Question #6:
In your opinion, what is the most timeless toy?

There’s something special about the smell of wooden blocks. It’s different from the scent of freshly cut lumber, different from the smell of any other wood blocks. It’s sweeter, earthier, darker and lighter at once, as if somehow, wooden blocks, and especially wooden blocks that have been handled (sometimes rather roughly) by the tiny hands of more than one generation, hold within them the essence of youth, the spirit of play, the kernel of imagination, and the garden of dreams, all compressed, folded in on themselves time after time, until what remains is a fairly innocuous object.

But what possiblities are in that object!

We talk about metaphorical building blocks all the time, protein, fundamental education, basic cooking skills, these are the building blocks of bodies, intellect, life skills.

Just as important are the building blocks we once used to actually, you know, build.

I remember sitting on the rug in the den near the ghastly yellow recliner my grandfather so loved, arranging blocks into different configurations. The same collection of rectangular and square bits of wood would form in rapid succession: the cages in a zoo, a sky scraper, a tree house, a log cabin, a ship, a town square, a mansion, a thought, a hope, a dream…

I remember the alphabet blocks, with their paint faded, chipped and worn, so the letters on them were as much as mystery as whose hands held them first. (Perhaps my mother, or her older brother, or one of my cousins?)

I remember a faded green rectangular block so old it’s edges had softened, rounded, blurred. It was the size of a bar of soap, a matchbox car, a wish.

I remember my grandfather insisting I sort the blocks by color, shape, and size before I could build (he was just as anal with the tinker toys, with the train sets, with everything). “Lay out your lumberyard,” he would coach, and I would tuck my braids behind my ears and willingly comply.

I remember feeling wistful, when I was too old for blocks, and passed them down to a younger cousin, a child who couldn’t possibly have appreciated them the way I did. The way I do.

I remember my grandfather’s hands, calloused, gnarled, thickened with age, when he would help me build, and I remember his regretful expression the year he could no longer hunker down on the floor and play with me, the year he was relegated to the sidelines of building block play.

We switched to breadmaking after that. I always thought it was because he just liked to bake. Now I wonder if maybe something in those golden loaves, rectangular, firm, loaves, reminded him of blocks.

DecQOTD #5: What is your favorite Christmas (Winter/Holiday) scent?

Even though I’ve lived in homes with fireplaces more often than not, the scent of burning pine has never been a particularly strong holiday memory, largely because my mother is extremely allergic to it. We’ve had plastic trees for as long as I can remember, and even though I’ve had my own tree for more than ten years now, that trend continues, partly out of respect for her, and partly because I’m afraid of what the dogs would do to an actual tree in the living room.

No, the scent of Christmas, for me, is not pine.

But what is it?

Well, sometimes it’s rain, as December tends to be rainy in both California and Texas. There’s something cozy about the faintly metallic ozone taste after a particularly close lightning strike, something tangy about the air just before a storm, and, by contrast, something so fresh and pure about it just after.

It’s also the scent of paperwhites. I love forcing them during the holidays, as they tend to perform reliably, and their essence wafting across the room never fails to improve my disposition.

THe cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger combination that is ubiquitous at this time of year is also a favorite. It doesn’t matter if it’s ginger snaps, pfefferneusse cookies, pumpkin pie, or just fresh nutmeg sprinkled over cocoa, eggnog, coffee or chai, that trio of spices is instant comfort. They’re all “sweetening” spices, by the way – flavors that bring out the natural sweetness of whatever they’re mixed with – and I rather think they sweeten the season itself as well.

Question #4:
Do you have a traditional Christmas (holiday) dinner that you prepare year after year? If so, what is it?

In honor of Thanksgiving, I posted my family’s turkey and stuffing recipe, as invented and perfected by my grandfather. I’ve heard two stories about it’s origin, one that he invented it while overseas during WWII, when supplies couldn’t get through, the other that he created it much later. In either case, it’s the ultimate holiday flavor for me.

