If Only In My Dreams

Last year my husband and I breathed a sigh of relief as our children, their children and all their holiday loot was loaded into their urban suburbans and with grandchildren head-setted into their places to watch yet another DVD, they honked their way out of our driveway and out of our lives.
Maybe it is time for our children to be home for the holidays, their own homes. The traditions and rituals their father and I have so carefully nurtured over the years are gradually giving way to generation X lifestyles.
Each year the menu gets larger and the tree taller, as we try to make this Christmas the best one ever, and each year we enjoy it less.
Our children hve grown and have changed, and we have grown older, but resisted change. One year, our daughter from Oregon who belongs to some kind of "green" organization, confronted her father about his lack of ecological consciousness when he brought in a freshly cut fir tree from the pasture.
Our grandchildren know who Santa really is and don't write letters to the North Pole or visit the guy with the fake beard. So we don't have any pictures of them dressed in their Eton suits and taffeta dresses, sitting on Santa's lap. They do make shopping lists. After a trip to the mall they write down the name and bar code information of the items they want.
Nobody wants to go caroling anymore, so we can't stop at the neighbors' for cookies and cocoa and show off our families while they are in town.
The teenage grandkids fill our home with strange music, hevy metals that send our old kitty to the basement for the season.
We don't live on 34th street and we don't expect miracles either, just a little respect. The Madonna on MTV is not the lady in the manger. Our daughter who was Mary in the Christmas pageant at our church years ago pickets manger scenes that threaten the separation of church and state. She declined our invitation for midnight Mass and informed us she is agnostic. I'm not sure what that means, but maybe it is like being antagonistic.
One of the boys, a vegetarian, requested tofurkey and his brother, who doesn't eat much of anything, jogged out the door every morning right past the brunch table and refused to even try my cookies and fudge. The jolly guy with a pack on his back? That is our youngest bringing home his laundry from fall term.
BAH HUMBUG!
This year my husband and I will celebrate Christmas our way. Our real tree will smell better each day as it gets a little dryer. We will bring in the Yule log and sit by the fire in our flannel jammies, munch fudge and listen to Bing sing about a White Christmas.
We'll tell the story that belongs to each handmade ornament as we take them out of storage and midnight Mass will seem a little more holy without the fussing of little ones.
We will be able to go to bed before dawn because the stockings will be mailed. So with me in my kerchief and pa in his long johns, we will sleep late, open our little treasures while we sip hot chocolate and welcome the collect calls from our children, as long they call before we go out to eat.

Let the Festivals Begin!

Humankind has struggled with darkness in his world and in his soul.
Most of us were afraid of the dark when we were little. Nightlights and flashlights were our friends. Even today with the world illuminated in nearly every corner, there are those who begin to develop symptoms of a disease called SAD (seasonal affective disorder). The effects of the shorter days and longer nights trigger feelings of depression, lethargy, fatigue and other problems. Treatment includes a light box that emits full spectrum light much like the sun.
The winter solstice has been celebrated in many ways for thousands of years, perhaps beginning with the aboriginal people who watched with fear as the sun sank further and further into the sky each noon. Then they began to notice a slight elevation of the sun's path a few days after the solstice. Hope was restored and the celebrations began!
Imagine man's excitement when he discovered fire and the interior of the cave was lit up.
We humans have found the "light" in many different ways. Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, brings light into the heart and home at sundown for eight nights as the menorah candles are kindled. Kwanzaa, the African American holiday uses a candleholder called a kinara, which holds seven candles that are lit each evening for seven days. Diwali, the Festival of Lights celebrated by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists light wicks in pots of oil to signify good over evil. Christians have the Star of Bethlehem, halos of light, and their Light of the World, Jesus.
In my neighborhood, the old men are stringing lights on rooftops, trees, fences and even their garbage cans in competition with each other have the best holiday yard on the block. December celebrations, no matter the reason for the season, include light in many forms. We watch with holiday joy as the White House tree is lit and many of us will attend the community tree lighting. We will load our pajama-clad kids with sugarplums waiting to dance in their dreams, into the car for the annual drive through town to look at the lights.
Seems the "Festival of Lights" takes on different meanings for different folks but whatever your reason, may you find the light that brings goodwill toward men and peace on earth.

