Jaci Dawn

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 –

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.

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…

So. I got this bright idea for a Christmas card. I never have bright ideas for Christmas cards until after the first of December which explains why my cards are generally late getting sent. But I digress.

I decided I wanted a photo card of “The Boys”. Problem was: I didn’t have any good photos of “The Boys” together. And no, I don’t mean the grandsons.

My children can send out cards with photos of their children on them.

I did think of sending out a card with the photo of my entire family taken in July but I nixed that because 1) Eli and Micah were not yet born and now they are and 2) Chrystal’s boyfriend is an ex-boyfriend and not really in favor around here and he’s in the photos.

So “The Boys” would have to do. Because I sure as heck am not sending out cards with my mug plastered on them.  And because “The Boys” have taken over our lives. “The Boys” are all testosterone and posturing (even though most of their testosterone supply has been effectively cut-off – pun intended) and “The Boys” actually love each other. In a doggie sort of way.

I didn’t want anything too close to show the damage they’ve done to my furniture.

I wanted something cutesy but when I brought out the Santa hats, Murphy immediately wanted to eat them.

So what follows is… well… what follows.

In which Harvey sulks because he did not get to chew on the Christmas stocking.

“Please don’t get mad at me… I’m not the one chewing the Christmas stocking…” – In which Harvey acts guilty because Murphy is eating the stocking.

“What? you want me to let HARVEY into the picture?”

In which they both sulk because Don temporarily took the stocking away.

“But he growled at me, Dad…”

Now he’s afraid to come down the stairs (and he wants one of those treasures that Murphy is hogging).

In which Harvey discovers there are brightly colored lights falling off of his neck and he decides to taste them…

“I’m not having any problem at all with this posing for Christmas card stuff. Just put ME on the card and forget about that other dog…”

And Christmas Harvey.

I settled for the last two.

Boys!

No, I don’t have anything deep to say.

I need to explain something about the lamp in my previous post. It’s one of those “touch” lamps: you touch it to turn it on and touch it to turn it off. It is the only lamp on my desk. When I enter my studio, I have to go around the door to turn on the overhead light, so I usually just touch the lamp to give myself some light to work with.

Tonight I thought better of that on the off-chance that Fred was still there.

Fred is the spider.

Fred is still there.

Fred is glad that I thought twice about touching the lamp in the dark to turn it on.

I am glad I thought twice.

I wouldn’t want to have to clean Fred off of my fingers…

Writing in the evening, unwinding from the first day back at work after the long weekend. It is black and rainy out. I can hear the forced air banging against the shuttered heat vent in the studio and I am finally beginning to warm up.

The house is quiet. Don doesn’t have the television on, I don’t have any music queued, and the dogs have mellowed out.

The calendar on my wall is flipped over to October (again). I really need to get a piece of clear tape and fix the little tear that keeps pulling November off – but, then it will be December on Wednesday so why bother?

There’s a pale spider crawling on the black lamp.

That’s a dangerous position for a spider to be in. I don’t mind arachnids but I do tend to kill them when they are inside my house. Spiders belong outside.

I may let this one live a little while seeing as how I squashed a silverfish in the attic the other day. I can live with a spider.

Don just informed me that Oregon Public Broadcasting is presenting a folk reunion. I’d love to go sit and listen but I don’t want to sit through the endless pledge drive and all the interviews – and there isn’t anything for me to DO while the show airs. I can’t just sit still for the next two hours. I just want to listen to the music: Roger McGuinn, the Chad Mitchell Trio and Barry McGuire are being highlighted. But it doesn’t sound like they will be interviewing all the currently living legends, so I am giving it a pass.

I bet I can find their music online and listen.

That spider hasn’t moved much. Does it think some errant bug is going to fly to it? It needs to go crawl around under the book cases and hunt for silverfish. It is creeping me out perched up there on my lamp.

The silverfish I killed was twice the size of this guy. Girl? How do you know what sex a spider is?

Do I even care to find out?

It is still black and rainy out but at least I no longer have Writer’s Block.

What else is a spider good for in the house?

Oh yeah: to kill silverfish. Hunt well my little eight-legged, eight-eyed transparent assassin.