neck, and then read two chapters in a new book one of my friends loaned me yesterday. 

Nothing exciting here on a snowy, blowy Monday. 

 Just me, trying to “realize life.”

I hope you’re realizing yours today, too.

Time Tested

Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents’ pots and pans, the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum.
~Susan Sontag

My mother’s friend Marie loved antiques – her house was a veritable museum of quilts from the Amish, and glassware from the Depression.  Even her dining room furniture was antique, an old pine table and chairs which, for all its loving refurbishment, still bore the nicks and scars of its ancient and former life.

My mother occasionally went “antiquing” with Marie, the pair of them driving off in Marie’s little red Mustang convertible, brightly colored babushka’s tied round their freshly done beauty parlor beehives, traveling out into the country to look for estate sales and resale shops.

My grandmother, left behind to babysit for me, would complain vociferously about my mother’s forays into the world of antique shopping. 

“I swear,” she would grumble, plopping my lunch plate onto the red Formica table in our kitchen, ” I don’t know why anyone would want that old stuff.  I had enough of old stuff like that when I was growin’ up…why I surely don’t have any use for it now.”

I sat quietly munching my toasted cheese sandwich, not daring to mention that I rather liked “that old stuff.” It sent little shivers down my spine to caress the soft patina of Marie’s dining room table, knowing that some other child perhaps a hundred years before had touched that very same spot. 

My mother never purchased much on those jaunts.  Occasionally, she’d come back with a piece of glassware – a china pitcher or a teapot.  Once, she brought home an (almost) complete tea service that was said to have belonged to Henry Ford (the first).  I remember fondling those paper thin china cups, imagining Mr. Ford coming home after a day of supervising cars being built, and settling down in his parlor to be served hot tea in this very cup.

I have that tea set now, nestled into a corner of my china cabinet.  The sugar bowl (which was missing its lid when my mother purchased it) is in daily use and sits on my kitchen counter.  There are a handful of “antiques” in my house, and I can tell you the story of each one.  The Nippon china tea set that was a wedding gift to my mother in law from the doctor whose children she babysat.  The pink cookie plate that belonged to my paternal grandmother, a woman I never even met,  but whom everyone tells me I strongly resemble.  The ruby ring which belonged to my Aunt Sally with the date of purchase (1892) engraved inside the band. 

It’s the back stories that make these possessions more than just “some old stuff,” and give them an essential value and importance, that make them unique to our own personal landscape. 

Although I don’t actively seek out antique objects for my home, I rather cherish these few that have fallen into my possession.  They’ve stood the test of time, and connect me with a small portion of the past. 

I like that.

inspired by Cafe Writing

Small World

When the Imagineers at Disneyland created that Small World ride, I don’t imagine they had any concept of just how small the world would one day become.

You all know what I’m talking about…email, cell phones, text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, Skype – who could have forseen the multiplicity of ways in which our world would become so embraceable.  Certainly I’m grateful for this miraculous explosion of communication.  It allows me to monitor (forgive me, Brian!) the activity of my only child, who, as we speak, has taken up residence in a country over 10,000 miles away.  So while Brian is on the other side of the world (quite literally) with the right click of a mouse button I can see that he’s “online and available to chat,” or that, four minutes ago according to Twitter, he was “up early and ready to get to work for the day.”

If you’re a parent, you know the value of those small touchstones when you’re dealing with the well being of your children.  How we must have worried and obsessed in those days before this plethora of instant communication!  But now this ability to keep tabs on everyone we care about has reached epidemic proportions.  Look at the recent explosion in popularity of Facebook.  We can be cyber “friends” with everyone from our old elementary school classmates to our attorneys and financial planners.  It’s fun to check  everyone’s status during the day, even if it’s only to see what Carol is making for dinner, or whether Leigh’s baby finally slept through the night.

But it’s especially satisfying when it gives you the ability to find out what your kid is up to at any given moment, especially when they’re a world away.

