Jaci Dawn

Unless something happens, tomorrow I promise to post about Terry and the Christmas Thugs. I was going to post that tonight but something came up.

My coworker & the woman I go on walks with was in a really grumpy mood today. She complained about everything. Why were checks printed after the mail went out in the morning? (Um: they’re always printed after the mail goes out? Would be my first guess, anyway.) Why was it so cold out? (Um, it was 50 degrees Farenheit today. Not particularly cold as cold goes. So not sure what the question was there?) Why couldn’t we close early? (Um. We get 12/24 off. We don’t always get Christmas Eve off but this year we do. I’m not complaining since it means a 3-day weekend…)

I love this woman but today I wanted to just scream. She just could not be happy about anything.

At 3:00 when it was time to take the mail, she was in really fine form. I wanted to say (and I did say) that I would take the mail myself, no problem. It wasn’t all that cold & I needed the walk. But she played the martyr and walked with me.

And that was when I learned what the root of her problem was. Are you ready?

We were not closing early today. She couldn’t go shopping for groceries early tonight. She can’t go grocery shopping on Saturday morning. Stores are closed on Saturday morning.

Nevermind that we have tomorrow off (Christmas Eve). That isn’t the point. Stores are closed on Christmas Day. And worse – we didn’t get off early today so my co-worker could go grocery shopping today instead of on Christmas Eve with the crowds.

I was shopping yesterday afternoon because I had the afternoon off. Believe me, the crowds were as thick as Black Friday yesterday and there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t be that thick on the 23rd. So how would getting off early on the 23rd improve your grocery shopping experience over shopping on the 24th? It wouldn’t. No matter how early (or late) we got off work today, it would still be insane in any store and any parking lot anywhere. No more insane than going shopping on the 24th during peak hours.

Now, if you got up early on the 24th and got your grocery shopping done before 10AM, then – piece of cake.  (Which I plan to do)

But my coworker didn’t see it that way. It was either go shopping this afternoon before 5PM or go shopping on Christmas morning. Period. And she was flat-out ticked that she couldn’t do either one.

I related this tale to Don and he stated the most obvious question: “Why not go shopping on Sunday, the day after Christmas?” because NO ONE WILL BE SHOPPING THEN.

I am still shaking my head. I know my coworker is an atheist. I don’t have a problem with that. Whatever she wants to believe. She even pointed out that her son & dil work on Christmas (because they choose to). I don’t care.

I don’t care because I have worked retail. I have worked on holidays. I have suffered through pre-Christmas, pre-Thanksgiving, and Easter shopping. All I can say is PLAN AHEAD STUPID. And be nice to the people who have to work.

They have families. They have plans.

And really, what is the difference between us getting a couple hours’ head start on a 3-day weekend vs. making someone work on Christmas morning just so we can buy our groceries without the hassle of a crowd? Really? I mean, REALLY? I don’t care what you believe in: you get 3+ days off to celebrate a holiday you don’t believe in but you want someone else to work on that holiday (who possibly has family & small children & who believes in Santa) just so YOU can avoid crowds?

How mature.

Shop on Sunday if you want to avoid crowds.

We haven’t closed early in at least 3 years. So why would we close early this year? I am just boggled by the mindset…

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Isn’t that every horse-crazy kid’s dream? I was well into my teens before I finally gave up on hoping to hear a nicker from the garage where I was certain my folks would hide that beautiful roan colt. I just could not let go of the fact that my dad was not going to give in and let me have a horse.

Fast forward to married with two small children and homeless. Well, sort of homeless: we were in the throes of buying a single-wide trailer to put on a friend’s property. We’d already lost everything it seemed and we were facing a second Christmas in an apartment in Portland where we had to hide our dog in the garage: moving into an old single-wide in a rural trailer park actually sounded like Heaven.

I had a friend at the time who prayed for a free horse and got a 30-year old Thoroughbred rescue horse that was no longer rideable. I remember saying aloud that if I were to pray for a free horse, she wouldn’t be 30 years old. After all, if you are going to ask God for something free, shouldn’t you just shoot for the moon? If He is big enough to provide something free, surely He is big enough to come through with what you really want.

