Happy Two Days After Christmas

 

There's been a lot of sweetness.

And a lot of Dumb and Dumber.

Reader, what's happening?

Peace in your mind, peace at home, breathe for peace, dance for peace, make love for peace

Christmas card pic, 2006

Sometimes I feel like screaming, What do they all want? I want to know what They all want -- the Republicans, Assad, the Trumps, the billionaires in his cabinet, all the billionaires, really, the terrorists, the oil people, the companies that manufacture weapons, the people who buy them for "protection," the oil tycoons, the climate deniers, the Christian evangelists, etc. etc.

What do they all want?

I'm aware that the question is rhetorical.

It's so easy to say it's all madness, but this time the easy is because it's true. It's madness.



I watched this video several times today, and I just can't get over it.  Lennon just asks the question in the simplest of ways, answers it and then gives us an alternative.

Please watch it. All of it. Even the messy and terrifying footage at the end.


WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It) from Yoko Ono on Vimeo.
If you had one wish for Christmastime, what would it be?


Peace on earth
Love
That implies 
No violence
No starving children
No violent minds
No violent households
No fear
No frustration


So this is Christmas, and what have you done?
Another year over, and a new one just begun.
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
They're old and they're young

A Poem for a McMansion Developer

I in my kerchief and they in their caps,
were nestled snug in our beds
dreaming of apps
when what to our wondering ears should a-sound
 but the play of drills and saws all around.
At 7 am,
I sprang from the bed to see
what was the matter
and all I could hear was the
clatter, clatter, clatter.
Your workers, it seems, on
this bright Christmas morn
were busy with tools
taking Christmas for fools.
You called me a communist
not long ago
when I deplored
the slaughter of trees
on my knees.
I find it ironic
and almost iconic
That on this sacred day
you're building
your house
and not even a mouse
can find peace.
I imagine your workers
are of Christian persuasion
but must work, work, work
even on this occasion
And because you love freedom
and the capitalist's way
I don't imagine you'll pay
for the holiday.
So as dry leaves that before
the wild hurricane fly,
when they meet with an obstacle,
mount to the sky,
so up to the housetop,
We'll fly, my boys, girl and I.
Our eyes will twinkle, our dimples
how merry
Our bellies will shake
like bowlfuls of jelly.
We'll speak not a word,
but go straight to our work
delivering chocolates
to those who don't shirk
Your house will get built
It will loom over mine
But a wink from an eye,
a nod from a head,
soon gave me to know 
we had nothing to dread.
We'll spring to our sleigh,
and I'll give a whistle
and away we'll all fly
like the down on a thistle.
We'll arise from the clatter
to the only thing that does matter.



Happy Christmas to All, And To All A Good Night!






From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs

Mosh Pit

Do you want to hear the good news first or last? It's not actually news but more of a rehash. SOS. Save Our Ship and Same Old Shit. I got a Christmas greeting card from our new health insurer. It was a snow globe with a cheerful winter scene inside. Despite coverage not beginning until the first of the year, I suppose Anthem Blue Shield is trying to butter me up. You know -- all that thank you for entrusting us to insure your good health and looking forward to a wonderful relationship in the new year. Wouldn't it be awesome if their season's greetings included Happy Hellidays and Looking Forward to Ripping You a New One in 2016! I'm thinking about printing the e-card out and using it for target practice -- oh, wait -- I don't own a gun and have already refused to even acknowledge those who believe it's their right or need to carry one. Maybe, instead, I'll use the card to practice spitting, or maybe blowing marijuana smoke rings. Wait -- I haven't really spit on anything or anyone since my sister and I fought over Parcheesi back in the mid-70s, and I don't smoke marijuana despite my fervent belief in its medicinal powers. May the new year knock some sense into our legislators, persuade them that accepting money from Big Pharma and the NRA enslaves you to drugs, fear and death.

Anyhoo.

