Category Archives: Holidailies

Dear Santa…

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Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

It’s that time of year again – the time that I write you a letter. I’ve been doing this for as long as I could read and write…do you remember?

When I was little, my mother served as your elf, writing my name in glitter on packages signed from you, and once, even leaving a trail of red construction paper footprints leading from my bedroom to the back of the couch, where the stockings were hung (we didn’t have a fireplace).

It’s because of her that I’ve managed to retain the ability to suspend belief, to find the bubble of magical delight that exists deep inside all of us, and to send it forth, sharing it with the world through words – essays and stories and songs – and yet, I never write these letters to my mother, Santa. I write them to you.

I don’t have a long list of “I wants” this year, Santa. Oh, there are tons of things I’d like to have – like the hoodie designed to look like a Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform, and this set of mugs I really like, but those aren’t things I need.

Other people, though, have real needs, so if you could transfer whatever allotment of North Polar magic I’m due to them, I’d really appreciate it. I even have some ideas:

I’m fostering two pit bull mixes right now, Santa. Madison is a two-year-old spayed female, and she’s as sweet as can be, though she prefers to not be around other female dogs, or any cats. Marco is a male puppy, who was born in a shelter and lived his whole life there, until he came to stay with me a week or so ago. I’d love for them to find forever homes with people who will love them as much as I do, but they’re safe for now.

More than that, I’d like for there to never be an unwanted puppy or kitten in the world. I’d like breeding mills and fighting rings to become things of the past. I’d like it if senior pets were either taken care of until they died naturally, or eased out of the world in the arms of the people who loved them.

I had a whole page and a half of other things to discuss, Santa, but I deleted it because I realized I was using my letter to you as a soapbox, and that wasn’t my intent.

And really, everything I wanted to talk about, even the animal issues I’ve already discussed, boils down to one thing:

COMPASSION

Compassion for each other, compassion for ourselves, compassion for the animals in our care, and those who exist in the wild, and compassion for this planet we call home.

We’re not, as a race, being very good stewards of the Earth or of each other. We’ve become cold and callous, embracing a “me first” attitude that is more than a little unpleasant.

It will be the end of us, Santa.

Already, friends and family members cease communications because they disagree with something they see in social media.
Our government representatives don’t cooperate with each other, and are smug about their non-cooperation.

It’s really sad.

And really scary.

So, Santa, please, bring us all a box of compassion this year. You can make my parcel a bit smaller than some, maybe a tiny bit larger than others, and I promise to share it, because the whole point of compassion, is that you do extend it to others.

I know in the past I’ve asked you for other intangible gifts. Love, generosity, patience – those are all things we still need in massive amounts.

But they come within the guise of compassion.

So, thanks, Santa, for listening, and considering my request this year. I wanted you to know that I’m completely over the whole wanting-a-pony thing. I mean, I have two huge dogs who are roughly the size of ponies already, and it costs a small fortune to feed and vet them. (Not that I would trade them for anything.)

But, if there’s a little extra Christmas magic, maybe whisper in the ear of my muse? My writing has been kind of hit-or-miss this year, and I could use some extra help.

Okay, extra help and the Star Trek: The Next Generation hoodie. In command red. Because even though Data was my favorite character, ops yellow makes me look sallow.

Image Credit: The Messy Desk of Santa Claus

Mulled Wine, Magic, and Dylan Thomas

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Ornament and Cinnamon

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”
~ Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales

Has anyone ever been more descriptive than Dylan Thomas? I just introduced a friend to Thomas’s brilliant book-length poem A Child’s Christmas in Wales and as I was reading it aloud, I found myself falling in love with the language all over again.

My first introduction to it was most likely via a reading on KPFA or some NPR station, but the first encounter I remember is when I was eighteen or nineteen. A friend had gifted me with tickets to the Christmas Show at a winery in Los Gatos, so my mother and I went.

The room was freezing, the crowd dressed elegantly beneath their coats and hats. Gloved hands clutched cardboard cups of coffee, cocoa, mulled wine.

We sat on chairs arranged on risers, and watched the show – a combination of the Thomas piece, “The Little Match Girl,” excerpts from “Anne of Green Gables” and the “Little House…” books, and some original transitional bits – that should not have worked as a single coherent story, but somehow did.

At the time, Dylan Thomas’s Christmas contribution was the only part that I wasn’t already fond of, didn’t already have a connection with.

But how could I not be?