Mind you, I do not believe in manipulating God. We have to accept His “NO!” just like we had to accept that Dad was not going to give in and hide a pony in the garage. Some things are just not going to happen.

But having opened my mouth, I unleashed something. I didn’t just say I wanted a younger horse. I told my little circle of acquaintances that I wanted a roan Arabian mare that was younger than 15 and right around 15 hands tall. Gentle. Like I said, if you’re going to ask GOD for something, shoot for the moon. Don’t be bashful. Tell Him what it is you really, really, really want.

Had I confessed this desire to friends, they would have dead-panned with a simple reply, “Jaci, that’s exactly what you ask God for every year. You have asked God for that exact horse since you were 8 years old and could discern between a roan and a sorrel.” And an Arabian and a Thoroughbred.

But I told my acquaintances and they believed me.

And apparently, God decided to change His mind.

Because one of those acquaintances brought me a little yellow slip of paper from one of those grocery store bulletin boards. FREE horse. 2 years old, Arabian, Green-broke.

Green-broke means: mostly wild. I knew that. But my heart was beating at 210 bpm and I was hyper-ventilating and Don said,. “We’ll just call and drive over to look at her, OK?”

I could NOT believe that the man of my dreams was actually offering to drive over to look at a horse. I fainted. Well, not literally, but I wanted to.

We made the call and the man who owned the horse told us where he lived. When we arrived there, he just pointed in the general direction of his barn and said, “You can go look at her.”

Just like that. She was a skinny little snow-flake Arab-cross mare standing in a stall. She nickered when we came around the corner. I left Don and the kids in the pasture and entered the stall by myself.

She was so sweet and gentle and adorable. I was head over heels in love with her in under ten seconds.

Her background was sad: someone had a registered Arabian mare they sold to the owner of a well-known Appaloosa stallion. The mare evidently never “took” and the Appaloosa stallion’s owner was disgusted with the little Arabian mare. He sold the mare at a very low price. The man who purchased her soon realized the mare had, indeed, “taken” and was with foal. She birthed a healthy filly on March 13, 1988. The owner of the Appaloosa stallion refused to acknowledge that the filly was his stallion’s offspring and would not provide papers.

She belonged to the kids of the family, but they were in their teens suddenly and kept forgetting to take care of her. The man (their father) told them that if they didn’t take care of the horse, he was going to give her away. And I was the lucky recipient.

She had papers going back the Arabian side to Hallany Mistanny. But there was noting on the Appaloosa side and she looked all Appy: little snowflake coat with a broad white blanket across her back and rump. They called her “Hallany’s Whisper” after her dam, “Shandar’s Hallany”.

I found a friend who had a horse trailer. He rolled his eyes and said he’d help me haul her out to the trailer park and pasture where she would live with his five horses. After he saw her, he apologized: she loaded into the trailer like a pro and he admitted she was not a bad horse to look at.

It was the week after Christmas 1989 that we brought her home. My horse for Christmas. My perfect horse: a 2-year old green broke Arab/Appy cross that loved kids, tolerated dogs, adopted cats, and put up with almost everything we did to her. With a little help from friends, I trained her.

We owned her until she was 13. I still miss her. And I can’t help but remember how God put a horse “under the Christmas tree” for me one year.

Of course, no horse is “free” after you pay for the vet, the farrier and feed. But in the long run, what horse-crazy kid cares about the expense? We just want the horse.

It was the most impulsive prayer I have ever uttered (and in public!) but it is the one answer I have treasured in my heart because somehow that horse meant that God really did love ME. I know – that’s kind of selfish and crazy, but you know what? I don’t even care.

And someday I hope to own another horse as sweet as that horse.

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I read somewhere that if I really wanted a husband I should write out a list of what kind of man I was looking for. It’s a prayer in writing and probably an exercise in reality: what do you really want in a soul-mate? The idea is to bare your soul in writing to God, like a letter to Santa.

Only God probably reads and we all know Santa hires other people to read his mail.

I still have the list somewhere inside a journal inside a box, but I am not even going to try to look for it. I remember that I wanted a soul-mate who was a good teacher: someone who would challenge me and help me learn about things I had never before considered. He had to have a good sense of humor. He had to love the outdoors. He had to be open to living with a free spirit. He had to be patient.