So here in the 21st century, the world is definitely smaller, and I believe that’s a good thing.  And don’t you think that this ability to connect with other human beings makes us more appreciative of each other?  Certainly this renewed interest in the minituae of other’s life has to mean more than just purient entertainment.  It has to mean we recognize the value of connecting with one another on ground level, that place where humanity converges irrespective of race, creed, or politics.  That place where the most important things are the love of family and the satisfaction of a life well lived.  Where all that matters is knowing your husband still loves you and your kid is safe.  That place where the world becomes small enough to fit into a terrabyte or on the head of pin.

It is definitely a small world after all.

It’s Me, Becca

Dear God,

It’s me, Becca. 

I know we don’t usually communicate in this fashion, but I’ve begun to feel as if you aren’t listening too closely so I thought I’d try a different tack.

You see, there’s a bunch of stuff going on in the world right now that’s making me – well, mad.  Really mad.  Mad enough that sometimes I just want to grab you by the shoulders and shake some sense into you.  What’s going on with you, anyway?   What’s the deal with all these companies going bankrupt, and people losing their jobs right and left, and our retirement savings going down the toilet?  While we’re at it, what about all these people with Alzheimer’s and cancer?  And the folks who can’t afford health care or medicine?  What about all these rich people who just get richer, while the rest of us get poorer? 

Okay, I know I’m luckier than a whole bunch of other folks out there.  But I gotta tell you, it really feels like things just aren’t going according to plan these days. 

What’s that?  Whose plan?  you ask.

Well, my plan. 

Once upon a time, God, I made some plans for my life. Now, don’t laugh…supposedly you gave us all free will, so I thought I was perfectly within my rights to make plans.  I was going to have a nice home in Michigan and a nice home in Florida and travel back and forth between the two.  I was going to have some nice little grandchildren to spoil, and every year take a nice trip or two to some exotic location.  I was going to write some nice books, and maybe belong to a nice musical group or two.

Nice life, huh?

But now it seems like the whole world’s going to hell in a handbasket (excuse my language), and my plans are going with it.  I’m kind of wondering what you’re doing about it.

I know, I know, “all things work together for good…” – you don’t have to remind me – that used to be one of my favorite verses.  I’m here to tell you, God, I’m getting a little bit worried about when the good part is going to get here.

So anyway, if you happen to be surfing the ‘net today and run across this post, I wish you’d take some things into consideration.  You know, I’ve always worked hard to be the kind of person I’m supposed to be, doing unto others and all that.  I don’t claim to be perfect at that, but I give it a really good shot.  There’s a lot of us down here who try to live by your principles and ideas.  We’d sure like to see that work together for some good in our lives. 

 Now, I’m not trying to tell you how to handle this business of being in charge of the world.  I’m just saying.

I suppose that’s it for today.  Sorry for venting, God.  Guess I just need to let off a little steam.  Maybe you feel the same way sometimes.

Thanks for listening.

~Becca

What I Know For Sure

There are days of late when I feel as if surety about anything is impossible.  Yet reading the responses to this phrase in last month’s issue of O Magazine got me thinking a bit more seriously.  I realize there are some things which, for better or worse, I can assert with a degree of certainty, at least in my own experience. 

So here goes:

I know that every human being needs a passion, and pursuing that passion will enrich your life in ways you never expected. 

I know that it’s good to step outside of your box, to expand your horizons, and stretch your boudaries.  You like yourself better when you do.

I know that moderation is the key to all things – to food, drink, work, play, and even love.

I know there’s a good reason that dog is god spelled backwards.

I know that family is the rock and foundation of every bit of happiness we have.

But I also know that friends can fill the gaps which occur in even the best of families.

I know that, in the amusement park of life, sometimes we’re on the roller coaster, but more often its the swan boats.

I know that all good things come to and end, and that this too shall pass.

I know that all things work together for good.

I know that tomorrow I’ll be sure of more than I am today.

Now tell me, what do you know for sure?

Write On Wednesday -Staying the Course

Yeah, I know it’s Sunday (soon to be Monday, actually). But it’s been that kind of week.  Starting out with an extra hour last Sunday was blissful, but I could have used at least 25 hours every day this week, and then maybe, just maybe, I might be on track.