Has another poet captured December any more vividly – especially December in a small coastal town? I think not. Sure, Robert Frost wrote eloquently about snowy woods, and Lucy (Maud Montgomery) and Laura (Ingalls Wilder) both touched upon the winter holidays in their books, but for the most part, their language was plain, simple, matter-of-fact.

Thomas captures our imagination. Thomas’s December, Thomas’s Christmas is made of imagination, memory, and mulled wine. It’s cinnamon and chocolate, cigar smoke and scary perfume.

When Thomas writes, you can feel the chill wind, and hear the crunch of snow under your feet, even if you’re reading him in a cozy, warm, well-lit kitchen in suburban Texas.

It’s been an ordinary day, with a few special moments – cuddling dogs, sharing brownies and coffee with friends, making homemade chicken soup because all of us have the traces of a cold.

But the fifteen minutes I spent reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales were made of magic.

I hope this sort of magic never leaves me.

* * * * *

Image credit: nilswey / 123RF Stock Photo

Random Musings on The Longest Night of the Year

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The Night Book

The Night Book | Credit: iStockPhoto.com | Click to embiggen

They say that spring will come again
No one knows exactly when.
Still the sun’s a long lost friend
On the longest night of the year.

We didn’t actually see the sun until the late afternoon today, because we woke up to thick cloud cover and heavy, fat raindrops that plummeted to the ground with satisfying splashes.

I don’t mind. I’m one of the few that loves the dark mornings and long twilights that come at the deepest part of the year.

We stare into the firelight
While December beats outside
Where the darkest hearts reside
On the longest night of the year

Fuzzy and I spent the day mostly together. We slept late, celebrated being together again after his week-long business trip to Utah, lingered in bed listening to the rain.

We finally crawled out of the warm covers because the dogs insisted it was time to get up. How they knew, when we didn’t, remains a mystery to me. I guess they have some inner time clock that alerts them to things like dawn, dusk, and dinnertime.

So keep me safe and hold me tight
Let the candle burn all night
Tomorrow welcome back the night
It was longest night of the year

After dropping our foster dogs (Madison and Marco) and our foster-housemate (Ben) at PetCo, we came back to the house, listened to the holiday extravaganza episode of “Ask Me Another” on NPR, and made a grocery list of essential things for getting through the next ten days.

I meant to buy votives, and forgot…I’m pretty sure I have tapers and tea-lights. I love candles, but ever since Yankee Candle changed their default sample size from a normal votive to a tartlet, I haven’t been buying many.

I used to think the world was small
Bright and shining like a ball
Seems I don’t know much at all
On the longest night of the year

We came home again, unloaded the groceries, and had sandwiches. I did some writing; Fuzzy dealt with an issue in Hong Kong, and then it was back to PetCo to pick up all three of our strays.

We press our faces to the glass
And see our little lives go past
Wave to shadows that we cast
On the longest night of the year

Foster dogs always look so confused when you drop them off at adoption fair. Their eyes tell the story. “I thought I HAD a home,” they seem to say. If I could, I would keep them all.

Well, maybe not ALL of them.

But a good many.

So keep me safe and hold me tight,
Let the candle burn all night,
Tomorrow welcome back the light.
‘Twas the longest night of the year

Tomorrow – today, almost – is the last Sunday in advent. So fast, this year has gone. I accomplished some lovely little things, but none of the big things I had hoped for. Baby steps? Maybe.

Sometimes I think the things I’m keeping safe are the very things I need to send out into the world.

Make a vow when Solstice comes:
To find the Light in everyone
Keep the faith and bang the drum
On the longest night of the year

I’m sitting at my kitchen table. My kitchen smells like cinnamon and chocolate, but under it there’s the scent of sleeping dog and the twin aromas of love and hope.

I don’t have a candle lit, but there’s a wreath in front of me with three votives.

If they were lit, they would burn for the past – the people who influenced me, loved me, guided me.

They would burn for the present – even though we’re in a state of extreme, if temporary, cash-poverty, the bills are paid, the house is full of food, the dogs are well cared for, and we are all mostly happy.

They would burn for the future – for the words as yet unspoken, the stories yet to be written or told. For the dreams we keep on dreaming, and for the connection we have, Fuzzy and me, to each other, to our friends and families, and to the world as a whole.