And yet, there are others. Pfefferneusse cookies were introduced to me by my mother, and at dinner, along side the turkey and cranberry sauce (always fresh, never from a can), there was always lasagna. It’s a rule, you know, that Italian families cannot have a big meal that doesn’t include pasta. My grandfather introduced me to coconut macaroons, and they’re still a favorite, and peppermint stick ice cream is just too cool to miss (no pun intended).

It’s aglio e olio, however, that brings back the most memory. Literally meaning garlic and oil, this is a pasta sauce of diced garlic and olive oil, sometimes with other herbs and lemon – but NOT a pesto – and NO pine nuts. It’s simple peasant food, and we always had it on Christmas Eve, and Easter. In my family, with their New Jersey Neapolitan accents, the Italian pronunciation has morphed to the very East Coast “Ahlya Awlya,” though the recipe has remained largely unchanged.

Food, like music, has the ability to transport me to different times, different places. Aglio e olio makes me an innocent seven-year-old, ice skating with my mother on weekends, or meeting her after school for cocoa in the vault-turned-sewing room at the back of her store. It is loud, boisterous family parties, and quiet contemplative evenings in the glow of the Christmas tree lights. Mostly, though, it is the warmth of my mother’s love, and her tireless work to make every Christmas magical.

Studio 60 made me cry this week. I don’t generally get so invested in television shows that I’m moved to tears by anything that occurs, though I’m perfectly capable of willfully suspending disbelief when I choose to, but this was special. It was, in fact, a magical moment in a medium that has largely forsaken magic in favor of money.

I’m writing, of course, of the four minutes at the end of the show, where musicians from Tipitina’s played an instrumental version of “O Holy Night” on an empty stage, with b roll footage of New Orleans playing behind them, and faux snow falling only at the end. Was it part of the story? Yes. It wasn’t the a-plot or even the b-plot, but there was an on-going thread about studio musicians all over the city calling in sick and letting musical visitors from New Orleans sub for them, thus earning union cards and Christmas paychecks. Was it hokey? Maybe a little. Was it effective? Absolutely.

We’ve long known that music can heal, that music can unite, that music can educate, but seeing it in action is vastly different from the purely intellectual “knowing.” I’m reminded by something that either Peter Yarrow or Noel Paul Stookey said during one of Peter, Paul and Mary’s concerts, years ago, that we are all adept at lying when we speak, but that it’s impossible to lie when we sing.

I’m not the most knowledgable person about jazz and blues. I know I like the genre, I have artists toward whom I gravitate, and favorite cd’s, but I learned Monday night, that just as you cannot lie when singing, you cannot hide your heart behind a trumpet, a sousaphone, a saxophone. The men on that stage played from the heart, and invoked the kind of magic that is found in the best performances, the kind that makes you cry real tears even though you’re not sitting in a concert hall, but curled up with your dogs on a plush red sofa, watching network television.

It was holiday magic, in the best form.
And I feel changed, improved, and more whole because of it.

(NBC is offering free downloads of the mp3 here.)

If you were a photographer who was given the chance to go back in history to capture a Christmas (Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/New Year’s Day) photograph, where would you go and what year would it be?

I’ve been mulling over this on and off all day, as I read others comments, wrote letters to soldiers stationed in Korea and Iraq, worked on some fiction, and really, I’m at a loss for anything historical or particularly poignant with the possible exception of the first performance of Silent Night, on a cold night in Germany, with a guitar for accompaniment.

For a moment, I can almost see it, and then my mind snaps back to reality, and I think about my favorite Christmases, and what snapshots I wish I could have, and the thing is – I have them already, on film and in my memory – all the times my mother made miraculous Christmases on no money, all the times she filled the house with love and magic, even when it was just the two of us, and the nearest relatives were across the country. I remember my ideal Christmas, spent with Aunt Peg and her son Jay and his wife Allison, our first year in California, when they heard we were alone for Christmas and insisted we come visit them immediately – for that night I knew what it was like to have sisters and brothers and a huge family, and for one night I loved it, but I was grateful to get home to my own life, too.