I wrote the list in early November, if I recall correctly. It was a long time ago: 1979. Almost Christmas.

We have different versions of our story, but I like mine better than I like his. He tells everyone we met in a check-out line at the grocery store. I tell everyone that I picked him up in a bar.

It was another Thursday and I was stuck in the check-out line at the local grocery store, putting in my hours. Smile at the customer, ring up the groceries, watch the clock.

I looked up and he was standing in line. Not my line. He was in line at the only other open check stand, holding his paycheck. It was another Thursday and I was debating on going out dancing again. But he was in the wrong check-out line.

So I picked up the intercom phone and called the other grocery clerk up. “See that guy in your line?”

“Don?”

“I don’t know his name. Moustache. Wants to cash his check.”

“Yes, Donald. I know him.”

“Tell him you don’t have enough money to cash his check but I do.”

She was married. I knew she’d do it.

So he came over to my line and presented his check to cash. I no longer remember which one of us brought up Ladies’ Night. I do remember we both said we’d see the other person there.

On my way to Ladies’ Night, however, I stopped by my friend’s house to visit. And they got busy trying to set me up with a mutual friend who was a very newly divorced father. A really nice guy who needed a friend to go dancing with, they urged. I couldn’t lie: I was going out. But I couldn’t say, “Well, I plan on picking up this other guy there…” because I didn’t even know if he would actually show up. And the newly divorced dad was sitting in the same room at my friend’s house. I felt fenced in.

Once we were alone, I explained to the newly divorced dad that I was looking only to be his friend and that I was hoping to meet someone downtown. Someone specific, I said.

He didn’t seem to get the hint. I know: he was hurting, lost, and lonely. But I was not The One to fix him. So there I sat on Ladies’ Night, hoping to pick up this certain OTHER man while sharing a booth with a lonely divorcé.

And that guy, Donald, was downtown. He was with his friends. Across the bar, across the dance floor, could have been across town.

I guess he had enough to drink because after awhile he came across the floor and asked me to dance despite the fact I was sitting at a table with another man. Keith – that was the other man’s name. I hope Keith finally found the right woman. He was a very nice guy and gracious when I ditched him to go dancing with Don. He never held it against me.

Two weeks later, it was Christmas and I found myself invited to Christmas with the Presley’s. It was not unlike Christmas with the Griswold’s (but without the lights). Boisterous comes to mind. We drove down to Huntington where Don’s dad and grandmother lived. His sisters came and his brother and the assorted in-laws and all the cousins. The whole fan-damily on the Presley side. And then some.

Sonny cooked the turkey. We played stupid games sober and then we played the same stupid games not-so-sober. We had a wonderful crazy Christmas and everyone brought gifts for “the woman Don was bringing home to meet the family.” Apparently, Don had never brought anyone home to meet the whole family before. I was definitely special…

I really hit it off with Don’s youngest sister. I think I ditched Don to sit and drink with his little sister. We laughed so hard. And while I love Julie to pieces, I will never, ever touch rum and coke again. Never. (Julie: write that down. No Rum. You know why.)

By New Year’s Day Don and I were talking marriage. Six months later, we made good on all that talk. I don’t believe in long engagements.

Don is a lot of things (including a very good teacher) but what he really has is a good sense of humor. He has to have one to live with me.

Just tonight as I was putting the dogs out, he said, “I need to take a photo of you.”

I said “why?” before it dawned on me what I was wearing: a green sweatshirt, green camo pants tucked into my pink rubber boots with the brown horses stamped all over them. If he would have taken a photo, I would have posted it.

Thank God he did not. It would have rated up there with the best of People of Walmart.

His discretion has kept us married.

Happy Christmas – but wait for my next installment when I get a horse for Christmas. Yes: every little horse-crazy kid’s dream come true.

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I had one photo in particular I wanted to share but when I pulled out the old photo album, I got so nostalgic that I scanned several more photos.

Sniff, Sniff. (And I mean that because I got teary-eyed, not because it was a scratch-and-sniff photo album.)