So keep me safe and hold me tight,
Let the candle burn all night,
Tomorrow welcome back the light.
After the longest night of the year

“The Longest Night of the Year” was written (music and lyrics) by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Mixing it Up

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Baking Cookies

From the time I was fourteen or fifteen years old, I’ve had this fantasy of owning a bookstore/cafe, only it wouldn’t be like the cafes nestled inside Barnes and Noble. Instead, it would be an old house, and each room would have a different theme, and matching menu. Sort of like that restaurant chain that I can’t remember the name of, where there was an African room and an Undersea room. Only in my fantasy cafe, there would be a mystery room and a science fiction room, and…well…you get the idea.

Fantasies are lovely, but the reality is that retail sucks, and the restaurant business is pretty thankless, and I prefer to let this dream remain in dreamland, indulging it, instead, by reading novels where recipes are prominent.

George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is an example of this, but for some reason, mysteries feature food a lot more than anything else (well, the Pern books had a lot of great dishes, and Melanie Rawn’s Ambrai series…but…) and one of my favorite series is Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse Mysteries.

I’ve been a fan of her work (and yes, I know “Cleo Coyle” isn’t really Cleo Coyle, but that’s not the point) since the first book, and have just finished the 13th, so you can imagine how tickled I was when she sent me an autographed copy of it after I contacted her about an interview for All Things Girl. I was even MORE tickled that she enclosed a bunch of recipe cards, one of which we’re making tonight.

Well, sort of.

The recipe card was for a candy cane frosting, but obviously if you’re making frosting, you must have something to, well, frost. Now, on her website, that frosting is paired with a standard brownie (from a mix) with a bit of ‘enhancement’ optional.

I don’t buy mixes.

And I have an excellent brownie mix, but it’s much more fun to go to the Source, Herself.

So I hopped on Facebook, and took a chance, asking if she had a scratch recipe that she’d recommend.

She did. And she sent me the link.

It’s a dark chocolate brownie with chocolate chips and espresso powder and…yeah.

I’ll post a follow up tomorrow afternoon when we put everything together (we’re making the brownies tonight, but will frost them tomorrow), and I’ll share the links at that time.

Meanwhile, y’all can go to bed imagining candy cane frosting on dark chocolate brownies.

Image credit: robynmac / 123RF Stock Photo

Maybe this winter…

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Lantern Santa

“It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.”
~John Burroughs, “Winter Sunshine”

Two weeks ago, we had an ice storm. Tonight we are in no danger of anything more threatening than rain, but on this last evening of fall, I can feel winter’s impending arrival even though I live in a climate where that ice storm could well be the only really wintry weather we get all year.

When I woke up this morning, it was 66 degrees, damp, and breezy. The cool, moist air felt like a favorite aunt was giving me a lingering goodbye hug.

This evening, the winter bite is back, and while the temperature has only decreased by about 30 degrees, there’s something different in the pulse of the world.

This chilly, damp weather gives me migraines, sometimes, and when I get them, I get really crabby – even bitchy – but I’m also at my most creative when it’s wet outside.

I also miss the beach.

There’s something magical about the beach in winter. The sand is cold and clammy, and the ocean and sky seem closer akin then they do when both are sun-warmed and blue. The smell is deeper, as if something from far below the surface has come for a visit, and there are different things to find.

In my dreams, Fuzzy and I walk the dogs along a winter shoreline.

In my waking life, I stare at the swimming pool and grin when it’s windy enough for the water to have some chop.

We keep talking about renting a beach house on the Gulf for a weekend, but we never actually do.

Maybe this winter…we will.

Or maybe we won’t, and I’ll have my moments of crabbiness soothed away by my husband’s tender kisses, or the wet-and-cold-nosed greetings of the dogs.

Maybe this winter I’ll find a way to channel the weather-enhanced creativity.

Maybe this winter I’ll incorporate more meatless meals into our diets.

Maybe this winter…

Today’s Santa: This one was a gift from my mother. He isn’t shiny or glass, but he’s one of my favorites because of the lantern he holds.

Piping

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Fix-it Santa

I was having a really lovely day, with the house all to myself, well, as all to myself as it ever gets with three dogs of my own, two fosters, a husband, and a temporary housemate. And then I went to rinse my coffee mug, and realized the kitchen sink wasn’t draining.

I ran the disposal. It hummed and whirred and turned itself off.

I tested the other half of the sink, the part without the disposal; it was fine.

Aha! I thought. Someone has put something bad down the disposal, and the trap is jammed.

Sadly, knowing what the problem is and knowing how to fix the problem are not enough if you do not have the necessary arm length to reach the pipes that need to be cleaned.

So, I had to wait til said housemate arrived home, as Fuzzy is still in Utah.