The Thanksgiving lesson

Turkey time is here again. One year I didn't have turkey to eat on Thanksgiving, well my family did, but I didn't, I had hamburger.
It was November of 1945 and the war was over. My brothers had returned from Iwo Jima and Europe with just one flesh wound that would heal in time, but with wounds to their souls that would last a life time. No matter, we knew that we were a family that should give thanks that there were no empty chairs at our table.
My hamburger patty Thanksgiving began in September that year. I, a seven-year-old city girl, who had traveled to a small Montana town to participate in a turkey shoot, had somehow won the children's division. My prize was a goose. A beautiful, live, white goose!
I put the goose in a cage that Daddy found and started a club in my playhouse called The White Goose club. My little friends came to the weekly meeting and after waving a white hankie in the manner of surrender I let them enter. We sang to the stars and stripes and drew pictures of the enemy, Germans and Japs, getting killed and hung those on the walls. Everyone got to feed the white "bird of peace" before the meeting ended.
On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, my friends and I happily ran from the school yard in anticipation of a four day holiday which was also the beginning of the Christmas season.
I was suprised to see the door to the playhouse open and when I went to shut it I discovered my goose was gone! I ran to the house crying, "Mother, Mother, something happened and my goose is gone."
Mother squatted down to my level and put her hands on my shoulder. "Carol, I took your goose to the butcher. He will be our Thanksgiving bird this year."
I couldn't believe what she was saying. I ran from her and threw myself across my bed sobbing. Mother tried to get me to understand that we couldn't keep a goose in the city and she added, "Carol, the war is over. It isn't right for you and your friends to be drawing pictures filled with hate. I think you should be proud that you brought home the bird for our celebration that is really about peace and Thanksgiving."
The next day when my mother carried the heavy platter with the golden goose to the table I cried a little bit more and ate the hamburger that my sister cooked for me.
Of course, I got over the anger and forgave my mother, but the story about the year that Mother "cooked my goose" became a Thanksgiving legend in our family.
If you don't have a turkey spread your fingers on a piece of paper and draw around them with a brown crayon. Then color the fingers with green, blue, orange and yellow. Draw a red waddle to put on the thumb and you have a turkey!
Sometimes what we need is right in our own hands. If you are hearing impaired you can talk with your fingers and if you are visually impaired you can even read with your fingers. If you are lonely, line up your fingers and offer a handshake to someone. Put all ten fingers together in the shape of a tent and reach out to your maker.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

TO BE OR NOT TO BE...THAT IS THE QUESTION IN 2009I have always been a bit of a politico but for the wrong reasons. In 1948 I argued on the playground at Emerson Grade school that we should have Gov. Thomas Dewey as our new president because Truman was a bomber. Growing up as a motherless child in Montana I watched the women who passed through my life for clues on who and how I wanted to be.I was fifteen when Dwight Eisenhower brought his lovely lady to my attention. I promptly cut my bangs like hers even though I did not have a cute little nose like Mamie. Richard Nixon, infamous for other reasons, still created a lasting memory for me when he danced at his daughter's wedding to the tune, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls."And when the democrats returned with Amy Carter and her kitty kat I gave in to my little boy's plea for a kitty.Bill and Hillary, dreaming of their future, chose their daughter's name from the song "Chelsea Morning" and later traded in their sandles and beads for Mr. President and first lady bringing with them a twelve year old who was beyond hopscotch and jacks, but was still her daddy's little girl. The first time I cast a ballot in a general election I had a personal interest in the outcome because I had met the dynamic John F. Kennedy in person while he was on the campaign trail. He shook hands with my young daughter and patted my baby on the head. As a young Air Force wife and mother of four I searched for ways to rise above the mediocrisy of my life and the Kennedy's were my models. I bought adult coats at the Salvation Army and cut them down to sew double breasted coats for my little ones. There were no flip-flops or clogs or shoes with lights that blinked when they walked. They wore laced up hightops that were polished white daily. Little Francis, three years old at the time, suffered through home haircuts in which I trimmed around a bowl I had placed on his head. The girls and I wore hats (mine was a pillbox type) and gloves to Mass on Sunday and I bought huge sunglasses and tied a scarf on my head when I shopped for groceries. On that fateful day in November, 1963, I saw that mourning is indeed grief gone public and I drew on that lesson for many personal losses that were ahead of me. Now I watch for ways to be, not how to look, or how to live or how to succeed, but how to be. I join in the emotional outpouring over the election of our first black president and I find myself melonchaly for other reasons. Once again the White House will echo with the laughter and running footsteps of children and pets. Young people everywhere will look to a young family struggling with bedtimes and allowances and puppy accidents as role models. They will look to a father who bends to kiss his daughter on election night and a husband who stands not in front of but beside his wife.We as a nation are and will be learning how to be and this time we will show the world how to be.