Where was I? Christmas greeting cards from your future health insurer (for whom you've already girded your loins in expectation of the Fight Over Formulary and Non-Formulary Drugs) are irksome and seem a waste of the cloud, no?

Here's some good stuff. I spent a few glorious hours in Sophie's school classroom this morning. I brought fresh donuts and about nine Trader Joe's gingerbread houses for the kids to put together and decorate. They're a rowdy, fun bunch of young men and women. They are Asian and Hispanic and African-American and Caucasian and Christian and Orthodox Jewish and Muslim. They sang Christmas carols, danced and laughed and wiped frosting all over themselves. They worked very hard throwing sprinkles over the roofs and piled the little sugar people up by the front door. The teacher declared awesome mosh pit! and they all giggled. If you need a bit of cheer in your life, if you're completely demoralized by all the bullshit -- by the freedom lovers and gun lovers, by the war mongers and terrorists, by the expressions boots on the ground and collateral damage, by the Federal Reserve -- you should visit a class of young adults with disabilities.

You won't feel gratitude for what you have and what they lack. You'll want what they have and what you lack.

Greetings from the Christmas Tchotchke Shop (with trigger warnings, see below!)*

First of all, let me clear things up regarding my post from yesterday. I failed miserably at conveying what I meant, and that was made clear by many of your thoughtful comments. I was struck by the T.C. Boyle quote that I used to open the post because it spoke to me about paradox, about holding opposing thoughts at the same time. I've written about that ad nauseum on this blog and elsewhere. Yesterday morning, as Henry struggled to get Sophie's wheelchair folded up and into my sexy, white Mazda, I remarked how strong he is and how lifting that thing would surely help to further build his muscles. I said it in the lame way that mothers do when they know what they're saying is cheerful bullshit. At least to me it's bullshit, because, frankly, having to lift a wheelchair into the back of the car for your handicapped sister and weaker mother is a pain in the ass. I have long mulled over the spin that we use to justify our situations or make them more tolerable or better. As a writer, I'm prone to flights of fancy and imagination. Sometimes it feels like I'm making the whole world up as I go. The things people say about Sophie or my boys, the things I say or think about Sophie or my boys or our situation -- I didn't mean to judge them.  It is what it is, as the moral relativists like to say. So, don't feel guilty if you've had those thoughts or said those things. Don't we all make stuff up to make ourselves feel better or to cope? And there is truth to all of them, anyway. Good truth and uncomfortable truth.






Now let's move on for a visit to the Tchotchke Shop. Despite my intentions to not bring down all the Christmas crap from the attic, I was over-ruled by the The Brothers who were aghast that I would even think about holding out on the annual extravaganza. Of course when it came time to actually decorate, I was the one doing it all.











I tried to remain Christmas Stepford Momish last night when it was looking like no one was going to help me put the lights and ornaments on the tree, but eventually I had to raise my voice to a moderate Christmasy decibel and insist that you need to get off those dang devices and get in here and decorate the tree! Then I forced Oliver to choose between decorating and sitting on the couch with Sophie. He chose Sophie until her head bangs forced him to do the job with Henry, and I sat on the couch with Sophie while simultaneously and sweetly ordering the both of them around.

We watched about five minutes of White Christmas until The Brothers' constant mocking (oh my god! Look at how fake it is! This is so stupid! WHAT IS THIS?) destroyed the shreds of Christmas cheer I was so valiantly trying to maintain. I gave the boys and Sophie their annual new ornament and gazed, again, at the one I bought myself.

Have you seen anything more fabulous than that today? I might have to craft a new blog header, right? How about this?

That brings me to the trigger warnings for this post:

  * Lots of scary tchotchkes that might bother those of you who get agita at Christmas
** Lots of wonderful tchotchkes that might possibly throw your panties into a wad if you believe in the war on Christmas. Happy Holidays to you!

Mother Superior and Her Kids On Sunday

Ha Ha Ha Ha!