This week’s Write On Wednesday topic focused on this thought:

The outcome of the election is a good reminder of the way dreams come true.  But geting there involves not only the courage to embark on the project, but the strength to stay the course when the going gets rough. How are you doing with staying the course toward the fulfillment of your writing dreams?

In my work life, I’ve become quite good at completing big projects.  My office job requires multi-tasking on numerous levels, and I’ve learned to keep a daily list of the things that need to get done, and calendar deadlines for future project due dates.

At work, I know I must stay the course – other people and our business depend on me.

In my musical life, I developed a method to see me through the long weeks leading up to concert time.  Early on in my “performing” career, I learned that I needed to feel extremely well prepared to forestall those performance anxiety attacks that lead to jittery failures on stage.  So I made sure I practiced a lot, practiced so much that my body could do the work required even if my mind went into nervous overdrive.  I worked hard so that I felt confident, and so that my “muscle memory” could take over onstage if my nerve should momentarily fail me.

In my writing life, things are a bit different.  I find it easier to “slip off course” because (1) there are no deadlines looming; and (2) no one is depending on me to deliver a finished project.  So my writing dreams get put on the back burner in deference to other responsibilities which take priority.

The conclusions here are quite obvious, aren’t they?  In order to “stay the course” and complete tasks to my satisfaction, I need the impetus of deadlines and personal accountability to others.  So how do I find those in my writing life?

Blogging provides a certain amount of accountability – many times I’ve been tempted to throw in the towel on this writing habit, but my blogs and the people I’ve come to consider my friends in this arena hold me accountable.  This week’s Write On Wednesday was a good example. In the crush of election excitement, work deadlines, and preparing for a trip out of town, Wednesday was gone before I knew it.  So skip it, I told myself…who cares?

Well, Bobbi, and Oh, and Corri…people who emailed me or posted about missing this weekly place to talk about writing and explore the way creativity works in their lives.

So perhaps staying the course is grounded in the perceived value of the task-not just to the individual involved, but to the community at large.

So thanks for keeping me on task and helping me continue along the road to achieving those writing dreams.

Amazing!

Last night was amazing, wasn’t it?  Who could tear themselves away from the television or computer, watching that sea of faces (more than 125,000!) in Grant Park, thousands more in Times Square, all eagerly anticipating the beginning of a new day in America.  It was a moment none of us in America will ever forget, another one of those “where were you when…” moments with which those of us who have lived more than half a century are so familiar.

I’ve certainly never seen anything like it in my lifetime, and it gives my weary heart hope.

Joining in with all the multitudes watching this poised and confident young man step forward into the history books, I realized how hungry Americans had been for a leader we could admire and trust.  A leader who cared about us, and who, like a wise and loving parent, expected much of us.  I saw how the country, like a rowdy teenager under the care of neglectful parents, had run amuck, out of control.  How we needed someone with a firm hand to rein us in, set us on the right road, and keep us there.

There are a precious few people who have that special “it” factor – the charisma, but also the intelligence, the drive, the ability to inspire people – that can make history. And this man surely has it in spades.  But
so much rides on Barack Obama’s shoulders. Not long ago, he told a reporter that the thing keeping him awake at night was not worries about what to do if he lost the election, but what he would do if he won.

And now he has. And he must hoist a multitude of American people – black, white, yellow and red – on those shoulders with him. His election proves that the American people can speak out, that we have the strength to take back our country from the hands of old line politics, that we can embrace change with our hearts and minds.

But we must be realistic, and not expect that he can change things overnight.  It will be a slow, but hopefully steady process, this business of getting the country under control, of gathering us all together under this umbrella of hope.  As Obama said last night, we must buy into the notion that there we are not a collection of “red states and blue states, we are the United States of America.” 

Like a fractured family, who has gone far too long without the oversight of a wise and intelligent parent, it will take time and love to get ourselves back on the right track.

But after the spectacle of last night, I believe it’s possible. 

 I believe we can!