1972. My sister was so proud of that coat. She was proud of those bell-bottoms, too. She never quit wearing bell-bottoms like that. Even into her late 30’s, she was wearing bell-bottoms like that. They call it “arrested development”: she was forever caught in the year 1972 when she first started abusing drugs and alcohol. But nevermind that: she’s so pretty in this photo and so happy. 13 years old.

Oh – see that gold “bust” in the background? That was an art project gone bad and it wasn’t mine. My mom did that. She had a styrofoam head she decided she should spray-paint gold. Only spray paint eats styrofoam. Somehow, Mom salvaged the head and we had it on display for years. No one outside the immediate family ever guessed that it was a project gone bad…

That same Christmas was the year my grandfather Wilcox died. Dad was in Idaho attending to his dad’s bedside. We all missed Dad terribly. Mom decided we needed a “stained glass window” so she purchased tissue paper and cut out a silhouette of the Virgin Mary and the Babe. I’ve tried to recreate that window but I have never quite captured it as well as my mom did that year. I don’t recall that she had a template: she simply designed it from an image in her head (just like she designed patterns for sewing).

Gramps died the week of Christmas. We got the news that Dad would probably not be home for Christmas. We all woke up on Christmas Morn and looked at the gifts under the tree longingly. No, we decided: we would wait until Dad got home to open them.

He got home late in the afternoon on Christmas Day to find we still hadn’t opened any gifts because he wasn’t there. I never quite knew if he was touched that we waited for him to drive home from Idaho or if he was a tad bit irritated (I’m thinking he was really touched and it came across as irritation because that’s just how he is).

Skip ahead to 1977. Another Christmas. Dad with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was one of the last Christmases when we were all at home (1983 was actually the last one, but there were several years between 1977 and 1983 that I did not make it “home” for Christmas. And I can’t find any photos of 1983).

THIS photo bugs me. It is the only proof I have that my mom received the painting I did for her. We can’t find the painting in any of her stuff. It was oil on canvas board, all shades of blue. It bugs the heck out of me that we can’t find it in any of Mom’s things and I suspect my sister of removing it when my mom died. And all of my sister’s belongings were eventually lost…

This was the photo I painted for my mom: Mary Lou, age 14.

Wish I knew where it went…

But all of that nostalgia aside, the photo I was looking for was from 1972.

When I was growing up in Winnemucca, Nevada, we always had a fake tree. Made sense: there are no conifers close to Winnemucca and the price of tree lot trees even then was exhorbitant.

But we moved to Ely, Nevada in 1970. Ely sits at 6500 feet elevation in the heart of pinion pine, juniper, and blue spruce country. We begged, pleaded and cried until our dad went out and cut a real Christmas tree for us. One year he even cut a White Fir (piss fir) for us.

Why a “piss fir”? Because it smells like cat pee.

My mom was not real thrilled with the real tree that year. She left the setting up and decorating of said tree to my brother and I.

Terry had a heckuva time getting the tree to stand upright in the stand. He had string around it and string around his… FINGER.

Oh, I love this photo.

My mother was really NOT impressed.

My mother really hated vulgarity of any kind. You couldn’t even say the word “piss” in front of her. It was Not Allowed.

She had a lot of words she hated: piss, bitch, shit. She’d say things like, “When the ship hits the sand” to avoid saying “shit”. You did not make vulgar hand signs around my mother.

And then this.

She never did believe us that it was an accident and terry had the string wrapped around his finger as he tried to figure out how to stand the tree upright…

By the way: please note that Terry has HAIR in this photo. Yes, HAIR. Real hair and relatively long. He was really, really, REALLY young.

And it wasn’t an accident.

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There’s a Special Effect in most photoshop programs that allows you to make your photo appear as if you were looking through water at it.

I did not use that effect.

I just took a photo of my windshield during a recent down pour.

Just for the record: I was not driving. I was enjoying my lunch, watching the sheet of water come down.

I always go out to my car to have lunch. It gets me out of the office, away from the cubicle, and gives me some much-needed alone time (or down time) in the middle of the day. Sometimes I take a nap, sometimes I read several chapters in a book, sometimes I read a devotional. I almost always work on a crossword puzzle. Sometimes I write letters.

And sometimes I just watch the rain.

And the traffic.