I wouldn’t mind a photograph of my first Christmas with Fuzzy – not the part with his family, which was actually quite nice, in spite of my shyness, but the ride back to his apartment, after , through snow-covered prairie, under starry wintry skies. We pulled off the road and made love in the cadillac under pine trees and the stars. Cadillacs, by the way, do not retain heat terribly well.

I’d love to have had a photo of the first time I hosted Christmas Eve for my family, when my grandmother was still lucid, and for that matter, alive, and we melted the pewter sugar bowl when we stuck a second log in the wood stove. I remember the laughter and the warmth, but not the faces.

Mostly, though, I’d have loved to see a picture of my grandfather’s first Christmas at home after being overseas for so many of the early years of his marriage to my grandmother, because I’m sure that was special and tender.

What’s the biggest change in your life since last December?

I was going to write that the biggest change in my life since last December is that I’m not working full time, but since I’m starting a new job on January 2nd, that’s not quite accurate. Anyway, I’d not been working full time before I began at BigFinancialCompany.

So has anything changed? Well, I’ve become a lot more aware of what I want from life. Improv is helping that a lot, but the time at BFC really brought home to me that I’m as good or better as the rest of the people who work in the mortgage industry, and that I’m much happier when I’m in charge, even if the only person I’m in charge of is myself. Autonomy and flexibility are worth more to me than any money, and even though things have been a little tight around here this last month or so, I’m in a much better place. I mean, I spent the last three months at BigFinancialCompany coming home two or three hours after my scheduled ending time, so tired I was in tears, not sleeping well, and then going back in two or three hours early. NO JOB is worth that.

Is it wrong that I’m just not comfortable in a corporate environment? I don’t think so. I went through a stage where I felt like I wasn’t a real person without a demanding high-paying job, but I’m better now. Fuzzy and I can have dinner together, and I don’t have to rush through so I can get to bed. I’m cooking and baking again. I’m sleeping better. I’m writing more. All in all this has been the best decision I ever made.

For the longest time, I would see all the yellow “support our troops” signs in our neighborhood, and bitch about them First I was annoyed because the HOA set them up in front of everyone’s houses without bothering to ask, and then I was angry because really, I don’t think people are sporting those signs because they particularly care, but because everyone else is. Those t-shirts that say “I support whatever’s trendy” are more accurate than most of us care to admit. (They’re also funny, and I want one, but that’s beside the point.)

Around Halloween, I took the sign I’d ripped out of the lawn back out of the dusty spiderweb-infested back corner of the garage and put it back out, not because I felt like our lawn was somehow naked or incomplete, but because I realized I actually know real people who are in the military, even if I only know most of them via blog, and I support them, even if I might disagree with their views. They’re the human face for me. They’re the people who make it real.

So, last night, I was surfing websites and watching the tivo’d American Girl movie about Molly and WWII, and found blogs talking about sending Christmas cards to soldiers overseas, and I was reminded by the letters my grandparents had written back and forth, when he was overseas during that generation’s war. His always ended with a plea for another letter.

And I thought about how much I love getting mail – even now. I mean, email’s great, but snailmail is SPECIAL. It’s more real somehow.

So this morning, I picked a site I liked – Soldier’s Angels, and adopted a soldier. I gave them my name and contact info. They gave me the name and APO address of a woman currently in Iraq. The deal is to send a letter a week, and a small parcel or two once or twice a month, both things I can easily do, and will cost me less than what I generally spend on designer coffee in a similar length of time. My intro letter has already been sent (I *just* made today’s mail pickup) and there’s a goody basket on its way. Am I a sucker for doing this? Maybe. Do I agree that the other women and men who do this are angels, as they call themselves? Well, there are many definitions of angel. So, I guess I can accept the term, in a sense roughly akin to the theatrical backer usage, because I don’t think there’s anything particularly angelic about reaching out in basic human kindness. I mean, we all live here together, we have a responsibility to give back in whatever way is individually appropriate.