Fortunately, I spent enough years doing tech support to be able to walk our housemate (Ben) through the necessary steps, which I did, while listening to him tell me that we should call a plumber, or that the pipe I’d identified couldn’t possibly be the problem, or, or, or.

“Trust me,” I said, “This has happened before. It’s an easy fix. Sometimes the even easier fix works, but as you can see I already tried that,” and I brandished the old wire coat hanger that I’d turned into a sort of snake.

NO WIRE HANGERS may be the rule for clothing, but trust me on this: keeping a couple of them around can SAVE YOUR LIFE when you have plumbing issues.

Anyway, Ben did as I instructed, and twisted and turned, handing me the u-bend with the attached p-trap, and I cleaned both of them out, and then guided him through re-attachment, plugging in the disposal (because of course the first thing I did was UNPLUG it) and showing him where to find the RESET button.

So, maybe I didn’t do the physical labor, though if I could have reached, I would have, but I still claim credit for the fix, because I knew what to do.

Today’s Santa: It seemed appropriate to share Fix-It Santa today. He doesn’t do plumbing, but a few small repairs to your gingerbread house are totally in his repertoire. Source: Cracker Barrel.

Dancing Memories

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Christmas Tree 2013

Like snowflakes, my Christmas memories gather and dance – each beautiful, unique and too soon gone. ~Deborah Whipp

My Christmas tree is finally finished. I took it out to ‘rest’ just after Thanksgiving, and we began decorating it that weekend (it took one evening just to open my ornaments) but then we all got busy, and so it sat, lonely, half finished, and half forgotten, in the dining room window.

Tonight though, I coaxed our temporary housemate into helping me with the outside lights. Then, after I bribed him with homemade chili and homemade chocolate chip cookies and cocoa, we finished the tree.

He patiently let me tell the stories of the ornaments, like a litany rolling from my tongue. “This is from the mobile that hung over my crib when I was a baby. This is from my first Christmas package. My mother made this when I was six or seven…I remember her cursing about all the French knots.”

The ornaments spun on their strings, slow pirouettes slowing into stillness that could be broken with the hint of a breath. The green of the plastic tree began to take on a healthier color.

“That one is from Ocean Grove, New Jersey. We lived there when I was nine. And that one is made of shells from my mother’s beach.”

The glass pieces – birds, fish, fruit and vegetables – glittered and glistened in the soft glow of the white tree lights.

“That was the tree-topper on all the trees my mom and I had, for most of my life. That one is older than I am. That one was my mother’s gift to Fuzzy. That one was a gift from Jeremy.”

The last hook was attached to a branch. The last plastic icicle given it’s place, the center of a triangle of three lights.

“Can you feel it?” I asked him. “Now it’s a Christmas tree.”

“It’s always been a Christmas tree,” he said.

“Nope,” I answered. “It was just a fake pine tree before.”

The memories danced in my mind as the decorations shone on the tree, and I texted my husband to tell him it was done.

He sent a smilie and the three words that matter most: I love you.

Santa Claus Boogie

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Santa on a Tractor

Tonight’s post is all about today’s Santa.

I bought this ornament a few years ago, after we spent a cold October weekend helping to pack up Fuzzy’s father’s farmhouse. At one point, all the combines and tractors were lined up, awaiting auction, and it was both so hopeful and so sad. To me, it spoke of the way rural small towns are disappearing, because family farms can’t compete with corporate factory farming, and the kids who grow up in those towns typically will do ANYTHING to get out.

If I’d had the cash, I’d have bought the farm, remodeled the house and barn, and turned it into a prairie writers’ retreat. After all, it was only half an hour from De Smet, the “Little Town on the Prairie” where the latter half of the Little House books take place.

Later that year, we took houseguests to the National Cowgirl Museum, and when I saw this ornament, I had to have it. It reminds me that behind my father-in-law’s gruff exterior there beats a truly good heart.

And while I have tractors on the brain, here’s a video to lighten the mood. It’s the “Santa Claus Boogie,” performed by – you guessed it – The Tractors:

Gone to the Dogs

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It’s nearly eleven PM, and I’ve been awake since 4:45 AM, except for a brief nap from 7:30-8:30 this morning. Why? Because this was my day:

3:45 AM: wake from a really awesome dream with undeniable need to pee
4:30 AM: wake to raucous alarm from my husband’s side of the bed. Send him off to shower.
4:45 AM: admit that I really can’t steal another few minutes of sleep, and get up.
5:15 AM: actually get out of bed
5:45 AM: drive with my husband and housemate to take the former to the airport
6:30 AM: arrive home, have breakfast and coffee and let the dogs out
7:30 AM: admit that I’m really not all that awake, and go to lie down for an hour
8:34 AM: get back up, get dressed again (this time, with makeup)
8:55 AM: go to church
11:00 AM: leave church, go home, let the dogs run around, give them water, contain them again, and put foster-dog in the car to go to adoption fair
12:00 PM: arrive at adoption fair, say we’re only going to stay a few minutes
5:08 PM: leave adoption fair, bringing foster-dog Madison, who did NOT get adopted, and foster-puppy Marco, who would have had to go back to the shelter since he also did not get adopted.
6:37 PM: housemate and I have dinner
7:40 PM: housemate and I go grocery shopping
8:53 PM: get home with groceries (note to self: BUY DOG FOOD)
9:30 PM: email stuff from upstairs computer to downstairs computer
9:40 PM: go outside to play with the puppies.
10:15 PM: come in to write this post end up watching the end of a cheesy Christmas film instead
11:00 PM: finally write this post

So, no pictures. In fact, no complete sentences. Just…me…being exhausted. Yeah.

Stars and Stories

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Blue Christmas

We spent last weekend enshrouded in ice that glittered like stars in the soft illumination of the porch light. We ate soup and played board games, and remembered what it was like when winter was a full season and change, instead of an isolated weekend here and there.

Yesterday, I was involved in a friend’s Facebook conversation about the perceived and actual ethnicities of Santa Claus and Jesus, and ever since then Margaret Gooding’s poem “Why Not a Star,” which I first encountered in the UU hymnal, has been running through my head:

Why Not a Star
They told me that when Jesus was born a star appeared in the heavens above the place where the young child lay.

When I was very young I had no trouble believing wondrous things; I believed in the star.

It was a wonderful miracle, part of a long ago story, foretelling an uncommon life.

They told me a super nova appeared in the heavens in its dying burst of fire.

When I was older and believed in science and reason I believed the story of the star explained.

But I found that I was unwilling to give up the star, fitting symbol for the birth of one whose uncommon life has been long remembered.

The star explained became the star understood, for Jesus, for Buddha, for Zarathustra.

Why not a star? Some bright star shines somewhere in the heavens each time a child is born.

Who knows what it may foretell?

Who knows what uncommon life may yet again unfold, if we but give it a chance?

When I went looking for the text to that poem, I found the LiveJournal page of one John Heaton, a man whose writing I used to follow when he used to be a fellow participant in Holidailies. His post today was another poem. It’s by Naomi Shihab Nye:

How Palestinians Keep Warm

Choose one word and say it over
and over, till it builds a fire inside your mouth.
Adhafera, the one who holds out, Alphard, solitary one,
the stars were named by people like us.
Each night they line up on the long path between worlds.
They nod and blink, no right or wrong
in their yellow eyes. Dirah, little house,
unfold your walls and take us in.

My well went dry, my grandfather’s grapes
have stopped singing. I stir the coals,
my babies cry. How will I teach them
they belong to the stars?
They build forts of white stone and say, “This is mine.”
How will I teach them to love Mizar, veil, cloak,
to know that behind it an ancient man
is fanning a flame?
He stirs the dark wind of our breath.
He says the veil will rise
till they see us shining, spreading like embers
on the blessed hills.

Well, I made that up. I’m not so sure about Mizar.
But I know we need to keep warm here on earth
And when your shawl is as thin as mine is, you tell stories.

That last line, especially, really resonated with me: And when your shawl is as thin as mine is, you tell stories., but it’s just one more strand that’s been plucked, one more string that is vibrating in my life. Another came the other night when I was watching the HBO documentary Six by Sondheim. Talking about his process, he said that when he was writing, he was acting, that he played all the parts in his head as he figured out their songs.

Sometimes I feel like I’m playing all the parts in my head, too, and other times I feel like I’ve stepped sideways, outside of the flow of time, and am just an observer, meant to remember everything and then use it in a piece of writing, or an improv character.

Another note, bowed, legato is Madeleine L’Engle’s assertion that the Judeo-Christian God is made of/from/by stories.

And so I sit here, and I read these poems. I get up, I pad, barefoot, through the house, and I stand at the back door and gaze up at the moon, smile at the stars. I let the chilly night air caress my face, and tickle my toes, and then I step backwards and slide the door shut.

We think we are made of flesh and blood and bone, and maybe we are, but we’re more, too.

We are stories and songs.
We are the stuff of stars.