There’s a two-way stop just to the right of the images in the photo. Cross traffic does not stop. Cross traffic is traveling at 35 miles per hour (or better). It’s sometimes quite amusing to watch the traffic. Horns blast as someone approaches and thinks it is a four-way. Someone pulls out in front of someone and horns blast. Someone turns left in front of on-coming traffic.

I’ve seen a couple accidents there, too. Accidents are not amusing.

Sometimes the geese decide to parade back and forth across the street right in front of my car. There’s a pond there by those watery looking incense cedar trees. Geese love to go on parade. They take their time and do a fancy little goose-step. Halfway across the street, they decide they really wanted to stay where they were.

Someone always gets impatient and honks their horn at the geese in the road. Geese do not understand what that means. They did not go to pedestrian school where the teacher told them, “If a car honks at you, get out of the way.” Geese think a car horn is just another weird human sound. They continue on their parade at their own pace.

There were no geese on parade the day I took the photo. They were curled up somewhere with their heads tucked under their wings. Smart geese.

That was a lot of water coming down.

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This should be filed under “what I really want for Christmas”. I really want a good zoom lens.

I don’t think I did too poorly with what I had, but I could have gotten a much better photo with a good zoom lens.

The Townsend’s warbler was competing with a bushtit for the suet. A moment earlier, upwards of 11 bushtits covered the little suet cage.

But it was the warbler I was stalking. Such a pretty little bird.

In case you are a birder and you are wondering how I attract insect eaters to my feeder: buy suet that has ground-up insects in it. I think the brand I buy is “Insect Lover’s” by our local Backyard Bird Shop.

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This was an accident.

Really.

I had my little Christmas village all set up before the tank and armored vehicles pulled in. there has been no violence and the citizens of the little village have carried on as usual with caroling and building of snowmen.

Santa doesn’t seem to be ruffled about having that tank parked behind him.

If I told you how this happened, you wouldn’t believe me. After Don “fixed” the little battery-operated toys in Zephan’s toy box here at the house (the ones Zephan’s mother declared would stay at Poppa’s house) and after the boys left (thankfully), Don mused that it would be fun to fix the battery operated military vehicles that have been gathering dust for 25 years or so.

So I brought them downstairs. And that was as far as they got: downstairs, kitchen table.

One morning we got up and they were parked in the village.

I guess the soldiers are in the pub having a drink or in the church praying.

I don’t mind. It just reminds me of my absolute very favorite Christmas song ever.

Merry Christmas, My Friend!

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Something happened to my mood the last few days. Something melancholy and grey, and I am pretty certain it was not the weather (although weather can have that effect on me). It happened between reading a good friend’s blog post (a very poetic blog) and reflecting on my own life.

My own life has been of dreams deferred.

I got sort of lost on the deferred part there and went down the road of almost feeling sorry for myself.

I didn’t put my finger on the feeling until today when I took a long walk by myself. We had a break in the rain and the cold, so I walked with my jacket open and no hood over my head, enjoying the brisk air. The first half of the walk felt the same: grey and wintery and lost. Colors in winter are either muted or they stand out in stark contrast to the greys. The only leaves left on the ground around the park where I work are the simple brown ones that have fallen (late) off of the birch and oak trees. All the colorful leaves from the many varieties of maples and flowering cherries have been scooped up by the men with leaf-blowers.

The birch trees are bright white against the green of the lawn; everything else is in shades of grey. And then there are the leaves: dull against the grass and sharp against the asphalt.

I miss the words I had when I was younger. I once had command of a much larger vocabulary and could turn a metaphor with ease, but the memory of those words and metaphors are all I have now. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened.

What happened was that I had children. When I was young and contemplating all the dreams I had: art, writing, poetry, travel – when I still had command of syntax and words longer than three syllables, I never factored in becoming a mother. I had no mothering instinct. I liked kids, but at a distance. I certainly did not like children enough to want to spend 24 hours a day with them, day in and day out. I did not like children enough to contemplate homeschooling them.

Yet that is what happened. Once I was pregnant, all these mothering hormones came to life inside me. I was still missing the ability to create serotonin on my own (and my mothering skills reflected that singular lack), but I had very good mothering instincts after all. And I liked being around my children.