After birthing and raising three children, now in my twentieth year, I figure I get to call myself a Mother Superior. You can, too, if you want. I'm not trying to act conceited -- just Superior. This morning, I wrangled the boys into taking down the tree and then rearranging the living room to my precise specifications. Perhaps I'm not so much a Mother Superior as the mother of Superior Sons. Despite the constant bickering and escalated shouts, the cranking up of music and the competing blares from the saxophone, the room got done. These boys even vacuumed the furniture.

Oliver then got busy making tortillas with his tortilla press. We squeezed lime juice on those little circles of corn and sprinkled salt on them, ate them hot as fast as he could make them.

And Sophie? Sophie was really happy today, less agitated, with no seizures to speak of. Knock on wood. Three times. I got a kick out of playing with her -- she loves these crazy felt mums on my slippers -- Mother Superior definitely getting some interest from one of the cloistered sisters.

Sisters and Brothers, how was your Sunday? Tell Mother Superior.

The Big O is Home from Switzerland

As you can see, Oliver got home from Switzerland with a hell of a lot of Swiss chocolate. Added to the Christmas crap that is, literally, everywhere, I can say confidently that I live in a Christmas and Chocolate Shop. I haven't even seen The Big O this morning as he is sleeping, still, at 2:00 in the afternoon. I'm trying to take down Christmas and simultaneously declutter. I've begun in the dining room, and in between opening cabinets and drawers and tossing what I don't want or need or am sick of, I pop one of those chocolates you see up there, clustered in a pile to the right. I'm being fueled by chocolate and incredulity at the amount of crap I have. January 3rd seems like as good a day as any to be ruthless, but don't think it isn't hard for me to part with some stuff. There's a three-drawer cabinet in one corner that has long been The Art Cart, and it's filled with art supplies -- markers, pencils, paper, stamps, watercolor paints, drawing pads, and various odd stuff like pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks.

Here's the thing. No one in my house is remotely crafty or artistic in the manner of The Art Cart, although we have riffled through the contents over the years for school projects, lemonade stands, etc. I really am loathe to get rid of The Art Cart, though, with that nagging premonition that the moment I do toss it, I'll need something from it -- why the hell did I throw out that Frida Kahlo coloring book? -- and have regrets. During hour three of the purge, I took a break and rode over to the post office to mail something and mulled over the art cart, the difficulty of getting rid of stuff, what that means in a psychoanalytic way and other psychic-shattering things.

Reader, I actually thought this thought:

The Art Cart could stay there and maybe when I have grandchildren, they'll appreciate the stuff inside of it. 

I'm going to wake Oliver up and pop some more chocolate.

Merry Christmas 2014

Well, if Jesus had been born in southern California, the day might have been similar to this one -- breathtakingly clear, the skies wiped clean and brilliant blue, the wind rustling through the palms so vigorously in the wee hours of the morning that I woke quite suddenly and lay in my bed and just listened, wondering what was up.

The Teenagers all slept in this morning, so I was able to take a quick photo of what Santa brought. We're a family that doesn't wrap presents, so Santa bent his will to our customs and left each teenager her and his own pile.

Everyone was happy. I had three of my favorite Instagram photos blown up and canvassed -- each one showed Henry, Sophie and Oliver doing their favorite thing. I pretended to give each one to the kids, but they are actually for me.

One of my sisters gave me this Frida mug -- when my neighbor called to say that she had hot mulled wine at her house, I walked over and filled Frida up.

Later, I insisted on some group photos outside by the poinsettia tree. Ya'll there is NO FILTER on these photos. That's how blue the sky was (above) and how red the flowers. Jesus absolutely should have been born in southern California because there might not be better winter solstice weather anywhere else. I'm so grateful to live here -- always.

Oh, here are the group photos. I won't tell you what sort of words came out of all of our mouths in the taking of these photos. Some things never change, right?