And the thing is, whatever my feelings are about the war – this war, any war – (and I’m a California liberal, so you can pretty much guess), the men and women who are actually fighting it are not at fault. They’re doing jobs I wouldn’t consider doing, and risking life and limb to do it. And that deserves respect.

After all, it’s Christmas.
And even just being on a business trip is rough enough at Christmas.

So really, I decided to do it for him, for them. For their stories of being under blackout conditions in Panama, for my grandmother’s endless repetitions of the tale of her return by (commandeered) cruise ship to the US, and the zig-zag course it had to sail, for their 50 years of marriage, and for the man who, years later, while watching CNN’s coverage of Desert Storm, took out a globe and explained to her exactly how that part of the world related to the parts she knew, her beloved Italy, her even more beloved America, with loving patience and endless repetition.

And I hear his words in my head right now, a phrase from one of my grandfather’s letters to my grandmother: “You looked like an angel, my angel.”

The last week, and the weekend, were filled with calls, meetings, questions, answers and negotiations, but the end result has been worth it. Beginning January 2nd, I have a job doing blog stuff and helping to edit other stuff, and writing still other stuff for the company my former boss owns.

I never worked for that company, as I was in his mortgage brokerage, instead, but we talk from time to time, and we trust each other, and he lets me have nearly complete autonomy, which is cool.

And between now and then? I’m delighted to have my own version of Christmas vacation, to get the house ready for the parents, finish some fiction projects, do some baking, and practice a lot of mime – space and object work – and, oh yeah, I play at ComedySportz at least once each weekend between now and the end of the year (12/09, 12/15, 12/16, 12/22, and 12/30), as well as having Lessons and Carols at church on the 17th.

It’s really too bad I’m not busy, or anything.

If only DFW had Trader Joe’s and BevMo, I’d be almost completely happy.

They say that if you want something to happen, even if it’s the merest wisp of a dream, you have to own the idea. They say that you should begin each day with affirmations of your best qualities, and declarations of what you will achieve.

I’ve been working on a series of short stories. I put them aside for NaNoWriMo, but they were what was speaking to me. I do that a lot. Make bad choices. Shoot myself in the proverbial foot.
But the stories are still whispering. I wanted them finished for Christmas. There’s still time.

This is a newer dream. For years I swore I would never get married, swore I’d never have a child. I like my life, I’d tell people. I’m too selfish to share that way.

Except I’m not, really. Selfish, I mean. And I enjoy our nieces so much, and even our nephews, even if we never get to see them for very long, and even if they terrify me a little. It tool me a long time to admit it, but I do, now. I do. I want a child.

Here’s the dream. It’s 2013. Fuzzy and I are in San Francisco, at one of our favorite bookstores, and our five-year-old daughter is wearing a red shirt and a plaid skirt, tights, mary janes and a hat. Fuzzy’s got a suede jacket. Chocolate brown. A red shirt beneath it. Me? I’m in green, rich stonewashed silk in forest green, black slacks, heels with subtle silver trim, a green fedora. We’re not shopping, I’m there to read.

Everyone I love is there with me. Friends include the ethereal counselor who designed my perfume –all natural and brewed to enhance my best qualities, the successful writer/actor/powerhouse who is currently running an avant-garde sketch show broadcast from San Francisco, the other friends who run a home-based arts and crafts business in the Midwest, and led the movement that knit together gay rights once and for all, the friends who live in Colorado with their dogs – their children are bilingual, of course, my parents, though my stepfather is nearing 80 at that point.

We toast the night with coffee served in red ceramic mugs, laced lightly with amoretto or kahlua. There is hugging and the sparkle of digital camera flashes. The local NPR station has sent a representative – the next morning, I will operate the digital optical aquaphone as author-in-residence on the 2013 edition of West Coast Weekend (other guests include Jason Robert Brown, Kathleen Norris, and a former improv troupemate who is one of the country’s hottest comedians).