But motherhood robbed me of the ability to paint a picture with a few words. I fell back onto common metaphors and allegories. Originality was tucked away and replaced with journal entries about toddler-isms. And the more I tucked it away, the more words became dim memories and my vocabulary slowly died.

Before you comment about how wonderful motherhood is or how much you know I love my grandchildren, bear with me. I began to understand that today. I won’t say that I fully appreciate it – yet – but I understand that the gift I was given in those children far outweighs the gift of being able to paint an allegory of human suffering and triumph. I understand that on a very deep level.

On a very shallow level, I still want to be able to paint that allegory of suffering and triumph.

I come back to the dreams deferred part. I only set aside my dreams for the years when I was raising children. I set them aside to become a taxi driver, a scheduler, a cheer-leader – in short, a very normal and average person. Well, not entirely average: I also chose to homeschool my children and prolong the agony of being with them 24 hours a day/seven days a week. i know an awful lot of women who would rather die than do that.

And why? I loved being around my children. They kept me sharp. They stayed a step ahead of me. If I wanted to guide them somewhere I had to know how to get there, first. I learned that teaching a child how to write has less to do with diagramming sentences (sorry, Mr. Little and Mrs. Foster) than it does with allowing them to pick freely from titles at the library.

Now they are gone and I have only visitation rights with my grandchildren. I am learning an entire new vocabulary of toddler-speak.

The words I lost are still lost along with the metaphors and allegories and syntax and the denouement to the stories I want to tell. I lost the ability to write a poem (although I still feel poetry).

I hope those words – those dreams – are just deferred like a student loan can be deferred. I can come back to them in time.

I came home tonight and painted a base coat on several craft items I have been planning on painting for years. I may not sit down and write a poem tonight, but I feel like I can reclaim some of the dreams.

Tomorrow, the rains will be back. Water will coat everything. The leaves will be glued to the pavement by the force of the rain. A fine mist will walk across the Willamette Valley in waves. The sump pump will growl to life under the house.

And I will be here, working on reclamation of dreams deferred. And I will not regret a moment spent with my children or grandchildren.

dream on –

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I have friends who do not celebrate Christmas like I do. They don’t have all the tinsel, lights, the tree, the stockings, the Santas, the blue & the gold & the silver, the candy dishes & Holiday coffee mugs, the reindeer: they don’t go in for any of that.

These are not all my non-Christian friends. Some of them are Christians. They have varying reasons: they don’t believe in the commercialism, they aren’t sure that December 25 was the date of Jesus’ birth, they disdain the mix of pagan symbolism with Christian symbolism, they prefer a simple day.

It doesn’t matter what their reasons are. It doesn’t even matter that they don’t go all out with the tree, trimmings and outside lights. I have non-Christian friends who go all out in that department.

Today as I was busy unloading my boxes and boxes of Christmas stuff, I began to think about what draws the line between those of us who display all the red-blue-green-gold-silver of the season and those of us who do not. It isn’t faith in Jesus Christ. It is something else: memories of childhood, perhaps? An attempt to capture magic? A wistful nature?

I cannot speak for those who do not load their tree with tinsel, lights, precious ornaments, and dog (or cat- or child-) warning jingle bells along the bottom. I never was one of those people even before I was a believer in Christ.

I was always a believer in Santa.

Every year there is a conversation among my closest Christian friends about how one celebrates and why. I can never adequately answer the questions of the most fundamental of my friends. I never had a problem mixing all the metaphors of Christmas: Santa kneeling at the manger, Jesus with the two broken hands, all my stuffed animals piled up in a make-shift Nativity where Teddy Bear and Pinky Cat represented Mary & Joseph and Lucky Dog was one of the Wise Men and Cecil the Sea Monster was a Poor Shepherd Boy.

Digressing here: Teddy Bear (my black-and-white teddy bear) and Pinky Cat (my sister’s faded stuffed pink cat) got married. They had a pink heart-shaped wedding cake which my sister & I shared with the minister of the ceremonies, my best friend, Lisa. My mom was a witness. I remember that I did not sift the powdered sugar and the pink frosting on the wedding cake ended up with tiny white spots of undissovled powdered sugar. I do not remember what flavor of Betty Crocker cake we baked for the occasion. I do not know what ever became of Pinky Cat, but I am certain Teddy Bear still mourns her. He & Lucky Dog are tucked into a box in my attic, antiques to pass on to another generation some day. (Cecil the sea serpent no doubt went to rest with Pinky Cat.)