We're winding down, getting ready for our Christmas Dinner with Uncle Tony. The Husband is grilling steaks and doing some other magical things in the kitchen. I'm drinking milk punch and tending to Sophie. All is calm. All is bright.

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

The Yuletide Season Pleasure Sampler

There are many things making me feel like I'm running off the rails this December. There are also many things that are giving me pleasure. Here are some:

1. Those Janis Joplin stamps. The package looks like a single record, and on the other side is a great big photo of Janis. They have Jimi Hendrix ones, too.

2. I heard this song on the radio yesterday, and it made me happy. It makes me cry a little, too.




3. This list of NPR's Maureen Corrigan's favorite books of 2014 gave me that overly-stimulated feeling that I still get when I go into a library or a bookstore and realize how many books there are to read. It's the good kind of over-stimulation, not the frantic one laced with anxiety that I get when I realize how much money shitty movies make during the holidays.

Sometimes You Can't Pick Just 10: Maureen Corrigan's Favorite Books of 2014


4. Yes, my house looks like one of those obnoxious Christmas shops in a tourist town, but I have several tableaus (if you will) that give me pleasure. Here's one:

Here's a close-up of the bowl and the weird baby that creeps some out but gives me pleasure:

5. I listened rapturously to the last episode of Serial, the podcast from This American Life. It was really pretty fantastic and highly addictive. It also saved my sanity in the car the last few weeks.




Reader, what's making you happy or giving you pleasure or helping to save your sanity during the Yuletide Season?

My loud vernacular horn

My oldest Christmas ornament is an owl in a globe from 1971. In any given moment, my house, all decorated for the holidays, can look charming or like some hellish year-round Christmas shop.

I read a greeting card today that said, Any given moment you can change your life. You just have to be there.

I'm here.

So far, the places where some of my friends are going for Christmas are Hawaii, Cambodia, New York City, Park City, San Francisco, Mexico and Chicago. With the possible exception of Hawaii, I don't really envy anyone travelling during the holidays. When I feel a ping of jealousy that ratchets up to resentment, I read Billy Collins' poem Consolation. That might be because we've got Sophie to contend with, and the thought of travel anywhere without her is way more difficult than travel with her. Does that make sense?

My sisters and their families are going to my parents' house in Atlanta.   One of my sisters asked whether I was sad about not being able to go "home" for Christmas, and I didn't quite know how to answer that. I think the place that used to be sad is now numb. I guess I'm sad that our family can never pick up and go anywhere, to tell you the truth, and even if we were willing to suspend what remnants of sanity we have left and take Sophie on a cross-country trip, it'd be illegal to take her medicine to Georgia. And I don't wish that I lived closer to home because that would mean -- well -- Georgia. In an ideal world, Sophie would still be who she is, difficult to travel with, but everyone would come here to see us.

So, while I'm sure I'll miss a good time with the relatives, I love a Christmas in my own sometimes charming and sometimes hellish Christmas-shop home.

How much better to command the modern precinct of home
than to be dwarfed by pillar, arch and basilica.


Like Virginia Woolfe said, nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.

Your Holiday Mind

Oliver asked me to print this file out, his newest entrepreneurial effort. 

I'm sort of dying -- 

THE HOLIDAYS ARE IN AND THAT MEANS CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!!!

Hi everybody it’s me Oliver your local handyman asking if you need help decorating your house for the holidays. I charge $5 an hour for whatever your holiday mind desires.

For more information my number is: 

Colored Lights Under the Dome of Dark

Things are different this year in more ways than one or even two. I piddled around most of the day, unpacking, doing laundry, catching up on email and so forth. I did a little shopping, too, mainly for the kids, and at one moment contemplated buying colored lights to hang somewhere in the house or outside. We're a white light kind of family, and there was a time when I thought colored lights were actually pretty atrocious. For some reason though, today, I couldn't take my eyes from those little globes that you see above, and I'm thinking of bucking tradition and buying a few strands. When I walked home, I realized, too, that despite the melancholy of "the season," I am looking forward to making my home look warm and welcoming, to seeing the lights in the houses and stores, to saying good-bye to this year and welcoming the next.