Getting A Blessing

It was one of the singular pleasures of my girlhood, a trip out to my Aunt Lil’s house. The 30 mile car ride to her little house on Elizabeth Lake was an all day affair, and we’d start out about 10:00, my mother, my grandmother, and my Aunt Lissie.  I’d clamber eagerly into the back seat with a book tucked securely under my arm.  My grandmother always had a paper grocery sack filled with home baked goodies, because of course one never went visiting without taking something to eat.

I remember the ride down Telegraph Road, the parade of stores and restaurants  finally giving way to lakefront views and tiny cottage size homes.  Occasionally I’d have dozed off in the back seat, the gentle motion of my aunt’s big Buick sedan rocking me to sleep.  The crunch of tires on Aunt Lil’s gravel road always woke me quickly, for I knew we were nearly there.

She usually heard us coming, my aunt did, and would burst through the screen door of the little gray shingled house, untying her faded apron, or wiping her hands on a clean cotton dishtowel.  “There you are!” she’d call gaily.  “Hurry on in, lunch is on the table!”

I have no idea why those lunches around her big kitchen table were so exceedingly good. Usually they were quite similar to our lunches at home – cold cuts, like boiled ham or that corned beef you get in the can which opens with one of those miniature keys, a dish of crisp lettuce leaves, radiant red garden tomato slices, and sweet bread-n-butter pickles.  A loaf of fragrant, fresh baked bread was often sliced at the table, and strongly brewed iced tea was poured into tall, slender glasses with a pattern of leaves stencilled gracefully on the edge.  I would sit, happily munching away at my sandwich while the women’s voices rose and fell harmoniously around me.

“Wait ’til you see the material I got at Penney’s yesterday,”  someone would say.  “I’m going to use it for curtains here in the kitchen.”

“Did you talk to Jen yet?” another voice would ask.  “Have you heard what that boy of hers is up to now?”

“I swear, I cannot get Carl to stop smoking” – this from my grandmother, who was on an eternal quest to rid my grandfather of the habit that would eventually (as she always promised) be “the death of him.”

So I absorbed their conversation along with my lunch, the cadence of their voices nurturing my soul as their food fed my body.  By modern standards, their lives were simple and commonplace, yet the ordinary events of their days seemed almost magical to me and certainly filled me with a sense of security and comfort. The memory of those times around the table is as vivid as if it were yesterday, rather than 45 years ago.

Today, a sparkling fall day, with the last of autumns glory clinging to the trees etched golden and ruby red against the brilliant blue sky, my mother and I took the drive out Telegraph road to say our final goodbyes to my Aunt Lil, who died last week at the age of 92. 

Much was said today about her ability to cook and her love of “putting on a spread.”  We all remembered holiday dinners around her table, when she and my grandmother would vie over who could put the most food on one surface and still leave room for plates and silverware.  Many people recalled her energetic spirit, her love of “visiting” with her friends and working in her church.  Stories were told about her annual car treks back and forth from one daughter’s home in Texas to the other daughter’s home in Michigan – a journey she made alone each year, driving in her little Plymouth, taking only the back roads and stopping at least 10 times to visit friends and family along the way.

She leaves two daughters, seven grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren – a good legacy, I think.  A few years ago, she gave me some advice I’ve called upon quite often.  She was talking about some volunteer work she’d been doing at her church, saying it had become something of a chore because the people she worked with tended to whine and complain about everything.

“Honey, I was coming home every week just mad at the whole place,” she said in her Kentucky accent, made even broader by the years she’d lived in Dallas.  “And I thought to myself -why, if I’m not getting a blessing from this, I shouldn’t be doing it at all.” 

I’ve found myself using this criteria for a lot of things in my life, and it’s helped me to put some of them in a very different perspective.

And so one more of the old guard in my family is gone.  But I’ll remember her energy and spirit, the sound of her laugh which rang out over everyone else’s.  I’ll think of her when I go shopping, for she loved to wander the stores and looked forward to getting a new outfit each season.  I’ll recall her wisdom and strength, her kindness and good humor.

And most of all, I’ll remember those summertime lunches around her kitchen table, and the warmth that spread right into the heart of a little girl, to dwell there forever. 

I surely got a blessing from that.