But that’s tomorrow, tonight, I’m sitting in a red leather wingback chair, brought from my house as a tribute to my grandfather, who held me in his lap and read me stories. I’m not reading from the new book just yet, I tell the crowd. First I want to share a piece from my first collection…it’s about a woman who buys a café, and ends up fostering a group of street gypsies in their various personal and artistic endeavors.

*This entry inspired by Sky, who lets me babble, and proofreads some of my worst drafts.

Last night, perched in bed with my laptop, I couldn’t get the song “The Man with the Bag” out of my head. I’ve always loved it, but I’d never really sung it. So I downloaded it, and then I downloaded the lyrics, and THEN I found the karaoke track. By the time we left for choir practice this morning, I knew the song, but it was still stuck in my head.

It’s had me thinking, also, about how much our relationships, and I don’t mean just the romantic ones, inform our choices, not just of politics, but of everything. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the songs we love.

I grew up in a house filled with protest music – folk tunes and seventies rock. Peter, Paul & Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, John Denver: these were the voices of my childhood.

At my grandmother’s house, I found a love of musicals, and a treasure trove of soundtracks – My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music (I remember that there were two copies of that record, because the original one had been scratched and skipped on the word “naive” in “Sixteen going on Seventeen.”), Pippin, Camelot and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, month others. I loved those records, because they were filled with singable songs that had real stories. (Always with me,there had to be a story.)

Modern musicals – Chess, Phantom, Les Mis – entered my personal vocabulary in high school. After all, it was a performing arts school. This was natural. (Two years before I started there, I’d wanted to be Puerto Rican, after seeing West Side Story for the first time. Ironically, my Caucasian-ness is what got me into my school, as much as my audition.)

My first really serious relationship – and I don’t mean my first sexual one – but my first grown up affair, was with a jazz musician. That he ended up being slime is secondary to the fact that he increased my mucial lexicon, introducing me to jazz and standards. Tony Bennet, Frank Sinatra Dean Martin, all the singers we mostly heard at Christmas – Perry, Bing, Nat, Rosemary and Judy – were suddenly surrounding me with decidedly non-holidayish sounds. And it wasn’t just the standards. Coletrain, Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald…their music was wrapped around me as well.

Those introductions continue to inform my choices. My collection now includes the Indigo Girls and Antigone Rising, and, leftover from college in San Francisco, Voice of the Beehive – but it also includes Madeleine Peyroux, Vienna Teng, Celtic Woman, Harry Connick, Jr, and quite a lot of stuff by Jason Robert Brown (who I maintain is the best storyteller who ever sat at a piano), as well as the requisite Erasure, Barenaked Ladies, Loreena McKennit and Billy Joel cd’s.

And of course, as a cellist, there are the classical pieces – YoYo Ma and Jaqueline DuPre, yes, but also Apocalyptica and Von Cello, the latter two who use the instrument for metal and rock.

Why am I thinking about this?

Because today at rehearsal, I realized that I’ve grown to really love liturgical music, as well. I mean, I’m never going to CHOOSE to listen to the Christian rock praise music that Fuzzy loves, though I’m complaining about it less, but the hymns we sing each Sunday morning, and especially the traditional pieces we get to do during advent, are insinuating themselves into my brain. Example: I realized today that I love the song “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming,” after years of thinking it was dull, and our new Lessons and Carols anthem “A Stable Lamp is Lighted” has this haunting Celtic-y/MiddleEastern influence that is just really amazing, and the imagery in the text is gripping:

A stable lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
And stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbour heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

(That the alto part is wonderfully complex and interesting, is a mere enhancement to my attraction. Witness: I actually asked Clyde if we could do it for “regular” choir instead of just Lessons and Carols. He said it’s already on the roster for Advent IV.)

So, this is what my brain is centered on today. Not that this is unusual. After all, I’ve often explained that I think in music. And it’s true. I have a song in my head for every mood, every experience. I can’t name them all, but music is how I relate to the universe.