The great poet Mark Strand died the other day. Here's a good one of his:


Lines for Winter

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself —
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Mark Strand (1934-2014)

The Death of Christmas

The scene at Target this afternoon. All the red-shirted stock people were cheerfully stocking the shelves with Christmas paraphernalia.


I thought I'd prempt the hysterical conservative Christian media and let ya'll know that the death of Christmas is imminent. Now you don't have to wait for Bill O'Reilly to tell you.

Next up on my plate is scouting out public schools to make sure they're slipping in some prayers and saluting the flag.

After that, I might build an enormous effigy of a teacup made out of the hundreds of flyers I've gotten in the mail this week, advertising for some candidate or another, and burn it.

Reader, what are you up to?

Caving before the Epiphany

The Christmas Shop our house is officially disassembled.

Peace reigns.

Christmas is for children

And I sure do love mine. Merry Christmas, everyone!

This'll Crack the Christmas Blues Out of You and Up

Crushing Christmas: How to Win Every Argument

By Kelly Williams Brown

December 24th 20135:45 AM

Shut down your relatives' political chit-chat with patent, confusing nonsense.

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

―Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Soon, many of us will head into the cozy crucible that is the extended family Christmas dinner. There will be side-hugs, nuts with the shells on, starchy dishes, small talk, and then (sure as spring turns to summer turns to glowing autumn), it’s time for Opinions on Issues of the Day and also Life Choices You Are Making.

Perhaps in the past, you’ve imagined that facts and well-reasoned arguments would work. Maybe diplomatic re-routing was the way to go. Keeping the same not-smile smile on your face, nodding quickly and answering with one word. How did these stratagems work out for you?

No more. This year, you stop bringing a pleasant, reasonable knife to a gunfight. This year, your responses will completely derail any conversation in progress. This year, your dinner table blather will leave everyone feeling quiet, unsettled, and somehow reminded of that time at summer camp when an allergic kid got stung by a bee and then died.

READ THE REST HERE

If you're not jolly, yet, you need to go have some Milk Punch or a shot of bourbon on the rocks.

Waiting and trepidation

That's Sophie when she was about 21 months old. We used the photo as our Christmas card that year, and it inspired the minister of All Saint's Unitarian Church, Galen Guengerich, in New York City to write a sermon about it on this exact day in 1996. Today is the day that we begin giving Sophie Charlotte's Web, with hope and trepidation, seventeen years later. Here is an excerpt from the sermon:

... Every new parent soon learns that the birth of a child changes lots of things substantially, the least of which turns out to be the thermostat. The essence of the Christmas story, however, is how the birth of one particular child changed almost everything. Yet my own guess is that the infant born to Mary and Joseph was not unusual at all. He was just another child born to parents who loved him, a lot like the child whose photograph adorns the front of a Christmas card I received here at the church just this week. The child in the photo is a beautiful little girl, about a year and a half old, dressed in white like an angel, with golden wings and a little halo of golden stars on top of her head. She's sitting on a bed which is covered by a white comforter, with a Christmas tree alongside. The photograph shows her face in profile as she looks upward, her arms uplifted too as if waiting.

But it's when you notice her eyes, which reveal an innocent intensity reflected in the hopeful openness of her hands and fingers, that you realize this is no seasonal charade. Her parents got it exactly right. Every child is born of his or her parents'  fondest hopes, the offspring of life's most fully-realized longing for itself. Especially at Christmas, each child is an angel in waiting. For some parents, however, the longing is more poignant, the hope more heartfelt, the waiting more riddled with trepidation.