The first time I ran smack-dab into Christian fundamentalism, I had been a Christian for 15 years. I had no idea there were Christians out there who associated a tree with paganism. As it happened, Don & I were temporarily living with a couple who refused to have a Christmas tree. I remember telling Don that we had to have our own apartment before the holiday because I was *not* going to have a tree-less Christmas.

I really didn’t care how logical the argument was.

Or illogical.

Christmas is as much about the traditions as it is the faith. It’s about little podunk church programs with little kids dressed in haloes and tinsel wings and a Mary who doesn’t know how to hold a baby doll. It’s about the lights in the yard, however hokey. The polar bears, the meese (plural for moose in my family), the reindeer, the many faces of Saint Nicholas.

I love Rudolph. And not because Gene Autrey recorded the hit before Burl Ives although that could be a very good reason to love Rudolph. Have you ever looked at a young Gene Autrey? Oh yeah. Besides, he had a gorgeous horse, prettier than Trigger.

I love Frosty the Snowman but not as much as I love Rudolph.

I love Santa. I love fat Santa in red, I love Saint Nicholas, I love Father Christmas.

I want to take an aside here to point out that no matter how I tried, my children saw the world in black and white. They never believed in Santa. Flying reindeer were not even myth: they were fantasy. They were as impressed with Santa as most of us are impressed with the Easter Bunny.

(I believe in the Easter Bunny, too.)

I am not into Christmas to get gifts. I really don’t care much about the gifts part except if you are going to get me a gift, make it totally useless and surprise me. I don’t want to know ahead of time what I am going to get. I like the surprise more than the gift.

My husband, on the other hand, wants a specific item and is disappointed if you digress.

I tell you all of this because I will probably blog about Christmas and decorations this month. It’s just what I do in December.

Today I put up the tree. And for the first time in 3 years, I got out every single ornament we own and put it on the tree. It is a very good thing it is a very full Noble Fir: I have a lot of ornaments.

In four weeks, I will be loathe to take this memorial down. That’s what it is for me: a memorial to God. A memorial of my life. Of our life together (Don & I). A celebration of a time in life when magic is afoot.

I don’t mean the magic of Hallowe’en, but a magic that runs deep in the blood of mankind, a magic that wants to believe in goodness, peace on Earth, and something larger than we are. A magic that transports us back to our childhood and the innocent moments where we loved each other unconditionally. Real magic, sans Harry Potter.

Harry Potter, by the way, celebrates Christmas. But that is an entirely other blog post.

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Well, three of them since two are in Colorado…

The boys came over to play with Grandma & Poppa today.

We had a great time. I am so amazed at how much they change every time I see them. Zephan is speaking in complete sentences, Javan is gaining more command of words, and Eli is just… fatter.

Poppa held Eli most of the time. Somehow I think this guy is in love with his Poppa. And lookit those cheeks! Oh my oh my oh my… You just want to cuddle that fat little face!

What is it about this boy and his lips? He has the most adorable little lips. I’ve tried capturing a moment of Eli’s lips, but… they just aren’t the same as Javan’s. Javen is so… expressive.

We had a wonderful night. Grandma showed the boys her pitiful outdoor Christmas light display which to little eyes looks like all the magic of Christmas and then some. Grandpa discovered that some of the cheap yard sale toys had battery compartments so he opened them up and added batteries. Suddenly the lights and horns came on and Arwen threatened us with, “THOSE are toys that STAY at Grandma’s house!”

Well, of course they are! But I don’t understand why she decided to leave fifteen minutes and twenty million truck honks later.

Someone blamed Grandma for taking the honking trucks away.

He should blame the Grinch holding him.

Tell me that tear doesn’t break your heart?

Yeah, he’s already forgotten about the honking trucks with blinking lights. He’s got Mom’s shades on.

Why?

Because Grandma’s Christmas lights are just so bright, they might blind you…

I know. It’s pitiful. But imagine it through the eyes of a one and two year old and it’s the best Christmas light display EVER.

Which is why I love my boys…

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