You see, I know the angelic little girl in the Christmas photo. She is a child of this congregation, dedicated here on the chancel by you and me and her parents last December. But I also know what the photo does not reveal. She suffers from severe epilepsy, which subjects her to dozens of seizures each day and has delayed her development and put the quality of her future in serious question. The photo is no conceit: the little girl and those who love her really are waiting for a new advent of hope. In her case, it may come, but then again, it may not. 

The sermon goes on beautifully and even weaves some poetry of Seamus Heaney:

Peace on earth, men of good will, all that

Holds good only as long as the balance holds

For the little girl in the photo and countless others as well, the scales seem badly out of balance, tilted far to one side by the onerous weight of unwarranted suffering. Joy and hope, even when they make their occasional visitation, seem far too ephemeral to act as a counterweight and bring the balance back. Most of us have been lucky enough to know what life is like when the balance does hold, when pain and pleasure come our way in roughly equal measures, when experiences which bring sorrow don't finally overshadow the ones that leave us filled with laughter and contentment. But many of us have experienced the anguish of life gone awry.

____________________________________ 

Further along in the poem, Seamus Heaney admits how easy it is to stand idly by while malevolent forces or malicious people throw things out of kilter. He recognizes that none of us can restore the balance alone. Even so, he insists:

...every now and then, just weighing in

Is what it must come down to... 

The Bible is filled with stories of how God through the ages has weighed in to right the balance in this world. Whenever hope is lost and peace just a memory and good will nowhere to be found, God shows up -- through a miracle, the word of a prophet, the voice of an angel. That is exactly what happened yet again, as the story goes, almost two thousand years ago in Bethlehem. God weighed in, this time as a child, and in so doing once again united the Spirit of Life with the human heart and opened the wonder of heaven to those of us who walk here on earth.

Does that mean everything is wonderful -- that pain is banished and sorrow forgotten and evil forever vanquished? Not at all. Lest we forget the hard truths, life has an uncanny way of reminding us, through Christmas cards and newspaper headlines and late-night telephone calls. But the glad tidings of this season renew our faith that the balance will hold. To us, even you and me, a child of hope is born, this day and every day. To us, a gift is given: the gift of life, the gift of joy and laughter, the gift of love. 

Report from Santa-Land

Aside from getting an estimate this morning from The Plumber Guy that surpassed the initial estimate by several thousand dollars, the one that provoked my stripping naked and running down the street screaming, today proved to be better than yesterday. A very close friend brought his Guy over to take a look at the Plumbing Troubles, and he will be able to do the job for far less money. We might even consider having The Brothers help to dig the trenches around the house over Christmas vacation. I'll wield a camera and take some photos in the Selgado vein.

We shall see.

That aside, I needed to get busy for a small party that we're having tomorrow night. I considered cancelling in the throes of despair last night, but The Husband told me that I was insane (even though I am already insane as he will not even be at the party), so I spent today baking and preparing for the festivities. Here are some Chocolate Rye Cookies with Maldon Sea Salt. I'm also making Pecan Puffs, Chocolaty Chip Cookies and Rolled Sugar Cookies. There will be soup, bread, cheese and olives. We will carol in our snowy Los Angeles neighborhood, bundled up against the 52 degree chill.

Here are some cheerful shots of our house which over the years has grown to resemble one of those Christmas stores that you see on resort islands (the resort islands that I regularly visit). It all sort of makes me nauseous and happy -- and you know me: very, very capable of holding those paradoxical feelings at once!

Here's the Owl ornament that I've had since 1972. Reader, I've been collecting owls for longer than some of you have been alive and certainly well before they became a thing. Have I ever told you about my owl shag rug that I hooked myself?

There's an Elf that I've had for far longer -- maybe the 1960s? It's the genuine article -- not that horrid little Elf on a Shelf business.

Here's our tree, and I have no idea what the sparkly lights are doing. I suppose it's another Christmas miracle, making up for the Plumbing Troubles.

Oh, and here's the life-sized Santa, because every tiny California bungalow should have at least one.

And then there's me, looking wan with freshly waxed eyebrows:

What are ya'll doing?